21905	----	A GUIDE FOR THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF JEWISH YOUTH. Proposed to Teachers by ISAAC REGGIO, Rabbi and Professor, Member of the Oriental and Leipsic, Halle, etc., etc., etc. Translated from the Italian by M. H. Picciotto. London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., Stationers'--Hall Court. MDCCCLV. London: Printed by J. Wertheimer and Co. SYNOPSIS. Notice by the Translator. Author's Preface. CHAPTER I. GOD. 1. His existence. Cosmological argument. 2. First Cause, necessary, eternal. 3. Omnipotent, free, provident, omniscient, infallible. 4. All-wise, good, pure, immutable. 5. God. 6. Psychological argument. 7. Moral argument. CHAPTER II. MAN. 8. His faculties. 9. His destination. 10. Intellect. 11. Reason. 12. Free will. 13. Immortal soul. 14. Double tendency. 15. Contrast. 16. Choice. 17. Conscience. 18. Feeling. CHAPTER III. NATURAL RELIGION. 19. Idea of religion. 20. Necessity for man. 21. Faith. CHAPTER IV. INSUFFICIENCY OF NATURAL RELIGION. 22. Obstacles. 23. Tardy development of reason. 24. Ascendancy of sensuality. 25. Want of opportunity. 26. Social life. 27. Internal anarchy. 28. Limitation of human understanding. 29. Uncertainty of human knowledge. 30. Experience. 31. Necessity of a revelation. CHAPTER V. REVEALED RELIGION. 32. Its actuality. 33. Its truth. 34. Its fundamental principle. 35. Relation between God and man. 36. Divine plan. 37. Essence of revelation. 38. Lofty aspiration of man. 39. Prophecy. 40. Prediction of the future. CHAPTER VI. OBJECTION AND ANSWER. 41. Rationalism antagonistic to faith. 42. Self-love in the physical world. 43. Self-love in man. 44. Heroism of man. 45. Proceeding from love. 46. Is the cause of faith. 47. Is not the offspring of imagination 48. Depends on the subjection of the sensual appetites. 49. Furnishes evidence to faith. CHAPTER VII. PRELIMINARY DISPOSITIONS OF REVELATION. 50. Contingency in revelation. 51. Its removal. 52. Choice of a portion of mankind. 53. Beginning from an individual. 54. Election of that individual. CHAPTER VIII. PATRIARCHAL EPOCH. 55. Abraham. 56. His virtues. 57. Aim of his vocation. 58. Covenant established with him. 59. Circumcision. 60. Abraham's progeny. 61. Providential measures. CHAPTER IX. SINAITIC REVELATION. 62. Egyptian bondage. Moses. 63. Preamble of the revelation. 64. Modality of the revelation 65. Decalogue. CHAPTER X. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 66. First Commandment, 67. Second, 68. Third, 69. Fourth, 70. Fifth, 71. Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth, 72. Ninth. 73. Tenth. CHAPTER XI. SUCCESSIVE REVELATIONS. 74. Their character. 76. Their twofold direction. 75. Their sanction. CHAPTER XII. REVEALED NOTIONS RESPECTING GOD. 77. Knowledge of God. 78. Opportunity of such a knowledge. 79. Immediate relation between God and man. 80. Love of God. 81. Fear of God. 82. Other duties towards God. CHAPTER XIII. DUTIES TOWARDS FELLOW-MEN. 83. Justice. 84. Negative duties. 85. Positive duties. 86. Other duties. 87. Charity and benevolence. 88. Duties toward the animate and inanimate nature. CHAPTER XIV. DUTIES TOWARDS ONE'S-SELF. 89. Fundamental rule. 91. Sanctification. 90. Duties towards the body. 92. Other special obligations. CHAPTER XV. JUDAISM. 93. Religious idea. 94. Its vicissitudes among the Jews. 95. Mosaism. 96. Prophetism. CHAPTER XVI. CONCLUSION. 97. Action, creed, hopes. NOTICE. THE name of Isaac Reggio of Goritz, is now a celebrity in the Hebrew literary world. A man of vast mind, a profound scholar, a philosopher, and an elegant writer, his numerous works on Theology, Hermeneutics, Philology, History, and Literature, written in Hebrew, in Italian, and in German, have tended much to revive the taste for Hebrew literature, and to reconcile modern education to the study of Jewish antiquities. The present little book is one of his latest productions in the Italian language. In a style at once concise and perspicuous, and with a form of reasoning suited to the scientific requirements of the times, he introduces the student to an enlarged view of Religion, ascends with him to the heavenly source from which it emanated, and leads him, through the paths of virtue and love, to the comprehension and admiration of the objects contemplated by it. In short, he teaches--if I am permitted the expression--_the philosophy of religion_. I humbly, but firmly believe that, in the hands of able Jewish teachers, this work will considerably assist them to infuse into religious instruction a little more spirituality, and to impart a more comprehensive view of religion, than the routine of former days deemed necessary, and that, by so doing, they will be better able to enlarge and satisfy the minds, improve the hearts, and generally advance the moral education of youth. Notwithstanding the well-intentioned and beneficial efforts of many friends of education among the British Jews, and the praiseworthy exertions of some excellent teachers, the education of the mass is, we must confess, still in a condition, in which the attainment of those objects has not ceased to be a desideratum. We may or may not be on a level with our neighbours, but we have very urgent and special calls of our own for self-improvement, we have a particular mission to fulfil, with its concomitant duties. Such self-improvement and such duties are demanded by the spirit--not of _the age_, as is too commonly said and believed--but of an age which began thirty-two centuries ago, at the revelation on Mount Sinai--the spirit of Judaism, of well-understood Judaism. Our age, with all its boasted and undeniable progress, is still, morally, far below the type designed by Providence for humanity in the Sinaitic dispensation, far behind the spirit which dictated and pervades the pages of the sacred volume, and which, when thoroughly understood and generally acted upon, must bring about the supreme reign of justice, charity, and universal love, and--as far as attainable--the ultimate perfection of mankind. It has appeared to me that these truths find a plain and logical exposition in this little work, and that its contents may not prove uninteresting even to the general reader. I also believe that a more correct apprehension of the true spirit and principles of Judaism by our Christian brethren, than is commonly arrived at, will have the twofold effect, of gradually leading to a larger measure of justice being dealt to the Jew, and inducing the latter to a higher degree of self-respect. For these several reasons, I have volunteered to translate it for the use of the English public, while other versions are being prepared in Germany and France. I trust that those to whose lot has fallen the honourable but arduous task of educating and informing young minds, and to whom it is more particularly addressed, will give it their earnest consideration, for the sake of whatever good they may cull from it, as a material in aid, while they are laying the foundations of virtue in the hearts of the rising generation. That the results may correspond to the intentions is the sincere wish of THE TRANSLATOR. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. TO INSTRUCTORS. IN the exercise of the sacred mission entrusted to you by Providence--that of educating our youth to piety and religion--it must have frequently occurred to you, to wish that such an instruction could be imparted, not in the shape of dogmas demanding to be admitted without investigation, but as doctrines addressed to the intellect by proper demonstrations, and finding their way to the heart by stimulating its noblest feelings. The little book that I present to you is intended to satisfy, at least in part, that wish. You will not find in it a complete treatise on Jewish Theology, or a systematic catechism, but only the essential elements, which may serve to the future elaboration of both. You will find deposited in it the rough materials, which some abler hands will perhaps one day employ in constructing an edifice, in which our youth may find a safe refuge from the storms of doubt, unbelief, and irreligion. I have purposed to avoid all exuberant ornaments of style, all pompous parade of erudition, and contented myself with a plain diction, and a strict laconism. I have not quoted authors who preceded me in the same field; I have not called up for investigation what of valuable or defective could be found in them; in short, I have not instituted comparisons, scientific disquisitions, or critical examinations of the opinions of others. A series of aphorisms, simple, plain, unadorned, of easy understanding, drawn from no other source than the Divine Word, presented with the greatest possible perspicuity and precision, progressing in a regular chain of consequential propositions, and containing in few words the most important points of the Israelitish creed--that is the form in which I have thought more proper to present to those, who are already versed in the Bible and in Hebrew literature, a skeleton of the vast religious science, in which they may perceive at a glance the principal characteristic of Judaism, its various ramifications, subsidiary parts, and special tendencies; they may then easily discover and account for the multifarious phases, in which it manifested itself in the various epochs of the universal history of mankind. To supply the deficiencies, to adorn those naked propositions, to provide them with evidence deduced from the sacred text, to enlarge them with appropriate applications, to illustrate them with examples, in fine, to reduce the whole into such a catechistic form as will suit a sound system of instruction--such is the task which remains entrusted to your intelligence, and to your zeal. By employing the proffered materials with that discretion which is peculiar to your ministry, with that method which the tender minds of your pupils require, and with the love inspired by the sublimity and importance of the subject, yours will be the merit of having propagated the seeds of truth that will bring forth charity and universal edification; to me suffices the happiness of having, in some degree, contributed to so noble a work. A GUIDE FOR THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF JEWISH YOUTH. CHAPTER I. I. WHOEVER directs his mind to the contemplation of the objects that surround him, the aggregate of which is called the universe, will soon perceive, that the parts of which it is composed undergo continually various modifications and successive changes, every one of them exercising some influence on the others, and receiving from them some alteration. This state of mutual dependence, in which the parts of the universe stand in relation to each other, leads us necessarily to conclude, that none of them has within itself the reason or cause of its existence, but that all of them together depend upon a cause which is out of themselves, and through which they began to exist; the universe, then, has had a cause, an Author. II. This Author of the universe, if he had not in himself the reason of his existence, must also have it in others, and these again in others. Consequently, we must either suppose an endless progression of causes and effects, which is repugnant to reason, or arrive at last at a Being existing by and of himself,--that is to say, one who owes not his existence to others, and has caused all other things to exist;--and in that case, the reason of his existence must be part of his _own_ essence and nature, and, consequently, inseparable from him and indestructible. The Author of the universe is then a Being necessary and eternal; and as to Him all things owe their existence, it follows that through Him they began to exist, and He created them from nought. III. He, who could create all from nought, has a power without limits, and nothing is to Him impossible; He, who has given existence to all things, has also ordained the laws to which they are subject; He, who has ordained at His will the laws of nature, has also the power of changing or suspending them at His will; and lastly, He, who caused all things to exist, can alone keep them in existence, governing and directing them with ceaseless providence; and such continual action implies, of necessity, that He should know everything, that nothing should be hidden from Him, and that in Him error should be impossible. The Author of the universe is then omnipotent, free, all-provident, omniscient, and infallible. IV. Again, whoever attentively contemplates the universe cannot help discovering, with admiration, in every part of it a stupendous art, a constant order, a systematic correspondence of means to ends, which demonstrate that all has been arranged on a predetermined plan and for a fixed purpose, to which all the particular dispositions developed in the course of the natural phenomena are exquisitely adapted. This order and this harmony--which manifest themselves, also, in all the progressive courses of nature--indicate a self-developing excellence, and a tendency to an ever-increasing perfectibility, such as can only emanate from a cause infinitely intelligent and good; and as such qualities cannot be attributed to a being corporeal, because limited and subject to changes, it follows that the Author of the universe is all-wise and good, pure and immutable. V. Now, this Being, necessary and eternal, whom the contemplation of the universe alone reveals to us as the Author of everything, as omnipotent, free, all-provident, omniscient, infallible, pure, immutable, all-wise, and good, is He whom we call GOD. VI. But our conviction of the existence of God need not be derived exclusively from the wonders of the universe; for every man can find in himself the evident proof of the existence of that supreme cause. In fact, man feels within himself that he thinks; and if he were even to doubt it, he could not deny that at least he doubts; and the doubt itself is already a thought. Admitting that he possesses the faculty of thinking, he must admit that there is within himself a substance, a being, a something which thinks. But this being, who is conscious of his own thoughts, is also conscious that he exists not by himself, that he has not existed from all eternity, that he is subject to changes, that even the simple ideas, which compose his thoughts, are not produced by himself, but acquired through his senses from external objects; and, in short, that he depends upon various causes placed without himself, and undergoes vicissitudes, which it is not in his power to remove. Therefore man has not within himself the reason of his own existence, but he must trace it to another, who is the Author of it. Now, this Author cannot have received His own existence from another, if He is to be considered the primary cause; otherwise we should fall into a succession of causes and effects to infinity. Then, the true Author of our existence is one who exists by Himself, and as such He is eternal, omnipotent, all-wise, etc., etc.; He is God. VII. Another source, affording the proof of the existence of God, man finds in himself when his intellectual faculties have attained a certain degree of culture and maturity. He then knows himself to be a moral being; that is to say, a being who, placed between good and evil, can, of his own free will, adhere to the former and reject the latter, if he follows the dictates of his reason. Then the moral sense awakens in his mind the idea of a supreme blessing, of a progressive and infallible moral perfection, of a future final accord between virtue and felicity, and their necessary co-existence. Now, he cannot expect this supreme blessing from anything that surrounds him in nature, because he does not find in the latter the desired union of happiness with virtue, enjoyment with merit. He must, therefore, seek it in a Supreme Cause existing out of nature--in a Cause which should contain in itself the type of the moral law, embrace the whole extent of that law with infinite intelligence, and act up to its dictates with a powerful will. This Supreme Cause is God. CHAPTER II. VIII. MAN has many advantages and privileges over all other creatures. Not only can he, like other animals, perceive through his senses all the surrounding objects, but he can compare with one another the perceptions received, associate them together, separate them, and form new ideas. He can know for what purposes things exist, investigate their causes and effects, discern between good and evil, between just and unjust; he alone can communicate his thoughts to others; he alone can speak. IX. Everything produced by an intelligent Author must be intended for some purpose--must have a _destination_. Man, the noblest creature on earth, must also have a destination. We shall arrive at a clear knowledge of that destination, when we shall have considered the powers and capabilities possessed by him; for the means with which nature has endowed him, for the development of his activity, evidently point out the goal which that activity is designed to attain. X. Now, the capabilities that we discover in man are the following:--Besides a body constructed with wonderful skill, but weak, corruptible, mortal, man has within himself a vivifying principle, which substantiates in him the knowledge of things with the aid of the senses, renews in him perceptions once received, unites them, separates them, and forms out of them new ideas. This thinking principle is certainly different from the body, of which no part is apt to think, and is what we call the _soul_; the act itself of thinking proceeds from a faculty of the soul which we call _intellect_. XI. But the soul can also judge, conclude from causes to effects, distinguish between good and evil, between just and unjust, conceive an idea of things never perceived through the senses; it can recognise the supreme Author of the universe, it can adore God. This faculty of the soul is called _reason_; intellect and reason are the principal or superior faculties of the human soul. XII. Reason points out good as a thing desirable, and evil as a thing to be avoided; yet man feels within himself a desire or impulse towards all that is pleasurable to the senses, although reason may represent it to him as an evil. And, on the other hand, he is conscious of his perfect freedom of choosing good, however disagreeable to the senses, and of abhorring evil, however tempting it may appear; he has, then, the faculty of directing his action to one or other of these two courses; his soul is endowed with _free-will_. XIII. A being endowed with intellect, reason, and free-will cannot be composed of parts, because the operations proceeding from such faculties presuppose a comparison of various relations with each other, and a deduction of consequences from their principles; and these operations require such a unity and simplicity in their subject as are absolutely incompatible with the nature of matter, composed, as it is, of parts. The human soul is therefore a simple being, a _spirit_, and, as such, indestructible, _immortal_. XIV. Man, then, unites in himself two natures, belongs to two classes of beings very different from one another, is a citizen of two worlds. In his body he is linked to the material world, undergoes all the vicissitudes of matter, is subject to the incentives of the senses, and is impelled to gratify the wants and cravings of physical enjoyment. As regards his soul, he enters into the sphere of intelligences, he feels himself attracted by the ideas of the beautiful, of the true, of the just; he participates in the condition of the spiritual beings, aspires to the immense, to the infinite; and is susceptible of an ever-increasing perfectibility, finding within himself the power of abhorring moral evil, viz., vice, and of cleaving to moral good, viz., virtue. XV. Man has, therefore, within himself a germ of discord between the two principles of which he is constituted, a contrast between the exigencies of the body and those of the soul--between the appetites of the senses and the dictates of reason; and as this latter alone is competent to form a judgment on what he ought or ought not to do, it follows that reason alone should be consulted and obeyed in determining upon every action. XVI. Now, by freely and spontaneously resolving to conform all the actions of his life to the dictates of reason, which commands him to be wise in his self-government, upright with others, and pious towards the supreme Author, man will have worthily corresponded to the end for which he was created--he will have fulfilled his _destination_; for it is clearly the destination of man to make the best possible use of the sublime faculties with which his soul is endowed; and the best possible use he does make when he subordinates his inferior to his superior tendencies, the cravings of the body to those of the soul; in a word, when he obeys the dictates of reason. XVII. When man obeys the dictates of reason, an internal voice in his heart tells him that he has done right; he feels satisfied with himself, and is penetrated with a sense of true joy. When, on the contrary, he consciously infringes the laws of reason, he is not only deprived of that internal approbation, but an inextinguishable voice rises reproachful within his heart; he is no longer satisfied with himself, but feels uneasiness and perturbation. That internal voice, which judges man's actions, and generates happiness or sorrow, is what is called _Conscience_. XVIII. But the human soul, when it concentrates itself within, has also the faculty of feeling the sense of its own individuality, and perceiving that the state in which it is is its own. By virtue of this sense, which we may call feeling, the soul is led always to desire its own welfare, its own happiness; thence springs love or hatred, inclination or aversion towards an object, as this object seems apt to occasion pleasure or pain. But man, sooner or later, discovers that a true and permanent pleasure cannot be obtained through any of the physical enjoyments on earth, which he may not always be able to procure, or, when procured, leave after them weariness and disgust. He, consequently, cannot place in them his true happiness; and his internal sense tells him that there are other enjoyments of a purely spiritual nature, which alone can satisfy the highest aspirations of his soul. The exercise of his moral duties--which, through his freedom of action, lies always within his power, and by which alone he can tranquillise his conscience and fully delight in self-contentment--is that which offers to his soul true and permanent enjoyment; that alone is worth desiring. CHAPTER III. XIX. ON man governing himself morally well in life, it becomes manifest to him, on the one hand, that his conduct, being conformable to the end for which he was created, must also be agreeable to the will of the Creator. On the other hand, that same internal sense, which prompts him to satisfy the demands of his own conscience, leads him, also, to elevate his mind towards God; and he feels at the bottom of his heart that he would be wanting in the principal element of his happiness if he referred not his every thought to the Author of his existence. This twofold direction of the mind towards God is called _Religion_, a word derived from the Latin _religare_, for, as a moral being endowed with intelligence and freedom, man feels always a certain tendency to disengage himself from the physical order of terrestrial things, and to _link_ himself again to the Supreme Cause from whom he emanated. XX. All the peoples of antiquity exhibited, in their successive developments, the aptitude of the human soul to entertain religion within itself, nay, the necessity in which it finds itself to connect the exercise of moral duties or virtue with the Supreme Source of all morality. In fact, God, in His infinite wisdom and goodness, wills nothing but what is good; and in no better mode could man ever manifest his gratitude to the Author of his existence, than by doing that which is agreeable to His will. Hence it is, that whoever is true to his destination, is said to be true to God; and he who is virtuous is religious. There is, then, in the human soul a natural disposition to religiousness or piety; and the history of all ages testifies that no people ever existed, who, however rude and uncultivated, has not had some presentiment of the relations which bind the rational creature to its Creator. Man is born to religion.[1] [Note 1: These truths are now readily admitted by all well-thinking men. It was very easy, and very amusing, for the philosophy of the eighteenth century, to ridicule the ignorance and superstition of the ancients, and to denounce the modern peoples which followed in the same direction, though by different tracks. But the true philosophy of the present age, which has penetrated deeper into the recesses of the human heart, has arrived at the double conclusion, that a superior power has implanted therein certain elements which it is not in human power to remove; and that what is inherent in human nature cannot he combated, but must be wisely directed. Hence, modern civilisation deals lees than preceding ages in abstractions; and in its Intellectual development, accepts religion as a starting point in the laborious but open walk, which leads to human happiness,--The TRANSLATOR.] XXI. This need for man to be religious constitutes the basis of _faith_. As man is said to _know_ that which is proved to him by experience, or by the testimony of the senses, so he is said to _believe_ that which is to him a real want, although it cannot be demonstrated to him either by experience or by the evidence of the senses. _Knowledge_ is based upon _objective_, and _belief_ upon _subjective_ proofs. The existence of God, the providence with which He governs the world, the immortality of the soul, the excellence of virtue, the just expectation of a final triumph of good, and of an improvement and future perfection of the human condition, are truths which have their foundations in man himself, that is, in the _nature_ of his soul; they originate in him, even without the concurrence of reflection, almost from an innate feeling of the heart, which impels him to admit them; they are founded on subjective proofs, and man _believes_ them as necessities of his own nature. These religious truths are therefore called _natural_, and their disciples are said to profess a _natural religion_. CHAPTER IV. XXII. YET, notwithstanding the possibility for man to attain happiness by only following the voice of reason, experience has shown, in the most unmistakable manner, that natural religion is insufficient alone to guide mankind in the right path, to preserve him from error, and to regulate his life with constant conformity to his destination, under all circumstances and in all conjunctures. Such insufficiency is caused by various obstacles, presented by the self-same nature of man, and the objects that surround him, and which prevent reason from exercising an absolute dominion over the heart, and naturally weaken its influence on human actions. XXIII. First among these obstacles, is the circumstance, that the intellectual faculties do not exhibit so much vigour in early youth as the animal or appetitive faculties. Long before the force of reason has developed itself in the mind, the sensual tendencies have already grown giants in the heart, impelling man to desire ardently all that has the semblance of pleasure, however fugitive and deceitful. The will, which is in its full vigour even in a child, has already carried into effect most of these desires, and has thus produced such a habit of grasping impulsively, and without reflection, at everything that presents itself in the aspect of an enjoyment, that reason often arrives too late to destroy the ascendancy gained by the lust of the heart, and to claim its dominion over all man's actions. XXIV. Besides, reason is sometimes in danger of losing its supremacy, even after having asserted it. Instinct, which, in brutes, holds the place of free-will, confines their physical cravings within certain limits, and we never see an animal wallow in intemperance; but man, just because enjoying absolute freedom of will, may extend his desires beyond every limit, and so much strain and invigorate them as to succumb under their influence. Therefore reason, whether from its tardy development, or from the unlimited ascendancy of sensuality, holds the reins of its power always with uncertainty, and is not ever certain of being obeyed. XXV. Another obstacle is to be traced in the want of opportunity and time, or, in other words, in the little time that man can spare to devote to reflection, in the presence of the multifarious cravings of his body. These cravings, increased, no doubt, by luxury and an inclination, to superfluities, demand daily and hourly to be satisfied. He is, then, obliged to work unceasingly to earn or procure the means of satisfying his own physical wants, as well as, not unfrequently, those of a whole family. Aliment, clothing, habitation, comfort, recreation, and other innumerable cares, real or artificial, require so much labour and exertion, that little or no time remains for the great majority of mankind to devote to the assiduous reflections and researches necessary to determine what duties reason imposes upon them to fulfil, and what actions to perform. XXVI. A third obstacle to the development of the moral force in man is the very social life which, by his own nature, he is called to enter. The safety of the social fabric demands that the property of each individual be distinct and acknowledged, and establishes a diversity of ranks, offices, honours, and positions, which ill agree with human cupidity. Hence a conflict of desires, a collision of ambitions, a contest of interests, which at all times generate among men discords, machinations, frauds, usurpations, treachery, violence, and rapine. Add the consequences of the pride and ambition, which each more or less entertains, to reach or surpass some others in power, wealth, or fame, whence many causes of disappointments and heartburnings, of hatreds and jealousies, of persecutions and calumnies, of acts of vengeance and injustice of every form, and it will be easily conceived how little, under the influence of _so_ many evil passions occasioned by social life, could populations, in the course of time, be disposed to submit willingly to the severe and exclusive regimen of reason. XXVII. Independently of these external impediments, there exists a kind of internal anarchy in man, arising from the want of a force exercising the functions of an arbitrator between the mind and the heart, and inclining the latter to shape its decisions on the motives of the former. The truths, which he is frequently able to discover, satisfy his intellect without affecting his will, minister food to the mind, but operate not on the heart; in short, they establish a theory, but command not practice. Hence it often happens that man sees right, approves it, and yet adheres to wrong. Even after having gathered an abundant harvest from long studies and profound meditations, he still feels the need of a guide to direct his steps--of a means, available at all times, and competent to enable him to subordinate the appetitive to the intellectual faculties, and to cause the will to follow the judgments of the mind rather than those of the heart. XXVIII. The inadequacy of natural religion alone becomes still more manifest, when we consider the weakness and limited extent of the human understanding. To meditate assiduously on an abstract object, which does not fall under the perception of the senses, is given only to a few individuals endowed with uncommon penetration. But by far the greater part of men, disinclined to submit to long and arduous researches, concerning what they ought or ought not to believe and to do, prefer living thoughtlessly; and when they even try to enter upon spiritual meditations, they soon feel discouraged, and, often distrusting their own powers, throw up the difficult task half way, to resume the course of a reckless mode of life. XXIX. But even the few privileged beings, who believe themselves equal to the task, and plunge earnestly into spiritual researches, must confess to the insufficiency of the intellectual powers, and admit, that beside some few principles which they have succeeded in establishing, many doubts remain to be cleared, many questions to be solved, many objections to be overcome; and they must ultimately conclude, that reason by itself is unable to answer on all that interests man to admit or to deny, to seek or to avoid, to believe and to do, to hope and to fear. There is not, in this wide range of spiritual subjects, a proposition held by one as true, which has not been discarded by another as an error; and there is not a paradox or an absurdity that has not found some supporters, who maintained it as a truth. Doubt and error, in abstract and metaphysical questions, are natural and inherent in mankind, so long as reason is their only luminary in the research. XXX. The experience of all ages teaches us that the obstacles above stated have always exercised their influence upon the development of the moral sense among men, by retarding, and sometimes even rendering impossible to them, a clear and sound conception of their destination, and a firm resolve to conform to it. All the nations of antiquity, which, left to themselves, never received from without any spiritual and religious instruction, could never rise from the slough of sensuality and superstition; they sank deep in idolatry, and ultimately adopted creeds and practices abominable and repugnant alike to the excellence of reason and the dignity of man. On the other hand, all the nations that totally or partly succeeded in extricating themselves from a state of brutality and barbarism, must acknowledge that not to the development of their intelligence alone they owe their regeneration, but to certain sublime doctrines--originated in causes quite extrinsical from human nature--which, having found their way to them through a concourse of favourable and apparently fortuitous circumstances, were more or less readily admitted, as notions gained from without, and by degrees ingrafted, under various modifications, on their own primitive ideas. XXXI. It being, then, almost impossible, or, at least, extremely difficult, for man to arrive, through the sole action of the faculties inherent in his nature, at his intended goal, to shape his course accordingly, and thus to lay the foundations of his future happiness, it was necessary that an intelligence far superior to his own should come to his assistance, communicate to him some fundamental truths concerning his present and future life, enlighten his intellect, guide his reason, invigorate his will in the paths of truth, justice, and righteousness, and thus facilitate to him the attainment of his sublime destination. It was necessary that God himself should instruct him in what was most important to know, manifest His will to him, and explicitly point out to him the way he was to follow, the obstructions he was to avoid, and the goal he had to reach. Man, then, was in need of a _revelation_. CHAPTER V. XXXII. THIS revelation was actually vouchsafed. It pleased the supreme Being, through His infinite mercy, to manifest His will, and make known some great and precious truths, which men would have vainly attempted to discover with the unaided operation of their reason; He chose to undertake, to a certain extent, the education of mankind. From the beginning of the world God revealed Himself to the first man; and He continued afterwards for many ages, as His eternal wisdom deemed proper, to communicate to such individuals as were the worthiest among mortals the instructions which were afterwards to work the salvation of all mankind. Those instructions, which contain truths by far more comforting and sublime than any results which man could have arrived at through his own faculties alone, constitute the substance of Revelation; and he who acknowledges their divine origin, and conforms to them the actions of his life, is called a professor of the _revealed religion_. XXXIII. That God has really revealed Himself to some individuals of the human species is an historical fact, the truth of which is proved, like all truths of a similar order, by testimony and documents. But independently of the existing evidence, the possibility of such an act can be easily conceived by the human understanding, when we consider that everything is feasible to the omnipotence of the Creator; and nothing is more consentaneous to His infinite goodness and wisdom, than the blessed purpose of granting to human frailty an assistance calculated to lead the noblest of creatures to the attainment of the exalted end for which he was created. To conceive, also, the precise modes and forms in which such a revelation is effected or conveyed, it was given only to those elect who were themselves the recipients, and who are called Prophets. But we can arrive at the knowledge of the principal characteristics which constitute prophecy, after we shall have placed in a clear light the essence and the final object of revelation. XXXIV. All the revealed doctrines may be reduced to one fundamental principle, from which they originate, and on which rests the whole edifice of revelation. This principle may be expressed as follows:--Besides the general relation of dependence existing indistinctly between all creatures and their Creator, there is a relation more intimate and special between God and man--a relation of a spiritual and sentimental nature, arising from the circumstance of the latter being created in the image of God, by virtue of which man is not subject exclusively to the blind government of the physical laws of nature, but, almost independent of them, he walks under the immediate influence of his celestial Father; this independence, however, cannot be accomplished before he has succeeded in subduing his sensual appetites, and has bent them to follow the divine direction. Thus acting, he will not remain a passive spectator of the vicissitudes which accelerate or retard the fulfilment of that which the Divine wisdom purposed as the final aim of the creation, but, through the immortal spirit transfused in him, he will feel impelled to take some active part in the great work of the ultimate universal perfection, and to associate his own will to the will of the Creator. XXXV. The relation between God and man is a tie of love. God being goodness itself, this finds a more extensive field for its manifestation in the rational creature than in any other. On the other hand, man, possessed of a spiritual soul, is superior to matter, and is capable, more than the other terrestrial beings, of receiving within himself an abundance of the Divine benevolence, which _diffuses itself throughout the universe in exact proportion to the various aptitudes of the recipients_. It is precisely in consequence of the understanding with which man is endowed, and of his aptitude to nourish love for the supreme Being, that he has been elected, from among all terrestrial creatures, to enter into a more intimate relation with God, and to co-operate, in as much as lies in his power, to the accomplishment of the divine plan. XXXVI. The plan of the Creator is immeasurably profound, and therefore inscrutable. Nevertheless, in so far as it is permitted to the human mind to penetrate it, and as it has pleased the Divine mercy to reveal it, we know with certainty that it is all directed to diffuse happiness and beatitude over all creatures, in proportion to their respective capabilities of participating in them, and to guide all beings towards that end, which, in the scheme of the universe, was pre-ordained by the Infinite Wisdom as _the best_. Now, the inanimate portion of the creation progresses unconsciously in the way ordained by Providence, obeys physical immutable laws, and is, therefore, only a means to a more exalted end. But the moral being, who has self-consciousness, resolves on action after deliberating upon what he thinks best, and carries out his resolve with free will; he is, then, himself the aim of his life. Therefore, to lead this being towards his own destination, it was proper not to subject him to restraint under laws of necessity, otherwise the freedom of his will would have been destroyed; it was only necessary to enlighten him, to place before him some fundamental truths, capable of dispelling all doubts from his mind, and detaching him from errors and superstitions, and thus to offer him means and inducements sufficient to direct his attention and will towards the end designed by the Divine wisdom. XXXVII. It is these truths, offered as means and inducements, that constitute the essence of revelation. Through revelation, man was made acquainted that God created the universe out of nought, that He governs it with His wisdom, and can work every change which He deems suitable; that He created man in the Divine image, that is, with an immortal soul, capable of receiving within itself the Divine idea, of conceiving its sublimity, and carrying it into effect. Through revelation, man learnt that God is One, omnipotent, holy, of infinite forbearance and mercy, and an inexhaustible source of pure love; that He created as a stock of all the human family a single individual (to proclaim thereby the principle of universal brotherhood and mutual love between all the members of that family); that He desires to be loved, worshipped, and served by it, with purity of heart, with elevation of spirit, and with unflinching constancy. Through revelation, we are taught to use wisely the earthly gifts, and to turn their material enjoyment into a subject for edification and the glorification of God; to exercise right, justice, rectitude, charity, piety, and humility; we are also taught that God judges the human actions, punishes those who contravene His will, and is disposed to pardon the sins of those who feel a true repentance. And, lastly, through revelation, an invitation is tendered to man to elevate his mind to the Creator, to imitate Him, to approach Him through self-sanctification; and a perspective is opened before his mind's eye of an interminable future of beatitude beyond the grave, as the ultimate goal of his longings, and a just reward to his virtuous conduct. XXXVIII. When an individual, after long and serious meditations, and through a concourse of favourable circumstances, acquires a comprehension of this divine plan, and conceives it in its fullest extent and excellence, he will feel an irresistible attraction towards such a contemplation, and an ineffable admiration will seize all his mind; an internal intense desire will spring up in his heart to see it carried out, nay, to contribute himself to its accomplishment, since the first tendency is already engrafted on his very nature. In proportion as this desire extends its roots in the heart of that individual, so will he make it his exclusive pre-occupation, voluntarily sacrifice to it every worldly consideration, and so will he feel impelled to devote himself to promote, promulgate, and bring to universal knowledge those truths which, as stated, form the essence of revelation; his soul will become the receptacle of the Divine idea, his tongue and all his body the organs of its fulfilment; his whole life will be an expression of the idea which pervades him; he will feel within himself an irresistible call to constitute himself, of his own authority, and without any regard to worldly powers, a preceptor to mankind, an adviser and censor of all, a supporter of right and virtue, a herald of truth, and a defender of the cause of God; he will defy every obstacle with unbending spirit, will employ all his powers, physical and moral, to the attainment of his aim; and sometimes he will end by becoming a martyr to his holy project. In short, his will becomes identical with the will of God. XXXIX. Such a man is a prophet. His mind elevated to the highest degree of intelligence, his heart bent constantly to love what is good, he has almost assumed a second nature, and he lives upon earth a purely spiritual life. Of all that surrounds him, nothing is of any value in his eyes but that which may contribute to the accomplishment of the Divine design; in all passing events he sees but as many dispositions of Providence calculated to direct men to the path in which they are called to walk; the very thoughts which cross his mind, and the wishes which form themselves in his heart, he regards them not as the productions of his own soul, but as emanations from the Spirit of God which dwells in him, and pervades all his being. Such a mode of viewing things is, after all, not a mere effect of his imagination, but a true reflex of the influence that actuates this man, an influence springing from the fact already stated, that his will has identified itself with the will of God. Hence the prophet is called a man inspired by God, for it is the Divine Spirit that pervades, agitates, and directs him; it is the Divine Spirit that found in him an instrument for its operation, an organ for its manifestation, a medium to carry out its high designs, a representative of God on earth, who shall recall men to their Divine origin, and lead them on to their ultimate destination. XL. From the foregoing exposition of the characters of prophecy it will appear obvious, that those are greatly mistaken, who think that the exclusive or even the principal ministry of the prophet consists in foreseeing and foretelling future events. The prophet may occasionally find it necessary to his ends to predict some events, which he does by virtue of the Divine spirit infused in him; but this is for him only an accessory means to the chief object, which is to propagate and promote among men divine knowledge and religious life. With an all-wise provision, God disposed that, as a rule, the future shall remain hidden from mortals, that they may exert themselves to render it propitious by their good actions; and if He sometimes permitted, as an exception, that it should be revealed to them through the dispensers of His word, it was not to gratify an idle curiosity, but to excite men to worthily conform their works to coming events. CHAPTER VI. XLI. THE preliminary notions hitherto set forth are to be regarded as placed in the vestibule leading to the temple of Revelation. Now, before we cross the threshold, it may be well to meet at once an objection which will possibly be offered by modern incredulity. It is fashionably said, that rational man can admit nothing as true except that which is proved to him by logical demonstrations; and as for the acceptance of a revealed religion faith is a necessary element, and this must exclude (as commonly pretended) every kind of proof, therefore all reasoning is out of the question, and the very basis of that which is sought to be inculcated as a truth, renders it inadmissible. Such an objection, however erroneous in reality, has too grave an appearance, and its consequences would be too lamentable, to permit us to disregard it. It becomes, therefore, indispensable, before entering the sanctuary of Revelation, to remove the obstruction of such an error, even at the cost of a digression from our path, in order to consider the matter in its origin. XLII. One of the primary laws of existence in the physical world is self-love; that is, an instinct in every creature to procure its own good, even at the expense of others, so that the preservation of one is attended with the destruction of some others. All nature is in a perpetual struggle within itself, and every component part receives the elements of its own life and increment from the destruction of others. This we see repeatedly happen under our own eyes, as well in plants as in animals, and so evidently, that we need not here record instances to confirm it. It is through this contrast of individual interests, through this perpetual alternation of production and growth with decrease and destruction, that Providence ordained the preservation of the world in its totality, while the individuals perish and the species remain. XLIII. Man also, considered only in his physical nature, is subject to the universal law of self-love; and until he has arrived at a correct appreciation of his moral nature and duties, he will allow himself to be impelled by that law to possess himself of all that he thinks suitable to his own advantage, regardless of the detriment of others, and even of their very existence; and so will, on the other hand, every one else, being in the same condition, act towards him. But the effects of unrestrained self-love are by far more mischievous in man than in the irrational animals, for the intelligence with which he is endowed affords him more means and artifices to accomplish his selfish views, so long as he is governed by these and not by nobler impulses. Hence it happens also, that so long as a man lies under the fascination of self-love, society, of which he is called to become a member, places him in a condition, from which he looks upon his fellow-men as the natural enemies of his individual happiness; and he feels a propensity to throw obstacles, either by malice or violence, in the way of others, to prevent their attaining that which is denied to him. XLIV. But we find, also, in man another principle diametrically opposed to self-love, which, proceeding from the noblest prerogatives of his soul, distinguishes him from the irrational creatures, and invites him to a career totally opposite to theirs. This principle, commonly called virtue, we shall express by the more comprehensive name of _heroism_. As by self-love man is inclined to sacrifice the welfare of others to his own, so by heroism he is led to sacrifice himself to the welfare of others. When we see a mother struggling to death, and with admirable self-devotion, against overpowering waves, or ferocious beasts, or devouring flames, to save her child from certain destruction, it would be stolidity and folly for us to bring into comparison with this act, the cares bestowed by a brute in feeding her young, since as soon as the latter has carried into effect the order of nature, she forsakes them, and, when grown, does not even recognise them; whereas the love of a mother endures beyond the grave. When a husband, bound with the indissoluble tie of affection to the woman of his heart, voluntarily sacrifices to her everything dearest in the world, and finds in her affection ample recompense for his direst privations, who would dare to attribute this to the physical sexual tendency common even to the brutes? a tendency, which, besides manifesting itself only at detached periods of time, disappears altogether in old age, whereas conjugal love runs beyond the confines of time. The same may be said of a friend, who would give his own life to save that of his beloved, of a generous warrior who risks everything for his country's sake, and of a host of others, who magnanimously devote themselves to the relief of suffering humanity; in short, of every one who feels himself moved by a superior force to cross over the boundaries of selfishness and sensuality, and to become a hero. XLV. In all these phenomena, a principle directly adverse to that of physical nature manifests itself. While in the latter, self-love is a necessary supreme law, in the spiritual life of man we see prevailing, as a foundation to morality, a voluntary sacrifice of self, offered on the altar of love. No pain or regret ever accompanies such an offering; on the contrary, a sensible man undertakes it with cheerfulness, as a manifestation of his exalted nature, and derives from its performance a purer joy than all other earthly enjoyments could afford him. But this love, which limits and conquers self-love, this love which so well testifies to the excellence of man, whence does it proceed? Assuredly not from physical nature; this is, on the contrary, based upon a law which would destroy love. It must emanate, then, from a source, itself a prototype of moral perfection, a perpetual spring of the purest love; and this source is God. Through the effects and impressions of this celestial love, man feels the need of approaching his Creator, of finding in Him the provident Ruler of the human destinies, and of expecting from His kindness the future triumph of good, and an ultimate perfection of all things. God, providence, and the immortality of the soul, become then for him incontestable truths: and at such a knowledge he does not arrive by way of laborious instruction and logical demonstrations; but it springs up, as it were, in his inward feeling, which prompts him to regulate his life according to that sublime model of moral perfection; therefore, although reason furnishes not to him logical proofs of these truths, yet he finds the presentiment of them within his heart, he feels them, he accepts them with a force more sentimental than intellectual, he embraces them with enthusiasm, and can no longer detach himself from them; in short he _believes_ them. XLVI. Thus, with the same confidence with which man admits as true, what is demonstrated to his reason by solid arguments,--and he is then said to be _convinced_,--does he likewise give his assent to the noble inspirations of his heart, not yet depraved by abject inclinations,--and he is then said to be _persuaded_. Thus there are two kinds of truths, equally ascertained, and therefore equally admissible; the one proceeding from intellect and called rational truth, the other formed in the heart, and called moral truth. The source of the latter might also properly be called _good sense_, which in fact acts, in many circumstances of life, in lieu of pure reason. A man endowed with good sense, and who has not yet become a slave to sensual appetites, will not doubt for a moment, even without having ever been acquainted with the proofs, that lying, calumniating, blaspheming, false swearing, robbing, murdering, betraying friendship, country or honour, are culpable and abominable actions. Other truths based on good sense are also the following: the faith we have in friendship, in the rectitude of those who administer justice, in the fidelity of a beloved object, in the tenderness of parents, in the excellence of virtue, and above all, in the wisdom, goodness, and providence of God; all these things we admit within our souls, not in consequence of a cold calculation of the intellect, but through an irresistible impulse of the heart, and in consequence of a sort of presentiment springing from the consciousness of our own noble spirituality, which develops itself and gains force, in proportion as we elevate ourselves above the material propensities to which we are subject as citizens of this earth. XLVII. Those who, throwing themselves on a severe rationalism, will recognise nothing as true but what is demonstrated to them like mathematical theorems, will look upon the sentiments above referred to as delusions of the fancy, because they see them founded but upon feeling; but they who think so are manifestly in error. If faith in God, in His providence, and in the immortality of the human soul, were a mere product of the imagination, it would last only so long as the semblance, which had given it aliment, exists; and when man is awakened to the sense of realities and facts calculated to destroy the delusion, he would be seen to withdraw from the meshes of his error, and his reason triumphant would confess the former aberration of the mind; yet it happens not so. In the moment we are struck by some grave calamity, when we see fond hopes, long cherished, vanish in an instant, or when we are on the point of losing what is dearest to us, why is faith in God and in His providence not then weakened in the religious man? Why, on the contrary, does he cling to it more and more? The reason is, because such a faith is not a cold theorem, against which some doubt may eventually arise, but a truth rooted in the love inherent in our nature; and consequently it acquires vigour with the growth of love, and its power cannot be extinguished but when we cease to love. So, also, the other impulses to heroism and to exalted moral action, by which we are induced to great sacrifices, or led to believe ourselves capable of accomplishing them, are produced in us by faith in an eternal Source of pure love, by that faith which carries with itself the surety of a future life and a future kingdom founded upon love. Therefore, in proportion as man succeeds in subduing his own passions, or as these grow faint by age or other causes, so his love grows more vigorous; and as earthly objects gradually disappear, so faith rises and shews itself all-pervading and invincible. XLVIII. As a condition indispensable to the entertainment of faith, we have already insisted on the necessity of previously freeing the heart from the sway of the sensual appetites; and it is not without a grave reason, for therein precisely consists the secret of the solution of the great question agitated in all ages between the so-called rationalists and the supernaturalists. Intellect and reason are rays from the Divine wisdom, bestowed upon man to assist him to discern between true and false, between good and evil; but such a function is not exercised by those faculties with an absolute power over the human will; they, on the contrary, are subservient to such desires and passions as have acquired a preponderance in the heart; they are similar to those ministers of a prince who, in offering him advice, only aim at facilitating the attainment of their master's wishes; or to the known effects of a glass applied to a jaundiced eye. So long as man remains faithful to his moral duties, and desires nothing but what is good and honest, his intellect and reason always offer him valid arguments to confirm him in his purpose, and to augment his love of virtue; and then, also, the noblest dogmas of faith, God, providence, and immortality find easy access to his mind, and are Harboured with joy. But if depraved propensities have corrupted his heart, so that his aspirations are in a wrong and base direction, then these same faculties become ministers to the predominant passion, and suggest to man sophisms, fallacies, and specious subtleties, whereby to disown that which he heretofore respected, to upset the edifice of his faith, to lull his conscience and quiet remorse, to excuse his weaknesses and break through every restraint, and thus to warrant every kind of fault and vice. Hence it is that the knowledge and discernment of what is true or untrue, in the moral world, depends, in a considerable degree, upon the practice of good or evil; hence it is, that the judgments of the mind are modified by the inclinations of the heart, and that virtue opens the way to faith, and vice is the author of infidelity. XLIX. From what we have hitherto briefly stated, it will appear sufficiently obvious that the dogmas of revealed religion, though based rather on the ground of faith than on that of philosophy and strict criticism, are yet, for an upright man, susceptible of a degree of evidence equal to that of any other demonstrable truth, inasmuch as they have their foundation in human nature itself, and can be rejected but by him who rebels against the noblest impulses of the heart, to give himself up to the sway of passions or inordinate appetites. One of the features, which most enhances the value of religion, is precisely this, that it is the product, not of transcendental devices of the mind, but of faith in God, itself springing from love, and that consequently, it is not originated by the intellect, but infused by a Divine grace. Thus we see every day, in our own experience, that the loftiest thoughts of virtue and heroism are not suggested to us by a long and laborious chain of syllogisms, but break upon us unexpectedly as inspirations of the heart; truly--considering the divine spirit dwelling within us, and which we have but to harbour carefully--they break upon us like inspirations of heaven. Having, as we hope, satisfactorily disposed of the objection usually put forward by the so-called rationalists, we shall now proceed to relate the modes by which Divine revelation historically came into actuality. CHAPTER VII. L. THE benefits which the Eternal Wisdom had determined to confer upon mankind through revelation, depended, however, on a condition without which, they could never have been realized. It was necessary that men, on their part, should be inclined to receive the bidding addressed to them, that they should direct their attention to the truths to be gradually promulgated to them for their own advantage; in short, that they should feel disposed to correspond to the Divine intentions. It was no part of the plan of the Divine wisdom that men should be in any way constrained, for that would have been depriving them of the precious gift of free will, and destroying their essence. But this very liberty, of action granted to man, rendered the realization of the Divine thought doubtful; and it might have happened that a generation, sinking itself into complete corruption, would have lost every trace of the truths already revealed; and thence a necessity would have arisen for one or more repetitions of the communication, with equal uncertainty of permanent success. LI. To avoid such a danger, it pleased the Divine Mercy to found upon earth a permanent institution of an exceptional, wonderful, almost preternatural character, through which the preservation of the principal doctrines, that form the substance of revealed religion, could be insured to mankind. As seeds of rare and precious plants are preserved with care, that the species may not perish, so the Ruler of Providence designed to establish among us a repository wherein to keep the germs of all that which concerns man's spiritual life; and He so ordained that they should be there jealously guarded, and with particular diligence cultivated, in order to bring about their slow and gradual, but sure propagation among all the individuals of the human family. This provision is a most luminous proof of the unbounded love and mercy of the Divine Artificer towards the rational creature, to whom a powerful assistance is thus offered to attain his noble destination, without in the least impairing his liberty of action. LII. Such a provision consists in God having chosen a small portion of mankind to be a medium for, and co-operator in, the grand work, and having entrusted to it the special important mission of perpetually preserving within its pale, the principal dogmas of revealed religion; of keeping always alive on earth the remembrance of that relation which was established from the beginning of creation between the Creator and the human family; and, in short, of contributing with all its might to the practical realization of the Divine idea. The chosen few had consequently to propose to themselves, as the goal of their career, the defence of the sacred deposit entrusted to them from all attacks that might be directed by malice, ignorance or superstition; they had to promote the propagation of the notions of monotheism; of the divine origin of man, and of the duties incumbent upon him to practice justice, charity, rectitude, and piety; they had to protest incessantly against polytheism, and against all and every idolatrous and superstitious creed, as adverse and injurious to the development of the principles of revealed religion; they had to confirm these theories by making themselves the exemplars of a religious life, and by bearing witness to them, when necessary, by their own martyrdom; they had thus to become the effectual instruments to the gradual diffusion throughout the world of those elements of truth, of virtue and happiness, calculated to bring forth the ultimate and universal perfection of mankind. LIII. In order that the individuals charged with such a grand mission should be competent effectually to fulfil it, it was necessary that they should themselves have been always free from the pernicious influence of the errors and corruption, which had already spread almost throughout the world; it was necessary that their minds should have remained unpolluted by the notions of the extravagant and degrading idolatries, which were in practice among almost all the ancient nations; and that their hearts should have remained untouched by the contagion of universal depravity. The soil to which any seed, however good, is to be committed, would never respond to the expectations of the husbandman, if it were not cleared from weeds and thistles. Those individuals had, therefore, to be drawn aside from the general society of men; and from their infancy educated and prepared, so as to receive within their virgin souls the seeds that were afterwards to produce in them, and through them, the spiritual regeneration of all mankind. But here another difficulty presented itself; who would have undertaken the charge of watching over those individuals from their infancy, and keeping them in such an isolation, as to make them inaccessible to the general depravity? It was, then, necessary to begin by a single individual, whose descendants should receive from that stock the education capable of fitting them for their future mission. LIV. The providential measure once decreed, of selecting an individual as guardian of the revealed truths, and making him the father of a posterity, whose duty was to preserve them and to make them fructify, it remained only to determine the selection of the person. And here it is obvious that not a capricious hazard, not an indulgent predilection, but only a strict justice and wise impartiality could determine the important choice. Whoever would have aspired to such a glory--and everybody could have aspired to it--by no other means could he have attained it than his own merits. Such a man must have, of his own accord and spontaneously, withdrawn himself from the general current of depravity; opposed, by his own impulse, the absurd ravings of his contemporaries; displayed a lively attachment to virtue, and a steady abhorrence of evil; cultivated, above all, justice, charity, and righteousness, in his every action; that man must have thrown off the subjection of the senses, and all cupidity of earthly things, and, almost assuming a second nature, have soared towards the eternal Source of truth, the Creator of the universe, offering as a sacrifice to Him his own dearest personal interests, and, if required, his life itself. CHAPTER VIII. LV. SUCH a man did appear on the stage of the world. It was the patriarch Abraham. The rarest qualities of mind and heart concurred admirably to render him fit for the high mission. By the superiority of his intelligence, he arrived at the rejection of the captivating, but absurd, idolatrous opinions of his contemporaries, and at the recognition of a unique supreme Cause of all things, omnipotent, all-wise and holy, that governs all with impartial justice and infinite mercy. The nobility of his sentiments led him to labour and exert himself in the diffusion of these holy notions wherever he found himself; and he was most sedulous in drawing the attention of men to that which most concerned their spiritual life. An unparalleled cordiality towards not only his own friends, but all who approached him; a self-abnegation, carried to the point of refusing the best deserved remuneration; a humility ready to waive any right of his own in order to support that of others; a hospitality full, generous, unasked; a continual exercise of charity and justice, which had become in him a second nature; in fine, a submission of all himself and his dearest to the will of God,--such was the character of that celebrated luminary of antiquity, of that man truly divine, of that exemplar of sublime virtue. LVI. Although so many pre-eminent merits indisputably assigned to him the distinction we have pointed out, yet the Divine wisdom decided to subject his constancy to various trials, with the view of making manifest to the world the excellence of that virtuous character, and the justice which dictated the choice. In the continual antagonism between the material and spiritual interests involved in the events of his agitated life, he had opportunities to display the noblest firmness in causing the latter to prevail. Involuntary peregrinations, conflicts with foreign potentates, domestic discords, dangers, hazards, hopes deferred, and promises well nigh forgotten, became to him so many occasions for the exercise of the highest virtues: and last, the holy resignation with which he prepared to immolate his beloved son, thinking thereby to respond to a Divine bidding, raised his glory to an unapproachable summit. If the other deeds of his edifying piety caused him to be appointed a herald of the true religion, this last heroic act brought down upon him the greatest blessing, in the shape of a promise, that even to his remotest posterity would be extended the mission of jealously preserving the revealed truths, and effectually cooperating in their propagation, so that through that posterity would be _blessed all the families of the earth._ LVII. Abraham's vocation marks a luminous and highly interesting epoch in the history of humanity. It was the commencement of the execution of that plan of education of mankind, which, conceived since the beginning in the Increate Mind, came by means extraordinary, yet consistent with the natural course of earthly events, to diffuse itself gradually and to acquire a progressive force among the various ramifications of the human family. In that vocation we perceive the first threads of a wonderful tissue of events, as well in the physical as in the moral world, which went on preparing a slow but always progressive development of the human intelligence, and will go on to produce ultimately the full final accomplishment of the same primitive plan, so grandly conceived. In fact, in the very act of electing this patriarch, God revealed the ultimate object of the election by saying, that He chose him, in order that he might transmit to his latest posterity the obligation--which was to become characteristic of it--of exercising and promoting CHARITY and JUSTICE, the two chief columns on which rests the edifice of human perfectibility, two conditions indispensable to the fulfilment of the Divine idea, and therefore called _ways of the Eternal_. LVIII. Abraham and his race having been called upon to perpetuate the idea of the relation existing between God and man, it was obviously necessary that such a relation should be fixed and established in a more precise mode in the individuals of that race than it was in any others; in other words, it was necessary to show clearly that the idea, which was to be promoted among others, was firmly seated, under permanent and concrete forms, in those who were called upon to propagate it. This permanency of the relation exhibited itself, then, to Abraham and his posterity under the form of a _covenant_ between God and that family, whereby the contracting parties, as it were, promised and undertook to maintain certain conditions, upon which depended the subsistence of that relation. The mutual conditions established were, in substance, nothing else than the universal relations subsisting between God and every rational being, but expressed, with respect to Abraham's, family, in more special and characteristic terms, viz., under a form in which God promised Abraham that He would be particularly _his God_, his Protector, Guardian, and Benefactor; and the Abrahamites, on their part, bound themselves to recognise _Him alone_ as the Deity, to whom adoration and loyal obedience were due. Thus the covenant, which had been formerly established in general terms with Noah, as the representative of all mankind, was afterwards confirmed in more specific terms to the Abrahamites, as those who were appointed to keep and to promote among mankind the fulfilment of the conditions of the said relation. Considering the Abrahamitic covenant in this point of view, all objections of unreasonable exclusiveness and unjust predilection, which have been sometimes urged, must disappear. The God of Abraham is the God of the universe; and the descendants of Abraham propose to themselves nothing more than the attainment of that same happiness to which every mortal can aspire. LIX. In order that the idea of the contracted covenant might remain firmly impressed on all Abraham's progeny, it was necessary to institute some external mark, which should continually recall it to the mind; for an idea being but an abstraction, it could not be very long retained in men's minds, without some symbol or visible sign capable of keeping its remembrance alive. It was also necessary that the adhesion of that progeny to the covenant should not begin to take effect in individuals in the adult age only, and as a result of one's own spontaneous reflexions, as had been the case with the first stock of that family, but that it should present itself as an accomplished fact, and, therefore, irrevocable and obligatory; so that every future offspring should bear from his birth an external indelible mark, characterising him as a follower of that principle, and qualifying him to enter into the pale of that association. By such means the preservation of the covenant was insured, and a beginning was made in the system of those external, symbolical, and commemorative acts, which were to be thereafter prescribed to all that race, when sufficiently increased to form an entire people distinct from others. This external mark, instituted before the birth of the elect progeny of the patriarch, is the _circumcision_. LX. Before Abraham's descendants attained that degree of maturity which would fit them to receive a revealed legislation, they had to pass through various stages of progressive material increment and intellectual development, and also to undergo several sad vicissitudes produced by the inevitable relations of contact with other nations. Throughout all this period, which we may call preparatory, the Divine Wisdom was pleased to take that race by the hand, guiding its first steps, and watching in an extraordinary manner over its destinies, so as gradually to prepare it for the high mission for which it was designed. We, therefore, perceive, during that epoch, a continual intervention of the Divinity in regulating the particular concerns of the patriarchs and their successors, and an incessant care to draw their attention to the future destiny of their grandchildren, and to their duty of preparing worthily for it. Such a care manifested itself, particularly, in various providential measures, the objects of which evidently were to remove from them everything that might exercise over them a sinister influence; to enlighten them on the importance of their election, and to make them acquainted beforehand with the severe trials in store for them for several centuries, before they could deservedly reap the intended benefits. LXI. To this category of providential measures belongs the state of isolation and of precarious subsistence, in which, by the Divine will, the first fathers had to live, in respect to their neighbours, in that same land which was yet promised to them as a perpetual inheritance; whereby they were brought to learn from the beginning that the great work, which their children were called upon to accomplish, was not absolutely dependent on the possession of a land under their own sovereignty, but rather on the religious doctrines to which they were to remain faithfully attached. To it belongs, also, the severance or removal of the elder branch of the first two families, which was too much inclined to material interests, to teach thereby that physical superiority is not at all requisite to the preservation of a covenant based entirely on spirituality. And, lastly, to the same category of measures belongs the decreed long servitude of the Abrahamites in a strange land, in which, not only the door to social enjoyments would be shut against them, but a barbarous tyranny would also deprive them of the free exercise of acts which are an imprescriptible right of all mortals. Through the instrumentality of such an oppression, the profound counsels of the Eternal Wisdom designed so to regulate the first education of that growing people, that, refined in the crucible of adversity, it should early learn to renounce the subjection of the senses, and turn its heart and soul to God, from whom alone it could hope salvation. It was only by depriving that people of all human support, and of all extraneous influences on its culture, that it could acquire a character, firm, independent, tenacious in the principles adopted, adverse to foreign notions, faithful to its vocation, and that its mind could be deeply impressed with the sentiment of a constant adoration of the Supreme Being, as its only Deliverer, Legislator, Father, and Sovereign. CHAPTER IX. LXII. THE descendants of the patriarchs, grown into a numerous people, were, then, obliged to undergo the severe trial of a long servitude in Egypt, from which they could expect no rescue otherwise than by a recourse to the God of their fathers. If the privations of earthly enjoyments tended to strengthen their spirits and courage against adversity, and to direct their desires towards gratifications of a more elevated nature; if the repulsive conduct of their oppressors (by character hostile to all strangers, and by system constituted in different castes, each of which jealous of its own privileges) favoured in a great measure their isolation, and kept them from a pernicious contact and association, it was the prayer which they offered up from the bottom of their hearts to the Supreme Ruler of their destinies, whose covenant with their progenitors they remembered; it was that prayer that hastened the termination of so severe a discipline, and drew near the epoch of their glorification. A fit instrument only was wanted, through which the deliverance should be effected, an organ to communicate to the people the Divine laws, a medium for the new solemn covenant which was to be proclaimed between God and Israel. This elect from among all mortals--whose noble character, resplendent with all human virtues, was heightened by the true grandeur of an unexampled humility--was the holy legislator Moses, the divine man, the faithful expounder of the will of God, the first link of the glorious chain connecting the human family with its Maker. He was appointed to deliver miraculously the Israelitish mass from the yoke of Egypt, and to lead it to the skirts of a mountain, where the grand act of the revelation was to be accomplished. LXIII. Before imparting that revelation, the Divine wisdom vouchsafed to declare to the people at large, in brief but clear words, the ultimate object intended to be attained by such an institution, and the principal condition conducive to its realisation. Therefore it was, that God began his communications by saying to Israel, through Moses, "_I have brought you unto me_" a concise and sublime sentence, which comprehends in itself the whole system of revealed religion, for the recognition of the intimate relation which brings the rational creature near to its Creator, is the true goal of man's destination. He added that, to facilitate the attainment of that object, He had adopted the means of electing a small portion of mankind to be His missionaries ("_although_" said He, "_all the earth is mine_"); that He wished, therefore, to form of them _a sacerdotal kingdom_, that is, a class of persons, who, as priests of God, should watch over, conserve, and promote spiritual interests upon the earth; and that in consequence of the gravity of such a task, He required of them that they should become a _holy people_, that is, a people peculiarly devoted to self-sanctification--which substantially consists in imitating, in as far as human nature permits, the Divine perfections, or virtues. LXIV. The awfully solemn act which succeeded this preliminary manifestation is the most portentous event to be found in the annals of the world. Two millions of persons, ranged around the skirts of a mountain, witness a majestic supernatural vision; and amid thunder and lightning, dense vapour and blazing fire, the whole ground trembling and the mountain echoing, a sonorous voice from heaven descends on the terrified ears of the people, and carries distinctly and unmistakeably to humanity the high message of God. By the pomp and circumstance which attended the glorious scene of the first revelation, God was pleased to afford an incontestable evidence of the truth and divinity, not only of the doctrines which were then and there being revealed, but of those, also, that were to follow; the unimpeachable testimony of the senses of a vast multitude, brought to bear upon the first and fundamental communication, was capable of producing so full and lasting a conviction in the minds of the numerous hearers, as to remove for the future all doubt as to the divine origin of revelation. Through an immediate sensible perception--which by its nature carries the most irrefragable certainty--Israel, then, received from God Himself the first dictates of a religion, of which that people was to become the professor, conservator, and propagator, in perpetuity; and equally convinced of the true mission of its leader, Moses, it naturally accepted from the latter all subsequent instructions, as laws emanating from the same divine source. LXV. The word of God pronounced in that memorable instant, and known since under the name of Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, could not, however, embrace the whole sum of religious truths that were intended to be revealed, because it would have been humanly impossible to the people to persist in that extraordinary state of intimate spiritual or prophetic relation with the Deity, till the end of all the revelation. Therefore, the Decalogue exhibits only some fundamental points, which, from their importance, deserved to be more prominently impressed; it marks the outlines of the foundation upon which the edifice of revealed religion was afterwards to be raised. Yet, although the promulgation of the entire divine code was a work reserved for the blessed legislator Moses, the Ten Commandments present, nevertheless, a compendious but complete system of institutions, referring to all those social and religious subjects, which most interest mankind. In fact, the three relations of man towards his Creator, his fellow-man, and himself, are traced in the Decalogue in a masterly manner, classified according to their order, and elucidated by placing prominently forward one culminating point, which serves to determine their true character. Such is the wise economy of all revealed laws, that generally avoiding abstractions, they select as a standard one special case of the most interesting, and leave it to thy care of the human understanding to generalize, and deduce from it universal theories.[2] Consequently, on analysing the ten emanations of the Divine Will, we must transfer mentally each of them to the class of duties to which it belongs, and consider it as intended to represent all that class. [Note 2: The author has already informed us, that he confines himself, in this book, to the enunciation of principles, and leaves to teachers the task of demonstrating, developing, and applying them, in course of instruction. Nevertheless, as this proposition recurs more than once in these pages, and contains a very important principle, it is perhaps desirable, for the general reader, to offer here an elucidation, by the following examples of its application. We are taught, "If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again" (Exod. xxiii. 4). We are to understand, that the lesson thereby conveyed, is not confined to the particular case named, but that we are commanded to cast off selfishness, and to extend our kindness and charity even to enemies, actively exerting ourselves for the assistance and benefit of others, whenever opportunities offer themselves in our every-day life. Again, we are enjoined, "Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling-block before the blind" (Lev, xix. 14). We are clearly to conclude therefrom, that any net of treachery, in itself already detestable in the eyes of God, becomes doubly so when directed against the unconscious and the helpless; and a very wide range of treacherous actions would, therefore, come within the meaning of this prohibition. The paramount importance of this hermeneutical rule will be any apology for having dilated on a point, which must be already well known to biblical students.--The TRANSLATOR.] CHAPTER X. LXVI. THE first commandment, which regards the relations of man with God, lays down that the acknowledgment of the Supreme Being is the basis of all the revelation, and gives us to understand that such a conviction then began historically to manifest itself on earth, taking root first in the people of Israel, whom therefore the Deity addresses, saying, "I am the Eternal, _thy_ God," signifying, "by _thee_ alone acknowledged hitherto." It also establishes the immutable eternity of the absolute Being, conveyed in the etymology of the ineffable Name; next, his indivisible unity, indicated in the word _El_, which denotes the sum of all the powers, and the aggregation of all the attributes, in one and the same essence. The same text proceeds then to arouse the feelings of gratitude, which must bind especially this people to the powerful hand that had delivered it from ignominious servitude: and this involves the obligation in the same people of devoting itself entirely to God, and subordinating all its tendencies to religious feeling. The last two words of this text allude to one of the great principles on which revealed religion rests, the Eternal having thereby proclaimed, not only the individual equality of all the Israelites before the law, but also the personal liberty of all men, which principle, being regulated according to the true idea of right, becomes the fundamental basis of civil society. LXVII. The worship of the only God, coupled with the absolute rejection of every form of idolatrous and superstitious creed, forms the subject of the second commandment, which completes the portion of the Decalogue regarding the relations of man towards the Creator. It severely prohibits every kind of idolatry, both that which substitutes for the true God false and imaginary beings, or even beings real but contingent and created, and that which would associate in His worship a veneration for others, under the title of mediators or protectors; it then interdicts the making of any image whatsoever, when intended to represent the infinite and incorporeal Being, and bids us neither to pay to any such simulacra a religious respect or veneration, which is due to the true God alone, nor to practise such conventional acts, as, however insignificant in themselves, are yet held by idolaters as modes of worship. Lastly, this commandment conveys the obligation to dissent from, and reject, every superstition and every error, requiring us to preserve pure and intemerate the adoration due to the Supreme Being, who, in this sense, is represented in this text as jealously watching over human actions, and a not indifferent spectator of good or evil; therefore a sure punisher of the guilty, and an eternal remunerator of him who faithfully adheres to His law. LXVIII. As a transition from the duties towards God to those towards our fellow-men, the two succeeding precepts are opportunely placed, one of which concerns the act of invoking the Divinity between men, and the other the mode of elevating men towards the Divinity. In the multifarious contentions arising in social life, it sometimes occurs to have recourse to God, to convalidate an assertion, or to test a truth. Now, in the act of attestation called oath, the third commandment prohibits with the greatest rigour anything that might offend the sanctity of the ineffable name of God, which is invoked by the deponent in attestation of the truth of his words. Consequently the text declares, that if such a solemn invocation were made to confirm a thing, which is not wholly conformable to the intimate conviction and most scrupulous conscience of the swearer, the consequences would be a profanation of the name of God, and a scandalous immorality, to the detriment of society at large; for this could not subsist without an upright administration of justice; and the latter would be upset and trampled upon by perjury. In order to shew more prominently the gravity of this matter, and to protect society, an avenging God protests that He would never leave unpunished whomsoever should render himself guilty of the monstrous crime of perjury. LXIX. From the moment when the work of creation was completed, the Divine wisdom ordained that an intimate relation should subsist between man and his Creator, and called that day holy and blessed on which so merciful an institution was inaugurated and began to come into operation. This relation, which, as we have already stated, forms the basis of revealed religion, tended to emancipate man from the sphere of materiality, and to render him conscious of his higher destination, and capable of accomplishing it. It was, therefore, natural that the people called upon to give the religious principle a durable consistency on earth, should keep a perpetual commemoration of that day which represented the bond subsisting between the Divinity and humanity; it was proper that the day should not only and simply be remembered, but that it should, also, have some feature exercising a predominating influence over material life, by making this subordinate to the spiritual requirements. The fourth word of the Decalogue prescribes, then, that the Israelite should for ever remember the holy day of sabbath, as a representative of religion, and should, during that day, abstain, and cause all his dependants to abstain, from all manual labour and earthly occupation, that might distract him from the contemplation of heavenly subjects, which should exclusively occupy his mind on that day. LXX. Among all man's duties towards his fellow-men, those of children towards their parents are assuredly the highest in degree, because without them the bonds which hold society together would be destroyed. These duties form the subject of the fifth commandment. To define their character in a single trait, a profound wisdom has selected the word _honour_, thereby pointing to a respect which arises, not from fear and terror, but from gratitude, love and submission. Additional importance is given to this precept by the consideration, that the revealed religion could not have been preserved and made known to the latest posterity but by the instrumentality of an uninterrupted tradition from generation to generation; and the faith to be placed in such a tradition depended, to a great extent, on the respect in which parents would be held. The reward promised to him who observes this commandment, is in perfect and natural harmony with the observance itself; man's life will be prolonged and blessed by honouring the authors of it. LXXI. The three conditions most prominent in human society, viz., life, matrimony, and property, are referred to in the subsequent words, which form the sixth, seventh and eighth precepts of the Decalogue. To concentrate in one word all that is to be observed regarding these essential elements of a social state, the sacred text confines itself to proclaiming, in an absolute mode, their _inviolability_, therefore adopting the negative or prohibitive form. It is desired to prevent and forbid every arbitrary act, and every unjust attempt, directed to deprive the legitimate possessor of, or to restrict and in any other way to disturb him in, the full, free, and exclusive enjoyment of his own. To respect the life, the conjugal bed, and the property of others, is to consolidate the bonds of society, to pay homage to the eternal principles of justice, upon the practice of which God willed that the preservation and prosperity of mankind should depend. LXXII. In order that our conduct towards our neighbours be strictly in accordance with justice, it is necessary, generally, that it should be based upon an honest and straightforward character of veracity, and that our outward demonstrations, in deeds and in words, should not be at variance with our inward convictions, respecting the merits or demerits of our fellow-men. Falsehood, detraction, calumny, and other similar vices, injurious to the peace and reputation of others, as well as simulated friendship, and hypocrisy, may all be comprehended within the denomination of perfidy; and as an extreme and most distinct manifestation of perfidiousness is to be found in false testimony, hence the ninth commandment is addressed to this vice, and forbids the witnessing against our fellow-men anything that is not entirely and strictly conformable to the truth. It is easy and natural for us to step from this special prohibition to the spirit which dictated it, and to conclude that the precept is generally directed to remove from society all perfidy and wrong, as contrary to truth and justice. LXXIII. A certain involuntary or instinctive desire of that which is pleasing, is in human nature itself; but this vague and voluble feeling may, by deliberate reflection, convert itself into an act of free-will, and, eventually increasing in strength, become a vehement affection, an uncontrollable passion. Now, so long as that feeling does not pass into an act of appropriating the thing desired, human law cannot deal with it; but Divine law, which has for its object the internal perfection of man, steps in to regulate the movements of the heart, when they are accompanied by a deliberate will of possessing. Therefore, the tenth and last commandment of the Decalogue, which refers to man's duties towards himself, aims at the human will, and prescribes limits, within which the desires, tending to procure possession, should be confined, forbidding specially to covet that which belongs to others. It is not thereby intended to absolutely prevent the formation of a natural wish, but it is directed to confine it within just limits, that it may not expand and be transformed into a usurpation. CHAPTER XI. LXXIV. THE succeeding revelations, which were made to the blessed legislator Moses, and by him collected into a body of statutes and rules, known under the title of Pentateuch, bear the same relation to the Decalogue as that of a finished edifice to the first outline which traced its limits and compartments--they are the elaboration of it, they branch into the same triple classification of duties which we have remarked in it, and present its development and completion. What in the Decalogue appeared, as in nucleus, under the form of duties of man towards God, towards his fellow-man, and towards himself, is developed by those laws into detailed instructions, through which the people of Israel was to learn the knowledge of God, to practise justice and charity, and to effect its own sanctification; three cardinal points, corresponding to the three classes of duties above mentioned, which embrace the whole sum and substance of revealed religion. We shall not, therefore, proceed to enumerate here, one by one, those multifarious laws,--a great part of which, being contingent on the existence of the temple and the possession of Palestine, have now no practical application,--but we shall only treat of the three principles which form the bases of them all, viz., God, Justice, and Sanctification, leaving to the intelligence of those who sedulously investigate the single precepts, the easy task of tracing them to one or other of the said three categories. LXXV. To the elucidation of these three principles we must, however, premise two observations. In the first place, it is to be remarked, on the one hand, that although the human intellect can by itself (provided it be not overruled by the sway of sensual appetites) recognise summarily the excellence of such principles, and give them unreservedly its sanction, yet its perceptions with respect to their specialities remain very imperfect, for several reasons: first, because it finds itself unable to rebut and conquer one by one all the objections which the infidel may bring forward; secondly, in consequence of the doubts which its own limited powers sometimes suggest, impairing its own sense of the truth; and lastly, because wanting the knowledge of many details and circumstances, about which it can form no judgment, the intellect cannot construct a complete rationalistic system of moral theology. Whereas, on the other hand, emanating as they do from the infinite wisdom and mercy of God, formulated in the shape of positive precepts, and corroborated by the portentous manner of their promulgation, those principles acquire an undisputed authority, remove every doubt, illumine the mind with unexpected sublime truths, satisfy the heart which finds them consentaneous with its own feelings, and are thus more apt to accomplish the objects towards which they are directed. And if there be among them some precept, of which we do not in our present time clearly perceive the true tendency, we accept it, nevertheless, with that filial confidence inspired by its divine origin; and, by analogy, we consider it as calculated to contribute to the promotion of our own weal. LXXVI. In the second place, it is necessary to distinguish, in the aggregate of this revelation, the universal theories applicable to, and concerning all mankind, from the special prescriptions obligatory only on those to whom they were addressed. Generally, all the children of Adam are bound to know God, to practise justice, and to procure their own sanctification; such duties are inherent in human nature itself, they correspond exactly to the destination of man, and none can exempt himself from them, without rebelling against nature and the sovereign Author of it. Consequently, the doctrines contained in the revealed law, in regard to these three points, apply to all rational beings, and everybody is called upon to participate in, and profit by, them; they are the inheritance of all mankind. But it was obvious that those, who were in the first instance selected to receive those dogmas, and to become their jealous conservators and perpetual propagators, should have some distinctive and peculiar devices, and be charged with observances, qualifying them for adepts to the ministry of such a sublime mission. Hence it is, that among the precepts of universal appurtenance there are several which Israel alone is bound to observe, and these consist partly of external acts to be performed, either at certain stated times, or at all times, partly of particular forms and rules to be followed, either in reference to one's self or to others, and to some external objects of animate or inanimate nature, and partly, in fine, they prescribe abstinence from certain things which to all others are left permissive. It will be easy to every attentive student to discern and point out the prescriptions of this class, as their very nature is sufficient to characterise them; we shall have, however, occasion to mention them, after we shall have endeavoured to place in a clear light the three principal articles of the revelation. CHAPTER XII. LXXVII. IMMENSE efforts have been made by human reason to elevate itself to the conception of the Deity, to demonstrate His existence, and to deduce with solid arguments His principal attributes. Yet, even that quantum which human reason believes to have succeeded in establishing on this exalted subject, has always had to encounter in the fields of proud philosophy tenacious, or rather pertinacious, adversaries. Whereas revelation, extricating man from the labyrinth of transcendental abstrusities, presents him at once with a well constructed system of theological science, which he has only to receive within his bosom, to lead a happy life on earth, and attain his true goal beyond the grave. The Divine word informs us of God, as a pure spirit, eternal and immutable, incorporeal, absolute (that is, not dependent upon causes without Himself), omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, all-perfect and therefore all-holy (that is, possessing all the attributes in the highest degree of perfection); one, because admitting not in Himself distinctions of multiplicity, and sole, because beside him there is no God; Creator of the universe from nought, therefore distinct from all things created (which we would call, if allowed the expression, _extramundane_); Creator of man in His image, having endowed him with intelligence, liberty, and an immortal soul; provident and immediate[3] to man, watching over his actions, punishing faults and rewarding merits, and pardoning him who truly repents of evil committed; He is a perpetual source of the purest love, hence a merciful father to all His creatures, unto whom He continually pours forth treasures of His kindness; He strengthens the weak, comforts the afflicted, enlightens the ignorant, protects the oppressed, and grants the prayer of those who trust in Him; He governs human events according to His will, now causing human enterprises to succeed, anon to fail; always directing them to the ends contemplated by His infinite wisdom, for He is the all-wise, just, and faithful, whose promises are infallibly accomplished, and whose word subsists to eternity. He sometimes suspends the order of nature, and works miracles, whenever He deems it suitable to His high designs. He established a covenant with the Abrahamitic race, and revealed to it His holy law, by this means to illuminate and bless all mankind. [Note 3: This expression is here used to indicate the direct and special relation of God with man, and the direct government of mankind by God, without intermediate agencies, in contradistinction to the other terrestrial creatures, whose relation with the Creator is only general, and which are governed through the medium of pre-established physical laws.--THE TRANSLATOR.] LXXVIII. Although these notions do not complete the idea of the Divinity, much less can they claim to define His essence--for to the very limited faculties of the human mind this will always remain inconceivable--yet they are sufficient to afford such an instruction on divine subjects as to satisfy the wants of humanity. With the guidance of the elements offered, and by a conscientious meditation on those Divine attributes, man will be able to dispel the superstitious notions and the errors into which they have fallen, who have not consulted the Divine word on such a subject; he will be able to sketch in his own mind an idea, however incomplete, of the sublime object of his adoration, and thus preserve himself from much that is evil. Having been destined to live in society, and compelled to work in order to supply the multifarious wants of his body; always more or less struggling with the interests of his fellow men to secure a possession often disputed to him by malice, or violence; and evil example and ignorance and the sensual appetites being concurrently at work--man became naturally, in the course of time, too easy a prey to passions, vice and error; he was overpowered by materialism, and fell into sin. Therefore, the idea revealed to him of a holy God, who watches over his destinies, who punishes the guilty, rewards the virtuous, and pardons the penitent, is the best balsam that could be administered, the best truth that could be taught to him; it saves him from error, removes him from sin, invites him to direct his view to heaven, restores him within the Divine grace, and opens to him the prospect of an interminable beatitude. LXXIX. Among those attributes, however, one becomes prominent, from its importance; it is that which establishes an immediate relation, or communion, as subsisting between the Creator and the rational creature; a fundamental point on which the whole religion hinges. The intimacy of such a relation manifested itself at the very beginning of the world by God having created man _in His image_, by which expression it is meant, that the Divine Maker bestowed some part of His perfections on the noblest creature on earth, endowing it with intelligence, free-will, and immortality; these high prerogatives conferred upon man, to a certain degree, a similitude with his Maker, and from this similitude was naturally to follow a closer relation of mutual love, than exists between God and the other created things. Such a relation assumed a more definite form when God took man under His special guardianship, whilst He left the government of inanimate nature to physical laws, unalterable and compulsory, which He had established in the first instant of creation. The stupendous connection was lastly completed, by God having communicated His will to men, and traced out to them the course they had to follow, in order to render themselves worthy of the great boon, and to attain the end destined for them. From all these circumstances it became evident that God is _immediate_ to man. LXXX. As, in general, all the revelation, has for its object to benefit humanity, so, in particular, when the divine word is directed to impart to us the knowledge of God, it intends to teach us the duties we are called upon to fulfil towards the Author of our existence; duties which we could not well discharge if we were wanting in that knowledge. Now, the first of these duties is to _love God_. Such a noble feeling, which, as we have already stated, derives its origin from a relation of similitude between him who loves and the object beloved, cannot be kindled in us by effect of a mere command, as the motions of the heart are not produced by authority. Therefore, while holy writ inculcates the love of God, it at the same time indicates to us the means whereby this sublime love will be promoted; and the means is _to walk in the ways of the Eternal_. To understand the connection between the means and the end, we must consider the different degrees of which love is susceptible, and motives by which it is actuated. He who loves God because of great favours received, is apt to feel a diminution of attachment, or even indifference, on being overtaken by misfortune. He who loves Him with a view to benefits in a future life, is also in danger of ceasing to love, if some doubts were to arise in his mind and to weaken his hopes. But when man loves God because he understands, and admires, and adores in Him the aggregate of all perfections, and feels within himself the flame of a desire to approach the Divine Majesty, then his love is an inextinguishable love, for he abnegates his own self, and centres his motives exclusively in the object beloved. This kind of love, however, presupposes a uniformity of tendencies, which causes the one who loves to esteem and to endeavour to appropriate the qualities admired by him; and in this precisely consists the resemblance, which produces the true love. Justice, faithfulness, righteousness, mercy, and many other Divine attributes, which in the biblical language are called _the ways of the Eternal_, cannot be fully and worthily appreciated, except by him who uses all his endeavours to adorn himself with such virtues, as far as his limited nature allows. And now we can understand, why he cannot truly love who walks not in His ways. LXXXI. Another principal duty, issuing from the same revelation, is that which is commonly called _fear of God_, an expression very frequent in the sacred text, but which requires to be explained. The Hebrew word used is susceptible of two different interpretations. It might apply to the fear of retribution, suggested by the reflection that an all-powerful God will not leave unpunished the transgressors of his commands; or the same word might signify the sense of reverence and unbounded veneration, with which the frail creature must feel almost overwhelmed when thinking of its exalted Creator, who knows all, sees all, and governs all. The former originates in the intellect, the latter in the heart. It is obvious that the fear of punishment is not a sufficient restraint to deter man, at all times, from sin; for in the ebullition of impetuous passions, the intellect becomes offuscated and impeded in the exercise of its functions, or frequently is itself pressed into the service of the predominating passion. Not so the awe and reverence inspired by the majesty of the Supreme King of the universe. It pervades all the heart, disposes it to feelings of submission and obedience, convinces it that man is at all times in the presence of his Maker, and thus prevents inordinate material appetites from bursting forth and rising forcibly to uncontrollable preponderance. Hence it is that the fear of God, taken in the latter sense, is a powerful prop which supports the religious edifice, is the most effectual and valuable lesson we derive from the revelation of the Divine attributes. LXXXII. From these two principal duties, spring, as corollaries, others of no less importance, which come, also, within the sphere of the first cardinal point of biblical revelation, the knowledge of God. He, who truly loves and fears God, will surely feel the necessity of placing in Him exclusively all his trust, for he is convinced that there is no being in nature, besides God, that can offer an infallible support to human hopes. He will find in his heart an almost irrepressible impulse to praise the Divine perfections, to extol His glory, to offer sincere homage to the Sovereign of the universe, to worship and serve Him with purity of heart, to thank Him for favours received, to supplicate Him for help, to confess to Him sins committed, and to ask His pardon with contrite spirit. All these and other like acts of filial dependence and piety, find their expression in that elevated form of external worship called _prayer_, which, whether exercised publicly in appropriate and consecrated temples, or recited in the solitude of the domestic closet,[4] whether strictly following an established formulary, or pouring out the impulsive feelings of the heart, is always an urgent want and an indispensable duty of every religious man. Lastly, the true love and fear of God imply the obligation of avoiding, in all that pertains to Divine worship, everything that might have the appearance of idolatry, of intrusion of intermediate powers, or of any superstition whatever; above all clearly emerges the duty of not abusing the holy name of God, either by uttering it on trivial occasions--which would tend to diminish the reverence due to Him--or by profaning it with an invocation to a false testimony, whereby the detestable crime of perjury would be consummated. [Note 4: Public, as compared with private worship, has the undoubted advantage of being in itself a public homage to the omnipotence of God, and a solemn testimony of the dependence of man on Him. True, solitary worship is often more likely to be attended with the requisite mental abstraction from all worldly objects, and intellectual elevation of the soul towards its Divine Source--a condition of mind indispensable to establish a true spiritual communion in Prayer, and without which all our orisons and ritual ceremonies would be but mechanical and meaningless performances, a body without soul. It is this condition of the mind that, in Talmudical style, is called [Hebrew: het-nun-vav-kaf], as is well known, and that later ascetic writers termed [Hebrew: tav-vav-dalet-dalet-vav-bet-het-he], from the circumstance that it is superinduced by solitary meditation. But whenever this condition is attained in a public service, then indeed is that service "divine," and humanity is exalted in its approach to the Throne of Mercy.--THE TRANSLATOR.] CHAPTER XIII. LXXXIII. ON determining the duties of the individual towards his fellow-men, and towards all that surrounds him in nature, revelation did not think it proper to refer the motives to human intelligence, and to allow the bases of justice and benevolence to rest on human reason alone; but it said, "Do what is right and just and good in the eyes of the Eternal thy God; and refrain from all that is not such, because it pleases not thy God," whereby it wished to proclaim that the notions of just and unjust, of good and evil, of rights and duties, should be considered as emanating from, and prescribed by, the Divine wisdom, and therefore obligatory only because agreeable to the Divine will. In this also the revealed word purposed to come to the assistance of human frailty, and to render superfluous the abstrusities--as arbitrary as uncertain and controvertible--about which eminent philosophers tortured their brains, for many centuries, to fix, as they thought, the principles of the so-called _Jure_ in its innumerable ramifications of natural and positive, public and private, civil and criminal, commercial, maritime, canonical, feudal, of police, of finance, of war, and what not, without ever yet arriving at a complete accord in their specialities; whereas all right obtains a solid and effective sanction when its origin is referred to God, who comprehending in Himself the sum total of right, justice and moral good, and having communed with man to enjoin to him their exercise, willed that the carrying out of their dictates should be considered as an act of religion, of service rendered to Him, and that violating the one or failing in the other, should be alike regarded as an offence committed towards Him, which He will punish severely. God, then, is the source of right; He made man acquainted with it through His law, and committed to him its performance on earth after rules prescribed by His will. LXXXIV. In promulgating the duties of man towards his fellow-men, the holy scripture assumed sometimes the negative form, to forbid all that which may cause injury to others; and sometimes the positive form, enjoining the practice to be followed towards all. To the first class belong the following prohibitions, viz., of nourishing hatred, rancour, revenge; of calumniating, or in any way whatever damaging the reputations of others; of assailing their honour or good fame; of restraining or obstructing others in the exercise of their rights, or in the use and enjoyment of their properties; of practising deceptions, impositions, frauds, and all forms of insincerity, usury, extortions, and violence; of laying obstructions in the way of the weak or helpless; of giving false testimony; of speaking untruth; of reporting even truth, when it may lead to discord and strife; of occasioning danger; of offending decency and good manners; of causing scandal; of withholding wages or remuneration due; of keeping in pledge the clothing or implements of the poor; of using two weights and measures; of associating with the wicked; of breaking a pledge-word; of violating or assailing the conjugal happiness of others; of coveting anything that belongs to others; and other similar prohibitions recorded in the sacred code, which can be easily collected as pertaining to this class. Moreover, it will not be unreasonable to complete this list by the addition of a few more particular actions, which, though not specifically mentioned, must yet be understood to be forbidden; for, as it is a constant rule in biblical exegesis to deduce general theories from single laws which appear to refer to particular cases, so must, by analogy, be comprised in an enunciated forbidden action all others of a similar nature, character, and tendency, as being understood in the former. LXXXV. The positive precepts concerning a man's conduct towards his fellow-men, are naturally enunciated in directions of a tendency precisely opposite to those expressed negatively; that is to say, it is _enjoined_ to practise the reverse of what has been forbidden. Now, to begin with the more general prescriptions; it is enjoined, in the first place, to love one's fellow-men as one's own-self, all mankind, without any exception, being comprised in this expression, as we meet again the same injunction with regard to the _stranger_, whom we are commanded to love as ourselves; and Scripture explained already what is to be understood by the word _stranger_, when it said: "Thou also hast been a stranger in the land of Egypt"; from which it is evident that the love inculcated extends even to adversaries and enemies. It is next commanded to respect in every individual the dignity of man, created in the image of God, which establishes the inviolability of person, and the equality of all before the law, so that there should be no privileged caste, no hereditary preeminence; desiring, on the contrary, that "under the protection of the same law and same right should dwell the native and the foreigner." The personal liberty of every member of the human family is also proclaimed, as it is with that intention that the Decalogue has put prominently forward the circumstance of Israel having been delivered from servitude; and if, on the one hand, the condition of the times, which had rendered the use of slavery natural and universal, did not then admit of its sudden and immediate extirpation; on the other, Scripture designed to mitigate its acerbity by provident and humane laws, so as to make obvious the tendency to its future total, though gradual, extinction. To prevent pauperism, as well as to cure its evils, the rich were enjoined to lend money to those who needed it; and the law, starting from the presumption that the poor man would not, or at least should not, desire to borrow and incur a debt, unless being deprived of the necessaries of life, ordered that such a loan to the destitute brother be gratuitous, whilst in commercial transactions with foreign people it permitted the charge of some reasonable interest on loans of money, as an equivalent for the service rendered. LXXXVI. The administration of justice being, according to the revealed principles, a divine office, was naturally to be confided to persons carefully selected for their intelligence, probity, incorruptibility, and superiority to every human regard; these are therefore invested with a judicial representation of the Divinity on earth, and are enjoined to proceed according to the rules of the strictest justice, without ever deferring either to the pitiable condition of the poor, or to the influence of the powerful. As a corollary to this system, every person is bound to appeal to these authorities in any emergency, and to refrain from taking the law into his own hands; even for the correction of the disorders of one's own child, the law requires a recourse to the constituted authority, not permitting the infliction of punishments of any kind, without the intervention of those appointed to administer justice. Passing to the other observances, which grow out of the grand duty to be just to all, we are strictly commanded to respect the property, the rights and the honour of others, to be solicitous of their welfare, as much as of our own, to act honestly, sincerely and faithfully on every occasion, to fulfil our promises, to facilitate to others the success to which they are justly entitled, and to pardon our enemies. From the multifarious and varied ties which bind the individual to family and society, issue the special duties of husband and wife, of fathers, of children, of relations, as well as the regard due to misfortune, respect to the aged, the virtuous, the learned, the magistrates, and the authorities of the state, attachment to the country, and obedience and loyalty to the sovereign, who, in the language of the Bible, is constituted by God to govern the destinies of the people committed to his or her care. All these duties, which branch off into many specialities, are either explicitly declared, or incontestably result, by analogies and sound hermeneutical deductions, from the various texts referring to such subjects. LXXXVII. But not to strict justice alone our conduct towards our fellow-men must conform itself; we are bound to act on the principles of the most generous benevolence and charity. Those acts of a noble mind and a magnanimous heart, commonly called virtue, which are by moralists only _recommended_, as meritorious works, are by the Divine law _enjoined_, as obligatory, in the most absolute sense. Alms, for instance, are, in the Mosaic law, a duty of the rich, and a right of the needy. God is the owner of the land; He gave it to the diligent to cultivate, and through His blessing their labours prosper; He assigned to the poor His dues on the cultivated soil, and ordered that to them should be left the total produce of every seventh year, the tithes of some other years, and the gleanings of the fields and vineyards. It was not thereby intended to render charity legal and compulsory, depriving it of its noblest attribute, which is spontaneity, but to show more conspicuously the importance attached to it, having otherwise left free all acts of kindness and mercy, to which the law does not fix any measure. To this class also belong the precepts, which make it a duty to give timely assistance to him who is about to succumb to fatigue and labour, to supply with provisions the discharged servant, to restore before sunset the clothing taken in pawn, to obviate danger in building a house, to put no obstructions before the blind, to grant every kind of relief to whomsoever stands in need, without exacting, or even expecting, any remuneration, to rescue those who are in danger, to defend the weak, to protect the widow and the orphan, to attend the sick, and to give sepulture to the dead. These and other similar prescriptions, which make of charity a duty, carry with them the great lesson, that justice must go always hand-in-hand with mercy, since the all-just God is also all-merciful, and he who satisfies not both alike, does not fully discharge his duties to society. LXXXVIII. The Mosaic dispensation, which considers the whole world as a grand unit, and tends to carry out the idea of moral good to its fullest extent, could not leave unnoticed the relations of man with beings of different species; therefore it also mentioned duties that we owe to the irrational creatures and inanimate beings. True, God granted to man a superiority, a dominion over all things created on earth, permitting him the use, and even the destruction, of them, whenever this is necessary to his own welfare, or conducive to his own advantage; but He wisely restricted such power within certain limits. Mosaism regards the entire universe as a temple manifesting the glory of God, and directs us to admire in the single component parts the profound counsels and infinite wisdom of Him who created and harmonized so many wonders. Thus we are commanded, in the first place, to respect the laws of nature, as established by its Supreme Author from the creation, and not to do capriciously things that are in direct opposition to such laws. From this principle spring the various prohibitions to couple sexually different species of animals, to practise on them castration, to constrain simultaneously to joint labour beasts of unequal strength, to muzzle them while thrashing, and to use towards them any kind of cruelty. Nay, it is enjoined that they, also, should participate in the general rest ordained for men on festivals. It is well for us to reflect how incomplete are as yet the modern institutions for the prevention of cruelty to animals, when compared with those of the ancient Mosaic code. Even the simultaneous sowing of heterogeneous species, and the ingrafting of plants, are considered as violations of the law of nature, which had established the distinctions. In the second place, in order that man, while using all things for his benefit, might not imagine that he is their absolute master, and should not forget the true Owner, who conferred them upon him under various reservations, he was enjoined not to appropriate at the same time two things, one of which had been born or produced from the other; but in the act of converting to his own use some object or being, he should spare that which gave it birth, and not lay his hands upon both simultaneously. He is thus to learn to respect the causes while enjoying the effects; and from the secondary causes he will mentally ascend to the primitive one, which produced them all from nought. This is the sense and intention of the prohibitions of taking in a covey the mother with the young, of slaughtering a quadruped together with that which gave it birth, of cutting down a tree, were it even for the necessity of a siege, while we are enjoying its fruit. CHAPTER XIV. LXXXIX. THE third class of duties comprises those which man has towards himself; and here the fundamental rule, from which they all emerge, sounds thus--"Sanctify thyself, for I, the Eternal, am holy," which, in other words, may be rendered as follows--"Imitate God, for thou wast created in His image." As, however, this sanctification of self cannot possibly be effected without knowing and loving God, and without walking in his ways by practising justice and charity, it follows that this third article is the cardinal point, which virtually comprehends in itself the other two--it _is_ the ultimate object of all the revelation, which purposed nothing more or less than the perfection of man; to this grand end the whole scheme of revelation was designed. It is clear that, in regulating the precepts of sanctification, the revealed word had not alone to deal with the human soul, but to take into account the body also, without whose concurrence man cannot attain perfection. Designed for a receptacle of an immortal spirit, and for an instrument to carry out the actions of life, the body must be preserved entire, pure, and inaccessible to all contamination that would be an obstacle to the high spiritual functions to be accomplished by its means. To ensure this inaccessibility, as far as possible, the Divine law prescribed for all mankind a rule, which, though to the short understanding of many its character may not appear very clear, was deemed by the eternal wisdom as calculated to promote morality. Previously to Abraham's vocation, God forbade Noah and his children to feed upon blood; and the scriptural declaration, that the soul of animals resides in their blood, seems to indicate that the motive of that prohibition is to prevent the human body being brutalised by absorbing within itself, and assimilating, a large amount of an inferior vitality, and thus causing the material propensities to preponderate in man. But even if the true reason of that prohibition remained unknown to us, this would not be the only instance of man being obliged to acknowledge his own ignorance, and to bow reverently before an explicit and rigorous commandment of God. XC. The principles inculcated by the Mosaic code, for the preservation of the body, involve, primarily, the prohibition of attempting its existence, and, secondarily, that of cutting _off_ or injuring any part of it. Suicide is, therefore, explicitly declared a crime; and several precepts are directed against mutilations, marks, and all sorts of deformations. The law does not permit voluntary macerations of the body, capricious abstinences from lawful things, multiplied or prolonged fasts, or subtractions from what is necessary to life. It, on the contrary, intends that bodily health should be cared for, that cleanliness and decency, in every respect, be regarded, a proper development of the physical faculties promoted, and an employment procured for them consonant with the superior requirements of man. It _is_ likewise due to the physiology of the human body, not to use any of its limbs in a manner contradictory to its organisation, to provide for the restoration of equilibrium or health eventually lost, to avoid risks of injuries or disorders, and to take advice of skilled men in cases of disease. But food, drink, recreation, physical enjoyment, and every other indulgence usually allowed to the advantage of the body, are required by the law to be moderated by certain rules of a moral standard, having in view more elevated ends than the mere gratification of earthly wants; so that even the most vulgar acts may, from the intentions which accompany them, acquire a certain religious importance. In short, the government of the body must be such as to favour, and not to hinder, the exercise of what concerns spiritual life. XCI. Passing to other moral requirements which come within the sphere of man's duties towards himself, it is unnecessary to demonstrate here how it is incumbent upon every man to choose a state in society adapted to his individual faculties and aptitude, to be industrious, sober and decorous, to fix on a well-regulated distribution of his time and work, to be economical without parsimony and liberal without prodigality, and generally to follow such rules of wisdom as tend to render life prosperous, and human conduct acceptable to society. All such rules are self-evident, and grow necessarily out of the general principle which demands of the functions of the body to subserve the attainment of self-sanctification. But we must now speak precisely of this sanctification, to point out briefly in what it consists. From the Divine prescript, "Sanctify yourselves because I am holy," we clearly conclude that the type of sanctification is to be sought, not in ourselves, but in God; therefore, to sanctify ourselves is to shape our own acts and will upon the known will of God; to be fully penetrated with the idea of Him; to hold steadfastly to Him; to take Him for a guide in the walks of life; to make Him the goal of our actions and the centre of our hopes; to devote our solicitude to the accomplishment of the high designs of His eternal wisdom; to perform whatever is agreeable to Him; to imitate, as far as possible, His perfections; in short, so to act, that what in Him is absolute may become in us subjective; and thus the sanctity of God will produce man's own sanctification. Having established this sovereign principle, revelation has accomplished its intentions, has attained its object, for the whole sum of the Divine law is concentrated in it; and worship, morals, judicial laws, and all single observances prescribed, are but branches or constituent parts of this principle; they all flow from, and return to, it, with a systematic consequence. XCII. Besides the three cardinal articles above stated, the observance of which, in their general tendencies at least, is incumbent on all mankind, there are in the sacred code various special prescriptions obligatory only on Israel, as him who first received the revelation, and who is bound to preserve it with particular means, and to testify it for ever, by his acts and by his very existence. Through such prescriptions, the law designed either to keep alive among the people the idea of the high mission entrusted to it, and the memory of signal favours which Providence prodigally conferred upon it in the early times of the institution, or to initiate it into a more scrupulous sanctitude, by interdicting to it some things that are left permissive to others. It is not necessary here to give a complete list of such precepts, as the mere inspection of the sacred text suffices to point them out; and we shall confine ourselves to indicating some of the more important. Pre-eminent among them stands the sabbath, the elevated tendency of which has been already explained in the Sinaitic revelation; next come the three Festivals of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles, which, besides being linked to, and combined with, rural events and circumstances, are also designed to commemorate luminous epochs in the national history; the great day of atonement, as a highly important act of reconciliation with God; the circumcision, as an ineffaceable mark of the adoption of Israel; the assiduous study of the Divine law, as the purest source of truth, and repository of the religious idea; the fringes in the garments, the phylacteries or frontlets, the inscriptions on the door-posts, and such like commemorative means; the redemption of the firstborn children; and the offering of the first fruits, as a demonstration of filial dependance on, and gratitude to, the Supreme Cause; the prohibition to feed on certain loathsome animals, and reptiles and insects, in order not to assimilate to the human body substances of a low, imperfect, and possibly deteriorated organization; the interdiction of marriages between certain degrees of relationships, because wanting in the antagonism required in connubial unions;[5] the duty of offering up prayer, one of the noblest offices of piety, and the most effectual medium of communion with God; that of confessing sins, the inevitable consequence of human frailty; the injunctions to reject idolatry, divinations, charms, exorcisms, sortileges, and all manner of superstitions, all of which are obstacles to the development of the religious idea; and several other precepts, which may be found dispersed throughout the sacred code, all having similar tendencies, and coming more or less directly within the scope we have assigned to them. [Note 5: Another probable reason of this prohibition is, that the practice of such unions would be fraught with great domestic disorders and unhappiness, and consequent social evils. But it is opportune here to remind the leader, that many attempts have been made, in the course of centuries, by eminent expositors, to assign to many of the Mosaic ordinances motives of various characters, rationalistic and metaphysical, sanitary, political, and mystical, but all more or less conjectural. To the religious man the positive knowledge of the true motives is not at all essential for the performance of the divine precepts; and in the words of our author himself, as stated elsewhere, "we have to bow reverently before an explicit and rigorous commandment of God, and we consider it as calculated to contribute to the promotion of our own weal."--THE TRANSLATOR.] CHAPTER XV. XCIII. CASTING now a retrospective glance on what we have hitherto briefly stated, it will be easy to deduce, from the aggregate of these notions, the principal characteristic of that wondrous institution, which it pleased the Divine mercy to found upon earth for the benefit of the human family, selecting for its organ the people of Israel; an institution, which, in reference to the means adopted for its preservation and propagation, is called _Judaism_. The scope of Judaism is, then, the propagation among men of the _religious idea_, and this comprises the doctrines revealed respecting the Deity and respecting man, in consequence of which the latter will be able to attain his true goal. Respecting God, revelation teaches that He is a Being absolute--that is to say, that has in Himself all the sources of existence, of will, of power, and of action--hence He is eternal, all-perfect, all-powerful, all-holy; He is unique, because there is no God beside Him; and He is one, because in Him there can be no multiplicity or division of parts; He created out of nought the universe, which He governs by pre-ordained physical laws, and all that exists owes to Him its existence and conservation. Respecting man, revelation teaches that he has an immortal soul, made in the image of God--that is, endowed with various spiritual faculties similar, in their nature, to those of his Maker--therefore susceptible of a progressive perfection, which he will attain by sanctifying himself--that is, by imitating God and carrying out his commands. To that effect, God entered into an immediate relation with man, whereby He not only provides for the preservation of mankind, as He does for that of all other things created, but He, moreover, granted him a supernatural assistance to improve his moral condition; and this assistance consists in having made him the recipient of a revelation, by which He instructed him in the best rules of life, and declared to him that He will be his support, his protector, his judge, his loving father, and his guide towards eternal felicity. XCIV. But the religious idea is not simply a theory that may be accepted or rejected without affecting the human actions, it is not an abstraction confined within the sphere of contemplation; it is a practical system, which requires to be put into execution, and to be manifested in every part of the human conduct. As such, it was to pass into the hands of men, to direct their actions; and they could conform to it only to the extent of their intellectual comprehension of its spirit. Now, every institution, however excellent in itself, is liable to vicissitudes, as soon as human ingenuity seeks to comprehend it, and human weakness to carry it into effect. Even as the intellectual powers and the modes of viewing things vary among men, so the religious idea, in its practical application, was subject, in the lapse of time, to some alteration among those who became its depositaries. Judaism did not remain always pure and consentaneous to its ends; and, although based on a foundation unchangeable in its nature, and eternal, its practice was sometimes at variance with its spirit, and its essence was either neglected or misunderstood, according to certain circumstances of the national development, as we are informed, even by the records of sacred history. XCV. There can be no doubt but the inspired man, who first was commissioned to proclaim the true religious idea, had fully realized in his mind the vastness and immense consequences of that new institution in its ultimate universal compass. In his eloquent addresses there are even some broad traits which allude to a fulfilment reserved to the latest posterity. Nevertheless, it is obvious, that, having to instruct a people who were not yet prepared to realize such an idea, and in an age when the opinions of all mankind ran into totally different directions, he had to take into account the condition of the times and of men, and to use a language suited to his hearers. At the same time it was not designed, or expected, by the holy legislator to see at once realized the last and comprehensive results to which the revealed doctrine aspires; it was sufficient to have given it existence and form, and to have instituted a repository capably of preserving it, leaving its final universal triumph to the development of humanity and progress of civilisation. Considered in these points of view, Mosaism has the appearance, in its exterior garb, of a special law, adapted to peculiar circumstances, and circumscribed to few persons, but in reality, and apart from that kind of integument, it contains the universal doctrines, destined to become the inheritance of all mankind. The blessed Prophet clearly foresaw that the new ideas preached by him would meet with many an obstacle, before they were thoroughly adopted, even by those who were called upon to preserve them; hence the greater was the force with which he inculcated the monotheistic principle, and the necessity of segregation from foreign and idolatrous influences; thus his laws acquired an aspect of _particularism_ and nationality, whereas on being carefully studied, and deeply penetrated, they exhibit their more general and sublime tendency. Therefore, in judging of Mosaism, and in interpreting the body of laws contained in the Pentateuch, we must never lose sight of the two following necessary cautions; viz., to deduce general theories from particular cases; and to take into account the circumstances of time and place, in order to seize that which is designed for all times and all places.[6] [Note 6: The attentive student of the Pentateuch must see, especially when assisted by the best commentators, that several ordinances are the creatures of circumstance and time, and consequently of an essentially transitory character. Among these stand foremost all such as refer to the treatment of, and relations with, the Canaanitic families. The strict separation of Israel from those corrupt and idolatrous populations, and their ultimate destruction, were conditions necessary to the establishment and success of the new order of things. As soon as the end of those ordinances was accomplished, they naturally ceased to have any other than a historical value. Therefore, he (if any such there be) who would transfer to the Gentiles of our days the principles of the policy that was inculcated towards the Canaanites of the time of Moses, would not only he committing a sad mistake, but running counter to the spirit of Judaism, and violating the very letter of the law, elsewhere clearly expressed. "Thou shalt love the stranger as thyself," is the motto which God inscribed for perpetuity on the banner of Israel.--THE TRANSLATOR.] XCVI. What the inspired Arch-prophet had foretold came too truly to pass, as soon as the people of Israel, mixing too freely with their corrupt neighbours, wished to imitate them, and assumed the form of a monarchy. Ambition and lust of power could ill agree with a law, which establishes individual liberty and equality of rights. Consequently, it was not long before Paganism ascended the throne, attended by a hideous train of profligacies and crimes; and, what then remained of the Mosaic institutions, consisted only of the material service of the temple, and some exterior acts mechanically performed, but sadly lacking the idea, which alone constitutes their merit. To put an end to so great a disorder, Prophetism rose. With admirable zeal, energy, eloquence, and abnegation, thundering in the courts, the temple, and the public markets; now by word of mouth, then by writings; now threatening, anon exhorting; always struggling with infinite obstacles, and setting at defiance the tyranny of the ruling powers with the sole prestige of the animated word, Prophetism undertook to revivify the religious idea, almost extinguished, or crushed under the weight of universal perversion. But to repress with greater force the overflowing depravity, and to combat the evil with an opposite extreme, it was proper to divest the religious idea of its particularising and national forms, and to present it in its more comprehensive and general character, in its celestial beauty of a future reign of happiness, based on love, justice, liberty, and universal peace. This was precisely what Prophetism did. Therefore, he would be greatly mistaken, who would suppose, in the expressions used by the Prophets, any intention of slight towards the ceremonial laws, and those biblical prescriptions, which are specially intended for the chosen people. True, these are to be regarded as means calculated to a superior end; but they remain in full force and validity until that end (which is in store in the Eternal Mind) shall have been fully and finally attained. The Prophets eliminated nothing from, and added nothing to, the law; they sought to revive the religious idea, which is the foundation and aim of the law; they brought it into prominence, to impress it more forcibly on the minds of a people who had nearly lost it. But they did more; they bounded over the confines of the present, transferred themselves through the imagination to a future final re-arrangement of the human conditions; and, giving to the religious idea its greatest possible latitude, depicted a future state of ideal perfection, which, while it offered a vivid contrast with contemporary corruption, left to posterity an imperishable monument of their inspired eloquence and exquisite foresight.[7] [Note 7: The original has here several succeeding paragraphs devoted to a historical review of various phases of Judaism, which it describes under the names of Talmudism, Rabbinism, Caraism, and Cabalism. Believing this digression, or appendix, to be unnecessary to the general purposes of the present book, I have omitted it in the translation, _with the sanction of the distinguished Author himself._--THE TRANSLATOR.] CHAPTER XVI. XCVII. JUDAISM is now clearly delineated before us. From the outline that we have endeavoured to sketch, it is evident that the religion of the Jew imposes upon him solemn duties towards God, towards his fellow-men, and towards himself. A sincere, pure, undivided, active, loving worship of his heavenly Father, and a constant practice of justice, benevolence, and charity, in their widest sense, will lead to his self-sanctification, which is the aim intended for him. These are his fundamental duties, as far as regards actions. Many of the observances prescribed by Holy Writ teach the modes and means of carrying out such duties. All such prescriptions as are strictly connected with the existence of the temple, and the sojourn in Palestine are dispensed with, since the destruction of the former, and the dispersion of Israel on the face of the earth. But no doubts can exist as to the others, which are all, and for ever, in full force, having been ordained for all times and all places. But the Jew has also a creed to profess. According to the Scriptures, he is bound to believe in the unity, eternity, omnipotence, omniscience, unerring justice, and infinite mercy of God; in His general providence over all the universe, which He created and which He governs, and His more special providence over man; he is bound to believe in the divine origin of the Mosaic revelation, in its truth and immutability, and in its efficacy to promote his own sanctification; he is bound to believe in the spirituality and immortality of the human soul, in its destination and aptitude to perform all that is good, and in the future reward of the virtuous and punishment of the wicked; and, lastly, he is bound to believe, that, in order to make known, preserve, and propagate these dogmas, a covenant was established between God and Israel, in consequence of which the latter is called _servant of God, son of God, holy people_, and has the particular mission to conform to the will of God, which is called _walking in the ways of the Eternal_. These various points are, however, so intimately connected with each other, and form so complete a system, that one being admitted, the others follow as legitimate consequences. It now remains for us only to add a few words concerning the hopes of Israel. The future--as great in its consequences as extraordinary in its conditions--which the Jew has a right to expect, has its foundation in the Divine promises, and, consequently, its accomplishment, though long in the womb of time, is infallible. By virtue of such promises, Israel expects a complete material restoration and spiritual perfection, not of his own people only, but of all the human family; so that every individual of the human species may then correspond, in all respects, to the lofty requirements of his nature, and attain the ends pre-established for man by the infinite wisdom of the Creator; and this not only during his earthly life, but also beyond it, in his immortal condition. As to the modes by which these heavenly universal promises will come into actuality, we must rest satisfied with very feeble and vague notions, and not require an exact comprehension of specialities, which, in our present limited power of mind, we might be unable even to conceive. It is sufficient for us to be able to deduce with certainty from prophetic words, that (as regards the future condition of this life) an increased intelligence, and a more energetic will directed towards what is good--which in the biblical language is called _circumcision of the heart_--will be the means of diffusing throughout the world the knowledge of the One God, and the exercise of virtue, under the regimen of an incorruptible justice, a generous benevolence, a universal peace, and an uninterrupted prosperity and happiness. To Israel, in particular, the gathering of his scattered members, the restoration of his ancestral inheritance, and the re-establishment of his nationality, have been promised and repeatedly assured; and the glory of that epoch forms the subject of the most glowing pictures of inspired poetry. But the fulfilment of these promises the Jew must expect from the wonder-working hand of God alone, without any personal efforts of his own. Meanwhile, he is to consider himself, as he truly is, a citizen of the country in which he dwells, a brother to his fellow-citizens, a dutiful observer of the law of the land, and a loyal subject of the sovereign, whose authority is constituted by God. LONDON: PRINTED BY J. WERTHEIMER AND CO., CIRCUS PLACE, FINSBURY CIRCUS. 
2849	----	AGAINST APION. [1] By Flavius Josephus Translated by William Whiston BOOK 1. 1. I Suppose that by my books of the Antiquity of the Jews, most excellent Epaphroditus, [2] have made it evident to those who peruse them, that our Jewish nation is of very great antiquity, and had a distinct subsistence of its own originally; as also, I have therein declared how we came to inhabit this country wherein we now live. Those Antiquities contain the history of five thousand years, and are taken out of our sacred books, but are translated by me into the Greek tongue. However, since I observe a considerable number of people giving ear to the reproaches that are laid against us by those who bear ill-will to us, and will not believe what I have written concerning the antiquity of our nation, while they take it for a plain sign that our nation is of a late date, because they are not so much as vouchsafed a bare mention by the most famous historiographers among the Grecians. I therefore have thought myself under an obligation to write somewhat briefly about these subjects, in order to convict those that reproach us of spite and voluntary falsehood, and to correct the ignorance of others, and withal to instruct all those who are desirous of knowing the truth of what great antiquity we really are. As for the witnesses whom I shall produce for the proof of what I say, they shall be such as are esteemed to be of the greatest reputation for truth, and the most skillful in the knowledge of all antiquity by the Greeks themselves. I will also show, that those who have written so reproachfully and falsely about us are to be convicted by what they have written themselves to the contrary. I shall also endeavor to give an account of the reasons why it hath so happened, that there have not been a great number of Greeks who have made mention of our nation in their histories. I will, however, bring those Grecians to light who have not omitted such our history, for the sake of those that either do not know them, or pretend not to know them already. 2. And now, in the first place, I cannot but greatly wonder at those men, who suppose that we must attend to none but Grecians, when we are inquiring about the most ancient facts, and must inform ourselves of their truth from them only, while we must not believe ourselves nor other men; for I am convinced that the very reverse is the truth of the case. I mean this,--if we will not be led by vain opinions, but will make inquiry after truth from facts themselves; for they will find that almost all which concerns the Greeks happened not long ago; nay, one may say, is of yesterday only. I speak of the building of their cities, the inventions of their arts, and the description of their laws; and as for their care about the writing down of their histories, it is very near the last thing they set about. However, they acknowledge themselves so far, that they were the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, and the Phoenicians (for I will not now reckon ourselves among them) that have preserved the memorials of the most ancient and most lasting traditions of mankind; for almost all these nations inhabit such countries as are least subject to destruction from the world about them; and these also have taken especial care to have nothing omitted of what was [remarkably] done among them; but their history was esteemed sacred, and put into public tables, as written by men of the greatest wisdom they had among them. But as for the place where the Grecians inhabit, ten thousand destructions have overtaken it, and blotted out the memory of former actions; so that they were ever beginning a new way of living, and supposed that every one of them was the origin of their new state. It was also late, and with difficulty, that they came to know the letters they now use; for those who would advance their use of these letters to the greatest antiquity pretend that they learned them from the Phoenicians and from Cadmus; yet is nobody able to demonstrate that they have any writing preserved from that time, neither in their temples, nor in any other public monuments. This appears, because the time when those lived who went to the Trojan war, so many years afterward, is in great doubt, and great inquiry is made, whether the Greeks used their letters at that time; and the most prevailing opinion, and that nearest the truth, is, that their present way of using those letters was unknown at that time. However, there is not any writing which the Greeks agree to be genuine among them ancienter than Homer's Poems, who must plainly he confessed later than the siege of Troy; nay, the report goes, that even he did not leave his poems in writing, but that their memory was preserved in songs, and they were put together afterward, and that this is the reason of such a number of variations as are found in them. [3] As for those who set themselves about writing their histories, I mean such as Cadmus of Miletus, and Acusilaus of Argos, and any others that may be mentioned as succeeding Acusilaus, they lived but a little while before the Persian expedition into Greece. But then for those that first introduced philosophy, and the consideration of things celestial and divine among them, such as Pherceydes the Syrian, and Pythagoras, and Thales, all with one consent agree, that they learned what they knew of the Egyptians and Chaldeans, and wrote but little And these are the things which are supposed to be the oldest of all among the Greeks; and they have much ado to believe that the writings ascribed to those men are genuine. 3. How can it then be other than an absurd thing, for the Greeks to be so proud, and to vaunt themselves to be the only people that are acquainted with antiquity, and that have delivered the true accounts of those early times after an accurate manner? Nay, who is there that cannot easily gather from the Greek writers themselves, that they knew but little on any good foundation when they set to write, but rather wrote their histories from their own conjectures? Accordingly, they confute one another in their own books to purpose, and are not ashamed. to give us the most contradictory accounts of the same things; and I should spend my time to little purpose, if I should pretend to teach the Greeks that which they know better than I already, what a great disagreement there is between Hellanicus and Acusilaus about their genealogies; in how many eases Acusilaus corrects Hesiod: or after what manner Ephorus demonstrates Hellanicus to have told lies in the greatest part of his history; as does Timeus in like manner as to Ephorus, and the succeeding writers do to Timeus, and all the later writers do to Herodotus nor could Timeus agree with Antiochus and Philistius, or with Callias, about the Sicilian History, no more than do the several writers of the Athide follow one another about the Athenian affairs; nor do the historians the like, that wrote the Argolics, about the affairs of the Argives. And now what need I say any more about particular cities and smaller places, while in the most approved writers of the expedition of the Persians, and of the actions which were therein performed, there are so great differences? Nay, Thucydides himself is accused of some as writing what is false, although he seems to have given us the exactest history of the affairs of his own time. [4] 4. As for the occasions of so great disagreement of theirs, there may be assigned many that are very probable, if any have a mind to make an inquiry about them; but I ascribe these contradictions chiefly to two causes, which I will now mention, and still think what I shall mention in the first place to be the principal of all. For if we remember that in the beginning the Greeks had taken no care to have public records of their several transactions preserved, this must for certain have afforded those that would afterward write about those ancient transactions the opportunity of making mistakes, and the power of making lies also; for this original recording of such ancient transactions hath not only been neglected by the other states of Greece, but even among the Athenians themselves also, who pretend to be Aborigines, and to have applied themselves to learning, there are no such records extant; nay, they say themselves that the laws of Draco concerning murders, which are now extant in writing, are the most ancient of their public records; which Draco yet lived but a little before the tyrant Pisistratus. [5] For as to the Arcadians, who make such boasts of their antiquity, what need I speak of them in particular, since it was still later before they got their letters, and learned them, and that with difficulty also. [6] 5. There must therefore naturally arise great differences among writers, when they had no original records to lay for their foundation, which might at once inform those who had an inclination to learn, and contradict those that would tell lies. However, we are to suppose a second occasion besides the former of these contradictions; it is this: That those who were the most zealous to write history were not solicitous for the discovery of truth, although it was very easy for them always to make such a profession; but their business was to demonstrate that they could write well, and make an impression upon mankind thereby; and in what manner of writing they thought they were able to exceed others, to that did they apply themselves, Some of them betook themselves to the writing of fabulous narrations; some of them endeavored to please the cities or the kings, by writing in their commendation; others of them fell to finding faults with transactions, or with the writers of such transactions, and thought to make a great figure by so doing. And indeed these do what is of all things the most contrary to true history; for it is the great character of true history that all concerned therein both speak and write the same things; while these men, by writing differently about the same things, think they shall be believed to write with the greatest regard to truth. We therefore [who are Jews] must yield to the Grecian writers as to language and eloquence of composition; but then we shall give them no such preference as to the verity of ancient history, and least of all as to that part which concerns the affairs of our own several countries. 6. As to the care of writing down the records from the earliest antiquity among the Egyptians and Babylonians; that the priests were intrusted therewith, and employed a philosophical concern about it; that they were the Chaldean priests that did so among the Babylonians; and that the Phoenicians, who were mingled among the Greeks, did especially make use of their letters, both for the common affairs of life, and for the delivering down the history of common transactions, I think I may omit any proof, because all men allow it so to be. But now as to our forefathers, that they took no less care about writing such records, [for I will not say they took greater care than the others I spoke of,] and that they committed that matter to their high priests and to their prophets, and that these records have been written all along down to our own times with the utmost accuracy; nay, if it be not too bold for me to say it, our history will be so written hereafter;--I shall endeavor briefly to inform you. 7. For our forefathers did not only appoint the best of these priests, and those that attended upon the Divine worship, for that design from the beginning, but made provision that the stock of the priests should continue unmixed and pure; for he who is partaker of the priesthood must propagate of a wife of the same nation, without having any regard to money, or any other dignities; but he is to make a scrutiny, and take his wife's genealogy from the ancient tables, and procure many witnesses to it. [7] And this is our practice not only in Judea, but wheresoever any body of men of our nation do live; and even there an exact catalogue of our priests' marriages is kept; I mean at Egypt and at Babylon, or in any other place of the rest of the habitable earth, whithersoever our priests are scattered; for they send to Jerusalem the ancient names of their parents in writing, as well as those of their remoter ancestors, and signify who are the witnesses also. But if any war falls out, such as have fallen out a great many of them already, when Antiochus Epiphanes made an invasion upon our country, as also when Pompey the Great and Quintilius Varus did so also, and principally in the wars that have happened in our own times, those priests that survive them compose new tables of genealogy out of the old records, and examine the circumstances of the women that remain; for still they do not admit of those that have been captives, as suspecting that they had conversation with some foreigners. But what is the strongest argument of our exact management in this matter is what I am now going to say, that we have the names of our high priests from father to son set down in our records for the interval of two thousand years; and if any of these have been transgressors of these rules, they are prohibited to present themselves at the altar, or to be partakers of any other of our purifications; and this is justly, or rather necessarily done, because every one is not permitted of his own accord to be a writer, nor is there any disagreement in what is written; they being only prophets that have written the original and earliest accounts of things as they learned them of God himself by inspiration; and others have written what hath happened in their own times, and that in a very distinct manner also. 8. For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, [as the Greeks have,] but only twenty-two books, [8] which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine; and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of three thousand years; but as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets, who were after Moses, wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life. It is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time; and how firmly we have given credit to these books of our own nation is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add any thing to them, to take any thing from them, or to make any change in them; but it is become natural to all Jews immediately, and from their very birth, to esteem these books to contain Divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be willingly to die for them. For it is no new thing for our captives, many of them in number, and frequently in time, to be seen to endure racks and deaths of all kinds upon the theatres, that they may not be obliged to say one word against our laws and the records that contain them; whereas there are none at all among the Greeks who would undergo the least harm on that account, no, nor in case all the writings that are among them were to be destroyed; for they take them to be such discourses as are framed agreeably to the inclinations of those that write them; and they have justly the same opinion of the ancient writers, since they see some of the present generation bold enough to write about such affairs, wherein they were not present, nor had concern enough to inform themselves about them from those that knew them; examples of which may be had in this late war of ours, where some persons have written histories, and published them, without having been in the places concerned, or having been near them when the actions were done; but these men put a few things together by hearsay, and insolently abuse the world, and call these writings by the name of Histories. 9. As for myself, I have composed a true history of that whole war, and of all the particulars that occurred therein, as having been concerned in all its transactions; for I acted as general of those among us that are named Galileans, as long as it was possible for us to make any opposition. I was then seized on by the Romans, and became a captive. Vespasian also and Titus had me kept under a guard, and forced me to attend them continually. At the first I was put into bonds, but was set at liberty afterward, and sent to accompany Titus when he came from Alexandria to the siege of Jerusalem; during which time there was nothing done which escaped my knowledge; for what happened in the Roman camp I saw, and wrote down carefully; and what informations the deserters brought [out of the city], I was the only man that understood them. Afterward I got leisure at Rome; and when all my materials were prepared for that work, I made use of some persons to assist me in learning the Greek tongue, and by these means I composed the history of those transactions. And I was so well assured of the truth of what I related, that I first of all appealed to those that had the supreme command in that war, Vespasian and Titus, as witnesses for me, for to them I presented those books first of all, and after them to many of the Romans who had been in the war. I also sold them to many of our own men who understood the Greek philosophy; among whom were Julius Archelaus, Herod [king of Chalcis], a person of great gravity, and king Agrippa himself, a person that deserved the greatest admiration. Now all these men bore their testimony to me, that I had the strictest regard to truth; who yet would not have dissembled the matter, nor been silent, if I, out of ignorance, or out of favor to any side, either had given false colors to actions, or omitted any of them. 10. There have been indeed some bad men, who have attempted to calumniate my history, and took it to be a kind of scholastic performance for the exercise of young men. A strange sort of accusation and calumny this! since every one that undertakes to deliver the history of actions truly ought to know them accurately himself in the first place, as either having been concerned in them himself, or been informed of them by such as knew them. Now both these methods of knowledge I may very properly pretend to in the composition of both my works; for, as I said, I have translated the Antiquities out of our sacred books; which I easily could do, since I was a priest by my birth, and have studied that philosophy which is contained in those writings: and for the History of the War, I wrote it as having been an actor myself in many of its transactions, an eye-witness in the greatest part of the rest, and was not unacquainted with any thing whatsoever that was either said or done in it. How impudent then must those deserve to be esteemed that undertake to contradict me about the true state of those affairs! who, although they pretend to have made use of both the emperors' own memoirs, yet could not they he acquainted with our affairs who fought against them. 11. This digression I have been obliged to make out of necessity, as being desirous to expose the vanity of those that profess to write histories; and I suppose I have sufficiently declared that this custom of transmitting down the histories of ancient times hath been better preserved by those nations which are called Barbarians, than by the Greeks themselves. I am now willing, in the next place, to say a few things to those that endeavor to prove that our constitution is but of late time, for this reason, as they pretend, that the Greek writers have said nothing about us; after which I shall produce testimonies for our antiquity out of the writings of foreigners; I shall also demonstrate that such as cast reproaches upon our nation do it very unjustly. 12. As for ourselves, therefore, we neither inhabit a maritime country, nor do we delight in merchandise, nor in such a mixture with other men as arises from it; but the cities we dwell in are remote from the sea, and having a fruitful country for our habitation, we take pains in cultivating that only. Our principal care of all is this, to educate our children well; and we think it to be the most necessary business of our whole life to observe the laws that have been given us, and to keep those rules of piety that have been delivered down to us. Since, therefore, besides what we have already taken notice of, we have had a peculiar way of living of our own, there was no occasion offered us in ancient ages for intermixing among the Greeks, as they had for mixing among the Egyptians, by their intercourse of exporting and importing their several goods; as they also mixed with the Phoenicians, who lived by the sea-side, by means of their love of lucre in trade and merchandise. Nor did our forefathers betake themselves, as did some others, to robbery; nor did they, in order to gain more wealth, fall into foreign wars, although our country contained many ten thousands of men of courage sufficient for that purpose. For this reason it was that the Phoenicians themselves came soon by trading and navigation to be known to the Grecians, and by their means the Egyptians became known to the Grecians also, as did all those people whence the Phoenicians in long voyages over the seas carried wares to the Grecians. The Medes also and the Persians, when they were lords of Asia, became well known to them; and this was especially true of the Persians, who led their armies as far as the other continent [Europe]. The Thracians were also known to them by the nearness of their countries, and the Scythians by the means of those that sailed to Pontus; for it was so in general that all maritime nations, and those that inhabited near the eastern or western seas, became most known to those that were desirous to be writers; but such as had their habitations further from the sea were for the most part unknown to them which things appear to have happened as to Europe also, where the city of Rome, that hath this long time been possessed of so much power, and hath performed such great actions in war, is yet never mentioned by Herodotus, nor by Thucydides, nor by any one of their contemporaries; and it was very late, and with great difficulty, that the Romans became known to the Greeks. Nay, those that were reckoned the most exact historians [and Ephorus for one] were so very ignorant of the Gauls and the Spaniards, that he supposed the Spaniards, who inhabit so great a part of the western regions of the earth, to be no more than one city. Those historians also have ventured to describe such customs as were made use of by them, which they never had either done or said; and the reason why these writers did not know the truth of their affairs was this, that they had not any commerce together; but the reason why they wrote such falsities was this, that they had a mind to appear to know things which others had not known. How can it then be any wonder, if our nation was no more known to many of the Greeks, nor had given them any occasion to mention them in their writings, while they were so remote from the sea, and had a conduct of life so peculiar to themselves? 13. Let us now put the case, therefore, that we made use of this argument concerning the Grecians, in order to prove that their nation was not ancient, because nothing is said of them in our records: would not they laugh at us all, and probably give the same reasons for our silence that I have now alleged, and would produce their neighbor nations as witnesses to their own antiquity? Now the very same thing will I endeavor to do; for I will bring the Egyptians and the Phoenicians as my principal witnesses, because nobody can complain Of their testimony as false, on account that they are known to have borne the greatest ill-will towards us; I mean this as to the Egyptians in general all of them, while of the Phoenicians it is known the Tyrians have been most of all in the same ill disposition towards us: yet do I confess that I cannot say the same of the Chaldeans, since our first leaders and ancestors were derived from them; and they do make mention of us Jews in their records, on account of the kindred there is between us. Now when I shall have made my assertions good, so far as concerns the others, I will demonstrate that some of the Greek writers have made mention of us Jews also, that those who envy us may not have even this pretense for contradicting what I have said about our nation. 14. I shall begin with the writings of the Egyptians; not indeed of those that have written in the Egyptian language, which it is impossible for me to do. But Manetho was a man who was by birth an Egyptian, yet had he made himself master of the Greek learning, as is very evident; for he wrote the history of his own country in the Greek tongue, by translating it, as he saith himself, out of their sacred records; he also finds great fault with Herodotus for his ignorance and false relations of Egyptian affairs. Now this Manetho, in the second book of his Egyptian History, writes concerning us in the following manner. I will set down his very words, as if I were to bring the very man himself into a court for a witness: "There was a king of ours whose name was Timaus. Under him it came to pass, I know not how, that God was averse to us, and there came, after a surprising manner, men of ignoble birth out of the eastern parts, and had boldness enough to make an expedition into our country, and with ease subdued it by force, yet without our hazarding a battle with them. So when they had gotten those that governed us under their power, they afterwards burnt down our cities, and demolished the temples of the gods, and used all the inhabitants after a most barbarous manner; nay, some they slew, and led their children and their wives into slavery. At length they made one of themselves king, whose name was Salatis; he also lived at Memphis, and made both the upper and lower regions pay tribute, and left garrisons in places that were the most proper for them. He chiefly aimed to secure the eastern parts, as fore-seeing that the Assyrians, who had then the greatest power, would be desirous of that kingdom, and invade them; and as he found in the Saite Nomos, [Sethroite,] a city very proper for this purpose, and which lay upon the Bubastic channel, but with regard to a certain theologic notion was called Avaris, this he rebuilt, and made very strong by the walls he built about it, and by a most numerous garrison of two hundred and forty thousand armed men whom he put into it to keep it. Thither Salatis came in summer time, partly to gather his corn, and pay his soldiers their wages, and partly to exercise his armed men, and thereby to terrify foreigners. When this man had reigned thirteen years, after him reigned another, whose name was Beon, for forty-four years; after him reigned another, called Apachnas, thirty-six years and seven months; after him Apophis reigned sixty-one years, and then Janins fifty years and one month; after all these reigned Assis forty-nine years and two months. And these six were the first rulers among them, who were all along making war with the Egyptians, and were very desirous gradually to destroy them to the very roots. This whole nation was styled Hycsos, that is, Shepherd-kings: for the first syllable Hyc, according to the sacred dialect, denotes a king, as is Sos a shepherd; but this according to the ordinary dialect; and of these is compounded Hycsos: but some say that these people were Arabians." Now in another copy it is said that this word does not denote Kings, but, on the contrary, denotes Captive Shepherds, and this on account of the particle Hyc; for that Hyc, with the aspiration, in the Egyptian tongue again denotes Shepherds, and that expressly also; and this to me seems the more probable opinion, and more agreeable to ancient history. [But Manetho goes on]: "These people, whom we have before named kings, and called shepherds also, and their descendants," as he says, "kept possession of Egypt five hundred and eleven years." After these, he says, "That the kings of Thebais and the other parts of Egypt made an insurrection against the shepherds, and that there a terrible and long war was made between them." He says further, "That under a king, whose name was Alisphragmuthosis, the shepherds were subdued by him, and were indeed driven out of other parts of Egypt, but were shut up in a place that contained ten thousand acres; this place was named Avaris." Manetho says, "That the shepherds built a wall round all this place, which was a large and a strong wall, and this in order to keep all their possessions and their prey within a place of strength, but that Thummosis the son of Alisphragmuthosis made an attempt to take them by force and by siege, with four hundred and eighty thousand men to lie rotund about them, but that, upon his despair of taking the place by that siege, they came to a composition with them, that they should leave Egypt, and go, without any harm to be done to them, whithersoever they would; and that, after this composition was made, they went away with their whole families and effects, not fewer in number than two hundred and forty thousand, and took their journey from Egypt, through the wilderness, for Syria; but that as they were in fear of the Assyrians, who had then the dominion over Asia, they built a city in that country which is now called Judea, and that large enough to contain this great number of men, and called it Jerusalem." [9] Now Manetho, in another book of his, says, "That this nation, thus called Shepherds, were also called Captives, in their sacred books." And this account of his is the truth; for feeding of sheep was the employment of our forefathers in the most ancient ages [10] and as they led such a wandering life in feeding sheep, they were called Shepherds. Nor was it without reason that they were called Captives by the Egyptians, since one of our ancestors, Joseph, told the king of Egypt that he was a captive, and afterward sent for his brethren into Egypt by the king's permission. But as for these matters, I shall make a more exact inquiry about them elsewhere. [11] 15. But now I shall produce the Egyptians as witnesses to the antiquity of our nation. I shall therefore here bring in Manetho again, and what he writes as to the order of the times in this case; and thus he speaks: "When this people or shepherds were gone out of Egypt to Jerusalem, Tethtoosis the king of Egypt, who drove them out, reigned afterward twenty-five years and four months, and then died; after him his son Chebron took the kingdom for thirteen years; after whom came Amenophis, for twenty years and seven months; then came his sister Amesses, for twenty-one years and nine months; after her came Mephres, for twelve years and nine months; after him was Mephramuthosis, for twenty-five years and ten months; after him was Thmosis, for nine years and eight months; after him came Amenophis, for thirty years and ten months; after him came Orus, for thirty-six years and five months; then came his daughter Acenchres, for twelve years and one month; then was her brother Rathotis, for nine years; then was Acencheres, for twelve years and five months; then came another Acencheres, for twelve years and three months; after him Armais, for four years and one month; after him was Ramesses, for one year and four months; after him came Armesses Miammoun, for sixty-six years and two months; after him Amenophis, for nineteen years and six months; after him came Sethosis, and Ramesses, who had an army of horse, and a naval force. This king appointed his brother, Armais, to be his deputy over Egypt." [In another copy it stood thus: "After him came Sethosis, and Ramesses, two brethren, the former of whom had a naval force, and in a hostile manner destroyed those that met him upon the sea; but as he slew Ramesses in no long time afterward, so he appointed another of his brethren to be his deputy over Egypt.] He also gave him all the other authority of a king, but with these only injunctions, that he should not wear the diadem, nor be injurious to the queen, the mother of his children, and that he should not meddle with the other concubines of the king; while he made an expedition against Cyprus, and Phoenicia, and besides against the Assyrians and the Medes. He then subdued them all, some by his arms, some without fighting, and some by the terror of his great army; and being puffed up by the great successes he had had, he went on still the more boldly, and overthrew the cities and countries that lay in the eastern parts. But after some considerable time, Armais, who was left in Egypt, did all those very things, by way of opposition, which his brother had forbid him to do, without fear; for he used violence to the queen, and continued to make use of the rest of the concubines, without sparing any of them; nay, at the persuasion of his friends he put on the diadem, and set up to oppose his brother. But then he who was set over the priests of Egypt wrote letters to Sethosis, and informed him of all that had happened, and how his brother had set up to oppose him: he therefore returned back to Pelusium immediately, and recovered his kingdom again. The country also was called from his name Egypt; for Manetho says, that Sethosis was himself called Egyptus, as was his brother Armais called Danaus." 16. This is Manetho's account. And evident it is from the number of years by him set down belonging to this interval, if they be summed up together, that these shepherds, as they are here called, who were no other than our forefathers, were delivered out of Egypt, and came thence, and inhabited this country, three hundred and ninety-three years before Danaus came to Argos; although the Argives look upon him [12] as their most ancient king Manetho, therefore, hears this testimony to two points of the greatest consequence to our purpose, and those from the Egyptian records themselves. In the first place, that we came out of another country into Egypt; and that withal our deliverance out of it was so ancient in time as to have preceded the siege of Troy almost a thousand years; but then, as to those things which Manetbo adds, not from the Egyptian records, but, as he confesses himself, from some stories of an uncertain original, I will disprove them hereafter particularly, and shall demonstrate that they are no better than incredible fables. 17. I will now, therefore, pass from these records, and come to those that belong to the Phoenicians, and concern our nation, and shall produce attestations to what I have said out of them. There are then records among the Tyrians that take in the history of many years, and these are public writings, and are kept with great exactness, and include accounts of the facts done among them, and such as concern their transactions with other nations also, those I mean which were worth remembering. Therein it was recorded that the temple was built by king Solomon at Jerusalem, one hundred forty-three years and eight months before the Tyrians built Carthage; and in their annals the building of our temple is related; for Hirom, the king of Tyre, was the friend of Solomon our king, and had such friendship transmitted down to him from his forefathers. He thereupon was ambitious to contribute to the splendor of this edifice of Solomon, and made him a present of one hundred and twenty talents of gold. He also cut down the most excellent timber out of that mountain which is called Libanus, and sent it to him for adorning its roof. Solomon also not only made him many other presents, by way of requital, but gave him a country in Galilee also, that was called Chabulon. [13] But there was another passion, a philosophic inclination of theirs, which cemented the friendship that was betwixt them; for they sent mutual problems to one another, with a desire to have them unriddled by each other; wherein Solomon was superior to Hirom, as he was wiser than he in other respects: and many of the epistles that passed between them are still preserved among the Tyrians. Now, that this may not depend on my bare word, I will produce for a witness Dius, one that is believed to have written the Phoenician History after an accurate manner. This Dius, therefore, writes thus, in his Histories of the Phoenicians: "Upon the death of Abibalus, his son Hirom took the kingdom. This king raised banks at the eastern parts of the city, and enlarged it; he also joined the temple of Jupiter Olympius, which stood before in an island by itself, to the city, by raising a causeway between them, and adorned that temple with donations of gold. He moreover went up to Libanus, and had timber cut down for the building of temples. They say further, that Solomon, when he was king of Jerusalem, sent problems to Hirom to be solved, and desired he would send others back for him to solve, and that he who could not solve the problems proposed to him should pay money to him that solved them. And when Hirom had agreed to the proposals, but was not able to solve the problems, he was obliged to pay a great deal of money, as a penalty for the same. As also they relate, that one OEabdemon, a man of Tyre, did solve the problems, and propose others which Solomon could not solve, upon which he was obliged to repay a great deal of money to Hirom." These things are attested to by Dius, and confirm what we have said upon the same subjects before. 18. And now I shall add Menander the Ephesian, as an additional witness. This Menander wrote the Acts that were done both by the Greeks and Barbarians, under every one of the Tyrian kings, and had taken much pains to learn their history out of their own records. Now when he was writing about those kings that had reigned at Tyre, he came to Hirom, and says thus: "Upon the death of Abibalus, his son Hirom took the kingdom; he lived fifty-three years, and reigned thirty-four. He raised a bank on that called the Broad Place, and dedicated that golden pillar which is in Jupiter's temple; he also went and cut down timber from the mountain called Libanus, and got timber Of cedar for the roofs of the temples. He also pulled down the old temples, and built new ones; besides this, he consecrated the temples of Hercules and of Astarte. He first built Hercules's temple in the month Peritus, and that of Astarte when he made his expedition against the Tityans, who would not pay him their tribute; and when he had subdued them to himself, he returned home. Under this king there was a younger son of Abdemon, who mastered the problems which Solomon king of Jerusalem had recommended to be solved." Now the time from this king to the building of Carthage is thus calculated: "Upon the death of Hirom, Baleazarus his son took the kingdom; he lived forty-three years, and reigned seven years: after him succeeded his son Abdastartus; he lived twenty-nine years, and reigned nine years. Now four sons of his nurse plotted against him and slew him, the eldest of whom reigned twelve years: after them came Astartus, the son of Deleastartus; he lived fifty-four years, and reigned twelve years: after him came his brother Aserymus; he lived fifty-four years, and reigned nine years: he was slain by his brother Pheles, who took the kingdom and reigned but eight months, though he lived fifty years: he was slain by Ithobalus, the priest of Astarte, who reigned thirty-two years, and lived sixty-eight years: he was succeeded by his son Badezorus, who lived forty-five years, and reigned six years: he was succeeded by Matgenus his son; he lived thirty-two years, and reigned nine years: Pygmalion succeeded him; he lived fifty-six years, and reigned forty-seven years. Now in the seventh year of his reign, his sister fled away from him, and built the city Carthage in Libya." So the whole time from the reign of Hirom, till the building of Carthage, amounts to the sum of one hundred fifty-five years and eight months. Since then the temple was built at Jerusalem in the twelfth year of the reign of Hirom, there were from the building of the temple, until the building of Carthage, one hundred forty-three years and eight months. Wherefore, what occasion is there for alleging any more testimonies out of the Phoenician histories [on the behalf of our nation], since what I have said is so thoroughly confirmed already? and to be sure our ancestors came into this country long before the building of the temple; for it was not till we had gotten possession of the whole land by war that we built our temple. And this is the point that I have clearly proved out of our sacred writings in my Antiquities. 19. I will now relate what hath been written concerning us in the Chaldean histories, which records have a great agreement with our books in oilier things also. Berosus shall be witness to what I say: he was by birth a Chaldean, well known by the learned, on account of his publication of the Chaldean books of astronomy and philosophy among the Greeks. This Berosus, therefore, following the most ancient records of that nation, gives us a history of the deluge of waters that then happened, and of the destruction of mankind thereby, and agrees with Moses's narration thereof. He also gives us an account of that ark wherein Noah, the origin of our race, was preserved, when it was brought to the highest part of the Armenian mountains; after which he gives us a catalogue of the posterity of Noah, and adds the years of their chronology, and at length comes down to Nabolassar, who was king of Babylon, and of the Chaldeans. And when he was relating the acts of this king, he describes to us how he sent his son Nabuchodonosor against Egypt, and against our land, with a great army, upon his being informed that they had revolted from him; and how, by that means, he subdued them all, and set our temple that was at Jerusalem on fire; nay, and removed our people entirely out of their own country, and transferred them to Babylon; when it so happened that our city was desolate during the interval of seventy years, until the days of Cyrus king of Persia. He then says, "That this Babylonian king conquered Egypt, and Syria, and Phoenicia, and Arabia, and exceeded in his exploits all that had reigned before him in Babylon and Chaldea." A little after which Berosus subjoins what follows in his History of Ancient Times. I will set down Berosus's own accounts, which are these: "When Nabolassar, father of Nabuchodonosor, heard that the governor whom he had set over Egypt, and over the parts of Celesyria and Phoenicia, had revolted from him, he was not able to bear it any longer; but committing certain parts of his army to his son Nabuchodonosor, who was then but young, he sent him against the rebel: Nabuchodonosor joined battle with him, and conquered him, and reduced the country under his dominion again. Now it so fell out that his father Nabolassar fell into a distemper at this time, and died in the city of Babylon, after he had reigned twenty-nine years. But as he understood, in a little time, that his father Nabolassar was dead, he set the affairs of Egypt and the other countries in order, and committed the captives he had taken from the Jews, and Phoenicians, and Syrians, and of the nations belonging to Egypt, to some of his friends, that they might conduct that part of the forces that had on heavy armor, with the rest of his baggage, to Babylonia; while he went in haste, having but a few with him, over the desert to Babylon; whither, when he was come, he found the public affairs had been managed by the Chaldeans, and that the principal person among them had preserved the kingdom for him. Accordingly, he now entirely obtained all his father's dominions. He then came, and ordered the captives to be placed as colonies in the most proper places of Babylonia; but for himself, he adorned the temple of Belus, and the other temples, after an elegant manner, out of the spoils he had taken in this war. He also rebuilt the old city, and added another to it on the outside, and so far restored Babylon, that none who should besiege it afterwards might have it in their power to divert the river, so as to facilitate an entrance into it; and this he did by building three walls about the inner city, and three about the outer. Some of these walls he built of burnt brick and bitumen, and some of brick only. So when he had thus fortified the city with walls, after an excellent manner, and had adorned the gates magnificently, he added a new palace to that which his father had dwelt in, and this close by it also, and that more eminent in its height, and in its great splendor. It would perhaps require too long a narration, if any one were to describe it. However, as prodigiously large and as magnificent as it was, it was finished in fifteen days. Now in this palace he erected very high walks, supported by stone pillars, and by planting what was called a pensile paradise, and replenishing it with all sorts of trees, he rendered the prospect an exact resemblance of a mountainous country. This he did to please his queen, because she had been brought up in Media, and was fond of a mountainous situation." 20. This is what Berosus relates concerning the forementioned king, as he relates many other things about him also in the third book of his Chaldean History; wherein he complains of the Grecian writers for supposing, without any foundation, that Babylon was built by Semiramis, [14] queen of Assyria, and for her false pretense to those wonderful edifices thereto buildings at Babylon, do no way contradict those ancient and relating, as if they were her own workmanship; as indeed in these affairs the Chaldean History cannot but be the most credible. Moreover, we meet with a confirmation of what Berosus says in the archives of the Phoenicians, concerning this king Nabuchodonosor, that he conquered all Syria and Phoenicia; in which case Philostratus agrees with the others in that history which he composed, where he mentions the siege of Tyre; as does Megasthenes also, in the fourth book of his Indian History, wherein he pretends to prove that the forementioned king of the Babylonians was superior to Hercules in strength and the greatness of his exploits; for he says that he conquered a great part of Libya, and conquered Iberia also. Now as to what I have said before about the temple at Jerusalem, that it was fought against by the Babylonians, and burnt by them, but was opened again when Cyrus had taken the kingdom of Asia, shall now be demonstrated from what Berosus adds further upon that head; for thus he says in his third book: "Nabuchodonosor, after he had begun to build the forementioned wall, fell sick, and departed this life, when he had reigned forty-three years; whereupon his son Evilmerodach obtained the kingdom. He governed public affairs after an illegal and impure manner, and had a plot laid against him by Neriglissoor, his sister's husband, and was slain by him when he had reigned but two years. After he was slain, Neriglissoor, the person who plotted against him, succeeded him in the kingdom, and reigned four years; his son Laborosoarchod obtained the kingdom, though he was but a child, and kept it nine mouths; but by reason of the very ill temper and ill practices he exhibited to the world, a plot was laid against him also by his friends, and he was tormented to death. After his death, the conspirators got together, and by common consent put the crown upon the head of Nabonnedus, a man of Babylon, and one who belonged to that insurrection. In his reign it was that the walls of the city of Babylon were curiously built with burnt brick and bitumen; but when he was come to the seventeenth year of his reign, Cyrus came out of Persia with a great army; and having already conquered all the rest of Asia, he came hastily to Babylonia. When Nabonnedus perceived he was coming to attack him, he met him with his forces, and joining battle with him was beaten, and fled away with a few of his troops with him, and was shut up within the city Borsippus. Hereupon Cyrus took Babylon, and gave order that the outer walls of the city should be demolished, because the city had proved very troublesome to him, and cost him a great deal of pains to take it. He then marched away to Borsippus, to besiege Nabonnedus; but as Nabonnedus did not sustain the siege, but delivered himself into his hands, he was at first kindly used by Cyrus, who gave him Carmania, as a place for him to inhabit in, but sent him out of Babylonia. Accordingly Nabonnedus spent the rest of his time in that country, and there died." 21. These accounts agree with the true histories in our books; for in them it is written that Nebuchadnezzar, in the eighteenth year of his reign, laid our temple desolate, and so it lay in that state of obscurity for fifty years; but that in the second year of the reign of Cyrus its foundations were laid, and it was finished again in the second year of Darius. I will now add the records of the Phoenicians; for it will not be superfluous to give the reader demonstrations more than enough on this occasion. In them we have this enumeration of the times of their several kings: "Nabuchodonosor besieged Tyre for thirteen years in the days of Ithobal, their king; after him reigned Baal, ten years; after him were judges appointed, who judged the people: Ecnibalus, the son of Baslacus, two months; Chelbes, the son of Abdeus, ten months; Abbar, the high priest, three months; Mitgonus and Gerastratus, the sons of Abdelemus, were judges six years; after whom Balatorus reigned one year; after his death they sent and fetched Merbalus from Babylon, who reigned four years; after his death they sent for his brother Hirom, who reigned twenty years. Under his reign Cyrus became king of Persia." So that the whole interval is fifty-four years besides three months; for in the seventh year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar he began to besiege Tyre, and Cyrus the Persian took the kingdom in the fourteenth year of Hirom. So that the records of the Chaldeans and Tyrians agree with our writings about this temple; and the testimonies here produced are an indisputable and undeniable attestation to the antiquity of our nation. And I suppose that what I have already said may be sufficient to such as are not very contentious. 22. But now it is proper to satisfy the inquiry of those that disbelieve the records of barbarians, and think none but Greeks to be worthy of credit, and to produce many of these very Greeks who were acquainted with our nation, and to set before them such as upon occasion have made mention of us in their own writings. Pythagoras, therefore, of Samos, lived in very ancient times, and was esteemed a person superior to all philosophers in wisdom and piety towards God. Now it is plain that he did not only know our doctrines, but was in very great measure a follower and admirer of them. There is not indeed extant any writing that is owned for his [15] but many there are who have written his history, of whom Hermippus is the most celebrated, who was a person very inquisitive into all sorts of history. Now this Hermippus, in his first book concerning Pythagoras, speaks thus: "That Pythagoras, upon the death of one of his associates, whose name was Calliphon, a Crotonlate by birth, affirmed that this man's soul conversed with him both night and day, and enjoined him not to pass over a place where an ass had fallen down; as also not to drink of such waters as caused thirst again; and to abstain from all sorts of reproaches." After which he adds thus: "This he did and said in imitation of the doctrines of the Jews and Thracians, which he transferred into his own philosophy." For it is very truly affirmed of this Pythagoras, that he took a great many of the laws of the Jews into his own philosophy. Nor was our nation unknown of old to several of the Grecian cities, and indeed was thought worthy of imitation by some of them. This is declared by Theophrastus, in his writings concerning laws; for he says that "the laws of the Tyrians forbid men to swear foreign oaths." Among which he enumerates some others, and particularly that called Corban: which oath can only be found among the Jews, and declares what a man may call "A thing devoted to God." Nor indeed was Herodotus of Halicarnassus unacquainted with our nation, but mentions it after a way of his own, when he saith thus, in the second book concerning the Colchians. His words are these: "The only people who were circumcised in their privy members originally, were the Colchians, the Egyptians, and the Ethiopians; but the Phoenicians and those Syrians that are in Palestine confess that they learned it from the Egyptians. And for those Syrians who live about the rivers Thermodon and Parthenius, and their neighbors the Macrones, they say they have lately learned it from the Colchians; for these are the only people that are circumcised among mankind, and appear to have done the very same thing with the Egyptians. But as for the Egyptians and Ethiopians themselves, I am not able to say which of them received it from the other." This therefore is what Herodotus says, that "the Syrians that are in Palestine are circumcised." But there are no inhabitants of Palestine that are circumcised excepting the Jews; and therefore it must be his knowledge of them that enabled him to speak so much concerning them. Cherilus also, a still ancienter writer, and a poet, [16] makes mention of our nation, and informs us that it came to the assistance of king Xerxes, in his expedition against Greece. For in his enumeration of all those nations, he last of all inserts ours among the rest, when he says, "At the last there passed over a people, wonderful to be beheld; for they spake the Phoenician tongue with their mouths; they dwelt in the Solymean mountains, near a broad lake: their heads were sooty; they had round rasures on them; their heads and faces were like nasty horse-heads also, that had been hardened in the smoke." I think, therefore, that it is evident to every body that Cherilus means us, because the Solymean mountains are in our country, wherein we inhabit, as is also the lake called Asphaltitis; for this is a broader and larger lake than any other that is in Syria: and thus does Cherilus make mention of us. But now that not only the lowest sort of the Grecians, but those that are had in the greatest admiration for their philosophic improvements among them, did not only know the Jews, but when they lighted upon any of them, admired them also, it is easy for any one to know. For Clearchus, who was the scholar of Aristotle, and inferior to no one of the Peripatetics whomsoever, in his first book concerning sleep, says that "Aristotle his master related what follows of a Jew," and sets down Aristotle's own discourse with him. The account is this, as written down by him: "Now, for a great part of what this Jew said, it would be too long to recite it; but what includes in it both wonder and philosophy it may not be amiss to discourse of. Now, that I may be plain with thee, Hyperochides, I shall herein seem to thee to relate wonders, and what will resemble dreams themselves. Hereupon Hyperochides answered modestly, and said, For that very reason it is that all of us are very desirous of hearing what thou art going to say. Then replied Aristotle, For this cause it will be the best way to imitate that rule of the Rhetoricians, which requires us first to give an account of the man, and of what nation he was, that so we may not contradict our master's directions. Then said Hyperochides, Go on, if it so pleases thee. This man then, [answered Aristotle,] was by birth a Jew, and came from Celesyria; these Jews are derived from the Indian philosophers; they are named by the Indians Calami, and by the Syrians Judaei, and took their name from the country they inhabit, which is called Judea; but for the name of their city, it is a very awkward one, for they call it Jerusalem. Now this man, when he was hospitably treated by a great many, came down from the upper country to the places near the sea, and became a Grecian, not only in his language, but in his soul also; insomuch that when we ourselves happened to be in Asia about the same places whither he came, he conversed with us, and with other philosophical persons, and made a trial of our skill in philosophy; and as he had lived with many learned men, he communicated to us more information than he received from us." This is Aristotle's account of the matter, as given us by Clearchus; which Aristotle discoursed also particularly of the great and wonderful fortitude of this Jew in his diet, and continent way of living, as those that please may learn more about him from Clearchus's book itself; for I avoid setting down any more than is sufficient for my purpose. Now Clearchus said this by way of digression, for his main design was of another nature. But for Hecateus of Abdera, who was both a philosopher, and one very useful ill an active life, he was contemporary with king Alexander in his youth, and afterward was with Ptolemy, the son of Lagus; he did not write about the Jewish affairs by the by only, but composed an entire book concerning the Jews themselves; out of which book I am willing to run over a few things, of which I have been treating by way of epitome. And, in the first place, I will demonstrate the time when this Hecateus lived; for he mentions the fight that was between Ptolemy and Demetrius about Gaza, which was fought in the eleventh year after the death of Alexander, and in the hundred and seventeenth olympiad, as Castor says in his history. For when he had set down this olympiad, he says further, that "in this olympiad Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, beat in battle Demetrius, the son of Antigonus, who was named Poliorcetes, at Gaza." Now, it is agreed by all, that Alexander died in the hundred and fourteenth olympiad; it is therefore evident that our nation flourished in his time, and in the time of Alexander. Again, Hecateus says to the same purpose, as follows: "Ptolemy got possession of the places in Syria after that battle at Gaza; and many, when they heard of Ptolemy's moderation and humanity, went along with him to Egypt, and were willing to assist him in his affairs; one of whom [Hecateus says] was Hezekiah [17] the high priest of the Jews; a man of about sixty-six years of age, and in great dignity among his own people. He was a very sensible man, and could speak very movingly, and was very skillful in the management of affairs, if any other man ever were so; although, as he says, all the priests of the Jews took tithes of the products of the earth, and managed public affairs, and were in number not above fifteen hundred at the most." Hecateus mentions this Hezekiah a second time, and says, that "as he was possessed of so great a dignity, and was become familiar with us, so did he take certain of those that were with him, and explained to them all the circumstances of their people; for he had all their habitations and polity down in writing." Moreover, Hecateus declares again, "what regard we have for our laws, and that we resolve to endure any thing rather than transgress them, because we think it right for us to do so." Whereupon he adds, that "although they are in a bad reputation among their neighbors, and among all those that come to them, and have been often treated injuriously by the kings and governors of Persia, yet can they not be dissuaded from acting what they think best; but that when they are stripped on this account, and have torments inflicted upon them, and they are brought to the most terrible kinds of death, they meet them after an extraordinary manner, beyond all other people, and will not renounce the religion of their forefathers." Hecateus also produces demonstrations not a few of this their resolute tenaciousness of their laws, when he speaks thus: "Alexander was once at Babylon, and had an intention to rebuild the temple of Belus that was fallen to decay, and in order thereto, he commanded all his soldiers in general to bring earth thither. But the Jews, and they only, would not comply with that command; nay, they underwent stripes and great losses of what they had on this account, till the king forgave them, and permitted them to live in quiet." He adds further, that "when the Macedonians came to them into that country, and demolished the [old] temples and the altars, they assisted them in demolishing them all [18] but [for not assisting them in rebuilding them] they either underwent losses, or sometimes obtained forgiveness." He adds further, that "these men deserve to be admired on that account." He also speaks of the mighty populousness of our nation, and says that "the Persians formerly carried away many ten thousands of our people to Babylon, as also that not a few ten thousands were removed after Alexander's death into Egypt and Phoenicia, by reason of the sedition that was arisen in Syria." The same person takes notice in his history, how large the country is which we inhabit, as well as of its excellent character, and says, that "the land in which the Jews inhabit contains three millions of arourae, [19] and is generally of a most excellent and most fruitful soil; nor is Judea of lesser dimensions." The same man describe our city Jerusalem also itself as of a most excellent structure, and very large, and inhabited from the most ancient times. He also discourses of the multitude of men in it, and of the construction of our temple, after the following manner: "There are many strong places and villages [says he] in the country of Judea; but one strong city there is, about fifty furlongs in circumference, which is inhabited by a hundred and twenty thousand men, or thereabouts; they call it Jerusalem. There is about the middle of the city a wall of stone, whose length is five hundred feet, and the breadth a hundred cubits, with double cloisters; wherein there is a square altar, not made of hewn stone, but composed of white stones gathered together, having each side twenty cubits long, and its altitude ten cubits. Hard by it is a large edifice, wherein there is an altar and a candlestick, both of gold, and in weight two talents: upon these there is a light that is never extinguished, either by night or by day. There is no image, nor any thing, nor any donations therein; nothing at all is there planted, neither grove, nor any thing of that sort. The priests abide therein both nights and days, performing certain purifications, and drinking not the least drop of wine while they are in the temple." Moreover, he attests that we Jews went as auxiliaries along with king Alexander, and after him with his successors. I will add further what he says he learned when he was himself with the same army, concerning the actions of a man that was a Jew. His words are these: "As I was myself going to the Red Sea, there followed us a man, whose name was Mosollam; he was one of the Jewish horsemen who conducted us; he was a person of great courage, of a strong body, and by all allowed to be the most skillful archer that was either among the Greeks or barbarians. Now this man, as people were in great numbers passing along the road, and a certain augur was observing an augury by a bird, and requiring them all to stand still, inquired what they staid for. Hereupon the augur showed him the bird from whence he took his augury, and told him that if the bird staid where he was, they ought all to stand still; but that if he got up, and flew onward, they must go forward; but that if he flew backward, they must retire again. Mosollam made no reply, but drew his bow, and shot at the bird, and hit him, and killed him; and as the augur and some others were very angry, and wished imprecations upon him, he answered them thus: Why are you so mad as to take this most unhappy bird into your hands? for how can this bird give us any true information concerning our march, who could not foresee how to save himself? for had he been able to foreknow what was future, he would not have come to this place, but would have been afraid lest Mosollam the Jew should shoot at him, and kill him." But of Hecateus's testimonies we have said enough; for as to such as desire to know more of them, they may easily obtain them from his book itself. However, I shall not think it too much for me to name Agatharchides, as having made mention of us Jews, though in way of derision at our simplicity, as he supposes it to be; for when he was discoursing of the affairs of Stratonice, "how she came out of Macedonia into Syria, and left her husband Demetrius, while yet Seleueus would not marry her as she expected, but during the time of his raising an army at Babylon, stirred up a sedition about Antioch; and how, after that, the king came back, and upon his taking of Antioch, she fled to Seleucia, and had it in her power to sail away immediately yet did she comply with a dream which forbade her so to do, and so was caught and put to death." When Agatharehides had premised this story, and had jested upon Stratonice for her superstition, he gives a like example of what was reported concerning us, and writes thus: "There are a people called Jews, and dwell in a city the strongest of all other cities, which the inhabitants call Jerusalem, and are accustomed to rest on every seventh day [20] on which times they make no use of their arms, nor meddle with husbandry, nor take care of any affairs of life, but spread out their hands in their holy places, and pray till the evening. Now it came to pass, that when Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, came into this city with his army, that these men, in observing this mad custom of theirs, instead of guarding the city, suffered their country to submit itself to a bitter lord; and their law was openly proved to have commanded a foolish practice. [21] This accident taught all other men but the Jews to disregard such dreams as these were, and not to follow the like idle suggestions delivered as a law, when, in such uncertainty of human reasonings, they are at a loss what they should do." Now this our procedure seems a ridiculous thing to Agatharehides, but will appear to such as consider it without prejudice a great thing, and what deserved a great many encomiums; I mean, when certain men constantly prefer the observation of their laws, and their religion towards God, before the preservation of themselves and their country. 23. Now that some writers have omitted to mention our nation, not because they knew nothing of us, but because they envied us, or for some other unjustifiable reasons, I think I can demonstrate by particular instances; for Hieronymus, who wrote the History of Alexander's Successors, lived at the same time with Hecateus, and was a friend of king Antigonus, and president of Syria. Now it is plain that Hecateus wrote an entire book concerning us, while Hieronymus never mentions us in his history, although he was bred up very near to the places where we live. Thus different from one another are the inclinations of men; while the one thought we deserved to be carefully remembered, as some ill-disposed passion blinded the other's mind so entirely, that he could not discern the truth. And now certainly the foregoing records of the Egyptians, and Chaldeans, and Phoenicians, together with so many of the Greek writers, will be sufficient for the demonstration of our antiquity. Moreover, besides those forementioned, Theophilus, and Theodotus, and Mnaseas, and Aristophanes, and Hermogenes, Euhemerus also, and Conon, and Zopyrion, and perhaps many others, [for I have not lighted upon all the Greek books,] have made distinct mention of us. It is true, many of the men before mentioned have made great mistakes about the true accounts of our nation in the earliest times, because they had not perused our sacred books; yet have they all of them afforded their testimony to our antiquity, concerning which I am now treating. However, Demetrius Phalereus, and the elder Philo, with Eupolemus, have not greatly missed the truth about our affairs; whose lesser mistakes ought therefore to be forgiven them; for it was not in their power to understand our writings with the utmost accuracy. 24. One particular there is still remaining behind of what I at first proposed to speak to, and that is, to demonstrate that those calumnies and reproaches which some have thrown upon our nation, are lies, and to make use of those writers' own testimonies against themselves; and that in general this self-contradiction hath happened to many other authors by reason of their ill-will to some people, I conclude, is not unknown to such as have read histories with sufficient care; for some of them have endeavored to disgrace the nobility of certain nations, and of some of the most glorious cities, and have cast reproaches upon certain forms of government. Thus hath Theopompus abused the city of Athens, Polycrates that of Lacedemon, as hath he hat wrote the Tripoliticus [for he is not Theopompus, as is supposed by some] done by the city of Thebes. Timeils also hath greatly abused the foregoing people and others also; and this ill-treatment they use chiefly when they have a contest with men of the greatest reputation; some out of envy and malice, and others as supposing that by this foolish talking of theirs they may be thought worthy of being remembered themselves; and indeed they do by no means fail of their hopes, with regard to the foolish part of mankind, but men of sober judgment still condemn them of great malignity. 25. Now the Egyptians were the first that cast reproaches upon us; in order to please which nation, some others undertook to pervert the truth, while they would neither own that our forefathers came into Egypt from another country, as the fact was, nor give a true account of our departure thence. And indeed the Egyptians took many occasions to hate us and envy us: in the first place, because our ancestors had had the dominion over their country? and when they were delivered from them, and gone to their own country again, they lived there in prosperity. In the next place, the difference of our religion from theirs hath occasioned great enmity between us, while our way of Divine worship did as much exceed that which their laws appointed, as does the nature of God exceed that of brute beasts; for so far they all agree through the whole country, to esteem such animals as gods, although they differ one from another in the peculiar worship they severally pay to them. And certainly men they are entirely of vain and foolish minds, who have thus accustomed themselves from the beginning to have such bad notions concerning their gods, and could not think of imitating that decent form of Divine worship which we made use of, though, when they saw our institutions approved of by many others, they could not but envy us on that account; for some of them have proceeded to that degree of folly and meanness in their conduct, as not to scruple to contradict their own ancient records, nay, to contradict themselves also in their writings, and yet were so blinded by their passions as not to discern it. 26. And now I will turn my discourse to one of their principal writers, whom I have a little before made use of as a witness to our antiquity; I mean Manetho. [22] He promised to interpret the Egyptian history out of their sacred writings, and premised this: that "our people had come into Egypt, many ten thousands in number, and subdued its inhabitants;" and when he had further confessed that "we went out of that country afterward, and settled in that country which is now called Judea, and there built Jerusalem and its temple." Now thus far he followed his ancient records; but after this he permits himself, in order to appear to have written what rumors and reports passed abroad about the Jews, and introduces incredible narrations, as if he would have the Egyptian multitude, that had the leprosy and other distempers, to have been mixed with us, as he says they were, and that they were condemned to fly out of Egypt together; for he mentions Amenophis, a fictitious king's name, though on that account he durst not set down the number of years of his reign, which yet he had accurately done as to the other kings he mentions; he then ascribes certain fabulous stories to this king, as having in a manner forgotten how he had already related that the departure of the shepherds for Jerusalem had been five hundred and eighteen years before; for Tethmosis was king when they went away. Now, from his days, the reigns of the intermediate kings, according to Manethe, amounted to three hundred and ninety-three years, as he says himself, till the two brothers Sethos and Hermeus; the one of whom, Sethos, was called by that other name of Egyptus, and the other, Hermeus, by that of Danaus. He also says that Sethos east the other out of Egypt, and reigned fifty-nine years, as did his eldest son Rhampses reign after him sixty-six years. When Manethe therefore had acknowledged that our forefathers were gone out of Egypt so many years ago, he introduces his fictitious king Amenophis, and says thus: "This king was desirous to become a spectator of the gods, as had Orus, one of his predecessors in that kingdom, desired the same before him; he also communicated that his desire to his namesake Amenophis, who was the son of Papis, and one that seemed to partake of a divine nature, both as to wisdom and the knowledge of futurities." Manethe adds, "how this namesake of his told him that he might see the gods, if he would clear the whole country of the lepers and of the other impure people; that the king was pleased with this injunction, and got together all that had any defect in their bodies out of Egypt; and that their number was eighty thousand; whom he sent to those quarries which are on the east side of the Nile, that they might work in them, and might be separated from the rest of the Egyptians." He says further, that "there were some of the learned priests that were polluted with the leprosy; but that still this Amenophis, the wise man and the prophet, was afraid that the gods would be angry at him and at the king, if there should appear to have been violence offered them; who also added this further, [out of his sagacity about futurities,] that certain people would come to the assistance of these polluted wretches, and would conquer Egypt, and keep it in their possession thirteen years; that, however, he durst not tell the king of these things, but that he left a writing behind him about all those matters, and then slew himself, which made the king disconsolate." After which he writes thus verbatim: "After those that were sent to work in the quarries had continued in that miserable state for a long while, the king was desired that he would set apart the city Avaris, which was then left desolate of the shepherds, for their habitation and protection; which desire he granted them. Now this city, according to the ancient theology, was Typho's city. But when these men were gotten into it, and found the place fit for a revolt, they appointed themselves a ruler out of the priests of Hellopolis, whose name was Osarsiph, and they took their oaths that they would be obedient to him in all things. He then, in the first place, made this law for them, That they should neither worship the Egyptian gods, nor should abstain from any one of those sacred animals which they have in the highest esteem, but kill and destroy them all; that they should join themselves to nobody but to those that were of this confederacy. When he had made such laws as these, and many more such as were mainly opposite to the customs of the Egyptians, [23] he gave order that they should use the multitude of the hands they had in building walls about their City, and make themselves ready for a war with king Amenophis, while he did himself take into his friendship the other priests, and those that were polluted with them, and sent ambassadors to those shepherds who had been driven out of the land by Tefilmosis to the city called Jerusalem; whereby he informed them of his own affairs, and of the state of those others that had been treated after such an ignominious manner, and desired that they would come with one consent to his assistance in this war against Egypt. He also promised that he would, in the first place, bring them back to their ancient city and country Avaris, and provide a plentiful maintenance for their multitude; that he would protect them and fight for them as occasion should require, and would easily reduce the country under their dominion. These shepherds were all very glad of this message, and came away with alacrity all together, being in number two hundred thousand men; and in a little time they came to Avaris. And now Amenophis the king of Egypt, upon his being informed of their invasion, was in great confusion, as calling to mind what Amenophis, the son of Papis, had foretold him; and, in the first place, he assembled the multitude of the Egyptians, and took counsel with their leaders, and sent for their sacred animals to him, especially for those that were principally worshipped in their temples, and gave a particular charge to the priests distinctly, that they should hide the images of their gods with the utmost care he also sent his son Sethos, who was also named Ramesses, from his father Rhampses, being but five years old, to a friend of his. He then passed on with the rest of the Egyptians, being three hundred thousand of the most warlike of them, against the enemy, who met them. Yet did he not join battle with them; but thinking that would be to fight against the gods, he returned back and came to Memphis, where he took Apis and the other sacred animals which he had sent for to him, and presently marched into Ethiopia, together with his whole army and multitude of Egyptians; for the king of Ethiopia was under an obligation to him, on which account he received him, and took care of all the multitude that was with him, while the country supplied all that was necessary for the food of the men. He also allotted cities and villages for this exile, that was to be from its beginning during those fatally determined thirteen years. Moreover, he pitched a camp for his Ethiopian army, as a guard to king Amenophis, upon the borders of Egypt. And this was the state of things in Ethiopia. But for the people of Jerusalem, when they came down together with the polluted Egyptians, they treated the men in such a barbarous manner, that those who saw how they subdued the forementioned country, and the horrid wickedness they were guilty of, thought it a most dreadful thing; for they did not only set the cities and villages on fire but were not satisfied till they had been guilty of sacrilege, and destroyed the images of the gods, and used them in roasting those sacred animals that used to be worshipped, and forced the priests and prophets to be the executioners and murderers of those animals, and then ejected them naked out of the country. It was also reported that the priest, who ordained their polity and their laws, was by birth of Hellopolls, and his name Osarsiph, from Osyris, who was the god of Hellopolls; but that when he was gone over to these people, his name was changed, and he was called Moses." 27. This is what the Egyptians relate about the Jews, with much more, which I omit for the sake of brevity. But still Manetho goes on, that "after this, Amenophis returned back from Ethiopia with a great army, as did his son Ahampses with another army also, and that both of them joined battle with the shepherds and the polluted people, and beat them, and slew a great many of them, and pursued them to the bounds of Syria." These and the like accounts are written by Manetho. But I will demonstrate that he trifles, and tells arrant lies, after I have made a distinction which will relate to what I am going to say about him; for this Manetho had granted and confessed that this nation was not originally Egyptian, but that they had come from another country, and subdued Egypt, and then went away again out of it. But that those Egyptians who were thus diseased in their bodies were not mingled with us afterward, and that Moses who brought the people out was not one of that company, but lived many generations earlier, I shall endeavor to demonstrate from Manetho's own accounts themselves. 28. Now, for the first occasion of this fiction, Manetho supposes what is no better than a ridiculous thing; for he says that, "King Amenophis desired to see the gods." What gods, I pray, did he desire to see? If he meant the gods whom their laws ordained to be worshipped, the ox, the goat, the crocodile, and the baboon, he saw them already; but for the heavenly gods, how could he see them, and what should occasion this his desire? To be sure? it was because another king before him had already seen them. He had then been informed what sort of gods they were, and after what manner they had been seen, insomuch that he did not stand in need of any new artifice for obtaining this sight. However, the prophet by whose means the king thought to compass his design was a wise man. If so, how came he not to know that such his desire was impossible to be accomplished? for the event did not succeed. And what pretense could there be to suppose that the gods would not be seen by reason of the people's maims in their bodies, or leprosy? for the gods are not angry at the imperfection of bodies, but at wicked practices; and as to eighty thousand lepers, and those in an ill state also, how is it possible to have them gathered together in one day? nay, how came the king not to comply with the prophet? for his injunction was, that those that were maimed should be expelled out of Egypt, while the king only sent them to work in the quarries, as if he were rather in want of laborers, than intended to purge his country. He says further, that, "this prophet slew himself, as foreseeing the anger of the gods, and those events which were to come upon Egypt afterward; and that he left this prediction for the king in writing." Besides, how came it to pass that this prophet did not foreknow his own death at the first? nay, how came he not to contradict the king in his desire to see the gods immediately? how came that unreasonable dread upon him of judgments that were not to happen in his lifetime? or what worse thing could he suffer, out of the fear of which he made haste to kill himself? But now let us see the silliest thing of all:--The king, although he had been informed of these things, and terrified with the fear of what was to come, yet did not he even then eject these maimed people out of his country, when it had been foretold him that he was to clear Egypt of them; but, as Manetho says, "he then, upon their request, gave them that city to inhabit, which had formerly belonged to the shepherds, and was called Avaris; whither when they were gone in crowds," he says, "they chose one that had formerly been priest of Hellopolls; and that this priest first ordained that they should neither worship the gods, nor abstain from those animals that were worshipped by the Egyptians, but should kill and eat them all, and should associate with nobody but those that had conspired with them; and that he bound the multitude by oaths to be sure to continue in those laws; and that when he had built a wall about Avaris, he made war against the king." Manetho adds also, that "this priest sent to Jerusalem to invite that people to come to his assistance, and promised to give them Avaris; for that it had belonged to the forefathers of those that were coming from Jerusalem, and that when they were come, they made a war immediately against the king, and got possession of all Egypt." He says also that "the Egyptians came with an army of two hundred thousand men, and that Amenophis, the king of Egypt, not thinking that he ought to fight against the gods, ran away presently into Ethiopia, and committed Apis and certain other of their sacred animals to the priests, and commanded them to take care of preserving them." He says further, that, "the people of Jerusalem came accordingly upon the Egyptians, and overthrew their cities, and burnt their temples, and slew their horsemen, and, in short, abstained from no sort of wickedness nor barbarity; and for that priest who settled their polity and their laws," he says, "he was by birth of Hellopolis, and his name was Osarsiph, from Osyris the god of Hellopolis, but that he changed his name, and called himself Moses." He then says that "on the thirteenth year afterward, Amenophis, according to the fatal time of the duration of his misfortunes, came upon them out of Ethiopia with a great army, and joining battle with the shepherds and with the polluted people, overcame them in battle, and slew a great many of them, and pursued them as far as the bounds of Syria." 29. Now Manetho does not reflect upon the improbability of his lie; for the leprous people, and the multitude that was with them, although they might formerly have been angry at the king, and at those that had treated them so coarsely, and this according to the prediction of the prophet; yet certainly, when they were come out of the mines, and had received of the king a city, and a country, they would have grown milder towards him. However, had they ever so much hated him in particular, they might have laid a private plot against himself, but would hardly have made war against all the Egyptians; I mean this on the account of the great kindred they who were so numerous must have had among them. Nay still, if they had resolved to fight with the men, they would not have had impudence enough to fight with their gods; nor would they have ordained laws quite contrary to those of their own country, and to those in which they had been bred up themselves. Yet are we beholden to Manethe, that he does not lay the principal charge of this horrid transgression upon those that came from Jerusalem, but says that the Egyptians themselves were the most guilty, and that they were their priests that contrived these things, and made the multitude take their oaths for doing so. But still how absurd is it to suppose that none of these people's own relations or friends should be prevailed with to revolt, nor to undergo the hazards of war with them, while these polluted people were forced to send to Jerusalem, and bring their auxiliaries from thence! What friendship, I pray, or what relation was there formerly between them that required this assistance? On the contrary, these people were enemies, and greatly differed from them in their customs. He says, indeed, that they complied immediately, upon their praising them that they should conquer Egypt; as if they did not themselves very well know that country out of which they had been driven by force. Now had these men been in want, or lived miserably, perhaps they might have undertaken so hazardous an enterprise; but as they dwelt in a happy city, and had a large country, and one better than Egypt itself, how came it about that, for the sake of those that had of old been their enemies, of those that were maimed in their bodies, and of those whom none of their own relations would endure, they should run such hazards in assisting them? For they could not foresee that the king would run away from them: on the contrary, he saith himself that "Amenophis's son had three hundred thousand men with him, and met them at Pelusium." Now, to be sure, those that came could not be ignorant of this; but for the king's repentance and flight, how could they possibly guess at it? He then says, that "those who came from Jerusalem, and made this invasion, got the granaries of Egypt into their possession, and perpetrated many of the most horrid actions there." And thence he reproaches them, as though he had not himself introduced them as enemies, or as though he might accuse such as were invited from another place for so doing, when the natural Egyptians themselves had done the same things before their coming, and had taken oaths so to do. However, "Amenophis, some time afterward, came upon them, and conquered them in battle, and slew his enemies, and drove them before him as far as Syria." As if Egypt were so easily taken by people that came from any place whatsoever, and as if those that had conquered it by war, when they were informed that Amenophis was alive, did neither fortify the avenues out of Ethiopia into it, although they had great advantages for doing it, nor did get their other forces ready for their defense! but that he followed them over the sandy desert, and slew them as far as Syria; while yet it is rot an easy thing for an army to pass over that country, even without fighting. 30. Our nation, therefore, according to Manetho, was not derived from Egypt, nor were any of the Egyptians mingled with us. For it is to be supposed that many of the leprous and distempered people were dead in the mines, since they had been there a long time, and in so ill a condition; many others must be dead in the battles that happened afterward, and more still in the last battle and flight after it. 31. It now remains that I debate with Manetho about Moses. Now the Egyptians acknowledge him to have been a wonderful and a divine person; nay, they would willingly lay claim to him themselves, though after a most abusive and incredible manner, and pretend that he was of Heliopolis, and one of the priests of that place, and was ejected out of it among the rest, on account of his leprosy; although it had been demonstrated out of their records that he lived five hundred and eighteen years earlier, and then brought our forefathers out of Egypt into the country that is now inhabited by us. But now that he was not subject in his body to any such calamity, is evident from what he himself tells us; for he forbade those that had the leprosy either to continue in a city, or to inhabit in a village, but commanded that they should go about by themselves with their clothes rent; and declares that such as either touch them, or live under the same roof with them, should be esteemed unclean; nay, more, if any one of their disease be healed, and he recover his natural constitution again, he appointed them certain purifications, and washings with spring water, and the shaving off all their hair, and enjoins that they shall offer many sacrifices, and those of several kinds, and then at length to be admitted into the holy city; although it were to be expected that, on the contrary, if he had been under the same calamity, he should have taken care of such persons beforehand, and have had them treated after a kinder manner, as affected with a concern for those that were to be under the like misfortunes with himself. Nor was it only those leprous people for whose sake he made these laws, but also for such as should be maimed in the smallest part of their body, who yet are not permitted by him to officiate as priests; nay, although any priest, already initiated, should have such a calamity fall upon him afterward, he ordered him to be deprived of his honor of officiating. How can it then be supposed that Moses should ordain such laws against himself, to his own reproach and damage who so ordained them? Nor indeed is that other notion of Manetho at all probable, wherein he relates the change of his name, and says that "he was formerly called Osarsiph;" and this a name no way agreeable to the other, while his true name was Mosses, and signifies a person who is preserved out of the water, for the Egyptians call water Moil. I think, therefore, I have made it sufficiently evident that Manetho, while he followed his ancient records, did not much mistake the truth of the history; but that when he had recourse to fabulous stories, without any certain author, he either forged them himself, without any probability, or else gave credit to some men who spake so out of their ill-will to us. 32. And now I have done with Manetho, I will inquire into what Cheremon says. For he also, when he pretended to write the Egyptian history, sets down the same name for this king that Manetho did, Amenophis, as also of his son Ramesses, and then goes on thus: "The goddess Isis appeared to Amenophis in his sleep, and blamed him that her temple had been demolished in the war. But that Phritiphantes, the sacred scribe, said to him, that in case he would purge Egypt of the men that had pollutions upon them, he should be no longer troubled with such frightful apparitions. That Amenophis accordingly chose out two hundred and fifty thousand of those that were thus diseased, and cast them out of the country: that Moses and Joseph were scribes, and Joseph was a sacred scribe; that their names were Egyptian originally; that of Moses had been Tisithen, and that of Joseph, Peteseph: that these two came to Pelusium, and lighted upon three hundred and eighty thousand that had been left there by Amenophis, he not being willing to carry them into Egypt; that these scribes made a league of friendship with them, and made with them an expedition against Egypt: that Amenophis could not sustain their attacks, but fled into Ethiopia, and left his wife with child behind him, who lay concealed in certain caverns, and there brought forth a son, whose name was Messene, and who, when he was grown up to man's estate, pursued the Jews into Syria, being about two hundred thousand, and then received his father Amenophis out of Ethiopia." 33. This is the account Cheremon gives us. Now I take it for granted that what I have said already hath plainly proved the falsity of both these narrations; for had there been any real truth at the bottom, it was impossible they should so greatly disagree about the particulars. But for those that invent lies, what they write will easily give us very different accounts, while they forge what they please out of their own heads. Now Manetho says that the king's desire of seeing the gods was the origin of the ejection of the polluted people; but Cheremon feigns that it was a dream of his own, sent upon him by Isis, that was the occasion of it. Manetho says that the person who foreshowed this purgation of Egypt to the king was Amenophis; but this man says it was Phritiphantes. As to the numbers of the multitude that were expelled, they agree exceedingly well [24] the former reckoning them eighty thousand, and the latter about two hundred and fifty thousand! Now, for Manetho, he describes those polluted persons as sent first to work in the quarries, and says that the city Avaris was given them for their habitation. As also he relates that it was not till after they had made war with the rest of the Egyptians, that they invited the people of Jerusalem to come to their assistance; while Cheremon says only that they were gone out of Egypt, and lighted upon three hundred and eighty thousand men about Pelusium, who had been left there by Amenophis, and so they invaded Egypt with them again; that thereupon Amenophis fled into Ethiopia. But then this Cheremon commits a most ridiculous blunder in not informing us who this army of so many ten thousands were, or whence they came; whether they were native Egyptians, or whether they came from a foreign country. Nor indeed has this man, who forged a dream from Isis about the leprous people, assigned the reason why the king would not bring them into Egypt. Moreover, Cheremon sets down Joseph as driven away at the same time with Moses, who yet died four generations [25] before Moses, which four generations make almost one hundred and seventy years. Besides all this, Ramesses, the son of Amenophis, by Manetho's account, was a young man, and assisted his father in his war, and left the country at the same time with him, and fled into Ethiopia. But Cheremon makes him to have been born in a certain cave, after his father was dead, and that he then overcame the Jews in battle, and drove them into Syria, being in number about two hundred thousand. O the levity of the man! for he had neither told us who these three hundred and eighty thousand were, nor how the four hundred and thirty thousand perished; whether they fell in war, or went over to Ramesses. And, what is the strangest of all, it is not possible to learn out of him who they were whom he calls Jews, or to which of these two parties he applies that denomination, whether to the two hundred and fifty thousand leprous people, or to the three hundred and eighty thousand that were about Pelusium. But perhaps it will be looked upon as a silly thing in me to make any larger confutation of such writers as sufficiently confute themselves; for had they been only confuted by other men, it had been more tolerable. 34. I shall now add to these accounts about Manethoand Cheremon somewhat about Lysimachus, who hath taken the same topic of falsehood with those forementioned, but hath gone far beyond them in the incredible nature of his forgeries; which plainly demonstrates that he contrived them out of his virulent hatred of our nation. His words are these: "The people of the Jews being leprous and scabby, and subject to certain other kinds of distempers, in the days of Bocchoris, king of Egypt, they fled to the temples, and got their food there by begging: and as the numbers were very great that were fallen under these diseases, there arose a scarcity in Egypt. Hereupon Bocehoris, the king of Egypt, sent some to consult the oracle of [Jupiter] Hammon about his scarcity. The god's answer was this, that he must purge his temples of impure and impious men, by expelling them out of those temples into desert places; but as to the scabby and leprous people, he must drown them, and purge his temples, the sun having an indignation at these men being suffered to live; and by this means the land will bring forth its fruits. Upon Bocchoris's having received these oracles, he called for their priests, and the attendants upon their altars, and ordered them to make a collection of the impure people, and to deliver them to the soldiers, to carry them away into the desert; but to take the leprous people, and wrap them in sheets of lead, and let them down into the sea. Hereupon the scabby and leprous people were drowned, and the rest were gotten together, and sent into desert places, in order to be exposed to destruction. In this case they assembled themselves together, and took counsel what they should do, and determined that, as the night was coming on, they should kindle fires and lamps, and keep watch; that they also should fast the next night, and propitiate the gods, in order to obtain deliverance from them. That on the next day there was one Moses, who advised them that they should venture upon a journey, and go along one road till they should come to places fit for habitation: that he charged them to have no kind regards for any man, nor give good counsel to any, but always to advise them for the worst; and to overturn all those temples and altars of the gods they should meet with: that the rest commended what he had said with one consent, and did what they had resolved on, and so traveled over the desert. But that the difficulties of the journey being over, they came to a country inhabited, and that there they abused the men, and plundered and burnt their temples; and then came into that land which is called Judea, and there they built a city, and dwelt therein, and that their city was named Hierosyla, from this their robbing of the temples; but that still, upon the success they had afterwards, they in time changed its denomination, that it might not be a reproach to them, and called the city Hierosolyma, and themselves Hierosolymites." 35. Now this man did not discover and mention the same king with the others, but feigned a newer name, and passing by the dream and the Egyptian prophet, he brings him to [Jupiter] Hammon, in order to gain oracles about the scabby and leprous people; for he says that the multitude of Jews were gathered together at the temples. Now it is uncertain whether he ascribes this name to these lepers, or to those that were subject to such diseases among the Jews only; for he describes them as a people of the Jews. What people does he mean? foreigners, or those of that country? Why then' dost thou call them Jews, if they were Egyptians? But if they were foreigners, why dost thou not tell us whence they came? And how could it be that, after the king had drowned many of them in the sea, and ejected the rest into desert places, there should be still so great a multitude remaining? Or after what manner did they pass over the desert, and get the land which we now dwell in, and build our city, and that temple which hath been so famous among all mankind? And besides, he ought to have spoken more about our legislator than by giving us his bare name; and to have informed us of what nation he was, and what parents he was derived from; and to have assigned the reasons why he undertook to make such laws concerning the gods, and concerning matters of injustice with regard to men during that journey. For in case the people were by birth Egyptians, they would not on the sudden have so easily changed the customs of their country; and in case they had been foreigners, they had for certain some laws or other which had been kept by them from long custom. It is true, that with regard to those who had ejected them, they might have sworn never to bear good-will to them, and might have had a plausible reason for so doing. But if these men resolved to wage an implacable war against all men, in case they had acted as wickedly as he relates of them, and this while they wanted the assistance of all men, this demonstrates a kind of mad conduct indeed; but not of the men themselves, but very greatly so of him that tells such lies about them. He hath also impudence enough to say that a name, implying "Robbers of the temples," [26] was given to their city, and that this name was afterward changed. The reason of which is plain, that the former name brought reproach and hatred upon them in the times of their posterity, while, it seems, those that built the city thought they did honor to the city by giving it such a name. So we see that this fine fellow had such an unbounded inclination to reproach us, that he did not understand that robbery of temples is not expressed By the same word and name among the Jews as it is among the Greeks. But why should a man say any more to a person who tells such impudent lies? However, since this book is arisen to a competent length, I will make another beginning, and endeavor to add what still remains to perfect my design in the following book. APION BOOK 1 FOOTNOTES [1] This first book has a wrong title. It is not written against Apion, as is the first part of the second book, but against those Greeks in general who would not believe Josephus's former accounts of the very ancient state of the Jewish nation, in his 20 books of Antiquities; and particularly against Agatharelddes, Manetho, Cheremon, and Lysimachus. it is one of the most learned, excellent, and useful books of all antiquity; and upon Jerome's perusal of this and the following book, he declares that it seems to him a miraculous thing "how one that was a Hebrew, who had been from his infancy instructed in sacred learning, should be able to pronounce such a number of testimonies out of profane authors, as if he had read over all the Grecian libraries," Epist. 8. ad Magnum; and the learned Jew, Manasseh-Ben-Israel, esteemed these two books so excellent, as to translate them into the Hebrew; this we learn from his own catalogue of his works, which I have seen. As to the time and place when and where these two books were written, the learned have not hitherto been able to determine them any further than that they were written some time after his Antiquities, or some time after A.D. 93; which indeed is too obvious at their entrance to be overlooked by even a careless peruser, they being directly intended against those that would not believe what he had advanced in those books con-the great of the Jewish nation As to the place, they all imagine that these two books were written where the former were, I mean at Rome; and I confess that I myself believed both those determinations, till I came to finish my notes upon these books, when I met with plain indications that they were written not at Rome, but in Judea, and this after the third of Trajan, or A.D. 100. [2] Take Dr. Hudson's note here, which as it justly contradicts the common opinion that Josephus either died under Domitian, or at least wrote nothing later than his days, so does it perfectly agree to my own determination, from Justus of Tiberias, that he wrote or finished his own Life after the third of Trajan, or A.D. 100. To which Noldius also agrees, de Herod, No. 383 [Epaphroditus]. "Since Florius Josephus," says Dr. Hudson, "wrote [or finished] his books of Antiquities on the thirteenth of Domitian, [A.D. 93,] and after that wrote the Memoirs of his own Life, as an appendix to the books of Antiquities, and at last his two books against Apion, and yet dedicated all those writings to Epaphroditus; he can hardly be that Epaphroditus who was formerly secretary to Nero, and was slain on the fourteenth [or fifteenth] of Domitian, after he had been for a good while in banishment; but another Epaphroditas, a freed-man, and procurator of Trajan, as says Grotius on Luke 1:3." [3] The preservation of Homer's Poems by memory, and not by his own writing them down, and that thence they were styled Rhapsodies, as sung by him, like ballads, by parts, and not composed and connected together in complete works, are opinions well known from the ancient commentators; though such supposal seems to myself, as well as to Fabricius Biblioth. Grace. I. p. 269, and to others, highly improbable. Nor does Josephus say there were no ancienter writings among the Greeks than Homer's Poems, but that they did not fully own any ancienter writings pretending to such antiquity, which is trite. [4] It well deserves to be considered, that Josephus here says how all the following Greek historians looked on Herodotus as a fabulous author; and presently, sect. 14, how Manetho, the most authentic writer of the Egyptian history, greatly complains of his mistakes in the Egyptian affairs; as also that Strabo, B. XI. p. 507, the most accurate geographer and historian, esteemed him such; that Xenophon, the much more accurate historian in the affairs of Cyrus, implies that Herodotus's account of that great man is almost entirely romantic. See the notes on Antiq. B. XI. ch. 2. sect. 1, and Hutchinson's Prolegomena to his edition of Xenophon's, that we have already seen in the note on Antiq. B. VIII. ch. 10. sect. 3, how very little Herodotus knew about the Jewish affairs and country, and that he greatly affected what we call the marvelous, as Monsieur Rollin has lately and justly determined; whence we are not always to depend on the authority of Herodotus, where it is unsupported by other evidence, but ought to compare the other evidence with his, and if it preponderate, to prefer it before his. I do not mean by this that Herodotus willfully related what he believed to be false, [as Cteeias seems to have done,] but that he often wanted evidence, and sometimes preferred what was marvelous to what was best attested as really true. [5]About the days of Cyrus and Daniel. [6] It is here well worth our observation, what the reasons are that such ancient authors as Herodotus, Josephus, and others have been read to so little purpose by many learned critics; viz. that their main aim has not been chronology or history, but philology, to know words, and not things, they not much entering oftentimes into the real contents of their authors, and judging which were the most accurate discoverers of truth, and most to be depended on in the several histories, but rather inquiring who wrote the finest style, and had the greatest elegance in their expressions; which are things of small consequence in comparison of the other. Thus you will sometimes find great debates among the learned, whether Herodotus or Thucydides were the finest historian in the Ionic and Attic ways of writing; which signify little as to the real value of each of their histories; while it would be of much more moment to let the reader know, that as the consequence of Herodotus's history, which begins so much earlier, and reaches so much wider, than that of Thucydides, is therefore vastly greater; so is the most part of Thucydides, which belongs to his own times, and fell under his own observation, much the most certain. [7] Of this accuracy of the Jews before and in our Savior's time, in carefully preserving their genealogies all along, particularly those of the priests, see Josephus's Life, sect. 1. This accuracy. seems to have ended at the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, or, however, at that by Adrian. [8] Which were these twenty-two sacred books of the Old Testament, see the Supplement to the Essay of the Old Testament, p. 25-29, viz. those we call canonical, all excepting the Canticles; but still with this further exception, that the book of apocryphal Esdras be taken into that number instead of our canonical Ezra, which seems to be no more than a later epitome of the other; which two books of Canticles and Ezra it no way appears that our Josephus ever saw. [9] Here we have an account of the first building of the city of Jerusalem, according to Manetho, when the Phoenician shepherds were expelled out of Egypt about thirty-seven years before Abraham came out of Harsh. [10] Genesis 46;32, 34; 47:3, 4. [11] In our copies of the book of Genesis and of Joseph, this Joseph never calls himself "a captive," when he was with the king of Egypt, though he does call himself "a servant," "a slave," or "captive," many times in the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, under Joseph, sect. 1, 11, 13-16. [12] Of this Egyptian chronology of Manetho, as mistaken by Josephus, and of these Phoenician shepherds, as falsely supposed by him, and others after him, to have been the Israelites in Egypt, see Essay on the Old Testament, Appendix, p. 182-188. And note here, that when Josephus tells us that the Greeks or Argives looked on this Danaus as "a most ancient," or "the most ancient," king of Argos, he need not be supposed to mean, in the strictest sense, that they had no one king so ancient as he; for it is certain that they owned nine kings before him, and Inachus at the head of them. See Authentic Records, Part II. p. 983, as Josephus could not but know very well; but that he was esteemed as very ancient by them, and that they knew they had been first of all denominated "Danai" from this very ancient king Danaus. Nor does this superlative degree always imply the "most ancient" of all without exception, but is sometimes to be rendered "very ancient" only, as is the case in the like superlative degrees of other words also. [13] Authentic Records, Part II. p. 983, as Josephus could not but know very well; but that he was esteemed as very ancient by them, and that they knew they had been first of all denominated "Danai" from this very ancient king Danaus. Nor does this superlative degree always imply the "most ancient" of all without exception, but is sometimes to be rendered "very ancient" only, as is the case in the like superlative degrees of other words also. [14] This number in Josephus, that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the temple in the eighteenth year of his reign, is a mistake in the nicety of chronology; for it was in the nineteenth. The true number here for the year of Darius, in which the second temple was finished, whether the second with our present copies, or the sixth with that of Syncellus, or the tenth with that of Eusebius, is very uncertain; so we had best follow Josephus's own account elsewhere, Antiq.;B. XI. ch. 3. sect. 4, which shows us that according to his copy of the Old Testament, after the second of Cyrus, that work was interrupted till the second of Darius, when in seven years it was finished in the ninth of Darius. [15] This is a thing well known by the learned, that we are not secure that we have any genuine writings of Pythagoras; those Golden Verses, which are his best remains, being generally supposed to have been written not by himself, but by some of his scholars only, in agreement with what Josephus here affirms of him. [16] Whether these verses of Cherilus, the heathen poet, in the days of Xerxes, belong to the Solymi in Pisidia, that were near a small lake, or to the Jews that dwelt on the Solymean or Jerusalem mountains, near the great and broad lake Asphaltitis, that were a strange people, and spake the Phoenician tongue, is not agreed on by the learned. If is yet certain that Josephus here, and Eusebius, Prep. IX. 9. p. 412, took them to be Jews; and I confess I cannot but very much incline to the same opinion. The other Solymi were not a strange people, but heathen idolaters, like the other parts of Xerxes's army; and that these spake the Phoenician tongue is next to impossible, as the Jews certainly did; nor is there the least evidence for it elsewhere. Nor was the lake adjoining to the mountains of the Solvmi at all large or broad, in comparison of the Jewish lake Asphaltitis; nor indeed were these so considerable a people as the Jews, nor so likely to be desired by Xerxes for his army as the Jews, to whom he was always very favorable. As for the rest of Cherilus's description, that "their heads were sooty; that they had round rasures on their heads; that their heads and faces were like nasty horse-heads, which had been hardened in the smoke;" these awkward characters probably fitted the Solymi of Pisidi no better than they did the Jews in Judea. And indeed this reproachful language, here given these people, is to me a strong indication that they were the poor despicable Jews, and not the Pisidian Solymi celebrated in Homer, whom Cherilus here describes; nor are we to expect that either Cherilus or Hecateus, or any other pagan writers cited by Josephus and Eusebius, made no mistakes in the Jewish history. If by comparing their testimonies with the more authentic records of that nation we find them for the main to confirm the same, as we almost always do, we ought to be satisfied, and not expect that they ever had an exact knowledge of all the circumstances of the Jewish affairs, which indeed it was almost always impossible for them to have. See sect. 23. [17] This Hezekiah, who is here called a high priest, is not named in Josephus's catalogue; the real high priest at that time being rather Onias, as Archbishop Usher supposes. However, Josephus often uses the word high priests in the plural number, as living many at the same time. See the note on Antiq. B. XX. ch. 8. sect. 8. [18] So I read the text with Havercamp, though the place be difficult. [19] This number of arourae or Egyptian acres, 3,000,000, each aroura containing a square of 100 Egyptian cubits, [being about three quarters of an English acre, and just twice the area of the court of the Jewish tabernacle,] as contained in the country of Judea, will be about one third of the entire number of arourae in the whole land of Judea, supposing it 160 measured miles long and 70 such miles broad; which estimation, for the fruitful parts of it, as perhaps here in Hecateus, is not therefore very wide from the truth. The fifty furlongs in compass for the city Jerusalem presently are not very wide from the truth also, as Josephus himself describes it, who, Of the War, B. V. ch. 4. sect. 3. makes its wall thirty-three furlongs, besides the suburbs and gardens; nay, he says, B. V. ch. 12. sect. 2, that Titus's wall about it at some small distance, after the gardens and suburbs were destroyed, was not less than thirty-nine furlongs. Nor perhaps were its constant inhabitants, in the days of Hecateus, many more than these 120,000, because room was always to be left for vastly greater numbers which came up at the three great festivals; to say nothing of the probable increase in their number between the days of Hecateus and Josephus, which was at least three hundred years. But see a more authentic account of some of these measures in my Description of the Jewish Temples. However, we are not to expect that such heathens as Cherilus or Hecateus, or the rest that are cited by Josephus and Eusebius, could avoid making many mistakes in the Jewish history, while yet they strongly confirm the same history in the general, and are most valuable attestations to those more authentic accounts we have in the Scriptures and Josephus concerning them. [20] A glorious testimony this of the observation of the sabbath by the Jews. See Antiq. B. XVI. ch. 2. sect. 4, and ch. 6. sect. 2; the Life, sect. 54; and War, B. IV. ch. 9. sect. 12. [21] Not their law, but the superstitious interpretation of their leaders which neither the Maccabees nor our blessed Savior did ever approve of. [22] In reading this and the remaining sections of this book, and some parts of the next, one may easily perceive that our usually cool and candid author, Josephus, was too highly offended with the impudent calumnies of Manethe, and the other bitter enemies of the Jews, with whom he had now to deal, and was thereby betrayed into a greater heat and passion than ordinary, and that by consequence he does not hear reason with his usual fairness and impartiality; he seems to depart sometimes from the brevity and sincerity of a faithful historian, which is his grand character, and indulges the prolixity and colors of a pleader and a disputant: accordingly, I confess, I always read these sections with less pleasure than I do the rest of his writings, though I fully believe the reproaches cast on the Jews, which he here endeavors to confute and expose, were wholly groundless and unreasonable. [23] This is a very valuable testimony of Manetho, that the laws of Osarsiph, or Moses, were not made in compliance with, but in opposition to, the customs of the Egyptians. See the note on Antiq. B. III. ch. 8. sect. 9. [24] By way of irony, I suppose. [25] Here we see that Josephus esteemed a generation between Joseph and Moses to be about forty-two or forty-three years; which, if taken between the earlier children, well agrees with the duration of human life in those ages. See Antheat. Rec. Part II. pages 966, 1019, 1020. [26] That is the meaning of Hierosyla in Greek, not in Hebrew. BOOK II. 1. In the former book, most honored Epaphroditus, I have demonstrated our antiquity, and confirmed the truth of what I have said, from the writings of the Phoenicians, and Chaldeans, and Egyptians. I have, moreover, produced many of the Grecian writers as witnesses thereto. I have also made a refutation of Manetho and Cheremon, and of certain others of our enemies. I shall now [1] therefore begin a confutation of the remaining authors who have written any thing against us; although I confess I have had a doubt upon me about Apion [2] the grammarian, whether I ought to take the trouble of confuting him or not; for some of his writings contain much the same accusations which the others have laid against us, some things that he hath added are very frigid and contemptible, and for the greatest part of what he says, it is very scurrilous, and, to speak no more than the plain truth, it shows him to be a very unlearned person, and what he lays together looks like the work of a man of very bad morals, and of one no better in his whole life than a mountebank. Yet, because there are a great many men so very foolish, that they are rather caught by such orations than by what is written with care, and take pleasure in reproaching other men, and cannot abide to hear them commended, I thought it to be necessary not to let this man go off without examination, who had written such an accusation against us, as if he would bring us to make an answer in open court. For I also have observed, that many men are very much delighted when they see a man who first began to reproach another, to be himself exposed to contempt on account of the vices he hath himself been guilty of. However, it is not a very easy thing to go over this man's discourse, nor to know plainly what he means; yet does he seem, amidst a great confusion and disorder in his falsehoods, to produce, in the first place, such things as resemble what we have examined already, and relate to the departure of our forefathers out of Egypt; and, in the second place, he accuses those Jews that are inhabitants of Alexandria; as, in the third place, he mixes with those things such accusations as concern the sacred purifications, with the other legal rites used in the temple. 2. Now although I cannot but think that I have already demonstrated, and that abundantly more than was necessary, that our fathers were not originally Egyptians, nor were thence expelled, either on account of bodily diseases, or any other calamities of that sort; yet will I briefly take notice of what Apion adds upon that subject; for in his third book, which relates to the affairs of Egypt, he speaks thus: "I have heard of the ancient men of Egypt, that Moses was of Heliopolis, and that he thought himself obliged to follow the customs of his forefathers, and offered his prayers in the open air, towards the city walls; but that he reduced them all to be directed towards sun-rising, which was agreeable to the situation of Heliopolis; that he also set up pillars instead of gnomons, [3] under which was represented a cavity like that of a boat, and the shadow that fell from their tops fell down upon that cavity, that it might go round about the like course as the sun itself goes round in the other." This is that wonderful relation which we have given us by this grammarian. But that it is a false one is so plain, that it stands in need of few words to prove it, but is manifest from the works of Moses; for when he erected the first tabernacle to God, he did himself neither give order for any such kind of representation to be made at it, nor ordain that those that came after him should make such a one. Moreover, when in a future age Solomon built his temple in Jerusalem, he avoided all such needless decorations as Apion hath here devised. He says further, how he had "heard of the ancient men, that Moses was of Hellopolis." To be sure that was, because being a younger man himself, he believed those that by their elder age were acquainted and conversed with him. Now this grammarian, as he was, could not certainly tell which was the poet Homer's country, no more than he could which was the country of Pythagoras, who lived comparatively but a little while ago; yet does he thus easily determine the age of Moses, who preceded them such a vast number of years, as depending on his ancient men's relation, which shows how notorious a liar he was. But then as to this chronological determination of the time when he says he brought the leprous people, the blind, and the lame out of Egypt, see how well this most accurate grammarian of ours agrees with those that have written before him! Manetho says that the Jews departed out of Egypt, in the reign of Tethmosis, three hundred ninety-three years before Danaus fled to Argos; Lysimaehus says it was under king Bocchoris, that is, one thousand seven hundred years ago; Molo and some others determined it as every one pleased: but this Apion of ours, as deserving to be believed before them, hath determined it exactly to have been in the seventh olympiad, and the first year of that olympiad; the very same year in which he says that Carthage was built by the Phoenicians. The reason why he added this building of Carthage was, to be sure, in order, as he thought, to strengthen his assertion by so evident a character of chronology. But he was not aware that this character confutes his assertion; for if we may give credit to the Phoenician records as to the time of the first coming of their colony to Carthage, they relate that Hirom their king was above a hundred and fifty years earlier than the building of Carthage; concerning whom I have formerly produced testimonials out of those Phoenician records, as also that this Hirom was a friend of Solomon when he was building the temple of Jerusalem, and gave him great assistance in his building that temple; while still Solomon himself built that temple six hundred and twelve years after the Jews came out of Egypt. As for the number of those that were expelled out of Egypt, he hath contrived to have the very same number with Lysimaehus, and says they were a hundred and ten thousand. He then assigns a certain wonderful and plausible occasion for the name of Sabbath; for he says that "when the Jews had traveled a six days' journey, they had buboes in their groins; and that on this account it was that they rested on the seventh day, as having got safely to that country which is now called Judea; that then they preserved the language of the Egyptians, and called that day the Sabbath, for that malady of buboes on their groin was named Sabbatosis by the Egyptians." And would not a man now laugh at this fellow's trifling, or rather hate his impudence in writing thus? We must, it seems, fake it for granted that all these hundred and ten thousand men must have these buboes. But, for certain, if those men had been blind and lame, and had all sorts of distempers upon them, as Apion says they had, they could not have gone one single day's journey; but if they had been all able to travel over a large desert, and, besides that, to fight and conquer those that opposed them, they had not all of them had buboes on their groins after the sixth day was over; for no such distemper comes naturally and of necessity upon those that travel; but still, when there are many ten thousands in a camp together, they constantly march a settled space [in a day]. Nor is it at all probable that such a thing should happen by chance; this would be prodigiously absurd to be supposed. However, our admirable author Apion hath before told us that "they came to Judea in six days' time;" and again, that "Moses went up to a mountain that lay between Egypt and Arabia, which was called Sinai, and was concealed there forty days, and that when he came down from thence he gave laws to the Jews." But, then, how was it possible for them to tarry forty days in a desert place where there was no water, and at the same time to pass all over the country between that and Judea in the six days? And as for this grammatical translation of the word Sabbath, it either contains an instance of his great impudence or gross ignorance; for the words Sabbo and Sabbath are widely different from one another; for the word Sabbath in the Jewish language denotes rest from all sorts of work; but the word Sabbo, as he affirms, denotes among the Egyptians the malady of a bubo in the groin. 3. This is that novel account which the Egyptian Apion gives us concerning the Jews' departure out of Egypt, and is no better than a contrivance of his own. But why should we wonder at the lies he tells about our forefathers, when he affirms them to be of Egyptian original, when he lies also about himself? for although he was born at Oasis in Egypt, he pretends to be, as a man may say, the top man of all the Egyptians; yet does he forswear his real country and progenitors, and by falsely pretending to be born at Alexandria, cannot deny the [4] pravity of his family; for you see how justly he calls those Egyptians whom he hates, and endeavors to reproach; for had he not deemed Egyptians to be a name of great reproach, he would not have avoided the name of an Egyptian himself; as we know that those who brag of their own countries value themselves upon the denomination they acquire thereby, and reprove such as unjustly lay claim thereto. As for the Egyptians' claim to be of our kindred, they do it on one of the following accounts; I mean, either as they value themselves upon it, and pretend to bear that relation to us; or else as they would draw us in to be partakers of their own infamy. But this fine fellow Apion seems to broach this reproachful appellation against us, [that we were originally Egyptians,] in order to bestow it on the Alexandrians, as a reward for the privilege they had given him of being a fellow citizen with them: he also is apprized of the ill-will the Alexandrians bear to those Jews who are their fellow citizens, and so proposes to himself to reproach them, although he must thereby include all the other Egyptians also; while in both cases he is no better than an impudent liar. 4. But let us now see what those heavy and wicked crimes are which Apion charges upon the Alexandrian Jews. "They came [says he] out of Syria, and inhabited near the tempestuous sea, and were in the neighborhood of the dashing of the waves." Now if the place of habitation includes any thing that is reproached, this man reproaches not his own real country, [Egypt,] but what he pretends to be his own country, Alexandria; for all are agreed in this, that the part of that city which is near the sea is the best part of all for habitation. Now if the Jews gained that part of the city by force, and have kept it hitherto without impeachment, this is a mark of their valor; but in reality it was Alexander himself that gave them that place for their habitation, when they obtained equal privileges there with the Macedonians. Nor call I devise what Apion would have said, had their habitation been at Necropolis? and not been fixed hard by the royal palace [as it is]; nor had their nation had the denomination of Macedonians given them till this very day [as they have]. Had this man now read the epistles of king Alexander, or those of Ptolemy the son of Lagus, or met with the writings of the succeeding kings, or that pillar which is still standing at Alexandria, and contains the privileges which the great [Julius] Caesar bestowed upon the Jews; had this man, I say, known these records, and yet hath the impudence to write in contradiction to them, he hath shown himself to be a wicked man; but if he knew nothing of these records, he hath shown himself to be a man very ignorant: nay, when lie appears to wonder how Jews could be called Alexandrians, this is another like instance of his ignorance; for all such as are called out to be colonies, although they be ever so far remote from one another in their original, receive their names from those that bring them to their new habitations. And what occasion is there to speak of others, when those of us Jews that dwell at Antioch are named Antiochians, because Seleucns the founder of that city gave them the privileges belonging thereto? After the like manner do those Jews that inhabit Ephesus, and the other cities of Ionia, enjoy the same name with those that were originally born there, by the grant of the succeeding princes; nay, the kindness and humanity of the Romans hath been so great, that it hath granted leave to almost all others to take the same name of Romans upon them; I mean not particular men only, but entire and large nations themselves also; for those anciently named Iberi, and Tyrrheni, and Sabini, are now called Romani. And if Apion reject this way of obtaining the privilege of a citizen of Alexandria, let him abstain from calling himself an Alexandrian hereafter; for otherwise, how can he who was born in the very heart of Egypt be an Alexandrian, if this way of accepting such a privilege, of which he would have us deprived, be once abrogated? although indeed these Romans, who are now the lords of the habitable earth, have forbidden the Egyptians to have the privileges of any city whatsoever; while this fine fellow, who is willing to partake of such a privilege himself as he is forbidden to make use of, endeavors by calumnies to deprive those of it that have justly received it; for Alexander did not therefore get some of our nation to Alexandria, because he wanted inhabitants for this his city, on whose building he had bestowed so much pains; but this was given to our people as a reward, because he had, upon a careful trial, found them all to have been men of virtue and fidelity to him; for, as Hecateus says concerning us, "Alexander honored our nation to such a degree, that, for the equity and the fidelity which the Jews exhibited to him, he permitted them to hold the country of Samaria free from tribute. Of the same mind also was Ptolemy the son of Lagus, as to those Jews who dwelt at Alexandria." For he intrusted the fortresses of Egypt into their hands, as believing they would keep them faithfully and valiantly for him; and when he was desirous to secure the government of Cyrene, and the other cities of Libya, to himself, he sent a party of Jews to inhabit in them. And for his successor Ptolemy, who was called Philadelphus, he did not only set all those of our nation free who were captives under him, but did frequently give money [for their ransom]; and, what was his greatest work of all, he had a great desire of knowing our laws, and of obtaining the books of our sacred Scriptures; accordingly, he desired that such men might be sent him as might interpret our law to him; and, in order to have them well compiled, he committed that care to no ordinary persons, but ordained that Demetrius Phalereus, and Andreas, and Aristeas; the first, Demetrius, the most learned person of his age, and the others, such as were intrusted with the guard of his body; should take care of this matter: nor would he certainly have been so desirous of learning our law, and the philosophy of our nation, had he despised the men that made use of it, or had he not indeed had them in great admiration. 5. Now this Apion was unacquainted with almost all the kings of those Macedonians whom he pretends to have been his progenitors, who were yet very well affected towards us; for the third of those Ptolemies, who was called Euergetes, when he had gotten possession of all Syria by force, did not offer his thank-offerings to the Egyptian gods for his victory, but came to Jerusalem, and according to our own laws offered many sacrifices to God, and dedicated to him such gifts as were suitable to such a victory: and as for Ptolemy Philometer and his wife Cleopatra, they committed their whole kingdom to the Jews, when Onias and Dositheus, both Jews, whose names are laughed at by Apion, were the generals of their whole army. But certainly, instead of reproaching them, he ought to admire their actions, and return them thanks for saving Alexandria, whose citizen he pretends to be; for when these Alexandrians were making war with Cleopatra the queen, and were in danger of being utterly ruined, these Jews brought them to terms of agreement, and freed them from the miseries of a civil war. "But then [says Apion] Onias brought a small army afterward upon the city at the time when Thorruns the Roman ambassador was there present." Yes, do I venture to say, and that he did rightly and very justly in so doing; for that Ptolemy who was called Physco, upon the death of his brother Philometer, came from Cyrene, and would have ejected Cleopatra as well as her sons out of their kingdom, that he might obtain it for himself unjustly. [5] For this cause then it was that Onias undertook a war against him on Cleopatra's account; nor would he desert that trust the royal family had reposed in him in their distress. Accordingly, God gave a remarkable attestation to his righteous procedure; for when Ptolemy Physco [6] had the presumption to fight against Onias's army, and had caught all the Jews that were in the city [Alexandria], with their children and wives, and exposed them naked and in bonds to his elephants, that they might be trodden upon and destroyed, and when he had made those elephants drunk for that purpose, the event proved contrary to his preparations; for these elephants left the Jews who were exposed to them, and fell violently upon Physco's friends, and slew a great number of them; nay, after this Ptolemy saw a terrible ghost, which prohibited his hurting those men; his very concubine, whom he loved so well, [some call her Ithaca, and others Irene,] making supplication to him, that he would not perpetrate so great a wickedness. So he complied with her request, and repented of what he either had already done, or was about to do; whence it is well known that the Alexandrian Jews do with good reason celebrate this day, on the account that they had thereon been vouchsafed such an evident deliverance from God. However, Apion, the common calumniator of men, hath the presumption to accuse the Jews for making this war against Physco, when he ought to have commended them for the same. This man also makes mention of Cleopatra, the last queen of Alexandria, and abuses us, because she was ungrateful to us; whereas he ought to have reproved her, who indulged herself in all kinds of injustice and wicked practices, both with regard to her nearest relations and husbands who had loved her, and, indeed, in general with regard to all the Romans, and those emperors that were her benefactors; who also had her sister Arsinoe slain in a temple, when she had done her no harm: moreover, she had her brother slain by private treachery, and she destroyed the gods of her country and the sepulchers of her progenitors; and while she had received her kingdom from the first Caesar, she had the impudence to rebel against his son: [7] and successor; nay, she corrupted Antony with her love-tricks, and rendered him an enemy to his country, and made him treacherous to his friends, and [by his means] despoiled some of their royal authority, and forced others in her madness to act wickedly. But what need I enlarge upon this head any further, when she left Antony in his fight at sea, though he were her husband, and the father of their common children, and compelled him to resign up his government, with the army, and to follow her [into Egypt]? nay, when last of all Caesar had taken Alexandria, she came to that pitch of cruelty, that she declared she had some hope of preserving her affairs still, in case she could kill the Jews, though it were with her own hand; to such a degree of barbarity and perfidiousness had she arrived. And doth any one think that we cannot boast ourselves of any thing, if, as Apion says, this queen did not at a time of famine distribute wheat among us? However, she at length met with the punishment she deserved. As for us Jews, we appeal to the great Caesar what assistance we brought him, and what fidelity we showed to him against the Egyptians; as also to the senate and its decrees, and the epistles of Augustus Caesar, whereby our merits [to the Romans] are justified. Apion ought to have looked upon those epistles, and in particular to have examined the testimonies given on our behalf, under Alexander and all the Ptolemies, and the decrees of the senate and of the greatest Roman emperors. And if Germanicus was not able to make a distribution of corn to all the inhabitants of Alexandria, that only shows what a barren time it was, and how great a want there was then of corn, but tends nothing to the accusation of the Jews; for what all the emperors have thought of the Alexandrian Jews is well known, for this distribution of wheat was no otherwise omitted with regard to the Jews, than it was with regard to the other inhabitants of Alexandria. But they still were desirous to preserve what the kings had formerly intrusted to their care, I mean the custody of the river; nor did those kings think them unworthy of having the entire custody thereof, upon all occasions. 6. But besides this, Apion objects to us thus: "If the Jews [says he] be citizens of Alexandria, why do they not worship the same gods with the Alexandrians?" To which I give this answer: Since you are yourselves Egyptians, why do you fight it out one against another, and have implacable wars about your religion? At this rate we must not call you all Egyptians, nor indeed in general men, because you breed up with great care beasts of a nature quite contrary to that of men, although the nature of all men seems to be one and the same. Now if there be such differences in opinion among you Egyptians, why are you surprised that those who came to Alexandria from another country, and had original laws of their own before, should persevere in the observance of those laws? But still he charges us with being the authors of sedition; which accusation, if it be a just one, why is it not laid against us all, since we are known to be all of one mind. Moreover, those that search into such matters will soon discover that the authors of sedition have been such citizens of Alexandria as Apion is; for while they were the Grecians and Macedonians who were ill possession of this city, there was no sedition raised against us, and we were permitted to observe our ancient solemnities; but when the number of the Egyptians therein came to be considerable, the times grew confused, and then these seditions brake out still more and more, while our people continued uncorrupted. These Egyptians, therefore, were the authors of these troubles, who having not the constancy of Macedonians, nor the prudence of Grecians, indulged all of them the evil manners of the Egyptians, and continued their ancient hatred against us; for what is here so presumptuously charged upon us, is owing to the differences that are amongst themselves; while many of them have not obtained the privileges of citizens in proper times, but style those who are well known to have had that privilege extended to them all no other than foreigners: for it does not appear that any of the kings have ever formerly bestowed those privileges of citizens upon Egyptians, no more than have the emperors done it more lately; while it was Alexander who introduced us into this city at first, the kings augmented our privileges therein, and the Romans have been pleased to preserve them always inviolable. Moreover, Apion would lay a blot upon us, because we do not erect images for our emperors; as if those emperors did not know this before, or stood in need of Apion as their defender; whereas he ought rather to have admired the magnanimity and modesty of the Romans, whereby they do not compel those that are subject to them to transgress the laws of their countries, but are willing to receive the honors due to them after such a manner as those who are to pay them esteem consistent with piety and with their own laws; for they do not thank people for conferring honors upon them, When they are compelled by violence so to do. Accordingly, since the Grecians and some other nations think it a right thing to make images, nay, when they have painted the pictures of their parents, and wives, and children, they exult for joy; and some there are who take pictures for themselves of such persons as were no way related to them; nay, some take the pictures of such servants as they were fond of; what wonder is it then if such as these appear willing to pay the same respect to their princes and lords? But then our legislator hath forbidden us to make images, not by way of denunciation beforehand, that the Roman authority was not to be honored, but as despising a thing that was neither necessary nor useful for either God or man; and he forbade them, as we shall prove hereafter, to make these images for any part of the animal creation, and much less for God himself, who is no part of such animal creation. Yet hath our legislator no where forbidden us to pay honors to worthy men, provided they be of another kind, and inferior to those we pay to God; with which honors we willingly testify our respect to our emperors, and to the people of Rome; we also offer perpetual sacrifices for them; nor do we only offer them every day at the common expenses of all the Jews, but although we offer no other such sacrifices out of our common expenses, no, not for our own children, yet do we this as a peculiar honor to the emperors, and to them alone, while we do the same to no other person whomsoever. And let this suffice for an answer in general to Apion, as to what he says with relation to the Alexandrian Jews. 7. However, I cannot but admire those other authors who furnished this man with such his materials; I mean Possidonius and Apollonius [the son of] Molo, [8] who, while they accuse us for not worshipping the same gods whom others worship, they think themselves not guilty of impiety when they tell lies of us, and frame absurd and reproachful stories about our temple; whereas it is a most shameful thing for freemen to forge lies on any occasion, and much more so to forge them about our temple, which was so famous over all the world, and was preserved so sacred by us; for Apion hath the impudence to pretend that, "the Jews placed an ass's head in their holy place;" and he affirms that this was discovered when Antiochus Epiphanes spoiled our temple, and found that ass's head there made of gold, and worth a great deal of money. To this my first answer shall be this, that had there been any such thing among us, an Egyptian ought by no means to have thrown it in our teeth, since an ass is not a more contemptible animal than [9] and goats, and other such creatures, which among them are gods. But besides this answer, I say further, how comes it about that Apion does not understand this to be no other than a palpable lie, and to be confuted by the thing itself as utterly incredible? For we Jews are always governed by the same laws, in which we constantly persevere; and although many misfortunes have befallen our city, as the like have befallen others, and although Theos [Epiphanes], and Pompey the Great, and Licinius Crassus, and last of all Titus Caesar, have conquered us in war, and gotten possession of our temple; yet have they none of them found any such thing there, nor indeed any thing but what was agreeable to the strictest piety; although what they found we are not at liberty to reveal to other nations. But for Antiochus [Epiphanes], he had no just cause for that ravage in our temple that he made; he only came to it when he wanted money, without declaring himself our enemy, and attacked us while we were his associates and his friends; nor did he find any thing there that was ridiculous. This is attested by many worthy writers; Polybius of Megalopolis, Strabo of Cappadocia, Nicolaus of Damascus, Timagenes, Castor the chronotoger, and Apollodorus; [10] who all say that it was out of Antiochus's want of money that he broke his league with the Jews, and despoiled their temple when it was full of gold and silver. Apion ought to have had a regard to these facts, unless he had himself had either an ass's heart or a dog's impudence; of such a dog I mean as they worship; for he had no other external reason for the lies he tells of us. As for us Jews, we ascribe no honor or power to asses, as do the Egyptians to crocodiles and asps, when they esteem such as are seized upon by the former, or bitten by the latter, to be happy persons, and persons worthy of God. Asses are the same with us which they are with other wise men, viz. creatures that bear the burdens that we lay upon them; but if they come to our thrashing-floors and eat our corn, or do not perform what we impose upon them, we beat them with a great many stripes, because it is their business to minister to us in our husbandry affairs. But this Apion of ours was either perfectly unskillful in the composition of such fallacious discourses, or however, when he begun [somewhat better], he was not able to persevere in what he had undertaken, since he hath no manner of success in those reproaches he casts upon us. 8. He adds another Grecian fable, in order to reproach us. In reply to which, it would be enough to say, that they who presume to speak about Divine worship ought not to be ignorant of this plain truth, that it is a degree of less impurity to pass through temples, than to forge wicked calumnies of its priests. Now such men as he are more zealous to justify a sacrilegious king, than to write what is just and what is true about us, and about our temple; for when they are desirous of gratifying Antiochus, and of concealing that perfidiousness and sacrilege which he was guilty of, with regard to our nation, when he wanted money, they endeavor to disgrace us, and tell lies even relating to futurities. Apion becomes other men's prophet upon this occasion, and says that "Antiochus found in our temple a bed, and a man lying upon it, with a small table before him, full of dainties, from the [fishes of the] sea, and the fowls of the dry land; that this man was amazed at these dainties thus set before him; that he immediately adored the king, upon his coming in, as hoping that he would afford him all possible assistance; that he fell down upon his knees, and stretched out to him his right hand, and begged to be released; and that when the king bid him sit down, and tell him who he was, and why he dwelt there, and what was the meaning of those various sorts of food that were set before him the man made a lamentable complaint, and with sighs, and tears in his eyes, gave him this account of the distress he was in; and said that he was a Greek and that as he went over this province, in order to get his living, he was seized upon by foreigners, on a sudden, and brought to this temple, and shut up therein, and was seen by nobody, but was fattened by these curious provisions thus set before him; and that truly at the first such unexpected advantages seemed to him matter of great joy; that after a while, they brought a suspicion him, and at length astonishment, what their meaning should be; that at last he inquired of the servants that came to him and was by them informed that it was in order to the fulfilling a law of the Jews, which they must not tell him, that he was thus fed; and that they did the same at a set time every year: that they used to catch a Greek foreigner, and fat him thus up every year, and then lead him to a certain wood, and kill him, and sacrifice with their accustomed solemnities, and taste of his entrails, and take an oath upon this sacrificing a Greek, that they would ever be at enmity with the Greeks; and that then they threw the remaining parts of the miserable wretch into a certain pit." Apion adds further, that, "the man said there were but a few days to come ere he was to be slain, and implored of Antiochus that, out of the reverence he bore to the Grecian gods, he would disappoint the snares the Jews laid for his blood, and would deliver him from the miseries with which he was encompassed." Now this is such a most tragical fable as is full of nothing but cruelty and impudence; yet does it not excuse Antiochus of his sacrilegious attempt, as those who write it in his vindication are willing to suppose; for he could not presume beforehand that he should meet with any such thing in coming to the temple, but must have found it unexpectedly. He was therefore still an impious person, that was given to unlawful pleasures, and had no regard to God in his actions. But [as for Apion], he hath done whatever his extravagant love of lying hath dictated to him, as it is most easy to discover by a consideration of his writings; for the difference of our laws is known not to regard the Grecians only, but they are principally opposite to the Egyptians, and to some other nations also for while it so falls out that men of all countries come sometimes and sojourn among us, how comes it about that we take an oath, and conspire only against the Grecians, and that by the effusion of their blood also? Or how is it possible that all the Jews should get together to these sacrifices, and the entrails of one man should be sufficient for so many thousands to taste of them, as Apion pretends? Or why did not the king carry this man, whosoever he was, and whatsoever was his name, [which is not set down in Apion's book,] with great pomp back into his own country? when he might thereby have been esteemed a religious person himself, and a mighty lover of the Greeks, and might thereby have procured himself great assistance from all men against that hatred the Jews bore to him. But I leave this matter; for the proper way of confuting fools is not to use bare words, but to appeal to the things themselves that make against them. Now, then, all such as ever saw the construction of our temple, of what nature it was, know well enough how the purity of it was never to be profaned; for it had four several courts [12] encompassed with cloisters round about, every one of which had by our law a peculiar degree of separation from the rest. Into the first court every body was allowed to go, even foreigners, and none but women, during their courses, were prohibited to pass through it; all the Jews went into the second court, as well as their wives, when they were free from all uncleanness; into the third court went in the Jewish men, when they were clean and purified; into the fourth went the priests, having on their sacerdotal garments; but for the most sacred place, none went in but the high priests, clothed in their peculiar garments. Now there is so great caution used about these offices of religion, that the priests are appointed to go into the temple but at certain hours; for in the morning, at the opening of the inner temple, those that are to officiate receive the sacrifices, as they do again at noon, till the doors are shut. Lastly, it is not so much as lawful to carry any vessel into the holy house; nor is there any thing therein, but the altar [of incense], the table [of shew-bread], the censer, and the candlestick, which are all written in the law; for there is nothing further there, nor are there any mysteries performed that may not be spoken of; nor is there any feasting within the place. For what I have now said is publicly known, and supported by the testimony of the whole people, and their operations are very manifest; for although there be four courses of the priests, and every one of them have above five thousand men in them, yet do they officiate on certain days only; and when those days are over, other priests succeed in the performance of their sacrifices, and assemble together at mid-day, and receive the keys of the temple, and the vessels by tale, without any thing relating to food or drink being carried into the temple; nay, we are not allowed to offer such things at the altar, excepting what is prepared for the sacrifices. 9. What then can we say of Apion, but that he examined nothing that concerned these things, while still he uttered incredible words about them? but it is a great shame for a grammarian not to be able to write true history. Now if he knew the purity of our temple, he hath entirely omitted to take notice of it; but he forges a story about the seizing of a Grecian, about ineffable food, and the most delicious preparation of dainties; and pretends that strangers could go into a place whereinto the noblest men among the Jews are not allowed to enter, unless they be priests. This, therefore, is the utmost degree of impiety, and a voluntary lie, in order to the delusion of those who will not examine into the truth of matters; whereas such unspeakable mischiefs as are above related have been occasioned by such calumnies that are raised upon us. 10. Nay, this miracle or piety derides us further, and adds the following pretended facts to his former fable; for he says that this man related how, "while the Jews were once in a long war with the Idumeans, there came a man out of one of the cities of the Idumeans, who there had worshipped Apollo. This man, whose name is said to have been Zabidus, came to the Jews, and promised that he would deliver Apollo, the god of Dora, into their hands, and that he would come to our temple, if they would all come up with him, and bring the whole multitude of the Jews with them; that Zabidus made him a certain wooden instrument, and put it round about him, and set three rows of lamps therein, and walked after such a manner, that he appeared to those that stood a great way off him to be a kind of star, walking upon the earth; that the Jews were terribly affrighted at so surprising an appearance, and stood very quiet at a distance; and that Zabidus, while they continued so very quiet, went into the holy house, and carried off that golden head of an ass, [for so facetiously does he write,] and then went his way back again to Dora in great haste." And say you so, sir! as I may reply; then does Apion load the ass, that is, himself, and lays on him a burden of fooleries and lies; for he writes of places that have no being, and not knowing the cities he speaks of, he changes their situation; for Idumea borders upon our country, and is near to Gaza, in which there is no such city as Dora; although there be, it is true, a city named Dora in Phoenicia, near Mount Carmel, but it is four days' journey from Idumea. [12] Now, then, why does this man accuse us, because we have not gods in common with other nations, if our fathers were so easily prevailed upon to have Apollo come to them, and thought they saw him walking upon the earth, and the stars with him? for certainly those who have so many festivals, wherein they light lamps, must yet, at this rate, have never seen a candlestick! But still it seems that while Zabidus took his journey over the country, where were so many ten thousands of people, nobody met him. He also, it seems, even in a time of war, found the walls of Jerusalem destitute of guards. I omit the rest. Now the doors of the holy house were seventy [13] cubits high, and twenty cubits broad; they were all plated over with gold, and almost of solid gold itself, and there were no fewer than twenty [14] men required to shut them every day; nor was it lawful ever to leave them open, though it seems this lamp-bearer of ours opened them easily, or thought he opened them, as he thought he had the ass's head in his hand. Whether, therefore, he returned it to us again, or whether Apion took it, and brought it into the temple again, that Antiochus might find it, and afford a handle for a second fable of Apion's, is uncertain. 11. Apion also tells a false story, when he mentions an oath of ours, as if we "swore by God, the Maker of the heaven, and earth, and sea, to bear no good will to any foreigner, and particularly to none of the Greeks." Now this liar ought to have said directly that, "we would bear no good-will to any foreigner, and particularly to none of the Egyptians." For then his story about the oath would have squared with the rest of his original forgeries, in case our forefathers had been driven away by their kinsmen, the Egyptians, not on account of any wickedness they had been guilty of, but on account of the calamities they were under; for as to the Grecians, we were rather remote from them in place, than different from them in our institutions, insomuch that we have no enmity with them, nor any jealousy of them. On the contrary, it hath so happened that many of them have come over to our laws, and some of them have continued in their observation, although others of them had not courage enough to persevere, and so departed from them again; nor did any body ever hear this oath sworn by us: Apion, it seems, was the only person that heard it, for he indeed was the first composer of it. 12. However, Apion deserves to be admired for his great prudence, as to what I am going to say, which is this, "That there is a plain mark among us, that we neither have just laws, nor worship God as we ought to do, because we are not governors, but are rather in subjection to Gentiles, sometimes to one nation, and sometimes to another; and that our city hath been liable to several calamities, while their city [Alexandria] hath been of old time an imperial city, and not used to be in subjection to the Romans." But now this man had better leave off this bragging, for every body but himself would think that Apion said what he hath said against himself; for there are very few nations that have had the good fortune to continue many generations in the principality, but still the mutations in human affairs have put them into subjection under others; and most nations have been often subdued, and brought into subjection by others. Now for the Egyptians, perhaps they are the only nation that have had this extraordinary privilege, to have never served any of those monarchs who subdued Asia and Europe, and this on account, as they pretend, that the gods fled into their country, and saved themselves by being changed into the shapes of wild beasts! Whereas these Egyptians [15] are the very people that appear to have never, in all the past ages, had one day of freedom, no, not so much as from their own lords. For I will not reproach them with relating the manner how the Persians used them, and this not once only, but many times, when they laid their cities waste, demolished their temples, and cut the throats of those animals whom they esteemed to be gods; for it is not reasonable to imitate the clownish ignorance of Apion, who hath no regard to the misfortunes of the Athenians, or of the Lacedemonians, the latter of whom were styled by all men the most courageous, and the former the most religious of the Grecians. I say nothing of such kings as have been famous for piety, particularly of one of them, whose name was Cresus, nor what calamities he met with in his life; I say nothing of the citadel of Athens, of the temple at Ephesus, of that at Delphi, nor of ten thousand others which have been burnt down, while nobody cast reproaches on those that were the sufferers, but on those that were the actors therein. But now we have met with Apion, an accuser of our nation, though one that still forgets the miseries of his own people, the Egyptians; but it is that Sesostris who was once so celebrated a king of Egypt that hath blinded him. Now we will not brag of our kings, David and Solomon, though they conquered many nations; accordingly we will let them alone. However, Apion is ignorant of what every body knows, that the Egyptians were servants to the Persians, and afterwards to the Macedonians, when they were lords of Asia, and were no better than slaves, while we have enjoyed liberty formerly; nay, more than that, have had the dominion of the cities that lie round about us, and this nearly for a hundred and twenty years together, until Pompeius Magnus. And when all the kings every where were conquered by the Romans, our ancestors were the only people who continued to be esteemed their confederates and friends, on account of their fidelity to them.[16] 13. "But," says Apion, "we Jews have not had any wonderful men amongst us, not any inventors of arts, nor any eminent for wisdom." He then enumerates Socrates, and Zeno, and Cleanthes, and some others of the same sort; and, after all, he adds himself to them, which is the most wonderful thing of all that he says, and pronounces Alexandria to be happy, because it hath such a citizen as he is in it; for he was the fittest man to be a witness to his own deserts, although he hath appeared to all others no better than a wicked mountebank, of a corrupt life and ill discourses; on which account one may justly pity Alexandria, if it should value itself upon such a citizen as he is. But as to our own men, we have had those who have been as deserving of commendation as any other whosoever, and such as have perused our Antiquities cannot be ignorant of them. 14. As to the other things which he sets down as blameworthy, it may perhaps be the best way to let them pass without apology, that he may be allowed to be his own accuser, and the accuser of the rest of the Egyptians. However, he accuses us for sacrificing animals, and for abstaining from swine's flesh, and laughs at us for the circumcision of our privy members. Now as for our slaughter of tame animals for sacrifices, it is common to us and to all other men; but this Apion, by making it a crime to sacrifice them, demonstrates himself to be an Egyptian; for had he been either a Grecian or a Macedonian, [as he pretends to be,] he had not shown any uneasiness at it; for those people glory in sacrificing whole hecatombs to the gods, and make use of those sacrifices for feasting; and yet is not the world thereby rendered destitute of cattle, as Apion was afraid would come to pass. Yet if all men had followed the manners of the Egyptians, the world had certainly been made desolate as to mankind, but had been filled full of the wildest sort of brute beasts, which, because they suppose them to be gods, they carefully nourish. However, if any one should ask Apion which of the Egyptians he thinks to be the most wise and most pious of them all, he would certainly acknowledge the priests to be so; for the histories say that two things were originally committed to their care by their kings' injunctions, the worship of the gods, and the support of wisdom and philosophy. Accordingly, these priests are all circumcised, and abstain from swine's flesh; nor does any one of the other Egyptians assist them in slaying those sacrifices they offer to the gods. Apion was therefore quite blinded in his mind, when, for the sake of the Egyptians, he contrived to reproach us, and to accuse such others as not only make use of that conduct of life which he so much abuses, but have also taught other men to be circumcised, as says Herodotus; which makes me think that Apion is hereby justly punished for his casting such reproaches on the laws of his own country; for he was circumcised himself of necessity, on account of an ulcer in his privy member; and when he received no benefit by such circumcision, but his member became putrid, he died in great torment. Now men of good tempers ought to observe their own laws concerning religion accurately, and to persevere therein, but not presently to abuse the laws of other nations, while this Apion deserted his own laws, and told lies about ours. And this was the end of Apion's life, and this shall be the conclusion of our discourse about him. 15. But now, since Apollonius Molo, and Lysimachus, and some others, write treatises about our lawgiver Moses, and about our laws, which are neither just nor true, and this partly out of ignorance, but chiefly out of ill-will to us, while they calumniate Moses as an impostor and deceiver, and pretend that our laws teach us wickedness, but nothing that is virtuous, I have a mind to discourse briefly, according to my ability, about our whole constitution of government, and about the particular branches of it. For I suppose it will thence become evident, that the laws we have given us are disposed after the best manner for the advancement of piety, for mutual communion with one another, for a general love of mankind, as also for justice, and for sustaining labors with fortitude, and for a contempt of death. And I beg of those that shall peruse this writing of mine, to read it without partiality; for it is not my purpose to write an encomium upon ourselves, but I shall esteem this as a most just apology for us, and taken from those our laws, according to which we lead our lives, against the many and the lying objections that have been made against us. Moreover, since this Apollonius does not do like Apion, and lay a continued accusation against us, but does it only by starts, and up and clown his discourse, while he sometimes reproaches us as atheists, and man-haters, and sometimes hits us in the teeth with our want of courage, and yet sometimes, on the contrary, accuses us of too great boldness and madness in our conduct; nay, he says that we are the weakest of all the barbarians, and that this is the reason why we are the only people who have made no improvements in human life; now I think I shall have then sufficiently disproved all these his allegations, when it shall appear that our laws enjoin the very reverse of what he says, and that we very carefully observe those laws ourselves. And if I he compelled to make mention of the laws of other nations, that are contrary to ours, those ought deservedly to thank themselves for it, who have pretended to depreciate our laws in comparison of their own; nor will there, I think, be any room after that for them to pretend either that we have no such laws ourselves, an epitome of which I will present to the reader, or that we do not, above all men, continue in the observation of them. 16. To begin then a good way backward, I would advance this, in the first place, that those who have been admirers of good order, and of living under common laws, and who began to introduce them, may well have this testimony that they are better than other men, both for moderation and such virtue as is agreeable to nature. Indeed their endeavor was to have every thing they ordained believed to be very ancient, that they might not be thought to imitate others, but might appear to have delivered a regular way of living to others after them. Since then this is the case, the excellency of a legislator is seen in providing for the people's living after the best manner, and in prevailing with those that are to use the laws he ordains for them, to have a good opinion of them, and in obliging the multitude to persevere in them, and to make no changes in them, neither in prosperity nor adversity. Now I venture to say, that our legislator is the most ancient of all the legislators whom we have ally where heard of; for as for the Lycurguses, and Solons, and Zaleucus Locrensis, and all those legislators who are so admired by the Greeks, they seem to be of yesterday, if compared with our legislator, insomuch as the very name of a law was not so much as known in old times among the Grecians. Homer is a witness to the truth of this observation, who never uses that term in all his poems; for indeed there was then no such thing among them, but the multitude was governed by wise maxims, and by the injunctions of their king. It was also a long time that they continued in the use of these unwritten customs, although they were always changing them upon several occasions. But for our legislator, who was of so much greater antiquity than the rest, [as even those that speak against us upon all occasions do always confess,] he exhibited himself to the people as their best governor and counselor, and included in his legislation the entire conduct of their lives, and prevailed with them to receive it, and brought it so to pass, that those that were made acquainted with his laws did most carefully observe them. 17. But let us consider his first and greatest work; for when it was resolved on by our forefathers to leave Egypt, and return to their own country, this Moses took the many tell thousands that were of the people, and saved them out of many desperate distresses, and brought them home in safety. And certainly it was here necessary to travel over a country without water, and full of sand, to overcome their enemies, and, during these battles, to preserve their children, and their wives, and their prey; on all which occasions he became an excellent general of an army, and a most prudent counselor, and one that took the truest care of them all; he also so brought it about, that the whole multitude depended upon him. And while he had them always obedient to what he enjoined, he made no manner of use of his authority for his own private advantage, which is the usual time when governors gain great powers to themselves, and pave the way for tyranny, and accustom the multitude to live very dissolutely; whereas, when our legislator was in so great authority, he, on the contrary, thought he ought to have regard to piety, and to show his great good-will to the people; and by this means he thought he might show the great degree of virtue that was in him, and might procure the most lasting security to those who had made him their governor. When he had therefore come to such a good resolution, and had performed such wonderful exploits, we had just reason to look upon ourselves as having him for a divine governor and counselor. And when he had first persuaded himself [17] that his actions and designs were agreeable to God's will, he thought it his duty to impress, above all things, that notion upon the multitude; for those who have once believed that God is the inspector of their lives, will not permit themselves in any sin. And this is the character of our legislator: he was no impostor, no deceiver, as his revilers say, though unjustly, but such a one as they brag Minos [18] to have been among the Greeks, and other legislators after him; for some of them suppose that they had their laws from Jupiter, while Minos said that the revelation of his laws was to be referred to Apollo, and his oracle at Delphi, whether they really thought they were so derived, or supposed, however, that they could persuade the people easily that so it was. But which of these it was who made the best laws, and which had the greatest reason to believe that God was their author, it will be easy, upon comparing those laws themselves together, to determine; for it is time that we come to that point. [19] Now there are innumerable differences in the particular customs and laws that are among all mankind, which a man may briefly reduce under the following heads: Some legislators have permitted their governments to be under monarchies, others put them under oligarchies, and others under a republican form; but our legislator had no regard to any of these forms, but he ordained our government to be what, by a strained expression, may be termed a Theocracy, [20] by ascribing the authority and the power to God, and by persuading all the people to have a regard to him, as the author of all the good things that were enjoyed either in common by all mankind, or by each one in particular, and of all that they themselves obtained by praying to him in their greatest difficulties. He informed them that it was impossible to escape God's observation, even in any of our outward actions, or in any of our inward thoughts. Moreover, he represented God as unbegotten, [21] and immutable, through all eternity, superior to all mortal conceptions in pulchritude; and, though known to us by his power, yet unknown to us as to his essence. I do not now explain how these notions of God are the sentiments of the wisest among the Grecians, and how they were taught them upon the principles that he afforded them. However, they testify, with great assurance, that these notions are just, and agreeable to the nature of God, and to his majesty; for Pythagoras, and Anaxagoras, and Plato, and the Stoic philosophers that succeeded them, and almost all the rest, are of the same sentiments, and had the same notions of the nature of God; yet durst not these men disclose those true notions to more than a few, because the body of the people were prejudiced with other opinions beforehand. But our legislator, who made his actions agree to his laws, did not only prevail with those that were his contemporaries to agree with these his notions, but so firmly imprinted this faith in God upon all their posterity, that it never could be removed. The reason why the constitution of this legislation was ever better directed to the utility of all than other legislations were, is this, that Moses did not make religion a part of virtue, but he saw and he ordained other virtues to be parts of religion; I mean justice, and fortitude, and temperance, and a universal agreement of the members of the community with one another; for all our actions and studies, and all our words, [in Moses's settlement,] have a reference to piety towards God; for he hath left none of these in suspense, or undetermined. For there are two ways of coming at any sort of learning and a moral conduct of life; the one is by instruction in words, the other by practical exercises. Now other lawgivers have separated these two ways in their opinions, and choosing one of those ways of instruction, or that which best pleased every one of them, neglected the other. Thus did the Lacedemonians and the Cretians teach by practical exercises, but not by words; while the Athenians, and almost all the other Grecians, made laws about what was to be done, or left undone, but had no regard to the exercising them thereto in practice. 18. But for our legislator, he very carefully joined these two methods of instruction together; for he neither left these practical exercises to go on without verbal instruction, nor did he permit the hearing of the law to proceed without the exercises for practice; but beginning immediately from the earliest infancy, and the appointment of every one's diet, he left nothing of the very smallest consequence to be done at the pleasure and disposal of the person himself. Accordingly, he made a fixed rule of law what sorts of food they should abstain from, and what sorts they should make use of; as also, what communion they should have with others what great diligence they should use in their occupations, and what times of rest should be interposed, that, by living under that law as under a father and a master, we might be guilty of no sin, neither voluntary nor out of ignorance; for he did not suffer the guilt of ignorance to go on without punishment, but demonstrated the law to be the best and the most necessary instruction of all others, permitting the people to leave off their other employments, and to assemble together for the hearing of the law, and learning it exactly, and this not once or twice, or oftener, but every week; which thing all the other legislators seem to have neglected. 19. And indeed the greatest part of mankind are so far from living according to their own laws, that they hardly know them; but when they have sinned, they learn from others that they have transgressed the law. Those also who are in the highest and principal posts of the government, confess they are not acquainted with those laws, and are obliged to take such persons for their assessors in public administrations as profess to have skill in those laws; but for our people, if any body do but ask any one of them about our laws, he will more readily tell them all than he will tell his own name, and this in consequence of our having learned them immediately as soon as ever we became sensible of any thing, and of our having them as it were engraven on our souls. Our transgressors of them are but few, and it is impossible, when any do offend, to escape punishment. 20. And this very thing it is that principally creates such a wonderful agreement of minds amongst us all; for this entire agreement of ours in all our notions concerning God, and our having no difference in our course of life and manners, procures among us the most excellent concord of these our manners that is any where among mankind; for no other people but the Jews have avoided all discourses about God that any way contradict one another, which yet are frequent among other nations; and this is true not only among ordinary persons, according as every one is affected, but some of the philosophers have been insolent enough to indulge such contradictions, while some of them have undertaken to use such words as entirely take away the nature of God, as others of them have taken away his providence over mankind. Nor can any one perceive amongst us any difference in the conduct of our lives, but all our works are common to us all. We have one sort of discourse concerning God, which is conformable to our law, and affirms that he sees all things; as also we have but one way of speaking concerning the conduct of our lives, that all other things ought to have piety for their end; and this any body may hear from our women, and servants themselves. 21. And, indeed, hence hath arisen that accusation which some make against us, that we have not produced men that have been the inventors of new operations, or of new ways of speaking; for others think it a fine thing to persevere in nothing that has been delivered down from their forefathers, and these testify it to be an instance of the sharpest wisdom when these men venture to transgress those traditions; whereas we, on the contrary, suppose it to be our only wisdom and virtue to admit no actions nor supposals that are contrary to our original laws; which procedure of ours is a just and sure sign that our law is admirably constituted; for such laws as are not thus well made are convicted upon trial to want amendment. 22. But while we are ourselves persuaded that our law was made agreeably to the will of God, it would be impious for us not to observe the same; for what is there in it that any body would change? and what can be invented that is better? or what can we take out of other people's laws that will exceed it? Perhaps some would have the entire settlement of our government altered. And where shall we find a better or more righteous constitution than ours, while this makes us esteem God to be the Governor of the universe, and permits the priests in general to be the administrators of the principal affairs, and withal intrusts the government over the other priests to the chief high priest himself? which priests our legislator, at their first appointment, did not advance to that dignity for their riches, or any abundance of other possessions, or any plenty they had as the gifts of fortune; but he intrusted the principal management of Divine worship to those that exceeded others in an ability to persuade men, and in prudence of conduct. These men had the main care of the law and of the other parts of the people's conduct committed to them; for they were the priests who were ordained to be the inspectors of all, and the judges in doubtful cases, and the punishers of those that were condemned to suffer punishment. 23. What form of government then can be more holy than this? what more worthy kind of worship can be paid to God than we pay, where the entire body of the people are prepared for religion, where an extraordinary degree of care is required in the priests, and where the whole polity is so ordered as if it were a certain religious solemnity? For what things foreigners, when they solemnize such festivals, are not able to observe for a few days' time, and call them Mysteries and Sacred Ceremonies, we observe with great pleasure and an unshaken resolution during our whole lives. What are the things then that we are commanded or forbidden? They are simple, and easily known. The first command is concerning God, and affirms that God contains all things, and is a Being every way perfect and happy, self-sufficient, and supplying all other beings; the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things. He is manifest in his works and benefits, and more conspicuous than any other being whatsoever; but as to his form and magnitude, he is most obscure. All materials, let them be ever so costly, are unworthy to compose an image for him, and all arts are unartful to express the notion we ought to have of him. We can neither see nor think of any thing like him, nor is it agreeable to piety to form a resemblance of him. We see his works, the light, the heaven, the earth, the sun and the moon, the waters, the generations of animals, the productions of fruits. These things hath God made, not with hands, nor with labor, nor as wanting the assistance of any to cooperate with him; but as his will resolved they should be made and be good also, they were made and became good immediately. All men ought to follow this Being, and to worship him in the exercise of virtue; for this way of worship of God is the most holy of all others. 24. There ought also to be but one temple for one God; for likeness is the constant foundation of agreement. This temple ought to be common to all men, because he is the common God of all men. High priests are to be continually about his worship, over whom he that is the first by his birth is to be their ruler perpetually. His business must be to offer sacrifices to God, together with those priests that are joined with him, to see that the laws be observed, to determine controversies, and to punish those that are convicted of injustice; while he that does not submit to him shall be subject to the same punishment, as if he had been guilty of impiety towards God himself. When we offer sacrifices to him, we do it not in order to surfeit ourselves, or to be drunken; for such excesses are against the will of God, and would be an occasion of injuries and of luxury; but by keeping ourselves sober, orderly, and ready for our other occupations, and being more temperate than others. And for our duty at the sacrifices [22] themselves, we ought, in the first place, to pray for the common welfare of all, and after that for our own; for we are made for fellowship one with another, and he who prefers the common good before what is peculiar to himself is above all acceptable to God. And let our prayers and supplications be made humbly to God, not [so much] that he would give us what is good, [for he hath already given that of his own accord, and hath proposed the same publicly to all,] as that we may duly receive it, and when we have received it, may preserve it. Now the law has appointed several purifications at our sacrifices, whereby we are cleansed after a funeral, after what sometimes happens to us in bed, and after accompanying with our wives, and upon many other occasions, which it would be too long now to set down. And this is our doctrine concerning God and his worship, and is the same that the law appoints for our practice. 25. But, then, what are our laws about marriage? That law owns no other mixture of sexes but that which nature hath appointed, of a man with his wife, and that this be used only for the procreation of children. But it abhors the mixture of a male with a male; and if any one do that, death is its punishment. It commands us also, when we marry, not to have regard to portion, nor to take a woman by violence, nor to persuade her deceitfully and knavishly; but to demand her in marriage of him who hath power to dispose of her, and is fit to give her away by the nearness of his kindred; for, says the Scripture, "A woman is inferior to her husband in all things." [23] Let her, therefore, be obedient to him; not so that he should abuse her, but that she may acknowledge her duty to her husband; for God hath given the authority to the husband. A husband, therefore, is to lie only with his wife whom he hath married; but to have to do with another man's wife is a wicked thing, which, if any one ventures upon, death is inevitably his punishment: no more can he avoid the same who forces a virgin betrothed to another man, or entices another man's wife. The law, moreover, enjoins us to bring up all our offspring, and forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten, or to destroy it afterward; and if any woman appears to have so done, she will be a murderer of her child, by destroying a living creature, and diminishing human kind; if any one, therefore, proceeds to such fornication or murder, he cannot be clean. Moreover, the law enjoins, that after the man and wife have lain together in a regular way, they shall bathe themselves; for there is a defilement contracted thereby, both in soul and body, as if they had gone into another country; for indeed the soul, by being united to the body, is subject to miseries, and is not freed therefrom again but by death; on which account the law requires this purification to be entirely performed. 26. Nay, indeed, the law does not permit us to make festivals at the births of our children, and thereby afford occasion of drinking to excess; but it ordains that the very beginning of our education should be immediately directed to sobriety. It also commands us to bring those children up in learning, and to exercise them in the laws, and make them acquainted with the acts of their predecessors, in order to their imitation of them, and that they might be nourished up in the laws from their infancy, and might neither transgress them, nor have any pretense for their ignorance of them. 27. Our law hath also taken care of the decent burial of the dead, but without any extravagant expenses for their funerals, and without the erection of any illustrious monuments for them; but hath ordered that their nearest relations should perform their obsequies; and hath showed it to be regular, that all who pass by when any one is buried should accompany the funeral, and join in the lamentation. It also ordains that the house and its inhabitants should be purified after the funeral is over, that every one may thence learn to keep at a great distance from the thoughts of being pure, if he hath been once guilty of murder. 28. The law ordains also, that parents should be honored immediately after God himself, and delivers that son who does not requite them for the benefits he hath received from them, but is deficient on any such occasion, to be stoned. It also says that the young men should pay due respect to every elder, since God is the eldest of all beings. It does not give leave to conceal any thing from our friends, because that is not true friendship which will not commit all things to their fidelity: it also forbids the revelation of secrets, even though an enmity arise between them. If any judge takes bribes, his punishment is death: he that overlooks one that offers him a petition, and this when he is able to relieve him, he is a guilty person. What is not by any one intrusted to another ought not to be required back again. No one is to touch another's goods. He that lends money must not demand usury for its loan. These, and many more of the like sort, are the rules that unite us in the bands of society one with another. 29. It will be also worth our while to see what equity our legislator would have us exercise in our intercourse with strangers; for it will thence appear that he made the best provision he possibly could, both that we should not dissolve our own constitution, nor show any envious mind towards those that would cultivate a friendship with us. Accordingly, our legislator admits all those that have a mind to observe our laws so to do; and this after a friendly manner, as esteeming that a true union which not only extends to our own stock, but to those that would live after the same manner with us; yet does he not allow those that come to us by accident only to be admitted into communion with us. 30. However, there are other things which our legislator ordained for us beforehand, which of necessity we ought to do in common to all men; as to afford fire, and water, and food to such as want it; to show them the roads; not to let any one lie unburied. He also would have us treat those that are esteemed our enemies with moderation; for he doth not allow us to set their country on fire, nor permit us to cut down those trees that bear fruit; nay, further, he forbids us to spoil those that have been slain in war. He hath also provided for such as are taken captive, that they may not be injured, and especially that the women may not be abused. Indeed he hath taught us gentleness and humanity so effectually, that he hath not despised the care of brute beasts, by permitting no other than a regular use of them, and forbidding any other; and if any of them come to our houses, like supplicants, we are forbidden to slay them; nor may we kill the dams, together with their young ones; but we are obliged, even in an enemy's country, to spare and not kill those creatures that labor for mankind. Thus hath our lawgiver contrived to teach us an equitable conduct every way, by using us to such laws as instruct us therein; while at the same time he hath ordained that such as break these laws should be punished, without the allowance of any excuse whatsoever. 31. Now the greatest part of offenses with us are capital; as if any one be guilty of adultery; if any one force a virgin; if any one be so impudent as to attempt sodomy with a male; or if, upon another's making an attempt upon him, he submits to be so used. There is also a law for slaves of the like nature, that can never be avoided. Moreover, if any one cheats another in measures or weights, or makes a knavish bargain and sale, in order to cheat another; if any one steals what belongs to another, and takes what he never deposited; all these have punishments allotted them; not such as are met with among other nations, but more severe ones. And as for attempts of unjust behavior towards parents, or for impiety against God, though they be not actually accomplished, the offenders are destroyed immediately. However, the reward for such as live exactly according to the laws is not silver or gold; it is not a garland of olive branches or of small age, nor any such public sign of commendation; but every good man hath his own conscience bearing witness to himself, and by virtue of our legislator's prophetic spirit, and of the firm security God himself affords such a one, he believes that God hath made this grant to those that observe these laws, even though they be obliged readily to die for them, that they shall come into being again, and at a certain revolution of things shall receive a better life than they had enjoyed before. Nor would I venture to write thus at this time, were it not well known to all by our actions that many of our people have many a time bravely resolved to endure any sufferings, rather than speak one word against our law. 32. Nay, indeed, in case it had so fallen out, that our nation had not been so thoroughly known among all men as they are, and our voluntary submission to our laws had not been so open and manifest as it is, but that somebody had pretended to have written these laws himself, and had read them to the Greeks, or had pretended that he had met with men out of the limits of the known world, that had such reverent notions of God, and had continued a long time in the firm observance of such laws as ours, I cannot but suppose that all men would admire them on a reflection upon the frequent changes they had therein been themselves subject to; and this while those that have attempted to write somewhat of the same kind for politic government, and for laws, are accused as composing monstrous things, and are said to have undertaken an impossible task upon them. And here I will say nothing of those other philosophers who have undertaken any thing of this nature in their writings. But even Plato himself, who is so admired by the Greeks on account of that gravity in his manners, and force in his words, and that ability he had to persuade men beyond all other philosophers, is little better than laughed at and exposed to ridicule on that account, by those that pretend to sagacity in political affairs; although he that shall diligently peruse his writings will find his precepts to be somewhat gentle, and pretty near to the customs of the generality of mankind. Nay, Plato himself confesseth that it is not safe to publish the true notion concerning God among the ignorant multitude. Yet do some men look upon Plato's discourses as no better than certain idle words set off with great artifice. However, they admire Lycurgus as the principal lawgiver, and all men celebrate Sparta for having continued in the firm observance of his laws for a very long time. So far then we have gained, that it is to be confessed a mark of virtue to submit to laws. [24] But then let such as admire this in the Lacedemonians compare that duration of theirs with more than two thousand years which our political government hath continued; and let them further consider, that though the Lacedemonians did seem to observe their laws exactly while they enjoyed their liberty, yet that when they underwent a change of their fortune, they forgot almost all those laws; while we, having been under ten thousand changes in our fortune by the changes that happened among the kings of Asia, have never betrayed our laws under the most pressing distresses we have been in; nor have we neglected them either out of sloth or for a livelihood. [25] if any one will consider it, the difficulties and labors laid upon us have been greater than what appears to have been borne by the Lacedemonian fortitude, while they neither ploughed their land, nor exercised any trades, but lived in their own city, free from all such pains-taking, in the enjoyment of plenty, and using such exercises as might improve their bodies, while they made use of other men as their servants for all the necessaries of life, and had their food prepared for them by the others; and these good and humane actions they do for no other purpose but this, that by their actions and their sufferings they may be able to conquer all those against whom they make war. I need not add this, that they have not been fully able to observe their laws; for not only a few single persons, but multitudes of them, have in heaps neglected those laws, and have delivered themselves, together with their arms, into the hands of their enemies. 33. Now as for ourselves, I venture to say that no one can tell of so many; nay, not of more than one or two that have betrayed our laws, no, not out of fear of death itself; I do not mean such an easy death as happens in battles, but that which comes with bodily torments, and seems to be the severest kind of death of all others. Now I think those that have conquered us have put us to such deaths, not out of their hatred to us when they had subdued us, but rather out of their desire of seeing a surprising sight, which is this, whether there be such men in the world who believe that no evil is to them so great as to be compelled to do or to speak any thing contrary to their own laws. Nor ought men to wonder at us, if we are more courageous in dying for our laws than all other men are; for other men do not easily submit to the easier things in which we are instituted; I mean working with our hands, and eating but little, and being contented to eat and drink, not at random, or at every one's pleasure, or being under inviolable rules in lying with our wives, in magnificent furniture, and again in the observation of our times of rest; while those that can use their swords in war, and can put their enemies to flight when they attack them, cannot bear to submit to such laws about their way of living: whereas our being accustomed willingly to submit to laws in these instances, renders us fit to show our fortitude upon other occasions also. 34. Yet do the Lysimachi and the Molones, and some other writers, [unskillful sophists as they are, and the deceivers of young men,] reproach us as the vilest of all mankind. Now I have no mind to make an inquiry into the laws of other nations; for the custom of our country is to keep our own laws, but not to bring accusations against the laws of others. And indeed our legislator hath expressly forbidden us to laugh at and revile those that are esteemed gods by other people? on account of the very name of God ascribed to them. But since our antagonists think to run us down upon the comparison of their religion and ours, it is not possible to keep silence here, especially while what I shall say to confute these men will not be now first said, but hath been already said by many, and these of the highest reputation also; for who is there among those that have been admired among the Greeks for wisdom, who hath not greatly blamed both the most famous poets, and most celebrated legislators, for spreading such notions originally among the body of the people concerning the gods? such as these, that they may be allowed to be as numerous as they have a mind to have them; that they are begotten one by another, and that after all the kinds of generation you can imagine. They also distinguish them in their places and ways of living as they would distinguish several sorts of animals; as some to be under the earth; as some to be in the sea; and the ancientest of them all to be bound in hell; and for those to whom they have allotted heaven, they have set over them one, who in title is their father, but in his actions a tyrant and a lord; whence it came to pass that his wife, and brother, and daughter [which daughter he brought forth from his own head] made a conspiracy against him to seize upon him and confine hint, as he had himself seized upon and confined his own father before. 35. And justly have the wisest men thought these notions deserved severe rebukes; they also laugh at them for determining that we ought to believe some of the gods to be beardless and young, and others of them to be old, and to have beards accordingly; that some are set to trades; that one god is a smith, and another goddess is a weaver; that one god is a warrior, and fights with men; that some of them are harpers, or delight in archery; and besides, that mutual seditions arise among them, and that they quarrel about men, and this so far, that they not only lay hands upon one another, but that they are wounded by men, and lament, and take on for such their afflictions. But what is the grossest of all in point of lasciviousness, are those unbounded lusts ascribed to almost all of them, and their amours; which how can it be other than a most absurd supposal, especially when it reaches to the male gods, and to the female goddesses also? Moreover, the chief of all their gods, and their first father himself, overlooks those goddesses whom he hath deluded and begotten with child, and suffers them to be kept in prison, or drowned in the sea. He is also so bound up by fate, that he cannot save his own offspring, nor can he bear their deaths without shedding of tears. These are fine things indeed! as are the rest that follow. Adulteries truly are so impudently looked on in heaven by the gods, that some of them have confessed they envied those that were found in the very act. And why should they not do so, when the eldest of them, who is their king also, hath not been able to restrain himself in the violence of his lust, from lying with his wife, so long as they might get into their bedchamber? Now some of the gods are servants to men, and will sometimes be builders for a reward, and sometimes will be shepherds; while others of them, like malefactors, are bound in a prison of brass. And what sober person is there who would not be provoked at such stories, and rebuke those that forged them, and condemn the great silliness of those that admit them for true? Nay, others there are that have advanced a certain timorousness and fear, as also madness and fraud, and any other of the vilest passions, into the nature and form of gods, and have persuaded whole cities to offer sacrifices to the better sort of them; on which account they have been absolutely forced to esteem some gods as the givers of good things, and to call others of them averters of evil. They also endeavor to move them, as they would the vilest of men, by gifts and presents, as looking for nothing else than to receive some great mischief from them, unless they pay them such wages. 36. Wherefore it deserves our inquiry what should be the occasion of this unjust management, and of these scandals about the Deity. And truly I suppose it to be derived from the imperfect knowledge the heathen legislators had at first of the true nature of God; nor did they explain to the people even so far as they did comprehend of it: nor did they compose the other parts of their political settlements according to it, but omitted it as a thing of very little consequence, and gave leave both to the poets to introduce what gods they pleased, and those subject to all sorts of passions, and to the orators to procure political decrees from the people for the admission of such foreign gods as they thought proper. The painters also, and statuaries of Greece, had herein great power, as each of them could contrive a shape [proper for a god]; the one to be formed out of clay, and the other by making a bare picture of such a one. But those workmen that were principally admired, had the use of ivory and of gold as the constant materials for their new statues [whereby it comes to pass that some temples are quite deserted, while others are in great esteem, and adorned with all the rites of all kinds of purification]. Besides this, the first gods, who have long flourished in the honors done them, are now grown old [while those that flourished after them are come in their room as a second rank, that I may speak the most honorably of them I can]: nay, certain other gods there are who are newly introduced, and newly worshipped [as we, by way of digression, have said already, and yet have left their places of worship desolate]; and for their temples, some of them are already left desolate, and others are built anew, according to the pleasure of men; whereas they ought to have their opinion about God, and that worship which is due to him, always and immutably the same. 37. But now, this Apollonius Molo was one of these foolish and proud men. However, nothing that I have said was unknown to those that were real philosophers among the Greeks, nor were they unacquainted with those frigid pretensions of allegories [which had been alleged for such things]; on which account they justly despised them, but have still agreed with us as to the true and becoming notions of God; whence it was that Plato would not have political settlements admit to of any one of the other poets, and dismisses even Homer himself, with a garland on his head, and with ointment poured upon him, and this because he should not destroy the right notions of God with his fables. Nay, Plato principally imitated our legislator in this point, that he enjoined his citizens to have he main regard to this precept, "That every one of them should learn their laws accurately." He also ordained, that they should not admit of foreigners intermixing with their own people at random; and provided that the commonwealth should keep itself pure, and consist of such only as persevered in their own laws. Apollonius Molo did no way consider this, when he made it one branch of his accusation against us, that we do not admit of such as have different notions about God, nor will we have fellowship with those that choose to observe a way of living different from ourselves, yet is not this method peculiar to us, but common to all other men; not among the ordinary Grecians only, but among such of those Grecians as are of the greatest reputation among them. Moreover, the Lacedemonians continued in their way of expelling foreigners, and would not indeed give leave to their own people to travel abroad, as suspecting that those two things would introduce a dissolution of their own laws: and perhaps there may be some reason to blame the rigid severity of the Lacedemonians, for they bestowed the privilege of their city on no foreigners, nor indeed would give leave to them to stay among them; whereas we, though we do not think fit to imitate other institutions, yet do we willingly admit of those that desire to partake of ours, which, I think, I may reckon to be a plain indication of our humanity, and at the same time of our magnanimity also. 38. But I shall say no more of the Lacedemonians. As for the Athenians, who glory in having made their city to be common to all men, what their behavior was Apollonius did not know, while they punished those that did but speak one word contrary to the laws about the gods, without any mercy; for on what other account was it that Socrates was put to death by them? For certainly he neither betrayed their city to its enemies, nor was he guilty of any sacrilege with regard to any of their temples; but it was on this account, that he swore certain new oaths [26] and that he affirmed either in earnest, or, as some say, only in jest, that a certain demon used to make signs to him [what he should not do]. For these reasons he was condemned to drink poison, and kill himself. His accuser also complained that he corrupted the young men, by inducing them to despise the political settlement and laws of their city: and thus was Socrates, the citizen of Athens, punished. There was also Anaxagoras, who, although he was of Clazomente, was within a few suffrages of being condemned to die, because he said the sun, which the Athenians thought to be a god, was a ball of fire. They also made this public proclamation, "That they would give a talent to any one who would kill Diagoras of Melos," because it was reported of him that he laughed at their mysteries. Protagoras also, who was thought to have written somewhat that was not owned for truth by the Athenians about the gods, had been seized upon, and put to death, if he had not fled away immediately. Nor need we at all wonder that they thus treated such considerable men, when they did not spare even women also; for they very lately slew a certain priestess, because she was accused by somebody that she initiated people into the worship of strange gods, it having been forbidden so to do by one of their laws; and a capital punishment had been decreed to such as introduced a strange god; it being manifest, that they who make use of such a law do not believe those of other nations to be really gods, otherwise they had not envied themselves the advantage of more gods than they already had. And this was the happy administration of the affairs of the Athenians! Now as to the Scythians, they take a pleasure in killing men, and differ but little from brute beasts; yet do they think it reasonable to have their institutions observed. They also slew Anacharsis, a person greatly admired for his wisdom among the Greeks, when he returned to them, because he appeared to come fraught with Grecian customs. One may also find many to have been punished among the Persians, on the very same account. And to be sure Apollonius was greatly pleased with the laws of the Persians, and was an admirer of them, because the Greeks enjoyed the advantage of their courage, and had the very same opinion about the gods which they had. This last was exemplified in the temples which they burnt, and their courage in coming, and almost entirely enslaving the Grecians. However, Apollonius has imitated all the Persian institutions, and that by his offering violence to other men's wives, and gelding his own sons. Now, with us, it is a capital crime, if any one does thus abuse even a brute beast; and as for us, neither hath the fear of our governors, nor a desire of following what other nations have in so great esteem, been able to withdraw us from our own laws; nor have we exerted our courage in raising up wars to increase our wealth, but only for the observation of our laws; and when we with patience bear other losses, yet when any persons would compel us to break our laws, then it is that we choose to go to war, though it be beyond our ability to pursue it, and bear the greatest calamities to the last with much fortitude. And, indeed, what reason can there be why we should desire to imitate the laws of other nations, while we see they are not observed by their own legislators [27] And why do not the Lacedemonians think of abolishing that form of their government which suffers them not to associate with any others, as well as their contempt of matrimony? And why do not the Eleans and Thebans abolish that unnatural and impudent lust, which makes them lie with males? For they will not show a sufficient sign of their repentance of what they of old thought to be very excellent, and very advantageous in their practices, unless they entirely avoid all such actions for the time to come: nay, such things are inserted into the body of their laws, and had once such a power among the Greeks, that they ascribed these sodomitical practices to the gods themselves, as a part of their good character; and indeed it was according to the same manner that the gods married their own sisters. This the Greeks contrived as an apology for their own absurd and unnatural pleasures. 39. I omit to speak concerning punishments, and how many ways of escaping them the greatest part of the legislators have afforded malefactors, by ordaining that, for adulteries, fines in money should be allowed, and for corrupting [28] [virgins] they need only marry them as also what excuses they may have in denying the facts, if any one attempts to inquire into them; for amongst most other nations it is a studied art how men may transgress their laws; but no such thing is permitted amongst us; for though we be deprived of our wealth, of our cities, or of the other advantages we have, our law continues immortal; nor can any Jew go so far from his own country, nor be so aftrighted at the severest lord, as not to be more aftrighted at the law than at him. If, therefore, this be the disposition we are under, with regard to the excellency of our laws, let our enemies make us this concession, that our laws are most excellent; and if still they imagine, that though we so firmly adhere to them, yet are they bad laws notwithstanding, what penalties then do they deserve to undergo who do not observe their own laws, which they esteem so far superior to them? Whereas, therefore, length of time is esteemed to be the truest touchstone in all cases, I would make that a testimonial of the excellency of our laws, and of that belief thereby delivered to us concerning God. For as there hath been a very long time for this comparison, if any one will but compare its duration with the duration of the laws made by other legislators, he will find our legislator to have been the ancientest of them all. 40. We have already demonstrated that our laws have been such as have always inspired admiration and imitation into all other men; nay, the earliest Grecian philosophers, though in appearance they observed the laws of their own countries, yet did they, in their actions, and their philosophic doctrines, follow our legislator, and instructed men to live sparingly, and to have friendly communication one with another. Nay, further, the multitude of mankind itself have had a great inclination of a long time to follow our religious observances; for there is not any city of the Grecians, nor any of the barbarians, nor any nation whatsoever, whither our custom of resting on the seventh day hath not come, and by which our fasts and lighting up lamps, and many of our prohibitions as to our food, are not observed; they also endeavor to imitate our mutual concord with one another, and the charitable distribution of our goods, and our diligence in our trades, and our fortitude in undergoing the distresses we are in, on account of our laws; and, what is here matter of the greatest admiration, our law hath no bait of pleasure to allure men to it, but it prevails by its own force; and as God himself pervades all the world, so hath our law passed through all the world also. So that if any one will but reflect on his own country, and his own family, he will have reason to give credit to what I say. It is therefore but just, either to condemn all mankind of indulging a wicked disposition, when they have been so desirous of imitating laws that are to them foreign and evil in themselves, rather than following laws of their own that are of a better character, or else our accusers must leave off their spite against us. Nor are we guilty of any envious behavior towards them, when we honor our own legislator, and believe what he, by his prophetic authority, hath taught us concerning God. For though we should not be able ourselves to understand the excellency of our own laws, yet would the great multitude of those that desire to imitate them, justify us, in greatly valuing ourselves upon them. 41. But as for the [distinct] political laws by which we are governed, I have delivered them accurately in my books of Antiquities; and have only mentioned them now, so far as was necessary to my present purpose, without proposing to myself either to blame the laws of other nations, or to make an encomium upon our own; but in order to convict those that have written about us unjustly, and in an impudent affectation of disguising the truth. And now I think I have sufficiently completed what I proposed in writing these books. For whereas our accusers have pretended that our nation are a people of very late original, I have demonstrated that they are exceeding ancient; for I have produced as witnesses thereto many ancient writers, who have made mention of us in their books, while they had said that no such writer had so done. Moreover, they had said that we were sprung from the Egyptians, while I have proved that we came from another country into Egypt: while they had told lies of us, as if we were expelled thence on account of diseases on our bodies, it has appeared, on the contrary, that we returned to our country by our own choice, and with sound and strong bodies. Those accusers reproached our legislator as a vile fellow; whereas God in old time bare witness to his virtuous conduct; and since that testimony of God, time itself hath been discovered to have borne witness to the same thing. 42. As to the laws themselves, more words are unnecessary, for they are visible in their own nature, and appear to teach not impiety, but the truest piety in the world. They do not make men hate one another, but encourage people to communicate what they have to one another freely; they are enemies to injustice, they take care of righteousness, they banish idleness and expensive living, and instruct men to be content with what they have, and to be laborious in their calling; they forbid men to make war from a desire of getting more, but make men courageous in defending the laws; they are inexorable in punishing malefactors; they admit no sophistry of words, but are always established by actions themselves, which actions we ever propose as surer demonstrations than what is contained in writing only: on which account I am so bold as to say that we are become the teachers of other men, in the greatest number of things, and those of the most excellent nature only; for what is more excellent than inviolable piety? what is more just than submission to laws? and what is more advantageous than mutual love and concord? and this so far that we are to be neither divided by calamities, nor to become injurious and seditious in prosperity; but to contemn death when we are in war, and in peace to apply ourselves to our mechanical occupations, or to our tillage of the ground; while we in all things and all ways are satisfied that God is the inspector and governor of our actions. If these precepts had either been written at first, or more exactly kept by any others before us, we should have owed them thanks as disciples owe to their masters; but if it be visible that we have made use of them more than any other men, and if we have demonstrated that the original invention of them is our own, let the Apions, and the Molons, with all the rest of those that delight in lies and reproaches, stand confuted; but let this and the foregoing book be dedicated to thee, Epaphroditus, who art so great a lover of truth, and by thy means to those that have been in like manner desirous to be acquainted with the affairs of our nation. APION BOOK 2 FOOTNOTES [1] The former part of this second book is written against the calumnies of Apion, and then, more briefly, against the like calumnies of Apollonius Molo. But after that, Josephus leaves off any more particular reply to those adversaries of the Jews, and gives us a large and excellent description and vindication of that theocracy which was settled for the Jewish nation by Moses, their great legislator. [2] Called by Tiberius Cymbalum Mundi, The drum of the world. [3] This seems to have been the first dial that had been made in Egypt, and was a little before the time that Ahaz made his [first] dial in Judea, and about anno 755, in the first year of the seventh olympiad, as we shall see presently. See 2 Kings 20:11; Isaiah 38:8. [4] The burial-place for dead bodies, as I suppose. [5] Here begins a great defect in the Greek copy; but the old Latin version fully supplies that defect. [6] What error is here generally believed to have been committed by our Josephus in ascribing a deliverance of the Jews to the reign of Ptolemy Physco, the seventh of those Ptolemus, which has been universally supposed to have happened under Ptolemy Philopater, the fourth of them, is no better than a gross error of the moderns, and not of Josephus, as I have fully proved in the Authentic. Rec. Part I. p. 200-201, whither I refer the inquisitive reader. [7] Sister's son, and adopted son. [8] Called more properly Molo, or Apollonius Molo, as hereafter; for Apollonins, the son of Molo, was another person, as Strabo informs us, lib. xiv. [9] Furones in the Latin, which what animal it denotes does not now appear. [10] It is great pity that these six pagan authors, here mentioned to have described the famous profanation of the Jewish temple by Antiochus Epiphanes, should be all lost; I mean so far of their writings as contained that description; though it is plain Josephus perused them all as extant in his time. [11] It is remarkable that Josephus here, and, I think, no where else, reckons up four distinct courts of the temple; that of the Gentiles, that of the women of Israel, that of the men of Israel, and that of the priests; as also that the court of the women admitted of the men, [I suppose only of the husbands of those wives that were therein,] while the court of the men did not admit any women into it at all. [12] Judea, in the Greek, by a gross mistake of the transcribers. [13] Seven in the Greek, by a like gross mistake of the transcribers. See of the War, B. V. ch. 5. sect. 4. [14] Two hundred in the Greek, contrary to the twenty in the War, B. VII. ch, 5. sect. 3. [15] This notorious disgrace belonging peculiarly to the people of Egypt, ever since the times of the old prophets of the Jews, noted both sect. 4 already, and here, may be confirmed by the testimony of Isidorus, an Egyptian of Pelusium, Epist. lib. i. Ep. 489. And this is a remarkable completion of the ancient prediction of God by Ezekiel 29:14, 15, "that the Egyptians should be a base kingdom, the basest of the kingdoms," and that, "it should not exalt itself any more above the nations." [16] The truth of which still further appears by the present observation of Josephus, that these Egyptians had never, in all the past ages since Sesostris, had one day of liberty, no, not so much as to have been free from despotic power under any of the monarchies to that day. And all this has been found equally true in the latter ages, under the Romans, Saracens, Mamelukes, and Turks, from the days of Josephus till the present ago also. [17] This language, that Moses, "persuaded himself" that what he did was according to God's will, can mean no more, by Josephus's own constant notions elsewhere, than that he was "firmly persuaded," that he had "fully satisfied himself" that so it was, viz. by the many revelations he had received from God, and the numerous miracles God had enabled him to work, as he both in these very two books against Apion, and in his Antiquities, most clearly and frequently assures us. This is further evident from several passages lower, where he affirms that Moses was no impostor nor deceiver, and where he assures that Moses's constitution of government was no other than a theocracy; and where he says they are to hope for deliverance out of their distresses by prayer to God, and that withal it was owing in part to this prophetic spirit of Moses that the Jews expected a resurrection from the dead. See almost as strange a use of the like words, "to persuade God," Antiq. B. VI. ch. 5. sect. 6. [18] That is, Moses really was, what the heathen legislators pretended to be, under a Divine direction; nor does it yet appear that these pretensions to a supernatural conduct, either in these legislators or oracles, were mere delusions of men without any demoniacal impressions, nor that Josephus took them so to be; as the ancientest and contemporary authors did still believe them to be supernatural. [19] This whole very large passage is corrected by Dr. Hudson from Eusebius's citation of it, Prep. Evangel. viii. 8, which is here not a little different from the present MSS. of Josephus. [20] This expression itself, that "Moses ordained the Jewish government to be a theocracy," may be illustrated by that parallel expression in the Antiquities, B. III. ch. 8. sect. 9, that "Moses left it to God to be present at his sacrifices when he pleased; and when he pleased, to be absent." Both ways of speaking sound harsh in the ears of Jews and Christians, as do several others which Josephus uses to the heathens; but still they were not very improper in him, when he all along thought fit to accommodate himself, both in his Antiquities, and in these his books against Apion, all written for the use of the Greeks and Romans, to their notions and language, and this as far as ever truth would give him leave. Though it be very observable withal, that he never uses such expressions in his books of the War, written originally for the Jews beyond Euphrates, and in their language, in all these cases. However, Josephus directly supposes the Jewish settlement, under Moses, to be a Divine settlement, and indeed no other than a real theocracy. [21] These excellent accounts of the Divine attributes, and that God is not to be at all known in his essence, as also some other clear expressions about the resurrection of the dead, and the state of departed souls, etc., in this late work of Josephus, look more like the exalted notions of the Essens, or rather Ebionite Christians, than those of a mere Jew or Pharisee. The following large accounts also of the laws of Moses, seem to me to show a regard to the higher interpretations and improvements of Moses's laws, derived from Jesus Christ, than to the bare letter of them in the Old Testament, whence alone Josephus took them when he wrote his Antiquities; nor, as I think, can some of these laws, though generally excellent in their kind, be properly now found either in the copies of the Jewish Pentateuch, or in Philo, or in Josephus himself, before he became a Nazarene or Ebionite Christian; nor even all of them among the laws of catholic Christianity themselves. I desire, therefore, the learned reader to consider, whether some of these improvements or interpretations might not be peculiar to the Essens among the Jews, or rather to the Nazarenes or Ebionites among the Christians, though we have indeed but imperfect accounts of those Nazarenes or Ebionite Christians transmitted down to us at this day. [22] We may here observe how known a thing it was among the Jews and heathens, in this and many other instances, that sacrifices were still accompanied with prayers; whence most probably came those phrases of "the sacrifice of prayer, the sacrifice of praise, the sacrifice of thanksgiving." However, those ancient forms used at sacrifices are now generally lost, to the no small damage of true religion. It is here also exceeding remarkable, that although the temple at Jerusalem was built as the only place where the whole nation of the Jews were to offer their sacrifices, yet is there no mention of the "sacrifices" themselves, but of "prayers" only, in Solomon's long and famous form of devotion at its dedication, 1 Kings 8.; 2 Chronicles 6. See also many passages cited in the Apostolical Constitutions, VII. 37, and Of the War, above, B. VII. ch. 5. sect. 6. [23] This text is no where in our present copies of the Old Testament. [24] It may not be amiss to set down here a very remarkable testimony of the great philosopher Cicero, as to the preference of "laws to philosophy:--I will," says he, "boldly declare my opinion, though the whole world be offended at it. I prefer this little book of the Twelve Tables alone to all the volumes of the philosophers. I find it to be not only of more weight,' but also much more useful."--Oratore. [25] we have observed our times of rest, and sorts of food allowed us [during our distresses]. [26] See what those novel oaths were in Dr. Hudson's note, viz. to swear by an oak, by a goat, and by a dog, as also by a gander, as say Philostratus and others. This swearing strange oaths was also forbidden by the Tyrians, B. I. sect. 22, as Spanheim here notes. [27] Why Josephus here should blame some heathen legislators, when they allowed so easy a composition for simple fornication, as an obligation to marry the virgin that was corrupted, is hard to say, seeing he had himself truly informed us that it was a law of the Jews, Antiq. B. IV. ch. 8. sect. 23, as it is the law of Christianity also: see Horeb Covenant, p. 61. I am almost ready to suspect that, for, we should here read, and that corrupting wedlock, or other men's wives, is the crime for which these heathens wickedly allowed this composition in money. [28] Or "for corrupting other men's wives the same allowance." 
6971	----	This eBook produced by: Distributed Proofreaders, John Williams, and David Starner JUDAISM By ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, M.A. READER IN TALMUDIC AND RABBINIC LITERATURE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE FOREWORD The writer has attempted in this volume to take up a few of the most characteristic points in Jewish doctrine and practice, and to explain some of the various phases through which they have passed, since the first centuries of the Christian era. The presentation is probably much less detached than is the case with other volumes in this series. But the difference was scarcely avoidable. The writer was not expounding a religious system which has no relation to his own life. On the contrary, the writer is himself a Jew, and thus is deeply concerned personally in the matters discussed in the book. The reader must be warned to keep this fact in mind throughout. On the one hand, the book must suffer a loss of objectivity; but, on the other hand, there may be some compensating gain of intensity. The author trusts, at all events, that, though he has not written with indifference, he has escaped the pitfall of undue partiality. I. A. CONTENTS I. THE LEGACY FROM THE PAST II. RELIGION AS LAW III. ARTICLES OF FAITH IV. SOME CONCEPTS OF JUDAISM V. SOME OBSERVANCES OF JUDAISM VI. JEWISH MYSTICISM VII. ESCHATOLOGY VIII. THE SURVIVAL OF JUDAISM SELECTED LIST OF BOOKS ON JUDAISM JUDAISM CHAPTER I THE LEGACY FROM THE PAST The aim of this little book is to present in brief outline some of the leading conceptions of the religion familiar since the Christian Era under the name Judaism. The word 'Judaism' occurs for the first time at about 100 B.C., in the Graeco-Jewish literature. In the second book of the Maccabees (ii. 21, viii. 1), 'Judaism' signifies the religion of the Jews as contrasted with Hellenism, the religion of the Greeks. In the New Testament (Gal. i. 13) the same word seems to denote the Pharisaic system as an antithesis to the Gentile Christianity. In Hebrew the corresponding noun never occurs in the Bible, and it is rare even in the Rabbinic books. When it does meet us, _Jahaduth_ implies the monotheism of the Jews as opposed to the polytheism of the heathen. Thus the term 'Judaism' did not pass through quite the same transitions as did the name 'Jew.' Judaism appears from the first as a religion transcending tribal bounds. The 'Jew,' on the other hand, was originally a Judaean, a member of the Southern Confederacy called in the Bible Judah, and by the Greeks and Romans Judaea. Soon, however, 'Jew' came to include what had earlier been the Northern Confederacy of Israel as well, so that in the post-exilic period _Jehudi_ or 'Jew' means an adherent of Judaism without regard to local nationality. Judaism, then, is here taken to represent that later development of the Religion of Israel which began with the reorganisation after the Babylonian Exile (444 B.C.), and was crystallised by the Roman Exile (during the first centuries of the Christian Era). The exact period which will be here seized as a starting-point is the moment when the people of Israel were losing, never so far to regain, their territorial association with Palestine, and were becoming (what they have ever since been) a community as distinct from a nation. They remained, it is true, a distinct race, and this is still in a sense true. Yet at various periods a number of proselytes have been admitted, and in other ways the purity of the race has been affected. At all events territorial nationality ceased from a date which may be roughly fixed at 135 A.D., when the last desperate revolt under Bar-Cochba failed, and Hadrian drew his Roman plough over the city of Jerusalem and the Temple area. A new city with a new name arose on the ruins. The ruins afterwards reasserted themselves, and Aelia Capitolina as a designation of Jerusalem is familiar only to archaeologists. But though the name of Hadrian's new city has faded, the effect of its foundation remained. Aelia Capitolina, with its market-places and theatre, replaced the olden narrow-streeted town; a House of Venus reared its stately form in the north, and a Sanctuary to Jupiter covered, in the east, the site of the former Temple. Heathen colonists were introduced, and the Jew, who was to become in future centuries an alien everywhere, was made by Hadrian an alien in his fatherland. For the Roman Emperor denied to Jews the right of entry into Jerusalem. Thus Hadrian completed the work of Titus, and Judaism was divorced from its local habitation. More unreservedly than during the Babylonian Exile, Judaism in the Roman Exile perforce became the religion of a community and not of a state; and Israel for the first time constituted a Church. But it was a Church with no visible home. Christianity for several centuries was to have a centre at Rome, Islam at Mecca. But Judaism had and has no centre at all. It will be obvious that the aim of the present book makes it both superfluous and inappropriate to discuss the vexed problems connected with the origins of the Religion of Israel, its aspects in primitive times, its passage through a national to an ethical monotheism, its expansion into the universalism of the second Isaiah. What concerns us here is merely the legacy which the Religion of Israel bequeathed to Judaism as we have defined it. This legacy and the manner in which it was treasured, enlarged, and administered will occupy us in the rest of this book. But this much must be premised. If the Religion of Israel passed through the stages of totemism, animism, and polydemonism; if it was indebted to Canaanite, Kenite, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and other foreign influences; if it experienced a stage of monolatry or henotheism (in which Israel recognised one God, but did not think of that God as the only God of all men) before ethical monotheism of the universalistic type was reached; if, further, all these stages and the moral and religious ideas connected with each left a more or less clear mark in the sacred literature of Israel; then the legacy which Judaism received from its past was a syncretism of the whole of the religious experiences of Israel as interpreted in the light of Israel's latest, highest, most approved standards. Like the Bourbon, the Jew forgets nothing; but unlike the Bourbon, the Jew is always learning. The domestic stories of the Patriarchs were not rejected as unprofitable when Israel became deeply impregnated with the monogamous teachings of writers like the author of the last chapter of Proverbs; the character of David was idealised by the spiritual associations of the Psalter, parts of which tradition ascribed to him; the earthly life was etherialised and much of the sacred literature reinterpreted in the light of an added belief in immortality; God, in the early literature a tribal non-moral deity, was in the later literature a righteous ruler who with Amos and Hosea loved and demanded righteousness in man. Judaism took over as one indivisible body of sacred teachings both the early and the later literature in which these varying conceptions of God were enshrined; the Law was accepted as the guiding rule of life, the ritual of ceremony and sacrifice was treasured as a holy memory, and as a memory not contradictory of the prophetic exaltation of inward religion but as consistent with that exaltation, as interpreting it, as but another aspect of Micah's enunciation of the demands of God: 'What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?' Judaism, in short, included for the Jew all that had gone before. But for St. Paul's attitude of hostility to the Law, but for the deep-seated conviction that the Pauline Christianity was a denial of the Jewish monotheism, the Jew might have accepted much of the teaching of Jesus as an integral part of Judaism. In the realm of ideas which he conceived as belonging to his tradition the Jew was not logical; he did not pick and choose; he absorbed the whole. In the Jewish theology of all ages we find the most obvious contradictions. There was no attempt at reconciliation of such contradictions; they were juxtaposed in a mechanical mixture, there was no chemical compound. The Jew was always a man of moods, and his religion responded to those varying phases of feeling and belief and action. Hence such varying judgments have been formed of him and his religion. If, after the mediaeval philosophy had attempted to systematise Judaism, the religion remained unsystematic, it is easy to understand that in the earlier centuries of the Christian Era contradictions between past and present, between different strata of religious thought, caused no trouble to the Jew so long as those contradictions could be fitted into his general scheme of life. Though he was the product of development, development was an idea foreign to his conception of the ways of God with man. And to this extent he was right. For though men's ideas of God change, God Himself is changeless. The Jew transferred the changelessness of God to men's changing ideas about him. With childlike naivete he accepted all, he adopted all, and he syncretised it all as best he could into the loose system on which Pharisaism grafted itself. The legacy of the past thus was the past. One element in the legacy was negative. The Temple and the Sacrificial system were gone for ever. That this must have powerfully affected Judaism goes without saying. Synagogue replaced Temple, prayer assumed the function of sacrifice, penitence and not the blood of bulls supplied the ritual of atonement. Events had prepared the way for this change and had prevented it attaining the character of an upheaval. For synagogues had grown up all over the land soon after the fifth century B.C.; regular services of prayer with instruction in the Scriptures had been established long before the Christian Era; the inward atonement had been preferred to, or at least associated with, the outward rite before the outward rite was torn away. It may be that, as Professor Burkitt has suggested, the awful experiences of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple produced within Pharisaism a moral reformation which drove the Jew within and thus spiritualised Judaism. For undoubtedly the Pharisee of the Gospels is by no means the Pharisee as we meet him in the Jewish books. There was always a latent power and tendency in Judaism towards inward religion; and it may be that this power was intensified, this tendency encouraged, by the loss of Temple and its Sacrificial rites. But though the Temple had gone the Covenant remained. Not so much in name as in essence. We do not hear much of the Covenant in the Rabbinic books, but its spirit pervades Judaism. Of all the legacy of the past the Covenant was the most inspiring element. Beginning with Abraham, the Covenant established a special relation between God and Abraham's seed. 'I have known him, that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of the Lord to do righteousness and judgment' (Gen. xviii. 19). Of this Covenant, the outward sign was the rite of circumcision. Renewed with Moses, and followed in traditional opinion by the Ten Commandments, the Sinaitic Covenant was a further link in the bond between God and His people. Of this Mosaic Covenant the outward sign was the Sabbath. It is of no moment for our present argument whether Abraham and Moses were historical persons or figments of tradition. A Gamaliel would have as little doubted their reality as would a St. Paul. And whatever Criticism may be doing with Abraham, it is coming more and more to see that behind the eighth-century prophets there must have towered the figure of a, if not of the traditional, Moses; behind the prophets a, if not the, Law. Be that as it may, to the Jew of the Christian Era, Abraham and Moses were real and the Covenant unalterable. By the syncretism which has been already described Jeremiah's New Covenant was not regarded as new. Nor was it new; it represented a change of stress, not of contents. When he said (Jer. xxxi. 33), 'This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel, after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it,' Jeremiah, it has been held, was making Christianity possible. But he was also making Judaism possible. Here and nowhere else is to be found the principle which enabled Judaism to survive the loss of Temple and nationality. And the New Covenant was in no sense inconsistent with the Old. For not only does Jeremiah proceed to add in the self-same verse, 'I will be their God, and they will be my people,' but the New Covenant is specifically made with the house of Judah and of Israel, and it is associated with the permanence of the seed of Israel as a separate people and with the Divine rebuilding of Jerusalem. The Jew had no thought of analysing these verses into the words of the true Jeremiah and those of his editors. The point is that over and above, in complementary explanation of, the Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenants with their external signs, over and above the Call of the Patriarch and the Theophany of Sinai, was the Jeremian Covenant written in Israel's heart. The Covenant conferred a distinction and imposed a duty. It was a bond between a gracious God and a grateful Israel. It dignified history, for it interpreted history in terms of providence and purpose; it transfigured virtue by making virtue service; it was the salt of life, for how could present degradation demoralise, seeing that God was in it, to fulfil His part of the bond, to hold Israel as His jewel, though Rome might despise? The Covenant made the Jew self-confident and arrogant, but these very faults were needed to save him. It was his only defence against the world's scorn. He forgot that the correlative of the Covenant was Isaiah's 'Covenant-People'--missionary to the Gentiles and the World. He relegated his world-mission (which Christianity and Islam in part gloriously fulfilled) to a dim Messianic future, and was content if in his own present he remained faithful to his mission to himself. Above all, the legacy from the past came to Judaism hallowed and humanised by all the experience of redemption and suffering which had marked Israel's course in ages past, and was to mark his course in ages to come. The Exodus, the Exile, the Maccabean heroism, the Roman catastrophe; Prophet, Wise Man, Priest and Scribe,--all had left their trace. Judaism was a religion based on a book and on a tradition; but it was also a religion based on a unique experience. The book might be misread, the tradition encumbered, but the experience was eternally clear and inspiring. It shone through the Roman Diaspora as it afterwards illuminated the Roman Ghetto, making the present tolerable by the memory of the past and the hope of the future. CHAPTER II RELIGION AS LAW The feature of Judaism which first attracts an outsider's attention, and which claims a front place in this survey, is its 'Nomism' or 'Legalism.' Life was placed under the control of Law. Not only morality, but religion also, was codified. 'Nomism,' it has been truly said, 'has always formed a fundamental trait of Judaism, one of whose chief aims has ever been to mould life in all its varying relations according to the Law, and to make obedience to the commandments a necessity and a custom' (Lauterbach, _Jewish Encyclopedia_, ix. 326). Only the latest development of Judaism is away from this direction. Individualism is nowadays replacing the olden solidarity. Thus, at the Central Conference of American Rabbis, held in July 1906 at Indianapolis, a project to formulate a system of laws for modern use was promptly rejected. The chief modern problem in Jewish life is just this: To what extent, and in what manner, can Judaism still place itself under the reign of Law? But for many centuries, certainly up to the French Revolution, Religion as Law was the dominant conception in Judaism. Before examining the validity of this conception a word is necessary as to the mode in which it expressed itself. Conduct, social and individual, moral and ritual, was regulated in the minutest details. As the Dayan M. Hyamson has said, the maxim _De minimis non curat lex_ was not applicable to the Jewish Law. This Law was a system of opinion and of practice and of feeling in which the great principles of morality, the deepest concerns of spiritual religion, the genuinely essential requirements of ritual, all found a prominent place. To assert that Pharisaism included the small and excluded the great, that it enforced rules and forgot principles, that it exalted the letter and neglected the spirit, is a palpable libel. Pharisaism was founded on God. On this foundation was erected a structure which embraced the eternal principles of religion. But the system, it must be added, went far beyond this. It held that there was a right and a wrong way of doing things in themselves trivial. Prescription ruled in a stupendous array of matters which other systems deliberately left to the fancy, the judgment, the conscience of the individual. Law seized upon the whole life, both in its inward experiences and outward manifestations. Harnack characterises the system harshly enough. Christianity did not add to Judaism, it subtracted. Expanding a famous epigram of Wellhausen's, Harnack admits that everything taught in the Gospels 'was also to be found in the Prophets, and even in the Jewish tradition of their time. The Pharisees themselves were in possession of it; but, unfortunately, they were in possession of much else besides. With them it was weighted, darkened, distorted, rendered ineffective and deprived of its force by a thousand things which they also held to be religious, and every whit as important as mercy and judgment. They reduced everything into one fabric; the good and holy was only one woof in a broad earthly warp' (_What is Christianity?_ p. 47). It is necessary to qualify this judgment, but it does bring out the all-pervadingness of Law in Judaism. 'And thou shalt speak of them when thou sittest in thine house, when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up' (Deut. vi. 7). The Word of God was to occupy the Jew's thoughts constantly; in his daily employment and during his manifold activities; when at work and when at rest. And as a correlative, the Law must direct this complex life, the Code must authorise action or forbid it, must turn the thoughts and emotions in one direction and divert them from another. Nothing in the history of religions can be cited as a complete parallel to this. But incomplete parallels abound. A very large portion of all men's lives is regulated from without: by the Bible and other sacred books; by the institutions and rites of religion; by the law of the land; by the imposed rules of accepted guides, poets, philosophers, physicians; and above all by social conventions, current fashions, and popular maxims. Only in the rarest case is an exceptional man the monstrosity which, we are told, every Israelite was in the epoch of the Judges--a law unto himself. But in Judaism, until the period of modern reform, this fact of human life was not merely an unconscious truism, it was consciously admitted. And it was realised in a Code. Or rather in a series of Codes. First came the _Mishnah_, a Code compiled at about the year 200 A.D., but the result of a Pharisaic activity extending over more than two centuries. While Christianity was producing the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament--the work in large part of Jews, or of men born in the circle of Judaism--Judaism in its other manifestation was working at the Code known as the _Mishnah_. This word means 'repetition,' or 'teaching by repetition'; it was an oral tradition reduced to writing long after much of its contents had been sifted in the discussions of the schools. In part earlier and in part later than the _Mishnah_ was the _Midrash_ ('inquiry,' 'interpretation'), not a Code, but a two-fold exposition of Scripture; homiletic with copious use of parable, and legalistic with an eye to the regulation of conduct. Then came the _Talmud_ in two recensions, the Palestinian and the Babylonian, the latter completed about 500 A.D. For some centuries afterwards the Geonim (heads of the Rabbinical Universities in Persia) continued to analyse and define the legal prescriptions and ritual of Judaism, adding and changing in accord with the needs of the day; for Tradition was a living, fluid thing. Then in the eleventh century Isaac of Fez (Alfasi) formulated a guide to Talmudic Law, and about a hundred years later (1180) Maimonides produced his _Strong Hand_, a Code of law and custom which influenced Jewish life ever after. Other codifications were made; but finally, in the sixteenth century, Joseph Caro (mystic and legalist) compiled the _Table Prepared_ (_Shulchan Aruch_), which, with masterly skill, collected the whole of the traditional law, arranged it under convenient heads in chapters and paragraphs, and carried down to our own day the Rabbinic conception of life. Under this Code, with more or less relaxation, the great bulk of Jews still live. But the revolt against it, or emancipation from it, is progressing every year, for the olden Jewish conception of religion and the old Jewish theory of life are, as hinted above, becoming seriously undermined. Now in what precedes there has been some intentional ambiguity in the use of the word Law. Much of the misunderstanding of Judaism has arisen from this ambiguity. 'Law' is in no adequate sense what the Jews themselves understood by the nomism of their religion. In modern times Law and Religion tend more and more to separate, and to speak of Judaism as Law _eo ipso_ implies a divorce of Judaism from Religion. The old antithesis between letter and spirit is but a phase of the same criticism. Law must specify, and the lawyer interprets Acts of Parliament by their letter; he refuses to be guided by the motives of the Act, he is concerned with what the Act distinctly formulates in set terms. In this sense Judaism never was a Legal Religion. It did most assiduously seek to get to the underlying motives of the written laws, and all the expansions of the Law were based on a desire more fully to realise the meaning and intention of the written Code. In other words, the Law was looked upon as the expression of the Will of God. Man was to yield to that Will for two reasons. First, because God is the perfect ideal of goodness. That ideal was for man to revere, and, so far as in him lay, to imitate. 'As I am merciful, be thou merciful; because I am gracious, be thou gracious.' The 'Imitation of God' is a notion which constantly meets us in Rabbinic literature. It is based on the Scriptural text: 'Be ye holy, for I the Lord am holy.' 'God, the ideal of all morality, is the founder of man's moral nature.' This is Professor Lazarus' modern way of putting it. But in substance it is the Jewish conception through all the ages. And there is a second reason. The Jew would not have understood the possibility of any other expression of the Divine Will than the expression which Judaism enshrined. For though he held that the Law was something imposed from without, he identified this imposed Law with the law which his own moral nature posited. The Rabbis tell us that certain things in the written Law could have been reached by man without the Law. The Law was in large part a correspondence to man's moral nature. This Rabbinic idea Lazarus sums up in the epigram: 'Moral laws, then, are not laws because they are written; they are written because they are laws.' The moral principle is autonomous, but its archetype is God. The ultimate reason, like the highest aim of morality, should be in itself. The threat of punishment and the promise of reward are the psychologic means to secure the fulfilment of laws, never the reasons for the laws, nor the motives to action. It is easy and necessary sometimes to praise and justify eudemonism, but, as Lazarus adds, 'Not a state to be reached, not a good to be won, not an evil to be warded off, is the impelling force of morality, but itself furnishes the creative impulse, the supreme commanding authority' (_Ethics of Judaism_, I. chap, ii.). And so the Rabbi of the third century B.C., Antigonos of Socho, put it in the memorable saying: 'Be not like servants who minister to their master upon the condition of receiving a reward; but be like servants who minister to their master without the condition of receiving a reward; and let the Fear of heaven be upon you' (Aboth, i. 3). Clearly the multiplication of rules obscures principles. The object of codification, to get at the full meaning of principles, is defeated by its own success. For it is always easier to follow rules than to apply principles. Virtues are more attainable than virtue, characteristics than character. And while it is false to assert that Judaism attached more importance to ritual than to religion, yet, the two being placed on one and the same plane, it is possible to find in co-existence ritual piety and moral baseness. Such a combination is ugly, and people do not stop to think whether the baseness would be more or less if the ritual piety were absent instead of present. But it is the fact that on the whole the Jewish codification of religion did not produce the evil results possible or even likely to accrue. The Jew was always distinguished for his domestic virtues, his purity of life, his sobriety, his charity, his devotion. These were the immediate consequence of his Law-abiding disposition and theory. Perhaps there was some lack of enthusiasm, something too much of the temperate. But the facts of life always brought their corrective. Martyrdom was the means by which the Jewish consciousness was kept at a glowing heat. And as the Jew was constantly called upon to die for his religion, the religion ennobled the life which was willingly surrendered for the religion. The Messianic Hope was vitalised by persecution. The Jew, devotee of practical ideals, became also a dreamer. His visions of God were ever present to remind him that the law which he codified was to him the Law of God. CHAPTER III ARTICLES OF FAITH It is often said that Judaism left belief free while it put conduct into fetters. Neither half of this assertion is strictly true. Belief was not free altogether; conduct was not altogether controlled. In the _Mishnah_ (Sanhedrin, x. 1) certain classes of unbelievers are pronounced portionless in the world to come. Among those excluded from Paradise are men who deny the resurrection of the dead, and men who refuse assent to the doctrine of the Divine origin of the Torah, or Scripture. Thus it cannot be said that belief was, in the Rabbinic system, perfectly free. Equally inaccurate is the assertion that conduct was entirely a matter of prescription. Not only were men praised for works of supererogation, performance of more than the Law required; not only were there important divergences in the practical rules of conduct formulated by the various Rabbis; but there was a whole class of actions described as 'matters given over to the heart,' delicate refinements of conduct which the law left untouched and were a concern exclusively of the feeling, the private judgment of the individual. The right of private judgment was passionately insisted on in matters of conduct, as when Rabbi Joshua refused to be guided as to his practical decisions by the Daughter of the Voice, the supernatural utterance from on high. The Law, he contended, is on earth, not in heaven; and man must be his own judge in applying the Law to his own life and time. And, the Talmud adds, God Himself announced that Rabbi Joshua was right. Thus there was neither complete fluidity of doctrine nor complete rigidity of conduct. There was freedom of conduct within the law, and there was law within freedom of doctrine. But Dr. Emil Hirsch puts the case fairly when he says: 'In the same sense as Christianity or Islam, Judaism cannot be credited with Articles of Faith. Many attempts have indeed been made at systematising and reducing to a fixed phraseology and sequence the contents of the Jewish religion. But these have always lacked the one essential element: authoritative sanction on the part of a supreme ecclesiastical body' (_Jewish Encyclopedia_, ii. 148). Since the epoch of the Great Sanhedrin, there has been no central authority recognised throughout Jewry. The Jewish organisation has long been congregational. Since the fourth century there has been no body with any jurisdiction over the mass of Jews. At that date the Calendar was fixed by astronomical calculations. The Patriarch, in Babylon, thereby voluntarily abandoned the hold he had previously had over the scattered Jews, for it was no longer the fiat of the Patriarch that settled the dates of the Festivals. While there was something like a central authority, the Canon of Scripture had been fixed by Synods, but there is no record of any attempt to promulgate articles of faith. During the revolt against Hadrian an Assembly of Rabbis was held at Lydda. It was then decided that a Jew must yield his life rather than accept safety from the Roman power, if such conformity involved one of the three offences: idolatry, murder, and unchastity (including, incest and adultery). But while this decision throws a favourable light on the Rabbinic theory of life, it can in no sense be called a fixation of a creed. There were numerous synods in the Middle Ages, but they invariably dealt with practical morals or with the problems which arose from time to time in regard to the relations between Jews and their Christian neighbours. It is true that we occasionally read of excommunications for heresy. But in the case, for instance, of Spinoza, the Amsterdam Synagogue was much more anxious to dissociate itself from the heresies of Spinoza than to compel Spinoza to conform to the beliefs of the Synagogue. And though this power of excommunication might have been employed by the mediaeval Rabbis to enforce the acceptance of a creed, in point of fact no such step was ever taken. Since the time of Moses Mendelssohn (1728-1786), the chief Jewish dogma has been that Judaism has no dogmas. In the sense assigned above this is clearly true. Dogmas imposed by an authority able and willing to enforce conformity and punish dissent are non-existent in Judaism. In olden times membership of the religion of Judaism was almost entirely a question of birth and race, not of confession. Proselytes were admitted by circumcision and baptism, and nothing beyond an acceptance of the Unity of God and the abjuration of idolatry is even now required by way of profession from a proselyte. At the same time the earliest passage put into the public liturgy was the Shema' (Deuteronomy vi. 4-9), in which the unity of God and the duty to love God are expressed. The Ten Commandments were also recited daily in the Temple. It is instructive to note the reason given for the subsequent removal of the Decalogue from the daily liturgy. It was feared that some might assume that the Decalogue comprised the whole of the binding law. Hence the prominent position given to them in the Temple service was no longer assigned to the Ten Commandments in the ritual of the Synagogue. In modern times, however, there is a growing practice of reading the Decalogue every Sabbath day. What we do find in Pharisaic Judaism, and this is the real answer to Harnack (_supra_, p. 15), is an attempt to reduce the whole Law to certain fundamental principles. When a would-be proselyte accosted Hillel, in the reign of Herod, with the demand that the Rabbi should communicate the whole of Judaism while the questioner stood on one foot, Hillel made the famous reply: 'What thou hatest do unto no man; that is the whole Law, the rest is commentary.' This recalls another famous summarisation, that given by Jesus later on in the Gospel. A little more than a century later, Akiba said that the command to love one's neighbour is the fundamental principle of the Law. Ben Azzai chose for this distinction another sentence: 'This is the book of the generations of man,' implying the equality of all men in regard to the love borne by God for His creatures. Another Rabbi, Simlai (third century), has this remarkable saying: 'Six hundred and thirteen precepts were imparted unto Moses, three hundred and sixty-five negative (in correspondence with the days of the solar year), and two hundred and forty-eight positive (in correspondence with the number of a man's limbs). David came and established them as eleven, as it is written: A psalm of David--Lord who shall sojourn in Thy tent, who shall dwell in Thy holy mountain? (i) He that walketh uprightly and (ii) worketh righteousness and (iii) speaketh the truth in his heart. (iv) He that backbiteth not with his tongue, (v) nor doeth evil to his neighbour, (vi) nor taketh up a reproach against another; (vii) in whose eyes a reprobate is despised, (viii) but who honoureth them that fear the Lord. (ix) He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not; (x) He that putteth not out his money to usury, (xi) nor taketh a bribe against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved. Thus David reduced the Law to eleven principles. Then came Micah and reduced them to three, as it is written: 'What doth the Lord require of thee but (i) to do justice, (ii) to love mercy, and (iii) to walk humbly with thy God? Then came Habbakuk and made the whole Law stand on one fundamental idea, 'The righteous man liveth by his faith' (Makkoth, 23 b). This desire to find one or a few general fundamental passages on which the whole Scripture might be seen to base itself is, however, far removed from anything of the nature of the Christian Creeds or of the Mohammedan Kalimah. And when we remember that the Pharisees and Sadducees differed on questions of doctrine (such as the belief in immortality held by the former and rejected by the latter), it becomes clear that the absence of a formal declaration of faith must have been deliberate. The most that was done was to introduce into the Liturgy a paragraph in which the assembled worshippers declared their assent to the truth and permanent validity of the Word of God. After the Shema' (whose contents are summarised above), the assembled worshippers daily recited a passage in which they said (and still say): 'True and firm is this Thy word unto us for ever.... True is it that Thou art indeed our God ... and there is none beside Thee.' After all, the difference between Pharisee and Sadducee was political rather than theological. It was not till Judaism came into contact, contact alike of attraction and repulsion, with other systems that a desire or a need for formulating Articles of Faith was felt. Philo, coming under the Hellenic spirit, was thus the first to make the attempt. In the last chapter of the tract on the Creation (_De Opifico_, lxi.), Philo enumerates what he terms the five most beautiful lessons, superior to all others. These are--(i) God is; (ii) God is One; (iii) the World was created (and is not eternal); (iv) the World is one, like unto God in singleness; and (v) God exercises a continual providence for the benefit of the world, caring for His creatures like a parent for his children. Philo's lead found no imitators. It was not for many centuries that two causes led the Synagogue to formulate a creed. And even then it was not the Synagogue as a body that acted, nor was it a creed that resulted. The first cause was the rise of sects within the Synagogue. Of these sects the most important was that of the Karaites or Scripturalists. Rejecting tradition, the Karaites expounded their beliefs both as a justification of themselves against the Traditionalists and possibly as a remedy against their own tendency to divide within their own order into smaller sects. In the middle of the twelfth century the Karaite Judah Hadassi of Constantinople arranged the whole Pentateuch under the headings of the Decalogue, much as Philo had done long before. And so he formulates ten dogmas of Judaism. These are--(i) Creation (as opposed to the Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of the world); (ii) the existence of God; (iii) God is one and incorporeal; (iv) Moses and the other canonical prophets were called by God; (v) the Law is the Word of God, it is complete, and the Oral Tradition was unnecessary; (vi) the Law must be read by the Jew in the original Hebrew; (vii) the Temple of Jerusalem was the place chosen by God for His manifestation; (viii) the Resurrection of the dead; (ix) the Coming of Messiah, son of David; (x) Final Judgment and Retribution. Within the main body of the Synagogue we have to wait for the same moment for a formulation of Articles of Faith. Maimonides (1135-1204) was a younger contemporary of Hadassi; he it was that drew up the one and only set of principles which have ever enjoyed wide authority in Judaism. Before Maimonides there had been some inclination towards a creed, but he is the first to put one into set terms. Maimonides was much influenced by Aristotelianism, and this gave him an impulse towards a logical statement of the tenets of Judaism. On the other side, he was deeply concerned by the criticism of Judaism from the side of Mohammedan theologians. The latter contended, in particular, that the biblical anthropomorphisms were destructive of a belief in the pure spirituality of God. Hence Maimonides devoted much of his great treatise, _Guide for the Perplexed_, to a philosophical allegorisation of the human terms applied to God in the Hebrew Bible. In his Commentary on the _Mishnah_ (Sanhedrin, Introduction to Chelek), Maimonides declares 'The roots of our law and its fundamental principles are thirteen.' These are--(i) Belief in the existence of God, the Creator; (ii) belief in the unity of God; (iii) belief in the incorporeality of God; (iv) belief in the priority and eternity of God; (v) belief that to God and to God alone worship must be offered; (vi) belief in prophecy; (vii) belief that Moses was the greatest of all prophets; (viii) belief that the Law was revealed from heaven; (ix) belief that the Law will never be abrogated, and that no other Law will ever come from God; (x) belief that God knows the works of men; (xi) belief in reward and punishment; (xii) belief in the coming of the Messiah; (xiii) belief in the resurrection of the dead.' Now here we have for the first time a set of beliefs which were a test of Judaism. Maimonides leaves no doubt as to his meaning. For he concluded by saying: 'When all these principles of faith are in the safe keeping of a man, and his conviction of them is well established, he then enters into the general body of Israel'; and, on the other hand: 'When, however, a man breaks away from any one of these fundamental principles of belief, then of him it is said that he has gone out of the general body of Israel and he denies the root-truths of Judaism.' This formulation of a dogmatic test was never confirmed by any body of Rabbis. No Jew was ever excommunicated for declaring his dissent from these articles. No Jew was ever called upon formally to express his assent to them. But, as Professor Schechter justly writes: 'Among the Maimonists we may probably include the great majority of Jews, who accepted the Thirteen Articles without further question. Maimonides must have filled up a great gap in Jewish theology, a gap, moreover, the existence of which was very generally perceived. A century had hardly lapsed before the Thirteen Articles had become a theme for the poets of the Synagogue. And almost every country can show a poem or a prayer founded on these Articles' (_Studies in Judaism_, p. 301). Yet the opposition to the Articles was both impressive and persistent. Some denied altogether the admissibility of Articles, claiming that the whole Law and nothing but the Law was the Charter of Judaism. Others criticised the Maimonist Articles in detail. Certainly they are far from logically drawn up, some paragraphs being dictated by opposition to Islam rather than by positive needs of the Jewish position. A favourite condensation was a smaller list of three Articles: (i) Existence of God; (ii) Revelation; and (iii) Retribution. These three Articles are usually associated with the name of Joseph Albo (1380-1444), though they are somewhat older. There is no doubt but that these Articles found, in recent centuries, more acceptance than the Maimonist Thirteen, though the latter still hold their place in the orthodox Jewish Prayer Books. They may be found in the _Authorised Daily Prayer Book_, ed. Singer, p. 89. Moses Mendelssohn (1728-1786), who strongly maintained that Judaism is a life, not a creed, made the practice of formulating Articles of Judaism unfashionable. But not for long. More and more, Judaic ritual has fallen into disregard since the French Revolution. Judaism has therefore tended to express itself as a system of doctrines rather than as a body of practices. And there was a special reason why the Maimonist Articles could not remain. Reference is not meant to the fact that many Jews came to doubt the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch. But there were lacking in the Maimonist Creed all emotional elements. On the one hand, Maimonides, rationalist and anti-Mystic as he was, makes no allowance for the doctrine of the Immanence of God. Then, owing to his unemotional nature, he laid no stress on all the affecting and moving associations of the belief in the Mission of Israel as the Chosen People. Before Maimonides, if there had been one dogma of Judaism at all, it was the Election of Israel. Jehuda Halevi, the greatest of the Hebrew poets of the Middle Ages, had at the beginning of the twelfth century, some half century before Maimonides, given expression to this in the famous epigram: 'Israel is to the nations like the heart to the limbs.' Though, however, the Creed of Maimonides has no position of authority in the Synagogue, modern times have witnessed no successful intrusion of a rival. Most writers of treatises on Judaism prefer to describe rather than to define the religious tenets of the faith. In America there have been several suggestions of a Creed. Articles of faith have been there chiefly formulated for the reception of proselytes. This purpose is a natural cause of precision in belief; for while one who already stands within by birth or race is rarely called upon to justify his faith, the newcomer is under the necessity to do so. In the pre-Christian Judaism it is probable that there was a Catechism or short manual of instruction called in Greek the _Didache_, in which the Golden Rule in Hillel's negative form and the Decalogue occupied a front place. Thus we find, too, modern American Jews formulating Articles of Faith as a Proselyte Confession. In 1896 the Central Conference of American Rabbis adopted the following five principles for such a Confession: (i) God the Only One; (ii) Man His Image; (iii) Immortality of the Soul; (iv) Retribution; (v) Israel's Mission. During the past few months a tract, entitled 'Essentials of Judaism,' has been issued in London by the Jewish Religious Union. The author, N. S. Joseph, is careful to explain that he is not putting forth these principles as 'dogmatic Articles of Faith,' and that they are solely 'suggestive outlines of belief which may be gradually imparted to children, the outlines being afterwards filled up by the teacher. But the eight paragraphs of these Essentials are at once so ably compiled and so informing as to the modern trend of Jewish belief that they will be here cited without comment. According then to this presentation, the Essentials of Judaism are: '(i) There is One Eternal God, who is the sole Origin of all things and forces, and the Source of all living souls. He rules the universe with justice, righteousness, mercy, and love. (ii) Our souls, emanating from God, are immortal, and will return to Him when our life on earth ceases. While we are here, our souls can hold direct communion with God in prayer and praise, and in silent contemplation and admiration of His works. (iii) Our souls are directly responsible to God for the work of our life on earth. God, being All-merciful, will judge us with loving-kindness, and being All-just, will allow for our imperfections; and we, therefore, need no mediator and no vicarious atonement to ensure the future welfare of our souls. (iv) God is the One and only God. He is Eternal and Omnipresent. He not only pervades the entire world, but is also within us; and His Spirit helps and leads us towards goodness and truth. (v) Duty should be the moving force of our life; and the thought that God is always in us and about us should incite us to lead good and beneficent lives, showing our love of God by loving our fellow-creatures, and working for their happiness and betterment with all our might. (vi) In various bygone times God has revealed, and even in our own days continues to reveal to us, something of His nature and will, by inspiring the best and wisest minds with noble thoughts and new ideas, to be conveyed to us in words, so that this world may constantly improve and grow happier and better. (vii) Long ago some of our forefathers were thus inspired, and they handed down to us--and through us to the world at large--some of God's choicest gifts, the principles of Religion and Morality, now recorded in our Bible; and these spiritual gifts of God have gradually spread among our fellow-men, so that much of our religion and of its morality has been adopted by them. (viii) Till the main religious and moral principles of Judaism have been accepted by the world at large, the maintenance by the Jews of a separate corporate existence is a religious duty incumbent upon them. They are the "witnesses" of God, and they must adhere to their religion, showing forth its truth and excellence to all mankind. This has been and is and will continue to be their mission. Their public worship and private virtues must be the outward manifestation of the fulfilment of that mission.' CHAPTER IV SOME CONCEPTS OF JUDAISM Though there are no accepted Articles of Faith in Judaism, there is a complete consensus of opinion that Monotheism is the basis of the religion. The Unity of God was more than a doctrine. It was associated with the noblest hope of Israel, with Israel's Mission to the world. The Unity of God was even more than a hope. It was an inspiration, a passion. For it the Jews 'passed through fire and water,' enduring tribulation and death for the sake of the Unity. All the Jewish martyrologies are written round this text. In one passage the Talmud actually defines the Jew as the Monotheist. 'Whoever repudiates the service of other gods is called a Jew' (Megillah, 13 a). But this all-pervading doctrine of the Unity did not reach Judaism as an abstract philosophical truth. Hence, though the belief in the Unity of God, associated as it was with the belief in the Spirituality of God, might have been expected to lead to the conception of an Absolute, Transcendent Being such as we meet in Islam, it did not so lead in Judaism. Judaism never attempted to define God at all. Maimonides put the seal on the reluctance of Jewish theology to go beyond, or to fall short of, what historic Judaism delivered. Judaism wavers between the two opposite conceptions: absolute transcendentalism and absolute pantheism. Sometimes Judaism speaks with the voice of Isaiah; sometimes with the voice of Spinoza. It found the bridge in the Psalter. 'The Lord is nigh unto all that call upon Him.' The Law brought heaven to earth; Prayer raised earth to heaven. As was remarked above, Jewish theology never shrank from inconsistency. It accepted at once God's foreknowledge and man's free-will. So it described the knowledge of God as far above man's reach; yet it felt God near, sympathetic, a Father and Friend. The liturgy of the Synagogue has been well termed a 'precipitate' of all the Jewish teaching as to God. He is the Great, the Mighty, the Awful, the Most High, the King. But He is also the Father, Helper, Deliverer, the Peace-Maker, Supporter of the weak, Healer of the sick. All human knowledge is a direct manifestation of His grace. Man's body, with all its animal functions, is His handiwork. He created joy, and made the Bridegroom and the Bride. He formed the fruit of the Vine, and is the Source of all the lawful pleasures of men. He is the Righteous Judge; but He remembers that man is dust, He pardons sins, and His loving-kindness is over all. He is unchangeable, yet repentance can avert the evil decree. He is in heaven, yet he puts the love and fear of Him into man's very heart. He breathed the Soul into man, and is faithful to those that sleep in the grave. He is the Reviver of the dead. He is Holy, and He sanctified Israel with His commandments. And the whole is pervaded with the thought of God's Unity and the consequent unity of mankind. Here again we meet the curious syncretism which we have so often observed. God is in a special sense the God of Israel; but He is unequivocally, too, the God of all flesh. Moses Mendelssohn said that, when in the company of a Christian friend, he never felt the remotest desire to convert him to Judaism. This is the explanation of the effect on the Jews of the combined belief in God as the God of Israel, and also as the God of all men. At one time Judaism was certainly a missionary religion. But after the loss of nationality this quality was practically dormant. Belief was not necessary to salvation. 'The pious of all nations have a part in the world to come' may have been but a casual utterance of an ancient Rabbi, but it rose into a settled conviction of later Judaism. Moreover, it was dangerous for Jews to attempt any religious propaganda in the Middle Ages, and thus the pressure of fact came to the support of theory. Mendelssohn even held that the same religion was not necessarily good for all, just as the same form of government may not fit equally all the various national idiosyncrasies. Judaism for the Jew may almost be claimed as a principle of orthodox Judaism. It says to the outsider: You may come in if you will, but we warn you what it means. At all events it does not seek to attract. It is not strange that this attitude has led to unpopularity. The reason of this resentment is not that men wish to be invited to join Judaism; it lies rather in the sense that the absence of invitation implies an arrogant reserve. To some extent this is the case. The old-fashioned Jew is inclined to think himself superior to other men. Such a thought has its pathos. On the other hand, the national as contrasted with the universal aspect of Judaism is on the wane. Many Jewish liturgies have, for instance, eliminated the prayers for the restoration of sacrifices; and several have removed or spiritualised the petitions for the recovery of the Jewish nationality. Modern reformed Judaism is a universalistic Judaism. It lays stress on the function of Israel, the Servant, as a 'Light to the Nations.' It tends to eliminate those ceremonies and beliefs which are less compatible with a universal than with, a racial religion. Modern Zionism is not a real reaction against this tendency. For Zionism is either non-religious or, if religious, brings to the front what has always been a corrective to the nationalism of orthodox Judaism. For the separation of Israel has ever been a means to an end; never an end in itself. Often the end has been forgotten in the means, but never for long. The end of Israel's separateness is the good of the world. And the religious as distinct from the merely political Zionist who thinks that Judaism would gain by a return to Palestine is just the one who also thinks that return is a necessary preliminary to the Messianic Age, when all men shall flow unto Zion and seek God there. Reformed Jews would have to be Zionists also in this sense, were it not that many of them no longer share the belief in the national aspects of the prophecies as to Israel's future. These may believe that the world may become full of the knowledge of God without any antecedent withdrawal of Israel from the world. If Judaism as a system of doctrine is necessarily syncretistic in its conception of God, then we may expect the same syncretism in its theory of God's relation to man. It must be said at once that the term 'theory' is ill-chosen. It is laid to the charge of Judaism that it has no 'theory' of Sin. This is true. If virtue and righteousness are obedience, then disobedience is both vice and sin. No further theory was required or possible. Atonement is reversion to obedience. Now it was said above that the doctrine of the Unity did not reach Judaism as a philosophical truth exactly defined and apprehended. It came as the result of a long historic groping for the truth, and when it came it brought with it olden anthropomorphic wrappings and tribal adornments which were not easily to be discarded, if they ever were entirely discarded. So with the relation of God to man in general and Israel in particular. The unchangeable God is not susceptible to the change implied in Atonement. But history presented to the Jew examples of what he could not otherwise interpret than as reconciliation between God the Father and Israel the wayward but always at heart loyal Son. And this interpretation was true to the inward experience. Man's repentance was correlated with the sorrow of God. God as well as man repented, the former of punishment, the latter of sin. The process of atonement included contrition, confession, and change of life. Undoubtedly Jewish theology lays the greatest stress on the active stage of the process. Jewish moralists use the word Teshubah (literally 'turning' or 'return,' _i.e._ a turning from evil or a return to God) chiefly to mean a change of life. Sin is evil life, atonement is the better life. The better life was attained by fasting, prayer, and charity, by a purification of the heart and a cleansing of the hands. The ritual side of atonement was seriously weakened by the loss of the Temple. The sacrificial atonement was gone. Nothing replaced it ritually. Hence the Jewish tendency towards a practical religion was strengthened by its almost enforced stress in atonement on moral betterment. But this moral betterment depended on a renewed communion with God. Sin estranged, atonement brought near. Jewish theology regarded sin as a triumph of the _Yetser Ha-ra_ (the 'evil inclination') over the _Yetser Ha-tob_ (the 'good inclination'). Man was always liable to fall a prey to his lower self. But such a fall, though usual and universal, was not inevitable. Man reasserted his higher self when he curbed his passions, undid the wrong he had wrought to others, and turned again to God with a contrite heart. As a taint of the soul, sin was washed away by the suppliant's tears and confession, by his sense of loss, his bitter consciousness of humiliation, but withal man was helpless without God. God was needed for the atonement. Israel never dreamed of putting forward his righteousness as a claim to pardon. 'We are empty of good works' is the constant refrain of the Jewish penitential appeals. The final reliance is on God and on God alone. Yet Judaism took over from its past the anthropomorphic belief that God could be moved by man's prayers, contrition, amendment--especially by man's amendment. Atonement was only real when the amendment began; it only lasted while the amendment endured. Man must not think to throw his own burden entirely on God. God will help him to bear it, and will lighten the weight from willing shoulders. But bear it man can and must. The shoulders must be at all events willing. Judaism as a theology stood or fell by its belief that man can affect God. If, for instance, prayer had no validity, then Judaism had no basis. Judaism did not distinguish between the objective and subjective efficacy of prayer. The two went together. The acceptance of the will of God and the inclining of God's purpose to the desire of man were two sides of one fact. The Rabbinic Judaism did not mechanically posit, however, the objective validity of prayer. On the contrary, the man who prayed expecting an answer was regarded as arrogant and sinful. A famous Talmudic prayer sums up the submissive aspect of the Jew in this brief petition (Berachoth, 29 a): 'Do Thy will in heaven above, and grant contentment of spirit to those that fear Thee below; and that which is good in Thine eyes do. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hearest prayer.' This, be it remembered, was the prayer of a Pharisee. So, too, a very large portion of all Jewish prayer is not petition but praise. Still, Judaism believed, not that prayer would be answered, but that it could be answered. In modern times the chief cause of the weakening of religion all round, in and out of the Jewish communion, is the growing disbelief in the objective validity of prayer. And a similar remark applies to the belief in miracles. But to a much less extent. All ancient religions were based on miracle, and even to the later religious consciousness a denial of miracle seems to deny the divine Omnipotence. Jewish theology from the Rabbinic age sought to evade the difficulty by the mystic notion that all miracles were latent in ordered nature at the creation. And so the miraculous becomes interconnected with Providence as revealed in history. But the belief in special miracles recurs again and again in Judaism, and though discarded by most reformed theologies, must be admitted as a prevailing concept of the older religion. But the belief was rather in general than in special Providence. There was a communal solidarity which made most of the Jewish prayers communal more than personal. It is held by many that in the Psalter 'I' in the majority of cases means the whole people. The sense of brotherhood, in other relations besides public worship, is a perennial characteristic of Judaism. Even more marked is this in the conception of the family. The hallowing of home-life was one of the best features of Judaism. Chastity was the mark of men and women alike. The position of the Jewish woman was in many ways high. At law she enjoyed certain privileges and suffered certain disabilities. But in the house she was queen. Monogamy had been the rule of Jewish life from the period of the return from the Babylonian Exile. In the Middle Ages the custom of monogamy was legalised in Western Jewish communities. Connected with the fraternity of the Jewish communal organisation and the incomparable affection and mutual devotion of the home-life was the habit of charity. Charity, in the sense both of almsgiving and of loving-kindness, was the virtue of virtues. The very word which in the Hebrew Bible means righteousness means in Rabbinic Hebrew charity. 'On three things the world stands,' says a Rabbi, 'on law, on public worship, and on the bestowal of loving-kindness.' Some other concepts of Judaism and their influence on character will be treated in a later chapter. Here a final word must be said on the Hallowing of Knowledge. In one of the oldest prayers of the Synagogue, repeated thrice daily, occurs this paragraph: 'Thou dost graciously bestow on man knowledge, and teachest mortals understanding; O let us be graciously endowed by Thee with knowledge, understanding, and discernment. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, gracious Giver of Knowledge.' The intellect was to be turned to the service of the God from whom intelligence emanated. The Jewish estimate of intellect and learning led to some unamiable contempt of the fool and the ignoramus. But the evil tendency of identifying learning with religion was more than mitigated by the encouragement which this concept gave to education. The ideal was that every Jew must be a scholar, or at all events a student. Obscurantism could not for any lengthy period lodge itself in the Jewish camp. There was no learned caste. The fact that the Bible and much of the most admired literature was in Hebrew made most Jews bilingual at least. But it was not merely that knowledge was useful, that it added dignity to man, and realised part of his possibilities. The service of the Lord called for the dedication of the reason as well as for the purification of the heart. The Jew had to think as well as feel He had to serve with the mind as well as with the body. Therefore it was that he was always anxious to justify his religion to his reason. Maimonides devoted a large section of his _Guide_ to the explanation of the motives of the commandments. And his example was imitated. The Law was the expression of the Will of God, and obeyed and loved as such. But the Law was also the expression of the Divine Reason. Hence man had the right and the duty to examine and realise how his own human reason was satisfied by the Law. In a sense the Jew was a quite simple believer. But never a simpleton. '_Know_ the Lord thy God' was the key-note of this aspect of Jewish theology. CHAPTER V SOME OBSERVANCES OF JUDAISM The historical consciousness of Israel was vitalised by a unique adaptability to present conditions. This is shown in the fidelity with which a number of ancient festivals have been maintained through the ages. Some of these were taken over from pre-Israelite cults. They were nature feasts, and these are among the oldest rites of men. But, as Maimonides wisely said eight centuries ago, religious rites depend not so much on their origins as on the use men make of them. People who wish to return to the primitive usages of this or that church have no grasp of the value and significance of ceremonial. Here, at all events, we are not concerned with origins. The really interesting thing is that feasts, which originated in the fields and under the free heaven, were observed and enjoyed in the confined streets of the Ghetto. The influence of ceremonial is undying when it is bound up with a community's life. 'It is impossible to create festivals to order. One must use those which exist, and where necessary charge them with new meanings.' So writes Mr. Montefiore in his _Liberal Judaism_ (p. 155). This is precisely what has happened with the Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. These three festivals were originally, as has been said, nature feasts. But they became also pilgrim feasts. After the fall of the Temple the pilgrimages to Jerusalem, of course, ceased, and there was an end to the sacrificial rites connected with them all. The only sense in which they can still be called pilgrim feasts is that, despite the general laxity of Sabbath observance and Synagogue attendance, these three celebrations are nowadays occasions on which, in spring, summer, and autumn, a large section of the Jewish community contrives to wend its way to places of public worship. In the Jewish Liturgy the three feasts have special designations. They are called respectively 'The Season of our Freedom,' 'the Season of the Giving of our Law,' and 'the Season of our Joy.' These descriptions are not biblical, nor are they found in this precise form until the fixation of the Synagogue liturgy in the early part of the Middle Ages. But they have had a powerful influence in perpetuating the hold that the three pilgrim feasts have on the heart and consciousness of Israel. Liberty, Revelation, Joy--these are a sequence of wondrous appeal. Now it is easily seen that these ideas have no indissoluble connection with specific historical traditions. True, 'Freedom' implies the Exodus; 'Revelation,' the Sinaitic theophany; 'Joy,' the harvest merry-makings, and perhaps some connection with the biblical narrative of Israel's wanderings in the wilderness. But the connection, though essential for the construction of the association, is not essential for its retention. 'The Passover,' says Mr. Montefiore (_Liberal Judaism_, p. 155), 'practically celebrates the formation of the Jewish people. It is also the festival of liberty. In view of these two central features, it does not matter that we no longer believe in the miraculous incidents of the Exodus story. They are mere trappings which can easily be dispensed with. A festival of liberty, the formation of a people for a religious task, a people destined to become a purely religious community whose continued existence has no meaning or value except on the ground of religion,--here we have ideas, which can fitly form the subject of a yearly celebration.' Again, as to Pentecost and the Ten Commandments, Mr. Montefiore writes: 'We do not believe that any divine or miraculous voice, still less that God Himself, audibly pronounced the Ten Words. But their importance lies in themselves, not in their surroundings and origin. Liberals as well as orthodox may therefore join in the festival of the Ten Commandments. Pentecost celebrates the definite union of religion with morality, the inseparable conjunction of the "service" of God with the "service" of man. Can any religious festival have a nobler subject?' Finally, as to tabernacles, Mr. Montefiore thus expresses himself: 'For us, to-day, the connection with the wanderings from Egypt, which the latest [biblical] legislators attempted, has again disappeared. Tabernacles is a harvest festival; it is a nature festival. Should not a religion have a festival or holy day of this kind? Is not the conception of God as the ruler and sustainer of nature, the immanent and all-pervading spirit, one aspect of the Divine, which can fitly be thought of and celebrated year by year? Thus each of the three great Pentateuchal festivals may reasonably and joyfully be observed by liberals and orthodox alike. We have no need or wish to make a change.' And of the actual ceremonial rites connected with the Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles, it is apparently only the avoidance of leaven on the first of the three that is regarded as unimportant. But even there Mr. Montefiore's own feeling is in favour of the rite. 'It is,' he says, 'a matter of comparative unimportance whether the practice of eating unleavened bread in the house for the seven days of the Passover be maintained or not. Those who appreciate the value of a pretty and ancient symbol, both for children and adults, will not easily abandon the custom.' This is surely a remarkable development. In the Christian Church it seems that certain festivals are retaining their general hold because they are becoming public, national holidays. But in Judaism the hold is to be maintained precisely on the ground that there is to be nothing national about them, they are to be reinterpreted ideally and symbolically. It remains to be seen whether this is possible, and it is too early to predict the verdict of experience. The process is in active incubation in America as well as in Europe, but it cannot be claimed that the eggs are hatched yet. On the other hand, Zionism has so far had no effect in the opposite direction. There has been no nationalisation of Judaism as a result of the new striving after political nationality. Many who had previously been detached from the Jewish community have been brought back by Zionism, but they have not been re-attached to the religion. There has been no perceptible increase, for instance, in the number of those who fast on the Ninth of Ab, the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple. Hence, from these and other considerations, of which limited space prevents the specification, it seems on the whole likely that, as in the past so in the future, the Festivals of the Synagogue will survive by changes in religious significance rather than by any deepening of national association. Except that the Synagogues are decked with flowers, while the Decalogue is solemnly intoned from the Scroll of the Pentateuch, the Feast of Pentecost has no ceremonial trappings even with the orthodox. Passover and Tabernacles stand on a different footing. The abstention from leavened bread on the former feast has led to a closely organised system of cleansing the houses, an interminable array of rules as to food; while the prescriptions of the Law as to the bearing of palm-branches and other emblems, and the ordinance as to dwelling in booths, have surrounded the Feast of Tabernacles with a considerable, if less extensive, ceremonial. But there is this difference. The Passover is primarily a festival of the Home, Tabernacles of the Synagogue. In Europe the habit of actually dwelling in booths has been long unusual, owing to climatic considerations. But of late years it has become customary for every Synagogue to raise its communal booth, to which many Jews pay visits of ceremony. On the other hand, the Passover is _par excellence_ a home rite. On the first two evenings (or at all events on the first evening) there takes place the _Seder_, (literally 'service'), a service of prayer, which is at the same time a family meal. Gathered round the table, on which are spread unleavened cakes, bitter herbs, and other emblems of joy and sorrow, the family recounts in prose and song the narrative of the Exodus. The service is in two parts, between which comes the evening meal. The hallowing of the home here attains its highest point. Unless, indeed, this distinction be allotted to the Sabbath. The rigidity of the laws regarding Sabbath observance is undeniable. Movement was restricted, many acts were forbidden which were not in themselves laborious. The Sabbath was hedged in by a formidable array of enactments. To an outside critic it is not wonderful that the Jewish Sabbath has a repellent look. But to the insider things wear another aspect. The Sabbath was and is a day of delight. On it the Jew had a foretaste of the happiness of the world to come. The reader who wishes to have a spirited, and absolutely true, picture of the Jewish Sabbath cannot do better than turn to Dr. Schechter's excellent _Studies in Judaism_ (pp. 296 _seq._). As Dr. Schechter pithily puts it: 'Somebody, either the learned professors, or the millions of the Jewish people, must be under a delusion.' Right through the Middle Ages the Sabbath grew deeper into the affections of the Jews. It was not till after the French Revolution and the era of emancipation, that a change occurred. Mixing with the world, and sharing the world's pursuits, the Jews began to find it hard to observe the Saturday Sabbath as of old. In still more recent times the difficulty has increased. Added to this, the growing laxity in observances has affected the Sabbath. This is one of the most pressing problems that face the Jewish community to-day. Here and there an attempt has been made by small sections of Jews to substitute a Sunday Sabbath for the Saturday Sabbath. But the plan has not prospered. One of the most notable rites of the Service of the Passover eve is the sanctification with wine, a ceremony common to the ordinary Sabbath eve. This rite has perhaps had much to do with the characteristic sobriety of Israel. Wine forms part of almost every Jewish rite, including the marriage ceremony. Wine thus becomes associated with religion, and undue indulgence is a sin as well as a vice. 'No joy without wine,' runs an old Rabbinic prescription. Joy is the hallmark of Judaism; 'Joyous Service' its summary of man's relation to the Law. So far is Judaism from being a gloomy religion, that it is almost too light-hearted, just as was the religion of ancient Greece. But the Talmud tells us of a class who in the early part of the first century were known as 'lovers of sorrow.' These men were in love with misfortune; for to every trial of Israel corresponded an intervention of the divine salvation. This is the secret of the Jewish gaiety. The resilience under tribulation was the result of a firm confidence in the saving fidelity of God. And the gaiety was tempered by solemnity, as the observances, to which we now turn, will amply show. Far more remarkable than anything yet discussed is the change effected in two other holy days since Bible times. The genius of Judaism is nowhere more conspicuous than in the fuller meanings which have been infused into the New Year's Day and the Day of Atonement. The New Year is the first day of the seventh month (Tishri), when the ecclesiastical year began. In the Bible the festival is only known as a 'day of blowing the shofar' (ram's horn). In the Synagogue this rite was retained after the destruction of the Temple, and it still is universally observed. But the day was transformed into a Day of Judgment, the opening of a ten days' period of Penitence which closed with the Day of Atonement. Here, too, the change effected in a biblical rite transformed its character. 'It needed a long upward development before a day, originally instituted on priestly ideas of national sin and collective atonement, could be transformed into the purely spiritual festival which we celebrate to-day' (Montefiore, _op. cit._, p. 160). But the day is none the less associated with a strict rite, the fast. It is one of the few ascetic ceremonies in the Jewish Calendar as known to most Jews. There is a strain of asceticism in some forms of Judaism, and on this a few words will be said later. But, on the whole, there is in modern Judaism a tendency to underrate somewhat the value of asceticism in religion. Hence the fast has a distinct importance in and for itself, and it is regrettable that the laudable desire to spiritualise the day is leading to a depreciation of the fast as such. But the real change is due to the cessation of sacrifices. In the Levitical Code, sacrifice had a primary importance in the scheme of atonement. But with the loss of the Temple, the idea of sacrifice entirely vanished, and atonement became a matter for the personal conscience. It was henceforth an inward sense of sin translating itself into the better life. 'To purify desire, to ennoble the will--this is the essential condition of atonement. Nay, it is atonement' (Joseph, _Judaism as Creed and Life_, p. 267; cf. _supra_, p. 45). This, in the opinion of Christian theologians, is a shallow view of atonement. But it is at all events an attempt to apply theology to life. And its justification lies in its success. Of the other festivals a word is due concerning two of them, which differ much in significance and in development. Purim and Chanuka are their names. Purim was probably the ancient Babylonian Saturnalia, and it is still observed as a kind of Carnival by many Jews, though their number is decreasing. For Purim is emphatically a Ghetto feast. And this description applies in more ways than one. In the first place, the Book of Esther, with which the Jewish Purim is associated, is not a book that commends itself to the modern Jewish consciousness. The historicity of the story is doubted, and its narrow outlook is not that of prophetic Judaism. Observed as mediaeval Jews observed it, Purim was a thoroughly innocent festivity. The unpleasant taste left by the closing scenes of the book was washed off by the geniality of temper which saw the humours of Haman's fall and never for a moment rested in a feeling of vindictiveness. But the whole book breathes so nationalistic a spirit, so uncompromising a belief that the enemy of Israel must be the enemy of God, that it has become difficult for modern Judaism to retain any affection for it. It makes its appeal to the persecuted, no doubt: it conveys a stirring lesson in the providential care with which God watches over His people: it bids the sufferer hope. Esther's splendid surrender of self, her immortal declaration, 'If I perish, I perish,' still may legitimately thrill all hearts. But the Carnival has no place in the life of a Western city, still less the sectional Carnival. The hobby-horse had its opportunity and the maskers their rights in the Ghetto, but only there. Purim thus is now chiefly retained as a children's feast, and still better as a feast of charity, of the interchange of gifts between friends, and the bestowal of alms on the needy. This is a worthy survival. Chanuka, on the other hand, grows every year into greater popularity. This festival of light, when lamps are kindled in honour of the Maccabean heroes, has of late been rediscovered by the liberals. For the first four centuries of the Christian Era, the festival of Chanuka ('Dedication') was observed by the Church as well as by the Synagogue. But for some centuries afterwards the significance of the anniversary was obscured. It is now realised as a momentous event in the world's history. It was not merely a local triumph of Hebraism over Hellenism, but it represents the re-entry of the East into the civilisation of the West. Alexander the Great had occidentalised the Orient. But with the success of the Judaeans against the Seleucids and of the Parthians against the Romans, the East reasserted itself. And the newly recovered influence has never again been surrendered. Hence this feast is a feast of ideals. Year by year this is becoming more clearly seen. And the symbol of the feast, light, is itself an inspiration. The Jew is really a very sentimental being. He loves symbols. A good deal of his fondness for ritual is due to this fact. The outward marks of an inner state have always appealed to him. Ancient taboos became not only consecrated but symbolical. Whether it be the rite of circumcision, or the use of phylacteries and fringed praying garments, or the adfixture of little scrolls in metal cases on the door-posts, or the glad submission to the dietary laws, in all these matters sentiment played a considerable part. And the word sentiment is used in its best sense. Abstract morality is well enough for the philosopher, but men of flesh and blood want their morality expressed in terms of feeling. Love of God is a fine thing, but the Jew wished to do loving acts of service. Obedience to the Will of God, the suppression of the human desires before that Will, is a great ideal. But the Jew wished to realise that he was obeying, that he was making the self-suppression. He was not satisfied with a general law of holiness: he felt impelled to holiness in detail, to a life in which the laws of bodily hygiene were obeyed as part of the same law of holiness that imposed ritual and moral purity. Much of the intricate system, of observance briefly summarised in this paragraph, a system which filled the Jew's life, is passing away. This is largely because Jews are surrendering their own original theory of life and religion. Modern Judaism seems to have no use for the ritual system. The older Judaism might retort that, if that be so, it has no use for the modern Judaism. It is, however, clear that modern Judaism now realises the mistake made by the Reformers of the mid-nineteenth century. Hence we are hearing, and shall no doubt hear more and more, of the modification of observances in Judaism rather than of their abolition. CHAPTER VI JEWISH MYSTICISM 'Judaism is often called the religion of reason. It is this, but it is also the religion of the soul. It recognises the value of that mystic insight, those indefinable intuitions which, taking up the task at the point where the mind impotently abandons it, carries us straight into the presence of the King. Thus it has found room both for the keen speculator on theological problems and for the mystic who, because he feels God, declines to reason about Him--for a Maimonides and a Mendelssohn, but also for a Nachmanides, a Vital, and a Luria' (M. Joseph, _op. cit._, p. 47). Used in a vague way, mysticism stands for spiritual inwardness. Religion without mysticism, said Amiel, is a rose without perfume. This saying is no more precise and no more informing than Matthew Arnold's definition of religion as morality touched with emotion. Neither mysticism nor an emotional touch makes religion. They are as often as not concomitants of a pathological state which is the denial of religion. But if mysticism means a personal attitude towards God in which the heart is active as well as the mind, then religion cannot exist without mysticism. When, however, we regard mysticism as what it very often is, as an antithesis to institutional religion and a revolt against authority and forms, then it may seem at first sight paradoxical to recognise the mystic's claim to the hospitality of Judaism. That a religion which produced the Psalter, and not only produced it, but used it with never a break, should be a religion, with intensely spiritual possibilities, and its adherents capable of a vivid sense of the nearness of God, with an ever-felt and never-satisfied longing for communion with Him, is what we should fully expect. But this expectation would rather make us look for an expression on the lines of the 119th Psalm, in which the Law is so markedly associated with freedom and spirituality. Judaism, after all, allowed to authority and Law a supreme place. But the mystic relies on his own intuitions, depends on his personal experiences. Judaism, on the other hand, is a scheme in which personal experiences only count in so far as they are brought into the general fund of the communal experience. But in discussing Judaism it is always imperative to discard all _a priori_ probabilities. Judaism is the great upsetter of the probable. Analyse a tendency of Judaism and predict its logical consequences, and then look in Judaism for consequences quite other than these. Over and over again things are not what they ought to be. The sacrificial system should have destroyed spirituality; in fact, it produced the Psalter, 'the hymnbook of the second Temple.' Pharisaism ought to have led to externalism; in fact, it did not, for somehow excessive scrupulosity in rite and pietistic exercises went hand in hand with simple faith and religious inwardness. So, too, the expression of ethics and religion as Law ought to have suppressed individuality; in fact, it sometimes gave an impulse to each individual to try to impose his own concepts, norms, and acts as a Law upon the rest. Each thought very much for himself, and desired that others should think likewise. We have already seen that in matters of dogma there never was any corporate action at all; in ancient times, as now, it is not possible to pronounce definitely on the dogmatic teachings of Judaism. Though there has been and is a certain consensus of opinion on many matters, yet neither in practice nor in beliefs have the local, the temporal, the personal elements ever been negligible. In order to expound or define a tenet or rite of Judaism it is mostly necessary to go into questions of time and place and person. Perhaps, then, we ought to be prepared to find, as in point of fact we do find, within the main body of Judaism, and not merely as a freak of occasional eccentrics, distinct mystical tendencies. These tendencies have often been active well inside the sphere of the Law. Mysticism was, as we shall see, sometimes a revolt against Law; but it was often, in Judaism as in the Roman Catholic Church, the outcome of a sincere and even passionate devotion to authority. Jewish mysticism, in particular, starts as an interpretation of the Scriptures. Certain truths were arrived at by man either intuitively or rationally, and these were harmonised with the Bible by a process of lifting the veil from the text, and thus penetrating to the true meaning hidden beneath the letter. Allegorical and esoteric exegesis always had this aim: to find written what had been otherwise found. Honour was thus done to the Scriptures, though the latter were somewhat cavalierly treated in the process; Philo's doctrine (at the beginning of the Christian era) and the great canonical book of the mediaeval Cabbala, the Zohar (beginning of the fourteenth century), were alike in this, they were largely commentaries on the Pentateuch. Maimonides in the twelfth century followed the same method, and only differed from these in the nature of his deductions from Scripture. This prince of rationalists agreed with the mystics in adopting an esoteric exegesis. But he read Aristotle into the text, while the mystics read Plato into it. They were alike faithful to the Law, or rather to their own interpretations of its terms. But further than this,--a large portion of Jewish mysticism was the work of lawyers. Some of the foremost mystics were famous Talmudists, men who were appealed to for decisions on ritual and conduct. It is a phenomenon that constantly meets us in Jewish theology. There were antinomian mystics and legalistic opponents of mysticism, but many, like Nachmanides (1195-1270) and Joseph Caro (1488-1575), doubled the parts of Cabbalist and Talmudist. That Jewish mysticism comes to look like a revolt against the Talmud is due to the course of mediaeval scholasticism. While Aristotle was supreme, it was impossible for man to conceive as knowable anything unattainable by reason. But reason must always leave God as unknowable. Mysticism did not assert that God was knowable, but it substituted something else for this spiritual scepticism. Mysticism started with the conviction that God was unknowable by reason, but it held that God was nevertheless realisable in the human experience. Accepting and adopting various Neo-Platonic theories of emanation, elaborating thence an intricate angelology, the mystics threw a bridge over the gulf between God and man. Philo's Logos, the Personified Wisdom of the Palestinian Midrash, the demiurge of Gnosticism, the incarnate Christ, were all but various phases of this same attempt to cross an otherwise impassable chasm. Throughout its whole history, Jewish mysticism substituted mediate creation for immediate creation out of nothing, and the mediate beings were not created but were emanations. This view was much influenced by Solomon ibn Gabirol (1021-1070). God is to Gabirol an absolute Unity, in which form and substance are identical. Hence He cannot be attributively defined, and man can know Him only by means of beings which emanate from Him. Nor was this idea confined to Jewish philosophy of the Greece-Arabic school. The German Cabbala, too, which owed nothing directly to that school, held that God was not rationally knowable. The result must be, not merely to exalt visionary meditation over calm ratiocination, but to place reliance on inward experience instead of on external authority, which makes its appeal necessarily to the reason. Here we see elements of revolt. For, as Dr. L. Ginzberg well says, 'while study of the Law was to Talmudists the very acme of piety, the mystics accorded the first place to prayer, which was considered as a mystical progress towards God, demanding a state of ecstasy.' The Jewish mystic must invent means for inducing such a state, for Judaism cannot endure a passive waiting for the moving spirit. The mystic soul must learn how to mount the chariot (Merkaba) and ride into the inmost halls of Heaven. Mostly the ecstatic state was induced by fasting and other ascetic exercises, a necessary preliminary being moral purity; then there were solitary meditations and long night vigils; lastly, prescribed ritual of proved efficacy during the very act of prayer. Thus mysticism had a farther attraction for a certain class of Jews, in that it supplied the missing element of asceticism which is indispensable to men more austerely disposed than the average Jew. In the sixteenth century a very strong impetus was given to Jewish mysticism by Isaac Luria (1534-1572). His chief contributions to the movement were practical, though he doubtless taught a theoretical Cabbala also. But Judaism, even in its mystical phases, remains a religion of conduct. Luria was convinced that man can conquer matter; this practical conviction was the moving force of his whole life. His own manner of living was saintly; and he taught his disciples that they too could, by penitence, confession, prayer, and charity, evade bodily trammels and send their souls straight to God even during their terrestrial pilgrimage. Luria taught all this not only while submitting to Law, but under the stress of a passionate submission to it. He added in particular a new beauty to the Sabbath. Many of the most fascinatingly religious rites connected now with the Sabbath are of his devising. The white Sabbath garb, the joyous mystical hymns full of the Bride and of Love, the special Sabbath foods, the notion of the 'over-Soul'--these and many other of the Lurian rites and fancies still hold wide sway in the Orient. The 'over-Soul' was a very inspiring conception, which certainly did not originate with Luria. According to a Talmudic Rabbi (Resh Lakish, third century), on Adam was bestowed a higher soul on the Sabbath, which he lost at the close of the day. Luria seized upon this mystical idea, and used it at once to spiritualise the Sabbath and attach to it an ecstatic joyousness. The ritual of the 'over-Soul' was an elaborate means by which a relation was established between heaven and earth. But all this symbolism had but the slightest connection with dogma. It was practical through and through. It emerged in a number of new rites, it based itself on and became the cause of a deepening devotion to morality. Luria would have looked with dismay on the moral laxity which did later on intrude, in consequence of unbridled emotionalism and mystic hysteria. There comes the point when he that interprets Law emotionally is no longer Law-abiding. The antinomian crisis thus produced meets us in the careers of many who, like Sabbatai Zebi, assumed the Messianic role. Jewish mysticism, starting as an ascetic corrective to the conventional hedonism, lost its ascetic character and degenerated into licentiousness. This was the case with the eighteenth-century mysticism known as Chassidism, though, as its name ('Saintliness') implies, it was innocent enough at its initiation. Violent dances, and other emotional and sensual stimulations, led to a state of exaltation during which the line of morality was overstepped. But there was nevertheless, as Dr. Schechter has shown, considerable spiritual worth and beauty in Chassidism. It transferred the centre of gravity from thinking to feeling; it led away from the worship of Scripture to the love of God. The fresh air of religion was breathed once more, the stars and the open sky replaced the midnight lamp and the college. But it was destined to raise a fog more murky than the confined atmosphere of the study. The man with the book was often nearer God than was the man of the earth. The opposition of Talmudism against the neo-mysticism was thus on the whole just and salutary. This opposition, no doubt, was bitter chiefly when mysticism became revolutionary in practice, when it invaded the established customs of legalistic orthodoxy. But it was also felt that mysticism went dangerously near to a denial of the absolute Unity of God. It was more difficult to attack it on its theoretical than on its practical side, however. The Jewish mystic did sometimes adopt a most irritating policy of deliberately altering customs as though for the very pleasure of change. Now in most religious controversies discipline counts for more than belief. As Salimbene asserts of his own day: 'It was far less dangerous to debate in the schools whether God really existed, than to wear publicly and pertinaciously a frock and cowl of any but the orthodox cut.' But the Talmudists' antagonism to mysticism was not exclusively of this kind in the eighteenth century. Mysticism is often mere delusion. In the last resort man has no other guide than his reason. It is his own reason that convinces him of the limitations of his reason. But those limitations are not to be overpassed by a visionary self-introspection, unless this, too, is subjected to rational criticism. Mysticism does its true part when it applies this criticism also to the current forms, conventions, and institutions. Conventions, forms, and institutions, after all, represent the corporate wisdom, the accumulated experiences of men throughout the ages. Mysticism is the experience of one. Each does right to test the corporate experience by his own experience. But he must not elevate himself into a law even for himself. That, in a sentence, would summarise the attitude of Judaism towards mysticism. It is medicine, not a food. CHAPTER VII ESCHATOLOGY That the soul has a life of its own after death was a firmly fixed idea in Judaism, though, except in the works of philosophers and in the liberal theology of modern Judaism, the grosser conception of a bodily Resurrection was predominant over the purely spiritual idea of Immortality. Curiously enough, Maimonides, who formulated the belief in Resurrection as a dogma of the Synagogue, himself held that the world to come is altogether free from material factors. At a much earlier period (in the third century) Rab had said (Ber. 17 a): 'Not as this world is the world to come. In the world to come there is no eating or drinking, no sexual intercourse, no barter, no envy, hatred, or contention. But the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads, enjoying the splendour of the Shechinah (the Divine Presence).' Commenting on this in various places, Maimonides emphatically asserts the spirituality of the future life. In his _Siraj_ he says, with reference to the utterance of Rab just quoted: 'By the remark of the Sages "with their crowns on their heads" is meant the preservation of the soul in the intellectual sphere, and the merging of the two into one.... By their remark "enjoying the splendour of the Shechinah" is meant that those souls will reap bliss in what they comprehend of the Creator, just as the Angels enjoy felicity in what they understand of His existence. And so the felicity and the final goal consists in reaching to this exalted company and attaining this high pitch.' Again, in his philosophical _Guide_ (I. xli.), Maimonides distinguishes three kinds of 'soul': (1) The principle of animality, (2) the principle of humanity, and (3) the principle of intellectuality, that part of man's individuality which can exist independently of the body, and therefore alone survives death. Even more remarkable is the fact that Maimonides enunciates the same opinion in his Code (Laws of Repentance, viii. 2). For the Code differs from the other two of the three main works of Maimonides in that it is less personal, and expresses what the author conceives to be the general opinion of Judaism as interpreted by its most authoritative teachers. There can be no question but that this repeated insistence of Maimonides has strongly affected all subsequent Jewish thought. To him, eternal bliss consists in perfect spiritual communion with God. 'He who desires to serve God from Love must not serve to win the future world. But he does right and eschews wrong because he is man, and owes it to his manhood to perfect himself. This effort brings him to the type of perfect man, whose soul shall live in the state that befits it, viz. in the world to come.' Thus the world to come is a state rather than a place. But Maimonides' view was not accepted without dispute. It was indeed quite easy to cite Rabbinic passages in which the world to come is identified with the bodily Resurrection. Against Maimonides were produced such Talmudic utterances as the following: 'Said Rabbi Chiya b. Joseph, the Righteous shall arise clad in their garments, for if a grain of wheat which is buried naked comes forth with many garments, how much more shall the righteous arise full garbed, seeing that they were interred with shrouds' (Kethub. 111 b). Again, 'Rabbi Jannai said to his children, Bury me not in white garments or in black: not in white, lest I be not held worthy (of heaven) and thus may be like a bridegroom among mourners (in Gehenna); nor in black, lest if I am held worthy, I be like a mourner among bridegrooms (in heaven). But bury me in coloured garments (so that my appearance will be partly in keeping with either fate),' (Sabbath, 114 a). Or finally: 'They arise with their blemishes, and then are healed' (Sanh. 91 b). The popular fancy, in its natural longing for a personal existence after the bodily death, certainly seized upon the belief in Resurrection with avidity. It had its roots partly in the individual consciousness, partly in the communal. For the Resurrection was closely connected with such hopes as those expressed in Ezekiel's vision of the re-animation of Israel's dry bones (Ezek. xxxvii.). Thus popular theology adopted many ideas based on the Resurrection. The myth of the Leviathan hardly belongs here, for, widespread as it was, it was certainly not regarded in a material light. The Leviathan was created on the fifth day, and its flesh will be served as a banquet for the righteous at the advent of Messiah. The mediaeval poets found much attraction in this idea, and allowed their imagination full play concerning the details of the divine repast. Maimonides entirely spiritualised the idea, and his example was here decisive. The conception of the Resurrection had other consequences. As the scene of the Resurrection is to be Jerusalem, there grew up a strong desire to be buried on the western slope of Mount Olivet. In fact, many burial and mourning customs of the Synagogue originated from a belief in the bodily Resurrection. But even in the orthodox liturgy the direct references to it are vague and idealised. Two passages of great beauty may be cited. The first is taken from the _Authorised Daily Prayer Book_ (ed. Singer, p. 5): 'O my God, the soul which Thou gavest me is pure; Thou didst create it, Thou didst form it, Thou didst breathe it into me; Thou preservest it within me; and Thou wilt take it from me, but wilt restore it unto me hereafter. So long as the soul is within me, I will give thanks unto Thee, O Lord my God and God of my fathers, Sovereign of all works, Lord of all souls! Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who restorest souls unto dead bodies.' The last phrase is also extant in another reading in the Talmud and in some liturgies: 'Blessed art Thou, who revivest the dead,' but the meaning of the two forms is identical. This passage, be it noted, is ancient, and is recited every morning at prayer. The second passage is recited even more frequently, for it is said thrice daily, and also forms part of the funeral service. It may be found in the Prayer Book just quoted on p. 44: 'Thou, O Lord, art mighty for ever, Thou quickenest the dead, Thou art mighty to save. Thou sustainest the living with loving-kindness, quickenest the dead with great mercy, supportest the falling, healest the sick, loosest the bound, and keepest Thy faith to them that sleep in the dust. Who is like unto Thee, Lord of mighty acts, and who resembleth Thee, O King, who killest and quickenest, and causest salvation to spring forth? Yea faithful art Thou to quicken the dead.' The later history of the doctrine in the Synagogue may be best summarised in the words of Dr. Kohler, whose theological articles in the _Jewish Encyclopedia_ deserve grateful recognition. What follows may be read at full length in that work, vol. vi. p. 567: 'While mediaeval philosophy dwelt on the intellectual, moral, or spiritual nature of the soul to prove its immortality, the Cabbalists endeavoured to explain the soul as a light from heaven, after Proverbs xx. 27, and immortality as a return to the celestial world of pure light. But the belief in the pre-existence of the soul led the mystics to the adoption, with all its weird notions and superstitions, of the Pythagorean system of the transmigration of the soul.' Moses Mendelssohn revived the Platonic form of the doctrine of immortality. Thenceforth the dogma of the Resurrection was gradually discarded until it was eliminated from the Prayer Book of the Reform congregations. Man's future was thought of as the realisation of those 'higher expectations which are sown, as part of its very nature, in every human soul.' The statement of Genesis that 'God made man in His own image,' and the idea conveyed in the text (1 Samuel xxv. 29), 'May the soul ... be bound up in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God,' which as a divine promise and a human supplication 'filled the generations with comfort and hope, received a new meaning from this view of man's future; and the Rabbinical saying (Ber. 64 a): "The Righteous rest not, either in this or in the future world, but go from strength to strength until they see God in Zion," appeared to offer an endless vista to the hope of immortality.' But quite apart from this indefiniteness of attitude as to the meaning of immortality, it is scarcely possible to speak of a Jewish Eschatology at all. The development of an Eschatology occurred in that section of Jewish opinion which remained on the fringe. It must be sought in the apocalyptic literature, which has been preserved in Greek. The whole subject had but a small attraction for Judaism proper. Naturally there was some curiosity and some speculation. The Day of the Lord, with its combination of Retribution and Salvation, was pictured in various ways and with some elaboration of detail. Paradise and Hell were mapped out, and the comfortable compartments to be occupied by the saints and the miserable quarters of sinners were specified with the precision of an Ordnance Survey. Purgatory was an institution not limited to the Roman Catholic Church; it had a strong hold on the mediaeval Jewish mind. The intermediate state was a favourite escape from the theological necessity of condemning sinners to eternal punishment. The Jewish heart could not suffer the pain of conceiving Gehenna inevitable. So, one by one, those who might logically be committed there were rescued on various pretexts. In the end the number of the individual sinners who were to suffer eternal torture could be named on the fingers of one hand. By the preceding paragraph it is not implied that Jewish literature in Hebrew has not its full complement of fancies, horrible and beautiful, regarding heaven and hell. But such fancies were neither dogmatic nor popular. They never found their way into the tenets of Judaism as formulated by any authority; they never became a moving power in the life of the Jewish masses. It was the poets who nourished these lurid ideas, and poetry which has done so much for the good of religion has also done it many a disservice. Judaism, in its prosaic form, accepted the ideas of Immortality, Retribution, and so forth, but the real interest was in life here, not in life hereafter. We can see how the two were bridged over by the Jewish conviction of human solidarity. For twelve months after the death of a father the son recited daily the Kaddish prayer (_Authorised Daily Prayer Book_, p. 77). This was a mere Doxology, opening: 'Magnified and sanctified be His great name in the world which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom during your life and during your days, and during the life of all the house of Israel, even speedily and at a near time, and say ye Amen.' As to the Messianic idea of the Kingdom of God, something will be said in the next chapter. But this Doxology was believed efficacious to save the departed soul when uttered by the living son. The generations were thus bound together, and just as the merits of the fathers could exert benign influence over the erring child on earth, so could the praises of the child move the mercy of God in favour of the erring father in Purgatory. It was a beautiful expression of the unbreakable chain of tradition, a tradition whose links were human hearts. In such conceptions, rather than in descriptive pictures of Paradise and Gehenna, is the true mind of Judaism to be discerned. That the first formal sign of grief at the death of a parent should be a Doxology will not have escaped notice. God is the Righteous Judge. Thus, in the Eschatology of Judaism, this idea of Judgment predominates. A favourite passage was the Mishnic utterance (second century): 'Rabbi Eleazar said: They that are born are destined to die, and they that die to be brought to life again, and they that live to be judged.' (Aboth, iv. 29). But in another sense, too, there was judgment at death. The sorrow of the survivors, like the decease of the departed, was to be considered as God's doing, and therefore right. Hence in the very moment of the death of a loved one, when grief was most poignant, the survivor stood forth before the congregation and praised God. And so the Burial Service is named in Hebrew 'Zidduk Ha-din,' _i.e._ 'The Justification of the Judgment.' A few sentences in it ran thus (_Prayer Book_, p. 318): 'The Rock, His work is perfect.... He ruleth below and above, He bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up again.... Blessed be the true Judge.' And perhaps more than all attempts to analyse beliefs and dogmas, the following prayer, recited during the week of mourning for the dead, will convey to the reader the real attitude of Judaism (at least in its central variety) to some of the questions which have occupied us in this chapter. The quotation is made from p. 323 of the same Prayer Book that has been already cited several times above: 'O Lord and King, who art full of compassion, in whose hand is the soul of every living thing and the breath of all flesh, who killest and makest alive, who bringest down to the grave and bringest up again, receive, we beseech Thee, in Thy great loving-kindness, the soul of our brother who hath been gathered unto his people. Have mercy upon him, pardon all his transgressions, for there is not a righteous man upon earth, who doeth good and sinneth not. Remember unto him the righteousness which he wrought, and let his reward be with him and his recompense before him. O shelter his soul in the shadow of Thy wings. Make known to Him the path of life: in Thy presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore. Vouchsafe unto him of the abounding happiness that is treasured up for the righteous, as it is written, Oh how great is Thy goodness, which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee, which Thou hast wrought for them that trust in Thee before the children of men! 'O Lord, who healest the broken-hearted and bindest up their wounds, grant Thy consolation unto the mourners: put into their hearts the fear and love of Thee, that they may serve Thee with a perfect heart, and let their latter end be peace. 'Like one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you, and in Jerusalem shall ye be comforted. Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself; for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. 'He will destroy death for ever; and the Lord will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it.' CHAPTER VIII THE SURVIVAL OF JUDAISM The Messianic Hope has an intimate connection with Eschatology. Whereas, however, the latter in so far as it affirmed a Resurrection conceived of the immortality of Israelites, the former conceived the Immortality of Israel. It is not necessary here to trace the origin and history of the Messianic idea in Judaism. That this idea had a strong nationalistic tinge is obvious. The Messiah was to be a person of Davidic descent, who would be the restorer of Israel's greatness. Throughout Jewish history, despite the constant injunction to refrain 'from calculating the date of the end,' men have arisen who have claimed to be Messiahs, and these have mostly asserted their claim on nationalistic pleas. They were to be kings of Israel as well as inaugurators of a new regime of moral and spiritual life. But though this is true without qualification, it is equally true that the philosophers of the Middle Ages tried to remove all materialistic notions from the Messianic idea. It is very difficult to assert nowadays whether Judaism does or does not expect a personal Messiah. A very marked change has undoubtedly come over the spirit of the dream. On the one hand the neo-Nationalists deny any Messianic hopes. When that great leader, Theodor Herzl, started a Zionistic movement without claiming to be the Jewish Messiah, he was putting the seal on a far-reaching change in Jewish sentiment. Dr. J. H. Greenstone, who has just published an interesting volume on the _Messianic Idea in Jewish History_, writes (p. 276): 'After the first Basle Congress (1897), when Zionism assumed its present political aspect, Dr. Max Nordau, the vice-president of the Congress, found it necessary to address an article to the Hebrew-reading public, in which he disclaimed all pretensions of Messiahship for himself or for his colleague Dr. Theodor Herzl.' We have thus this extraordinary situation. Many orthodox Jews stood aloof from the Zionistic movement because it was not Messianic, while many unorthodox Jews joined it just because of the movement's detachment from Messianic ideas. It may be well to cite Dr. Greenstone's verdict on the whole question, as the reader may care to have the opinion of so competent an authority whose view differs from that of the present writer. 'Sacred as Zionism is to many of its adherents, it cannot and will not take the place of the Messianic hope. Zionism aims at the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine under the protection of the powers of Europe. The Messianic hope promises the establishment, by the Jews, of a world-power in Palestine to which all the nations of the earth will pay homage. Zionism, even in its political aspect, will fulfil only one phase of the Jewish Messianic hope. As such, if successful, it may contribute toward the full realisation of the hope. If not successful, it will not deprive the Jews of the hope. The Messianic hope is wider than the emancipation of the Jews, it is more comprehensive than the establishment of a Jewish, politically independent State. It participates in the larger ideals of humanity, the ideals of perfection for the human race, but it remains on Jewish soil, and retains its peculiarly Jewish significance. It promises universal peace, an age of justice and of righteousness, an age in which all men will recognise that God is One and His name One. But this glorious age will come about through the regeneration of the Jewish people, which in turn be effected by a man, a scion of the house of David, sent by God to guide them on the road to righteousness. The people chosen by God to be His messengers to the world will then be able to accomplish their mission of regenerating the world. This was the Messianic hope proclaimed by the prophets and sages, and this is the Messianic hope of most Jews to-day, the difference between the various sections being only a difference in the details of the hope' (_op. cit._, p. 278). Dr. Greenstone surely cannot mean that the question of a 'personal Messiah' is a mere detail of the belief. Yet it is on that point that opinion is most divided among Jews. The older belief undeniably was what Dr. Greenstone enunciates. But for this belief, none of what Mr. Zangwill aptly terms the 'Dreamers of the Ghetto' would have found the ready acceptance that several of them did when they presented themselves as Messiah or his forerunners. And no doubt there are many Jews who still cling to this form of the belief. On the other hand, there has been a slow but widespread tendency to reinterpret the whole intention of the Messianic hope of Judaism. In 1869, and again in 1885, American Conferences of liberal Rabbis adopted resolutions to the following effect: 'The Messianic aim of Israel is not the restoration of the old Jewish State under a descendant of David, involving a second separation from the nations of the earth, but the union of all children of God in the confession of the unity of God, so as to realise the unity of all rational creatures and their call to moral sanctification.' This view sees in the destruction of the Temple and the dispersal of Israel not a punishment but a stage in the fulfilment of Israel's destiny as revealed to Abraham. Israel is High-Priest, and can only fulfil his mission in the close neighbourhood of those to whom he is elected to minister. This, no less than the non-Messianic Zionism, is a considerable change from older beliefs. As a Messianic hope it transcends the visions of Isaiah. The prophet looks forward to an ideal future, a reign of peace and felicity, but the nations are to flow to Zion. The significance of the change lies in this. The Messianic idea now means to many Jews a belief in human development and progress, with the Jews filling the role of the Messianic people, but only as _primus inter pares_. It is the expression of a genuine optimism. 'Character, no less than Career,' said George Eliot, 'is a process and an unfolding.' So with the Character of mankind as a whole. But this idea of development, unfolding, is quite modern in the real sense of the terms; it is something outside the range even of the second Isaiah. Judaism was never quite sure whether to join the ranks of the '_laudatores temporis acti_,' or to believe that man never is but always to be blest. On the one hand, the person of Adam was endowed with perfections such as none of his successors matched. On the other hand, the Golden Age of Judaism, as Kenan said, was thrown forward into the future. That on the whole Judaism has taken the prospective rather than the retrospective view, is the sole justification for the modern conception of the Messianic Age which is fast becoming predominant in the Synagogue. The Synagogue does not share the Roman poet's sentiment: 'A race of men baser than their sires Gave birth to us, a progeny more vile, Who dower the world with offspring viler still'; but the English poet's trust: 'Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.' Denouncing the 'Calculators of the End,' a Rabbi said (Sanh. 97 b): 'All the computed terms have passed, and the matter dependeth now on repentance and good deeds' (cf. S. Singer, The Messianic Idea in Judaism, pp. 1 and 18) If, however, Israel is not destined to a Restoration, if the Jewish Mission is the propagation of an idea, on what ground is the continued existence of Israel as a separate organisation defensible or justified? Israel is indestructible, said Jehuda Halevi in the twelfth century; certainly Israel is undestroyed. When Frederick the Great asked what should make him believe in God, he received in answer, 'the survival of the Jews.' Dr. Guttmann of Breslau not long since put forward a similar plea in vindication of the continued significance of Judaism. In nature all forms die when their utility is over; in history, peoples succumb when their work in and for the world is complete. Shall, he asks, we recognise Judaism as the solitary exception, as the unique instance of the survival of the unfit and the unnecessary? The modern apologists for all religions rarely belong to the rank and file. Whether it be Harnack for Christianity or Mr. Montefiore for Judaism, the vindicators stand far above the average of the believers whose faith they are vindicating. The average man needs no defence for a religion which enables him to live and thrive, materially and spiritually. The importance of this consideration is very great. Restricting our attention to Judaism, it is clear that it still offers ideals to many, prescribes and enforces a moral law, teaches a satisfying doctrine of God. If so, then it is futile to discuss whether Judaism is still necessary. Can the world afford to surrender a single one of its forces for good? If there are ten millions of men, women, and children who live, and live not ignobly, by Judaism, can it be contended that Judaism is obsolete? The first, the main justification of Judaism is its continued efficiency, its proved power still to control and inspire many millions of human lives. There are more people living as Jews to-day, than there were at any previous moment in the world's history. But, like many answers to questions, this reply does not satisfy those who raise the question. I refer exclusively to the doubters among the Jews themselves, for if Jews were themselves convinced of the justification of the Jewish separateness, the rest of the world would be convinced. Now, the Jews who ask this question are those who are not so completely given over to Judaism, that they are blind to the claims of other religions. To them the question is one not of absolute, but of comparative truth. Judaism may still be a power, but it may not be a desirable power. The further question therefore arises as to the mission of Israel in history to come as well as in history past. History seems contradicted by the claim made by Judaism. Jews are quick enough to see the weakness of the pretension made by certain sects of dogmatic Christianity that it is the last word of religion, that all saving truth was once for all revealed some nineteen centuries ago. History, says the Jewish controversialist, teaches no such lessons of finality. Forces appear, work their destined course, and then make way for other forces. The world does not stand still; it moves on. Then how can Judaism claim for itself a permanence, a finality, which it must deny to every other system, to every other influence which has in its turn moulded human destiny? A favourite answer is: Judaism is the exception that proves the rule. It _has_ been a permanent force in the world's history. It is argued that Jewish ideals have exercised recurrent influence at all important crises. Dr. Guttmann somewhat rhetorically makes this identical claim. He points to the birth of Christianity, the rise of Islam, the mediaeval Scholasticism, the Italian Renaissance, the German Reformation, the English and American Puritanism, the modern humanitarian movement, as exemplifications of the continued power of Judaism to mould the minds and souls of men. There is a sense in which this claim is just. It is a valuable support to the Jew's allegiance to Judaism. But even if Dr. Guttmann's claim were granted, and it is considerably exaggerated, how does it help? We are all agreed as to the debt which the world owes to Greece. That debt is a great one. Is it obsolete? Surely not. Greece has again and again revived its ancient power to inspire men. The world would be a poor one to-day without all that Greek culture stands for. Greece did not give men enough to live by; Hebraism did that. But Greece made life more worth living. Hellenism is an ever-recurrent force in human civilisation. Yet no one argues that because Hellenism is still necessary, Hellenes are also necessary. Who contends that for carrying on Greek culture you need Greeks? On the contrary, it was the case of Greece that gave rise to the profound observation that just as a man must die to live, so peoples must die that men may live through them. Renan, who, among the moderns, gave fullest value to this truth, included Judaea with Greece in the generalisation. Certainly as a nation, whether temporarily or irrevocably, Judaea perished no less than Athens, that a new world might be born. And a new Jewish nation would no more be the old Judaea of Isaiah than the Athens of to-day is the Athens of Pericles, or the Rome of to-day the Rome of Augustus. History does not retrace its steps. Athens fell, and with it the Athenians. Why then, when Judaea fell, did the Jews remain? Greek culture does not need Greeks to carry it on; why does Jewish culture need Jews? The first suggestion to be offered is this:--Israel is the protestant people. Every religious or moral innovator has also been a protestant. Socrates, Jesus, Luther; Isaiah, Maimonides, Spinoza; all of them, besides their contributions--very unequal contributions--to the positive store of truth, assumed also the negative attitude of protesters. They refused to go with the multitude, to acquiesce in current conventions. They were all unpopular and even anti-popular. The Jews as a community have fulfilled, and are fulfilling, this protestant function. They have been and are unpopular just because of their protestant function. They refuse to go with the multitude; they refuse to acquiesce. Geiger used this argument very forcibly, from the spiritual point of view, in the early part of the nineteenth century, and Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu (in his book _Israel among the Nations_) even more forcibly used it at the end of the same century, from the historical point of view. This ingenious French observer cites a suspicion that 'the sons of Jacob, as compared with the rest of the human race, represent a higher state of evolution' (p. 232). No modern Jew would make so preposterous a claim. But when the same writer sees in the Jew a _different_ stage of evolution, then he is on the right tack. Here is a passage which deserves to be quoted again and again: 'I have little taste, I confess, for uniformity; I leave that to the Jacobins. My ideal of a nation is not a monolith, nor a bronze formed at a single casting. It is better that a people should be composed of diverse elements and of many races. If the Jew differs from us, so much the better; he is the more likely to bring a little variety into the flat monotony of our modern civilisation' (p. 261). And the same argument applies to religions. There is a permanent value to the world in Israel's determined, protestant attitude. The handful of protestants who, in Elijah's day, refused to bow to Baal and to kiss him, were the real saviours of their generation. And though the world to-day is in no need of such salvation, still the Jew remains the finest exemplification of the truth that God fulfils Himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Then again, Judaism seems destined to survive because it represents at once the God-idea and the ethical idea. The liberal Jew, as well as the orthodox, believes that no other religion does this in the same way as does Judaism. Putting it crudely, the Jew would perhaps admit that Christianity has absorbed, developed, enlarged and purified the Hebrew ethics, but he would, rightly or wrongly, think that it has obscured by dogmatic accretions the Jewish Monotheism. On the other hand, the Jew would admit that Islam has absorbed and purified the Jewish Monotheism, but has done less of the flattery of imitation to the Hebrew ethics. Islam has certainly a pure creed; it freed itself from the entanglements of anthropomorphic metaphors and conceptions of God, which are apparent in the early strata of the Hebrew Bible, and from which Judaism, because of its reverence for the Bible, has not emancipated itself yet. But that it can emancipate itself is becoming progressively more clear. And even if we drop comparisons, Judaism stands for a life in which goodness and God are the paramount interests. But, beyond all, the Jew believes himself to be a Witness to God. He thinks that on him, in some real sense, depends the fulfilment of the purposes of God. It may be an arrogant thought, but unlike most boasts it at once humiliates and ennobles, humiliates by the consciousness of what is, ennobles by the vision of what might be. After enumerating certain ethical and religious ideas which, he holds, Judaism still has to teach the world, the Rev. M. Joseph adds: 'But to the Jew himself, first of all, these truths are uttered. He is to help to win the world for the highest ideals. But if he is to succeed, he must himself be conspicuously faithful to them. He is the chosen, but his very election binds him to vigorous service of truth and righteousness. "Be ye clean, ye that bear the vessels of the Lord." Only when Israel proves by the nobility of his life that he deserves his holy vocation will the accomplishment of his mission be at hand. When all the peoples of the earth shall see that he is worthily called by the name of the Lord, the Divine name and law will be near to the attainment of their destined empire over the hearts of men' (_Judaism as Creed and Life_, p. 513). A community that believes itself to fill this place in the Divine purpose deserves to live. Its separate existence is a means, not an end; for when all has been said, the one God carries with it the idea of one humanity. The Fatherhood of God implies the brotherhood of man. And so, amid all its trust that the long travail of centuries cannot fulfil itself in Israel's annihilation, amid all its particularism, there soars aloft the belief in the day when there will be no religions, but only Religion, when Israel will come together with other communions, or they with Israel. And so, thrice daily, in most Synagogues of Israel, this prayer is uttered: 'We therefore hope in Thee, O Lord our God, that we may speedily behold the glory of Thy might, when Thou wilt remove the abominations from the earth, and the idols will be utterly cut off; when the world will be perfected under the kingdom of the Almighty, and all the children of flesh will call upon Thy name, when Thou wilt turn unto Thee all the wicked of the earth. Let all the inhabitants of the world perceive and know that unto Thee every knee must bow, every tongue must swear. Before Thee, O Lord our God, let them bow and fall; and unto Thy glorious name let them give honour. Let them all accept the yoke of Thy kingdom, and do Thou reign over them speedily, and for ever and ever. For the Kingdom is Thine, and to all eternity Thou wilt reign in glory; as it is written in Thy Law, The Lord shall reign for ever and ever. And it is said, And the Lord shall be King over all the earth; in that day shall the Lord be One, and His name One.' Modern Judaism, in short, claims no finality but what is expressed in that hope. It holds itself ready to develop, to modify, to absorb, to assimilate, except in so far as such processes seem inconsistent with this hope. Modern Jews think that in some respects the Rabbinic Judaism was an advance on the Biblical; they think further that their own modern Judaism is an advance on the Rabbinic. Judaism, as they conceive it, is the one religion, with a great history behind it, that does not claim the religious doctrines of some particular moment in its history to be the last word on Religion. It thinks that the last word is yet to be spoken, and is inspired with the confidence that its own continuance will make that last word fuller and truer when it comes, if it ever does come. SELECTED LIST OF BOOKS ON JUDAISM [This list does not include works on the early Religion of Israel, or articles in the standard Dictionaries of the Bible. For the rest, only works written in English are cited, and for the most part Jewish expositions of Judaism.] Articles in the _Jewish Encyclopedia_ (New York and London, Funk and Wagnalls, 12 vols. 1901-1906). Especially the following: 'Articles of Faith' (E. G. Hirsch); 'Atonement' (K. Kohler); 'Cabala' (L. Ginzberg); 'Catechisms' (E. Schreiber); 'Conferences' (D. Philipson); 'Ethics' (K. Kohler, I. Broyde and E. G. Hirsch); 'Eschatology' (K. Kohler); 'God' (E. G. Hirsch); 'Hassidim' (S. M. Dubnow); 'Immortality' (K. Kohler); 'Judaism' (K. Kohler); 'Law, Codification of' (L. Ginzberg); 'Messiah' (M. Buttenwieser); 'Nomism' (J. Z. Lauterbach and K. Kohler); 'Pharisees' (K. Kohler); 'Keform Judaism' (E. G. Hirsch and D. Philipson); 'Resurrection' (K. Kohler); 'Sabbath' (E. G. Hirsch and J. H. Greenstone); 'Theology' (J. Z. Lauterbach). M. FRIEDLANDER.--_The Jewish Religion_ (Kegan Paul, 1891). J. H. GREENSTONE.--_The Messiah Idea in Jewish History_ (Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society of America, 1906). M. JOSEPH.--_Judaism as Creed and Life_ (London, Macmillan, 1903). N. S. JOSEPH.--_Religion, Natural and Revealed_ (London, Macmillan, 1906). M. LAZARUS.--_The Ethics of Judaism_ (London, Macmillan; 2 vols., 1900-1) C. G. MONTEFIORE.--_Hibbert Lectures_ (London, Williams and Norgate, 1892, especially _Lectures_ VII.-IX.). ------_Liberal Judaism_ (London, Macmillan, 1903). S. SCHECHTER.--_Studies in Judaism_ (London, A. and C. Black, 1896). E. SCHURER.--_A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Christ_ (Edinburgh, T. and T. Clark, 1890). S. SINGER.--_Authorised Daily Prayer Book_ (London, Eyre and Spottiswoode; many editions). 
45952	----	made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) THE EVOLUTION OF OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION THE EVOLUTION OF OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION BY W. E. ORCHARD, B.D. LONDON JAMES CLARKE & CO., 13 & 14, FLEET STREET 1908 TO My Wife PREFACE The substance of this book was originally delivered as a Course of Lectures to a week-night congregation. The Lecture form has been retained, and this accounts for the repetition of the leading ideas, while the practical interests of Church life account for the insistence on the religious value and lesson. It is hoped that this, which might be irritating to the professional student, may be helpful to the ordinary reader who is repelled by the technicality of critical works, and often fails to discern the devout spirit by which such works are inspired, or to discover what religious interest is served by them. Where everything is borrowed from other writers, and no claim to originality is made, detailed acknowledgment would be impossible, but the resolve to attempt some such course in place of the usual form of a week-night service was formed in the Hebrew class-room of Westminster College, Cambridge, while listening to the Lectures on Old Testament Theology and Messianic Prophecy, delivered by the Rev. Professor Dr. Skinner (now Principal), in which accurate scholarship was combined with a deep insight into the present religious importance of these subjects. Grateful acknowledgment is also due to the Rev. J.R. Coates, B.A., who kindly read through the proofs and made many valuable suggestions. W. E. ORCHARD. ENFIELD, _August, 1908_. CONTENTS LECTURE PAGE INTRODUCTION vii I. THE SEMITIC RACES 19 II. THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE HEBREWS 31 III. MOSAISM 55 IV. THE INFLUENCE OF CANAAN 83 V. PROPHETISM--EARLY STAGES 107 VI. THE RELIGION OF THE LITERARY PROPHETS 135 VII. THE EFFECT OF THE EXILE 169 VIII. THE WORK OF THE PRIESTS 195 IX. THE RELIGION OF THE PSALMISTS 215 X. THE RELIGION OF THE WISE 241 XI. MESSIANIC EXPECTATIONS 265 INTRODUCTION It is a matter of common knowledge that within the last few decades a tremendous change has come over our estimate of the value of the Old Testament, and that this change is of the gravest importance for our understanding of religion. But what the exact nature of the change is, and what we are to deduce from it, is a matter of debate, for the facts are only known to professional students and to a few others who may have been led to interest themselves in the subject. With some, for instance, the idea prevails that the Old Testament has been so discredited by modern research that its religious significance is now practically worthless. Others believe that the results arrived at are untrue, and regard them as the outcome of wicked attacks made upon the veracity of the Word of God by men whose scholarship is a cloak for their sinister designs or a mask of their incapacity to comprehend its spiritual message. There is perhaps a middle course open to some who have found a message of God to their souls in the Old Testament, and who, on hearing that the authorship of this book has been questioned or the historicity of that passage assailed, are unmoved, because they believe that it does not matter who wrote the Pentateuch or the Psalms so long as through these documents they hear the voice of the living Word of God. Here then is a subject on which there exists a distressing confusion, and, moreover, a subject in which ignorance plays no small part. Save with a few devout souls who have made a long and continuous study of the Scriptures, it may be doubted whether there is any widespread knowledge of the actual message of the Old Testament, even among Christian people. There are certainly many people willing to defend the authority of the Bible who spend very little time in reading it. The favourite Psalms and the evangelical passages of Isaiah are probably well known, and beyond this there is but the knowledge gained in early days, from which stand out in the memory the personalities of Samson and Saul, David and Goliath, and Daniel in the lion's den, together with the impressive stories of the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the fall of Jericho. A very little is probably carried away from the public reading of the Scriptures in places of worship. It cannot be said that this acquaintance conveys any real impression of the magnificent message that lies embedded in these thirty-nine books which go to make up the Old Testament. Now whatever harm may be charged to the modern methods, it can at least be claimed that neglected portions have been carefully studied, the meaning of obscure passages discovered, and much of importance and interest brought to light; but more than this, it has been discovered that the essential message of the Old Testament lies largely apart from those narratives and personalities that impress the superficial reader, and rather in the record of a gradual development of the conception of God and of His purpose in calling Israel to be the recipient of His self-disclosure. It has been found that the striking figures of the landscape are of less importance than the road that winds among them along which revelation moves to its final goal. It may be objected that the new inspiration, which so many who have studied the Scriptures by these methods claim to have felt, throws quite a new emphasis on our conception of the Old Testament and is revolutionary of all that we have been accustomed to believe concerning it; that the methods are such as could not legitimately be applied to the Word of God, and are the products of a criticism which is puffed up with a sense of its own superiority; and that the results are discreditable to the Old Testament, since they allege that some of the narratives are unhistorical, some passages and even whole books unauthentic, and traditions on which the gravest issues have been staked shown to have nothing more than a legendary basis. There is much in these objections that is natural, but much that is misunderstanding. It is true that the contribution which the Old Testament makes to religion is estimated differently from what it was fifty years ago, and it must be allowed that this brings a charge of having misunderstood the Scriptures against generations of scholars and saints. But it is admitted that all matters of knowledge are open to misunderstanding. It is no argument against the conception that the earth moves round the sun, that the contrary idea was held in other ages. We know that the understanding of the Old Testament has been obscured, often by those who ought to have been the greatest authorities on its meaning. Jesus read into the Scriptures a meaning unrecognised by the authorities of His day, and dealt with them in a fashion that was regarded as revolutionary. To some of the Scriptures He appealed as to a final authority, but others He regarded as imperfect and only suited to the time in which they were written. The Jews of His day venerated every letter of the sacred writings, and regarded the very copies of the Law as sacred to the touch, and yet on their understanding of the Scriptures they rejected the mission and message of Jesus. Christian scholarship has undoubtedly followed rather after the Rabbis than after Christ. The message of the Old Testament that the new methods have made clear certainly appears to be more in conformity with the Spirit of Christ than with that of His opponents, and if this is revolutionary then it is no new thing; religion always moves along such lines. Great offence has been caused and insuperable prejudice aroused among many by the name under which these methods have become known. The name, "higher criticism," conveys to most people a suggestion of carping fault-finding and an assumption of superiority. This is due to an entire misunderstanding of a technical term. Criticism is nothing more than the exercise of the faculty of judgment, and, moreover, judgment that ought to be perfectly fair. The sinister suggestion that is conveyed in the word is due to the fact that our criticisms are so often biassed by personal prejudices. But this only condemns our faults, and not the method. "Higher" criticism does not mean any assumption of superiority, but is simply a term used to distinguish it from "lower" criticism. The criticism that endeavours to ascertain the original text by a comparison of the various documents available is called _lower_, and that which deals with matters higher up the stream of descent by which the writings have been conveyed to us, namely, matters of date and authorship, is called _higher_ criticism. It might well be called literary and historical criticism, in distinction from textual criticism. It employs historical methods, and uses the simple tests of comparison and contemporaneity. For the understanding of a particular age, it prefers those documents that describe the times in which they were written, and give indirect evidence, rather than those histories which were written long after the event and which reveal a purpose other than the strictly historical. Fortunately, we have in the Old Testament many such contemporary and indirect witnesses in the writings of the Prophets. They are not consciously writing history, but they tell us indirectly what the practices of their day were, and especially what religious ideas were prevalent; for it is these things that they feel called upon to attack. With these reliable standards we can compare the regular histories, which were necessarily written at a much later age, and very often to serve some religious purpose. Now it is this method, which is surely a true and proper one, that has changed our estimate of the history and development of religion in Israel. Are we to condemn the method without examination because it destroys certain traditions about the Bible which we have received largely from Judaism?--the Judaism which could find no place for Jesus! But it will be answered that these methods yield results that are incompatible with the inspiration of the Bible, and are unworthy of God's revelation to us. But how are we to decide what is compatible with inspiration? We can only tell, surely, by seeing what these results are and by discovering whether they bring any inspiration to us. Can we be certain, without examining the facts, to what lines the revelation of God is to be restricted? Is this not coming to the Bible with a theory which we have manufactured and which will surely distort the facts? It will be said that anything less than absolute accuracy makes void any claim to be a Divine revelation. Let us consider what this means. We know that the historical spirit, which endeavours to see history as it actually happened quite apart from our desires or sympathies, is an ideal which has only emerged with the general spread of education, and that in ancient times history was written largely with a view to edification, and especially for giving such lessons as would lead to right principles being adopted for the future. It was not the accuracy of the material but suitability for its purpose that weighed with the historian. Now, with these conditions existing, was it impossible for God to speak to men through their conceptions of history, or had He to wait until the historical spirit prevailed? Could He not use the early legends which they believed, and through them bring the truth to men? We know that the greatest of all religious teachers did not scruple to embody the highest truths in such parables as lowly minds could receive. We may demand that revelation shall be infallible, but this would need in turn an infallible person to receive it, and even then an infallible interpreter. An infallible revelation would mean that there could never be any progress in revelation; that it would have to be given perfect in one process; that it would have to be authenticated to men by authority, since it would be beyond the understanding of a fallible mind; that it would break in upon every other experience, remain isolated, and never be grasped by that strong conviction which we call faith; and this would entail a destruction of the mental faculties of man, and an acknowledgment that communication between God and man is really impossible. Could not God speak to man in his infancy, and with the growing understanding would there not be growing light? Meanwhile, whatever we feel about these abstract principles, we ought to know the facts. In the pages that follow an endeavour is made to present the results at which a consensus of opinion has arrived. There will be no great time spent in argument for or against these facts. Such are to be sought in the scientific works and in the dictionaries, which alone can deal adequately with these facts, but since many altogether refuse to consider the facts because of the inferences which they think can be drawn from them, this book is an earnest plea for earnest men to consider whether it is not open to be shown that from these facts there comes to us a much clearer understanding of God's ways with man; a more certain conviction that in the past God has actually spoken through the Scriptures; a clue to a better understanding of the place Jesus occupies in the history of revelation; and what we all need greatly to-day: a preparation of heart that we may follow the leading of that Spirit who ever has and who ever will guide into all truth those who are willing to follow Him. The aim of this book is that the reader may feel that the voice which speaks in his own heart and the voice which has guided man through all his strange history is One, and is of God. THE SEMITIC RACES _Read, as Introduction to this Lecture, the Tenth Chapter of Genesis._ This is one of the most interesting documents in anthropology. It is an attempt at a scientific ethnology, and seems to have been expanded from the closing verses of the preceding chapter. It will be noticed that those verses are in poetical form (R.V.), and are likely to be very ancient. Note the principles of classification:-- (1) Geographical. It is a very incomplete summary of the peoples of the earth. Only those nations are mentioned that fill the horizon of the writer's knowledge. That horizon will be found to correspond very largely with that of the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel. (2) Prejudice. The evident kinship of some peoples is denied on the ground of dislike; for the same reason, Moab and Ammon, who are well known, are simply omitted. The real test of kinship is language, which is here ignored. The names are not to be taken as individuals. Of this the very form is witness: Ludim is plural, Mizraim is dual, Tarshish is the name of a place, and Amorite is gentilic. Notes:-- Verse 2. Madai = Medes. Javan = the Greeks, or more particularly, the Ionians. Verse 4. Tarshish is probably Spain. Kittim = the Cretans. Dodanim (read Rodanim 1 Ch. i. 7) = the inhabitants of Rhodes. Verse 6. Mizraim: the name for Egypt. Canaan: here and elsewhere said to be descended from Ham. Beyond all doubt the Canaanites were a Semitic people and spoke a language akin to Hebrew. Religious antagonism and the fact of their conquest demanded in the popular imagination a different ancestry. Verse 14. "Whence went forth the Philistines" is misplaced, and should follow after "Caphtorim" (Amos ix. 7). Verse 21. Eber: the name of the supposed ancestor of the Hebrews. Verse 22. Elam = Persia. Racially the Elamites were quite distinct from the Semites. This inclusion may be a clue to the date of this Table of Nations; friendship with Persia dates from Cyrus (Sixth Century B.C.). (See Driver's "Genesis.") Lecture I THE SEMITIC RACES The Hebrew nation forms a branch of that group of the human family known as the Semites. Their relation to the other great racial divisions of mankind is far beyond the reach of our enquiry, and we cannot even penetrate to a period when the Semites formed an unbroken family. At the remotest date to which history can take us we find the family already widely dispersed, with distinct national characteristics well developed, and their common ancestry quite forgotten in their violent hatreds of their unrecognised kinsmen. Indeed it is only the test of language which still preserves for us an indisputable proof of their common origin. Their existence can be traced back to a very remote date, for fragments of their literature and other evidences of civilisation have been discovered that have been dated 5000-4000 B.C., and even at that period the language shows signs of phonetic degeneration that require a still further period for the process to have reached this stage. The primitive home of the Semites cannot have been, however, where these ancient remains have been found, namely, in the Euphrates valley, for the records themselves show that they were only immigrants there and had replaced the original inhabitants, who came of Sumerian stock. Neither was it in Palestine, as our own Bible will tell us; but it is probably to be sought in Arabia, where the purest Semitic stock is still to be found. In this desert home the race was bred that was destined to have such a tremendous influence on the history of the world, and it is largely to this desert training that we can trace influences which have made them what they are. The battle for life in that inhospitable land would mould a physique capable of extraordinary endurance, and to this we can perhaps trace the virility of the modern Jew, who has resisted for centuries the poisonous ghettos of European cities and remains far healthier than his indigenous neighbours. This hard training fitted them for an exacting life, and in the Phoenicians they became the traders of antiquity, and in the Carthaginians and Saracens, warriors not to be despised. Hardness easily becomes cruelty, and purely Semitic empires, such as Assyria, developed a barbarous cruelty, the story of which is told on their inscriptions and in the denunciations of the Hebrew Prophets. There is something in the Semitic character that is disliked by Western nations, and the Jews have been subjects of relentless persecution in mediæval times, and are still capable of arousing bitter hostility, as may be seen from those violent eruptions of anti-Semitism which occasionally burst through the cosmopolitanism of Western Europe. The well-defined limitations of their primitive home--crushed in between the continents of Europe, Africa and Asia, the neutral ground of the Eastern and Western worlds--seem almost to be reflected in the limitations of their mental development. The Semitic tongue is crude in its simplicity and incapable of expressing an abstract idea, and it is natural to find as a result that the philosophical faculty is almost entirely missing. Although they have given to the world an alphabet, a system of numeration which has made mathematics possible, and the beginnings of measurement and of the science of astronomy, yet their mind is not scientific in the modern sense. They possess, as perhaps no other race, the gift of telling stories of wonder and mystery, and for a simple tale of love and pathos they are unsurpassed. They have produced the finest lyrical literature of the ancient world, but have contributed hardly anything to dramatic or epic poetry, and their achievements in art have been cramped by their religious prejudices. But in the realm of religion they are supreme, and have become the high-priests of humanity, for from them have gone forth three great religions, and one of these capable of development into the universal religion of mankind. These faiths have not been slowly evolved from the national consciousness, but have both sprung from and been embodied in inspiring personalities; for have they not given to the world Moses and the Prophets, Mahomet, and the Son of Man? The Semites are divided by anthropologists into the following groups: Southern Group--North Arabians, Sabæans, Abyssinians; Northern Group--Babylonians, Assyrians, Aramæans, Canaanites, Hebrews; and all these groups seem to have been formed from the original stock by migrations from their home in Arabia. The contracted area of the Arabian peninsula, the inability of the land to support a large population, coupled with their restless spirit and the constant feuds between the tribes, made emigration a necessity at a very early period. The exact history and order of these migrations it is now impossible to trace, but it would seem that the first great movement was eastward, whither they were drawn by the culture and wealth of the Sumerian civilisation in the Euphrates valley. It is quite possible that this movement commenced 6000 years before Christ. At a later date they seem to have invaded Egypt and left some traces upon the language and customs of that land. The land of Syria would offer a near and easy home for the emigrants, and yet the first Semites to arrive in Palestine seem to have come from the Euphrates. The inhabitants they displaced were the Hittites, who probably came from Asia Minor; they were Turanians, and were akin to the present inhabitants of Armenia. It is only lately that excavation has revealed the remains of a Hittite Empire in Palestine. The first Semitic tribes to reach Palestine pushed down to the seaboard, where they developed a wonderful maritime civilisation and became the daring traders and explorers who are known in history as the Phoenicians; the other tribes occupied the hill country and became the Canaanites of Bible story. Of the next migration westward, the Bible preserves a popular account in the story of the journey of Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees. Now Abraham and his descendants were called Hebrews, and this name is traced to an ancestor who was called Eber or Heber. It is doubtful whether an _individual_ so named ever existed. The name "Hebrew" means "one from the other side," and would therefore have been a suitable name for those who crossed the Euphrates, coming from Arabia; but of this movement the Bible knows nothing. Some have supposed that the name was given much later to the tribes who entered Palestine across the Jordan. The discovery of the Tel-el-Amarna tablets has somewhat complicated our understanding of these events. These tablets were letters written by the vassal-kings of Syria to their overlord Amenophis III., King of Egypt, and in them the King of Jerusalem calls for help against some tribes who are invading the country and whom he names _Habiri_. Now the date of this correspondence is about 1500 B.C., and if these are the Hebrews, we shall have to suppose that not all the tribes of Israel went down into Egypt or that the Exodus took place some two centuries earlier than the date given in the Bible; but the whole question of the identification of the Habiri is not yet certain. It is, however, with those Hebrew tribes who were afterwards known as the children of Israel that we have to do; and however remote, and by whatever stages it is to be traced, their Semitic relationship is certain. Their own tradition of the birthplace of Abraham shows that they are conscious of their common origin with the Babylonians; the stories in Genesis acknowledge their kinship with Moab and Ammon, even though national hatred has coloured the account of their birth (Gen. xix. 30-38). They formed a brotherly covenant with Edom, and Ishmael is recognised not only to be kin but to be the elder. The Canaanites were disowned wrongly, for they were certainly Semites; but the Philistines rightly, for they came into Palestine over-sea from Crete. We need always to bear in mind that our Bible is the product of Semitic thought, and whatever its universal message, it is expressed in the forms of Semitic genius; and yet that the Hebrews stand out from the other Semitic nations is indisputable, and the distinguishing mark is the purity of their religion. What is the cause of that difference? How came such a tender root out of such a dry ground? Renan is responsible for the popular idea that the Semites have a natural tendency towards Monotheism. The idea should present no difficulties for a theory of Revelation, but it is certainly not true. It is not true of the general type of Semitic religion, and it cannot be claimed, in the face of the Prophets' record of their countrymen's lapses, that it was true even of the Hebrews. If it were said that there was that in Semitic history and character which, provided opportunity were given, would offer a congenial soil for the reception of monotheistic ideas, it would be the utmost that could be said. Neither is there more truth in the antithesis that contrasts the Aryan conception of God as immanent with the Semitic as transcendent; for in their primitive stages Aryan and Semitic religions are alike. Primitive Semitic religion is indeed quite polytheistic; every tribe has its own god and this god is closely identified with a particular locality. Therefore, to be an outcast from the tribe meant to be an exile from the protection and service of the god. This idea can be found in the Bible as late as David, who thought that if he were driven forth from his own land he would have to serve other gods (1 Sam. xxvi. 19). The god is conceived to be the father of the tribe, while the land is the mother, and this in quite a physical and literal sense. The same idea is of course frequent in the Greek religions, and some such conception must be the original of the strange tradition in Genesis (vi. 1), which describes a union between the sons of God and the daughters of men. The connection of the god with the tribe is therefore simply a matter of blood descent, and the blood becomes in consequence invested with sacred virtues. The blood of the tribe cannot be shed by one of the members without incurring the vengeance of the god; and the use of the blood of animals in various ceremonies may point to the belief in a common ancestry for men and animals; in some tribes the animal is regarded as a superior being, and is actually worshipped. The blood of animals even is thought to be too sacred for human consumption, and is therefore set apart by libation as suitable food for the god. Seeing that the connection between the god and man is only tribal, the shedding of the blood of any other tribe is quite allowable; for the tribal god cares only for his own people, and others cannot approach him (2 Kings xvii. 27). It is evident that a religion based upon such ideas can never be a factor in the moral development of a people. It only needs to provide for help against enemies, counsel in times of national affliction, and oracles for difficult problems of judgment; therefore, in times of national prosperity and security, it will play no part beyond that of custom; and custom often seems the stronger in proportion to its lack of meaning. We may insist that the Hebrew religion is superior to all this because it owes its origin to the special revelation of God; but even that does not preclude us from enquiring through what natural causes this revelation came, if we believe that natural causes form some part of the working of the Divine mind. Now these ideas common to Semitic religion persisted among the Hebrews and were only shaken by the earnest ministry of the Prophets, and eventually destroyed by the reflection which followed the national disaster of the Exile. The continued national trouble of Israel was therefore a factor in her advance in the truth, and she stands as a witness to the possibility of suffering being an educative force. Moreover, she found that her Promised Land was only a little strip hemmed in between the desert and the sea, where all dreams of world-empire were forbidden. Then it was that this nation turned her thoughts to a spiritual kingdom, and looking across the sea that she feared to cross saw a day when the distant isles should be her possession, because she had given to them the Law of Jehovah, and the knowledge of God. THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE HEBREWS THE STRATA OF THE PENTATEUCH We give here for reference the proposed identification of the documents that critics say can be recognised in the construction of the first five books of the Bible. The theory has been developed so as to include the Books of Joshua, Judges, and some parts of Samuel, all of which are said to bear the same marks of composition from pre-existing documents. "J." Jahvistic. Dated 900-700 B.C. This document is especially distinguished for using the name of Jehovah, or "Yahwè," and is anthropomorphic in its conception of God. "E." Elohistic. Dated 750-650 B.C. The name for God in this document is "Elohim," and its conception of God is more spiritual and elevated than in "J." "D." Deuteronomist. Dated 650-550 B.C. This document has the style and thought of the Book of Deuteronomy, where it is chiefly, though by no means exclusively found. The central idea of this document is _the one sanctuary_. "P." Priestly Code. Dated 550-400 B.C. This document supplies the framework of the Pentateuch, and is distinguished by its interest in questions of ritual, and by its very legal and stereotyped style. The dates given above are arrived at from a comparison of the ideas expressed in these documents with their emergence in the historical books of the Old Testament. Only for the last two can it be claimed that there are historical events which are said to confirm them. These are: the finding of the Book of the Law in the reign of Josiah, and the promulgation of the Law by Ezra. Lecture II THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE HEBREWS We have seen from the last lecture that an examination of the general type of Semitic Religion gives us no explanation of the mature development of the Religion of the Hebrews; on the contrary, that development would seem to take place in spite of the common Semitic characteristics, for it is against these characteristics and the natural tendency to return to them that we find the Prophets continually at war. If this is so, can we penetrate to the first stage at which the new religious movement begins which was to reach such glorious heights in Jeremiah, the Psalmists and the Son of Man? It is certainly not to be found in the general character of Semitic religion; does it commence with the ancestor of the Hebrew race, the Patriarch Abraham? To this question the editor of Genesis means to return a decided answer: the true religion of Jehovah existed from the earliest times, and all lower forms are deteriorations from that pure original revelation. The earliest stories in Genesis are made to bear witness to this; Abel offered the true worship of God in that he brought of the best of his flock, thus agreeing with the sacrifice of animals set forth in the fully-developed ritual of Leviticus as the only means of approach to God; Noah offers of "clean" animals; the Patriarchs offer animal sacrifices, and call upon the name of Jehovah; Rebekah goes to enquire of Jehovah and obtains an oracle. The author means to convey by this that the earliest religion was the religion which we find outlined in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, with the exceptions that a priest is not necessary, and that sacrifice is permitted at other places besides the one chosen sanctuary. This idea is enshrined in that favourite name for God which we find in the Old Testament, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We have now to enquire whether this is a correct view of the history, or only the writer's speculations about an age long removed from his own. We are moved to do this because there are certain facts in this history that do not seem to fit in with the author's view. It is evident at the outset, that the writer, whoever he be, is dealing with subjects concerning which he can have at best only second-hand knowledge. This may have been conveyed to him in documents, or in popular tradition. If the object of the compilation of this history was not so much to produce an accurate and exact history as to interpret the past as a religious lesson for his own age, it cannot be instantly dismissed as improbable that he may have altered some of his material so as to accord more closely with his own religious views. Now scholars say that they can detect the presence of various documents, which have been loosely combined and coloured with the editor's own ideas of what should have taken place. There is hardly any theory which has excited more ridicule from a certain class of Biblical students. The idea is dismissed offhand as utterly unworthy of a sacred writer; and even if he did adopt such a scissors-and-paste method of compiling history, it is denied that anyone could detect the various strata now. No defence of these claims of the critical school need be attempted here, for we are taking their theories as granted, with the idea of seeing what their acceptance as true would mean to our estimate of the Bible and Revelation; but it may be shown that the Evangelist Luke is not ashamed to confess that he used something like this method in compiling his Gospel. From the Table that faces this lecture, it will be seen that the critics give dates for these documents that lie very far apart, and if the dates are even approximately true, it is a fair conclusion that with such wide separation of time, and with the consequent difference both in language and idea, there should be sufficient criteria to detect the different strata. The critics who have attempted the disintegration of the original documents of the Pentateuch have been challenged to show their fitness for such a task by extricating the respective contributions in a joint authorship novel such as "The Chaplain of the Fleet," by Walter Besant and James Rice. Or, again, such claims are discounted on the ground of the known failures of professional literary critics to recognise under pseudonym or anonymity, the style of a well-known author, or even to guess correctly the sex of the writer. The analogy fails because the circumstances are entirely different. It would be on more equal terms to deny that it would be possible to distinguish, say, the personal opinions of the author of an English History from the passages quoted from the Doomsday Book, Chaucer, or an Act of the Long Parliament, if all quotation marks and references were omitted. For according to the witness of the very documents themselves this conception of the early history must be set aside as not quite correct. The history in Genesis is conscious that some new start began with Abraham: he abandoned idolatry. Still more clearly is it seen that with Moses another epoch began, for according to one document, the very name of Jehovah was unknown before its revelation to Moses (Exod. vi. 2, 3). We are, therefore, faced with the necessity of enquiring how much of the stories of the Patriarchs can be called history in any true sense. The reasons for and against their historical value may be summarised: _Against_: (1) The stories must have been composed long after the events took place. (2) Tribal movements and personal incidents seem to have been confused. (3) The endeavour to explain the origin of personal and geographical names is often merely popular, and etymologically incorrect. (Compare with this the common errors of our own day; for instance, the explanation of the name of Liverpool from a supposed bird called the liver, now known to be entirely mythical.) (4) While the contemporary history of this period is now quite an enlightened field, and the life, character, and customs of the inhabitants of Palestine in this age of the Patriarchs comparatively well known, we look in vain for any mention of these persons themselves. _For_:(1) The narratives of the Patriarchs are admitted by critics to have been taken from at least two documents of separate origin and of different dates. This should double the weight of the evidence. (2) The simplicity of the narratives in many places looks like a relation of fact. (But over against this must be placed the genius for relating a story of pure fiction which is so peculiar a distinction of the Semites. Some of the narratives are quite artificial; as the story of Isaac's lie to shield his wife, which follows a similar story related of Abraham.) (3) We might appeal to the memory of the Bedawin reciters, who can repeat almost incredibly long portions of the Koran. The most likely solution of this conflicting evidence would seem to be that in the history of the Patriarchs we have a modicum of historical foundation which has been worked up into popular and idealised legends. If the stories of the three Patriarchs be carefully studied, it will be noticed that while the stories of Jacob are matter of fact, and do outline a conceivable character, the stories of Isaac produce only a nebulous character impression, while Abraham stands forth as a character which has been idealised. This would be an accountable psychological process: in the case of Jacob a good deal of detail is remembered, Isaac is almost forgotten, while in the case of Abraham, only the name and a few incidents are known, which serve to form the framework of a religious lesson. It is, however, in the conception of their religion that idealisation has most plainly occurred, for it is mainly the religion of the Ninth Century, that is, of the age immediately preceding the great literary Prophets. In the documents themselves there is left to the careful reader ample indication in customs and narratives, the meaning of which has escaped the notice of the editor, that a more primitive form of religion prevailed. It would seem, as we have seen, that the name of Jehovah was unknown to them, while there are evident tokens of polytheistic belief (Gen. xxxi. 19; xxxv. 1-4). The crudity of the worship may be seen in the frequent reference to the erection of pillars and stones, which, it will be seen later, have more than a merely memorial purpose. The ease with which we find idolatry always reappearing in later history points to some hereditary tendency at work among the mass of the people. If, however, we suppose that the primitive religion was entirely heathen we shall be faced with the problem of discovering some necessary point of departure to which the higher revelation could affix itself. We may suppose, therefore, that among the ancestors of the Hebrews there was held a faith that was relatively purer than that common to the Semites, a faith which contained in itself the guarantee of the possibility of advance, if only favourable conditions arose; that "El, the Mighty One (_Shaddai_)," was worshipped, but along with the retention of customs and ideas that are to be found in some forms of demon worship, that is, with the recognition of many other great spirits, not all of whom are thought of as inimical to man; very much as we find among the North American Indians the idea of a Great Spirit, existing side by side with heathen practices and beliefs. So far our enquiry has not taken us on to very sure ground, and we must seek other methods. In the study of Comparative Religion the idea of a certain natural order of the evolution of religion predominates, but the actual origin of religion is still only a matter of speculation, as indeed it is bound to remain from the very nature of religion itself, since it is a vision of faith, rising in different ages and races through quite different processes. We propose now to take both the speculations and the assured results of the study of Comparative Religion, and using these as tests, see if they have left any traces in the evolution of the Hebrew religion or if they can guide us to its possible origins. The principles of such enquiry and application may be stated. (1) The ascertained customs and ideas of other religions, especially those of the Semites, will form a working hypothesis, and if we then find any reference to these customs or ideas in the Old Testament, it will make towards reasonable proof of a similar origin. (2) We must be careful, however, to exclude customs that are known to have been borrowed from the Canaanites, such as the practice of Baal-worship. (3) At the same time we must beware of assuming, without further enquiry, that all the observances ordained by the religion of Jehovah whose origins are connected with some historical event are to be thought of as having their beginning then. It is more than likely that when a long-established custom was recognised to be heathen in its origin or tendency, it would be strictly forbidden, as in the case of the heathen practice of necromancy; others which had lost their original meaning would be baptised into a new significance under the new religion. (With this phenomenon may be compared our own festival of Christmas Day, taken over from the Roman Saturnalia, and our mourning customs, which are survivals of heathenism, and can only with great difficulty be made to take on a Christian meaning.) Let us then examine the supposed origins of heathen religion, and first of all, that known as Totemism. Totemism is a custom exceedingly common among savage tribes, in which some animal is chosen as the badge, or the name of the tribe, and a blood covenant formed, when the animal becomes the "totem" or god of the tribe. Popular instances may be given in the names of many of the Indian tribes of North America, or even in the crests and emblems of our now disrupted clans in Scotland, which can be traced back to a similar idea. In other cases the totem may be one of the well-known flora of the country or some other natural object. The custom is, of course, seen in the well-known worship of animals which has continued even among nations of advanced civilisation. Are there any traces of the influence of this idea at work in the religion of the Old Testament? There are one or two tribal names which are names of animals. Simeon is probably the name of a hybrid between a wolf and a hyæna. Leah means a wild cow, and Rachel is the Hebrew name for an ewe. The distinction between clean and unclean animals might be traced to this influence, but it does not altogether explain the lists in Lev. xi. and Deut. xiv. Another theory of the origin of religion is that known as Animism. This is the belief in the existence of spirits,--a belief prompted by the phenomena of dreams,--which usually takes the form of belief in the activity of the spirits of the recently deceased, an activity which is sometimes thought to be harmful and therefore feared. Animism, as a belief in a spiritual activity behind natural phenomena, especially those of the fearful type, survives in some form or other in the highest religions, and was particularly active in the Hebrew idea that Jehovah controlled natural forces for the deliverance of His people and for His own wonderful manifestations. Animism generally survives among uncivilised peoples in the practice of ancestor worship, of which there is no trace among the Hebrews. Nevertheless, the belief in Animism has left some customs behind it. Especially is this seen in the mourning customs which are designed to render the relatives unrecognisable to the departed spirit. This was effected by sprinkling ashes on the head, going naked or clothed in sackcloth. Cutting the flesh for this purpose is expressly forbidden (Lev. xix. 28). The ritual uncleanness of one who has come into contact with a dead body is also a relic of Animism, as is also the strange idea in Num. xix. 15, which is intended to guard against the spirit taking up its abode in a position from which it would be difficult to dislodge it. The funeral feast is held with the idea that the dead can still partake, but in this case friendly feelings rather than fear operate. The conclusion is that Animism has played its part in the shaping of Israel's religion, but that the cruder forms of it were dropped at a very early age. The religion of savage tribes is generally found to be polytheistic, and this is supposed to be one of the earliest stages in the development of religion. It takes the form of the deification of the forces of Nature or of striking natural objects, which are worshipped and generally feared, and is therefore a form of Animism. If the theories of the critics as to the composition of the early books of the Bible are correct, we should expect to find that, if any traces of Polytheism could be detected, they would be carefully obliterated from the original documents by the latest editor. There are indications discernible which show that this has been done, for although the worship of other gods is always severely condemned as the greatest of sins, yet at the same time we find no clear recognition of the idea of the One God until the time of the Prophets. The gods of the heathen are mentioned as if they were real beings who are to be feared. The evidence for this may be objected to in detail, but the accumulation of facts does press the reader to the unavoidable conclusion that until the Prophets, the faith of Israel was Monolatry rather than Monotheism, that is, the worship of one God rather than the definite belief that He is the Only God. The very name for God in the Hebrew language has a plural form (Elohim), but this is explained by a grammatical custom by which things of exalted idea are spoken of in the plural, called by grammarians, _the plural of eminence_. The evidence for Polytheism quoted above from Gen. xxxi. 19; xxxv. 1-4, might be referred to the introduction of alien idolatrous practices; but this can hardly be claimed in the case of the practice mentioned in Lev. xvii. 7, which must be a reference to the cult of satyrs, or goat-like demons which were commonly supposed to inhabit the desert, to the discouragement of which the ceremony mentioned in Lev. xvi. 8, 10, 21 ff, would seem to be directed. This strange figure called Azazel is not elsewhere described in the Old Testament, but we learn from the Book of Enoch that this was the name for the King of the Demons, a kind of _djinn_ who inhabited the wilderness and demanded toll of human life. (In agreement with what has been said before it will be noticed how this practice has been absorbed in the ritual of the Tabernacle, but with a different meaning.) Even the First Commandment does not explicitly deny the existence of other gods; it merely prohibits their worship by the Israelites. It may be that this command led to the full monotheistic belief which we find in men like Isaiah, but that full conception cannot be fairly read into the First Commandment. Chemosh, the god of the Amorites, is mentioned in Judges xi. 24, as a real being who had given the Amorites the possession of their land, even as Jehovah had given Canaan to the Israelites. In the popular imagination these heathen gods would remain as real beings probably long after the monotheistic belief had been held by the more enlightened, being thought of as demon powers, in much the same way as the early Christians regarded the gods of Greece and Rome. When we turn to the evidence from the customs of worship that owe their origin to heathen ideas, the supposition that the early religion of the Hebrews was hardly distinguishable from that of the Semitic races finds a full confirmation. The most determinative of these ideas is that of the localisation of the god, who appears only at certain specified places with which he is inseparably connected. The appearance is generally in some form more or less human, and the site of the manifestation is either marked for posterity by the erection of a suitable memorial, in the shape of a stone or an altar, or else some natural object is taken to be the actual residence of the god. The god is therefore connected rather with the land than with the people, and it is this antagonism of the popular idea with that of the Prophets, who stand for the relation between Jehovah and Israel as not territorial but covenanted, which is the key to the history of Israel. Apart from this prevalent idea, which is in itself a sufficient proof, we have the frequent reference to the sacredness of certain memorials and objects whose original significance cannot be hidden from the careful reader. We shall examine first these objects of reverential regard and then proceed to notice some of the more outstanding customs whose origin is heathen. (a) _Sacred Stones._ Throughout the Old Testament we meet with numerous references to stones or circles that form convenient landmarks or natural _rendezvous_ for national ceremonies. Adonijah strengthens his rebellion by a great sacrifice at the stone of Zoheleth--"the serpent's stone." The extremely important part which the serpent plays in all Semitic religion and mythology, together with the sacrificial act at this spot, points to its having been the ancient site of some idolatrous cult. Many of these sacred stones may have been the shrines of the Canaanites, and to some of these the invading religion attached its own meaning. The circle at Gilgal, which is said to commemorate the crossing of the Jordan, may be an example of this, for there is some contradiction in the account which refers it to a memorial erected by Joshua for this purpose (compare Josh. iv. 2-6, 20 ff, with iv. 9), and it is more than likely that the circle of graven images mentioned in Judges iii. 19 (R.V. margin) is to be identified with it. Among this class of sacred objects must be mentioned the obscure _Mazzebah_, translated in the margin of the Revised Version, "Obelisk." The use of the Mazzebah is strictly forbidden in Exod. xxxiv. 13, as one of the idolatrous customs of the former inhabitants of the land, but in the Eighth Century the Mazzebah is reckoned by Hosea as one of the essentials of Hebrew worship, as if he knew nothing of this proscription in the Law (Hosea iii. iv.). These pillars were evidently used to mark the place of worship, and they are said to have been found at Shechem, Bethel, Gilgal, Mizpeh, and elsewhere. From their usage in primitive Semitic religion as well as from their prohibition in Exodus it can be seen that they had idolatrous significance, and it is thought that they were rudely carved to resemble the likeness of the god. The two pillars placed before the temple, called Jachin and Boaz, are probably connected with the Mazzebah. (b) _Sacred Trees._ The continual reference to these in the Old Testament shows that they had some special and sacred significance. Such are the terebinths of Mamre (Gen. xiii. 18; should be singular according to the Septuagint), the tamarisk at Beersheba (Gen. xxi. 33), the palm of Deborah (Judges iv. 5), and the terebinth in Ophrah (Judges vi. 11). We can understand how to desert peoples trees naturally stood for objects of thankful reverence, and in the popular mind were regarded as the special seat and haunt of a deity. That they also served for the purpose of obtaining oracles may be seen from 2 Sam. v. 24; with which may be compared the practice of oracular decision by the rustling of the famous oaks of Delphi. With this species of tree-worship we must compare the use of the Asherah mentioned as a sacred symbol in Judges vi. 25; this is expressly forbidden in Exod. xxxiv. 13, Deut. xvi. 21. It used to be supposed that this was a wooden symbol of a goddess Asherah, but from the description in the passage quoted from Deuteronomy, and from Isa. xvii. 8, it would seem to be a tree-like post, and is more likely to be a remnant of tree worship, as our own Maypole may be. It came to pass that the tree or tree-like pole could therefore stand beside any altar as the sign of the presence of the god, and in the pre-Prophetic religion of Israel this was transferred to a sign of the presence of Jehovah until the Asherah was forbidden, in that great attempt to make return to idolatry impossible, the reform under Josiah. (c) _Sacred Springs._ A similar origin may be supposed for the recognised sacredness of springs. From the names given to some of these it is evident that they were regarded as the special seat of Divine power, natural enough, as in the case of the trees, to a desert-bred race and to dwellers in a land which never had too plentiful a supply of water. The proximity of the spring to an altar or sacred stone confirms this, as in the case of the stone Zoheleth near the spring En-rogel, the "spring of the fuller." The name of "En-Mishpat" (Gen. xiv. 7), "the spring of judgment," would seem to indicate that springs were used for the purpose of obtaining oracles, but by what signs this was effected is not known. The name of the spring in Gen. xvi. 14, where the angel appeared to Hagar, is significant in this connection: "the well of the living one who seeth me." In the customs of worship, and in all customs to which there is attached a definite religious significance, we find analogies in the heathen religions which show that they must have had a common origin. Chief among these must be classed the custom of sacrifice. It is natural, therefore, to find that sacrifice, which has such an undoubtedly natural explanation in heathen religions as either the food of the god or a means of propitiation, is nowhere in the Old Testament explicitly defined as to its intent and meaning. The root idea is, however, clearly seen in such customs as that of the setting forth of the Shewbread, however much the meaning may have become spiritualised by a purer idea of the nature of Jehovah, while in Ezek. xliv. 7, 15, this seems to be quite explicitly stated. As the conception of Deity was spiritualised, the idea of material food would doubtless grow too repugnant to be retained in the bare offering of flesh, and so we get the burnt-offering, the smoke of which Jehovah can smell. The blood especially, forms the correct offering, since being the seat of life, it belongs altogether to God. On the idea of the sacrifice being used as a propitiation to the Deity, it follows naturally that the more costly the victim the more acceptable it will be, and of all sacrifices the most efficacious will be that of a human being. The story of Abram and Isaac in Gen. xxii. is made to serve as a condemnation of human sacrifices, but the origin of the story may very well have pointed the other way, as indeed the first part of the story does; and that the practice was common may be seen from 2 Kings xvi. 3; xxi. 6; Jer. vii. 31; xix. 5 (Delete the last words of Jer. xix. 5, as an evident gloss from vii. 31). True, in these passages human sacrifice is said to be in express contravention of the will of Jehovah, but no such comment is added to the story of Jephthah (Judges xi. 30 ff.), while in Micah vi. 7, the sacrifice of the firstborn is simply classed among other sacrifices as part of the common idea. A remnant of this horrible practice is probably to be found in the consecration of the firstborn to Jehovah, while the legality of human sacrifice is determinative in the common practice of the "ban," by which all captives were devoted to Jehovah, and any violation visited by the direst vengeance; as in the case of Saul and Agag. Another use of the sacrifice was that of ratifying a covenant by cutting a victim in parts, between which the contracting parties passed (Gen. xv. 9-17; Jer. xxxiv. 18). Much the same result will be found from enquiry into the origin of special feasts and customs that are said to have been instigated at the express command of Jehovah; for there is evidence which shows that they were often customs common amongst the heathen, and were only invested with a new significance by the higher religion of the Hebrews. Among these it is likely that we must reckon even the Passover, for the daubing of the lintels is said to be a common heathen practice, and it will be noticed in support of the pre-Mosaic origin of the ceremony that at its first mention in Exod. xii. 21, it is called _the_ Passover. The meaning of the Hebrew word translated "Passover" is also capable of another meaning than that given in the story of its institution, a meaning which also points to its being the survival of a Semitic and heathen custom. Similar enquiry into ancient religions of the Semitic type shows that originally circumcision had no special religious significance, but was probably a sign of puberty and the right to marry. As manners softened it became a family rite and there was no need to postpone it till years of manhood. The practice of wearing special garments at religious rites is also found in heathen religions, and still maintains itself in our habit of wearing "Sunday clothes." The results of these enquiries are sufficiently startling to those who have been accustomed to regard the religion of Israel as starting from some definite act of revelation which ordained these ordinances and their religious meaning for the first time. But it is common enough in history to find that customs persist long after their original significance has been forgotten, and that they are gradually invested with a meaning more appropriate to the spirit of the age. We are not, however, shut up to the conclusion, that, because we can trace much of the wonderful religion of Israel to common causes acting upon heathen religion, there is no real work of revelation in this gradual progress from lower to higher stages. It would be quite useless, from the point of view of this book, to enter on the fruitless discussion as to whether in the evolution of religion we have to deal with a natural process or with a supernatural revelation. Is any such antithesis necessary? Surely the one can come through the other. If revelation is to reach us it must come through the ordinary processes of our minds; the recognition that it is from God cannot be authenticated to us by any miracle or outward authority, but simply by the possibility of the mind, which God has made, being able to recognise its Maker. It may be more of a difficulty to others that we should have such erroneous conceptions of history in a Book that has been regarded as infallible on these matters. We have to face the fact, from which there is no escape, that the historian may not have known the origin of the things of which he wrote, or may have intentionally obscured the fact of the heathen origin of customs that had become to all pious Israelites expressions of Jehovah's special revelation to Israel. If we are going to call this fraud, then it means that we are going to force on that early age a conception of historical accuracy which it certainly did not possess, and which, as a matter of fact, is only a late demand of the human mind. And after all, there was truth in this reference of all their religion to the revelation of Jehovah. It witnesses to the fact that behind even the crudest religion there is something which defies explanation, and that we have in heathen religions the slow dawning consciousness of God within man's soul. In Israel these things never stood still. That central idea of the localisation of Jehovah grew too small to contain the widening conception of Him as it was evolved through reflection and national experience, until the Prophets burst forth with the proclamation that He was the God of the whole earth, and His relation to Israel not tribal or territorial, but moral, and only to be maintained by righteousness and true holiness. MOSAISM The reader is recommended to make a careful study of the following passages, which are among the most important adduced by the critics as evidence for the non-Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. (1) Mosaic authorship is never claimed for the Pentateuch as a whole. Only in certain places is it noted that Moses wrote down special things (Exod. xvii. 14; xxiv. 4; xxxiv. 27; Num. xxxiii. 2; Deut. xxxi. 9, 22, 24). Moses is consistently spoken of in the third person, and it is hardly likely that this is a style purposely adopted, or the statement of Num. xii. 3 would be extraordinary in the circumstances. Obviously the last chapter of Deuteronomy was not written by him, nor is the common opinion that it was added by Joshua at all probable, for there is no difference in style from the rest of the book discernible, and, moreover, Dan is referred to (Deut. xxxiv. 1; cp. also Gen. xiv. 14), which was not so named until after the conquest. (Josh. xix. 47; Judges xviii. 29.) Would Moses need to authenticate his history of contemporaneous events by quoting from what are regarded as ancient books: from the Book of the Wars of Jehovah (Num. xxi. 14), wars which could have only just commenced, or from the poem which refers to the victory over Sihon (Num. xxi. 27 ff.), which took place at the very end of the forty years' wandering? (2) The standpoint as a whole is that of an age later than Moses. The remark in Gen. xxxvi. 31 can only have had any meaning in the age of David when Edom was in submission to Israel. A late date is also needed for the following passages: Gen. xii. 6; xiii. 7; xxxiv. 7 ("in Israel"! cp. Judges xx. 10; 2 Sam. xiii. 12); Lev. xviii. 27; Deut. ii. 12; iv. 38. In fact, the whole geographical outlook is that of an inhabitant of Western Palestine, as may be seen from the use of the term "Seaward" to indicate the west, and of "Negeb," or the desert land, for the south. These terms are used even in the description of the Tabernacle, which, if taken from the site of Mount Sinai, would be altogether wrong and meaningless. Compare Num. xxii. 1; xxxiv. 15; Deut. i. 1, 5; iii. 8; iv. 41, 46, 49: "beyond the Jordan," showing clearly that the writer's position is in Palestine, west of the Jordan. (3) There is no trace in the history of any observance of the Levitical ritual until after the exile; the day of atonement, the sin-offering, the high-priest, all are unheard of until this date. Nor can it be claimed that it was the ignorance of the common people, or their apostasy, that was responsible for this condition of things. The great leaders of the various reformations are apparently also quite ignorant that none but a priest could sacrifice, and none but a Levite take charge of the ark. Samuel, who was not a Levite, sleeps beside the ark and offers sacrifice. Elijah does nothing to recall the people to the ritual of Leviticus. (4) The conclusion is that, while later ages were right in attributing to Moses the founding of their religion and some of their ritual, all the accumulation of law, which had only been the growth of many centuries, has been placed to his credit. What the actual contribution of Moses was it is now impossible to say, but the original of the Ten Words and of the Book of the Covenant (Exod. xx. 2-xxiii. 33) may well go back to that age, as may be seen from the relative simplicity of the laws and rules. For example, compare the simple regulations for the altar in Exod. xx. 24 with the elaborate altar described in Exod. xxvii. 1-8. Lecture III MOSAISM The national consciousness of Israel goes back to a series of remarkable events in which the nation was born, and which are too deeply graven on the mind of the people to be mere legends without historical foundation. These events are the deliverance from the bondage in Egypt and the great covenant made with Jehovah at Sinai. The indispensable personal centre, round which these events revolve, is that of the great national leader, Moses. The fact that, outside the Pentateuch and the closely connected Book of Joshua, little is known of the work of Moses until after the exile, has given rise to doubts concerning his historical reality. If we take the writings of the Old Testament that are contemporary with the period they describe, there stand out in indisputable primacy the writings of the great literary Prophets. To these modern criticism has rightly turned to discover the opinions, customs, and religion, prevailing in the Eighth Century; and it is claimed that by these writings we can test the historical value of the Pentateuch, and of the other historical books. Now it must be admitted that in the pre-exilic Prophets the mention of Moses is less frequent than we should expect from the position which is claimed for him in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Prophets do appeal with one consent to the original covenant of Jehovah with Israel, to the fulfilment of which they would recall the nation; but only rarely is the name of Moses associated with that covenant. There are only four references to Moses in the Prophets before the exile (Hosea xii. 13--Moses not actually named; Micah vi. 4; Jer. xv. 1; Isa. lxiii. 12--reckoned post-exilic by critics), and in none of these is Moses referred to as a law-giver, but as a prophet and national deliverer. We have to come to Prophets writing after the exile to find any reference to the legislative work of Moses (Mal. iv. 4; Dan. ix. 11-13). The purpose of the prophetic writings is moral rather than historical, and this forbids putting more evidential weight upon this argument from silence than it will bear; but in face of their continual appeal to the covenant of Sinai, this silence is at least significant. Evidently Moses was not a name to conjure with in their age. (Compare Jer. xxxi. 31, 32, where the mention of the name of Moses would have been most natural.) We have, on these and other grounds, to disregard the later idea that Moses was the only law-giver of Israel and the author of the Pentateuch, although the fact that the later legislation could only find sanction as it was included under his name, points to him as in some way the initiator of Israel's great Code of Laws. While in addition to this, it must be admitted that a great deal of the story of his life is due to the growth of legend, there is no need to regard the figure of Moses as entirely mythical. The events by which a motley crowd of serfs became a nation and covenanted themselves to an almost new religion not only need for their explanation a great interpreter, but also a great leader; and this demand and need Moses fills. We may therefore safely regard Moses as one of the great Founders of Religion. We have now to enquire how much of the marvellous story of his life can be safely reckoned as history. The document which gives the earliest, and therefore the most trustworthy, story of his life is dated by the critics in the Ninth Century, although it is not denied that it may, and probably does, go back for its material to a much earlier period. This document, known to the critics as "J," owes its origin to early prophetic influence. In this document, as might be expected from the analogy in similar cases (compare the absence of the birth stories in Mark), the story of the birth and finding of Moses is omitted; it is probably nothing more than an effort to find a popular explanation of his name, as derived from _Mashah_, "to draw out." A much more likely origin of the name is found by modern scholars in the Egyptian word for "son" (_Mesu_). The important thing to be noticed is that in this early document he appears first of all in Midian, although there are indications which show that it is known that he had previously been in Egypt. Here, alone in the wilderness, or in intercourse with the strange Bedawin who still inhabit that region, there came to him a revelation of Jehovah and the call to deliver Israel from their bondage. He returned to Egypt with a message at once religious and national. He calls upon the Israelites to leave Egypt and to seek a covenant with Jehovah at His shrine at Sinai. During a plague, the passage of the Red Sea was effected under conditions that were interpreted to be due to the direct intervention of Jehovah; and, the returning tide cutting off the pursuing Egyptians who challenged their flight, the Israelites stood delivered from their enemies and their first trust in Jehovah was vindicated. It is not for us to enquire into the exact causes which proved so favourable to the Israelites and so disastrous to the Egyptians; we only need to know that they were interpreted religiously. Then around Mount Sinai, with its impressive solitude and its awful storms, Moses gathered the people, imparted the secret of the new worship, made a solemn covenant by which the people of Israel became for ever the people of Jehovah, and probably laid down some rudiments of legislation fitted for their primitive and nomadic condition. This much at least the after history demands as the irreducible minimum. If this is at all an accurate view of the founding of the religion of Jehovah, then we are faced with the phenomenon of a nation practically adopting a new religion. We do not ignore "revelation" when we feel compelled to seek for natural causes which might prepare the way for this event; and this we may attempt by an enquiry into the meaning of the name "Jehovah." It should be noted at the outset that "Jehovah" is a personal name, like that of Zeus or Poseidon, conveying the idea of some aspect of deity. The meaning of the name is exceedingly obscure. The general name for deity common to all Semites, and therefore belonging to the undivided primitive stock, is "El," meaning either "the Mighty One" or, and more in accord with Semitic conceptions of God, "the Leader." The meaning of the name "Jehovah" is difficult to discover, because in the first place the exact pronunciation of the word has been lost, probably beyond recovery. The word "Jehovah" is a hybrid compound, and as a matter of fact was never used as a name for God until the Reformation. We can be certain only that the consonants of the word were _JHVH_ (or _YHWH_, Hebrew pronunciation). This extraordinary state of things is accounted for by the fact that for centuries the Hebrew Scriptures were "unpointed" or unvocalised--that is, the consonants only were written and the necessary connecting vowels were taught orally, and only retained in the memory for use when the Scriptures were read aloud. When in the Ninth Century A.D. it was likely that the pronunciation of the sacred language would be entirely forgotten, a device for its preservation was made whereby the vowel pronunciation was indicated by means of "points" placed chiefly underneath the consonantal text; very much like the dots and dashes used for vowels in Pitman's system of shorthand. When, however, it came to the "pointing" of JHVH, it was found that the pronunciation of this word had been entirely lost. Reverence for the name of God had become so exaggerated that, in reading aloud from the Scriptures, wherever the sacred name occurred another word had always been substituted. This word was one of respect, but of less marked exaltation--_Adonai_, equal to our word "Lord." The only course open to the punctuators was that of inserting under the consonants JHVH, the vowels (with suitable euphonic modifications) of the word _Adonai_, with the result that we get the conflate "Jehovah," a word which has become invested with so much solemnity to our ears, but which was certainly not the right pronunciation, and which has never been used by the Jews. Scholars have endeavoured, at present without any universally accepted result, to recover the lost pronunciation by linguistic enquiries, with the desire to discover what the word originally meant, in the hope that it would throw some light on the origin of the religion founded by Moses. In Exod. iii. 13 ff. (R. V. margin) we have the traditional explanation of the word, an explanation which is not altogether satisfactory from a grammatical point of view; the great Hebraist Ewald goes so far as to pronounce it highly artificial. It has been objected that the man who wrote this account, about 750 B.C., surely understood his own language. Probably; but that is not to say that he understood the etymology of it, for etymology is a new science, and has upset many popular derivations in the case of our own language. If the explanation given in Exodus is correct, and we cannot with certainty put anything much better in its place, then the meaning of the word "Jehovah" would be "He that is," perhaps an equivalent in Hebrew form to the Western idea of "The Eternal." Only one of the numerous guesses as to the meaning of the original name need be quoted here: that the word comes from a verb, _hawah_, meaning either "to fall," or "to blow." Similar ideas would seem to account for either of these meanings. "He who blows," looks like the name for the Tempest God, while "that which falls" has been taken to indicate a fallen meteorite, which may have been preserved as a symbol of Jehovah. When we remember the thunderstorms at Sinai, and the common belief that thunder was a special theophany of Jehovah, these ideas are not to be hastily dismissed as altogether incredible. Nor should we be prevented from considering such an idea from the prejudice that it would make the origin of the religion of Israel a piece of Nature-worship and superstition. God has taken man where He has found him, and none can dare to define the limits of childish and crude conceptions within which the Spirit of God can begin His work in man's mind. The conclusion derived from the examination of the meaning of the name "Jehovah" must therefore remain open until some further light is thrown on the subject. (Scholars usually adopt the pronunciation, _Yahwe_, as our nearest approach to the original.) An endeavour has been made to discover the origin of the religion of Israel from the persistent connection of Jehovah with the locality of Mount Sinai. This idea continues long after in the Promised Land (Deut. xxxiii. 2; Judges v. 5), and Elijah takes a long journey back to the sacred spot, presumably to get into closer touch with Jehovah (1 Kings xix.). With the prevailing beliefs of that age in the localisation of the god, this connection must be thought of as of more than accidental significance. It is fair to assume that the seat of Jehovah at Sinai must have been known before the great covenant, and is indeed required by the narrative itself (Exod. iii.; iv. 27), while recent discoveries are said to prove that the traditional Sinai must have been a sacred place from the earliest times. Moses, however, is clearly represented as coming to know of Jehovah during his stay in Midian. The exact means of the revelation is said to have been the sight of a bush on fire, yet miraculously unconsumed. What actually lies behind this story--whether it is a creation of the religious imagination which sees "every common bush afire with God"--it is useless for us to try and discover. A natural explanation has been sought in the fact that Jethro, the Kenite, was the priest of Midian, and presumably of some shrine of Jehovah. Certainly Jethro knew the name of Jehovah, but apparently only regarded Him as one of the gods, until the marvellous deliverance of the Exodus proved Him to be the greatest of gods (Exod. xviii. 9-11). Jethro performs an act of sacrifice to Jehovah, in the presence of Aaron and the elders, that looks remarkably like an act of initiation by which Israel are introduced to the worship of Jehovah by the regular priest of the shrine (Exod. xviii. 12). The hypothesis is further strengthened by the fact that the Kenites are found later dwelling in Palestine (Judges i. 16), and are always remembered long after as the friends of the Israelites (1 Sam. xv. 6; xxvii. 10; xxx. 29). The inference from this is that Moses first learned of Jehovah from his father-in-law Jethro, but that he understood more of the character of Jehovah than Jethro, and by his superior religious consciousness conceived of Him as in some way Supreme who to Jethro had been only one of the desert gods. This theory would certainly be strengthened if Sinai could be identified, not with the traditional site of _Jebel Musa_ in the southern part of the Sinaitic peninsula, but with some spot in the land of Midian, across the gulf of Akaba. This does indeed seem necessary from the narrative, for from the most natural interpretation of Exod. iii. 1, Horeb, the mount of God, was in Midian. It is generally taken for granted that Horeb and Sinai are identical; the respective names are used by different documents. It is said that, for some reasons, Midian would fit in with the record of the journey through the wilderness better than the Sinaitic peninsula. If the parallelism of Sinai with Seir in Deut. xxxiii. 2 can be taken to show identity, as is natural, we have a further confirmation, for Seir is in Midian. The grave difficulty of all this is that it would make the religion of Jehovah a distinct importation. Is such a thing as its reception by the Hebrews credible on this account? The idea of a nation changing its religion is certainly repugnant to the Semitic mind (Jer. ii. 10, 11), and some more natural connection seems necessary, both from the narrative and from general considerations. Now the narrative hints that the religion was not entirely new (Exod. vi. 3), but was known to the Patriarchs under different forms; while the sanctity of Sinai would seem to have been already known to some of the tribes (Exod. iv. 27). There is nothing here definite enough for us to proceed to historical certainty, but it is fair to suppose that the shrine at Sinai was known to the Patriarchs in their wanderings, and that Jehovah would be worshipped; as would any other local god whose territory they happened to be in. Grant that this was partly known to the Hebrew slaves in Egypt; that Moses received the revelation of the power of Jehovah in his exile in Midian, and by a splendid leap of inspiration identified the actual shrine and the Person of Jehovah with the Mighty Spirit dimly known to the Patriarchs, and we have an explanation that is natural and is also true; for the Object of man's worship has been One through all history. When the successful passage of the Red Sea and the defeat of the Egyptians were interpreted by Moses as the direct intervention of Jehovah, the transition to the great covenant is made possible. All this may be very contrary to the traditional idea of how Moses received the revelation of Jehovah, but the facts do point this way; and it is not for us to deny that the Spirit of God could work through these natural events and through the mind of this commanding personality, and so bring about this identification of Jehovah and the Great Spirit of the Patriarchal thought, which was to lead to such great results for religion. We are now free to investigate what the character of the religion introduced by Moses actually was. (1) _General Character._ A careful examination of its character shows that while it is by no means identical with the religion taught by the Prophets, and while it retained many heathen ideas and customs, yet it contained within itself the promise and guarantee of development. We have already had occasion to notice that it is not pure Monotheism. Jehovah is not the only God; He is the only God for Israel. The heathen deities are still regarded as having a real existence. Neither can it be called a purely spiritual religion, for Jehovah is rather said to have a spirit than to be a spirit; He has a form which, though terrible in its effect on the beholder, by reason of its glory, can nevertheless be seen; He inhabits a special place, which is His sacred territory, and on this Moses stumbles all unwittingly in Midian. Still more emphatically against the idea of a purely spiritual religion is the fact--which the editors have done their best to hide, but not successfully--that images of some kind were allowed, or existed unreproved. The Ephod, of which we hear so often, was evidently at one time an idol. The meaning of the word is of something "covered," as may be seen from Isa. xxx. 22, where the feminine form of the word (_aphuddah_) is used of the gold plating of images; but according to a later idea (Exod. xxviii. 6-14), the Ephod formed part of the dress of the High Priest, and was a kind of embroidered waistcoat. This explanation, however, does violence to a number of passages where the Ephod is mentioned. Gideon expended seventeen hundred shekels of gold on an Ephod which he "set up" in Ophrah (Jud. viii. 26 f.); this cannot be a waistcoat. Only the explanation that the Ephod was an image can do justice to the reference in Judges xvii. 5, and it suits the passage in 1 Sam. xxi. 9, if we think of the sword hanging behind an image. If the ephod was nothing more than a waistcoat by which lots were determined, we have to explain why it is so sharply condemned in Judges viii. 27, and why the text of 1 Sam. xiv. 18, which in the Septuagint reads "ephod," in the Hebrew text has been altered to read "ark"; an alteration which is quite impossible here, as the ark was at this time in Kirjath Jearim, and, moreover, was never used for the purpose of obtaining oracles. (The only explanation is that some scribe has made this alteration because he knew that there was something idolatrous about the ephod.) Even as late as Hosea (iii. 4) we find the ephod mentioned in a connection where it can only stand for an object of idolatrous worship. It is certainly strange that the same name should be in use for an image, and then later for a garment of the high-priest; but the likely explanation of this is that the image was at one time clothed with a dress, as was usual (Jer. x. 9), and that in the pockets of this the lots were kept. When the use of the image became offensive the garment was retained as part of the high-priest's dress. The transition is made more natural if we can suppose that the Priest of the Oracle, in the early days, was accustomed to put on the garment of the image, under the customary idea that thus the divine knowledge of the idol would be communicated to him. In 2 Kings xviii. 4, we read of _Nehushtan_, the brazen serpent which Moses had made, being used idolatrously; but perhaps this has been wrongly ascribed to Moses. From the intimate connection of bull-worship with the worship of Jehovah, it would seem that the bull was regarded as a symbol of Jehovah; a similar idea may have instituted Aaron's golden calf. While admitting the force of this evidence, we must still keep open the possibility that the religion instituted by Moses was of a purer type, but was never strong enough to drive out the remnants of heathen practice. More indisputable evidence of the materialistic conception of the Person of Jehovah is found in the reverence paid to what is known as "the ark of Jehovah," the making of which is certainly ascribed to Moses. The name "the ark of the covenant," was not the original name given to the ark, but is taken from the incident recorded in Deut. x. 1-5. The idea that the ark was built to contain the tables of the Law does not appear until the time of Deuteronomy, and is quite unknown to the older strata of the Pentateuch. In these older strata all mention of the actual making of the ark is omitted, although there is evidence that they did contain an account of its preparation and meaning. Enough, however, is told us of the reverential treatment of it, to show that it was a symbol of higher sanctity than a mere receptacle for the stones of the law would be likely to be. It is certainly very closely identified with Jehovah Himself, as may be seen from Num. x. 35. (This is in poetic form, and is therefore likely to be a very early fragment. It should be noticed that the ark apparently starts of itself.) Its presence in the battlefield ensures victory, while its absence brings about defeat (Num. xiv. 42-45; 1 Sam. iv. 3-7; v. 1 ff.). It can hardly be that the ark was taken for Jehovah Himself, but it must have contained something that was closely identified with Jehovah; a box is not built except with the idea of holding something. We have seen that it is unlikely that that something was originally the two tables of the law; was it something else of stone which made the transference to the tables of the law at once necessary and natural? Was it a stone image of Jehovah? It has been conjectured that it may have contained meteoritic stones, which would agree with the proposed derivation of "Jehovah" from the Storm God of Sinai. There is nothing in the Old Testament which gives any support to these conjectures, but in face of the fact that the original narrative of the making of the ark has been omitted, and in view of the ideas of religion which were common in that period, we cannot say that they are absolutely excluded from consideration. The ark was certainly bound up with the idea of war, and would seem to have been kept in a soldier's tent. It was transferred to the dark inner temple till 586 B.C., and from that date all trace of it is lost. The Priest's Code ("P") makes provision for it in the second temple, but we have unimpeachable Jewish testimony that the shrine of the inner temple was absolutely empty (Josephus, _War of the Jews_, v. v. § 5). Jeremiah may have been aware of the original significance of the ark as tending towards idolatry, and hence his words in Jer. iii. 16. (2) _Ordinances of Worship._ It remains for us to enquire into the character of the religion founded by Moses by an examination of some of the outstanding ordinances that regulated the idea of worship. Here the traditional ascription of the fully developed ritual of the Book of Leviticus to Moses has to be set aside, on the consideration that we have no record of its observance until late in the period of the monarchy, and from then it can be traced as a gradual growth of custom and ideal until its complete observance after the Exile. There does not seem to have been any priesthood of the exclusive Levitical order founded by Moses. The story of the Levites in Exod. xxxii. can only be a late story, for there is no record of their monopoly of the ritual service until the Reform under Josiah: Joshua, an Ephraimite, is the "servant of the tent"; Samuel, also an Ephraimite, sleeps beside the ark (1 Sam. iii. 3); David and Solomon assume a kind of chief priesthood (2 Sam. vi. 13; 1 Kings viii. 5, 62 ff.), and of course neither of them were Levites. The story in Judges xvii. gives what is perhaps the true position of the Levites: anyone could be consecrated as a family priest, but the presence of a Levite was reckoned propitious. Down to a very late age sacrifice seems to have remained largely a tribal or family act, and although a descendant of Moses' tribe (Levi) was regarded as possessing special advantage, there was no law by which Levites alone were reckoned capable of discharging priestly functions. In the matter of sacrifice, it would seem that Moses simply adopted what was a very ancient and common practice. In face of the evident neglect of the Levitical ritual in matters of sacrifice, both by the common people and by such great reformers as Samuel and Elijah, together with the fact that in the teaching of the prophets doubts are cast on its divine origin (Isa. i. 11; Amos v. 25; Micah vi. 6-8), we cannot infer that the detailed and explicit commands concerning sacrifice found in the Book of Leviticus are the work of Moses, or belong to an early age. To the Prophets, sacrifice is always reminiscent of paganism. The time when the change came in may be detected in the different value given to sacrifice by the post-exilic prophets (Mal. i. 13 f.), while the incompatibility of the two views, prophetic and priestly, can be seen from the addition which has been made to Ps. li., to bring it into accord with the later view. Neither is it possible for us to believe that the elaborate shrine known as the Tabernacle owed its existence to Moses. The impossibility of transporting the cumbrous fixtures through the wilderness had been noticed before the modern era of critical study. A close examination of the details of construction shows that it is nothing more than an ideal projection from the mind of a priestly writer who believed that a tent-like counterpart of Ezekiel's temple was essential to Israel's worship in the wilderness. It is enough to recall that the tabernacle of the priestly writer's imagination is quite unknown to the historical books. In Exod. xxxiii. 7 ff., which may be seen to be only a fragment of an early document, since it starts abruptly by describing "the" tent, which is known as the Tent of Meeting, we have what has been taken to be the Tabernacle; but it is nothing more than a tent for keeping the ark in. (3) _Legislation._ How much of the legislation of the Pentateuch is to be ascribed to Moses we cannot tell. Too many hands have been at work on it for the original to be discovered. A remarkable discovery was made in the year 1901 of some enormous _steles_, which bear in cuneiform characters what is now known as the Code of Hammurabi, the oldest code of laws in the world, the date of which is reckoned to be 2250 B.C. They presuppose an advanced state of civilisation and morality existing in the Euphrates valley at that period. The agreement between the Pentateuchal Code and the Code of Hammurabi argues dependence of the former on the latter to a very considerable extent, and supplies a still further testimony to the extent to which the religion of Israel is indebted to Babylon. The exact bearing of this discovery upon critical theories, and especially upon the date of the Pentateuch has perhaps hardly been estimated yet; it does not, however, refute the theory which denies that the Pentateuch as it stands is from the hand of Moses. We naturally think of the Decalogue as the work of Moses, but here we are faced by the difficulty that the Decalogue appears to exist in three recensions (Exod. xx. 1-17; xxxiv. 14-28; Deut. v. 6-21). The account in Exod. xxxiv., which forms part of the document "J," is reckoned to be the oldest of these, and the original of this might well go back to the time of Moses. It has been objected that the Decalogue is too ethical to suit the time of Moses, but is this not because we are inclined to read into the Ten Commandments far more than is to be found there? It can be shown that they are little more than ten laws of "rights." A special difficulty is found in ascribing the second commandment to this age, in view of its frequent uncensured breach; but perhaps there is some difference that escapes us between a molten image, which is prescribed in the first draft (Exod. xxxiv. 17), and the later prohibition of the graven image (Exod. xx. 4). In the foregoing examination we have allowed for the most rigorous demands of advanced criticism, demands which may have to be modified as criticism becomes more of a science, but there remains the need to discover what there was, on these critical assumptions, in the Mosaic religion that provided the way for a further advance into the faith which became the glory of Israel. What is it that makes the difference between Mosaism and the heathen Semitic religions, a difference which was to make the gradual growth of a pure Monotheism possible? The first important element which needs to be reckoned with is that it was a religion of choice rather than a religion of nature. We saw that it was difficult to conceive how the religion of Jehovah could have been adopted by Israel unless there had been some previous contact. What is so difficult to understand is nevertheless the one element that contained the possibility of progress. The relation of Israel to Jehovah was neither by physical descent nor through the connection of the god with the land, as with the heathen Semitic religions. Jehovah was at first conceived of as the God of the tribe only, but even this was not by nature, but by His gracious choice. Their land was given to them by Jehovah, but His natural connection was with a far distant shrine. This fact in itself must have rendered necessary some more spiritual conception of His habitation, and, though hard enough for the common people to realise, when they entered Canaan and found a full-grown cultus and religion in connection with the god of the land already in possession, it was this fact upon which the Prophets fastened and which could not be denied: the religion of Jehovah was a matter of choice and not of racial or local connection. That choice had been ratified by solemn covenant, to which the Prophets appealed. The relation between Jehovah and Israel depended therefore on the conditions of the covenant being faithfully kept. When we compare the religions of the other Semites, which made the relation of the god and his people one which nothing could break, and from which neither the god nor the people could escape, we can see how this difference constituted one of the ethical germs of the religion which was destined to grow into fuller power and life. There was another important conception, which was intensified by the fact that the religion of Jehovah was a religion of choice: that of the jealousy of Jehovah. This was often interpreted, especially in the pre-prophetic period, in a very crude and in even a cruel way. The jealousy of Jehovah was very like the human passion: uncertain, arbitrary and irrational, manifesting itself according to the popular mind in outbreaks of fury for ceremonial mistakes, or for causes even less comprehensible (Num. iii. 4; 2 Sam. vi. 7). In all the religions it was thought to be a serious thing to depart from the allegiance to the rightful god, and sure to lay one open to his jealousy and vengeance; but something more is now found in this idea as it develops in Hebrew thought: it is that the jealousy of Jehovah is due to the great difference between Him and the other gods, a difference which came to be recognised as one of character. Something of this must go back to Moses himself. This difference is also expressed in the idea that He is a God of righteousness. The word "righteousness" does not always have in the Hebrew Scriptures the absolute meaning which it has for us. It was rather equal to our word "rights," which we often employ quite unethically. Jehovah was one who gave right judgments when questions were submitted and answered by the lot, and One who brought victory to the right. It was undoubtedly Israel's right that was chiefly considered, but there was hidden in it an ethical germ which was to bring forth notable fruit when man's sense of right was widened. This at least was the mark of the new religion which Moses impressed on the people, impressed with such a force that it could never be quite forgotten. It had new thoughts pregnant with meaning for the mind of man and for the future of religion, and these became the fulcrum of the Prophets' appeal. From the bosom of this people was to come forth One who was to reveal the Father as perfectly righteous and impartial, and who demands for His service a righteousness that must far exceed that of the straitest observers of external religion. It would be easy for us to despise this day of small beginnings, or to refuse to see in it any real revelation of God at all. Doubtless this enquiry may necessitate a change in our conceptions of the work of Moses, but it is one that we are forced to by a multitude of facts, and we must find a theory of inspiration wide enough to fit them. Crude as we may make the beginnings of Israel's faith, natural as we may feel are the laws by which it worked towards its growth, we have not been able to get any nearer to some of those ultimate questions which ask how religion begins, what the nature of revelation is, and how it comes to man's mind. We need not think that God had to break in on the mind of Moses, so that the personality of the man was in abeyance while God worked through him. When God wishes to bring men to a higher truth He does not supernaturally communicate it; He makes human nature to produce personalities whose minds come naturally to the truth. There can be no separation of natural and supernatural here; wherever that separation is to be made, we certainly cannot make it. There can be no meaning in revelation, and no possibility of it, unless God has made man's mind to be growingly in touch with Him and to be capable of receiving His revelation by the natural working of thought, so that it seems to spring up within his own consciousness. Deeper into this question we are not called upon to go at present, but no one can object that it is less reverent, or that it shows signs of a decay of faith, if men can see God to-day not only in the extraordinary and the supernatural, but also in the ordinary and the natural. If the recognition of God depends on spiritual vision, then those who refuse to narrow the limits within which God can be seen, and who therefore welcome all truth with gladness and without fear, are not to be called godless and unspiritual. We should learn to be thankful for Moses, for he was faithful as far as he knew; if we were as faithful in proportion to the fuller light which has come to us, religion would be a very real and inclusive thing. We should also learn to take heart, if from these beginnings such mighty movements have sprung. The mistakes inevitable to the human mind do not destroy the possibility of revelation, the error cannot everlastingly obscure the truth, nor in the long run will evil triumph over good. It was possible in that far off age, it was possible in all ages, it is possible now, for a mind still far from the true conception of the ultimate nature of God to yet grasp something, and by a supreme faith in the leading of a Mighty Power to lift a whole nation, and through it the world, one stage further on in goodness and truth. THE INFLUENCE OF CANAAN As an introduction to Lecture IV. the reader is advised to make a careful study of Judges i. 1-ii. 5, a mutilated fragment of a very early and reliable account of the invasion of Canaan. The opening words (verse 1) refer the events which follow to the period after the death of Joshua; but the Book of Joshua has already recorded the complete conquest of Canaan, so that there can be no place for this further invasion on a far less ambitious plan, and apparently with less successful results. It will be noticed, however, that this account easily falls away from the main body of the narrative; Judges ii. 6 follows naturally after Joshua xxiv. 28, and ignores what comes between. We have, therefore, in this account another history of the conquest of Canaan, which contradicts altogether the impression--which we get from reading the Book of Joshua--that the conquest of Canaan was effected by the tribes acting in unison, that it was complete, and that the conquered were exterminated; it records a movement of tribes acting independently, there is no "conquest" in the ordinary sense of the term, but a footing is obtained alongside the original inhabitants of the land. This account of a gradual immigration of tribes is confirmed by the discovery of inscriptions, which seem to show that there were some tribes of the Hebrews in Palestine before the traditional date of the Conquest, and even before the Exodus. Until quite lately the history of Egypt has thrown no light on these events. It has not even been possible to identify with any certainty the Pharaoh under whom the Exodus took place. One identification is now fairly certain. The Pharaoh who enslaved the Israelites was Rameses III., for discoveries have proved that it was he who built Pithom (Exod. i. 11); the Exodus has therefore been referred to the reigns of Merneptah or Seti II., his immediate successors. The objection to this is that in these reigns both the peninsula of Sinai and the land of Palestine were under full Egyptian control, and therefore the Exodus must be put later on, when this control slackened. This would bring the Exodus to the date of 1200-1180 B.C. and the Conquest some fifty years later. The latest discoveries tend to throw this result into confusion. Names, which it is proposed to identify with tribes of the Israelites, have been found in inscriptions belonging to earlier reigns. On an inscription of Rameses II. the name of Asher is found as dwelling in North Palestine. In a list of Thotmes III. (still earlier, Sixteenth Century, B.C.) we find the names Jacob and Joseph in the significant combination, Jacob-el and Joseph-el, used to describe the Dan-Ephraim district of Palestine. This makes it more likely that the Tel-el-Amarna tablets (dated Fourteenth Century, B.C.) refer to the Hebrews. In these letters, addressed to Amenophis IV., the King of Jerusalem appeals for help against an invasion of the _Habiri_, who are led by Abd Ashera. The invasion is not by a large force, as may be seen from the fact that it is thought thirty or forty Egyptian soldiers will be sufficient for the purpose of resisting their attacks. More certain than any of these references is the occurrence of the name of Israel on a Stele of Merneptah, in connection with a recital of his triumphs in Syria. The form in which this reference is made leaves no doubt that, by this period, Israel was already settled in Palestine. ("Israel is laid waste, its corn is annihilated.") There is no confirmation of a Syrian campaign under Merneptah, and it may be that in accordance with the fashion of the age, he is including among his victories the exploits of his predecessors; this would agree with the earlier date for the occupation of Canaan by Israel which the previous references seem to require. The exact bearing of these discoveries has yet to be determined, but they either require us to put the date of the Exodus earlier, which would in itself be difficult, or, what would bring light on many problems, assume that not all the tribes were in bondage in Egypt, and that the invasion of Canaan by various tribes, only long after welded into a nation, was spread over a long period. Lecture IV THE INFLUENCE OF CANAAN If the nation of Israel may be said to have been born in captivity, baptised in the Red Sea, and awakened to national consciousness at Mount Sinai, then the settlement in Canaan corresponds to the no less critical period of adolescence, when, training and tutelage being over, youth must choose its own path and fight its way in the world. Certain it is that the entrance into Canaan largely determined the future of this people, for it must have profoundly modified the national character, turning as it did nomadic tribes into a settled and civilised people; but above all, and what more concerns us, it proved extremely critical for the fate of that as yet untried revelation of Jehovah, which had still to win its way against the heathenism of the common people, and was now by this new experience called upon to measure its strength against the attraction of a competing faith. The peculiar and pathetic love of the Jews for Canaan is largely due to the remembrance that it was not their own land but the long promised gift of Jehovah, standing therefore to all time as the material proof of His love for Israel; while their estimate of it was intensely deepened by the wilderness experience which preceded. That estimate seems to us somewhat exaggerated, for to-day Palestine has almost given up the struggle against the always threatening advance of the desert. It has certainly changed for the worse under neglect and misrule, but it can never have been a too indulgent land; only comparison with the bare and awful desert can have called forth the description, "a land flowing with milk and honey." With the long memory of restless nomadic life and the bitter thought of bondage, any land would seem welcome that offered them freedom and safety; while to those approaching it from the desert it seemed as fair and fruitful a land as men could desire. All lands have contributed largely to the character of the nations they have reared, and the wilderness ancestry and the character of Canaan have played their part in the development of Israel. The very geographical position of Canaan helps us to understand the Hebrews, and even to see how it was that in this land it was possible to nurture from such unpromising beginnings the wonderful development of religion that was to make this smallest of all lands one of the most sacred spots on earth, and this strange and limited people among the greatest contributors to the moral and religious ideas of humanity. Crushed in between the sea and the desert, hemmed in by great military powers, the little buffer state itself the very crossways of East and West, its roads never long at rest from the tramp of armies; here was a land in which all dreams of fame and empire were hammered out, and nothing left possible save an empire of spiritual power and the fame of a unique religion. A people strangely proud and passionately exclusive, they could never rest under the dominion of their great neighbours, however light the burden imposed; and since sustained resistance was out of the question by reason of their inferior numbers and lack of military power, they resorted to irritating acts of rebellion, or intrigued with the enemies of their overlords, and so brought down on their land frequent vengeance. Such was their untameable nature that the only practical policy open to Babylon, if she wished to insure the loyalty, or at least, the neutrality of Palestine, was to deport the Jews bodily to where they could be under observation. So we find the greatest heroes of Jewish history--from Moses, through Gideon and Samson, to David and Judas Maccabæus--are those who deliver the nation from oppression; while Israel's prayers are largely cries for succour against enemies, or for Divine vengeance on the oppressor; only too eloquent a witness of the sense of their own impotence. Yet it was precisely this experience that forced their religion to rise above the common type, to conquer its natural tendencies, and to become the most magnificent faith in God that the world has seen. Of this they themselves were not ignorant; for one of their writers points to the easy lot of Moab as the cause of their irreligion (Jer. xlviii. 11), and one of the Psalmists says that it is the men who have no changes who fear not God (lv. 19). We need not consider the utterly feeble objection that all this makes the religion of Israel the outcome of natural necessity, rather than of Divine revelation; for God made the land that made Israel. The entry into Canaan was therefore one of the most critical periods in the history of this people and in the development of the religion of the Old Testament. It is, however, extremely difficult to discover from the means at our disposal just how or when that entry was effected. The sources for this period are found in the Books of Joshua and Judges, but, from comparison with much in the history that follows, it is clear that they do not present us with absolute history; yet a critical examination of these books enables us to recover the essential facts. A study of the preface to this lecture will show that the story of the Conquest is obscure in its details and difficult to reconcile with modern discoveries. A careful examination of our sources shows that the description of the entry of the Hebrews into Canaan as a "conquest," which was settled by a few decisive battles, is at least rather fanciful; and as a matter of fact we have quite another picture in the first chapter of Judges, which partakes more of the character of an "alien immigration," a method of "conquest" in which the Jews have always been remarkably successful. The history in Joshua certainly represents the Conquest as striking, complete, and followed by a ruthless extermination of the defenders of their native land. In view of the relations that were for long maintained between the Canaanites and the Hebrews, the representation in Judges i. must be regarded as nearer to the facts than the story of the Conquest according to the Book of Joshua. The children of Israel dwelt side by side with the Canaanites, simply because they were not able to drive them out; and as a result the tribes were frequently divided by strong belts of Canaanitish territory. Right through the time of the Judges we get warfare between the Israelites and the inhabitants of the land; sometimes in pitched battles between the Canaanites and the united tribes of Israel (Judges iv. v.), but more generally in guerilla warfare or in the sudden surprise of a Canaanitish garrison (Judges xviii.). The result of the conflict seems to have been the gradual absorption of the two elements into one nation. The records definitely admit that it was not until the time of David that the Jebusites were driven from Jerusalem (2 Sam. v. 6, 7), and not until Solomon that the superiority of the Israelites was finally established (1 Kings ix. 20, 21). It surely is an immense relief to think that the huge slaughters recorded in the Book of Joshua are, to say the least, exaggerations. The history in Judges also clearly shows that there was little cohesion between the tribes. They filtered across the Jordan only by degrees, and there is evidence that this process may have extended over a considerable time. We have records of quarrels between Gideon and Ephraim (Judges viii. 1), and between Jephthah and Ephraim (Judges xii. 1). These inter-tribal conflicts might have been serious, were it not for the circumstance that the Israelites were no sooner settled in the land than other tribes of desert invaders began to press upon them, and they had to sink family differences in order to combine against the common enemy. The song of Deborah (Judges v.) is one of the most valuable documents we possess for the light which it throws on the conditions of religious and national life in this period, for it is probably the only document in the Old Testament, earlier than the founding of the monarchy, that is contemporary with the events it describes. It shows that the tribes had somewhat improved their position, for they now seem to be in possession of the highlands of Ephraim, although the plains are still in the hands of the Canaanites. The growing power of the Israelites and their threatening predominance moved the Canaanites to a united effort to repress Israel. It is to face this danger that the Prophetess Deborah calls the tribes; but from the way in which the praise and blame is meted out we can see that a strong sense of national unity was still lacking. The important point to be noticed is that the bond of unity to which Deborah could appeal was the name of Jehovah. It should be noted also that in the enumeration of the tribes, Judah, Simeon, and Levi are altogether omitted. In the case of so important a tribe as Judah this is significant, for it agrees with the fact that until the time of David this tribe does not come into prominence. It has been conjectured that Judah was only a small tribe, and may have invaded Canaan from the south, for it is difficult to conceive how it could have crossed the strong Canaanitish territory which separated it from the other tribes. At any rate, at this time it was not regarded as one of the tribes of Israel; it may have been that this tribe embraced a strong Canaanitish element (Gen. xxxviii.), and this fact may have contributed to the resentment which broke out among the other tribes when Judah assumed the hegemony in the time of David, and which led in the end to the disruption of the Kingdom. In our sources the history of this period has attached to it a religious interpretation: apostasy, and disobedience to the commands of Jehovah were the causes of the people being sold into the power of their enemies; when they returned to the worship of Jehovah and penitently pleaded for His forgiveness then deliverers were raised up who vanquished their oppressors. This can be nothing but a late interpretation, for the religion of the Book of Judges is of quite a fixed order, and many of the stories recorded in it will not lend themselves to any such interpretation. The hand that supplied this reading of the history of this period has been identified with the author of Deuteronomy, or, as some would prefer to say, with the school of thought that produced that work. There is a religious lesson in this history, as in all history; but it is hardly to be found in a series of apostasies and returns. There are really four separate endeavours to account for the undoubted fact of the Canaanites being spared. (1) Israel was not able to drive them out (Judges i. 19, 27). (2) Israel was only commanded to drive them out by degrees, "lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee" (Deut. vii. 22). (3) It was a providential arrangement to keep the Israelites practised in war (Judges iii. 1, 2). (4) It was due to direct disobedience to the command of Jehovah (Judges ii. 20). The history does not entitle us to assume that the judges were officials who exercised kingly rights over a united Israel. The word translated "Judge" more often means "Deliverer," and this is certainly the part that they play. Of some of the so-called minor judges we know nothing beyond their names, and there is evidence that they have simply been used to fill out a traditional period of 480 years (1 Kings vi. 1). Whenever the "Judges" assumed kingly or judicial functions trouble and rebellion always followed. The figure of Samson displays little fitness for ruling a nation or guiding it in religion, but the stones of his life are illuminating for the understanding of the morality and interests of that age. With this revised conception of the history of the Conquest, and of the events which followed, we are in a better position to estimate the effect of the change from nomadic life to a settled existence, and to understand how critical for the future of the religion of Jehovah this change was. We see tribes possessing little national unity, but bound together by a religion in which lay the germ of a mighty future, entering a land where the inhabitants had reached a higher stage of civilisation, and possessed a religion that drew its power from the fact that it was the worship of Baal, the possessor and owner of the land. In face of these conditions it was almost inevitable that many of the customs of the original inhabitants should be gradually adopted, and that the religion of Jehovah should borrow something from the religion indigenous to the land. This was certainly the result which followed. For a considerable period we find a religion prevalent among the common people, which is simply a conflation of the two religions. There were certain elements common to both, and certain advantages in the one, together with corresponding weaknesses in the other, that prepared the way for this syncretism. We shall now turn to examine the religion of the Canaanites, which we shall find to partake largely of the common elements of Semitic religion. Their deities were personifications of natural forces, and among these there is no one which is supreme, and nothing that tends to Monotheism. The gods are friendly and destructive by turn, and of unreliable character. It is nothing more than an undeveloped Polytheism. The religion, as it is seen in the Old Testament, groups itself around three names: Baal, Ashtoreth (often written in plural form Ashtaroth), and Molech (otherwise written Moloch, Milcom, and known to the Phoenicians as Melkart). The name of Baal has a hateful memory in the pages of the Old Testament as the Canaanitish deity to whom Israel constantly apostatised. The exact significance of Baal in the Canaanitish religion is a matter of dispute. He has been identified with the sun, and by the Greeks with Zeus; so that it has been inferred that Baal was the President of the Canaanitish Pantheon. This view is no longer generally accepted, for it certainly fails to fit in with the records of the cult preserved in the Old Testament. The word "Baal" is not a proper name, but signifies "the Possessor"; it is used in Semitic language for "husband," as the possessor of the wife, and is used as the name for deity, as the possessor of the land. Every land, and indeed every locality, will therefore have its own Baal; so that in the Old Testament we hear of the "Baalim" (the Hebrew plural), and these local Baalim are further distinguished by the addition of the name of their locality or of some event with which they were connected, as Baal-Peor, Baal-Berith, Baal-Zebul. The "Baal" is especially responsible for sending rain and sunshine, and for giving fruitful seasons. He is, therefore, the god of agriculture, and the great events of the agricultural year, such as harvest and vintage, are observed as his festivals. It is natural to find the uncertainty of the weather reflected in the character of the Baalim, with the result that we get a religion alternating between intoxicating joy and the deepest gloom. To appease the fickle god or to win his favour sacrifices, even of human lives, are presented, and if Baal continues unheeding, scenes of the most unrestrained fanaticism prevail. It is this gloomy religion which darkens the times of the later Kings of Judah. The Canaanitish Baal should be distinguished from the Baal of Tyre (Melkart) whose worship was introduced by Ahab. Here the introduction of an alien Baal, with probably different rites and ceremonies, awoke the resentment of the prophetic party under the leadership of Elijah, but the worship of the Canaanite Baal was maintained for long unchecked. Closely connected with the worship of the Baalim we find the worship of the Ashtaroth (Judges ii. 13). The pronunciation of this word is obscure; it was probably _Ashtart_, and the singular form, Ashtoreth (1 Kings xi. 5), has been formed by inserting the vowels of the word _bosheth_ (shame), a common device in the Old Testament for expressing contempt. Ashtart is the female counterpart of Baal, and is spoken of in the plural for a similar reason. Monuments of the worship of Ashtart are still to be found, and from these it is evident that we have here the worship of the goddess of sexual passion, as common in polytheistic systems, and best known in the Greek worship of Aphrodite. The whole conception of Ashtart can be traced to the famous goddess _Ishtar_ of Babylonian religion, and there is only too certain evidence that in Canaan as elsewhere the degrading rite of religious prostitution was used in this worship of female divinity (Hosea iv. 13). The identification of Ashtart with the "Queen of Heaven" (Jer. vii. 18; xliv. 15-25) is not so certain. As far as the worship of the latter is described to us, it looks like an importation of the Babylonian worship of Ishtar, who was identified with the planet Venus or sometimes with the moon. The "cakes to pourtray her" (Jer. xliv. 19) may have been crescent-shaped cakes. Of a similar character was the worship that gathered around the name of Molech. We have here simply the word for king (_Milk_) with the vowels of _bosheth_. Of this name, Moloch, Milcom, and Melkart of Tyre are variations. Molech is not to be distinguished from Baal, as may be seen from Jer. xix. 5, where the practice of passing children through the fire, which was certainly connected with the worship of Molech, is a part of the worship of Baal. This burnt-sacrifice of children evidently belonged to the Canaanitish religion (2 Kings xvi. 3). This then was the religion of the Canaanites: in times of prosperity and fruitful seasons, one of rejoicing and festivity; but in time of famine, drought or national danger, one of the most hopeless gloom and of the most fearful fanaticism. In conflict with this religion, the purer worship of Jehovah yet presented certain weaknesses; these are found chiefly in points of possible identification, which in the course of the history actually took place. This may be difficult for us to understand until we remember that Baal and Molech, to Semitic ears, simply meant "Lord" and "King"; and Jehovah was the "Lord" and "King" of Israel. If the character of Jehovah was not clearly apprehended as moral by the common people, we can see how easy it was for confusion to take place. The great weakness of the religion of Jehovah was that He was not the God of Canaan. His home was in distant Sinai, and the only symbol of His presence was the ark, a symbol bound up with the idea of war. As the people settled down to a peaceful agricultural life, the need for Jehovah, the warrior God, would not be keenly felt. There was certainly a party from the very first who recognised the difference between Jehovah and Baal and fought against their identification, but so long as Baal was believed to be a real being the danger of his secret worship at least was never far away. Every land had its own god, and although the people knew that Jehovah was their God, yet they might think it necessary, and not inconsistent, to pay their respects to the local Baalim on whom they were dependent for the fruits of the earth (Hosea ii. 8). Nothing therefore but a national calamity could revive the old religion in face of the attractions of the new; if peace had been continuous it is hard to see how the religion founded by Moses could have persevered. Such dangerous peace the Children of Israel were not to enjoy. We soon hear the rousing call to the help of Jehovah in the Song of Deborah, and it was the threatened domination by the Philistines that called the monarchy into existence and revived the religion of Jehovah. Meanwhile, however, a process of syncretism was gradually taking place, which it was to be the task of the Prophets to unravel; and how far it had gone may be seen from the difficulty they found in making the character of Jehovah and the moral demand made upon His worshippers clear to the people. "Jehovah," it must be remembered, was a name largely personal. Baal was a general name for deity, and could be applied to Jehovah quite truthfully. That this actually took place may be seen from a number of passages in the Old Testament. The most instructive instance is to be found in Hosea ii. 16; but the names given to places point in the same direction: David calls the spot where Jehovah broke his enemies, Baal-perazim; the same god is called indiscriminately, Baal-berith (Judges viii. 33; ix. 4) and El-berith (Judges ix. 46). This practice accounts for the names of Saul's son, Eshbaal, and of Jonathan's son, Meribbaal (1 Chron. viii. 33, 34), both of which have been altered in the Book of Samuel to "bosheth." (In obedience to the command of Exod. xxiii. 13, _Bosheth_ was substituted for _Baal_ in reading the Scriptures. The written text was altered in many places at a later period; the Chronicler must have found _Baal_ in his text of Samuel; that is about 200 B.C.) The names of Jehovah and Baal therefore came to have the same significance, and the distinction began to be missed; Jehovah was still the God of Israel, but the moral elements of His religion were gradually diluted with the naturalistic conceptions of the worship of Baal. Jehovah becomes the Baal of the land; that is, the relation between Him and Israel is conceived in a natural and even physical way. It is therefore no longer a covenant relation, which depends on the observance of moral obligations, but one of nature which cannot be broken by either party. Naturally the sanctuaries of the Canaanites are taken over by the Israelites, and Jehovah is worshipped in "the high places." All through the history worship at these local sanctuaries is condemned, but only from a later standpoint, for the earliest Book of Laws permitted an altar to be erected anywhere where Jehovah had manifested Himself (Exod. xx. 24). Around some of these undoubtedly Canaanitish sanctuaries the stories of the Patriarchs gathered, but from the practices which prevailed at such places as Bethel we can see that heathen rites were used, for here Jeroboam set up the golden calves, which seem to have been used in the worship of Jehovah, for neither Elijah nor Amos condemns them. Jehovah is now worshipped all over the land, but there is the same tendency to regard each separate place as having its local deity, and so Jehovah is multiplied (perhaps, Jer. xi. 13) and needs to be further identified by the addition of place names, as in the strange name El-bethel (Gen. xxxv. 7), El-elohe-Israel (Gen. xxxiii. 20), in a way that is very like the multiplication of the Baalim. So deeply was the worship of Jehovah mixed up with Canaanitish ideas that in the reign of Josiah the only possibility of reform lay in forbidding the worship at the local sanctuaries altogether and concentrating all worship at the central sanctuary of Jerusalem. Nothing but this process of syncretism can explain the condition of religion in the subsequent history, and it is needed to enable us to understand both the difficulty of the work of the Prophets and the form their message takes. Nevertheless, there must have been from the earliest times elements that made for a purer faith, and that never acquiesced in this confusion between Jehovah and Baal, which certainly prevailed in the popular mind; otherwise the Reformation of the Eighth Century would be an isolated and inexplicable movement, and without that historical support the Prophets claimed. There was a party against Baal altogether, although they do not emerge until the monarchy. This party may have consisted of the "priests" of Jehovah. At mention of these we must not think of the sacrificing priests described in the Book of Leviticus. No such persons are known until after the exile; during this period anyone could sacrifice. The story of the priest in Judges xvii. gives a good idea of this class; his chief duties seem to have consisted in keeping the oracle and obtaining decisions by the lot. These decisions became the basis on which there was gradually built up the _Torah_ (the Law), which, as the word implies, was a collection of decisions obtained by casting lots. For the purpose of obtaining these decisions the priests seem to have used an idol of some kind; for this is the most natural explanation of the Ephod and its use in the early history. There would be different degrees of intellectual and moral capacity found in the ranks of the priests, and many of them may have had higher ideals of their duties than the one mentioned in Judges. It would be likely that those who were in charge of the Sacred Ark possessed a superior dignity and maintained a purer tradition. Gradually the magical accompaniments to their oracular decisions may have given way to more judicial deliverances, although in the time of David and Abiathar they were apparently still used (1 Sam. xxx. 7). At any rate the priests kept alive the idea of Jehovah as the dispenser of justice, and helped to build up that system of laws for which Israel is so justly famous. This "higher critical" view of the history is simply one to which we are driven by the records that stand nearest to the times they describe. It certainly alters considerably the ordinary conceptions of the type of religion that prevailed in those early days, before the coming of the Prophets; but that such was the type is only too clearly shown by the writings of the Prophets themselves. Nevertheless this view of the period, while it shuts out a somewhat stiff and mechanical religious interpretation of the history which has been forced upon it by a later age, is still not without a valuable lesson, which is perhaps not taught elsewhere in the Bible, and yet is one that we need to have always before us. It is one, the possibility of which always exists and often threatens a spiritual religion: the danger of a gradual encroachment and assimilation of pagan ideas until the original purity is lost almost beyond recovery. If this has happened anywhere it has happened in Christianity. It was the awakening to this paganisation of Christianity that provoked the struggle of the Reformation, not yet decided. Many of the conceptions that are still popularly identified with Christianity are the remnants of paganism. It is not necessary to enumerate the common customs which wear only a thin veneer of Christianity; but many of the ideas in connection with Christian Doctrine certainly owe more to pagan philosophy than they do to the New Testament. The syncretism between Paganism and Christianity has not been destroyed by the Reformation. Many of the popular ideas of the Atonement, for instance, rest on a pagan conception of God and a materialistic idea of Christ's work which are so deeply involved in the common presentation of Christianity that to present the actual New Testament teaching would seem to many like a denial of the foundation truths of the Gospel. Still more dangerous is the localisation of the god as the peculiar patron of the land, which justifies many unholy wars and makes such a thing as a national repentance almost impossible. There is a god of the British Empire who is remarkably like the Jehovah-Baal of the old syncretised religion that ruled in the period which we have been studying, and whose worship begets equal indifference to the claims of true religion, and equally cruel treatment for the prophet who strives to call men to a purer faith. It is a relief to turn to a more comforting lesson. It is that which assures us that man's thought of God is not entirely his own, that it cannot be destroyed and is never wholly forgotten, but ever makes its way to higher truth and greater power. The way in which the higher religion comes is through the pure minds of those who wish only to live up to the fulness of the truth, and however mistaken they be, wish only to know and to do the will of God. A similar task lies equally before every honest man and every true Christian. The lesson is plain: beware of a stagnant religion that dreads progress, and keep the mind open as a child's to God's further revelation of Himself, which has yet many things to tell us. PROPHETISM--EARLY STAGES The reader is recommended to investigate for himself the origins of Prophetism by a careful examination of the following passages:-- I. There were originally Guilds or Schools of Prophets; from which it would appear that Prophetism was a kind of profession (1 Sam. x. 5; xix. 20; 2 Kings ii. 3, 5). There is nothing in the records that we possess that marks these bands of prophets as possessed of great spiritual power; they were devoted to the cause of Israel and Jehovah, and the way in which this was manifested was taken to imply that they were filled with the spirit of Jehovah; it inclines somewhat to the Dervish order of enthusiastic devotion (1 Sam. x. 5; xix. 20-24). It is significant that wherever these schools are found there is known to have existed a "high place," _i.e._, an old Canaanitish sanctuary, now used for the worship of Jehovah-Baal. A similar order of prophets was connected with the worship of the Tyrian Baal (1 Kings xviii.). II. Samuel (1 Sam. xix. 20) Elisha (2 Kings ii. 15; iv. 38; vi. 1-7) and in much less degree, Elijah (1 Kings xviii. 4; xix. 10) had some connection with these schools. III. The later Prophets did not claim descent from these guilds of "prophecy," and even repudiated any connection with them (Amos vii. 14). This conflict between the "called" prophet and the professionals is revealed in the fierce denunciations of Isaiah (xxix. 10) and Jeremiah (v. 31; xiv. 13, 14; xxvi. 7, 8). IV. The identification of these prophets with priests and seers probably gives a clue to their origin (1 Sam. ix. 9; Isa. xxix. 10; Jer. xxvi. 7, 8; Amos vii. 12). V. Certain individuals who are called prophets or seers had official court connection (2 Sam. xxiv. 11; 1 Chron. xxv. 5; Amos vii. 10). Between these "prophets" and the great writers who bear the same designation, we cannot fail to recognise an immense difference; Samuel and Elijah are connecting links between the two classes. Elijah is rather a hero than a prophet in the later sense, for he gives us no new doctrine, and Samuel is a seer who has risen to political power, rather than a religious ruler. Critics have discovered evidence of a double narrative in our documents. (Earlier) 1 Sam. ix. 1-x. 16; xi. xiii. 2-xiv. 52. (Later) 1 Sam. i. ii. iii. iv. vii. 3-17; viii. x. 17-25; xii. xv. If these be examined and contrasted, it will be found that Samuel is more allied in the earlier narratives with the "priest-seer" than with the Prophet of the type of Amos. A confirmation of this double narrative is found in the different accounts of the origin of the monarchy which they give. Samuel, according to the earlier sources, is just the type we need for the intermediate stage in the development of the Prophet. For the different historical conceptions of the work and character of David the narratives in Samuel should be compared with the representation given in Chronicles, and with that inferred by the ascription of various Psalms to his authorship. Lecture V PROPHETISM--EARLY STAGES We have seen that in the time of the Judges the religion of Jehovah became so mixed with elements taken over from the Canaanites that the original revelation gained through Moses was in danger of being lost. We have now to trace the steps by which this syncretism was broken up, and the advance made to the purely monotheistic conception and the lofty morality of the great literary Prophets. However this came about it is certain that it was not due to any gradual movement among the mass of the people, for the type of religion which we have been considering remains largely unaltered in its hold upon the popular mind. Through the teaching of the earlier prophets certain reforms were attempted, but none of them seem to have touched the heart of the nation. Hezekiah and Josiah attempted to reform religion by centralising the national worship, but, from whatever cause, it left the people still in opposition to the prophetic type of religion, a conflict that was only ended by the calamity of the exile. It is, therefore, to the prophetic band themselves that we must turn. Can we trace within this more limited circle a movement that shall in any way prepare us for the appearance of men of the type of Amos? To answer this question we must turn to the Books of Samuel and Kings. These present us with a history of the period which, like most history, has been written, or over-written, from a later standpoint and made to conform with later ideals. On the whole, however, and by contrasting it with the still later conceptions of the Books of Chronicles, we can form an accurate impression of the state of religion at this time; and incidentally we have a valuable account of a movement that evidently gave birth to those great conceptions of religion which were to be voiced with such power and force by the great Prophets. The writers who, apart from the value of their religious teaching, have by their distinctive style made the Old Testament a contribution to the literature of the world, are known to us as "Prophets." This name they share, however, with others who have left us no first-hand record of their religious opinions, and who, as described to us in the early sources, bear only the slightest resemblance to Prophets as we conceive them. Our task will be, therefore, to investigate the origins of this movement which embraces such diverse elements, and this we may commence by examining the meaning of the word "Prophet" (_Nabi_). Like many other words in the Old Testament that lock up important secrets, the origin of the word Prophet is obscure and its meaning disputed. The conception which is most natural to our word "Prophet" is of one who sees into the future; this is not even the main characteristic of the writing Prophets, nor does it embrace all the phenomena connected with the movement, especially in its early stages. All that can be said of the word from an etymological standpoint is that it has no origin which can be traced in historical Hebrew, and the inference is that it is either a very ancient word, or one borrowed from some other language. The word can, however, hardly be ancient, for it is not common to Semitic tongues, as is the word "priest," for instance, while we have a definite statement that within historic times it superseded the older word "seer" (1 Sam. ix. 9). The name was also used for certain devotees of the Tyrian Baal, whose worship was imported by Ahab; but it can hardly be that the name would be adopted directly from a phenomenon that was so repugnant to the Israelites, although the common name hints that there was a common ancestry somewhere. It seems fair to assume from the facts mentioned that the word is, at least, not older than the entry into Canaan, and while it cannot be definitely proved that it was borrowed from the Canaanites, there is some confirmation of this in the fact that the earliest occurrence of the name is in connection with the "sons of the prophets," who are always found in places where it is known that there were Canaanitish sanctuaries. The word _Nabi_ has been variously connected with the root, _nab'a_, "to bubble," and so one inspired; with the Arabic word, "to speak," and so a speaker or herald. The word seems to exist in Assyrian in the form _nabu_, "to announce," but this is probably from the name of the Babylonian deity, Nebo, the God of Eloquence, so that the word might mean one possessed by Nebo. Some have even looked to this as the ultimate derivation of the word. The investigation of the word really gives nothing satisfactory, and we must therefore turn to examine the character of the persons to whom it was applied. In various passages in the Old Testament, Seer and Prophet are so used as to lead us to infer that they embraced identical ideas (Isa. xxix. 10; Amos vii. 12), and in one passage, which has only the authority of a late annotation of the text, we learn that they were identical in their application (1 Sam. ix. 9). The other name with which Prophet is frequently bracketed is that of Priest; they are placed together in the denunciations of Jeremiah (ii. 8; v. 31). Our previous studies showed us that these classes were all somewhat akin in their origins; the duties of the priest were discharged in keeping the oracles, while the Seer is evidently akin to the Soothsayer, a type that has appeared in all religions. We have a concrete example of these classes being combined in Samuel. In the early story of Samuel's first meeting with Saul, we find Saul turning to consult the famous Seer in order to discover where his father's lost asses are to be found; and even the question of the Seer's usual fee is mentioned (1 Sam. ix. 8). This picture, which makes Samuel a notable Seer, is earlier and more authentic than that which makes him nearly a ruler over Israel. Although he is nowhere called a priest, yet he himself sacrifices, and his presence at a sacrifice is reckoned an advantage (1 Sam. xiii. 8-13); while we have the story of his sleeping by the ark in his youth. The Seer is, therefore, an exalted type of priest who has obtained renown by the success of his prognostications, and so we read of Seers attached to the courts of the Kings (2 Sam. xxiv. 11; 1 Chron. xxv. 5); but the later sources have recognised that there is something heathenish about the word, and have covered it up with the name Prophet. From the early descriptions of the bands of prophets in the books of Samuel, it would seem that they are more allied to the priestly order than to the Seers, for it is certain that down to the middle of the Ninth Century the name Prophet stands for something different from its use as applied to Moses and the literary Prophets. The name is applied to bands of men who "prophesy," but this prophesying is entirely unlike the methods associated by us with the prophetic spirit. It is evidently something which is done, not individually, but in companies, and apparently in solemn procession to the accompaniment of noisy music. It must have been a species of violent incantation, leading to acts of fierce fanaticism, in which the clothing might be stripped off, and often ending in complete mental prostration (1 Sam. x. 5, 6; xix. 23, 24). The connection of music with religious exercises is almost universal, and it always had a conspicuous place in the worship of Jehovah (2 Sam. vi. 5; Isa. xxx. 29), while music has often been used to induce the prophetic vision (2 Kings iii. 15). These prophets seem to have lived together in schools, semi-monastic orders, or guilds, and to have been found where there were high places, or Canaanitish sanctuaries; and from their behaviour we are forced to admit that we have here a common manifestation in the history of religion, where companies of men devote themselves to fanatical outbursts that are taken to indicate possession by the Spirit of God. To the accompaniment of music and frenzied dancing they work themselves into a state that approaches madness--always among uncivilised peoples taken to be a sign of the hand of God (Hosea ix. 7). We cannot fail to be reminded of the greater excesses of the prophets of Baal, the extraordinary performances of the dervish bands, and the fanatical excesses that have always disfigured monastic institutions. It cannot be dismissed, therefore, as incredible that this phenomenon was derived from the Canaanites, and developed a zeal for Jehovah that was manifested after a fashion common to the devotees of other religions. Down to a very late date in the history of the Kingdom, the literary Prophets found themselves in conflict with bands of prophets, who to their judgment prophesied falsely; and from the way in which these are often associated with the priests, it seems probable that they represent the deteriorated--or perhaps simply the stagnant--remnant of this earlier movement. It is, however, necessary to assume that even in the earlier movement there were purer elements than those which we have noticed, and that it embraced individuals who were led into a real fellowship with the mind of God, of which Samuel and Elisha are conspicuous examples. Religious movements of the "revival" type, which have undoubtedly inspired and produced great ethical changes and resulted finally in sane religion, have often been accompanied in their earlier stages by these frenzied outbreaks. It would be in response to some of those strange mental movements which modern psychology is endeavouring to understand, but also whenever danger threatened the nation or the national religion, that these enthusiasts would take the field. As the movement shed its purely hysterical elements, it may have been occupied in the compilation of the records of Israel's history, for many of these hardly reflect the higher prophetic standpoint, or in writing down such stories of their great heroes as we find connected with Elijah and Elisha. A connection with the literary productions of the great Prophets may be thus indirectly traced, as it also most certainly can in the prophetic _style_, which in its fierce rhythm of denunciation or its sobbing sweeps of passionate appeal recalls something of the incantation of the prophetic bands. Samuel, Elijah and Elisha, by their connection with this early phenomenon of prophetism and by the approximation of their work to the ideals of the later Prophets, are the true links between the earlier and later stages of the prophetic movement. It is both credible and natural that, when the movement had spent itself in some wonderful advance into ethical power and religious insight, the less noble elements should have still remained and continued to claim divine inspiration, and yet have been found in open conflict with its own nobler productions. It would seem that the obscure sect known as Nazarites were connected in some way with the early prophetic movement, for they are mentioned side by side with the prophets (Amos ii. 11, 12); and it is probable that Samuel was both a Nazarite and a prophet (1 Sam. i. 11), while Samson, in whom the Spirit of Jehovah seemed to produce these strange outbursts of savage frenzy, was certainly a Nazarite (Judges xiii. 4, 5, 7, 14). It would appear that the Nazarites were men who devoted themselves to the service of Jehovah under certain vows of abstinence from wine and ceremonial defilement. The vows might be taken for life or for a limited period, but while under the vow the hair was left unshorn. There is evidence that this is an old Semitic custom, and that when the vow was accomplished the hair was made an offering to the god (Num. vi. 18); to this day the pilgrims to Mecca are forbidden to cut their hair until the journey is completed. The law of the Nazarites (Num. vi.) is only a late attempt to legislate for a custom that had existed independently of the institutions of the religion of Jehovah, and so to secure a place within the official religion for a custom that would have been difficult to suppress by prohibition. Similar in many respects to the Nazarites, but even more obscure, were the Rechabites, who abstained from wine (Jer. xxxv. 2-10), but who seem also to have protested against the adoption of any of the arts and customs of settled life, especially as these customs were typified in the cultivation of the vine. They chose these methods in order to resist the influence of Canaan, which was threatening so dangerously the integrity of the nation and the national religion. They probably hoped by these conservative manners to destroy the syncretism between Baal and Jehovah; for the only other mention of the sect in the Old Testament is in connection with the extirpation of the house of Ahab (2 Kings x. 15-17). It may appear repulsive to those who have made up their minds as to the methods by which the Spirit of God can work to trace back the supreme genius, the impassioned ethical ideals, and the practical statesmanship of the great Prophets of Israel to movements bordering on insanity; yet it is from enthusiasm that most of the great saving movements of the world have come. Certainly the great religious revival which was soon to come in Israel owed almost as much of its success to these bands of enthusiasts as to the personality of Elijah. It falls now to our task to trace the movement from bands to individuals, from Prophetism to Prophecy, from a phenomenon to a teaching. We have records of men who seem to have moved beyond the mantic stage and who prepare the way for the great Prophets. We can conveniently call these "transition prophets." We shall find that they bear some resemblance to the old style of Seer, or to the guild prophets, or to both. Of some of these we have only the merest mention, so that they may be called the _minor_ transition prophets. Two stand together by their connection with David and from the fact that they both seem to have been Court officials (2 Sam. vii. 2; xxiv. 11; 1 Kings i. 10). There is no word here of the mantic fury of the early prophets; although in Gad, who makes known the best way to escape the anger of an offended Deity, we have a survival of the ancient seer; but in Nathan we have a truly noble example of one who, although he may have been dependent on David for his daily bread, yet faced him with the unsparing denunciation of his sin. Here is a man who regards right in Israel more than the smile of princes, and who has a higher conception of his office than that of a convenient manipulator of oracles for the flattering of a King. Nathan is a true ancestor of Amos and Jeremiah. Ahijah the Shilonite is famous because he foretold the disruption of the Kingdom (1 Kings xi. 29-31), and we may see in this the beginnings of that political judgment which was to become notable in the later Prophets; although a partisan motive might be suspected in this particular case, when Jeroboam, in later years, sent his wife to consult Ahijah, accompanied with the usual fee (1 Kings xiv. 2), the message he received shows that in Ahijah we have no party politician, but the impartial judgment of the later Prophets. There is a pathetic and somewhat mysterious story of an unnamed man of God who delivered the word of Jehovah to Jeroboam at the altar at Bethel, and who, refusing the accustomed hospitality due to a prophet, afterwards accepted the invitation of the old prophet of Bethel, and paid the penalty with his death. We have here a story, the moral of which may be obscure enough, but which certainly illustrates the growing conflict between the two prophetic ideals. Here is a prophet who travels from his own land to rebuke the sin of a King to his face, afterwards yielding to the blandishments of one of the official prophets. The new Prophetism, tempted from its superior position by the old, fell; yet not many years were to elapse before these two orders, in the persons of Amos and Amaziah, were again to face one another at this same spot, and this time the new Prophetism was to maintain its integrity (1 Kings viii.; Amos vii. 10-17). Before we pass on to the _major_ transition prophets, it will be well to consider here the effect which the foundation of the Monarchy had on the development of the religion of Israel. Of the inauguration of the Monarchy we possess two accounts; one extremely unfavourable, written doubtless after Judah's experience of some of her notorious Kings, and in the light of a somewhat ideal conception of the Theocratic government that was supposed to have flourished before the time of Saul (1 Sam. x. 17-24); the other account, in which Samuel himself at the revelation of Jehovah initiates the movement towards the Monarchy (1 Sam. ix. 15-x. 1) by anointing Saul, is the one that is placed earlier by the critics. The Monarchy was an inevitable stage in the social development of a settled people, and it was the policy of Samuel to make the Monarchy the organ of the Theocracy. For all this Saul does not seem to have had any influence on religion, or to have ever realised the needs of his times, and under the sense of failure he became a prey to fear and depressing influences which eventually wrecked his reason. Round the name of David have gathered the national ideals of heroism and sainthood so often found in combination in early story. They had a true origin in David, if we judge from the standards of piety and rulership that were natural to his age. Outlaw, hero, poet, saint--David is the darling of Israel's history. It would be unfair to David to picture him as the saintly author of some of the tender Psalms that bear his name, although others of a more robust character might well be from his hand. That David was a poet seems to be certain, and the songs of lament over Saul and Abner, which have strong claims to be genuine, bear witness to his true poetic gift; but they are deficient in any display of deep religious feeling. We may have also to reduce somewhat the conception of the extent or the absoluteness of his kingly rule. He was rather one of those freebooters who by their heroism and rough manly courage are able to gather round them men of their own nature and to inspire in their followers a loyal devotion. To this pleasant adventurer the early Kingdom fell, but for long it was only a kingdom of personal followers; nor does he ever seem to have been enthusiastically acknowledged by the whole nation, or to have established his claims absolutely beyond dispute. His heroic defence against the Philistine invasion was sufficient to give him a great place in the affection of the people, yet he never assumed the imperial rule in the manner of his successor Solomon. With all this necessary allowance for the idealising process of a later age, David was the indispensable centre round which the early ideals and legends of the Monarchy could collect. His work was of immense importance for the future; especially his conquest of Jerusalem, now for the first time wrested from the Canaanites and destined to become in the future the centre of the national life, to be bound up with his name, and above all to be the peculiar dwelling-place of Jehovah. To make Jerusalem his capital was a very diplomatic stroke, for it was neutral territory to both Ephraim and Judah, and this fact quietened the mutual jealousy of these tribes. It was also a great work of David that by his rough piety he definitely connected the Kingship with devotion to the cause of Jehovah. This devotion found expression in his care for the sacred palladium of the Tribes, although it was policy as well as piety that brought the Ark to Jerusalem; for we are forced to admit that in matters of religion David was not greatly in advance of his times. He regarded the jurisdiction of Jehovah as not extending beyond Palestine (1 Sam. xxvi. 19), and although he himself may have abandoned idols, yet he allowed them in his house (1 Sam. xix. 13), while he retained the old custom of consulting the will of Jehovah by the Ephod (1 Sam. xxx. 7) or by the movements of trees (2 Sam. v. 23-25). His conception of Jehovah was that of a Being of uncertain temper, who would take vengeance for any acts of ceremonial violation (2 Sam. vi. 9) or whose anger might be aroused for reasons beyond human discovery (2 Sam. xxiv. 10-17). But it would be equally wrong to blame David because he does not come up to the ideals of a later age. So far as it went, we may believe that his piety was real; he was a man after Jehovah's own heart, _for those times_. He certainly did his best to found a Kingdom on personal affection and to establish some kind of impartial justice. In the matter of Bathsheba and Uriah David has been judged by impossible standards, and especially by the religious ideas of the 51st Psalm, which bears in its every line evidence of a morality far too deep for the age of David, and which is quite unsuitable for a confession of murder and adultery. It was no crime in the eyes of an oriental monarch to take his neighbour's wife, and it was novel doctrine that David heard from the lips of Nathan; it is to be laid to his everlasting credit that he listened to this prophetic judgment, was convicted of the sinfulness of his act, and repented very profoundly. When we pass to Solomon we come to a character altogether different, but one that is very difficult to estimate from the portrait presented to us in the Old Testament. The writers allow themselves to be carried away by the tradition of his magnificence, and by the external evidence of his piety preserved in the splendid Temple which he reared to the glory of Jehovah; but they cannot produce much evidence for the depth of his personal religion. He attempted to build an empire on the lines of the barbaric and superficial glories of his greatest neighbours; but its splendour and certainly its significance have been rather overdrawn by the later historians. It was a reign of splendour, but for the religion of Israel it was unimportant, for it was in the main irreligious. Save for the presence of Nathan at his coronation, the prophetic ministry almost disappears in this reign; what prophets remain are opposed to his policy. Solomon was little more than a worldly cosmopolitan; his empire was magnificent in comparison with the achievements of his predecessors, but it rested not as David's on the devotion of the people to a popular hero, but depended for its strength on a system of taxation and a false imperialism: forced labour was employed and the loyalty of the tribes was strained. It was an endeavour to change the government from a natural and tribal system to that of an Eastern despotism; and it ended in failure. The building of the Temple was only a part of this policy, and it was a policy resented by the prophetic party, who were all for simplicity in matters of worship (2 Sam. vii.; omit verse 13). The Temple did not occupy too outstanding a place in the block of royal buildings, and there is no evidence that in this age it was anything more than Solomon's private chapel built with the desire to rival the splendid royal shrines of other countries. It was evidently designed largely on heathen models, and contained heathen symbols which the later religion absorbed with difficulty. The adoption of the Temple as the supreme centre of Israel's worship was not the work of Solomon, but the effect of the teaching of Isaiah of Jerusalem and the consequence of the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah. The harem and the strange worship were similarly parts of an international policy. Solomon was certainly the first to give to the worship of Jehovah an imposing splendour and regularity, but it was not a splendour that appealed to the Prophets. The beautiful prayer of the dedication can hardly be the composition of Solomon, but is more likely to have been the production of a later age which endeavoured to give to this display a piety which the original did not possess. In time the Temple was to become of enormous importance, but in this period it remained only a magnificent shrine for the Ark. The fact that two of the prophets sided with Jeroboam may point to a revolt against this religious splendour. The bulls of Jeroboam were a counterblast to the Temple, and although his name is ever afterwards connected with the introduction of this idolatrous worship, and the succeeding Kings of Israel condemned for their participation, it is evident that these strictures are somewhat intensified by the conception that in the quarrel between Israel and Judah, Judah was in the right, and by the refusal to allow for the fact that this method of worship had not been condemned by any contemporary. The calves were most likely ancient symbols of Semitic divinity, and were certainly intended as symbols of Jehovah. Nevertheless, the future lay with the Temple and the South, for the revolution was based on a merely conservative impulse and contained no ideal. In the South, Jehovah was never worshipped with such an excess of heathen symbolism, and thither the voice of Prophecy soon transferred itself to find in Judah its greatest sphere. We are brought now to one of the most pregnant movements of this time, known as the northern prophetic revolt, and to the work and personalty of the major transition prophets, Elijah and Elisha. The introduction of the worship of the Tyrian Baal by Ahab was the signal for revolt. Here was a violation of the commonest conceptions of religion: the transplantation of the worship of another god, Melkart, the Baal of Tyre, into the territory of Jehovah, who was regarded as the Baal of Canaan. It opened the eyes of the schools of the Prophets to the danger of the use of the name of Baal, and was the cause of its complete disuse as a name for Jehovah (Hosea ii. 16, 17). In the revolt against the worship of this heathen Baal there stands out as its chief inspiration and leader the magnificent figure of the prophet Elijah. It is evident that in the story of his life we have much that is legendary and probably some confusion with the work of Elisha, but the religious significance is sufficiently clear. We have noticed that Elijah is remotely connected with the prophetic schools, and they share with him the persecution organised by the devotees of Baal; the old mantic accompaniments of prophecy are still found in Elijah; he seems to charm the rain (1 Kings xviii. 42), and he certainly hears it coming. With all his courage and insight he does not fully comprehend the true methods by which the religion of Jehovah is to win its way; conviction is to be brought by thunder and fire; if these fail there remains the sword. It may be difficult to decide whether Elijah actually conceived the wonderful revelation at Mount Horeb, but it is more than likely that to this man there came in the hour of failure the discovery that there were other ways more to the mind of Jehovah whereby men should realise His presence; a discovery which has been dramatised in the theophany on Horeb. Revelation by the still small voice of inner conviction certainly gained greater recognition after the ministry of Elijah. If we seek to understand the meaning of Elijah's stand for Jehovah, we shall see that it was first of all a protest against the syncretism of the Baal and Jehovah religions. This protest may have been founded initially on conceptions not too exalted, namely, that Jehovah and Melkart could not be worshipped in the same land, but there are evidences that Elijah had advanced further than that. His daring taunts to Baal amount to complete scepticism as to his existence, or at least of his power to injure the true follower of Jehovah. If that is so, then we have in Elijah the first monotheist. He clearly perceived that in character Baal and Jehovah were utterly different. The cruelty connected with the religion of Jehovah still persists under Elijah, but the incompatibility between the true religion and heathenism is recognised and affirmed. We may sum up Elijah's religion in his own phrase: "I have been very jealous for Jehovah." There is another aspect of Elijah's work which certainly forms a true transition to the teaching of the later Prophets; he denounces the murder of Naboth almost as much as the worship of Baal. We trace here the rise of the ethical conception of the service of Jehovah and the protest against social wrongs which was to become so great a part of the burden of such men as Amos and Micah. With Elijah we can see forming, however dimly, the thought of a Kingdom of God, and the peculiar patriotism of the Prophets: he desires an Israel independent of all heathen alliances; it is a conception of a Kingdom which shall be great in intension rather than wide in extension. It was this conflict of the prophetic and the so-called patriotic ideals that was to contribute largely to the final overthrow of the State. It may have been that the Prophets could never have built up a strong State on the lines they indicated, and their very protest may have weakened the arm of statesmen and contributed to the destruction of the Kingdom founded by David and Solomon. We can only feel that we side with the Prophets. If the prophetic voice had been silenced we might have had Israel with a kingdom as mighty as Assyria, although that is highly doubtful; but it would have been a kingdom as useless for its contribution to religion as that proud, vain, and cruel empire. The theophany at Horeb, therefore, whatever its embellishment and however symbolical its dress, is the true history of this period. In the development of the prophetic religion, magic and mystery are failing, display and external glory are passing away, and there enters from this time the conception of the religion of the inward voice on which the work of the later Prophets is built. Elisha is but a pale reflection of his master, and makes little contribution to religion; but we soon hear of Micaiah (1 Kings xxii. 8), whose message reveals the still widening gap between the professional prophet and the new order of men who hear with greater clearness the true voice of Jehovah. But sixty years have to pass, and Northern Palestine awakens to the echoes of a new voice, and listens to the new message of the first of that prophetic band who have enriched literature while they have exalted religion--Amos the herdman of Tekoa. Where elsewhere in history has there been a religion that, starting in comparative heathenism, almost lost in conflict with a fully-developed paganism, has yet moved steadily upward, breaking away from its origins, shedding the false charms of magic and sorcery, and rising by gradual ascent into fellowship with the Will of God? It is this _movement_ that constitutes the inspiration of the Old Testament and that makes it still a Word of God to us. Many of these conclusions, which have been put forward and established by critical methods, especially in reference to the religious feeling of those times, and in the different conception of the piety of men like David and Solomon, may strike the reader as startling and disturbing. That may well be, but that is no excuse for our reading into Bible story more than can be legitimately found there, while it will be sure to obscure some of its highest teaching, which is to be found not in isolated "texts," but in great movements. It is the facts that we have to face, and the facts are obscured not so much by the corrections of the history by the later historians, as by our forcing into them the still later conceptions of our own times. We have not given detailed proof of many of the positions here taken up; they may be sought in detail by the reader in the works of Biblical scholarship. Our object is to discover whether these things being so, we can still find a true revelation in the history of this people, and hear in it the Voice of God. Do we not get from this corrected view of the history, a sense of the splendid onward movement of this religion, which in itself is so much more inspiring than the monotonous conception, which is only the product of later Judaism, that the history of Israel's religion is nothing but a series of apostasies from a pure and perfect faith? That late conception is not borne out by a careful and critical study of the sources, and it rather owes its strength to-day to a certain dogmatic conception of human nature that is needlessly pessimistic, and to an idea of the weakness of the Spirit of God in His dealings with man that nearly approaches atheism. One or two lessons of the period stand out in strong relief. One is that better things come of enthusiasm, even when it is mistaken, than from indifference. The reference of all the institutions of Israel to the definitely revealed Will of Jehovah may seem to some, after these investigations, a mistake. This can only arise from too narrow a conception of the working of God and the means through which His Spirit reaches man, for it is this very reference to the Will of God that is responsible for the advance in Israel's faith. To believe in the Will of God, and to refer all to it, does gradually increase the knowledge of that Will, and so leads to a true revelation. Another lesson is, not to despise the accompaniments of the first movements of the Spirit of God in man. It is not within the scope of this work to enquire why it is that when a man is moved by the Spirit of God such strange phenomena as we have been studying in the prophetic bands, which still accompany many revivals, should be the immediate results. There must be patience with these things as beginnings; but equally must there be impatience with them when they elevate themselves into a permanent claim to recognition as the only signs of a true religious life, and when they refuse to recognise as higher the sane and ethical movement to which they themselves have given birth. One of the chief difficulties in things religious is to recognise the offspring of a great movement, to discover the time when the child must be allowed its new-found freedom, to know when symbols may be dropped and the reality brought in. Protestantism has given birth to wider thoughts about God and deeper appreciations of the extent of His working, which are the logical outcome of Protestantism, and yet which are often repudiated by those whose Protestantism is of the aggressive type. A progressive movement of any kind always has these strifes. They are as constant in Science as in Religion, only in Science they are more easily overcome by the greater readiness to accept new revelation. Christianity is a religion that moves, and, as Christ Himself foretold, it causes the son to rise up against his father, the new generation to come into conflict with the old. Ours it is never to forget that the Kingdom of God is on the side of the child; except ye receive the Kingdom of God as a child, in the spirit of enquiry and growth, except ye never grow old, ye cannot enter therein. THE RELIGION OF THE LITERARY PROPHETS THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE PROPHETS _Assyrian Period._ B.C. Amos 760-750 B.C. Hosea 750-737 Accession of Tiglath Pileser III 745 Isaiah 740-700 Invasion of Sennacherib 701 Micah 724- Fall of Samaria 722 Zephaniah _circa_ 627 Western Palestine invaded by Scythians Nahum 610-608? Fall of Nineveh 607 _Chaldæan Period._ Jeremiah 626-586 Deuteronomy discovered 621 Habakkuk 605-600? First Great Exile 597 Ezekiel 593-573 Second Great Exile 586 _Persian Period._ Isa. xiii.-xiv.; xxi. 1-10; xxxiv., (Date uncertain, but xxxv. definitely after the Exile.) Isa. xl.-lv. (The "Second" Isaiah) _c_540. Cyrus takes Babylon 538 Isa. lvi.-lxvi. (Various prophecies, to be dated after the return.) Return of the Exiles 537 Haggai _c_520 Zech. i.-viii. _c_520 Mal. 460-450 Promulgation of the Law 444 Zech. ix.-xiv. 322 There is nothing to enable us to decide the dates of Jonah, Joel, and Obadiah with greater definiteness than to say that they were written after the Restoration. Diagram representing the religious significance of the Prophets:-- FINAL EMBODIMENT GOLDEN AGE OF PROPHECY SILVER AGE OF PROPHETIC TEACHING _Exile_ + +--------+ PSALMS | | | | | | | + | +--------------+ 2 ISAIAH | | | | | | | +---+ JEREMIAH | | | | | | | | + | | +--+ HOSEA | | | | | | | | AMOS +-------+ MICAH--NAH.--HAB. +--+--------------+ WISDOM LITERATURE | | | | | | +-----------+ ISAIAH DEUT. | | + | | | | | | | | +-------------+ EZEKIEL -----+ THE LAW Judging from the standard of New Testament religion and their contribution to it, the Prophets may be roughly classified in the above order. The higher tendency seems to vanish from the historical works which were composed after the Exile, save in many of the Psalms, where religion reaches its highest expression outside the New Testament. The tendency represented by the middle and horizontal line ends in the somewhat superficial ethics of such works as the Book of Proverbs. The lower tendency _is only to be judged so from comparison_; it served its purpose, and it was an honest endeavour to reduce the Prophetic ideals to a definite system. It is in line with the spirit of many of the Psalms that the religion of the revelation of Christ takes its rise, and we may see in the Sadducees and the Pharisees the degenerate effect of the other lines of development. Lecture VI THE RELIGION OF THE LITERARY PROPHETS Among the writings of the Old Testament, the Prophetical Books, whether considered as literature or religion, are acknowledged to stand out as unsurpassed. If the Psalms claim to rival them it is to be remembered that the Psalms are probably to be traced to the Prophetic teaching. The Prophets themselves begin a new era; they are creative and owe but little to their past. That for so long a period, in unbroken continuity, there should emerge from a tiny nation a succession of men of differing temperament, training, and social position, who should with remarkable unity voice truths of religion not only hitherto unrecognised but rarely surpassed or apprehended in subsequent history, is in itself a unique phenomenon in comparative religion. Equally notable is the fact, that in the majority of the Prophets we have not only the gift of religious intuition, but that this is found in combination with great oratorical power, true poetic genius, and practical statesmanship. They remain for all time an indisputable witness to the Divine revelation in the development of Israel's religion. Previous stages which we have been able to recognise in the development of Israel's religion do not carry us on to Amos by so inevitable a movement, that his message could be predicted as the next stage to be reached. When we come fresh from the investigation of the religion held by the leaders of the people in the times of David and Solomon, we recognise the immense strides made when we open the Book of Amos. We can trace a likeness between Elijah and Amos in their denunciation of wrong; but, in the sphere of religion, there is a great gulf between them which no records of the intervening period quite help us to bridge over. We cannot think of Amos taking part in the great vindication of Carmel; it is probable that he would have recognised it as useless. In Samuel, Elijah and Elisha we undoubtedly have the religious ancestors of the Literary Prophets, but while they stood at the head of popular movements which they led in triumph against the intrusion of alien faiths, the Prophets that we are now to study stand in decided antagonism to the popular faith, and the conceptions of Israel's religion which they reiterate with such passion and insistency were never acceptable to the people. Their religion has to make its way against the national religion. The importance of the Prophets is the natural starting point for the modern study of the Old Testament, and it is from the earnest perusal of their writings that modern Biblical science has been forced to take up a rigorous criticism of the entire literature of the Old Testament. Under the old methods, the Prophets had only a secondary position in the history of the ancient revelation, since their message was conceived as rather concerned with an age yet to come than with their own times and needs. The Divine Law had already been given to the people, constituting a perfect norm of religion. When the people failed to obey the Law, then the Prophet appeared, enforced its principles, and condemned the people's apostasy. If that message was rejected, as it often was, then nothing was left for the Prophet but the proclamation of vengeance, or the prediction of a time when the Law should be ideally fulfilled by the revelation of the Gospel. Between the Law and the Gospel, therefore, stood the Prophets, but they acted only as a bridge from the one to the other. The natural method of studying their writings was to search for the fulfilment of their predictions in history. With these aims it was perhaps inevitable that their words should often be interpreted in a quite unwarrantable manner; events were read back into their prophecies, or the fulfilment was found in such ordinary coincidences that the dignity of prediction was itself lost, the study became puerile and morbid, while a fancied necessity as to what they must mean prevented any scholarly and unbiassed interpretation. Their works have consequently been largely used as mysterious oracles from which the future history of the world could be accurately predicted. To read the Prophets in order to obtain a picture of their own age was regarded as a secular occupation, while every attempt to recover the original application of their words was regarded as an endeavour to discountenance the proofs of Divine revelation. Many of their words bear remarkable likeness to the gracious invitations of the Gospel, so that they have been used equally with the New Testament for Gospel preaching, but it was never dreamed that they were real invitations to the people of their own times, founded on the eternal laws of God's forgiveness afterwards made clear in Christ; they were simply words spoken under mental effects which transferred the speakers to the time of the New Testament. Whatever the final results of the application of historical criticism may be, it has already laid religion under a permanent obligation in its discovery of the hitherto unrealised importance of the Prophets. At first attention was directed to their exalted ethical and religious standpoint, appearing as it did in an age that neither produced nor responded to it; minute study then showed that they gave first-hand and incidental accounts of their own times. Their messages bear witness to the contemporary state of the religion of Jehovah and the people's morals, and although it may be that they sometimes judged these from their own high standard, which caused them to paint them somewhat darker than an absolutely historical judgment would demand, yet on what the prevailing religious opinions of the day really were, they are the best evidence. The startling but unassailable deduction made from the Prophets' accounts of their own times is, that in matters religious they were proclaiming doctrines that seemed to their contemporaries entirely novel. The Prophets do not, however, acquiesce in the charge of novelty. They profess to go back to the original and inner meaning of Jehovah's choice of the nation. They refer to this choice, as a "covenant," and to the religion demanded by it, as the law of the Lord. The first inference is that they refer to that which _we_ know as the Law, the Pentateuch, or Law of Moses. A comparison with the Prophetic teaching with the ordinances of, say, the Book of Leviticus, shows that this cannot be the case, for they do not correspond. Many things there commanded as essential are passed over in silence by the Prophets; but the force of the argument is not wholly drawn from that, although it has a weight here which the argument from silence cannot usually carry, because both Leviticus and the Prophets' teaching set forth the essentials of religion, and there can be no possibility of doubt that the conceptions of the essentials have an altogether different outlook. It is chiefly, though not by any means entirely, from the standpoint of the Prophetical writings that modern criticism is forced to revise the conception of the progress and decline of religion that Jewish tradition has embodied in the arrangement of its Scriptures, and especially in the ascription of the Pentateuch as a whole to the age and authorship of Moses. The verdict from this comparison between the Prophets and the Law is, that the five Books of Moses either did not exist in their present form at the time of the Prophets, or, if they did, remained entirely unknown to them. The historical value of the Prophets is therefore to be rated very high, not only because of their transparent sincerity, but also because the historical data which can be secured from them are given indirectly, and are valuable for the same reason as the remarks of a contemporary diarist. They are unaware that they are writing history, and are consequently free from the almost unescapable tendency of the historian to make the facts fit into preconceived theories. Modern criticism, therefore, does rightly in making the Prophets of paramount importance for the understanding of the Old Testament, and when the Prophets are thus made the test, much in the history that was either completely hidden or difficult to understand, becomes visible and clear, and the progress of Israel's religion is displayed in all its grandeur and movement. We can now turn to examine the extent of the sources from which we may draw, in order to estimate the religious opinions and influence of the Prophets, and to examine the peculiar character of the literature for which they are responsible. First in importance stand the Books of the Prophets proper. In the ancient division of the Hebrew Bible into, (1) The Law, (2) The Prophets, (3) The Hagiographa, or the holy writings, "The Prophets" included, beside our Books of the Prophets, such historical Books as Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. Significantly enough, however, Daniel is not grouped with the Prophets, but with the Hagiographa, either because it was not classed as prophecy, or more probably because the Canon of "The Prophets" had been closed by the time it was written. Therefore, in addition to the writings ascribed to the Prophets, there is a literature which has been influenced by their teaching, and this is found largely in those historical Books which have thus been rightly included in the Prophetical division of the Hebrew Bible. That is to say, however, that Books dealing with history prior to the rise of the Prophets, show traces of an influence that can only have emerged later. It is here that criticism seems to the ordinary reader to enter very debatable ground, although among critical students of the Bible the question is no longer an open one. They claim that the peculiar conditions under which Hebrew history was compiled allow us to discern, and to separate with ease, this later prophetical editing, whereas in other literatures such would be impossible. History was compiled among the Jews largely from pre-existing documents, much as it is everywhere, with the difference that in the Old Testament the records have been simply pieced together with whatever corrections and reductions were rendered necessary, while the conceptions of the later times, when this re-editing was accomplished, are often simply superimposed; this method has been ridiculed as an invention of the critical mind, but it is simply an indisputable if tiresome fact which has to be taken into account in any serious study of the literature. The narratives of the documents that have been named "J" and "E" bear the marks of having been combined under the influence of prophetical teaching, since this teaching, it is to be noted, is recognisably incompatible with other parts of the stories which have been left untouched. It has been suggested that criticism seems to assume that religion progressed until it reached a certain height in the Eighth Century, and to enable this theory to stand all marks of this supposed later type appearing earlier are classed as interpolations. It is usual to trace this theory to "Evolution gone mad." Even on the critical theories this cannot however be legitimately shown to result, since critical reconstruction shows that the supreme height gained in the Prophets was never maintained, but suffered a perceptible decline. Whatever the guiding idea of criticism may be, it cannot be an endeavour to make the history of Israel's religion confirm some theory of the natural development and evolution of religion. The critical theories leave us with the problem of moral lapses to account for and with the failure of vision to explain, and demand still a moral insight to detect the cause. But it is clear to many that the moral causes do stand out more clearly discoverable by this method. The critical theory of the priority of the Prophets is not based only upon the emergence under their teaching of certain theological ideas for the first time; but also on the difference of style and vocabulary which can be recognised after only a slight acquaintance with the language; and on the general outline of the history that the Bible itself forces upon us. It is a fact which the reader can soon discover for himself, that the historical Books are compilations from the records of various ages, and these various ages can be as easily discerned as the conflicting styles of an oft-restored church, or the disturbance of the normal geological strata that demands some upheaval for its explanation. It must be remembered that all this is made possible from the fact of the remarkable uniformity of ideas that characterises the various stages of Hebrew religion. The Prophets' teaching can therefore be traced outside their own writings; mainly in fragmentary comments added to the narratives; or in a superimposed colouring, which easily falls off, leaving the original outlines in view; but it is supposed to be found grouped into one great mass in the Book of Deuteronomy. The critics' theory of this Book is that it is an endeavour to reduce the teaching of the Prophets, more especially that of Isaiah, to a code, and to secure reform by the centralisation of worship at Jerusalem. This idea of a central worship, which leaves no record of its actual observance until the time of Josiah, or perhaps an attempt in the reign of Hezekiah, is so unmistakable and is so uniformly expressed that the work of this author (perhaps we should say, this school) can be easily detected, and many of the Books, such as Judges and Kings, can be seen to have been subjected to a "Deuteronomist" redaction. In all these phenomena we have teaching that presupposes the Prophets, and that stands in contrast and often in conflict with the general tone of the original. It is remarkable that with such redactions of history any clue to the earlier conceptions should have been left to us, especially that there should have been left in the records anything that would be in disagreement with the editors' ideas, but the Jews, like the other nations of antiquity, did not possess modern notions of exactness, and their notions of history prevented them from understanding things that were removed only a short distance from their own times. It is hardly surprising to find that this Prophetical literature was in turn liable to redaction, though in a different degree and for a different reason, since it has been preserved to us under peculiar conditions. This at first may seem terribly confusing to the bewildered student, and it is here that tired men reject criticism and all its works. To such the reminder cannot be spared that in any branch of Science the same conditions have to be overcome, and if he would understand the Old Testament and reap the magnificent reward that its earnest study gives, he must be prepared to face the facts and labour at their solution. First of all then, it must be noted that the Books of the Prophets are not so much literature, in the ordinary sense of the word, as reported rhetoric, with the qualification that the reporter and the speaker may be usually assumed to be the same. In most cases the speeches were written out by the Prophet himself soon after they were delivered, although sometimes this was done by others long after, and expanded or altered, as is actually reported to have been the case with the prophecies of Jeremiah (Jer. xxxvi.). In the second place, the literature reveals the fact that there does not seem to have been in that age any conception of literary property; ideas are borrowed directly from one Prophet by another, and sometimes direct quotation is made without any acknowledgment or indication of the source. The Prophet's scribe, his school or followers, could amend or paraphrase; later generations could evidently insert a qualifying phrase, temper a threat with a qualifying condition, or to the doom of exile add a promise of restoration. When it is noticed that messages like those of Amos or Hosea end unexpectedly in hopeful words, and when it is recollected that these Prophets have been used as Service Books in the Synagogue and may have been therefore altered to suit the purpose, then we shall understand the problem that faces us and why a shadow of suspicion should rest on promises of restoration that are to be found in pre-exilic writings. Let it be remembered however that it is no true critical canon to assume that prediction cannot be made; but what are we to do when such a prediction fits ill with the context, breaks the sense, is foreign to the outlook of the speaker, and is in later style? Finally, there seem to have been many prophecies circulated anonymously, and since a place had to be found for these they were inserted in other writers, on no principle that we can discover, or more often were grouped together at the end of some notable Prophet's works. In Zechariah we have to suppose three strata of different authorship and date, or give up the rational study of the Book altogether; and in the famous case of the Book of Isaiah we have to suppose that some of the early chapters are the work of a post-exilic author, while chapters xl.-lxvi. are a heterogeneous collection by a number of writers, of which chapters xl.-lv. are recognised to be by one hand, and that, one of the most wonderful personalities which has contributed to the Old Testament; about that grand figure we only know one thing, that he was not Isaiah of Jerusalem. This has been called "sawing Isaiah asunder" and making the Bible a piece of patchwork and the critics are blamed; but if they are right, these complaints are not directed at them, but at the Bible itself, a proceeding which to say the least, is not pious. When a writer could say many years later that revelation came of old time in many fragments (Heb. i. 1), others beside critics fall under these hasty condemnations. It is refreshing to turn from this less interesting part of our subject, which nevertheless demands serious study from anyone who would be informed where ignorance has done and still is doing so much harm, and to examine the features which distinguish the work of the literary Prophets. We have already spoken of the novelty of their message. Whatever theory is chosen for the study of Old Testament history, nothing quite prepares us for the message of the Prophet Amos. What an inspiration we miss because he does not stand in our Bibles in his rightful place, at the head of the Prophets! His bravery and ruggedness remind us of Elijah, but he brings something that Elijah is far from giving us. Elijah was very jealous for the due recognition of Jehovah as the only God for Israel; Amos is jealous for the recognition of the true _character_ of Jehovah. That is to say, we receive from Amos definite teaching concerning the character of Jehovah and His relations to the people of Israel, and these doctrines are startling to Israelitish ears. Almost the first thing that strikes us as an outstanding characteristic of the Prophets is that they are conscious of a call to which they often appeal. Five of them definitely refer to the circumstances of their call (Amos vii. 14; Hosea i. 2; Isaiah vi.; Jer. i. 4-10; Ezek. i. 1-ii. 3). The same is true of their predecessors, but in a different way; they stand as defenders of the national religion because they belong to the prophetic guilds or possess certain gifts of vision. On the other hand the literary Prophets are against the national religion as a perversion of the true, and to this weary and warlike work they are called by immediate and special summons of God. This call is not self-originated nor can it be evaded (Jer. xx. 9), and in some cases there has been no preparation for the office (Amos vii. 14, 15), and even positive unfitness (Jer. i. 6). They are very careful therefore to distinguish themselves from the schools of prophets. Professionalism has disappeared, and in Jeremiah the official idea also vanishes. The peculiar mental condition of the Prophets has of late years attracted a great deal of attention. The rapture and holy frenzy into which they are sometimes thrown remind us of the phenomena accompanying the early Prophetism, studied in our last lecture; but this is now accidental and is becoming rare. The Prophets often speak of this as "the hand of the Lord" upon them (Isa. viii. 11); in the visions of Ezekiel the effect is often described as overpowering (Ezek. iii. 14 ff.). There is a similarity between the accompaniments of these states and the trances which have been found in so many religious movements, and which are now attracting the attention of the scientific world so seriously. Only the results differ remarkably from the effects obtained in hypnotic and sub-conscious states, with which the prophetic gift has sometimes been compared. The Prophet still exhibits his natural style when under the influence of the Word of the Lord. Yet it may be that there is something to be learned along the lines of modern research; we know that if certain states of mental passivity can be induced, there lies open a new realm of knowledge, which, although it can be accounted for, cannot be summoned under ordinary mental conditions; add to this the superior moral constitution which seems to be missing from the mediums of spiritualistic phenomena to-day, and the prophetic consciousness becomes more comprehensible. The Prophets often speak of visions, but it is difficult to gather their actual character. It can hardly be objective; it is more like the artistic vision which creates within the mind in perfect detail and objectivity, so that what is seen has greater reality than any reproduction on canvas or in stone. The mind would seem to project its vision by the strength of its imaginative powers, so that, owing to the emotion aroused by the nature of the truth perceived, the revelation appears to come from an entirely external source. Sometimes it would seem to be an actual beholding of some natural object, which induces a train of thought, as the case of Amos's vision of the plumb-line may well be. We cannot think either of any organic hearing of their message, since they sometimes also declare that they "see" it. Their predictive power has been exaggerated, chiefly because it was thought that this was the only office of the Prophet. Where it occurs it is mostly a natural deduction from their insight into the movements of their age, their conception of the unchangeable character of Jehovah, and their belief in His providential government; the emphasis is never upon details, and it may be added that the prediction is by no means always fulfilled. Their vision of the future usually takes a certain outline, or order; a national calamity is immediately impending, in which they recognise the punishment of the people's sins and the complete triumph and vindication of Jehovah; this will result in a purifying of the nation, and in the immediate succession there will come the Messianic or ideal era. Still there are predictions which cannot be explained on any theory yet broached, such as the prediction by Isaiah of the destruction of Sennacherib's army, or Jeremiah's prophecy of the Restoration. If this is ordinary second sight, then it is strange that it should have occurred in so many cases at this time when prophecy was dropping its mysterious accompaniments. Yet it may be recalled that in the history of all nations there has been, in times of great national affliction, a tendency to prophecy of this order, which can sometimes claim a remarkable fulfilment. The distinguishing glory of Israel's prophecy is, however, to be sought in its ethical character, and it is perhaps to the writings of men like our own Carlyle, where we often catch the old prophetic ring, that we are to look for its analogy. Among the things that separate Amos from his predecessors is the use of a literary channel for the dissemination of his teaching, which was of course primarily preaching. This in itself marks a great change. What was it that led the Prophet to write down the message which he had delivered? It may have been that there was a tendency towards literature at that particular period, but even before this the habit of keeping records must have commenced, while there is evidence of collections of poems or sagas, such as the Book of Jasher, or the Book of the Wars of the Lord, being in existence from a very early period. It is evident therefore that we need some particular occurrence to account for the adoption of literature as the vehicle of Prophecy. It has been suggested that the cause is to be sought initially in the rejection of the message of Amos by those to whom it was delivered: he was aware of the permanent application of the truths that he had delivered, and since his own times would not hearken he resolved to commit them to the verdict of posterity. The example once set, it was natural for the succeeding Prophets to wish to give something more than the fleeting character of the spoken word to teaching that was new and that had been rejected, and therefore to adopt this form (Isa. viii. 16 f.). Whatever the cause, we are thankful for the results. The channel chosen for the preservation of their messages was not purely literary; the form is not that of the essay, or thesis; it has not the studied elegance of poetry, yet it rises above prose, and rhythmic verse is found scattered throughout their writings. These reports of passionate oratory fall naturally into poetic form as the Prophet is carried away by his message. Especially do we find a very extensive use of symbolism, which has proved a trap into which the literalist has hastened to fall. The relation of the Prophets to the State is difficult for us accurately to appreciate. Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha headed what were practically popular revolutions; in them nationalism overshadows the universally religious, or the purely moral ideal. To appreciate the contrast that the literary Prophets present to this, a careful study should be made of 2 Kings ix. 7-10; x. 30, and this compared with the verdict of Hosea, which rises above the standard of State interest to a judgment of universal morals (Hosea i. 4). The literary Prophets have no office at court and receive no fee (Micah iii. 2); but they have an official connection with the nation, which they regard as the chosen instrument for the establishment of God's reign; they have no conception of a secular state for Israel. It became therefore a tragedy for Jeremiah to be so completely rejected by the nation, for then he felt his prophetic office really ceased. It was this that drove him into a personal relationship with God that is not reached by any other of the Prophets. It is not correct to say that the Prophets were social reformers or practical politicians. Their sole concern is with religion, but it is a religion that goes very deep, and that must express itself in social and national ethics. It is however upon their distinctive message that the chief interest centres, not only for the understanding of their age, but for their permanent contribution to religion. It is a declaration of pure ethical Monotheism. Jehovah is not simply the tutelary deity of Israel; He is the Only God. The gods of the other nations are not real beings; this truth is vividly expressed in the scorn which is poured on idols and their worship. Jehovah is a spiritual Being; therefore the crusade against the idols that had been used in the worship of Jehovah is an outcome of prophetic teaching. This condemnation of idols in the worship of Jehovah is not actually met with until Hosea (xiii. 2), but that any visible form of Jehovah is derogatory to the true conception of His glory is the only possible deduction from prophetic teaching. We still get the naïve terms that refer to Jehovah as if He had bodily parts; but this is nothing more than the necessary imagery which all spiritual conceptions have to employ, and which are not mistaken by any save the most ignorant. This purely spiritual Being fills the whole universe (Deut. x. 14; 1 Kings viii. 27; Jer. xxiii. 24; esp. Isa. xxxi. 3, which implies more clearly than any other statement in the Old Testament the spirituality of God, and thus anticipates the declaration of Jesus to the woman of Samaria). But it is with the _ethical_ character of Jehovah that they are mostly concerned. He is righteous; which means more than the early conception that He simply defends Israel's right. They insist on His complete impartiality, which no choice of Israel for His own can turn aside: "You only have I known of all the families of the earth, _therefore_ will I visit upon you all your iniquities." They fall back again and again on His absolute fidelity and truthfulness. The arbitrary character which is ascribed to Jehovah in the Books of Samuel has completely disappeared; the Prophet can say: "Come and let us reason together, saith Jehovah." Universalism is the necessary corollary to Monotheism, but the strong sense of Israel as His chosen instrument hinders the clear statement of this truth by the Prophets. A particular regard for Israel still colours their vision; but they are altogether against the popular estimate in maintaining that this choice was made solely as a means for reaching the whole world. Universalism is seen forming in the idea that Jehovah is concerned with the punishment of other nations, since He it is who will punish them for their sins; not only for their hatred of His chosen, but for their cruelty to other nations: He will punish Moab for his inhumanity to Edom (Amos ii. 1). This is a great advance. Even when the surrounding nations afflict Israel it is not because the Lord has no control over them, but it is He that raises up the hostile powers as instruments of His chastisement. Even kinder views are to be found in Amos, in whose tiny book we find nearly all the characteristic ideas of the Prophets; for Jehovah is said to have been concerned in the early migratory movements not only of the Hebrews, but of the hated Philistines and Assyrians (Amos ix. 7). The grand universalism of Isaiah xix. 19-25 only needs us to recall the part that Egypt and Assyria played in the history of Israel, in order to appreciate its magnanimity. Yet in spite of these passages, the outlook as a whole is centred on Israel, and works of a definitely universalistic nature could hardly have found a place in the canon. This spirit probably made it necessary for the writer of "Jonah" to embody his universalistic doctrines in the form of an obscure parable about a Prophet and a whale. It was the same national bigotry that led to the rejection of the Son of man. It is in the idea of the conditions of the covenant between Jehovah and Israel that the teaching of the Prophets stands in such contrast to the conceptions of the people. That relation was conceived of, as we have seen, as tribal; the Prophets declare it to rest on a covenant of choice, which is to be maintained by the adherence of the parties to the original terms. They love to place in contrast the unwearied faithfulness of Jehovah and the fickleness of the people; while they alternate between threats of Jehovah's complete rejection and the recurring thought that despite all He can never change, and against all known custom will even welcome back the harlot nation. Jehovah's requirements from Israel, for the proper maintenance of the covenant, are simply the full allegiance of the people; but how this is to be displayed is not so definitely described. There must be a pure worship of Jehovah, but this is not to find expression in accurate ritual or great sacrifices. Indeed it cannot be claimed that the Prophets are at all concerned about ritual. The Book of Deuteronomy distinctly lays down that the true worship of Jehovah is to be performed at one chosen central spot, while Leviticus provides an elaborate method of approach, which can only be neglected at the peril of the worshipper. On the other hand, it is certain that the Prophets found the people worshipping at the "high places," the old Canaanitish shrines, with many customs which would be a direct infringement of the Code of Leviticus, yet they are entirely unconcerned with these faults. The principle of sacrifice as a means of worship had existed from ancient times, and is to be found in nearly all religions; yet there is an overwhelming verdict from the pre-exilic Prophets that shows that they are doubtful of its Divine appointment or of its necessity. (These passages should be carefully examined:--Amos v. 25; Hosea vi. 6; Isa. i. 11-17; Micah vi. 6-8; 1 Sam. xv. 22; Jer. vi. 20; vii. 21-23; and Jeremiah may have been a priest!) There is only one conclusion possible; these Prophets had never seen the Book of Leviticus. The ritual which the Prophets seek is that of an upright life. They base all their morality on religious ideas. The great incentive to moral conduct is the recognition that the whole nation and land is the property of Jehovah; any social wrong is wrong against Him. So we find that the earliest attempt to formulate this teaching in a code contains many regulations which are purely humanitarian (Deut. xiv. 29; xix. 2 ff.; xxi. 10-17; xxii. 1-3; xxiv. 6, 10-15). Ritual is turned into ethics. Against the inequalities and injustices of their day the Prophets set their faces, with an utter disregard for consequences: they hurled their accusations at the nation with tremendous energy, in public, before kings, as men went up to worship; fiery denunciation mingling with a patriot's tears; for the time, all unavailing. Yet they have had their harvest, and to-day they are among the voices that call men to social reform. It will be well to endeavour to show, in the briefest possible outline, the historic setting of this mighty message. It was shortly after the opening of the Eighth Century that threatening indications began to gather on the horizon of Northern Israel. The situation called for a Prophet's message. Amos, the herdman of Tekoa, comes like a whirlwind from Judah, utters his message at Bethel and returns. He is the first and in many respects the greatest of that meteoric band who illumine the dark night of Israel's history; later Prophets repeat his words and share his ideas. Hosea, from the Northern Kingdom, follows in his steps, but with a message made the more tender from the fact that the whole drama of Israel's unfaithfulness to her husband Jehovah had been brought home to him in a personal domestic tragedy. The tender heart which led him to forgive his unfaithful wife, wondered if Jehovah would not be equally forgiving, and through this experience he almost penetrates to the thought of God as Love. A few years later, a voice is heard in the villages of Judah proclaiming the message of Amos with the same call to simple reality: Micah pleads for simple life, simple worship, simple justice. With this transference of the prophetic voice to the Southern Kingdom there falls an awful silence on the North. In 722 B.C., Samaria fell before the arms of Assyria, and Israel ceased to exist. For centuries that land was to remain silent and despised, until there should come from Galilee of the Gentiles He of whom all the Prophets spake. One would expect that the awful doom which had overtaken the Northern Kingdom would not have been without effect on Judah. Its only visible effect was the strengthening of her belief in her own inviolability, and the acceptance of the idea that Israel's fall was due to her separation from Judah. If a Prophet could have turned the people's thought in a saner direction, then it would have been accomplished by Isaiah, the most princely and the most literary of all the Prophets. His work was not indeed without effect. He was the means of lifting prophecy into popular favour, and a revival followed his teaching. The chief cause of this favour was the events of the memorable year, 701 B.C. In face of the demands of Assyria, Isaiah had all along counselled submission and the avoidance of all intrigues with Egypt. But the violation of the treaty by Sennacherib, who demanded the surrender of the city after he had been bought off, roused the anger of Isaiah. In answer to the insulting message of the Rabshakeh, while the army lay round the city, in obedience to the word of Jehovah he counsels resistance. Nothing seemed more improbable than that there could be any escape for Jerusalem; nevertheless he declared that the holy city should be inviolable. The great host with their insolent captain lay before the gates, but in the morning "The Gentile, unsmote by the sword, Had melted like snow in the glance of the Lord." Whatever the actual cause of the raising of the siege may have been, there can be no doubt that something did happen to the Assyrian army which Isaiah was able to attribute to the intervention of Jehovah, for from this time Isaiah became famous. To those who see in the fulfilment of prediction the chief end of prophecy this event will naturally seem of profound importance. To another view of the function of prophecy this is the least thing that Isaiah did, for while it lifted his name into popular favour, that same deliverance proved a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. For his declaration of the city's inviolability was remembered long after, and quoted as if it had been of universal, instead of temporary application, while his moral teaching was forgotten. To that trick of national memory the exile was largely due. From this time the sacrosanct character of the city obsessed the popular mind, and in consequence the Temple became, for the first time since its erection, of supreme significance in Jewish eyes. Following Isaiah, there was a movement, commenced probably by his disciples, that strove to bring the Temple into prominence as the one authorised place of worship. Possibly during the reactionary reign of Manasseh, when their master is said to have been martyred, they worked at this idea, and driven into silence by the persecutions of the king they employed their pens in producing a code of laws, which undoubtedly gathered into legal form many of the customs which had existed for centuries, and endeavoured to give them the religious interpretation of the prophetic teaching. Its chief injunction was the suppression of the high places as no longer authorised for the worship of Jehovah, hoping to centre thereby the whole of the nation's worship at the Temple. This code was probably laid up for publication in brighter days, and was discovered in the reign of Josiah, in the year 621 B.C. There can be but little doubt, from the reforms instituted, and from the total disregard of them until this time, that this code was our Book of Deuteronomy. Since it was published under the name of Moses, many moderns have looked upon its compilation as a pious forgery. This is to read into a past age the legal conceptions of Western civilisation. It must be remembered that many of these laws could be legitimately traced back to Moses or to his influence, and there was no idea of deception in using his name. The hand of the School which produced this work can also be traced in the compilation and redaction of other historical works, which were undertaken with this idea of making the past history teach the value of the reforms they wished the people to adopt. This was not only regarded as legitimate, but as a sacred duty imposed upon them. The modern historical ideal, which instigates research with the sole intention of discovering the facts, is only the product of our own age, and is still unsuccessfully striven after. The reformation under Josiah is therefore known as the Deuteronomic reformation. From this time the Temple becomes the only spot where God can be publicly worshipped, and the local shrines are forbidden. This may seem an arbitrary action, and it is possible that for some time it called forth loud complaints; but it was certainly for the benefit of religion. It had been proved to be impossible to dissociate the local shrines from the customs and ideas which had descended from the original Canaanitish worship carried on there. With a central worship it was found possible to check practices that were not in accordance with the religion of Jehovah. The teaching of the Prophets finds then in the Book of Deuteronomy its first-fruits of reform. The relation of one young man to this new movement is full of peculiar interest and difficulty. It was at this very time that Jeremiah began his ministry, and it is possible that he took some part in the movement (Jer. xi. 8). He also lived to see the reaction and to prove that the reform was only superficial. There is one passage which seems to point to a change of view and even to the suspicion that the new code was not authoritative (Jer. vii. 8). When Jeremiah attacked the sin of the people, and warned them that the presence of Jehovah's Temple would not suffice to protect them if they persisted in their iniquity, his message was rejected and eventually he was imprisoned and silenced by a coalition of the priests and prophets. Jeremiah ceased therefore to be the Prophet of that nation. In his loneliness and sorrow, his thoughts turned in an hitherto unexplored direction. He complains to God in words which sound almost blasphemous, and pours forth expostulations that are the reverse of the submissive spirit usually thought proper to religion; but it is through this agony that Jeremiah discovers that God can be something to him, not only as the Prophet of the nation, but for himself. He discovers personal religion. His next discovery is equally momentous; for he is led to see that no promulgation of laws can save the nation: ordinances do not change the heart. He sorrowfully pronounces the doom of the nation, but as he stands by its open grave he sings of its resurrection. When purged by trial the nation shall return, and the New Covenant shall be set up, in which Jehovah shall write His laws in their hearts. It is a long far-off look that he gives, and the picture is not complete until One sits at a last supper and says: This cup is the New Covenant in my blood. THE EFFECT OF THE EXILE Dates for reference:-- B.C. 597. Jehoiachin and 10,000 captives deported to Babylon, and Zedekiah made king in his stead. FIRST CAPTIVITY. 587-6. Jerusalem besieged, Zedekiah taken to Babylon, Jerusalem and the Temple destroyed, and the whole population, save the very poorest, deported to Babylon. SECOND CAPTIVITY. 538. Cyrus issues edict for Return. Return under Sheshbazzar (?) (Ezra i.). 537. Return under Zerubbabel (Ezra ii.). 458. Arrival of Ezra. 445. First Mission of Nehemiah. 433. Second Mission of Nehemiah. There is a good deal of uncertainty about the above dates, and the condition of the documents in Ezra-Nehemiah offers difficulties which have not, so far, found acceptable solutions. Some have sought to identify Sheshbazzar with Zerubbabel, and to bring down the date of the Return to 522-21. It will be seen from the above Table that Jeremiah's prophecy of Seventy Years was not literally fulfilled. * * * * * The student would receive a clear idea of the growth of Israel's institutions and the way in which they have been incorporated in the successive documents, by tracing the development of the Sabbath in the following passages. Some claim that the Records of Babylonia show that the observance of the seventh day as sacred goes back to the origins of primitive Semitic religion. (1) In "J-E" (which may be prior to Amos in oral form, and perhaps slightly later as documents): Exod. xxiii. 12; xxxiv. 21; xx. 8. (2) In historical books: 2 Kings iv. 22, 23; Amos viii. 5; Hosea ii. 11; Isa. i. 13. (3) In "D": Deut. v. 14. (4) In Jer. xvii. 19-27. (Jeremiah is the first writer to show traces of the influence of Deuteronomy.) (5) In "H," The Code of Holiness (Lev. xvii.-xxvi.): Lev. xix. 3, 30; xxvi. 2. (6) In Ezek. xx. 12, 13. (7) In "P": Gen. ii. 1-3; Exod. xx. 10, 11; xxxi. 12-17; xxxv. 1-3; Lev. xxiii. 3; Num. xv. 32-36; Exod. xvi. 5, 22-30. (8) In post-exilic observance: Neh. xiii. 15-22; Isa. lvi. 2, 4, 6; lviii. 13, f.; lxvi. 23. Lecture VII THE EFFECT OF THE EXILE In the year 597 B.C., a catastrophe long foretold befell the Kingdom of Judah. Nebuchadrezzar invaded the land, took Jerusalem, and robbing the land of every person of importance or usefulness, transported them together with King Jehoiachin to Babylon, hoping doubtless to prevent any further trouble with Judæa. In what a conflict of emotion must the exiles have left that city which they had fondly imagined inviolable! for even in Babylon they continued to believe that so long as Jerusalem stood, Jehovah would have a citadel, and the holy city would remain a symbolic witness to their unconquered religion. With the captives there went a young man who was destined to leave a deep impression upon the future of his nation--the priest Ezekiel. Arrived in Babylon, he felt himself called to a prophetic ministry to the exiles, and his first message was directed to the crushing of their remaining hopes; for with dramatic symbolism he predicted that Jerusalem would be utterly destroyed. The suicidal policy of Zedekiah, whom Nebuchadrezzar had left to carry on the government as his vassal, soon fulfilled this prophecy; for sedition and intrigue soon compelled Nebuchadrezzar to adopt still stricter measures. He again marched into Judæa and besieged Jerusalem. This time the Jews expected no mercy, and resisted with such tenacity that the siege lasted for nearly two years. On the ninth day of the Fourth month, (our July) 586 B.C., a day still kept with solemn fasting by the Jews, a breach was made in the walls and the city capitulated. A month later the entire destruction of the city and Temple was ruthlessly carried out, and the whole population, with the exception of a few husbandmen, was deported to swell the company of exiles now at Babylon. This was the inevitable culmination of the policy of the Kingdom of Judah under her latest monarchs. The position of their land laid them open to conflicts with the powers of Assyria and Babylon. The wise and peaceful policy of Solomon had been departed from, and indeed rendered impossible by the disruption of the Tribes. A period of national decadence seems to have followed, in which luxury and corruption undermined all political sanity, and both rulers and people became blind to the dangers that threatened. Such religion as existed, only expressed itself in bursts of fanaticism, and filled the people with the fatal idea that Jehovah would never suffer the Temple to be violated or the holy city to be taken. The disaster of the Exile is charged by the Prophets to the unrepented sins of the nation, and while this is a religious interpretation it is not unsupported by a review of the history. The people had set their hearts upon a glorious kingdom of material prosperity, presided over and protected by a mighty national deity; the Prophets wanted a kingdom of righteousness, which would reflect the character of Jehovah and be a witness to the nations of His reality and power. While they saw in the Exile a calamity which meant the destruction of the nation, and an evidence that Jehovah had broken His covenant because of disobedience, they clung to the belief that the end for which Jehovah had chosen Israel might still be attained. That nation might be destroyed, yet from its ruins there would arise a Kingdom of God; a remnant would return, weaned from a false religion, to work out a new ideal of holiness and service. The period which follows is one of great obscurity and the records which are actually dated from this time are scanty. Literary criticism however throws great light on this period because it believes that it is from the Exile that we are to date many institutions and writings that have been referred to a previous age. This may seem at first sight a desperate device, since so little is known of the actual conditions; and yet unfettered investigation can arrive at no other conclusion, the exilic stamp being often unmistakable and even showing itself in geographical outlook (1 Kings iv. 24). If we take the Bible as it stands, it presents us with the story of an early legislation given by Moses, neglected however by the entire people, including the Reformers and Prophets, until it suddenly appears after the Exile as the acknowledged code for the regulation of religion and common life. It would be quite possible to conceive that the shock of the Exile drove the Jews to examine the details of the neglected covenant of Jehovah and to restore the authority of the Law of Moses. Such however is impossible, not only from that fact that there is no mention of the Law of Moses in the records that can be dated between the Conquest of Canaan and the Exile, but that in this period we can discern customs and ideas _gradually_ growing up that find their full and final embodiment in the Pentateuch as we now possess it. From the lawless condition of the Judges and the early monarchy, we advance to the teaching of the Prophets. It is Isaiah who contributes the ideas which lie at the basis of the Deuteronomic Code, and the time of Josiah is the first to show the influence of that code. Ezekiel is the first to show any trace of the ideas which we find embodied in Leviticus, but these, as we shall see, have to be explained as anticipations of, rather than as an acquaintance with, the finished Levitical Code. When we consider what effect the Exile would have upon the more thoughtful of the Jews, we can imagine that conscience would be shocked into activity, and a new interest would be taken in their strange history, especially in its prophetic interpretation. It is common in history to find that repentance rarely goes so deep as to grasp the inner meaning of its discovered sin, but is apt to content itself with somewhat superficial methods of showing its sincerity and securing future compliance with religion. So at least, the records of Israel's history assure us, happened in this instance, and one of the resolutions of their penitence took concrete form in the writing or editing of their history so that it should be a warning to the future, and in codifying customs and drawing up regulations which should make apostasy for ever impossible. Many references in the ancient records or in the oral tradition which savoured of idolatry or of a too anthropomorphic conception of God were corrected, as those references, the tendency of which was not detected, have remained to bear witness; and the whole history was fitted somewhat clumsily into a mechanical scheme, which was rather what they thought ought to have happened than what really did happen. One example of this may be seen in the condemnation which is naïvely passed on king after king because he had allowed sacrifice to be made at the high places; the fact being that this was not made illegitimate until the reign of Josiah. In this way external offences were marked and abandoned, while the deeper incongruity between the national religion and the teaching of the Prophets was missed. If we seek in this period for the rise of ideas which shall bridge over the change from the popular religion on the one hand, and the religion of Jeremiah on the other, to the complete unity of the national religion under Nehemiah and Ezra, we shall find a most important link in the Book of Ezekiel. The Book of Ezekiel is said to be the least read book in the Bible, yet its author plays a most important part in the history of Israel's religion, and to grasp the position which he occupies is to have a focus point from which the whole development may be conveniently grasped. The Prophet probably got a better hearing from his contemporaries than any of his predecessors. He accompanied the body of captives who left Jerusalem for Babylon in the year 597, and his works date from soon after that year and go down to about 570. The men to whom he was called to speak were therefore his fellow captives, and he had not to look far for a text for his sermons. His hearers were in Babylon for their sins, and they knew it. His style of preaching is difficult, and his method of embodying his message in visions marks a new phenomenon in Israel's religion. He states truth in strange and fanciful figures, a method which was to form an example for the later works of Judaism, and if we detect in Ezekiel a return to the extravagance of the earlier prophecy, we must make allowance for the tragic times in which he lived; especially must we do this where we trace a falling off from his predecessors in moral insight and in the ritualistic influence which his work undoubtedly left behind him. Ezekiel continues the work of the pre-exilic Prophets in that he proclaims their characteristic doctrines, and naturally he shows distinct traces of the influence of Jeremiah. What is new, is that he gives to those doctrines a more fixed and somewhat pedantic form, and a greater self-consciousness is discernible; the prophecies are accurately arranged, and the language is marked by precision; rhetoric is less frequent, and the prophecies look more fit for reading than for delivery. The idea of God is the same as in the earlier Prophets, but in Ezekiel it is elevated and rarified; especially is great emphasis laid upon the attribute of holiness, which is however a ceremonial rather than a purely ethical conception. The characteristic idea of the Prophets, that Jehovah chose Israel not for their own sakes, becomes the idea that Jehovah did this for His own sake alone, and this is so often repeated that it almost looks like arbitrariness. The cause of Judah's punishment is still traced to the sin of the people, but that sin is now definitely determined to be idolatry; and this is insisted on almost to the exclusion of the social and ethical wrongs assailed by the earlier Prophets. While, however, Ezekiel enforces the bitter lessons of the Exile, he carefully distinguishes the true interpretation of that disaster from that which rose readily to the popular mind. He disposes of the conception that the Captivity was due to the inability of Jehovah to defend His own land (xxxvi. 20); it was a punishment for sin (xxxix. 23), and in His own time He will prove this by restoring them to their land again (xxxix. 25). Neither will he allow them to rest in the flattering thought that they were only suffering for the unvisited sins of a former generation; he insists, probably with greater rigour than experience would sanction, that each man bears his own sin, and never suffers for the sins of others. But to those who admit the justice of his charges, and who therefore regard the future as hopeless, he preaches a tender doctrine of forgiveness and the possibility of cleansing from sin. From the events of his times, he seeks to draw lessons which should redeem the mistakes that had been made in the past: the teaching of the Prophets must be kept before the people in definite rules and religious ceremonies. Old customs, whose original significance had long been forgotten, were invested with new interpretations worthy of the true religion of Jehovah, and were made not only customs, but religious commands. In the book which bears his name, and especially in chapters xl.-xlviii., he outlines a policy in which the whole of national life is comprehended in its religious significance, and thus the calamity of future apostasy prevented. The new State is to centre round the idea of worship: the Temple with its services and appointments is to be the expression of the national life. Now in this scheme there is little doubt that we have the beginning of the Levitical system, for Ezekiel is related to Leviticus as the rough sketch to the finished plan. If Leviticus in its present form existed in Ezekiel's time, then the work of the Prophet was not only entirely unnecessary, but careless and presumptuous. Some of the facts which point to the priority of Ezekiel to the Levitical Code may be noticed. In the Levitical Code we find that a distinction is made between priests and Levites. This is not found in Deuteronomy (xvii. 9, 18; xviii. 1) but is first found in Ezekiel (xliv. 10-15), where it is explained to be due to the degradation of the Levites as a punishment for leading the people into idolatry; in Leviticus we reach the final stage, where the distinction is accepted without explanation. In Ezekiel we have no mention of the high-priest or of the Day of Atonement, both of which figure so largely in the Priest's Code, although we can find _foreshadowings_ of the Day of Atonement (Ezek. xlv. 18-20). Indeed we meet with no mention of the Day of Atonement, apart from the Priestly Code, until Zechariah (vii. 5; viii. 19). The general conclusion may be safely drawn, that during and after the Exile, Ezekiel's ideas were stiffened and developed into the full legislation now preserved for us in Leviticus. We may rightly claim Ezekiel to be the founder of Judaism, with its transcendent conception of Jehovah and its great attention to ceremonial detail, and we are bound therefore to recognise in Ezekiel a falling off from the ideals of the pre-exilic Prophets; he is a prophet in priest's clothing. Yet it may be questioned whether the idealistic teaching of the Prophets could have been preserved through the periods of the Exile and the Restoration, without this formal process. An outer husk of formality had to develop in order that the living kernel might be protected during the critical years when Persia, Greece, and Rome were to press their alien ideas upon this people. It has been well for the world that Ezekiel clothed the Prophets' teaching in the resisting garments of Judaism. The Exile could not fail to leave upon the Jewish nation an imperishable mark, and they emerged from that trial a different people. It was a shock that brought a repentance the Prophets had often laboured for in vain, and this repentance was marked by the initiation of many new movements in thought, and by a more stringent and solemn observance of their peculiar institutions. Probably in that alien land many of the Jews adopted the customs of their conquerors, since it is estimated that not more than a small fraction returned to Palestine. This defection would impress upon those who remained faithful the necessity for a strict policy of separation, and from this time certain institutions which had been inherited from ancient Semitic practice received a new meaning. Chief among these may be noticed the observance of the Sabbath, and the rite of circumcision. The observance of a certain day as sacred to the gods is a custom that is found in nearly all early religions, and there are traces of such an observance in the Babylonian religion. We do not find however in the historical books of the Bible that mention of the Sabbath which would be expected, if it was observed with the strictness common after the Exile. There are traces of an observance, not strictly defined, save that it is in association with the new moon feasts, and is combined with social relaxation (2 Kings iv. 22, 23; Hosea ii. 11; Amos viii. 5; Isa. i. 13). Even before the Exile however a more religious conception had arisen (Jer. xvii. 19-27), and is even then referred to as an earlier command. The change after the Exile was towards an ever increasing strictness (Isa. lvi. 2, 4, 6; lviii. 13; lxvi. 23; Neh. xiii. 15-22). The rite of circumcision was by no means peculiar to the Jewish religion (Jer. ix. 25, 26), except perhaps in so far as it was performed in infancy: its origin and growth are very obscure. Its original significance was early lost and its interpretation was probably due to the Prophets themselves, who often referred to a spiritual circumcision, and thus made possible the full ceremonial interpretation which became so important a feature in later Judaism. We have seen that there is evidence to prove that the religion of Israel had not always been averse to the use of idols as part of the legitimate worship of Jehovah. The Prophets began the protest against this, not so much because of its principles, but because of the immoral practices with which idol worship was connected. But after the Exile, idolatry was for ever separated from the worship of Jehovah, and in the later Prophets idolatry becomes the target for their most scornful invective. It has been suggested that this new abhorrence accounts for the non-return of the Ark, which in this period disappears from history. Among the most important of the new institutions that can be traced back to the period of the Exile is the founding of the Synagogue. In the land of Exile, away from the one spot where sacrifice was permitted, worship had to be carried on without the aid of sacrificial or ceremonial rites, but there was nothing to prevent the people from gathering together for prayer or to hear read their newly reverenced prophetic books. It is quite possible that this led to a collection of the Prophets' writings being made, and perhaps to some editing to meet their present needs. This movement was of profound importance for the future development of religion, for it was in the Synagogue rather than in the Temple that Christianity was to find the readiest medium for its dissemination and the earliest model for its worship. The Synagogue itself prepared the way for the more spiritual developments within Judaism, for away from the Temple sacrifices and their always dangerous suggestions men learned that the sacrifice of the broken heart was more acceptable to Jehovah; and so the way was prepared for that magnificent collection of prayers and songs which we call the Psalms, which were afterwards to be used as an accompaniment to a form of worship that they frequently condemn. The external and legal conceptions were, however, to be the most visible results gained from the Exile, and they were to mould religion for many a year. The materials for an exact history of the return from Exile do not exist in our Bibles; the accounts found in Ezra and Nehemiah raise questions which have not yet been satisfactorily answered. The Prophets who had foretold the destruction of the kingdom of Judah had never been able to rest in the thought that this was the final chapter in Jehovah's dealings with His people, and their faith forced them to peer through this impending disaster and dimly discern a purpose yet to be disclosed. This is often pictured in merely general terms, but in Jeremiah and Ezekiel these hopes issued in the definite prophecy of the restoration of the Jews to their own land within a certain period. When political changes brought this on the horizon of possibility, the times wakened the "voice of one crying in the wilderness," in some respects the most wonderful of all that noble band we have been studying. The name of this herald has not been preserved, but he is known to criticism as the Second Isaiah. This does not of course mean that he bore that name, but it is a convenient designation for the writings that occupy the second half of the work included under the name of Isaiah. The separation of chapters xl.-lxvi. from those which precede, as from different hands, is one of the most universally accepted results of criticism. The preceding chapters end with a historic survey of events that happened in the lifetime of the great Isaiah of Jerusalem, and then suddenly the whole outlook and atmosphere change. Critics claim that the test of language and style is itself decisive, but while this must remain a question on which only Hebrew experts are qualified to pronounce, the difference of theological ideas, and the change of situation cannot be missed by any attentive English reader. Indeed that the situation has changed is a fact which has never been challenged. From chapter xl., the audience addressed consists no longer of the proud and scornful peoples of the time of Hezekiah, but of penitent captives far from their native land some 150 years later; the accepted explanation used to be that Isaiah transported himself to this later time by a miracle of prophetic inspiration. But there is really only one adducible reason for attributing this prophecy to Isaiah: it is bound up with the book that bears his name as the title. This reason is of little value when we admit our ignorance of the method by which the Old Testament was finally edited, and when the internal evidence entirely contradicts the traditional theory. For it must be borne in mind that the explanation that this is due to a prophetic transportation is only a hypothesis framed to fit the conditions, and has no claim to acceptance if there can be found one that does equal justice to the facts without appealing to such an unusual method. Moreover, the hypothesis of prediction does not fit the facts, for while some parts of the prophecy have predictive form, others have not. For instance, the picture of Cyrus and his conquests, complete even to the name of the hero, is not only presented as if he were on the stage of actual history, but his appearance is adduced as a convincing evidence of the fulfilment of prophecy. What fulfilment would it be if Cyrus was yet a figure of the unknown future? If it is claimed that this presentation is due to what is known to Hebrew grammarians as a use of the _prophetic present tense_, in which things future in fact, are stated as present, owing to the vividness of the prophetic consciousness, then we must ask why it is that Cyrus is presented as a figure of contemporary history, while the fall of Babylon is still spoken of as future. This distinction would be meaningless if the whole of this period was seen from some anterior time. The "settled results" of criticism were greatly ridiculed when further investigation pronounced that only chapters xl.-lv. can have come from this great Prophet, and that the remainder of the book is of a composite character, extending at least to the time of the Second Temple. To have to bring in a third author, or even more, to explain this book is quoted as an example of the foolishness of criticism. Now the critics _may_ be wrong, but their theories are simply endeavours to understand these prophecies by setting them in their exact historical surroundings. Surely this is a task worthy of any reverent student of the Old Testament, and if it brings, as many believe, wonderful light on these messages, and thus sets free their eternal significance, then these men should earn gratitude rather than ridicule, when the difficulty of their task calls for a continual rearrangement and a finer adjustment. The critical reconstruction of this prophecy therefore places chapters xl.-lv. among the scenes it depicts, and in the very history whose movements called it forth. The exact conditions can be discerned. After the death of Nebuchadrezzar the kingdom of the Chaldæans began to decline, and when Cyrus succeeded to the throne of Persia its fate was determined. His victorious campaigns, culminating in the fall of Sardis in B.C. 547, could not fail to reach the ears of the exiles in Babylon, and many a whisper of hope must have been exchanged, and many a prophecy handed on. Babylon itself fell before the conqueror in 538 and between these two dates, and perhaps nearer to the latter, the internal witness of the prophecy demands that it should be placed. When we turn to examine the work of this unknown messenger we cannot help noticing the difference in style, which even the translation cannot obscure. The great Isaiah writes in terse, closely-packed sentences, with all the authoritative manner customary with the Prophets. This writer, on the other hand, is rhetorical, and loves to dwell on his favourite ideas. The sharp word of the prophetic deliverance here gives way to a reasoning exposition and a pleading tenderness that makes this prophecy a Gospel before the Gospels. The distinctive religious ideas can be easily marked. Absolute Monotheism is insisted on with a fulness and repetition which shows that it is in some degree a new truth. There is none beside Jehovah; He is alone, unique; and description is exhausted in the endeavour to picture His glory and power. He is now constantly referred to as the Creator of the world, the framer of the stars on high, the maker of both darkness and light, both good and evil; so that no room is left for the dualism that the Prophet may have learned to despise in the Babylonian religion. His finest scorn is reserved for the conception that an idol can have any claim to divinity. He depicts the process of their manufacture, their utter helplessness; it may be that he had seen them borne in to the capital as the suburbs fell before the invader. Universalism struggles for expression in this writer, but it is not always so clear and definite as in the writings of the great Isaiah. This arises however, not so much from the racial prejudices that have so clogged the Hebrew mind, as from a reading of Israel's history which the prophet was well entitled to make, namely, that she was to be the premier nation in the instruction of the world in righteousness and the knowledge of God, the priest-nation of humanity. This conception of the nation's history and destiny is embodied in a personification known as the Servant of Jehovah. Israel has been chosen as the Servant so that the light may be brought to the nations. In this mission the Servant meets with persecution, yet turns not back from those who pluck off the hair nor hides his face from shame and spitting. The slightest retrospect of Israel's history shows that the Servant of Jehovah was trained for his task only through suffering. Israel had suffered for her sins of presumption and disobedience; but were the nations who punished her any more righteous? Moreover, many of those who sat down by the waters of Babylon and wept when they remembered Zion must have been pious and righteous, and innocent of the causes of their nation's calamities. As the prophet broods over the meaning of the Exile, as it affected the godly remnant, he begins to see that this suffering, undeserved though it might be in particular cases, would become a supreme lesson in righteousness to the world. This assumption is embodied in the astonishing drama of the suffering Servant; one who suffers from a disfiguring disease, which marks him out to all beholders as the afflicted of Jehovah, and who is therefore despised and rejected of men. But the day comes when the idea slowly dawns upon men that this servant-nation suffered for the sake of the world, bore the consciousness of sin when other nations lived in carelessness and flourished on cruelty. The Prophet believed that this patient suffering would be an awakening force and would be the means of bringing the world to the knowledge of God. It is a marvellous reading of Israel's history; but it is true, for that little nation despised and rejected by Empires, battered by the armed forces which surrounded her, has made the whole world her debtor. But indirectly this interpretation is a revelation of the meaning of all history, and especially of that strange law of vicarious suffering which binds all the world one and makes every new age in debt to the past. This unknown writer has contributed one of the most fruitful ideas to the philosophy of history. It is not surprising that most early commentators have tried to read in the 53rd chapter a picture, not of a nation, but of some definite person; although the Prophet definitely identifies the Servant of the Lord with Israel (Isa. xli. 8). But when did Israel embody such a conception? It can only stand for an ideal of what Israel ought to have been; and there have been many things which have entered into the composition of the picture. It has been suggested that one of the Prophets sat for this picture, just as sometimes an artist painting a symbolical picture will get one of his friends to sit for the model; and who could be better for this purpose than Jeremiah, the rejected of the nation? The interpretation that finds in this picture a minute prediction of the life and passion of Jesus is not sanctioned by a careful study of the passage; but the instinct that has led to this is right in the main, for as we travel down the ages looking for the fulfilment of this ideal, we only rest with complete satisfaction on the story of the life and death of One who stepping out from this very race, by His uninterrupted communion with God, His hatred of sin and His profound sympathy with mankind, bore away the sin of the world on the red flood of sacrifice, and brought in for ever the true Kingdom of God. An increasing number of Old Testament scholars believe that another of the Prophets contains an interpretation of the Exile, conceived in the same spirit as that of the Second Isaiah, although veiled under such a strange allegorical form that centuries of Jewish and Christian interpretation have entirely missed its meaning. The book of the Prophet Jonah belongs to a later age, and should probably stand last of all the Minor Prophets, but the critical interpretation of the prophecy falls naturally to be considered here. The character of the Book reveals on close inspection that it was never intended for history; as its inclusion among the prophetical writings perhaps recognises. It is not only the improbability of the whale episode that has led to this conclusion, but the whole character of the events narrated: the sudden growth and withering of the gourd, the instant repentance of the Ninevites, which included a forced régime of fasting even for the cattle! Moreover, the closing words of the book breathe a spirit of universalism and humanity that is almost the high-water mark of Old Testament inspiration, and this encourages the reader to look for some deeper meaning in the rest of the book. The story as interpreted by critical methods is that Jonah is the nation of Israel, chosen to be a missionary nation to the heathen. On refusing the task which Divine selection had marked out for her she is thrown into exile, and has been restored for the purpose of carrying out her original mission. This is here symbolised by the whale swallowing Jonah, who on being cast up proceeded on his neglected commission, though still with little love for his work. The imagery is crude and may strike the reader as exceedingly improbable, until his attention is drawn to the fact that the whale or sea-monster plays a great part in Old Testament imagery and is once actually used as a symbol of the Exile. "Nebuchadrezzar the King of Babylon hath devoured me, ... he hath swallowed me up like a dragon, ... he hath cast me out.... I will do judgment upon Bel in Babylon, and I will bring out of his mouth that which he hath swallowed up" (Jer. li. 34, 44). With this interpretation as a clue, the book becomes luminous. It is an apology for the Gentiles who are shown to be capable of repentance; Israel is blamed for her grudging estimate of the heathen, for her refusal to convey to them the light which she enjoyed, and for her fear lest others should share the favour of Jehovah. Perhaps the symbolic character of the book was adopted, because the author knew that if such truths were boldly stated they would never be received by his age; and so he hoped that the truth might enter in through an interesting story of wonder and adventure. It can hardly be claimed that the author has been successful; for the Jews resisted the universalism of the Son of Man and the propagandist methods of the Apostle Paul, while Christendom has been far more concerned in proving that a whale can swallow a man, than in carrying out the command to evangelise those who know not their right hand from their left. THE WORK OF THE PRIESTS The following passage (Exod. vii. 14-25) illustrates the attempt to disintegrate the various documents ("J" is indicated by roman type, "E" by _italics_, and "P" by CAPITALS). "And Yahwe said unto Moses, Pharaoh's heart is stubborn, he refuseth to let the people go. _Get thee unto Pharaoh in the morning; lo, he goeth out unto the water; and thou shalt stand by the river's brink to meet him; and the rod which was turned to a serpent shalt thou take into thine hand._ And thou shalt say unto him, Yahwe, the God of the Hebrews, hath sent me unto thee, saying, Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness: and, behold, hitherto thou hast not hearkened. Thus saith Yahwe, in this thou shalt know that I am Yahwe: behold, I will smite ... _with the rod that is in mine hand upon the waters which are in the river, and they shall be turned to blood_. And the fish that is in the river shall die, and the river shall stink; and the Egyptians shall loathe to drink water from the river. AND YAHWE SAID UNTO MOSES, SAY UNTO AARON, TAKE THY ROD, AND STRETCH OUT THINE HAND OVER THE WATERS OF EGYPT, OVER THEIR RIVERS, OVER THEIR STREAMS, AND OVER THEIR POOLS, AND OVER ALL THEIR PONDS OF WATER, THAT THEY MAY BECOME BLOOD; AND THERE SHALL BE BLOOD THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND OF EGYPT, BOTH IN VESSELS OF WOOD AND IN VESSELS OF STONE. AND MOSES AND AARON DID SO, AS YAHWE COMMANDED; _and he lifted up the rod, and smote the waters that were in the river; in the sight of Pharaoh, and in the sight of his servants; and all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood_. And the fish that was in the River died; and the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink water from the river; AND THE BLOOD WAS THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND OF EGYPT. AND THE MAGICIANS OF EGYPT DID IN LIKE MANNER WITH THEIR ENCHANTMENTS: AND PHARAOH'S HEART WAS HARDENED, AND HE HEARKENED NOT UNTO THEM; AS YAHWE HAD SPOKEN. _And Pharaoh turned and went into his house, neither did he lay even this to heart._ And all the Egyptians digged round about the river for water to drink; for they could not drink of the water of the river. And seven days were fulfilled, after that Yahwe had smitten the river." Notes:--The account in "J" evidently had nothing about the water being turned into blood. Yahwe himself will smite the river (_Ye' or_; the Nile) so that the fish will die. "The river" probably stood after "smite ..." in "J." In "E" Moses is commanded to smite with his rod, and the Nile will be turned into blood. In verse 17 _thine_ must have stood in the original and was altered to "mine" when the documents were pieced together. In "P" Aaron is to take the rod, and now all the rivers of Egypt, and even the water in the houses, is to be turned into blood. Notice the formal repetition in "P." Lecture VIII THE WORK OF THE PRIESTS We have seen that the Exile produced two important prophetical works. The one is a vision of a restored Jewish state, contemplated under the guise of a Church rather than as a Nation; the work of the priestly Prophet Ezekiel. The other is incorporated in the second half of the prophecies ascribed to Isaiah; the author is unknown, but the work is an attempt to interpret the calamitous history of the Exile in such a fashion that the nation might be led to take as its ideal for the future, the Servant of Jehovah, the bearer of light to the nations of the world. The outlook in these two works is entirely different, yet both seem to have called forth a school which endeavoured to work out their ideals, but the school of Ezekiel obtained a more immediate recognition and exerted the greater influence on the nation. For the first time in Israel's history a prophet is found who is concerned with matters of ritual, the regulation of a priesthood, and the details of ecclesiasticism. Ezekiel endeavoured to secure the reforms demanded by the Prophets, not only by the effect of his own preaching, but by the formation of definite organisations and the establishment of certain customs. The priestly school which followed Ezekiel and developed his conceptions, possessed sufficient prestige to persuade the nation that their scheme was of Divine authority. Their work was carried on during and after the Exile, but with the exception of Ezra, the names of the authors have not been preserved. In the Bible history their work suddenly appears under the name of "the law of Moses" in 444 B.C. The first certain mention of the recognition and observance of this law is found in Nehemiah (viii.), where a memorable scene is described. Ezra the Scribe, "the writer of the words of the commandments of the Lord and of his statutes to Israel" (Ezra vii. 11), has come from Babylon, bringing with him the law of Moses. The people are gathered together on a certain day, and from morning to noon, the law is read in their hearing, with such comments and explanations as seemed necessary. The immediate result of this publication was the discovery that important provisions had been neglected and commands very seriously transgressed, and there followed such grief and alarm among those who listened, that it was difficult for the authorities to persuade the people to abandon their mourning and rejoice in the fact that the law had now been made known to them. On the morrow a further reading took place, when they discovered that on that very day they ought to be keeping a feast of tabernacles. The feast was therefore observed for the appointed time of eight days, and it is expressly noted that this had not been done since the time of Joshua. Other reforms were immediately set in motion; marriage with those not of pure Jewish blood was not only forbidden but, where such had actually been contracted, an immediate dissolution was enforced; a tax of one third of a shekel was levied for the upkeep of the Temple Services, and the law of the Sabbath was rigorously enforced. Now this picture was not written by a contemporary, and critics have found such difficulty in discovering the exact historical facts that considerable doubt has been aroused, not only concerning the historicity of this event, but even concerning the existence of Ezra himself. But it is certain that in the Fifth Century B.C., laws were obeyed and institutions were recognised, of which we have no record, outside the Pentateuch, in the earlier historical books. The question to be answered is: What was that "law of Moses" which Ezra brought to Jerusalem and read to the people? Later Judaism calls the first five books of the Bible "the Law of Moses," and for centuries both Jewish and Christian scholars have identified Ezra's law with these books, have supposed that they existed from the time of Moses downwards, but were entirely neglected by the Jews until this time. Modern research is compelled to dissent altogether from this tradition. Our purpose in this book prevents us from discussing the details of this controversy, but in addition to what has been already said in an earlier lecture, the main results of critical study on the origin of the Law may be outlined. From the time occupied by Ezra in reading his law it is inferred that it could hardly have been our first five books of the Bible; and since to carry out the laws contained in them would involve endless discussion because of their contradictory character (compare for example the directions for keeping the feast of Tabernacles in Deut. xvi. 13, 15, which commands seven days, with Lev. xxiii. 39, which adds an eighth day for a solemn assembly; compare also the account in 1 Kings viii. 66, with 2 Chron. vii. 8, 10), it is thought that this law of Ezra must have been much smaller than the Pentateuch, and much more homogeneous. The Pentateuch not only contains more than "laws," but even the legal sections bear the marks of such widely different aims and conditions that we are compelled to assume a gradual collection, with continual redaction and codification, in order to account for the various phenomena. The earliest strata may go back to a great antiquity, and the customs themselves must often be primitive Semitic survivals, but the critical contention is that, as a whole, the "Law of Moses" owes its present form to an age later than the Exile, and somewhat later than Ezra himself; for Ezra's code has itself been revised (compare Neh. x. 32, where a third of a shekel is appointed, with Exod. xxx. 13, where it has increased to half a shekel), before it was amalgamated with the Pentateuch in its existing form. The critical basis for this theory of the gradual formation of the law is found first in the fact that the legislation of the Pentateuch is not homogeneous: it is so contradictory that to carry out the law as it stands would be found impossible. It is claimed that the presence of the various strata can be detected by the numerous repetitions (_e.g._, the commandments exist in three recensions: Exod. xx. 1-17; xxxiv. 17-28; Deut. v. 6-21); by the use of different names for God, by the difference in language and style, and by the change in theological conceptions; and moreover, that these different strata can be roughly assigned to various ages, which can be actually confirmed by the record of their observance in the historical books (compare the provisions made for the Ark in Exod. xxv.-xl.; Num. iii.-iv., with its actual treatment in 1 Sam.). The different strata of the laws, and the ages to which they may be roughly assigned, are as follows:--The earliest code of laws is said to be that of the "Book of the Covenant" (Exod. xxiv. 7), found in Exod. xx. 20-xxiii. 33. The primitive character of this code can be discerned, by the comparison of its directions for worship with those of later ages. It sanctioned the erection of rude altars at any place where Jehovah had been revealed, whereas in later codes no place except the one chosen spot can be used for worship, and the altar must be of highly specialised construction (compare Exod. xx. 24-26 and Deut. xii. 4-24, with Exod. xxvii. 1-8). Now it is precisely this informal worship, which could be performed by any one and at any place, that appears to have been the custom until the time of the reformation under Josiah; and in his times, and as the cause of his reform, the critics place the Book of Deuteronomy, v.-xxvi.; for it presupposes the teaching of the prophets and is the programme followed by Josiah. Then next follows "the Law of Holiness" (Lev. xvii.-xxvi.); which is either the outcome of Ezekiel's work or is shortly prior to it; anyhow, the connection is close. Then in 444 B.C. appears the code of Ezra, which was afterwards developed and set in a brief narrative describing the historical preparation for the law and its actual deliverance by Moses; this document of history and laws is known for convenience as the Priestly Code, and is denoted by the letter "P." The editorial framework of the completed Hexateuch (the first six books of the Bible), is of the same stamp as the Priests' Code, and the date of its final compilation must not be put very much later than Ezra, since the Samaritan Pentateuch probably goes back to the Fourth Century, from which date it can claim an independent existence. It is this work of the Priests that we are now to examine. "P" is to be found at present scattered throughout the Hexateuch, and embraces nearly the whole of Leviticus, Numbers and a good portion of Exodus; is found in many scattered passages in Genesis and in a small portion of Joshua and Judges, especially, in the latter case, in the closing chapters; there is only a very little in Deuteronomy. Although not the work of one hand, these passages can be detected by their unity of motive, the uniform phraseology, the priestly outlook, and their concern with legal and ritualistic regulations. The style is stereotyped, measured, and prosaic, and is rendered somewhat monotonous by the repetition of stated formulae. The theological ideas are dominated by the thought of the awful holiness of God and the danger that there lies in approaching Him in any other than the ordained way. What were the sources from which this code drew its material? It is not suggested that the code was simply _invented_ during the Exile. Many of the legal commands concerning uncleanness, leprosy, and marriage are really ancient customs, and only owed their _codification_ to this late age; for they reflect a low stage of culture, and their rites of purification are primitive. Again sacrifice had been performed as far back as Semitic history can be traced, and customs which had persisted were now simply tabulated and their form fixed. Many of the sacrificial rites prescribed in the code still bear the marks of their early origin, especially in the case of the burnt and the peace-offerings, but the law of the sin-offering shows artificial elaboration. Undoubtedly when Solomon's Temple was built a new sacrificial ritual would be developed more in keeping with the splendour of the edifice, and as the Temple increased in prestige, and when under Isaiah's influence it became the one spot at which sacrifice could be performed, the priestly caste would keep the rite in their own hands and perform it with more care; and all this would become the basis for a new ritualistic legislation. The minuteness of the Priestly Code often gives the impression of a record of exact history, but a careful examination of such measurements as are given in the case of the Ark or the Tabernacle do not confirm the historical accuracy; for the Tabernacle cannot be made exactly as described, and if it could be, would neither stand up, nor be suitable for the purpose for which it was intended, nor be able to be transported through the desert. It is simply a tent-like model of the Temple projected into the early history on the theory that the worship which existed in the writer's time was that which had always existed. The artificial conception of the history which "P" follows can of course be seen, if we separate the various strata of the first six books in the Bible, but it can be seen without this difficult and controversial method by comparing the history of Kings with Chronicles: the one written largely before and the other entirely after the legislation of "P" had been accepted. The law of the Day of Atonement is almost entirely late, and originated in the deepened sense of guilt produced during the Exile; neither is there any trace of its observance until that time. A difficult question has arisen concerning the date of this legislation since the discovery of the Code of Hammurabi. Hammurabi was a Babylonian king who lived somewhere about 2,250 B.C., and who has been identified by some with the Amraphael of Gen. xiv. His code reveals a fairly advanced stage of civilisation and morality existing in Babylon at that time, but its chief interest for us is found in the fact that many of the laws concerning common life, marriage, etc., are not only like the laws of the Bible, but in some cases are verbally similar. This phenomenon demands some theory of contact between the two codes, but no theory has yet been found that explains all the facts. The idea of direct borrowing on either side can hardly be taken seriously, and the correspondence between the two codes hardly requires that; so that the question is narrowed to one of influence. This influence would seem to be most natural in the time of the Exile, were it not that the strictly exclusive spirit then developed by the Jews makes it unthinkable. There remains either the explanation of a common basis for the two codes, traceable to their Semitic origin, or what has received the greater support from scholars, the idea that the influence of Hammurabi's laws on Israel's legislation is to be traced through the former inhabitants of Canaan. To understand how this is possible, we must remember that it is now known that Babylon had predominating influence over Western Palestine before the conquest of Canaan by the Hebrews; that the inhabitants of the land were much more civilised than their conquerors; and that the invaders did not exterminate the inhabitants, but quietly effected a settlement among them and adopted many of their customs. While on the subject of the influence of Babylon it will be convenient to notice here that this influence is not confined to legal matters, but can be traced in certain legendary elements in the Old Testament. The ideal of the Priests' Code would not tolerate heathen mythology that could be detected as such, to appear in its work, and yet there are definite traces of such mythology to be found in "P"s account of the creation in Gen. i. The discovery of the libraries of Assurbanipal has brought to light records of a mythological cosmogony which, while utterly different in conception and spirit from Genesis, is sufficiently similar to suggest some degree of connection. This Babylonian Epic of creation deals not so much with the remarkably scientific idea of a gradual creation of our earth out of chaotic materials, but with a conflict of gods and monsters which is supposed to have taken place before the creation. In the opening verses of the Bible there is a reference to the partition of the deep, which is here called by the non-Hebrew name _Tehom_, into two parts: the waters above and the waters under the firmament. Now in the Babylonian story the actual creation of the earth is preceded by a mighty struggle between _Marduk_, the sun-god (the Merodach of the Bible) and a great dragon symbolical of the primeval waters, which bears the name _Tiamat_, the Babylonian form of _Tehom_. The influence of this myth is the more certainly to be traced in Genesis, because it appears elsewhere in the Old Testament under the form of a legend of a conflict between Jehovah and Rahab, a mighty dragon; and this legend is generally in some way connected with creation (Job ix. 13; xxvi. 12; Isa. li. 9; Ps. lxxxix. 10). There is also a Babylonian story of the flood which keeps even closer to the Bible narrative, and it may be seen from the Babylonian version that this is more probably another form of the dragon myth than a common memory of a tremendous deluge. A Babylonian seal cylinder in the British Museum bears the picture of a man and woman standing one on each side of a sacred tree, from which they are picking fruit, while a serpent coils around the tree; but no written explanation of this very suggestive picture has been discovered. These mythical stories have come down from primitive Semitic times, but we cannot fail to notice that while their ancestry is undoubtedly common, there is a tremendous difference between the stage reached under the inspiration of the Hebrew genius and the crude Polytheism of the Babylonian stories. Their connection in some way is unmistakable, but still more certain is their different ethical and religious level. The fact of the borrowing does not deny the inspiration; it rather reveals how powerful that inspiration was. To turn now to a consideration of the work of the Priests. We must doubtless concede to the workers a very lofty motive: it was nothing less than an endeavour to include the whole of the nation's life under the conception that God was dwelling among His people, and that the nation must be holy because He is holy. But in the working out of this purpose the ideal is neither secured nor maintained. The holiness of God is insisted on with much reiteration, but it is conceived of as a physical rather than a moral attribute. It is really only a conception of the unapproachability of God unless certain purely ritual and physical conditions are observed. For the enforcement of this idea the old custom of sacrifice was elaborated and strictly defined, but strangely enough, without explicit teaching as to its meaning. This is peculiar, and it seems to have remained largely unnoticed, for many Biblical expositors have adopted without inquiry the idea that the sacrifices were substitutionary, piacular, and typical of the sacrifice of Christ. The piacular meaning suggests itself at so many points that it is startling to find that it cannot be borne out by careful examination. The sacrifices are in most instances only efficacious for the forgiveness of unintentional sins, or for the atonement of ritualistic mistakes made in ignorance or through inadvertence. The ceremony of laying the hands of the offerer on the head of the intended victim, suggests that a symbolical transference of guilt is taking place, and yet only in one case is this accompanied by a confession of sins, and there the victim is not slain, but led away for Azazel. The sin-offering involved the death of the animal, but an animal was not absolutely necessary for the purpose, and flour might be substituted; and even where we have the slain animal, the idea that the animal has taken the place of the sinner seems to be excluded by the fact that its flesh is regarded as "most holy." The offerings are said to make atonement, but we are not told how this is affected unless in the passage that states that "it is the blood that maketh atonement, by reason of the life." The word translated "atonement" means simply "a covering," and of course may mean that the blood, which is symbolical of the offered life, either covers the eyes of God from beholding the sin, or covers the sinner. We are left then, either with the deduction that the exact significance of the sacrifices was not mentioned because everyone knew what it was, or that it has not been told because it was too mysterious, or that there was no definite meaning attached to them. Originally sacrifice did not bear a piacular significance, but it would be unsafe to argue from this that no substitutionary value was attached to the Levitical sacrifices by these priestly lawyers; indeed the only safe conclusion seems to be that the priests adopted these sacrifices, which were time-honoured, as the proper ritual for the approach to God, without any definite inquiry as to their meaning. But taking the Levitical system as a whole there seems to underlie it the theory of symbolical, although not piacular substitution. God owns man entirely, and that by right: his time, possessions, flocks, and lands; and demands from him the completest recognition of this ownership. Now in practice, this absolute demand can only be recognised by substitute and proxy; and so we have the recognition of God's claims by the observance of one holy day in seven, by the ransom of the first-born, by the sabbatical and jubilee years, by the tithes, and especially by the sacrifices. His dwelling in the land is symbolised by the respect paid to one symbolical holy place; and the continual service He demands is represented by the daily service carried on by the Levitical caste. But even if this be the intention of the system, it is nowhere so defined, and therefore it is not surprising to find that people soon forgot the symbolical meaning, and treated the symbol as a thing sufficient in itself; with the result, that the service of God came to be restricted to a performance of rites that had lost all significance. One explanation would soon silence any criticism of this scheme that might arise, namely, that God had so ordained that men should worship Him. But deeper still there lay a radical misconception of the very nature of God and of the service He seeks. God was conceived as inimical not so much to man's sin, as to man himself; and this danger was averted by the use of protective rites which needed to be performed with scrupulous care, lest a mistake might bring down on the worshipper immediate and awful destruction, quite irrespective of his moral condition. Doubtless the nation might be impressed by these means with the awful aloofness of God, and there must often have accompanied this some notion of the ethical character that was expressed in this separateness; but the means taken for satisfying this character and demand in the nature of God could never have had any other result than it did, namely, the conception that attention to details of ritual could be a substitute for the much more difficult service of repentance and righteousness. It is possible that we may be under-estimating the real motive of the Priests' work and its actual success in preserving religion under these forms; but the radical evil is clearly exposed when we come to the time of another calamity, that which befel the nation under Antiochus Epiphanes, when no other method of averting the anger of God seems to have been thought of, except that of increasing the rigour of this ritual law and fencing it round with still further restrictions, until it became a burden too heavy to be borne. Such a régime utterly failed to understand the teaching of Jesus and could only regard His religion as impious and lacking in all that was essential, reverential, or good, and it was "the Law" which put Jesus to death. It is much to be deplored that the Sacrifice of Christ has in turn been explained to the conscience touched to penitence and tenderness by the story of the Cross, rather by the analogy of the Old Testament sacrifices than by its complete superiority to them as based upon a different and ethical order; for the rags and tatters of the Levitical system still impede the religious life; allowing men to think that God is content with substitutes, can be placated with blood, and is more concerned with abstract regulations than with moral change. And so there still hang about religion the same inconsistencies, the same slaughter of the prophets, the same blindness to the eternal demands of personal and social righteousness. The motive of the work of the Priests may have been to enforce the prophetic repentance, but to gain this end they compromised with unspiritual ritual, and on that compromise Christ was, and is still crucified. THE RELIGION OF THE PSALMISTS Titles of the Psalms, descriptive of their contents:-- (1) Song, Heb. _Shirah._ A lyrical poem for singing. Probably the earliest title, which in some instances may have belonged to the original composition. (2) _Michtam_, perhaps, "a golden piece." The title indicates their artistic form and choice contents. They were probably all taken from a previous collection. (3) _Maschil_, a meditative poem, from a collection made perhaps in the late Persian period. (4) Psalm, Heb. _Mizmor_. The name given to a collection used for public worship, probably in the early Greek period. (5) _Shiggaion_, (Ps. vii.; also in plural, Hab. iii. 1.) Some take this to mean a wild, passionate composition, but this Psalm hardly bears that character. Perhaps we may expect a textual corruption from _Neginah_: a song accompanied with musical instruments. (6) A song of Ascents: used in the processions to the Temple. (7) A prayer. On the question of the Davidic authorship of the Psalms, the following passages should be examined; they would appear to be in hopeless disagreement with the life of David as depicted in the historical books. Ps. v. 8-10; vi. 7, f.; xii. 1-4; xvii. 9-14; xxii.; xxvii. 10, 12; xxxv. 11-21; xli. 5-9; liv. 2-6; lxii. 3, f. The Psalms which are ascribed to some definite occasion in David's life are not on the whole any more suitable to the situation, although there is generally some single phrase which probably gave rise to this identification. The great commentator Ewald, on literary grounds ascribed the following Psalms to David because of their originality and dignified spirit: Ps. iii.; iv.; vii.; viii.; xi.; xv.; xviii.; xix. 1-6; xxiv. 1-6; xxiv. 7-10; xxix.; xxxii.; lx. 6-9; lxviii. 13-18; ci.; cxliv. 12-14. Briggs would not go so far as to indicate Davidic Psalms, but would put as far back as the Early Monarchy, Ps. vii., xiii., xviii., xxiii., xxiv. b, lx. a, and cx. Lecture IX THE RELIGION OF THE PSALMISTS The principles of Biblical criticism have often been traced to a vigorous application of the theory of evolution to the growth of religious ideas. Such an application, if without the support of facts, would discredit all critical results; but as a matter of fact, the critical readjustment of the Old Testament does not give a perfect progression in religious development. Indeed, it leaves us with a perplexing story of decline from high attainment. The Law follows the Prophets, and no theory can recognise the Law as an advance upon prophetic teaching. The national rejection of the Prophets is the central tragedy of Hebrew history and prepares us for the national rejection of Jesus. Yet between the Prophets and the religion of the Gospels we are able to trace an almost continuous link in the religion of the Psalmists. This connection is somewhat obscured by the early date assigned to the Psalms by uncritical tradition, by the heterogeneous character of the collection, and by its continual redaction in the interest of the purpose to which they were adapted. In adopting this collection of religious poems for the purpose of public praise, it is more than likely that additions were made, in order that they might more fitly express the need of the time, while reverence for the writings, by the time at least, of the final edition of the work, operated to preserve the original; as may be seen, for instance, in the addition made to the fifty-first Psalm (ver. 18, 19), which in its original form condemns the very worship in which it was used. Moreover the collection is as much a prayer-book as a hymn-book, for many of the Psalms are really prayers, and five of them are actually so entitled. The book was certainly used in the Temple services, but on the whole it must have seemed more fitted for the non-sacrificial and non-ceremonial worship of the synagogue, or for the private devotions of pious men and women. However and wherever used, it must have nourished a deep personal religion and kept alive hopes to which Christianity afterwards appealed. No other single book of the Old Testament has had such an influence on Christian piety and worship. From ancient times to the present day the Psalms have been chanted, and in Churches of widely differing ritual they have been considered the only fit vehicle for Christian praise. Nothing more clearly demonstrates their proximity to the Christian view of things, although the modern spirit in Christendom is finding it increasingly difficult to express itself in the language of all the Psalms, on account of their imprecatory wishes. Perhaps still more, the predominant tone of the book, which is one of crying for deliverance from overwhelming enemies and oppression, hardly suits the safety of our times, or meets the demand for a joyful religious spirit. Many of the Psalms become real only in times of severe spiritual trial, and where there exists a deep sense of contrition; still better do they express the emotions which arise in times of national calamity or religious persecution; and most of all when men are constrained to take arms in the cause of religion and righteousness. They have never sounded so fitting as on the lips of the Reformers, Cromwell's Ironsides, or the Scottish Covenanters. And yet their great breadth of appeal, their touching of every possible note in religious experience--penitence and joy, questioning and trust, longing and satisfaction, defeat and victory,--their majestic literary form, and their poetic inspiration will preserve them for ever as sublime utterances of universal religion. But our work is not to appraise their eternal value, but to estimate their significance, influence, and position in the development of Old Testament religion; and to do this we must endeavour to trace the origin and compilation of the Psalter. The criticism of the Psalter is faced by a peculiarly difficult and complex problem, arising from the lack of historic connection, the possible obliteration by editorial redaction, and the difficulty of interpreting with certainty even those data which the text presents, and it has by no means yet reached settled conclusions; only general and tentative results can be noted here. That, however, the book is the result of a gradual process, may be seen from the presence of doublets (liii. = xiv.; lxx. = xl. 13-17; cviii. = lvii. 7-11 + lx. 5-12), and from the subscription at the end of Book II., which displays ignorance of the fact that further Psalms, ascribed to David follow. It will be more convenient to start from the final position and work backward; and that final position is undoubtedly this, that the Book of Psalms as it stands in our Bible is the hymn-book of the restored Second Temple. It is a book prepared for musical accompaniment; this may be seen from the titles still preserved at the head of many of the Psalms. These titles are of three kinds: they describe the nature of the poetic composition; they give the names of the authors and sometimes the circumstances in which they were composed; and the third kind are most probably to be explained as instructions for musical setting. These last-named titles are in most cases very obscure; the Revised Version has simply transliterated the Hebrew words. On the assumption that these are musical terms, we have three classes of them in the Psalms. One class apparently gives directions for the tune to which the Psalm is to be sung, and this tune is named, like some modern hymn tunes, after the words with which the tune had been originally or customarily associated; these appear to have been popular songs, not necessarily of an entirely religious character (Ps. lvi., R.V. title: "set to Jonath elem rehokim"; mar. translates: "The silent dove of them that are afar off"; Ps. lvii., lviii.: "set to Al tashheth," which means: "Do not destroy." In the Septuagint the setting of Ps. lxx. has been altered to: "Save me, O Lord"). Other titles seem to direct the voice to be used in singing, as either falsetto or bass (Ps. xlvi., "set to Alamoth"; probably maiden-like voices, and as women took no part in the service of the choirs, this must refer either to tenor, or male falsetto; Ps. vi., xii., "set to the Sheminith." R.V. mar., "the eighth." This is probably the octave or bass voice). Two references are to be found to the instrumental accompaniment to be used, as either stringed or wind instruments (Ps. iv., vi., etc., "on stringed instruments"; Ps. v., "with the Nehiloth," mar., "wind instruments"). The much discussed meaning of _Selah_ is most probably to be sought in a musical direction. The word means: "lift up." The Septuagint translates, "interlude," but many other versions (Version of Aquila, Syriac Peshitto, Jerome and the Targum) translate, "for ever." This duplicate translation suggests the very possible clue that at the places where _Selah_ appears, the Psalm might be ended, if desired, and the "for ever," or the doxology, which was usually sung at the end of the Psalm and which is found at the end of each book, could be taken there. As completed, the Psalter is therefore a book with directions for a fully organised and choral worship, and we have to seek for a time when such a worship was in existence. The difficulty is that these musical directions are somewhat rare and are not found in the later books, but only in connection with those Psalms entitled, "for the Director." As the instruments mentioned are only of the simplest kind and not of the varied character used in the ornate worship of the Temple (cxlix. 3; cl. 3-5), and as by the time the Greek translation was made (150 B.C.), their significance was forgotten, we have to put the final edition long after the founding of synagogue worship, in which the Director's Psalm Book was first used, and at some period when there had been a complete change in musical practice. This demands a time when Hellenistic culture had moulded even the Temple worship. (The Jews were under Greek influence and rule from B.C. 333 to B.C. 63.) The time from which a full choral service was in use in the Temple is to be carried back, according to the Chronicler, to the time of Solomon and David, but a comparison with the earlier history contained in the Books of the Kings does not confirm this. The Chronicler, who from his interest in these matters seems to have been a member of one of the Levite choirs, really gives us the customs current in his times, and infers that they went back unchanged to the time of the building of the first Temple and to the preparatory work of David. These considerations, together with the admitted lateness of many of the Psalms, some of them undoubtedly belonging to the times of the Maccabæan wars, bring us down to that late age and perhaps more precisely to the time of the rededicated Temple (165 B.C.), and demand that the final edition of the Psalter is to be placed somewhere about 150 B.C. We might expect to find traces of the growth of the Psalter in the division into five books (at xli., lxxii., cvi., cl., see R. V.), but there seems no real division necessary between Books IV. and V. and the five-fold division may be due to the desire to imitate the divisions of the Law; the other divisions however contain more hopeful suggestions. The first book, for instance, is almost entirely ascribed to David (Ps. i. is an introduction to the whole book, composed for the final edition, and Ps. ii. may have been also placed in front as part of the introduction. Ps. xxxiii., which is very late, may have been added as a kind of doxology to Ps. xxxii. The rest are ascribed to David). The second book is largely Davidic and it concludes with the statement: "the prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended." In spite of this notice Psalms are found ascribed to David in the books that follow, so that the remark must have been found appended to a collection that the final editor took over; it cannot be due to his own hand. Further evidence of compilation is to be found in the strange occurrence of the different names for God: Elohim and Jehovah. In the first book the name of Jehovah preponderates. In Book II. the name Elohim is found most frequently. Then in Book III. Psalms lxxiii.-lxxxiii. use Elohim only, and lxxxiv.-lxxxix. Jehovah mainly; and in practically the whole of Books IV. and V. Jehovah is almost solely used, The reason for this phenomenon must be sought in editorial redaction, for in the duplicate Psalms, xiv. and liii., xl. 13-17 and lxx., Jehovah is found in the first recension and Elohim in the second. The Elohistic character of lxxiii.-lxxxiii. may be due to the original compiler since they are all ascribed to Asaph and otherwise bear marks of common production. The Elohistic redaction may have been made in a period when the name Jehovah sounded tribal and almost heathenish; but a similar test leads to the conclusion that the first collection enjoyed by this time a liturgical familiarity, which did not permit of alteration. The reversion to the name of Jehovah in Books IV. and V. might be explained by the fact that in later times the name was written but never pronounced. On the line of these suggestions we should expect to find that Book I. contained the earliest Psalms and Books IV. and V. the latest; this is roughly correct, if we allow for the possibility of minor insertions being made for various purposes in the last edition. In Book V. there is a group of Psalms (civ.-cvi., cxi.-cxiii., cxv.-cxvii., cxxxv., cxlvi.-cl.), which are distinguished by either commencing or ending with "Hallelujah," and are known as the "Hallels." From their contents, it may be observed that they are suitable for use at the Great Festivals, and it is known that they were, and are still so used by the Jews. They imply a highly organised musical service (Ps. cl.), they require a time when the festivals were regularly observed and when the worship of the Temple could be carried on without fear. Such conditions are to be found together only after the Exile, and then only during the period of Greek rule; and to this late period the composition of these Psalms is to be referred. An even later date is demanded for some Psalms that are said to reflect the rebellion against the Hellenizing movement enforced by Antiochus Epiphanes, in which the Maccabees played such a heroic part. This date is confirmed by the references to: the "assembly of the saints" (Ps. cxlix. 1, Heb. _hasidim_, the purist party formed in that time); the cruel persecution for religious opinions (Ps. xliv. 17-22; lxxix. 2; lxxxiii. 3, 4); the defiling of the Temple, the burning of the synagogues, and the silence of the Prophetic voice (Ps. lxxiv. 7-9; lxxix. 1). Other Maccabæan Psalms are said to be: cx., where there is a reference to some priest who is not in the legitimate succession, which entirely describes the Priest-Kings of the Maccabæan dynasty (other scholars would put this Psalm very early; on the other hand there are alleged traces of an acrostic that would spell Simon, the first of the Maccabæan Priest-Kings); cxv. cxviii., which celebrate successful wars in which the leaders have been the house of Aaron, to which house the Maccabees of course belonged. This is the latest date that is demanded for any of the Psalms, and in the present condition of criticism we can only say that between this and some earlier period the book is to be placed. It must now be our task to discover the earliest date that any of the Psalms demand. We have seen that Book I. seems to be the earliest collection, and tradition assumes that this was the work of David and was the Psalm Book used in the First Temple. To discuss this point it is necessary to enquire into the reliability of the titles that ascribe the Psalms to definite authors. These titles give: one each to Moses, Ethan, and Heman; two to Solomon; eleven to the Sons of Korah; twelve to Asaph; and seventy-three to David (it is doubtful whether Jeduthun is a person; if so he is probably the same as Ethan: Ps. xxxix., lxii., lxxvii., titles; cp. 1 Chron. vi. 44 with 1 Chron. ix. 16). Now it should be noticed that none of the authors are later than Solomon (Ethan, 1 Kings iv. 31, 1 Chron. vi. 44; Heman, 1 Kings iv. 31, 1 Chron. vi. 33, xv. 17, 19, xxv. 5; Asaph, 1 Chron. vi. 39, xxv. 1f, Neh. xii. 46; in Ezra ii. 41, Neh. vii. 44, Asaph seems to mean a guild of singers rather than an individual). If any of the Psalms ascribed to authors might be expected to yield confirmation by internal evidence, it would be Ps. xc.; but there is nothing in its language or thought that points to extreme antiquity. There is also nothing in the Psalms themselves that confirms the authorship of the contemporaries of Solomon, Ethan and Heman. The title of Ps. cxxvii., "of Solomon," is missing in the Septuagint and is evidently a late gloss, and the title of Ps. lxxii. is translated in the Septuagint: "a psalm _for_ Solomon," which certainly describes the contents better. The Psalms ascribed to the Sons of Korah (xlii.-xlix., lxxxiv., lxxxv., lxxxvii., lxxxviii.; 2 Chron. xx. 19, 1 Chron. xxvi. 19; but 1 Chron. vi. 33-38 shows that Kohathite and Korahite are the same), have common features, as have also the Psalms ascribed to Asaph, which imply that they are at least guild collections; but their exalted conception of God, their consciousness of national righteousness, the reference to synagogue worship and the cessation of prophecy (lxxiv. 8f) point to a time subsequent to Ezra. The chief interest of the titles is found in the ascription of so many Psalms to David. It was long thought that David was not only the author of the Psalms ascribed to him, but that he was also editor of the entire Psalter. (When as early as Theodore of Mopsuestia it was recognised that some of the Psalms were Maccabæan, it was supposed that David wrote them in the spirit of prophecy.) Our enquiry may be narrowed down to those Psalms that are ascribed to David in the earliest collection, Book I. Do these reflect the conditions and development of his times? It must be replied that there is nothing in the Davidic Psalms as a whole to distinguish them from other Psalms, and what historical connection they betray seems everywhere to belong to an age later than David. The Temple is spoken of as already in existence (Ps. v. 7; xi. 4) and the name for Jerusalem, "my holy hill," seems to demand a time subsequent to the mission of Isaiah. The general conditions of life reflected are clearly those in which a godly minority is oppressed and wickedness is established in the land; a condition which finds no parallel in the Books of Samuel. Moreover, the religious ideas are far in advance of those that seem to have been prevalent in the time of David or that can be traced to him. The general tone of the Psalms is one of a chastened piety that hardly existed in the time of the kingdom, and the religious ideas everywhere show dependence upon the teaching of the Prophets. There is hardly a verse of the fifty-first Psalm which cannot be paralleled in Jeremiah, but there is almost nothing in the Psalm that makes it a fitting confession for an adulterer and murderer. These considerations lead us to enquire whether the Hebrew preposition translated "of" David denotes authorship; its accurate signification is "belonging to," and from the analogy of the other titles we infer this to mean that the editor found these Psalms in a collection ascribed to David. What gave the name of David to that collection? Some of the Psalms may be pre-exilic and may even go down to the early monarchy; Ps. xx. may belong to the Old Kingdom, but it can hardly have come from the lips of David; it is Ps. xviii. that has perhaps the greatest claim to Davidic authorship. This Psalm is also found in 2 Sam. xxii., but there it seems to be an interpolation, for it breaks apart verses that apparently once stood together (2 Sam. xxi. 22 and xxiii. 8). Yet we meet with a reference to the Temple even in this Psalm (2 Sam. xxi. 7); at the same time several of its passages would come very fittingly from the Warrior King, and would be suitable to his barbarous times. In this Psalm, if anywhere, we may possess some original Davidic fragments. We must conclude therefore, that the Davidic Psalter was so called because its origin was somehow due to David, or because it contained some Song of David which must have been considerably altered to suit liturgical purposes. The early tradition of David ascribes to him a poetic and musical gift (1 Sam. xvi. 18; Amos. vi. 5), and of this the lament over Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam. i.) is a sufficient confirmation, but it should be noticed that it is remarkably free from any religious sentiment whatsoever. It must be due to the later tradition of the Chronicler that David has been credited as the saintly author of the whole Book of Psalms. The conclusion is that the titles are not, strictly speaking, a claim to authorship, but are names given, for various reasons, to pre-existing collections; that the earliest of these collections may contain pre-exilic Psalms, but that everything points to the collection being made for use in the time of the Second Temple. The references to a king do not necessitate any re-consideration of this verdict; they may be personifications of the nation in the light of Messianic conceptions. This position has been steadily resisted by some in the interests of tradition, but without any real religious reason being adduced; for the idea that this decision denies the authority of Christ and His Apostles is disposed of by the simple fact that in the New Testament, David is simply a name for the Psalter (Ps. ii. is ascribed to David in Acts ii. 34; it is anonymous in the Psalter. Heb. iv. 7 has "in" David; this does not refer to authorship, for the author of this Epistle never quotes the Scriptures save anonymously). To others it will perhaps come as a great relief to feel that the writer of some of the most spiritual utterances of personal religion need not be identified with the historical David. There are awful possibilities of failure in the most religious men, but the problem here is more difficult than that: it would compel us to think of David as displaying in public no hint of the secrets of his inner religious life, but very much that contradicts them. The traditional idea of the authorship of the Psalms has done grave injustice to the sincere if passionate character of the historical David. The origin of such a tradition is due as much to the spiritual blindness as to the careless historic judgment of later Judaism, and its acceptance by generations of Christian students speaks a greater reverence for tradition than for religious insight. To be compelled to date the great majority of the Psalms within the period 500-150 B.C., is indeed a comforting interpretation of Jewish history; for it shows that the barren ground of post-exilic times was not without its tender flowers of piety and an appreciation of the prophetic religion far beyond that of the Prophets' contemporaries. The gloss of legalism, which can be traced in the Psalter, and which was inevitable when these private devotions were adapted to the Levitical worship of the Temple, has not succeeded in obscuring, but rather brings into greater clearness the spiritual elements in the Psalms. It is welcome to turn from this task of literary criticism, which finds in the Psalms its most difficult field, and which perhaps yields here less help than in other branches of Bible literature, to an endeavour to appreciate the religion of the Psalmists. There is difficulty here also; but now it is in the splendour of the composition, the magnificent breadth of experience they embrace, the classic utterance of the eternal religion of the heart. We have recognised the heterogeneous character of the collection, and it is only to be expected that this should be reflected in the variety of religious ideas. A theology of the Psalter is as impossible as it is mistaken. The quality of poetic genius varies, the heights of religious inspiration sometimes reached are not consistently maintained, and there are many lower levels. And yet there remains a sufficient unity to leave a very definite impression; that unity owes little to similarity of circumstances, to contemporaneity, or to the influence of a theological school; it is rather due to the unreflective simplicity of the human mind in the realised presence of God. In that position all unfettered religion speaks one tongue: the only mother tongue of humanity. The inspiration of the Psalmist owes its beauty to the absence of self-consciousness. There is nothing here of the prophetic claim to speak in the name of God; in the Psalms God does not speak to men, men speak to God, but it is just because of this that the revelation in the Psalms reaches so far beyond the limits of Old Testament religion and seems to grasp that religion which was to be personified in the consciousness of Jesus. We are compelled to recognise that men's prayers are themselves a revelation of God, and that when men seek to voice their highest aspiration we catch the sound of a deep undertone, the supplication of the Spirit that intercedes within. As an expression of eternal religion the Psalms have one serious defect, which really unfits them, without careful selection, for use in Christian worship--their awful imprecations upon enemies. There are hardly to be found in the whole realm of literature more fearful desires for vengeance than in the Psalms (cix. 6-15. cxxxvii. 9; cxl. 10). To date the Psalms from the comfortable times of the monarchy, under the martial supremacy of David and Solomon, is to make them cruel without meaning; but imagine the sufferings of the Israelites in Exile, or in the still worse times when the pious remnant were persecuted by their own irreligious and apostate countrymen, which was so often their lot in post-exilic times, and these expressions can be explained, even if they cannot be justified. The desire for vengeance does not arise from personal motives, but is doubtless due to the complete identification of the Psalmist with the cause of God and righteousness, and to his burning indignation against the cruelty, injustice, and craftiness of the impenitent wicked. Thus understood, there is a moral element in this anger, which is not only to be condoned but even admired. This deep moral revulsion has been one of the greatest factors in moulding history along righteous lines. But when all this has been said, it remains to be acknowledged frankly that this is not the religion of the Sermon on the Mount. The anger at sin is right, but the desire for vengeance is no real cure for sin. It is far from the deep wisdom of the Son of Man; but we have to remember, when we judge the Psalms from that standard, that His wisdom is still unaccepted, not only by the world, but by many who profess His name. It is in the Psalms that personal religion receives its clearest exposition in the Old Testament, and this spirit owes much to the personal experience of Jeremiah. There has been an endeavour to find the speaking subject of the Psalms not in the individual but in the nation. There are national Psalms, but many others cannot be successfully interpreted save as the expressions of personal devotion. National religion could never reach these heights; it is bound down to the average level, it is always open to unethical movements and ideas. The personal element is not to be confused with the individualistic; the personal is wider than the individual; it realises the things that lie at the base of all human life, and when it is most personal it speaks the most universal language. It is in the deep sense of sin and the assurance of forgiveness that the Psalms are the classics for all who know the secrets they utter; and the sense of sin can never be felt save under the searching light of God's very presence. To be deeply conscious of sin is the first step towards any high revelation of God, and of this the fifty-first Psalm is the most perfect expression; there we see the sense of inward sin, opening up the possibility of a separation between the self and that higher self, the holy spirit, and bringing about the severest mental pain and anguish. Naturally, the Psalms hardly rise to the Christian ground of forgiveness, but the thirty-second Psalm vibrates with the joy that the Christian knows and, when mere figures of speech are discounted, it springs from the same reason: the acknowledgment of one's sin and the consciousness of its forgiveness in the newly realised communion with God. In dealing with the problem of the providential order of the world, the Psalms hardly reflect any higher conceptions than those found elsewhere in the Old Testament, if they even rise as high as the conception of the Second Isaiah. The idea that goodness is rewarded by long life and prosperity, and that wickedness is always marked by outward disaster is the root idea; and the fact that this is not confirmed by observation is the cause of the complaint of many a Psalm. This problem receives no conscious solution throughout the book. The revelation given through the worship of the sanctuary only shows that the prosperity of the wicked is temporary (Ps. xxxvii., lxxiii.); but how often even this must seem to be untrue, for in many cases there are no bands in their death. Nothing higher is reached than pride in one's integrity and the assurance that somehow and somewhere retribution is sure. There is no conception of the principle of vicarious suffering, and the values set upon righteousness and prosperity never attain to those words of Jesus: "Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness sake." The pressure of this problem of Providence is supposed to have driven the Psalmists to pierce the veil and to descry beyond the grave a compensation for the inequalities of this life, and passages are frequently adduced to prove this (Ps. xvi. 10, 11; xvii. 15; xlix., 15; lxxiii. 23-26). The current belief of Israel embraced an existence after death, but only in the form of unconscious and shadowy life in the under world, _Sheol_, and this is most explicitly expressed in many of the Psalms (vi. 5; xxx. 9; xlix. 14; lxxxviii. 10-12). What then is the significance of the expressions which seem to point to something more? An accurate translation and a correct exegesis dispose of nearly all of these passages as in any sense explicit evidence for a definite belief in immortality; but there remains a witness of much greater value. It is through communion with God, and because of the significance with which it invests conscious life that the Psalmists are led to feel that their experience can never be interrupted by death. To those who know the reality of personal communion with God, this has more cogency than any other argument for immortality. The experience of communion throws a new value on personality and gives a deeper meaning to this life, and in face of this discovery death becomes nothing more than a passing shadow. While therefore the application of Ps. xvi. 10 to the resurrection of Christ is foreign to the methods of modern interpretation, that passage does show the real significance of the resurrection of Christ; for it is the person of Christ in communion with God that has brought life and immortality to light. The Psalmist shared this vital experience whether he was able to infer immortality of the soul from it or not. But the glory of the Psalms is found in their realisation of the presence of God. This expresses itself in the vivid consciousness of a present and helpful Personality rather than in intellectual concepts or theological definitions. The transcendence of God receives full appreciation, but it is never in terms of spatial distance, but in an inward realisation of His moral excellence (Ps. xxxvi. 5-7). To the discerning soul the presence of God is inescapable and is absolutely omnipresent (Ps. cxxxix. 7-10). Right alongside of the recognition of the might of God and His holiness, there is found the sense of His fatherly pity, His gentleness, and His understanding of us (Ps. ciii. 13; xviii. 35). It would be altogether mistaken to look in the Psalms for that conception of Nature which has become one of the greatest gains of modern culture. To the Psalmist Nature has no meaning apart from God, and it is merely the sphere of His activity. But the beginnings of a poetic delight in things is felt almost on every page (Ps. xxiii. 2; lv. 6; lxv. 8, 9; xciii. 3; cvii. 24; cx. 3b; cxxiv. 5; cxxx. 6; cxxxix. 18b); while the so-called Nature Psalms (viii., xix., xxix., lxv., xciii., civ., cxlviii.) yield a conception of creation and of the relation of God to the world that has not sufficiently shaped theology, and as a consequence has made it possible for us to think of a conflict between religion and science. The consciousness of God as of a present living Personality is the great contribution of Hebrew religion, and of this the Psalms are the supreme expression. All conception of a merely unconscious, all-pervading essence is transcended by the intense experience of communion; He is "an ever present help in time of trouble." The Hebrew Psalmist may be a child beside the Hindu sage or the Greek philosopher, but no one has ever sounded the human heart as he. The experience he has bequeathed to the world is that of a God who is infinite, mighty and all-present, and yet One who can be known in the experiences of temporal life and felt in the limitations of the human mind; One who shepherds and guides men, and who can take the place of human friend or nearest relative. This is in the direct line with Christ's consciousness of the Father. Without this we may have a mysticism that must perforce remain silent, or a philosophy that loses itself in the endeavour to reconcile the antinomies of thought, but without this we cannot have a religion that can satisfy the craving of the human heart for an infinite, holy, and helping Companion. THE RELIGION OF THE WISE In determining from internal evidence whether Job is later or earlier than Proverbs, the following comparisons should be examined:-- Job v. 17 and Prov. iii. 11. " xi. 8 " " ix. 18. " xv. 7 " " viii. 25. " xviii. 5,6} " {" xiii. 9. " xxi. 17 } " {" xxiv. 20. " xxii. 28 " " iv. 18. " xxviii. 18 " " iii. 15; viii. 11. " xxviii. 28 " " i. 7. In these examples, it might be noted, it is the friends of Job who quote the Proverbs; except in Job xxi. 17, where Job questions the Proverb already quoted by Bildad, rather than quotes it with approval; and in the case of xxviii. 18, 28, the whole chapter is regarded by critics as suspicious, on the ground that the sentiments here expressed by Job are in contradiction to his general attitude. These passages would seem somewhat to confirm the idea that the Book of Job is intended to be a criticism of the theory of Providence found in Proverbs. * * * * * On the suggestion that Ecclesiastes owes its disjointed character to some disarrangement of the original sheets of the MS., Bickell proposes to read the book in the following order:-- (1) i. 1-ii. 11. (2) v. 9-vi. 7. (3) iii. 9-iv. 8. (4) ii. 12-iii. 8. (5) viii. 6-ix. 3. (6) ix. 11-x. 1. (7) vi. 8-vii. 22. (8) iv. 9-v. 8. (9) x. 16-xi. 6 (10) vii. 23-viii. 5. (11) x. 2-x. 15. (12) ix. 4-10. (13) xi. 7-xii. 8. Bickell would regard the Appendix, xii. 9-14, as a later addition. Lecture X THE RELIGION OF THE WISE Certain books of the Old Testament have a marked resemblance both in their subject-matter and in their religious and ethical outlook. They stand out from the other classes of the literature, for they are neither prophetical, like the writings of the Prophets or the histories written under their influence, nor legalistic, like the great codes of the Pentateuch, nor liturgical and devotional, like the Psalms; and for convenience they are designated: "the Wisdom Literature." These writings deal chiefly with "wisdom," or the practical ordering of life, and we frequently find a reference to "the words of the wise," as if there was a school of teachers who were devoted to the discussion of these problems. The chief contributions of this school are, in our Bible, the Book of Proverbs, and in the Apocrypha, Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus. Job and Ecclesiastes are occupied with the same problems, but their attitude is critical and their method of treatment peculiar. No one can fail to feel the almost perplexing difference of this literature from the rest of the Old Testament; unlike the prophetic it has less a message to the conscience than a problem for the mind; unlike the historical books it is perfectly timeless, and utterly detached from the national hopes; it is not occupied with ceremonies or ritual, but with religion as a matter of conduct. The nearest approach to this is to be found in some of the Psalms, which, passing from the emotions of the devout spirit, become engaged with the problems and injustices of life. Its religion is more universal than that of the Prophets or even of the Psalmists, but it is less emotional; the religion of the heart has given way to the wisdom of the mind. We have here the beginnings of a philosophy, a mental activity strangely absent from the Hebrew race; it is not however a speculative philosophy, but one purely concerned with practical life; and yet there is a direct progression traceable from the chapters in Proverbs (i.-ix.), which are devoted to the praise of wisdom, through the work known as the Wisdom of Solomon, to Philo, the great Jewish philosopher, who endeavoured to interpret Moses by Plato and to reconcile Hebrew religion with Greek speculation. Although in this literature we have the beginnings of a philosophy it is rather that of the street than of the academy; a cultivation of a philosophic attitude towards life, its problems and duties, rather than any speculation on metaphysical reality or the absolute origin of things. The wisdom we hear so much of is an intellectual virtue, although it embraces neither speculation nor learning, but is limited to mean sagacity, shrewdness, prudence in the conduct of life. This is the main theme of the Proverbs, but the problem of the correct ordering of life unearths a deeper and darker one--the problem of the existence of evil, the injustice of life as revealed in the blind indiscrimination of trouble, pain, and death. With this problem some of the Psalms and the Books of Job and Ecclesiastes especially deal. In seeking to place this literature, we are met with an even worse difficulty than in the case of the Psalms; for the entire absence of historical allusion, and the spirit of detachment in which religious questions are discussed, leave no trace of date or age. The three books in our Bible belonging to this literature are ascribed to very early authors; two to Solomon and one traditionally to Job or Moses, although the Book of Job is really anonymous. Now it is exceedingly difficult to gather from the prophetic or historical books any trace of the opinions that are found in the Wisdom Literature. The problem of evil certainly began to occupy the minds of men like Jeremiah even before the Exile; but in the picture which the Prophets give us of the Jewish state under the late monarchy, we get no glimpse of a people who looked on life and religion as do the writers of these books. In the Wisdom Literature we find references to "the wise" as to a special class in the community (Prov. i. 6; xxii. 17; xxiv. 23; Job xv. 18); in the historical literature we find the "wisdom" of certain men extolled (Solomon, 1 Kings iii. 16-28; iv. 29-34; x. 3 ff.; Joseph, Gen. xli. 39; the four wise men, 1 Kings iv. 31, the wisdom of Egypt, the East, 1 Kings iv. 30, and of Edom, Ob. 8; Jer. xlix. 7), and in the prophetic writings "the wise" are mentioned as a class distinct from the prophet and the priest (Jer. xviii. 18) and often in a depreciatory way (Isa. xxix. 14; Jer. viii. 8; ix. 12). It seems almost impossible to identify the wise men of Proverbs with this class who receive so little praise from the Prophets. The wise men of Proverbs do not speak as if they needed to defend themselves against the claims of the prophet (Prov. xxix. 18; the reference to "vision," which can only mean a communication to the prophet, is not found elsewhere in Proverbs and is doubted by many scholars), nor can we understand the need for the message of the Prophets if this practical religion of "the wise" was current in their times. This religion may lack passion and be without national consciousness, but Isaiah and Micah would surely have found something to their heart's desire in its pure ethical character. Indeed, the religious thought seems to be dependent on the teaching of the Prophets, but only at a distance, for it is ethically advanced and has become somewhat rarefied and unemotional. The literary character seems also to point to a later age; for it is academical, sophistical, and polished. The polish of the Proverbs might be due to constant use among the common people, but they are not like popular sayings (cp. 1 Sam, xxiv. 13; 1 Kings xx. 11; Jer. xxxi. 29; Ezek. xviii. 2), and their evident kinship with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus indicates a late post-exilic origin. We shall first devote some time to an examination of the Book of Proverbs. The Hebrew "proverb" (_mashal_) means "a representation," and may be used of a fable or a taunt, but is more especially confined to any generalisation from experience or observation on life and character expressed in a rhythmic and polished form. The most usual form of the proverb is a couplet in which a common fact of Nature is placed beside a common fact of human life: "Where there is no wood the fire goes out, and where there is no talebearer strife will cease." The book as a whole would seem to be ascribed to Solomon (i. 1), but this is only the tradition of the final editor; for, as in the case of the Psalter, Proverbs shows every trace of gradual compilation, and the names of other authors are given. The main divisions of the book are as follows:-- A. (i. 1-6). The prologue, by the final editor, either ascribing the work to Solomon or else praising his proverbs. B. (i. 7-ix.). This seems to be the latest addition to the book; it is not a collection of proverbs at all, but is a continuous discourse in praise of Wisdom. In viii. 22 Wisdom is personified as a creature of God present at the creation of the world. This hypostatization of an attribute of God is one of the latest developments of Hebrew thought, and is so unusual to its genius that we are compelled to seek for some possibility of infiltration from foreign sources. The idea is still further developed in Ecclesiasticus (xxiv.), and in the Book of Wisdom has become quite a Platonic speculation (vii. 22-viii. 1). The appearance of this idea in Hebrew thought seems to be most explicable in the period of Greek influence, when Plato's doctrine of the Idea might become known in Palestine; somewhere about 250 B.C. seems a likely date. The identification of virtue with knowledge, which we find in the book, is also due to Greek thought. It was along this line of development that the conception of "the Logos" was welcomed into Jewish thought, to have through Philo such a profound influence on some of the writers of the New Testament. C. (x.-xxii. 16). This collection of proverbs is ascribed to Solomon and is generally thought by critics to be the oldest main collection; many would even be willing to assign it to the golden age of the monarchy. The Solomonic authorship is, however, unthinkable; the sentiments expressed are unsuitable for a luxurious and polygamous monarch (xv. 16, xxi. 31; xxii. 14; xiii. 1; cp. 1 Kings iv. 26; xi. 1, 4, 5-13; xii. 10, 11), and the ascription to Solomon is probably due to circumstances similar to those which operated in the case of the ascription of the Psalms to David. There are many objections to any pre-exilic time as a suitable historic background for this collection; there is no mention of idolatry, whereas we learn from Ezekiel (vi., viii., xxiii.) that idolatry was practised in Jerusalem down to the time of the city's destruction; monogamy seems to be taken quite for granted, whereas it would appear that polygamy was general before the prophetic reforms; and of the great upheaval that these reforms involved, this collection shows no trace. The national religion has here given place to universalism, a development that seems to demand some experience of contact with other nations and especially some acquaintance with foreign culture. The references to the king neither require Solomonic authorship nor demand an age when the monarchy was established; for they are only general sentiments concerning the duties of the king in the State, and are of such a nature that they show very little reminiscence of Israel's actual experience of a monarchy. D. (xxii. 17-xxiv. 22) and E. (xxiv. 23-34) are two collections of the sayings of "the wise," whose ascription, together with the reference to "instruction," points to an advanced stage of reflection and teaching, and perhaps to the existence of philosophic teachers who had schools and pupils. F. (xxv.-xxix.). "These also are proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, King of Judah, copied out." This title has an air of circumstantiality about it which looks like a genuine historical note, and it has been observed that there is a change of tone, in this collection, in regard to the monarchy, as if some actual experience of kingly tyranny had been lately borne; so that if we were to refer this collection to the age mentioned in the title we should have to ante-date the collection, C. But in view of the state of society here portrayed, which is similar to that of Ecclesiasticus, we have no alternative but to regard the title, as in the case of some of the Davidic Psalms, as due to later Jewish scribes, and as without authority. G., H. and I. are three small collections (xxx.; xxxi. 1-9; xxxi. 10-31), the first by Agur: a very obscure passage, apparently quoting a declaration of reverent agnosticism, with a reply to it by some more believing scribe. The second is ascribed to King Lemuel, and the third is in praise of a virtuous woman, by an anonymous writer. The religious teaching of the Proverbs would seem to be a refinement of the prophetic religion, standing quite apart from the legal and ritual development. Religion has become entirely a matter of ethics; the creed is wonderfully colourless and simple, and the inducement to virtue remains almost entirely on the plane of utilitarianism and prudence. There is a good deal that is quite worldly wisdom, but pure religion is by no means wanting (xxi. 3; xiv. 34); the fear of the Lord is not slavish fear, but is a guiding principle for life and the beginning of wisdom. Men are divided somewhat roughly into the foolish and the wise; and although no book in the world has ever depicted the foolishness of men with greater variety and reality, yet there seems no hope that folly may be overcome, or that wicked men can be turned from their ways; Wisdom knows no forgiveness and can only mock when men turn to her too late (i. 24-28). Yet the ethical level is high; woman especially is highly estimated, and the home life is held sacred; kindness to animals is inculcated (xii. 10), and there is a real approach to absolute ethics in such sayings as: "Say not thou, I will recompense evil"; "Say not I will do so to him as he hath done to me" (xx. 22; xxiv. 17, 29; xxv. 21, 22). The writers have been called "humanists," and this rightly describes their position; it is the highest level rabbinical religion ever reached; it has its parallel in some of the aphoristic teaching of Jesus, but it has no message for the outcast and fallen; it knows no secret whereby the fool may be made wise and the heart be changed by a great emotion; it is the religion of the sage, not the religion of the Saviour. The doctrine of retribution is still thought to be quite satisfactory in its working (ii. 21 f.; x. 25; xi. 21). In an earlier and less reflective age this idea would not have been unexpected; but it is remarkable that it should be acquiesced in by the wise men; and yet it is an idea of life that seems to persist against all experience: it is found in the time of Christ and it still obtains, especially in the judgment of the cause of poverty. Perhaps its persistence is to be traced to an ideal of justice so strong as to obscure accurate observation of the facts. * * * * * When we turn to the Book of Job we come to a work not only the greatest product of the wise men, but the supreme literary production of the Hebrew nation. The grandeur of its language has somewhat obscured the real meaning of the book; for the opinions that the book was written to controvert are stated with such vivid power and poetic grace that they are now often quoted as Biblical truths of equal value with the opinions apparently supported by the author. It is our task, not so much to admire the literary talent of the author, as to estimate his contribution to the religion of Israel. The Book of Job has been referred to almost every age from Moses to post-exilic times. There is certainly an endeavour to reproduce the conditions of the patriarchal age, in the avoidance of the name Jehovah (Exod. vi. 3), and in the money standard adopted (Job. xlii. 11); but there is no desire to deceive the reader, for this archaic atmosphere is adopted merely as the appropriate setting of the dialogue, and is not maintained: the name Jehovah slips from the author's pen, he takes no pains to conceal his knowledge of the Law and his interest in the questions of his own times. The question of age is not to be complicated by the question of authorship; there was a person named Job, known to Ezekiel (xiv. 14), but there is nowhere any assumption that Job himself wrote the book; and the mechanical and symbolical character of the disasters which befall Job, and the nature of the compensation, show that we have here only dramatic settings for the speeches and not actual history. It is likely that there was a well-known tradition of a man named Job who had suffered overwhelming troubles and eventually had been restored to his former prosperity, and this is made the basis for a discussion of the problem of suffering. It has been suggested that in the Prologue and Epilogue we have fragments of that old tradition, since these passages are in prose while the body of the book is in semi-poetic rhythm; but the prose form is best explained as that always adopted by the Hebrews for narrative, for we find ideas in these parts that betray as late a date as anything in the body of the work. Considered on internal evidence, everything seems to point to the age which produced the rest of the Wisdom Literature; and more precisely, a date shortly before or shortly after Proverbs, seems indicated. The material for deciding more particularly is such that different conclusions may be drawn from it. For instance, the personification of wisdom in Proverbs seems to be in advance of the idea of wisdom in Job; and if we could think of the development of an idea always coinciding with chronological progression, then Job would need to be placed earlier than Proverbs; but this is complicated by the fact that the main body of the book of the Proverbs may have been in circulation before the earlier chapters were added. Yet there are apparent quotations from the Proverbs in the Book of Job (xv. 7 f. = Prov. viii. 22-25), and the reference to the lamp of the wicked being put out (Prov. xiii. 9; xxiv. 20) seems clearly to have Proverbs in mind (Job. xxi. 17). Dependence might, of course, be taken to lie the other way, but on the whole, it would appear that the problems dealt with in Job have not yet emerged for the writers of the Proverbs, and indeed Job seems rather an indictment of the superficial idea, which we find everywhere assumed in the earlier work that prosperity and goodness are inseparable. The most satisfactory order seems therefore to be: Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes. The idea that Job is to be understood as a personification of the nation, such as we were led to conceive in the allegory of Jonah and in the Servant of the Lord, can hardly be maintained in face of the perfect detachment from the history and the national hopes that characterises the book. The book deals with a problem already stirring in the minds of the Prophets and the theme of many of the Psalms, but here stated with an awful daring and intensity and as the subject-matter of an entirely new form of literary composition. The Book of Job is not a drama, in the sense that it was ever intended, or would be suitable, for presentation on the stage; but it is a poem with dramatic elements and it has a dramatic movement. The endeavour to understand the message of the book is rendered difficult because different points of view are presented, and this has suggested different authors. The book certainly has well-marked divisions, and they appear to yield distinct and different solutions of the problem of suffering. The Prologue shows us what has taken place in heaven, and seems to infer that the trials came upon Job to establish his faith and righteousness; but the speeches between Job and his friends, in the second division, if by the same author as the Prologue, skilfully avoid this explanation, and the drama pursues its course with the actors remaining in complete ignorance of the solution that has been disclosed to the audience. The third division is taken up with the speeches of Elihu: these break the continuity of the poem, Job makes no reply to him, and Elihu is not mentioned in the Epilogue. An examination of these speeches shows that they fall somewhat below the level of brilliance and originality maintained in the rest of the book, and the idea that they proceed from another writer of the same school, who felt that the arguments of the three friends had not been presented in the best possible way, is worthy of consideration. The speeches of Jehovah are by the author of the main portion and are wonderfully impressive and grand, although the exact contribution that they make to the discussion of the problem is difficult to discern. The Epilogue falls back into prose, and was certainly written by one who had the entire work before him; but it so misses the meaning of the whole argument, and is content with such a superficial solution of restoration, that it has been thought by many to be an addition to the original work. Whatever may be thought of the idea of plural authorship as a solution of these divergences, the divergences themselves must be borne in mind in any attempt to estimate the message of the book. But are these different points of view incompatible with a single author? With an author of such extraordinary talent in voicing opinions with which he evidently does not agree, it cannot be said to be impossible; and it may be that he only wished to state the problem and to give those answers which were current in his age, leaving it to the reader to discover whether these answers were really solutions; the Prologue and Epilogue may have nothing to do with the didactive motive, but only be due to dramatic and artistic demands. The theology of Job certainly demands a late age and an advanced stage of reflection. One interesting point is raised by the employment, in the Prologue, of the figure of Satan. This personality, so fruitful a factor in speculation on the cause of evil, demands a careful study. It should be noted, first, that he is referred to as _the_ Satan, that is, "the Adversary"; it is a generic, not a proper, name. This creature is represented as appearing together with the angels in the presence of God, and although his designs are sinister and his suggestions unworthy, he is still a minister doing the will of God. This delegation of evil advocacy can be traced, from the idea that it is due to God Himself (2 Sam. xxiv. 1), to the work of the separate spirit who offered to entice Ahab (1 Kings xxii. 21), and then to the greater definiteness of our author. Beyond this book, again, the adversary is a darker character who has to be rebuked by God (Zech. iii.), and in the history of the Chronicler _the_ Satan has become "Satan," a proper name (1 Chron. xxi. 1; cp. 2 Sam. xxiv. 1); but we have to go outside the Old Testament Canon to get a completely dualistic opposition of God and Satan (Wisdom ii. 24). The conception of God has passed, in this book, entirely beyond the tribal Deity Jehovah, and even beyond the ethical Personality known to the Prophets, to One who is felt to be unknowable; and yet withal Job clings to the idea that he shall one day see the face of the Redeemer who now hides Himself. As in the Psalms, the alleged idea of immortality (xix. 25 ff.) is not very definite, and so contradicts the general expectation of the book (vii. 9 f. x. 21 f. xiv. 10 ff. 20 ff. xvi. 22; xxi. 26; xxx. 23), that it must be taken to refer to Job's conviction that some vindication of his cause will be made here in this life. At the same time the idea of a future judgment which shall proclaim his innocence and the ill-desert of his sufferings, is so strong, that it sweeps death out of vision, and the hope of the future life hovers in the thought if it does not break into language. A dispassionate examination of the solutions here offered to the problem of suffering shows that nothing really beyond a negative position is reached in this book. The speeches of Job must be taken to convey the author's opinions, and they are a most emphatic repudiation of the doctrine of Providence expressed by the three friends. They can only repeat the accepted notion that suffering is everywhere the cause of sin, and with scorn and indignation Job repudiates the charge, so far as he is concerned; he maintains his innocence and appeals to God as his witness; but the Witness is silent and there is no daysman betwixt them. Job's protest is not concerned with mere innocence, for in one magnificent passage he appeals to his beneficent life spent in the service of the poor and needy (xxxi.). The answers of Job leave the little system of Providence supported by his friends, completely discredited, and in this particular Jehovah sides with Job. The theophany and speeches of Jehovah do not, however, seem to convey any further contribution to the problem than perhaps the idea that for man it is insoluble, because he does not and cannot see the whole; and so nothing is left for man but to bear his griefs in silence and maintain his trust in God. Job remains, not only the finest contribution of Semitic genius to the realm of literature, but a classic for all those who feel the anguish of the world and the unintelligible perplexities of life. If it conveys no real solution, it at least disposes of one long accepted as adequate, and its complete overthrow removes one of the worst mistakes of human observation and refutes one of the cruellest judgments of men. The idea that prosperity always follows goodness has been a most disastrous bequest of Hebrew thought, and has more than anything else obscured from men's eyes the real meaning of life, prevented an accurate judgment of character, and done much to turn aside the expression of sympathy and obscure the duty of pity and forgiveness. That a solution was not within the limits of Israel's faith cannot be affirmed with Isa. liii. before us; but that it had never been rightly understood and had never taken deep hold of even noble minds is driven home with a telling force, in a further contribution of the Wisdom Literature, the Book of Ecclesiastes. The name Ecclesiastes is borrowed from the attempt to translate the Hebrew term _Qoheleth_ into Greek. Of this name a variety of interpretations have been put forward (Qoheleth, from _qahal_ an assembly, is the active feminine participle and means, one who calls, or addresses, or is merely member of, an assembly; A.V., "the Preacher"; R.V. "the great Orator"), but the one that perhaps best describes the term is that of "the debater." The work is put forward in the name of Solomon, and of all the works ascribed to him there is none that would come so suitably from the pen of that monarch, if he ever reflected deeply on his career; but this ascription is not kept up with any idea of deceiving the reader, but is simply one of the literary customs of the time and a way of honouring a great name, for there are biographical statements impossible to Solomon ("I _was_ king," i. 12; "above all that were before me in Jerusalem," i. 16), while the reflection of society and the stage of thought, but most notably the extremely late language, betray what is one of the latest of the Old Testament writings. Ecclesiastes is a work that has held an unusual fascination for certain types of disposition, Renan declaring that it was the only lovely thing that ever came from a Hebrew mind. The presence of the book at all in the Old Testament is strange, and there were strong opinions against admitting it into the Canon; it was perhaps only eventually sanctioned because its contradictory statements made it possible to interpret the book as a work written to controvert pessimistic ideas, which are brought forward only to be refuted. For the intention of the work is difficult to gather owing to its disjointed and incomplete character, which makes the book as it stands a mass of contradictions. Some passages profess utter pessimism and unbelief in God's providence, while others, like the closing chapter, seek to inculcate religious fear and trust. Various theories have been proposed to explain these phenomena occurring in one book. It has been suggested that the work is a dialogue between a doubting scholar and an orthodox believer. With a view of straightening out the argument it has been conjectured that the sheets of the original have somehow become disarranged, and others have thought of a series of interpolations in an originally quite unbelieving work; first by a writer who wishes to defend Wisdom from the author's charges of unprofitableness, and then by a writer who wishes to defend the providence of God. If interpolation is to be thought of at all--and it should only be a refuge of despair--it is to be sought in the opening and closing verses of the last chapter (xii. 1, 13, 14), which may have been added to correct the influence of the work; but even they are not impossible from this strangely vacillating author. Certainly no explanations can remove the gloomy tone of the book. The writer seems to have come into contact with Greek pessimism, and from this standpoint he sees nothing true in the Hebrew doctrine of retribution, and especially does he reject the too optimistic doctrines of the Wisdom school. The problems that are solved so simply in Proverbs, stated and left unanswered by Job, are by this author answered in entirely negative fashion: nothing is profitable in this life, nothing is new; nature and man move in an endless cycle without hope or meaning. The pursuit of Wisdom is just as foolish as the pursuit of folly: the end of the fool and the end of the wicked is the same; life is not worth living; vanity of vanities, all is vanity. In this book we at last come upon a clear recognition of the doctrine of immortality, but only to find it explicitly denied by our author (iii. 19-21). The only solution that the writer proposes is a sad Epicureanism: make the best of a bad world. And yet in spite of this conclusion the author still believes in God (iii. 11, 14; viii. 17); but He is a God who has hidden His purpose from man and whom man can do nothing to turn from His ways. This is more like the inscrutable Fate of the Greek tragedians than the Jehovah of the Prophets: indeed the word Jehovah is never once used throughout the book. If the concluding chapter comes from the original author, then it recommends a religious attitude towards these mysteries; but there is no revelation of anything that gives assurance of the reasonableness of this position or of the goodness of God. What are we to learn from this Book? Are we to refuse to read it and to reverse the judgment that included it in the Canon? Hardly that. It is well that man's doubts should find a place in the same sacred collection with his surest beliefs, for doubt may be but a stage in a process from an inadequate to a fuller faith. The book shows that the common appreciation of Israel's faith could not satisfy the mind that had its attention fixed upon the facts of life; and especially does it show that the hope of immortality, apart from which Israel's faith had largely developed, is not the one thing that is lacking. That hope, with its promise of retribution in a future and better world, will always appear too speculative to some minds to relieve the burdens of the life that now is, and even if believed in, it would offer no real clue to the meaning of our trials here, but only tend to take men's eyes off this life where perchance they might find the solution they have missed. For there is an attitude to life that solves its darkest problems, a disposition which transmutes its pain and failure, finding it no enigma, but an opportunity for learning the will of the Father; our presence here not a thing to be reluctantly borne, but a task to be joyfully accepted as the commission of God. The book of Ecclesiastes shows us, therefore, that the revelation through Israel is not yet complete; for it voices the unsatisfied need and stretches out hands of faith for something not yet made known. It is the deep dark of the night; the next hour will see the Morning Star of Bethlehem above the horizon, the fleeing shadows and the breaking of the day. MESSIANIC EXPECTATIONS The prevalence of the expectation of a personal Messiah reflected in the Gospels, and the clearness and consistency of the idea, are not to be explained solely from the Old Testament prophecies. In the Apocrypha the Messianic expectation has almost died out (Ecclus. xlix. 11; 1 Macc. ii. 57), but after the Maccabæan revolt it revived, owing doubtless to the disappointment caused by the deterioration of the Hasmonæan dynasty, of which so much had been expected. The Pharisees, who resented the policy of the Hasmonæans, made the idea of a restoration of the Davidic line the peculiar property of their party, and from this time until the appearance of Jesus, Messianic expectation reached a point never before attained. The following summary shows the emergence of the idea in the literature of the period:-- (1) The Dream-Visions of Enoch. B.C. 166-161. The Messiah appears under the figure of a white bullock, and the saints are changed into His image. The Messiah has only an official function in the world-drama, and a human though glorified personality. (2) The Sibylline Oracles. In a passage assigned to B.C. 140, the Messiah is represented as a God-sent King, who is expected to arise from the East, and whose appearance will be a signal for an attack upon the Temple by the Gentiles. (3) The Book of Jubilees. B.C. 135-105. The writer is concerned more with the Messianic Kingdom, which he conceives of spiritually, than with the Messiah, who is only alluded to once, and who is expected to arise from Judah. (4) The Similitudes of Enoch. B.C. 95-80. This part of the Book of Enoch is much occupied with the person of the Messiah. He is definitely named "the Messiah," and also bears the titles "the Elect One," "the Righteous One," and "the Son of Man." He is a Prophet and a Teacher, "the light of the Gentiles," all judgment is committed unto Him, and He will sit on the throne of His glory. He will raise again to life all the righteous who have died. (5) The Psalms of Solomon. B.C. 70-40. The Messiah is to be sinless; He is the Son of David; He will not adopt the ordinary methods of warfare, but will smite the earth with the rod of His mouth. The following works all belong to the Christian era, but they may reflect ideas that had an earlier origin:-- (6) The Assumption of Moses. A.D. 7-30. The hope of an earthly Messiah is abandoned and it is God Himself who is expected to take vengeance on His enemies. (7) The Apocalypse of Baruch. _c._ 70 A.D. The Messiah will appear after Israel's enemies have been destroyed. His Kingdom is likened to "the bright lightning," and at the end of His reign He is to return in glory to heaven. (8) 2 Esdras. A.D. 81-96. The Messiah, although more than earthly, dies after a reign of 400 years. He is pictured as a lion rebuking an eagle (the Roman power), and "as it were with the likeness of a man" arising from the midst of the sea, and flying with the clouds of heaven. Lecture XI MESSIANIC EXPECTATIONS In all the stages through which the Old Testament religion passed there seems to have existed a consciousness of their imperfection, and this produced a tendency to gaze into the future, in which it was thought the ideal religion would exist, and where could be descried the perfect realisation of God's dwelling among men. It is natural that this characteristic should find its clearest expression in the Prophets. When their eyes are upon the present, they condemn; when they look to the immediate future, they utter grave warning and the shadows deepen upon their faces; but when they lift their eyes to the distant hills of time, the light is on their faces, and they break into songs of the days that are yet to be. It is this vision of the future and the endeavour to give it a definite outline that runs like a thread through the Old Testament and forces us to look beyond its borders for the ultimate issue of its religious development. This subject may best be studied under the general head of Messianic expectations. The immediate difficulty in understanding this subject is found in the circumstance that it has received from Bible students an exaggerated attention, and has been pursued with methods that the best modern scholarship cannot sanction. The eager hunting for Messianic prophecy, and the desire to find literal fulfilment, has often stretched the meaning of passages unwarrantably and made a sane exegesis appear tame and uninteresting. But more disastrous has been the effect upon the understanding of the Old Testament as a whole. The literature has been treated as a mysterious typology, in which some indirect picture of the Messiah was to be discovered, or a series of exact predictions of His life and work. This has destroyed the sense of perspective, it has ignored the message of the Prophets to their own age, and it has been responsible for the idea that the religion of the Psalmists was simply a pious expectation of the Messiah, instead of a real communion with God. It is difficult to gain a right appreciation of this subject after it has suffered such abuse, but a serious effort should be made; for it is in the understanding of the Messianic expectation that we shall find a key to the New Testament and more especially to that conflict of soul which the acceptance of the Messiahship seems to have brought upon Jesus. The method of study followed will be an endeavour to read all alleged Messianic predictions, first of all in the light of their actual meaning for the age in which they were uttered; but more particularly it will embrace the general ideas of the future of which the conception of the Messiah forms only a part. We shall find that the conscious prediction of the Messiah is somewhat reduced in bulk, and that the Messianic expectation includes something more than a figure of the Messiah himself, and is indeed sometimes found without any such feature. The Messianic ideal involves the whole conception of the religious future of Israel. The Hebrew religion receives much inspiration from its tradition of the past, but infinitely more from its hopes for the future: the golden age is not thought to lie far back in history, but in a time yet to come. It seems likely that this idea was widely dispersed even among the common people, and it is therefore only natural that it should often have been held in an unspiritual manner and expressed after a material fashion. This hope was seized upon by the Prophets, and by them elevated above a merely material expectation; they enriched it by the wealth of their creative genius, and from their time it receives a definite content. Standing far above their contemporaries in their conception of the meaning of Jehovah's covenant with Israel, the Prophets were forced to realise the failure of their message to win immediate acceptance, and sometimes they witnessed its entire rejection by the people; and therefore it was inevitable that they should look to the future to yield what the present seemed unable to produce: a religion pure, simple, and free from all limitations. If we inquire the reason of this hope, we find it in their trust in Jehovah's covenant and in their conviction of the ultimate triumph of truth. Now it was not unnatural, with the peculiar character of their national history, for their hopes to group themselves around some commanding figure; for all along Israel had been moved by splendid personalities. They were accustomed to the appearance of men whose power and genius marked them out as fitted by Jehovah for some mighty task; so that whenever they think of the future and come to a detailed description of their vision they descry one dominant figure, the symbol and representative of the people, but also the symbol and representative of the power of Jehovah dwelling among them. This figure receives his peculiar outline largely from the needs of their immediate times, and any person of whom great things are expected may be hailed as the Messiah (Cyrus, Isa. xlv. 1; Haggai ii. 20-23, seems to suggest that Zerubbabel is the expected Messiah; and Zech. vi. 12 uses Messianic language of Joshua the High Priest). We should have expected that the figure of the Messiah, as conceived by the Prophets, would partake largely of the prophetic office idealised and accepted by an obedient people. This however is not the case. There is a promise of a prophet made through Moses, which in the New Testament has been interpreted as a Messianic prophecy (Deut. xviii. 18; Acts iii. 22, vii. 37), but an examination of the passage, which follows a denunciation of the practices of divination, necromancy, and sorcery, out of which primitive Prophetism arose, shows that it is a promise of the establishment of the prophetic office rather than of any one person. Elsewhere Moses is made to exclaim: "would that all the Lord's people were prophets" (Num. xi. 29). Both these passages are due to prophetic teaching, and this is the Prophets' conception of their office: they do not rejoice in their splendid isolation and their unique relation to God; they are grieved that the people do not share their possession of the Spirit of God and their hearing of His word, for to them these things are the essence of all true religion. So they look forward to a time when their office will no longer be necessary (Jer. xxxi. 34), and when the Spirit of the Lord shall be poured out on all flesh (Joel ii. 28f). It is not in any contradiction to this that the picture of the Servant of the Lord, delineated by the Second Isaiah, is largely drawn from the prophetic office (Isa. xlii. 1-4, xlix. 1-6, l. 4); for the Servant is the Nation of Israel fulfilling her prophetic role among the nations of mankind. In the late prophecy of Malachi the figure of Elijah the prophet is seen in the future, but only as the herald of the coming of the Messianic era (Mal. iv. 5). The Priest contributes little more than the Prophet to the picture (Zech. iii.; vi. 12; Psa. cx.); for to the prophetic conception of things the Priesthood is hardly a necessary office in a true religion. It is from the office of the King that the Messiah is largely drawn. This conception could only have arisen after the founding of the monarchy and only when the real David had faded far enough into the past to be idealised. It was in their experience of the imperfection of the Kings of Israel and Judah that the Prophets saw the need for a true kingly head; and in the oppression of military kingdoms, the need for a mighty warrior. And yet it is not a king who fills the picture of the future, so much as a kingdom. Outside the Prophets and the Psalms we find little expectation of a personal Messiah, but we find almost everywhere the conception of an ideal or Messianic age. What has been called the Protevangelium, the promise to the woman that her seed should bruise the serpent's head (Gen. iii. 15), does not point explicitly to any one person, but simply promises that in man's eternal warfare with temptation he shall at length gain the victory. The prophecy of Balaam (Num. xxiv. 17-19) involves nothing more than the future supremacy of Israel. Jacob's blessing on Judah (Gen. xlix. 10) promises a stable dynasty to that tribe, and the reference to Shiloh is so obscure that nothing can be built upon it (_Shiloh_ may mean peace, but in the Septuagint the phrase is translated: "until that which is his shall come." Another ancient reading is: "till he come whose it is." Shiloh might refer to the town of that name, but this would give no help to the interpretation. The text must be corrupt). It will be necessary for us to examine the circle of ideas which form the background of the Messianic hope and from which the idea of the Messiah emerges. When the Prophets speak of the future they often use a strange phrase: "the day of the Lord." This is found first in Amos (v. 18), but its occurrence there shows that it was already a term in use among the people, for Amos had to dissent from the popular idea of its character. The term comes from the Hebrew idiom of the "day" of battle, and it comes to be used of the great conflict in which Jehovah will entirely overthrow the enemies of Israel; it is therefore looked for with expectant hope. Amos points out that the manifestation of Jehovah will be fatal to sin, whether in Israel or in other nations: _dies iræ, dies illa_. Thus modified by Amos this is the conception which, with varying details, becomes the prophetic idea of the Day of the Lord. It may therefore come in some threatened invasion; later, it is conceived as a gathering of all the nations against Jerusalem, from which we get the picture of Armageddon, the last great war before the establishment of peace; and finally it becomes the world assize, and so the "day" of judgment of the New Testament. This "day" is to separate the history of God's dealings with men into two distinct periods, and will be the dividing line between the perfect and the imperfect; so that all the bright visions of the future are to be "after those days." The Prophets believe that reconstruction can only come after destruction, that history will reach its ideal over a precipice; they believe in a reform by cataclysm rather than by evolution. Every threatening of political change or national disaster may herald the coming of that day; it is always at hand; to their vision, they are living near the finality of things. There is a great deal in this imagery that fails to appeal to modern ideas of history and progress. It was part of the prophetic scheme and as such was a limitation of perfect vision; but shorn of its mere form it remains a witness to their consciousness of the activity of God in human history and of His judgment in the crises of the world. The form was a limitation essential to their stage of mental evolution and to its intelligibility to their age; its spirit is an eternal message to mankind. Immediately after the Day of the Lord, the Messianic Age is ushered in, and in depicting the conditions of that time the lyrical genius of the Prophets reaches its supreme expression, and these passages still inspire the reformer and move men with their ideals of peace. The picture of that age is composed by projecting into the future their own institutions and especially their religious conceptions. They picture a condition of human society which is best described in the phrase, "the kingdom of God"; for although such an expression never breaks forth from their lips, its contents are obviously in their minds. It is to be a community in which the will of God is perfectly realised, when religion shall no longer consist in statutes and commands, but in the recognition of an inner law. Absolute righteousness, individual and civil, will prevail, and the nations shall learn war no more. The animal and natural creation will share in this beneficent order: the lion shall lie down with the lamb, and the wilderness shall blossom like the rose; the veil shall be torn from men's vision, all tears shall be wiped away, and death shall be swallowed up in victory. When they come to depict the subjects of this kingdom they fail to attain to the inner and ethical requirements enunciated by Jesus, for national hopes and ambitions still cloud their outlook. There are two streams of thought--one frankly particularistic, where the future of the heathen is ignored, or where they are simply to be exterminated; and the other universalistic, where the conversion of the whole world is expected (Isa. xlv. 22; Jer. xii. 14 ff, xvi. 19; cp. Isa. xi. 14-16 with xix. 18-25). It is somewhat surprising, in view of the subsequent development of these ideas under Christian thought, that the sphere of this tremendous change is conceived to be this present earth; and even when the necessity of a new earth and a new heaven is considered, it is still earth that is to be the chief theatre of events. Heaven is conceived of as the dwelling place of Jehovah, but there is no idea that this great change is to be postponed or relegated to some heavenly condition; heaven is to come down to earth and Jehovah is to dwell among His people and be their God. It is from the ground of these ideas that there arises the conception of the person known as the Messiah, who shall be the Divine instrument in bringing about this blessed condition. Messiah is from the Hebrew, _Mashiah_, and means "anointed one." The actual phrase, _the_ Messiah, without further qualification, is not found in the Old Testament (Dan. ix. 25, A.V. "The Messiah" is incorrect; it should read: "an anointed one, a prince," as R.V. mar.); but after the closing of the Canon the phrase was constantly used to denote the Jewish hope of the appearance of a singular person, of Davidic descent, who should be superhumanly endowed, and who should overturn the enemies of the Jews and place their nation at the head of the world. The title recalls the mode of consecration used for priests and kings by anointing them with oil (Lev. iv. 3, 5, 16; vi. 22; 1 Sam. ii. 35; xii. 3), and "the anointed of Jehovah" is the common title for the kings of Israel. The origin of this idea of the Messianic King may certainly be traced to Nathan's promise to David of a perpetual seed which should occupy his throne and be the special delight and care of Jehovah (2 Sam. vii. 2-17). In the presence of a weak or unworthy occupant of the throne this promise would come to mind, and would gather new meaning as the Prophets saw in the troubles of their times the imminence of the Day of the Lord. It is to the prophet Isaiah that we owe a striking conception of a monarch who not only fulfils his promise but transcends it in a way that is hardly conceivable in a merely human king. The first emergence of this hope in the mind of the prophet occurs when he attempts to restrain Ahaz from joining the fatal confederacy of Syria and Ephraim against Assyria. When Ahaz demands some confirmation, the prophet promises the sign of a young woman who shall bear a child named Immanuel (Isa. vii. 14-17). Following Matthew, Christian expositors have taken this to be a prophecy of the virgin birth of Jesus; although it is difficult to see how this could be a sign to Ahaz. The subject is obscure to the last degree. The Hebrew word rendered "a virgin," although capable of such a special application, means simply a young woman. The translation "virgin" was first made by the Septuagint, and this may point to the fact that at the time this version was made the Messiah was expected to be born of a virgin. The prophecy seems to have arisen from the conviction that the Assyrian invasion would bring into existence some person who should represent the active presence of God with His people; and beyond this explanation there is nothing but mere speculation. But in a later oracle of Isaiah's (ix. 6f), the conception has grown in definiteness, and this expected person is crowned with such honorific titles as "Wonder of a Counsellor, Hero-God, Father of Eternity, Prince of Peace." To our ears these titles convey the sense of absolute Divinity, but it is questionable whether they meant that to Isaiah. Eastern monarchs have always been addressed with high-sounding titles, and Isaiah's language may have been coloured by foreign court customs; but still it would remain that the titles lead us to expect an unexampled figure who possesses attributes that mark him out as specially equipped by God. Once more Isaiah returns to this figure (xi. 1-12), and now definitely asserts that he shall spring from David's line; only now the majesty of his person is conceived as due to his seven-fold possession of the Spirit of Jehovah, and his character fits him rather for administrative and prophetic work. Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah, has much the same figure (v. 2-5) of a mighty prince of Davidic lineage and of mysterious birth (Bethlehem simply stands here for David's line, and "whose outgoings have been from eternity" probably means nothing more than that his descent shall spring from this ancient ancestor). There is an inexplicable element in these predictions, but they have been found elsewhere, outside Israel, in times of great national danger or expectation. In Israel, the idealisation of David, the personal element in her history, and the increased possibilities discovered in human personality when under the complete dominion of the Spirit of Jehovah, have contributed to the creation of this figure. It cannot be said that it was a mental vision of the person of Jesus that shaped the prophecy, for it must not be forgotten that it was an immediate fulfilment that they expected; and indeed their picture so utterly misled the Jews, that, when Christ claimed to be the Messiah, they treated His claim as blasphemous. While we can see that Christ was indeed a King, it is only by a spiritual conception of kingship, and only after the verdict of history has crowned Him as a true ruler of men; not by any actual resemblance to the external magnificence of the Messianic King. When the Messianic call came to Jesus He found in these passages a difficulty, for they outlined a programme He could only reject; but it was other and indirect allusions of the old Testament, some of which had never been considered as Messianic, that Jesus took for His pattern. This meant a reading of prophecy very different from that of the Jews of His time, and it is surely here that the views we have found ourselves forced to accept in regard to Old Testament prophecy can claim the support of Jesus Himself. It is important to grasp this point: the argument from predictions definitely fulfilled in Jesus has failed to convince the Jews, who ought to understand their own Scriptures best, and we must recognise that it is only a spiritual interpretation of prophecy and a valuation of Jesus which owes nothing to flesh and blood that can see in Him One of whom all the Prophets bore witness. It is to these other conceptions, to which the spiritual intuition of Jesus led Him in His search for support for His Messianic ideals, that we must now turn. The first of these in importance is undoubtedly "the Servant of the Lord." We saw when examining this idea that it was an ideal of a nation rather than of an individual, and yet it was upon this that Jesus fixed, and it was this idea that seemed to mould His whole conception of His mission. According to Luke, the first discourse of Jesus took place in the Synagogue at Nazareth, where He set forth His programme and policy, and stated them to be identical with those the prophet had outlined for the nation centuries before (Luke iv. 16-21; Isa. lxi. 1, 2); and the evangelist Matthew sees in the methods of Jesus a fulfilment of the prophecy of the Servant (Matt. xii. 18-21; Isa. xlii. 1-4). It was probably as Jesus saw the clouds gather about His life and disaster began to threaten that He was led to study the career of that Servant and see that it involved suffering, being despised and rejected of men; and so He came to find the key to the mystery of His Cross in that classic of the vicarious life, the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. Jesus was probably the first to interpret that passage in a Messianic sense. His reason for adopting the title of "the Son of Man" is exceedingly difficult to trace; it may be said that no completely satisfactory explanation of the origin or meaning of the term has yet been discovered, and in the present state of research on the subject it would be folly to commit ourselves to any of the theories that have been propounded. We can only keep in mind the various facts, which the use of this title in the Gospels presents to us. It is clear that Jesus did not intend the title to be a declaration to the world that He had accepted the Messianic call; for all along it was His deliberate purpose to conceal His Messiahship, and for reasons that are obvious, when we consider the difference between His conception of Messianic function and that of the Jews of His day. Again, although there is a slight difference between Daniel, where we only hear of "one like unto a son of man," and Jesus who calls Himself "_the_ son of man," yet when challenged by the high-priest Jesus certainly quotes from Daniel (Dan. vii. 13; Mark xiv. 62). Now in Daniel it is not a person who is figured by this title, so much as a humane kingdom which is to replace the kingdoms that were more like beasts in their character. It is only in the Book of Enoch that the Son of Man is definitely identified with the Messiah. Did Jesus ever read that Book, or were its ideas at all commonly known? If so we should have to concede that the Son of Man meant the Messiah, both to Jesus and to the people, and yet this is an apparent contradiction of His general motive in keeping the Messiahship secret. Perhaps, and the suggestion is made with the knowledge that in the present state of the problem it can be nothing more than a suggestion, there is a line that has not been exhausted, and along which help may yet be found. It starts from the fact that Jesus seems to have adopted the _character_ of the Servant of the Lord under the _name_ of the Son of Man; and we have seen that both these are ideals of a community or a nation rather than of a person. Again, that somehow the title "the Son of Man" had Messianic significance, and in the mind of Jesus was connected with the figure in Daniel, is seen from His confession before Caiaphas. The contradiction between these facts and the purpose of concealing His Messiahship can perhaps be solved by noticing that Jesus never explicitly identifies Himself with the Son of Man; and if all the passages where this title is found in the Synoptics are examined, they seem to separate themselves into three distinct groups: (1) where the reference might be not only to Jesus Himself but to Man fulfilling his ideal; (2) where the reference is to the suffering which the Son of Man must undergo; (3) and most important, this term is always used when Jesus speaks of that mysterious return on the clouds which is known as the Second Advent. The conclusion to which it is suggested all these facts point is that although Jesus believed Himself to be the personal centre on which the Messianic hope converged, it was not to Himself personally, but to the new humanity which His Spirit should beget, that He looked for the complete fulfilment of the Messianic hope. Thus at least are linked together the fact that the Prophets are occupied rather with the Messianic community than with the Messiah, and the fact that Jesus made the centre and aim of His teaching the Kingdom rather than its personal embodiment in Himself. Jesus certainly read these Prophets more according to their real inwardness than any of His contemporaries or than many generations of Christian scholars; and there is no better preparation for the serious study of the Gospels than a careful examination of the growing revelation of the Old Testament religion, and the inner meaning of the Messianic hope. Of this wonderful growth and moving revelation, it can be said, in a way deeper than the old typological and prophetic methods of study could understand, that Christ is the aim and the goal; not only Jesus of Nazareth with His unique Personality, but that still more transcendent mystery, the Christ within the heart, Christ the head of every man. If we have learned nothing else, surely we have learned this: that behind the hopes of mankind, behind their misty dreams, their gropings after truth, their struggles for righteousness, are the eternal thoughts of God; and although these may transcend their poor reflection in the mind of man, as the heavens the earth, yet this remains: that for every hope implanted, there is an answer beyond our expectation; for every desire Godward, the revelation of the Father-friend; for every ideal of the human heart, the Christ; and for every effort after human progress, the ever nearer coming of the Kingdom of God. INDEX Abraham, emigration of, 23; historicity of, 36; religion of, 31, 34 _Adonai_, 60 Ahijah, 117 Altars, erected anywhere, 98; construction of, 200 Amaziah, 118 Amos, 98, 118, 136, 148, 152, 159, 271 Animals, as tribal names, 39; clean and unclean, 40; worship of, 26, 39, 68, 124 Animism, 40, 41 Apostasy, 90, 129 Arabia, home of Semites, 20, 22 Ark, 69, 70, 121, 180 Armageddon, 272 Aryan conception of God, 25 Asaph, 222, 225 Asherah, 46 Ashtoreth, or _Ashtart_, 94 Assembly of the saints, 223 Assyria, 156, 160, 161 Atonement, 102, 208; of Christ, 210, 211; Day of, 177, 178 Azazel, 42, 207, 208 Baal, 38, 92, 96, 98 Baal of Tyre, 94, 109, 125. See also under Melkart Babylon, fall of, 185; Jews in, 169-174, 179, 185, 204 Babylonian epic of Creation, 205; influence of, 204-206 Babylonian religion, 186 Balaam, prophecy of, 271 Ban, the, 49 Blood, significance of, 26, 208; food of deity, 48 Book of the Covenant, 200 _Bosheth_, 94, 97 Bull-worship, 68, 98, 124 Calf-worship. See under Bull Canaan, influence of, 27, 83-86, 170; conquest of, 82, 86, 87; Jewish love for, 83; limitations of, 84 Canaanites, customs of, borrowed, 92, 98; origin of, 23, 24; religion of, 38, 92-95; sanctuaries of, 98, 158, 163; why not exterminated, 90; and Hebrews, 87 Centralization of worship, 144, 157, 163 Chemosh, 43 Choice of Israel, Jehovah's, 75; prophetic conception of, 156, 187 Christ the goal of Old Testament, 282. And see under Jesus Christianity, 101, 274 Chronicler, the, 221 Circumcision, 50, 180 Comparative religion, 38 Conditions of life among Semites, 20; in time of Judges, 87; after exile, 196, 232; in time of Psalms, 226, 231, 232; reflected in Wisdom lit., 247; in Ecclesiastes, 259; in Messianic age, 273 Covenant at Sinai, 58, 65; prophetic conception of, 76, 157, 267 Covenant-sacrifice, 49, 63 Creation, 186, 205; Babylonian legend of, 205 Customs retained with new significance, 39, 50, 176 Customs, mourning, 40 Cyrus, 183, 185, 268 Daniel, Book of, 141 David, character of, 119, 121, 229; influence of, 120; his kingdom, 88, 120; a poet, 119; his religious ideas, 121; his work, 120; and the Messiah, 270, 275 Day of Atonement, 177; of the Lord, 271; of judgment, 272 Deborah, Song of, 88 Decalogue, the, 74 Deluge, the, 206 Deuteronomy, Book of, 145, 157, 162, 200 Development of Religion, xiv, 27, 37, 79, 86, 99, 128, 129, 131, 142, 215, 282 Director's Psalm Book, 220 Documents, various, how detected, 33, 194, 199 "E," 30, 142, 194 Ecclesiastes, name, 258; Book of, 260; ascribed to Solomon, 258; significance of, 262 El, 37, 59 Elijah, 98, 99, 106, 114, 125, 126, 136, 148 Elisha, 113, 114, 125, 128 _Elohim_, 30, 42, 222 Ephod, 67, 100 Ethical conceptions, 127, 152, 155, 158, 244, 249 Ethnology of Old Testament, 18 Exile, date of, 134, 168; cause of, 171, 176; critical view of, 171, 172; lessons from, 190; religion after, 230 Exilic stamp on literature, 172 Exodus, the, 58; date of, 24, 82 Ezekiel, 169, 174, 175, 178, 195; Book of, 174, 177; his school, 195; and Leviticus, 172, 177 Ezra, 181; introduces the Law, 196, 197; what did it include? 198, 200 Feast of Tabernacles, 197, 198 Forgiveness, 207, 233 Funeral feasts, 41 Gad, 117 God, name of. See under _Elohim_, El and Jehovah God, conception of, Semitic, 25, 26; Aryan, 25; anthropomorphic, 48, 66, 155; ethical, 96, 155, 211; local, 43, 52, 62, 75, 96; spiritual, 155; tribal, 26, 32, 75; materialistic, 69, 70; as the Storm God, 70; as the Creator, 186 God, conception of, by David, 26; by Prophets, 154, 155, 175, 186; by Psalmists, 236; in Job, 256; in Ecclesiastes, 261 God, holiness of, 175, 207; jealousy of, 76; righteousness of, 77, 155, 232 _Habiri_, 24, 82 Hallel Psalms, 223 Hammurabi, code of, 73, 203, 204 Heathen deities, 42, 43, 66, 154 Hebrew, meaning of name, 23 Hebrew Bible, divisions of, 141 Hebrews, relation to other nations, 18, 19, 22, 24, 85, 156 Heroes of Israel, 85 Hexateuch, 200 High places, worship at, condemned, 173. See also Canaanitish sanctuaries Higher criticism, xi, xii Historical value of Hebrew tradition, 32, 183, 228, 229, 245, 247 Historical books, Prophets' influence on, 114, 141, 142 History, ancient conception of, xiii, 32, 51, 145, 163; how compiled, 114, 142, 143; religious interpretation of, 90, 101, 129, 171, 176, 187, 189. See also under Redaction Hittites, 23 Holiness, 175, 207, 236; code of, 200 Horeb, Theophany at, 126, 128 Hosea, 159 Human sacrifice, 48, 49, 95 Ideal Israel, 188 Idolatry and images, 37, 45, 67, 68, 70, 154, 176, 180, 186, 247 Immortality in Psalms, 34, 35; in Job, 256; in Ecclesiastes, 261, 262 Inspiration, xiii, 129, 206, 231; how related to infallibility, xiii, xiv Interpolations, 146 Isaiah, 160, 295; Book of, 147, 156; authorship of, 147, 182-185 Israel. See under Hebrews "J," 30, 32, 194 Jehovah, name, 59; pronunciation, 60, 62; explanation of, 61 Jehovah and other nations, 156; and Baal, 97, 98; and Israel, 44 Jehovah, religion of, date, 31, 34, 65; weakness of, 92, 95, 96; prophetic conception of, 154, 155; a religion of choice, 65, 75 Jehovah. See also under God Jeremiah, 154, 164, 188 Jeroboam, 124 Jerusalem, connection with David, 120; idea of inviolability, 161, 169, 170; besieged by Sennacherib, 161; deliverance of, 161; besieged by Nebuchadrezzar, 170; destruction of, 169, 170 Jesus and Messiahship, 266, 276, 278, 280, 281; and new covenant, 77; and Levitical system, 210; and Revelation, xv, 77; and Prophets, 273, 282; and Psalms, 231, 232, 234; and Proverbs, 250; and Isa. liii., 189; and Book of Daniel, 280, 281; and Book of Enoch, 280; and Old Testament, x Jethro, 62 Jews. See under Hebrews Job, 251; Book of, 250; date of, 251, 252; author, 251, 254, 255; divisions of, 253 Jonah, Book of, 156, 189 Joshua, Book of, 82, 86, 87 Josiah, reform of, 162, 163, 200 Judah, tribe of, 89 Judaism, 178 Judges, functions of, 91; Book of, 82, 87, 88, 90, 144 Kenites, 64 King. See under Monarchy and Messiah Kingdom of God, 28, 127, 131, 171, 273, 282 Korah, sons of, 225 Law, origin of, 173; of Moses, 196-198; later than Prophets, 137, 158; no observance of, until after exile, 54, 172, 199. See also under Pentateuch and Moses Levi, tribe of, 89 Levite choirs, 221 Levites, 71; distinguished from priests, 177 Levitical system, 208; intention of, 209 Leviticus, Book of, 157, 158, 172 Literary ideals, 146, 163, 251, 259 Localization of God, 43, 96, 103 Local sanctuaries, 58, 59 Lower criticism, xi Maccabees, the, 223, 224; times of, 221; Psalms of, 224, 226 Manasseh, 162 _Mazzebah_, the, 45 Melkart, 94, 95, 125. See also Baal of Tyre Memorial stones, 37, 44 Messiah, name, 274; title, 276; Davidic descent of, 275, 277 Messiah in the Prophets, 269, 276; in Apocrypha, 264 Messiah as Prophet, 269; Priest, 270; King, 270, 275 Messianic age, 151, 270, 273 Messianic King, 228 Messianic prophecy, 266, 267, 269-271, 275-277; includes more than a person, 267, 271, 281 Micah, 160, 277 Micaiah, 128 Midian, 64 Molech, 95, 96 Monarchy, origin of, 97, 106, 118; in Psalms, 228; in Proverbs, 247, 248 Monotheism among Semites, 25; Hebrews, 39, 43; not taught by Moses, 66; in the Prophets, 42, 154, 186 Moses, name, 57; historical reality, 55, 57; his call, 58, 63; mention before exile, 56; not author of Pentateuch, 54, 57. See also under Law, and Pentateuch Music and prophecy, 112 Musical directions in Psalter, 218-220 Musical services, 223 Nathan, 117, 122, 275 Nature in Psalter, 236 Nazarites, 114 Nebuchadrezzar, 169 Necromancy, 39 Nehustan, 68 New Covenant, the, 165 New Testament, Psalms quoted in, 229 New Testament and Old Testament, 266. See also under Christianity, and Jesus Old Testament, attitude of Jesus to, x; Jewish reverence for, x. See also under Hebrew Bible Oracles, 27, 46, 47, 68, 77, 100 Origin of religion, 51, 62 "P," 194. See under Priestly Code Palestine. See under Canaan Particularism, 155, 186, 191, 273 Passover, the, 49 Patriarchs, historicity of, 35 Pentateuch, strata of, 30, 194, 199, 200; how discovered, 34, 194, 199; not by Moses, 54, 73; Samaritan, 201. See also under Law, and Moses Personal conception of religion, 154, 166, 232, 233, 235, 237 Personalities, influence of, on history, 268 Personification, 186, 189, 232, 246, 252, 253 Pharaoh of the Exodus, 82 Philistines, 24, 97 Philo, 242, 246 Philosophy, 21, 246, 252 Phoenicians, 20, 23 Poetry, sign of early date, 18, 69, 88; of David, 119, 228; in Prophets, 153; in Psalms, 236; in Proverbs, 245 Polytheism among Semites, 25; among Hebrews, 37; the religion of savages, 41; in original documents, 41; evidence of, 42 Prayer, 216, 231 Prediction, 137, 151, 182, 183, 266, 278 Priesthood, 63; in time of Moses, 71, 111, 202; in time of Judges, 54,68, 100; in Ezekiel, 177; after exile, 209; of Messiah, 270. See also under Levites Priestly code, the, 200-202; ideals of, 206, 210. See also under Levitical system Priestly school, the, 196, 206 Problem of Providence, 234, 250, 253, 257, 259, 260 Problem of suffering, 187, 243, 251, 253, 257, 258, 262 Progress, causes of, 75, 97, 102. See under Development Prophesying, 112 Prophet, name of, 109, 110 Prophetic bands, 106, 112, 125 Prophetic consciousness, 149, 150 Prophetic literature, how compiled, 145, 146, 152 Prophetic style, 114, 145, 150, 153, 185 Prophets, origin of, 106; two classes, 108, 111, 149, 153; conflict between, 113, 128; their call, 148; their relation to State, 117, 127, 153; and national religion, 136, 149; and the Covenant, 139, 157; chronology of, 134; their place in history, 137; importance of, for criticism, xii, 137, 138; their picture of their age, 138, 139; they are creative, 135; their relation to the Law, 137, 139, 140, 143, 164, 215; and the Gospel, 136, 137, 138; their scheme of the future, 151, 272 Protestantism, 131 Protevangelium, the, 270 Proverb, the, 245 Proverbs, Book of, 245; its relation to Job, 240, 252; divisions of, 245; date of, 247 Psalms, titles of, 214, 218, 219, 224, 225, 228; ascription to David, 214, 218, 221, 222, 225-229; authorship of, 224, 225; some are prayers, 216; use in synagogue, 216; in the temple, 216, 218; Hallels, 223; Maccabæan, 224, 226; tone of, 217; imprecations in, 217, 231, 232; and the Gospel, 215; and Christianity, 216; their conception of God, 225, 236 Psalter, the, criticism of, 217, 218; date of, 221, 225-227, 229, 231; Books of, 221; a gradual compilation, 218, 221 Queen of Heaven, 95 Rahab, 205 Rechabites, 115 Redaction, 144, 145, 173, 215, 218 Reform, 107; of Elijah, 126; of Prophets, 139; under Josiah, 144, 162, 163; after exile, 180, 181; under Ezra, 196, 200 Religion, origin of, 38, 78; primitive, 32, 39, 40, 42, 43; Semitic, 25; of Patriarchs, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 65; in time of Moses, 54; in time of Judges, 67, 71; of Canaanites, 92-95; under monarchy, 108, 112, 158; after exile, 179, 181; Levitical conception of, 209, 210; of Psalmists, 230, 231-235; in Wisdom lit., 242, 244; in Proverbs, 249; in Job, 255; in Ecclesiastes, 261; of the future, 265, 268, 273 Repentance, 173, 178 Restoration, the, 181, 182 Retribution, 250, 262. And see under Problem of Providence Revelation, xiii, 51, 63, 66, 78, 79, 231 Ritual, 157, 209, 211 Sabbath, 168, 179 Sacred springs, 47 Sacred stones, 44 Sacred trees, 46 Sacrifice, primitive, 47, 48; adopted by Moses, 72; covenant, 49, 63; human, 48, 49; Prophetic estimate of, 72, 158; in "P," 202, 207; meaning of, 207, 208; of Christ, 210, 211. See also under Atonement Samaria, fall of, 134, 160 Samson, 115 Samuel, 106, 111, 113, 114, 119 Satan, 255, 266 Saul, 111, 112, 119 Scepticism, 248, 260, 261 Science, 21, 131, 237 Second Isaiah, 147, 180. See also under Isaiah Seer, 100 Selah, 219, 220 Semites, home of, 20; desert life, 20; Western antipathy to, 21; their contribution to thought, 21; to science, 21; to religion, 22; groups of, 22; migrations of, 22 Semitic character of our Bible, 25 Semitic language, 19 Semitic religion, 25, 26; tribal, 26; value of, 27; does not account for Hebrew religion, 25, 31 Sennacherib, 160 Servant of the Lord, 187, 188, 269, 278, 280; the suffering, 187, 279 Shekel, temple, 197, 199 Shewbread, 48 Shiloh, 271 Simeon, tribe of, 89 Simon Maccabæus, 224 Sin, 176, 207, 209, 232, 233 Sin-offering, the, 207 Sinai, 58, 62, 64, 65 Social conceptions, 127, 158, 159 Solomon, 88, 122, 224, 225; Proverbs ascribed to, 245, 246, 248; and Ecclesiastes, 259 Son of Man, the, title of, 279-281 Sons of the Prophets, 106, 110-112. See also under Prophetic bands Substitution, 208, 209 Supernatural, the, 79 Symbolism, 208, 209 Synagogue, the, 180, 181, 216 Syncretism, 92, 97, 99, 101, 102, 107 Tabernacle, the, 72, 73, 202 Tabernacles, Feast of, 197, 198 _Tehom_, _Tiamat_, 205 Tel-el-Amarna, tablets, 24, 82 Temple, the, 122-124, 162, 164, 177, 202; worship of, 220, 230; mentioned in Psalms, 226, 227 _Torah_, 100 Totemism, 39 Tradition, Jewish, 229 Tribes, names of, 40; unity of, 88, 91 Universalism, 155, 156, 186, 190, 191, 242, 274 Virgin birth, the, 276 Wisdom, 243, 246, 249, 261 Wisdom literature, 241; compared with rest of Bible, 243-244; date of, 245 Wise men, the, 244, 248 Worship, prophetic conception of, 157; of synagogue, 181; of temple, 220, 230. And see under Altars, Religion, God, and Sacrifice Zechariah, Book of, 134, 147 BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGE. Transcribers' Notes: Cover created by Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain. Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained. Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. Missing periods at the ends of the Roman numbers of Biblical citations have been added. Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references, but on page 285, reference to page 295 under "Isaiah" should be to page 195. Page 208: "how this is affected" perhaps should be "effected". Page 288: "BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD." was printed that way, as "LD." 
14764	----	Transcriber's Note: (Gutenberg preparation by Ge J. Snoek 2004: g.snoek3@chello.nl The original printed paper book pages are marked as <xxx> right aligned, (because lots of pages are referenced: omitting page nrs troubles comfortable searching, while footnotes are marked/numbered between square [123] hooks.) JOHAN M. SNOEK THE GREY BOOK A COLLECTION OF PROTESTS AGAINST ANTI-SEMITISM AND PERSECUTION OF JEWS ISSUED BY NON-ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCHES AND CHURCH LEADERS DURING HITLERS RULE INTRODUCTION BY URIEL TAL Van Gorcum & Comp. N.V. dr. H.J. Prakke & H.M.G. Prakke--Assen, 1969 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION (by Uriel Tal) Part I 1 PROBLEMS OF EVALUATION 2 FACTORS LEADING TO PUBLIC PROTESTS 3 RESULTS 4 HELP TO CHRISTIANS OF JEWISH ORIGIN 5 "MERCY-BAPTISMS" Part II 6 HISTORICAL EVENTS 7 GERMANY 8 THE NETHERLANDS 9 BELGIUM 10 FRANCE 11 SWITZERLAND 12 DENMARK 13 SWEDEN 14 HUNGARY 15 RUMANIA 16 GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 17 THE UNITED STATES 18 INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS OF CHURCHES Part III 19 HISTORICAL EVENTS, 1939-1945 20 GERMANY 21 NORWAY 22 THE NETHERLANDS 23 FRANCE 24 YUGOSLAVIA 25 GREECE 26 DENMARK 27 SLOVAKIA 28 RUMANIA 29 BULGARIA 30 HUNGARY 31 SWITZERLAND 32 SWEDEN 33 GREAT BRITAIN 34 THE UNITED STATES 35 THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES 36 TERRITORIES IN WHICH THE CHURCHES REMAINED SILENT 37 IN CONCLUSION APPENDIX I APPENDIX II BIBLIOGRAPHY PERIODICALS AND REPORTS INTRODUCTION (by Uriel Tal) The protests of the non-Roman Catholic Churches against the persecution and extermination of the Jews during the Nazi period, carefully compiled and amply documented in this volume, possess a significance that is not confined to the history of Christian-Jewish relations. They constitute an important chapter in the history of Christianity itself in that they reveal the deeper aspects of the Church's antagonism to the anti-religious and hence anti-Christian character of Nazi anti-semitism. The well-attested facts presented to us in this volume are a clear confirmation of the Church's reputation of Nazi doctrines, not only when these doctrines were directed against the Jews but, first and foremost, when they threatened the very existence of the Church itself, both as a system of theological doctrines and beliefs and as an historical institution. The Church regarded freedom, freedom of man as well as its own, as an inalienable right rooted in the nature of man as a rational being created in God's image. Hence, when the Church was deprived at the right of self-determination, it felt its very existence endangered, and it was then that it recognized the full symbolic import of Jewish persecution. This view was plainly set forth at the beginning of the persecution of the Jews by the Nazi-regime in Holland, by D. J. Slotemaker de Bruine, Protestant pastor and Minister of State, who declared: "...Freedom of the spirit is our life-blood. By that I mean freedom in questions of the spirit, freedom of conscience, freedom of the Church, freedom of instruction, freedom of the Word of God, freedom to bear witness..." [1] <I> In the light of this statement it is obvious that the Church was provoked to raise its voice in protest chiefly because the Nazis appropriated the messianic structure of religion which they exploited to their own ideological and political ends. This was made clear already in the early days of the Third Reich by "Die Geistlichen Mitglieder der Vorlaufigen Leitung der Evangelischen Kirche" who, in a memorandum (Denkschrift) addressed to the Fuehrer (May 1936), accuse Hitler of pursuing a policy that is not only directed against the Church but which is designed "to de-Christianize the German people" (das deutsche Volk zu entchristlichen), quoting, among other things, the words of Reichsorganisationsleiter Dr. Robert Ley: "The Party lays total claim to the soul of the German people...and hence we demand the last German, whether Protestant or Catholic..." [2] To those Church circles that raised their voices in protest this totalitarian structure of the Nazi regime presented a double threat to the very existence of the Church. First, the pseudo-religious and pseudomessianic character of Nazism was calculated to weaken the Church from within and to mislead the Christian community, especially its youth. It became increasingly clear to these circles that the Nazi racial doctrine - which Hitler and also the "Deutsche Christen" had called positive Christianity in their first formulation as early as 5 May 1932 - constituted a kind of additional gospel of messianic redemption that ostensibly strengthened Christianity as an institution and as a religion of revelation. Secondly, this pseudo- messianic and pseudo-religious authority that the Nazi regime arrogated to itself was able by means of its repressive measures to curtail the influence of the Church and even to reduce it to silence. This danger was perceived at an early date by the "Bekenntnissynode der Deutschen Evangelischen Kirche" in its Botschaft (Part I, par 2, 5) adopted by the Conference held in Berlin- Dahlem 19-20 October 1934, which stated: <II> "The National Church that the Reich's bishop has in view under the slogan: One State - one People - one Church, simply means that the Gospel is no longer valid for the German Evangelical Church and that the mission of the Church is delivered to the powers of this world.... The introduction of the Fuehrer principle into the Church and the demand of unconditional obedience based upon this principle are contrary to the Word of Scripture and bind the officials of the Church to the Church regiment instead of to Christ... [3] Towards the end of the period that is dealt with in the sources collected in this volume, in the year 1943, we also meet with a clear expression of the Church's opposition to this pseudo-religious and pseudo-messianic character of Nazism in the "Pastoral concerning National Socialist Philosophy" that was sent in Holland: ... to parochial church councillors to give them the necessary basis for their opposition in the struggle against National Socialist ideology, and especially against the intangible, but all the more dangerous religious ideas and expressions of National Socialism which will exercise an influence even after the war." In its penetrating analysis of the totalitarian character of Nazism this Pastoral observes: "...It is not surprising that National Socialism has the power to become the religion of the masses, and its assemblies to take the form of a kind of popular worship in which a great deal of latent religious emotion is released.... In carrying out its ministry the Church must therefore make its work in this connection even more definite in character, and must tell its members very clearly and resolutely that what is at stake here is the first commandment: Thou shalt have no other gods besides me...!" [4] <III> This pseudo-religious and pseudo-messianic character of Nazism was by no means accidental or the product of mass hysteria induced by some skilful propagandists. It was rather an ideological structure that was consciously given definite patterns and developed within a conceptual system in accordance with its own laws of logic. In this development the traditional theological concepts of Christianity were retained but given an altogether different meaning. Values that had previously been regarded as relative in the culture of Christianity and of the West now became absolute; and values that had formerly been considered absolute, being interpreted as metaphorical or visionary, became relative. Phenomena with an imminent historical essence were lifted to a meta-historical plane. Means were converted to ends, and ends were endowed with absolute authority in so far as they sanctified the means. In this manner the fundamental concepts of religion were not invalidated nor the integrative functions served by these concepts impaired, such as those cohesive factors that hold together the social structure and ensure its normal functioning. The Nazis retained these concepts and their functions as a legitimate part of their racial theory and, after depriving them of their authentic historical content, turned them into political expedients to be used in their attack against humanism, religion and Christian values. Basic theological concepts such as God, redemption, sin and revelation were now used as anthropological and political concepts. God became man, but not in the theological Christian sense of the incarnation of the Word: "...and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us..." (John 1. 14) or in the Pauline conception of the incarnation of God in Christ in whom "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily" (Colossians 2. 9). In the new conception God becomes man in a political sense as a member of the Aryan race whose highest representative on earth is the Fuehrer. This change in the essential meaning of the concepts God-man is, from the standpoint of cognition, effected by converting the relative into the absolute and, from the standpoint of theology, by transferring the Pauline conception (Ephesians 4. 24; Colossians 3. 10) from the plane of metaphysics and eschatology to that of nationality rind politics. <IV> It was this radical change from Christian doctrines to pagan myths that aroused the Churches to express their protest against Nazism, and also against the persecution of the Jews, in the above Pastoral of the year 1943: "And there is now a return to the worship of life and power by accepting and exalting the old Adam as the original and eternal MAN. There is an attempt at self-salvation - the old Adam is not crucified with Christ (Rom. 6. 6) but by his very own inmost strength achieves a new life and a heightened vitality..." [5] Similarly, the theological concepts of sin and redemption were transferred to a legal category of administrative regulations that demanded outer conformity and inner obedience. The traditional conception of sin and redemption that was common to all currents of Christian thought held that man's redemption, and hence eschatological existence, depends on his faith: "the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ... since all have sinned and... they are justified by grace... through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus..."(Rom. 3. 22-24). In the totalitarian Nazi regime the concepts sin and redemption were used as means by the State or the Party to convert man into a loyal subject whose allegiance is assured by his constant fear not only of violating some concrete ordinance or governmental decree but simply of just deviating from the official ideology. The Christian belief that man could be saved through faith in the forgiveness of Jesus who died for his sins, "so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin" (Rom. 6.6), was transferred from the theological to the secular, political plane. Even the comforting assurance of the believer that his sins shall be forgiven and that he shall be found worthy of the purifying influences of grace could now be gained only by the individual's complete identification with the State, the Party and the superior Aryan race. An instructive illustration of this shift from theology to ideology is to be found in the circular letters (Rundschreiben) and in the speeches of the Reichsorganisationsleiter Dr. Robert Ley, for example in his words of 26. June 1935: "Strength through joy (Kraft durch Freude) is the embodiment of National Socialism. <V> Over against sin we put discipline, over against penitence pride! Over against the weak and their infirmities we put strength... " [6] This doctrine was not mere Aryan propaganda; it became an integral part of school studies and was systematically inculcated into the minds of the young. The following is an example of a dictation given in 1934 to the third grade of an elementary school: "Just as Jesus redeemed mankind from sin and hell, so did Hitler rescue the German people from destruction. Jesus and Hitler were persecuted; but whereas Jesus was crucified, Hitler rose to be Chancellor... Jesus worked for heaven, Hitler for the German soil..." [7] This same pattern of reversing meanings was also applied by the totalitarian Nazi regime to the basic concepts of western culture. Nationalism as an historical phenomenon of a people with a common language and culture and with the consciousness of a common destiny was raised to a mythical, meta-historical plane. The essence of national unity was discovered to reside in race and soil; the cultural and spiritual creations of the nation were attributed to man's biological resources. Similarly, the State became an end in itself, an ideal meta-historical entity that was identical with the national spirit. [8] This view was critically described by the Dutch Church as follows: "... The whole cult of National Socialism finds its most powerful manifestation in a State which claims to support, lead and fill in the material and spiritual, educational, cultural and religious spheres, the whole life of its subjects. Not only does the State order the life of the individual, but it takes a creative part in it. It becomes the founder of the true religion and the dispenser of the true philosophy; it furnishes the data for knowledge..." [9] <VI> Mythical nationality in the totalitarian regime thus developed a monolithic structure which functioned as the only ontological framework in which the individual may acquire his own identity, his selfknowledge and understanding. While in a different, non-totalitarian civilization man establishes his inner freedom by means of intellectual autonomy, the Nazi regime made the actual biological belonging to the Aryan race into the ultimate condition for the self-realization of Man. Hence one who could not belong to the Aryan race, the prototype of whom was the Jew, was doomed to be completely alienated, deprived not only of all rights, but of the very justification to exist. It was this reversal of the status of the individual which prepared the ground for subsequent developments against which the Church protested, such as forced labour, the repression of independent thought, the indoctrination of the young by the State and their estrangement from their parents, teachers and preachers. An example of this tendency towards the total dehumanization of the individual, as reflected in the persecution of the Jews, and that provoked the Church to protest, was the decree authorizing sterilization. The stand of the Church in this matter was stated in the "Letter on the Question of Sterilization" that was sent in May 1943 by the Protestant and Catholic Churches in Holland to the officials of the Reich and in which, among other things, we find the following: "...In the last few weeks the sterilization of the so-called mixed marriages has begun. But God, who created heaven and earth and whose commandments are for all men, and to whom even your Excellency will have to give account one day, has said to mankind: 'Be fruitful and multiply' (Gen. 1. 18). Sterilization is a physical and spiritual mutilation directly at variance with God's commandment that we shall not dishonour, hate, wound or kill our neighbours. Sterilization constitutes a violation of the divine commandment as well as of human rights. It is the last consequence of an anti-Christian racial doctrine that destroys nations, and of a boundless self-exaltation. It represents a view of the world and of life which undermines true Christian human life, rendering it ultimately impossible... [10] <VII> The fact that the protest of the Church against the persecution and annihilation of the Jews was an inseparable part of its general protest against the inhuman and anti-Christian character of modern anti-semitism places the documents collected in this volume in a broad historical context. These documents offer ample evidence of the Church's opposition to an historical phenomenon rooted long before the Nazis came to power, hence also prior to the rise of modern anti-semitism. The protest of the Church was fundamentally directed against those pagan and mythological elements that had crept into Christianity itself in the course of its historical development among the heathen. To many of the fathers of modern anti-semitism, which is the racial and political Anti-semitism that arose towards the end of the 19th century and reached its highest stage during the Third Reich, the rejection of Judaism was tantamount to the rejection of religion in general. This view goes back to Feuerbach's anthropological criticism of religion, to the young Hegelians (Max Stirner, Bruno Bauer) and to the early Romantics who longed to return to the primitive forms of a religion called "vorchristliches Germanenthum". [11] Modern anti-semitism was influenced by these streams of thought through Nietzsche's concept of the 'Antichrist', although Nietzsche himself kept aloof from the more vulgar manifestations of political anti-semitism of his day. In him the anthropological view reaches its culmination - God, who is nothing more than the deified form of man [12] is finally overthrown by Dionysian man who found courage to assert his instinctive life and abjure the gross and enslaving notions of Christianity that men <VIII> are equal and can be redeemed by faith, the gospel of the downtrodden and everything that creeps on earth. [13] These views, inimical to religion and to Christianity, were already being expounded with great vigour towards the end of the 19th century. Christian doctrine was accused of perverting man's instinctive life, vitiating his natural enthusiasm, inflaming his ego, invading his private life over which it declares its dominance only to enslave human nature, to weaken and alienate man, by imposing upon him "un-natural" restraint such as the anguish of his conscience. Wilhelm Marr, one of the early fathers of modem racial and political Anti-semitism and the man who during the late 70's coined the term 'anti-semitism'[14] included in the rejection of Judaism his critique of Christianity as early as the year 1862. In a polemical work called "Der Christenspiegel von anti-Marr" by Moritz Freystadt, a member of the "Society for History and Theology" in Leipzig, written in answer to Marr's "Judenspiegel", the author interprets Marr's rejection of Judaism as a rejection of monotheism, based on his anthropological view of God as a subjective product of our conscious life - an antireligious analysis Marr evidently borrowed from Voltaire, Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer. [15] With Marr's intensification of anti-Jewish propaganda inspired by the new racial anti-semitism we find increased criticism of Christianity both as a system of beliefs and as an institution. In one of his popular books "Religioese Streifzuege eines Philosophischen Touristen" (1876) Marr, relying on theories propounded by Voltaire and Feuerbach, observes that from the atheistic point of view it is evident: <IX> "that Christianity, in its dogmas and precepts, is like every religion, a malady of human consciousness. The philosopher explains... every religion as a product of man's conscious life and relegates to the sphere of phantasm the so-called 'revelations' of which all people boast depending on the state of their culture..." [16] Most additional factors in the rejection of Judaism, Marr continues, go beyond the attack directed against Christianity as a system of beliefs and superstitions that demoralizes man and corrupts his nature. Anti-semitism is not only called to combat religion and Christianity; its chief aim is to save the German nation and the whole world from Jewish domination and from the moral depredation of the Jewish race. Christianity is not yet fully cognizant of the gravity of the problem, and it deceives itself when it thinks that baptism or conversion is a gratuitous deliverance from native corruption, for the Jew's aberrations are not religious but biological and hence incorrigible. The Jewish question, Marr concludes, is a racial question for the infidelity of the Jew is essentially biological, and hence Christianity is in no position to save the world from the perils of the Semitic-Jewish race. [17] <X> We here encounter a primary distinction between the doctrines of racial anti-semitism and those of the Christian Heilsgeschichte, a contradiction that awoke the Church to the dangers of Nazism when, in 1933, it opposed the "Arierparagraph". This racial law rejected the notion that the Jews could still hope for redemption, and for a renewed status of election, assured them in the New Testament (Rom. 9-11) on condition that they acknowledge their error and accept the redeeming truth of Christianity. Even in the early years of racial anti-semitism, in the seventies and eighties of the last century, we already find this inner contradiction between a racial theory that regards Jews as the ontological embodiment of an ineradicable evil and the views of the Heilgeschichte that believes this evil to be remedial if only the Jews could be persuaded that salvation comes from the Savior who was sent first of all to the Jews themselves, and who atoned for the sins of all mankind. It is this inner tension between the recalcitrance of the Jew and the incorrigibility of Judaism that refuses to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, already conspicuous in the change that took place in Luther's attitude to the Jews between 1523 and 1543, which charactarizes the theological and political attitude of Adolf Stoecker, court preacher in the Bismarck era and one of the leading figures of modern anti-semitism. Until recently historians concentrated much on his importance in preparing the ground for racial and political anti-semitism. It is true that without his powerful influence during the last decades of the 19th century the rise of modern political anti-semitism would be incomprehensible. A more balanced approach has been taken lately, as may be seen in the instructive study by Walter Holsten on the part played by Stoecker in the rise of modern anti-semitism. The author shows that many phases of Stoecker's anti-semitism had their roots in the conservative tradition of Lutheranism and at the same time were opposed to the anti-Christian tendencies of racial anti-semitism. [18] <XI> The early phases of Stoecker's activity already reveal the ambivalent nature of his attitude to the Jews and to Judaism, an ambivalency that characterized the anti-Christian elements in antisemitic "Christian" ideology throughout the days of the Third Reich. In his speeches after the political defeat of his Christian Social Labor Party in the summer of 1878, Stoecker insisted on making a distinction between the anti-Jewish attitude that arises in conjunction with or flows from Christianity and the antisemitic attitude which at the same time also impugns Christian ethics. In his well-known antisemitic speech as early as 19.9.1879 Stoecker warns his listeners: "We can already detect here and there a hatred directed against the Jews that is contrary to the Gospels". [19] Even in his most violent speeches against the Jews Stoecker did not draw the extreme biological consequences of his racial theories and continued to maintain that conversion was the only authentic solution to the Jewish question that would complete the universal mission of Christianity and that only baptism could save the Jews from their ignominious belief in the validity of the halacha after the coming of Jesus. The salvation promised to the Jew then is to be saved from his Judaism. The final redemption, however, will not raise the Jews above the nations of the world, as promised in the Old Testament, but this position of eminence and election will pass, or actually has already passed, from the Jews not just to the Christians but to Christian Germany. The redemption promised to the Jews is thus to be attained by way of the baptismal font at the entrance to the Church: <XII> "All Israel will be saved when the fullness of the heathen shall have come to an end. This was Paul's promise to his beloved people - final salvation and not a future glory that will raise Israel above the other nations as proclaimed in the Old Testament... and every believing Christian knows well what a rejoicing there will be in the Kingdom of God when the people of the Old Testament finally acknowledge their sin against Christ and repent. This event will be hailed by all Christendom and by the angelic hosts with paeans of praise, and it will be turned by the Church in the End of Days into glory and renown when Israel will bring to it its uncommon religious talents and intellectual gifts..." [20] The inner tension between the theological view that sees the solution of the Jewish question in the liquidation of Judaism and the racial view that sees it in the liquidation of the Jews is clearly expressed in an address delivered by Stoecker on 8.2.1882 about the danger to the German Reich from Jews in public life, in which he states: "We regard the Jewish question not as a religious nor indeed as a racial question. Although it is at bottom both of these, it appears in its external form as a social-ethical question, and is treated by us as such. No people can tolerate the preponderance of an alien spirit without degenerating and being destroyed? We would not solve the Jewish question radically by force, but gradually in a spirit of peace and amity... We must keep the wounds open until they are healed..." [21] Although Stoecker himself was opposed to the use of force, modern political anti-semitism, which was to no small degree influenced by him, did not shrink from advocating violence in its hostility to Judaism, to religion and finally to Christianity. A significant contribution in this direction was made by the Darwinian racial doctrines of Eugen Duehring and his antisemitic disciples. Whereas Marr had formulated the anti-religious meaning of modern anti-semitism in ominous terms of the Jewish domination of Europe and especially Germany, Dühring adopted a so-called constructive approach by suggesting an alternative to religion and religious culture, namely, race. In his antisemitic writings after 1880 Judaism serves as the prototype of religion in general, including Christianity. <XIII> The primary aim of this anti-Christian anti-semitism was for Duehring the struggle against Jews and Judaism, and this also entailed the struggle against the monotheistic religions and all forces that suppressed what he called "the instinct of the free, natural life." In his anti-religious book "Wert des Lebens" (1877), and especially in the third edition issued four years later, he points out that Christianity as a monotheistic religion is opposed to life and that all religious systems are nothing but pathological maladies (ein Stueck weltgeschichtliche Krankheitslehre des Geistes). Christianity is thus not interested "in ennobling man, but rather in suppressing his natural instincts" as is evident, for example, in the "paradox Christian doctrine" of the crucifixion of the flesh. [22] Hence, it is absurd and hopeless to conduct the struggle against the Jews with Christian theological concepts borrowed from Judaism, and those Christians who attach importance to this only deceive themselves for it is plain that: "...their anti-semitism lacks the primary truth, namely, that Christianity itself is Semitism, a truth... that must serve as the terminus a quo for all genuine anti-Hebraism..." [23] As long as the Christians fail to disavow their Jewish source and their Jewishness they themselves will be tainted by its anti-natural influence. But since Christianity is inextricably bound to its Jewish origins, and even the New Testament is nothing but "a racially Jewish tradition" (eine rassenjuedische Ueberlieferung), the only hope for struggling humanity is to throw off once for all this humiliating yoke, meaning the religious heritage of Jews and Christians alike. The liberation from the Jewish-Christian heritage, on the one hand, and the strengthening of the Nordic German race on the other cannot be achieved through the process of education or civilization but only by means of racial purity which will cleanse man of religious depravities and restore the vital sources of his instinctive life. Christianity is inadequate for this struggle since it is itself ineradicably debased by its complicity with Judaism: <XIV> "Those who would cling to Christian tradition are in no position to combat Judaism effectively. ...An understanding Christian cannot be a serious antisemite... The Nordic gods are rooted in nature itself, and no millennial diversion can eradicate them... We here see a vivid phantasy in operation that is incomparably loftier than the Jewish slave-imagination..." [24] This basic thesis that racial anti-semitism must also be directed against Christianity continued to be elaborated from the end of the 19th century onwards by Theodor Fritsch as well as in a number of journals: the Antisemititche Correspondenz, which in 1888 became the official organ of the D.A.P. under the name of Deutsche-Soziale Blaetter, the Antisemiten-Katechismus which was later called Handbuch zur judenfrage and, in the early years of the present century, the influential journal Hammer. The general tendency of this movement was directed against Christianity as an ecclesiastical institution, sometimes chiefly against the Catholic Church which was suspected of "ultramontanist" sympathies for a foreign ecclesiastical power. Christianity was also opposed as a system of beliefs and practices that tended to debilitate the German Aryan race in its struggle for existence. Finally, Christianity was opposed because of its Jewish origins which deteriorate the whole human race by elevating spirit over body, rational thought over the wisdom of the senses, abstract ideas over direct and spontaneous experience, and the discursive intellect over the vital emotions. In the course of this debate the antisemitic movement displayed a readiness to reconcile itself to the continued existence of Christianity on condition that it subsitute the biological values of the Aryan race for its Jewish origins, as was recommended by the idealogues who made Jesus a member of the Aryan race - Julius Langbehn, Max Bewer, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Leopold Werner, and the German Christians in the days of the Third Reich. [25] <XV> We find the same line of thought pursued by the followers of Duehring, such as Prof. Paul Foerster, as well as in those circles connected with the antisemitic journals, such as Heimdall, Freideutschland, Staatsburger Zeitung, also some of the functionaries connected with the imperialist Der Alldeutscher Verband, such as Friedrich Lange, the author of the anti-Christian Reines Deutschtum (1893), and numerous writers, historians, orientalists, scientists and students influenced by anthropology, materialism and Darwinism. A popular exposition that reveals the national and Romantic roots of this ideology appeared in the Hammer (Oct. 1908), and reads in part as follows: "What shall we do with a Christ whose kingdom is not of this world? A Bluecher, a Gneisenau, a Koerner, an Arndt can always be useful for Germany, but not a Christ. The God who was called upon at Leuthen, Leipzig and Sedan was not the God of love, nor the God of Abraham. Christ comforts the lowly, the weak and the sick. We too are sorry for these poor folk and try to alleviate their condition; but they are of no use to us and to our future. They only degrade that which we deem to be the highest good - the German character. Strength, health, the joy of life are what we need. The kingdom of Heaven can be left to the lowly and the wretched, as long as we possess the earth. Give the Bible to the sick and the lonely, the shut-ins and the scholars who wear their faces on their backs!..." [26] Similarly, the antisemitic propagandist, Dr. Ernst Wachler, writes in the same journal (Jan. 1911): "Away with the stones and tales, the doctrines and precepts of Jews as well as of Christians!... Not only the free-thinkers, but our basic Aryan instincts demand: the Church with all its trappings must be done away with..." [27] <XVI + (whole page XVII is footnote)> The available historical sources, including the documents collected in this volume, clearly indicate that the protests of the Church against the persecution of the Jews, with its human and ethical concern for their fate, were an inseparable part of a more comprehensive opposition directed against the pseudo-messianic and hence anti-Christian character of Nazism. Seen in this context, the protest of the Church gives rise to a number of historical and theological questions that require further study. The questions that arise fall into three groups. A. To what extent did the secularizing tendencies of the last century, the rationalistic attacks on religion, the Romantic philosophies, pagan mythology, Darwinism and the anthropological critique of religion, contribute to the anti-Christian character of modern anti-semitism? How did the process of secularization influence the teachings and art of Richard Wagner, the Christian mythology of Houston St. Chamberlain, Julius Langbehn, Ernst Bergmann and the movement of the "German Christians", or the "Mythus" of Alfred Rosenberg? Can modem historiography support the psychoanalytical Freudian explanation of anti-Christian anti-Semitism in terms of a revival of vestigial pagan elements which were latent in Christianity itself, and which consequently revolted against the ethical Judaic basis of Christianity and against the Jews who were now made responsible for all that disturbed the Christian conscience? From the vast literature that has grown up around these problems [28] we see that side by side with the all-pervasive secularization of life there were also historical and theological factors embedded in Christianity which later turned against Christianity itself. Through further study, we might find in the history of Christianity traditions <XVIII> that originated in the barbarism of the pagan world, turned anti-Christian by that very paganism, then continued as anti-Jewish attitudes and policies on the part of the Christian world - and finally culminating dialectically into a destructive force that was directed not only against Judaism, but through Judaism against Humanity and hence also against Christianity. One of these powerful anti-Jewish elements which rooted in Christianity, and after having been secularized became an effective means used by totalitarianism against the Jews as well as against the Jews as the symbol of non-conformism, as the embodiment of the human quest for a free existence, for the right to be different and yet to be, is the very concept of Collective Guilt. Its origin is the idea of guilt for the crucifixion of God who took on Flesh (Matt. 27. 25; I Thess. 2. 15), a guilt which lies as a heavy yoke on the shoulders of all the Jews till the end of the days. It was applied to social life by various Church Synods (such as Elvira in 306, Clermont in 535, Orleans in 538, the Lateran Councils of 1179 and 1215) with their succession of repressive measures and harassments directed against the Jews. It culminated under the influence of blood libels in the late Middle Ages (Andreas of Ryn p. 1462, Simon of Trient 1475) [29], and in Modern Times (Tisza-Esslar, Korfu, Xanten, Polna, Konitz) - down to the days of the Third Reich. By using the very pattern of a Collective Guilt, the Christian projected on to the Jew the frailties common to all human beings. This mechanism enabled the Christian to see his own weakness reflected in the Jew so that by persecuting the Jew, moreover by exterminating him, the Christian could obliterate his own image as a sinner, and cleanse his conscience from the burden of guilt. These patterns of thought and conduct, these models of generalization, projection and prejudice that originally were established by Christianity with respect to the Jews - to what extent were they now employed by the Nazi regime against Humanity, as well as against the Church itself whenever the racial antisemites attacked its ethical Judaic basis? <XIX> B. The second group of questions concerns the problems as to whether the survival of the Jews on the one hand, and their ultimate Christianization on the other, are both indispensable to Christianity. Since the promise made to the Jews in the Old Testament (Gen. 22 .18; II Sam. 7. 12; Isaiah 7.14), will be fulfilled or perhaps superseded by those of the New Testament (Rom. 9-11) when the Jews return in penitence and acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, it seems that the Christian concern for the fate of the Jews, even in the days of the holocaust, is unavoidably accompanied by an interest in his salvation. Alas, his salvation is conceived by the Christian in terms that are unacceptable for the Jew as long as he wishes to adhere to Judaism as a religion, a people and an unfulfilled eschatology. As we study the documents before us in their total historical context including parts not directly relevant to the very protest and therefore not printed in this volume, we are impressed with the following fact; while the Church raised its voice against the persecution of the Jews out of human motives, as well as in the hope of thereby strengthening its own members, the traditional, dogmatic concept of the Jew continued to be dominant. According to this view the persecution of the Jews constitutes an error, not only for reasons of humanity, but mainly because persecution prevents the Jew from seeking redemption among his persecutors. It prevents the Jew from turning to Jesus as the Messiah and from seeking in the New Testament that salvation which not only is promised him, but without which Christianity itself is doomed to remain unfulfilled. From the theological point of view regarding the right of Judaism to exist, the Church in its protest against the Nazis reverted to the original attitude of Luther, as expressed in "Das Jesus Christus eyn geborener Jude sey" of 1523. When Luther protested against the anti-Jewish policy of the Church, claiming that the Church treated the Jews "als waren es hunde", and that under such circumstances he himself would: "...ehe eyn saw geworden denn eyn Christe", this very protest was also not based on an acknowledgment of the right of Judaism to exist as an independent, autonomous religion. The motive that inspired this protest was the hope that Christianity would mitigate the persecution of the Jews and apply to them instead the Christian Commandment of love and tolerance, as written by Luther: <xx> "...Ob etliche halsstarrig sind was ligt daran? Sind wyr doch auch nicht alle gute Christen...". In that case, and only in that case, Christians might be hopeful that the Jews would return in penitence and believe in the salvation brought to them by their own Messiah. Against this historical background [30] it seems that even during the Holocaust, Christianity continued to identify the Jew not in his own, authentic, terms, but according to the classical traditions. The Jew is one who persists in the impenitent rejection of Christ, but must be saved, for it is the Jew who has to complete the eschatological process of the Heilsgeschichte. Therefore Jews, and especially converts, have to be rescued from racial discrimination. Moreover, since Judaism continues to be an integral part of Christianity, the very notion of the Jews as a race can have no basis whatsoever in Christian theology. [31] This has been stated as early as September 1933 by the theological faculty of the University of Marburg in its statement against the "Arierparagraph". Similar statements were issued by theologians such as Rudolf Bultmann and the members of the Bekenntnis der Vaeter und die bekennende Gemeinde (Betheler Bekenntnis), 1934 [32]. Thus, even at the height of Nazi persecution and in times of the extermination of the Jews, the Church would not acknowledge Judaism as a religion in its own right and on its own terms, but insisted that a Jew who became a Christian was merely fulfilling his predestined role; such a Jew did not leave his faith, he returned to his true faith. It is most symptomatic and instructive to note that in the controversy between Heinrich Vogel, one of the leaders in the protests against the persecution of Jews and the author of the "65 Theses of Protest" (March 1933) and Friedrich Gebhart, a spokesman of the "German Christians" and the author of the "Reply to the 65 Theses" (May 1933), <XXI> both sides, despite their theological and political contradictions adhere to the same traditional Christian view that the Jews are in a state of rejection (Verwerfung). One view holds that the Jew can abrogate his old covenant with Jehovah and step over to the side of the Redeemer; the other holds that the derelict Jew is beyond salvation and the redeeming influences of the Church, that Ueberzeuging cannot overcome Zeugung, that the Vollendung of Judaism in Christ should be turned into the Endloesung of Jewish existence. Both, however, despite the far reaching differences and contradictions between them, deny the Jew the right to live on his own terms and according to his own autonomy. This approach to the Jewish question on the part of those who protested against the persecution of the Jews was not confined to the Bekennende Kirche in Germany. Even the Dutch Church, in the early forties, did not deviate from its theological tradition. A typical illustration is to be found in the Pastoral Letter written by the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church (Sept. 1941), a document that will go down in history as a striking witness to spiritual integrity and moral courage. Although the Letter emphasizes the fact that the New Testament is dependent on the Old Testament (Deut. 6, 4-5; Mark 12, 29-31) and that the love of one's fellowman also applies to the treatment of the Jew (Lev. 19, 18; Matt. 22, 39), it defines Judaism as a religion that is destined to disappear by being redeemed through and in Christianity. Again, this is in keeping with Christian tradition which holds that the metaphysical status of election and the promise of eschatological salvation as given to the Jews in the Old Testament are fulfilled in Jesus who is "...the fulfilment of all God's promises to Israel, the true king of this nation sent by God..." [33] Hence, the document continues, having rejected Jesus as the redeemer, the Jews are still sunk in sin: "...Israel did not recognize Him, but rejected Him... In this way they hardened their hearts against the grace of God... They are no longer Israel in the original sense of the lord, they are 'Jews' now. A Jew is a man of Israel who rejects Jesus Christ, and thus is to us a sign of human hostility to the Gospel..." [34] The Church that protested Jewish persecution by the Nazis with such courage and religious conviction still finds it indispensable to advocate conversion as the only solution to the problem of Jewish stubborn existence, an existence which equals infidelity: <XXII> "...The true destiny of the Jewish people lies in its Conversion to Christ, by joining the Christian Church. The Jew remains a Jew in the bitter sense which this word has for him first and foremost; the Jew cannot free himself from himself, as long as he does not come to Christ..." [35] Are there any pronouncements of the Church that offer a Christian-Jewish relationship other than that of conversion? [36] Is there a possibility that the Church may acknowledge the inherent right of self-determination for the Jew, so that he could retain his identity and not seek to "free himself from himself?" This "bitter sense" of the Jew the Church spoke about even when protesting against Nazism, is it indigenous to Judaism or rather the result of the social and political conditions in a Christian world? Similar questions arise when we read the documents in Appendix I which do not deal with the period of the Third Reich but with the period after the Second World War. In these documents we find a number of explicit statements by eminent Christian theologians condemning anti-semitism. But even here we find no acknowledgment of the right of Judaism to exist on its own terms. Nor do we find such acknowledgment in the special declaration of a group of theologians, during the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches which convened in Evanston in 1954, entitled "Hope of Israel" [37]. In this declaration a systematic attempt is made to renew relations with <XXIII> Judaism since"... to be a member of the Christian Church is to be involved with the Jews... and the people of the New Covenant cannot be separated from the people of the Old Covenant..." [38] Jews, however, are still regarded as candidates for salvation on Christian terms, so that even in this enlightened document - a document which was composed years after the wholesale extermination of the Jews by the Nazis - theologians find no other solution but "...to hope for the conversion of the Jewish people..." [39]. Moreover, when these circles in the Church desire for reasons of conscience and remorse to express "...the grievous guilt of the Christian people towards the Jews throughout the history of the church...", they find no better way to express their deep sorrow than to revert to the "Findings of the pre-Evanston Conference of the American committee on the Christian Approach to the Jews" (Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, August 8-11, 1954) which states that '... the Church cannot rest until the title of Christ to the Kingdom is recognized by His own People according to the flesh...'" [40]. Another typical example of this attitude is the proclamation of the Joint Committee of the World Council of Churches and the International Missionary Council, after its Consultation at the Ecumenical Institute, Bossey, Sept. 12-18, 1956. An attempt was made to elevate the missionary activities of the Church, to seek the salvation of the Jews by the power of the spirit only: "...Our hope for the Jews does not mean that we can calculate the time or define the nature of the coming of Christ in his Kingdom... We may find a further warning against too precise speculation with regard to the Second Coming of Christ..." (Ch. III, par. c, d.). [41] In conclusion, however, the Joint Committee could not help adding a declaration which for the Jew makes any authentic dialogue meaningless if not impossible: "... The Jewish people will not find their true destiny until they return and acknowledge Jesus as Christ and Lord" (Cf. Chap. IV, 6) [42]. <XXIV> C. The third group of questions that arise from reading the documents and require careful study, deal with the actual situation as it existed during the Nazi regime. Were the protests of the Church effective, in rescuing Jews and then in strengthening the spirit of resistance, or even the religious feelings among Christians? Were the protests raised at the right time and under the proper circumstances, to mitigate the persecution or to postpone the annihilation of the Jews? Was the protest the most useful means of rescuing Jews, or would it have been more helpful for the Church to keep quiet so that it could devote itself more to actual underground activities - but, then, could the Church keep quiet? Was the Church, in its protest, ready to endanger its members as well as their relatives for the sake of an effective anti-Nazi struggle, or did the protest function as a Catharsis, relieving the members of the Church from the burden of moral responsibility towards the persecuted? Did the protests create a new, perhaps even a revolutionary non-conformist stand of the Church over against political power? How was the protest of the Church related to the concept of obedience to the existing regime, as expressed in Paul's Letter to the Romans Ch. 13, and in Luther's "Von weltlicher Obrigkeit wie weit man ihr Gehorsam schuldig ist" 1523? Finally, what was the reaction of the Jews who were persecuted, and especially of those Jews who lived in free countries and who might have been expected to exert themselves to save their brethren? Did they endanger their personal safety to rescue their fellow-Jews and display a deeper sense of responsibility towards them than the Church? This collection of sources, by concentrating on only one aspect of the entire interrelationship between Christianity and Judaism during the period of the holocaust may confuse the reader in thinking that the Protest was the prime characteristic and policy of the Church regarding anti-semitism, the persecution of the Jews and their extermination. The author of this book, the Rev. Johan M. Snoek, is correct in bringing to our attention that the Protest must be viewed as one and only one aspect of the position of the Church and of the Christian world as a whole during the Nazi regime. A collection of sources on the Protest of the Church does not preclude the fact that there existed other positions among Christians; the position of cooperation with antisemites, whether it was active or passive, direct or indirect, with knowledge of without, whether voluntary or <XXV> through coercion. This volume does not attempt to research the entire and definite historical and theological position of the Church during the Holocaust. Its purpose is to bring light upon one aspect, which until now has not been sufficiently investigated. By having gathered these documents, and by having placed them before us in their historical and geo-political order, a major contribution has been made towards a more balanced and varied understanding of this period. Uriel Tal The Hebrew University, Jerusalem <XXVI> PREFACE Much has been published as to whether the Pope remained silent during the persecution of the Jews in Europe, primarily as a reaction to Rolf Hochhuth's play "The Representative" (Der Stellvertreter in German or in Dutch "Plaatsbekleder"). Not so much, however, has been published about the attitude of the non-Roman Catholic Churches. When there is a vacuum in our knowledge, it is an excellent breeding place for myths. We should fill a gap therefore as well as possible. There exist certain myths, which die hard. Many people still believe that it was Richard III who murdered the princes in the Tower, though this has been shown to be false. The Dutch people for instance did not behave as courageously during the Second World War as is generally believed, but the myth seems to be firmly established; just as is the story that the King of Denmark walked through the streets of Copenhagen wearing the yellow badge in protest against the German measures concerning the Jews. One should not lightly dismiss the existence of such historical untruths on the assumption that there is always a grain of truth in every myth. Sometimes a myth is completely false, as in the case of murdered princes. Moreover, this type of myth is sometimes very harmful. We need only remind ourselves of the infamous ritual-murder myth, suggesting that the Jews used the blood of a Christian child for ritual purposes. <1> It is undeniable that throughout the ages many Christians took an active part in the persecution of Jews. [43] This fact has been officially and repeatedly admitted by Christian bodies. Some of the statements in this documentation unequivocally plead guilty in this respect. Small wonder, then, that many Christians, as well as Jews, honestly believe that "there was a complete and terrible silence on the part of the Church" [44]. In the process of creation of anti-Jewish myths, there is a tendency to generalize: "The Jews have ..." We like to think in general terms because stereotypes are so easy, whilst it costs us much more mental effort to discriminate. Let us not commit the same offence against logic as the anti-Semites have and let us remember that it is just as fallacious to talk about "the Churches" as about "the Jews". It is important for many reasons not to overrate the positive things the Churches did and said. It is also important, again for many reasons, not to belittle them. We certainly must denounce acts of anti-Semitism, even when outstanding leaders of the Church were the perpetrators, but this remains a negative. We must also mention the positive, which is more encouraging. I believe this is one of the underlying intentions of "Yad Vashem's" competent Department in trying to seek out and honour the "righteous of all Nations": non-Jews who helped Jews at the risk of their own lives. [45] It seems far too early to come to a definite evaluation of many aspects of the holocaust. Far be it from me, to claim that I can say the last word about that one aspect under discussion here: the attitude <2> of the non-Roman Catholic Churches. I can and must try to be objective, but I cannot be detached, as probably none of our generation can: we were all involved, in one way or another. [46] But I am convinced that our generation can and must do the groundwork. It must collect the material that may otherwise be completely lost or forgotten, and investigate it before even more people, who were personally involved, have passed away. Collecting these documents was like trying to make a jigsaw puzzle from which many pieces are missing, the difference being that in this case one often does not even know that something is missing. However, the lack of other pieces is known. [47] As regards my own country (the Netherlands), I am fairly sure that the collection of documents is well-nigh complete. Some statements issued by Churches were published in Bulgarian or Slovak, etc., but not in English. Even such documents as were available in English were not generally known. Most of the material in this book had to be translated from Hebrew, French, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Slovak, Hungarian, Bulgarian or Greek. Initially, I sent a circular letter to the heads of Churches in Eastern Europe asking for information and I received some replies, though not many. Some replies stated that no documents were available because everything had been destroyed during the war. This seems quite possible, and perhaps we must give the Churches in question the benefit of the doubt. Moreover, it was not advisable, for security reasons, to keep certain documents. Thus, for instance, all documents of the World Council of Churches and its preceding organizations, which might incriminate Christian leaders in Germany, were destroyed when, in 1940, it was feared that Germany would invade Switzerland. [48] <3> Yet, some Churches, which probably could have sent material, and which in some cases as, for example, the Churches in Bulgaria and Greece, had a good record of resistance against anti-Semitism, failed to do so. It would appear that Church archives are sometimes the safest place in the world for documents not to be found. The Library and Archives of "Yad Vashem", in Jerusalem, had much material. I was also able to spend some days in the Wiener Library, in London, and in the Library of the World Council of Churches, at Geneva. I could never have succeeded in finding the material and having it translated without the help of many interested friends, Jews as well as Christians, to whom I am deeply indebted. It would be difficult to mention all their names, but I should like at least to express here my indebtedness to the late Director of "Yad Vashem", Dr. Arjeh Leon Kubovy, of blessed memory; and to Dr. Shaul Esh, of blessed memory, who made valuable suggestions for the chapters on Germany. I am also especially indebted to Dr. J. Robinson, of New York, and Prof. Dr. C. Augustijn, of Amsterdam, who read the manuscript and suggested many improvements. Of course the responsibility for any eventual mistakes solely rests on me. I am deeply grateful for all the kind help rendered to me by the Chief Librarian of "Yad Vashem", Miss Ora Alcalay, and her assistants. Most of the chapters in Part III (During the War) have some particulars about anti-Semitic measures taken by the Germans: I wanted to give some historical background for the statements issued by Churches. For the background of statements issued in the different countries before the Second World War, the historical survey and the chapter on Germany in part II should be consulted. One can never have too much knowledge of the situation and background in the countries concerned, if one is to see facts clearly in their historical context and interpret them correctly. Thus, more publications are mentioned in the notes for further study. Some figures concerning the membership of Churches are given in Appendix II, though they are of limited value. Many territorial changes took place in Central and Eastern Europe. Some Churches count as members all who were baptized, whether they ever attended services or not; others count <4> "communicants"; the Baptists do not count the children. But one will at least acquire a conception of the numerical strength of a certain Church. An investigation into the question whether the non-Roman Catholic Churches kept silent, must necessarily have certain limitations. Firstly, no statement issued by a Church under the authority of the Pope are recorded in this book, with the exception, of course, of joint statements issued by Protestants and Roman Catholics, as was the case in the Netherlands. Thus I have recorded nothing from the Polish Greek Catholic Metropolitan Sheptitsky, or from the Maronite Patriarch of Syria, Mgr. Arida. [49] Secondly, this investigation is not concerned with the acts of individual Christians, unless they were leaders of the Church and clearly spoke in the name of their Church. [50] Thirdly, I have not recorded the contents of protests issued solely against the treatment of Christians of Jewish origin. It was certainly the duty of the Churches to do all in their power to protect those Christians, but this is not my subject. I am interested in what manner the Churches acted or failed to act on behalf of the Jews in general. This book is first of all an attempt to draw up an inventory, rather than to draw up the balance-sheet. However, the fact that I have often had the privilege of lecturing on the subject to Jewish, Christian or mixed audiences, always followed by brisk discussion, encourages me to feel that I have correctly understood some of the problems and questions which arise. The Introduction arrived only just in time to be printed. I am particularly grateful to Dr. Uriel Tal for his penetrating comment and questions. It stands to reason that our views need not agree in every detail, but <5> Christians should know that such questions as are raised in the Introduction are asked by many Jews. It is of the utmost importance for Jewish-Christian relations to discuss them as frankly as Dr. Tal did. <6> I GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 1 PROBLEMS OF EVALUATION Commentators on the attitude of the Churches in certain lands frequently contradict one another. Some Christians, such as Rev. Niemoeller [51] and Rev. Buskes [52] for instance, pass a severe verdict on the Churches and include themselves also. It seems to me that at least one Jewish commentator gives too positive a picture about the attitude of the population in his country, Greece.[53] He may, consciously or unconsciously, have tried not to embarrass the people amongst whom he still lived when he wrote his book. But also the opinion of a Christian that "the hundreds of thousands of Jews that escaped the doom decreed for them owed their survival more to the rescue activities of individuals and private groups, above all the Churches, than to governmental resistance policy" [54], seems to me too favourable. It must be difficult for Jews who know of anti-Semitic actions perpetrated by Church leaders throughout the centuries, and who personally suffered and lost their relatives in the holocaust, to believe that not merely a few "righteous of all Nations" but also Churches publicly and unequivocally spoke out against Hitler's murderous anti-Semitism. On the other hand, Christians are in danger of trying to whitewash the Church and ignoring the many instances when the Church failed. We all tend to forget our failures and to remember our victories. Some commentators tend to forget how the actual situation was in those days. Indeed, it is difficult even for people who themselves lived through it, to project themselves back into the time when Hitler seemed all-powerful. Moreover, we now have the benefit of living after the events, and thus we know many facts, which were not generally known in those days. <9> It seems unbelievable now, but in the summer of 1940, when some people somewhere in the Netherlands formed a resistance group, their leader stated that the British would not liberate us before Christmas 1940, and everybody present felt sorely disappointed. This kind of unwarranted optimism was fostered by many people throughout the war, and thus they underestimated the danger to the Jews and believed that, if German action against them could be delayed by some kind of compromise, much, and perhaps all, would be won. Many people in occupied Europe, in Great Britain and in the United States thought, that the information about the gas-chambers was "atrocity propaganda". The President of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. stated, on May 1, 1943: "What is happening to the Jews on the Continent of Europe is so horrible that we are in danger of assuming that it is exaggerated" [55]. We quote the following from "Unity in Dispersion": "The undertaking was so staggering that, until the revelation about the Maidanek camp, a majority of the people in the United States as well as in England dismissed the facts of extermination as 'atrocity mongering'... It should be conceded, as extenuating circumstances, that never before in history had states descended to such depths of bad faith, deceit, and treachery as did Germany and some of her satellites in their resolve to murder. In 1942, tens of thousands of Polish Jews volunteered for cunningly disguised 'resettlement' and agricultural work in the territories recently conquered by the Germans in the East, and thus entered of their own accord on a road at the end of which destruction awaited them." [56] The Germans tried to deceive the victims about their aims as well as the people amongst whom these victims lived, and they succeeded in this to a considerable extent. [57] <10> They had, in occupied Europe, all the instruments of mass communication, such as press and radio, at their disposal. All these and other factors are mentioned in "Unity in Dispersion" [58] in order to explain to some extent "the failure of organized Jewry to halt or even to slow down the most terrible catastrophe in Jewish history". Much of it is, mutatis mutandis, also applicable to "organized Christianity". On the other hand, when the true facts became known, there was danger mentioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury: "It is one of the most terrible consequences of war that the sensitiveness of people tends to become hardened... There is a great moral danger in the paralysis of feeling that is liable to be brought about." [59] We now are in danger of forgetting that so many other problems burdened people in those days. The British people were fighting their life-and-death struggle against the Third Reich, but were free. In the occupied countries, many young people were sent to Germany for compulsory labour; food was rationed and became more and more scarce. People went out in the night to cut wood illegally as there was hardly any fuel. One cannot understand what happened in occupied Europe without remembering these things; neither can one understand, without realising the power of human egoism and the will to survive. No one who has never really been hungry, nor has been deprived of his liberty, can understand what it meant in practice to "love one's neighbour" during the Second World War. The persecution of the Jews was not the only challenge confronting the Churches in those days, though we only now can perceive better that it was the most important one. The list of steps taken by the Churches in the Netherlands shows the type of problems which faced the Churches: intercession in church services for the Queen; arrest of pastors; suppression of the Church press; compulsory labour for youth; requisition of church bells; deportation of labourers to Germany; closing down of the Bible Society; ban on Church conferences; death sentences: plea for mercy; deportation of students, and national-socialist education in Christian schools. [60] <11> We tend now to underestimate the power of the Hitlerite terror. It has been said that all the Dutch should have blocked the railways with their own bodies, thus preventing the deportation of the Jews, because Hitler could not have murdered the entire Dutch population. I do not doubt that he could have and he would have done precisely that. [61] It is not surprising then that many lay members of the Church and Church leaders were afraid, and therefore failed to fulfil their duties. Gerstein said, in Rolf Hochhuth's play: "A Christian in these days cannot survive if he is truly Christian". [62] Dr. Banning said: "If the Church had fully exercised the obedience of faith, no pastor or priest would have come out alive. [63] But the greatness of the risks matched the appalling need to help: the Germans committed genocide. Whenever the Church remained silent in view of the holocaust, it was guilty. "Nevertheless a crime of such magnitude falls in no small measure to the responsibility of those witnesses who never cried out against it - whatever the reason for their silence." [64] Therefore, all the considerations mentioned above cannot exempt Churches, Christians or non-Christians, though they can help us to be fairer in our judgment. One is sometimes in danger of becoming irritated by people who did not stand the test themselves, and yet claim to know exactly what should have been said and done. There recently appeared a book [65] in which the author sharply criticizes much what was done, or was not done, during the German occupation of the Netherlands. <12> He himself took a very active part in the struggle. Perhaps that is the reason why his criticism is not without compassion, and that it is to a large extent self-criticism. In order to understand how difficult it was to risk one's life or even freedom on behalf of others, one had to have been in it oneself. I, who am now living in Israel, have sometimes, when lecturing on the subject, invited my audience to imagine for a moment that (God forbid!) some foreign power should occupy the land of Israel, say in the year 1980; and that this foreign power should deport many Jews for compulsory labour abroad, and also ration all food supplies, but that the Jewish part of the population should not risk their lives when complying with the demands of the enemy; that, however, the Christian minority in Israel should be deported and exterminated; that they should be deprived of their ration cards, that their identity cards should be stamped with a C, and that they must wear a yellow badge in the form of a cross, in order to distinguish them as Christians. I then asked the question: "would you be willing, in such a situation, to hide my wife, one of my children or me, who all look very "Aryan", though you knew that, as in every community, you were in danger of being betrayed and in even greater danger of being given away by careless talk of other people? Or would you, if you were the Chief Rabbi, be prepared to denounce the anti-Christian measures publicly and unequivocally?" 2 FACTORS LEADING TO PUBLIC PROTESTS There were many factors that led Churches to protest publicly. One of them is mentioned by the Executive Council of the Federal Council of Churches in the U.S.A. in 1941: "No true Christian Can be anti-Semitic in thought, word or deed without being untrue to his own Christian heritance." [66] But how often true Christians were untrue... <13> The National Council of the Reformed Church in France made a similar statement, in September, 1942, declaring: "A Christian Church would lose its soul and the reason for its existence, were it not to maintain... the Divine law above human contingencies." [67] The Bible (the Old as well as the New Testament) was frequently cited in the protests. This may appear strange to people who only knew that the New Testament was used as a source of anti-Semitic influence. The same applies, by the way, to the Old Testament. [68] In my opinion, this use is quite indefensible. We list some of the texts cited in the protests: "Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction. Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and the needy. (Proverbs 31, 8-9). Indirect reference, particularly in Switzerland and Germany, was made to Ezekiel 33, when the Church's office as Watchman is mentioned. "When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman: if when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet and warn the people; then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head... But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand. So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel..." (Ezekiel 33, 2-4, 6-7). "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." (Matthew 7, 1). "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25, 40). "We ought to obey God rather than man." (Acts 5, 29). "...and (God) hath made of one blood all the nations of men..." (Acts 17, 26). "There is neither Jew nor Greek...: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3, 28). <14> In addition to this, the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10, 30 - 37) was quoted. It was frequently pointed out, though the wordings differ, that Jesus was born a Jew. With regard to the Churches in the Netherlands, it has been stated that "the moral implications of Christian doctrine motivated the resistance of the Churches". [69] Such a statement seems to me to oversimplify matters. I believe that the Christian doctrine (or rather: the teachings of the Bible) demanded the resistance of the Churches, but it is always possible to find convenient excuses to escape a challenge, as for example the opinion that the Church should not interfere in political matters. I once tried to convince a devout Protestant (he was an elder of the Church) that he should hide a Jewish child, by reminding him that one day he would have to give account of his deeds to the Supreme Judge. The man, who certainly could have hidden that child (he had a large farm) flatly refused, not because he denied that he would have to give account of his deeds, but because he was afraid, - too afraid to hide the child. I pointed out to him that he should rather fear God and not man, but my words simply had no effect. Christian teaching did not work in this case, though that does not mean that it did not work in other cases. Chief Rabbi Safran spoke to the Rumanian Patriarch Nicodemus of the terrible responsibility he was taking upon his conscience in the eyes of the Supreme Judge [70], and in this case it worked, though there were probably other motivations as well. Everybody's decisions are also motivated by the principles to which he adheres, and thus a Christian's decisions are influenced by Christian principles, though it must be admitted that mostly there are many other influences and motivations, probably more than the person who makes a decision, realizes. <15> The whole matter of the attitude of the Churches during the war was once discussed at a conference, and one of the speakers began by expressing as his opinion that Hitler and Eichmann were Christians, but later on he said that Mr. Johannes Bogaard, one of the "righteous of all Nations" who saved many Jews and whose father, brother and son were murdered by the Germans, was "just a courageous Dutchman". I happen to know Mr. Bogaard very well and I am convinced that he acted as he did during the war, primarily because he is a committed Christian. Of course this does not alter the fact that many Christians did not do very much, if anything, on behalf of their neighbours, the Jews; nor should it be denied that many non-Christians did do what they could, out of national, socialist, humanist or communist convictions. The same applies to the attitudes of a community. A member of a left wing kibbutz stated his views very clearly to me, and I know that many people hold views similar to his: "Allow me to express my position which is based on dialectical materialism. The Protestant Churches were active everywhere according to the local circumstances, first of all according to the nature of the people amongst whom they lived. The Churches did not act in a vacuum. For instance, in the countries of Western-Europe, such as Holland, Norway and Denmark, where the 'final solution' met with the resistance of all sections of the population, the courageous stand of those nations found its vehement expression in the attitude of the different Churches. The non-Roman Catholic Churches merely reflected the opinion and reactions of the people." It seems to me that there is more than a grain of truth in such a view and certainly no Church ever acted in a vacuum. Much in the protests issued by Churches in countries such as Bulgaria and Greece, points to nationalist rather than to spiritual-Christian considerations. Reading and analysing the contents of the statements may be of some help when assessing the motivations of Christians and groups of Christians who resisted the persecution of Jews. <16> If, however, one indeed believes that everything can be explained by the influences of local circumstances etc., one should be consistent and stop holding Churches responsible for acts of anti-Semitism committed by Churches or by people professing to be Christians throughout the ages, for in such a case they were also "merely reflecting the opinion and reactions of the people amongst whom they lived". In the case of such a rigid determinism, it seems difficult to hold anyone anywhere responsible for his acts and decisions. In my opinion we are all influenced by the people amongst whom we live, by social circumstances and by many other factors. We are all subject to a kind of mimicry, but that does not necessarily mean that we are just chameleons and nothing else. Churches are certainly influenced, just like any other group of people, by circumstances and surroundings, but they on their part influence these circumstances and surroundings. There is interplay of factors. Similar to the opinion mentioned above is the viewpoint that Churches always tend to support the Establishment. The United States and Great Britain were at war with Germany, and the Churches participated in the crusade against the enemy. The same applies to Churches in occupied Europe, even when their own Government was in exile. I think that the Old Testament already gives us many examples of organized religion supporting the Establishment, but it also gives us some instances when religious leaders (the prophets!) refused to do so. [71] It is doubtful whether the British Government was pleased with the Church's protest against the pogroms of the "Crystal Night", just after the Munich agreement. [72] The Archbishop of Canterbury's speech in the House of Lords and the Bishop of Chichester's letters to The Times, in 1943, must have embarrassed political leaders who were of the opinion that the main object was to win the war, and that attempts to rescue Jews were of less importance. [73] The Swiss Churches could hardly be accused of supporting the Establishment, when they protested against the decision of the Swiss Government to return refugees to Nazi Germany who had illegally entered Switzerland. [74] Similar examples can be given regarding the United States, Sweden and other lands. The little that was said by the "Confessing Church" in Germany on behalf of the Jews was certainly not in support of the Establishment. <17> A Church must try to be the conscience of nation and Government, even though this may mean that its leaders have to speak out against the seeming interests of their nation. Churches frequently failed to do so, but we should refrain from generalizing. Whenever Churches were conscious of belonging to a worldwide fellowship, this contributed to their making a stand against anti-Semitism. Church leaders in the Netherlands followed the struggle of the "Confessing Church" in Germany, and were on the alert when they were challenged themselves. The Church in Sweden was moved to protest by the statement issued by the Church of Norway. Church leaders in Hungary realized, when they did not carry their protest before the Hungarian public, that this course would "incur... the reproach and accusation of the leading bodies of the Christian Churches" and stated that, if their intervention proved ineffective, they would be obliged "to testify before the congregations of our Church and the Protestants of the world that we did not suppress the message of God". [75] Many of the Church leaders who took a clear stand, knew one another personally. [76] In view of the attempts of the Germans to deceive world opinion as to their ultimate aims concerning the Jews, and in view of the tendency to dismiss reports about what was going on as "atrocity propaganda", the importance of the information given by the World Council of Churches through its Press Service and by other means can hardly be overestimated. The need to combine efforts and thus break through denominational barriers in order to come to a joint stand, was understood in some countries. In the Netherlands, Protestants and Roman Catholics began a new chapter in their relationship by protesting together. In France and Hungary there was consultation between Roman Catholics and Protestants, but it is to be regretted that they did not achieve a common front. <18> Sometimes there existed close contact between Christian and Jewish leaders, as for example in the United States, in Great Britain, in Bulgaria and between the leaders of the World Council of Churches and the World Jewish Congress, in Geneva. Thus, again, information about what was going on was communicated and action could be co-ordinated. The negative implication is also clear: whenever a spirit of particularism, provincialism and isolationism was strong in a Church, it did not fulfil its duty toward the persecuted Jews. 3 RESULTS In order to ascertain the practical effects that could be expected from steps taken by the Churches, the political and geographical position of the countries concerned, as well as the time factor, must be born in mind. Where there was a national Government, as was the case in Slovakia, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria, protests had a better chance of some success than in countries under direct Nazi control. Yet even then what Jeno Levai stated about Hungary was sometimes true: "The Church was not in a position to promise or to threaten. Thus, in spite of their very best intentions, they could obtain only very little. Naturally this little meant life to the persons concerned." [77] Typical were the differences between the Scandinavian countries: Sweden was neutral; Finland was an ally of the Germans; Denmark was occupied but it had its own King and was officially not even in a state of war with Germany; Norway's King had fled and the infamous Quisling had become Prime Minister. <19> Geography also played an important role. The Jews in the Netherlands were in a deadly trap; Hungary was, at least for some time, a place of refuge for Jews in the neighbouring countries; Jews in Denmark and Norway had a chance to flee to Sweden and the Jews in France and Italy to Switzerland, in so far as that country was willing to admit them. The time persecution began was a vital factor. The earlier it started, the smaller the chance of saving at least some lives. It should be noted that these three factors were utterly unfavourable in Germany. It is difficult to assess the range of influence of any Church. Figures have been given about membership in Appendix II, but one must remember that many Churches have a high percentage of nominal members who, perhaps since their baptism, never attended a church service. Therefore it can be misleading to read that there were forty-five million Protestants in Germany, or, that 96,2 per cent of the population of Norway are members of the State Church. Only 5 per cent of the members of the Norwegian Church regularly attend Sunday services. In many other countries the situation is similar. Many people who were not church goers may never even have known about the protests of the Church, and this is especially true of occupied Europe in those days, for there the Church could only speak from the pulpits, not through press and radio. Moreover, many nominal Christians are influenced by other outlooks on life, rather than by the Christian faith. However, when press and radio were silenced and the Church alone could voice an open and public protest, it met with the response of many people who were outside the fold. Church services were better attended than in times of peace. The former editor-in-chief of the Dutch communist daily De Waarheid relates that he went to a church service in those days: That church meant something to us in those black days, were it only to listen to the prayer of a man, who dared make a public address on behalf of the people tortured in the concentration camps. [78] <20> I myself belong to the persons who, in those days, found their way back to the fold, attracted as we were by the Church's spiritual resistance to the Nazis. When attempting to assess the practical results of steps taken by Churches or Church leaders on behalf of the Jews, we distinguish between countries under German occupation, countries under a satellite government, neutral countries, and countries that were at war with Germany. In countries under German occupation, efforts made by the Churches had hardly any direct practical result for the Jews in general. Personal intervention did not help or, at best, could only cause some delay in the deportations. The only step that had some effect on the Germans (as we now know!) was the issuing of a public protest. Again it was evident, that the German authorities did not fear or have any step taken by the Churches as much as their protests which were read from the pulpits. Letters of protest they could throw in the dustbin or file away. They could listen to oral protests without taking them to heart. But they tried in every way to prevent public protests (in those days the only form of public protest), fearing their effect upon the people."[79] The most effective protests were those, which clearly encouraged the faithful to help the Jews. Others called for non-cooperation with the Germans, and this had at least some result. Six Roman Catholic police-agents at Utrecht informed their chief on February 24, 1943, that on the grounds of a pastoral letter read in their church on February 21, they would have to refuse if ordered to arrest Jews. Their chief threatened to dismiss them without pension and said that "those who do not announce their intended refusal and yet have the impudence to carry it out will be considered saboteurs, with all the serious consequences. The Germans immediately tried to arrest these agents but they had gone into hiding. The Germans then arrested their wives and children." [80] <21> Generally speaking, the positive indirect effect of public protests was, that it counteracted the attempts of the Germans to separate and isolate the Jews from the non-Jewish population, in order to break their will to resist deportation and annihilation. [81] It is impossible to count the lives saved through the activities of the Churches in the occupied territories. I agree with the opinion of Dr. Visser 't Hooft: "So far we have only spoken of public protests. But were these protests implemented by deeds? The answer is that they were, though by no means as generally as ought to have been the case. The full story of Christian assistance to the Jews in their hour of great need will never be fully told, for in many cases individuals acted quietly and behind the scenes." [82] In the countries under a satellite government, actions undertaken by the Churches were of some and sometimes even of much avail. [83] Concerning the neutral countries, the steps and protests of the Churches in Switzerland contributed to the relaxation of measures against the refugees [84], and in Sweden the Lutheran Archbishop encouraged his government to broadcast its willingness to take in the Jews of Denmark. [85] It is difficult to assess how far the protests of the Churches in countries that were at war with Germany had a practical effect. [86] They apparently helped to combat anti-Semitic influences in these countries (the same applies to protests issued in the countries mentioned above) and they contributed towards "breaking the wall of silence." <22> "The world wide public, overburdened with the issues and the incidents of a world conflict fraught with the gravest consequences, was not receptive to reports which it was ready to dismiss as propaganda tales; besides, the facts were hidden from it, not withstanding persistent endeavours by the (World Jewish) Congress to keep it informed. A wall of secrecy concealed the terrible tragedy... The main difficulty was how to convince public opinion and induce the Allied Governments to act. The battles of World War II raged fiercely on three continents, the onslaught of barbarity was nowhere decisively checked, the democratic nations feverishly tried to overcome their unprepared ness for a conflict of such dimensions. The Governments in Exile were chiefly concerned with the sufferings of their nations as a whole." [87] The pressure exerted by Jewish and Christian leaders on their Governments did not, however, result in effective rescue activities being undertaken by these Governments. It has been suggested that the protests from the Churches mostly came too late, and thus fell flat. This is partly true. The Protestant leaders in Hungary did speak out very late, and Bishop Wurm of Wurttemberg sent his letters when there only remained a chance of doing something for the "privileged" Jews. On the other hand, Churches or Church leaders in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Great Britain and the United States began to protest in 1933. The Churches in the Netherlands protested at the very beginning of the German attacks on the Dutch Jews, in 1940. The Church of Denmark had prepared a public protest before the deportations started. It is, however, necessary to keep the dates of protests in mind, in order to arrive at a fair evaluation of the moral courage which such protests required. After Hitler's defeat at Stalingrad, at the end of 1942, and the defeat of Rommel at El-Alamein, it became more and more clear that Germany would lose the war. The measure of success is in itself no yardstick for the moral value of a deed. One can hardly say that Church leaders in Rumania behaved better than Church leaders in, for instance, the Netherlands, because the former, contrary to the latter, actually succeeded in saving many lives. <23> To this it must be added, however, that the seeming absence of any chance of success could not be an excuse for maintaining silence or for doing nothing against the terror of the Nazis. Prince William the Silent is said to have stated that it is not necessary to hope in order to try, nor to succeed in order to persevere. 4 HELP TO CHRISTIANS OF JEWISH ORIGIN Apart from the 500,000 Jews who registered as members of their community in 1933, there were some 50,000 Jews in Germany who no longer belonged to the Jewish community. Though born as Jews, they had been baptized. In addition, some 210,000 people had at least one Jewish parent, and another 80,000 one Jewish grandparent; thus a total of some 340,000 people in Germany were, in addition to the "full Jews", affected by racial legislation. [88] Until the end of the year 1938, Christian leaders and Churches tended to stress the necessity of helping Christian refugees of Jewish origin, rather than calling for help for Jews in general. A notable exception to this rule was the Appeal of the Ecumenical Council for Life and Work, in 1933, to help "Jews, Christians of Jewish origin and political refugees". [89] During the war, Churches in countries such as Bulgaria, Hungary and the Netherlands, instituted steps to protect their members of Jewish origin. It can hardly be denied that it was the right as well as the duty of the Churches to do so, but more than once the Churches were tempted to try and save their own members while neglecting the Jews in general. The announcement read from the pulpits of the Hungarian Protestant churches, on July 16, 1944, is significant: "The Bishops... wish to inform the congregations that in connection with the Jewish question, and particularly in the case of baptised Jews, they have repeatedly intervened with the competent Government authorities..." [90] <24> A comment on the "Confessing Church" in Germany is: "The Church took up the cudgels for the baptized Jews and that meant to the average churchgoer that the unbaptized Jew, i.e. the Jew as such, was left to the devil." [91] Church leaders in the Netherlands regarded the issue as a temptation: "Great dangers and temptations threatened continually. From the German side came the voice of the tempter: 'do not protest; only negotiate'. 'Do not speak on behalf of the Jews any more; then we shall be lenient to the Christians of Jewish origin.'... It is a great miracle that, in general, the Church recognized these voices as coming from the tempter, and boldly rejected the temptation." [92] That these questions were very difficult indeed, becomes clear from the following comment of Herzberg: "The baptized Jews [in the Netherlands], who were able to save their lives, owed this exclusively to the resistance of the Churches, a resistance which was especially impressive because of the principles by which it was motivated." [93] Quite different, however, is the sharp verdict of Presser: "And the Churches (in the Netherlands)? With what hesitation did they begin their resistance? How many were there, unfortunately, who were resigned to the fatal decrees of the occupying power, even appealing to texts in the Bible, and actually helping to carry out the decrees. How many times did they stand up only on behalf of baptized Jews and not on behalf of others." [94] <25> It makes a difference, whether Churches on their own initiative stressed the importance they attached to the fate of Christians of Jewish origin, or were forced into a compromise by the tactics of the Germans. The latter was the case when the DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH failed to read the telegram of protest publicly in the church services. [95] The Protestant Christians of Jewish origin in the Netherlands indeed survived. We should not pass judgment lightly and we must realize that we now have the benefit of being after the events, Church leaders in those days were not always aware of the fact that the Germans, who offered not to deport the Christians of Jewish origin, were not just making a concession, but were also providing themselves with a means of exerting further pressure on the Churches. It is most regrettable that on several occasions certain Churches interpreted the saying "charity begins at home" as they did. 5 "MERCY-BAPTISMS" Christian clergymen in many lands were prepared to baptize Jews if the ceremony of baptism meant that lives could be saved. The following is related of the Lutheran Church in Slovakia: "Many Jews who tried to escape persecution sought rescue by giving up their religion and by requesting to be received into the Evangelical Church, for the Catholic Church did not receive them. [96] The Evangelical Church did not refuse them, which was an act of courage in those days, but enabled them to become members of the Church... Here some examples follow: <26> In 1940, 20 persons, most of them adults, became Christians in Bratislava. For the year 1941 the number was 83; for the first half of the year 1942: 47 persons; for the second half: 7.828 persons were admitted in 1943; only 2 in 1944. In Horne Zelenice (near Hlohovec), 169 persons became Christians in 1942; 39 in 1943; in 1945 only one. In Frencin 120 persons; in Kochanovce (near Treucin) 45; in Banska Bystrica, 202 persons became Christians in 1942. This help aroused the anger of the rulers, of the Gestapo and of the Hlinka Guard. They began to arrest Evangelical Christians and pastors. 9 pastors were sent to the concentration camps in Germany. Joseph Bucko, minister at Martine, perished in the camp." [97] It is reported that in Bulgaria, "... Ministers of various Christian denominations engaged in mass 'mercy baptisms'; several of them were removed from office because of this (one of these ministers, with a community of about 200 souls, managed to baptize 200 additional persons between January 1 and September 1, 1940). High dignitaries of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church declared that 'conversion to Christianity' and 'formal baptism' were two different acts, the first of which necessarily preceded the second, sometimes by a considerable period; because the law spoke of conversion and not of baptism having to have taken place before September 1, 1940, Jews baptized later could also be saved if the minister declared that they had expressed their will to adopt Christianity before that date. Many courts accepted this reasoning. In this way, a number of baptized Jews and offspring of mixed marriages escaped the provision of the law." [98] The following is quoted from the testimony of Richard Simantov: <27> "... It must be admitted that, with a few exceptions, all the Christian religious institutions [in Bulgaria], as also their clergy, behaved with sympathy towards the Jewish victims of the anti-Jewish legislation. When issuing the required legal documents to the Christian Jew, the clerk of the court or the judge himself interrogated the priest, whether he had indeed carried out all the religious formalities, and how long the teaching of the catechism had lasted for the person of Jewish origin concerned. The priest would always reply in the affirmative and would declare that the man had received instruction for 3, 4 or 5 months, and that he regularly attended church services etc., although often these documents, which were issued by the Church, were given only in exchange for a payment, without the ceremony having been performed..." [99] We have the following particulars about Greece : "Many tried to evade the racial laws through baptism. More than 500 Jews embraced the Orthodox religion; some scores preferred to become Catholics. it was clear that it was not out of conviction that these Jews entered into the Church. It was well-known, that only the desire to escape persecution moved them to seek refuge in the shadow of the cross. Out of compassion, the priests did not hesitate to accept the new converts. They were on friendly terms with them in different ways. Out of noble feelings and not in order to receive a reward, the priests also distributed baptismal certificates to Jews who had never attended a church service..." [100] The biographer of the Archbishop of Athens, Damaskinos, relates: "Later on, when the persecutions started affecting the Jews of Athens, the Archbishop decided on the following measures. He summoned the Director General of the Administrative Services of the Community of Athens, Mr. P. Haldezos, and said to him: "I have made the sign of the cross and have spoken to God, and have decided to save as many Jews as I can, even though I run a great risk. I am going to baptize them, and you must give certificates enabling them to obtain the identity cards of Christian Greeks. Mr. Haldezos agreed to this. With the help of a Municipal official, they opened a register wherein they registered 560 Jews as Christians, all of whom were saved. There was no treachery." [101]<28> Rev. J.J. Buskes discussed the considerations, which led clergymen in the Netherlands to provide Jews with false certificates of Baptism: "We are well aware that many pastors had conscientious objections to giving forged baptismal certificates. But, thank God, there were other ministers who had conscientious objections about not doing so. Such a certificate was, of course, false. But the man who wrote it out and gave it to a Jew, did service to the truth and helped his neighbour. The one, however, who would not write it and thus refused help to a Jew, served falsehood and failed the Jew. There is a truth which is like a lie and there is a lie which is like the truth. God commanded us to lie in the service of the truth. Not the end, but the obedience to God's commandment (to love our neighbour as ourselves) justified the means. Thus the humble and scrupulous Dr. Oorthuis wrote in a pamphlet of the underground movement: even forged passports can be safe-conducts from the Lord, and stolen ration cards be gifts of mercy from God, which we accept with Thanksgiving." [102] Many people may feel horrified when reading the views of Rev. Buskes. The same author stated in another publication: "If I can save a man whose life is threatened by a scoundrel by saying to that scoundrel that two and two make five, I shall say so to him, in obedience to the ninth commandment. In such a case I am even prepared to declare that two and two make ten." [103] A personal friend of mine, who is a devout Christian, took the oath declaring that a child in his house was not Jewish but his own child born out of wedlock. He saved the child. People who are horrified at such behaviour, probably never lived under German occupation. At any rate, they should remember St. Paul's saying: "Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law". [104] In my opinion, it was morally permissible and even laudable to baptize Jews in those days in order to save their lives, as long as it was mutually understood that this was in order to deceive the persecutors and that the baptism in fact was invalid. <29> II BEFORE THE WAR 6 HISTORICAL EVENTS a. Hitler's Rise to Power - the Nuremberg Laws. (Jun., 1933-Sept., 1935) President Hindenburg entrusted Hitler with the Chancellorship on January 30, 1933. The Reichstag fire, on February 27, was followed by a wave of arrests. The "Ordinance for the Protection of the People and the State", issued on February 28, suspended the sections of the Constitution which guaranteed individual and civil rights. The "Enabling Act" (March 23) stripped Parliament of its power and handed it over to the Reich Cabinet. Laws enacted by the Cabinet were to be drafted by the Chancellor (Hitler) and might deviate from the Constitution. On April 1, Jewish shops throughout Germany were boycotted. Jewish civil servants were dismissed on April 7. On the same day the exclusion of "non-Aryan" lawyers was ordered. According to a decree of April 22, no Jewish physicians were allowed to work for sick funds anymore. At the end of April another decree restricted the admission of Jewish children and students to schools and universities. In the following months Jews were excluded from working in the fields of art, music, literature and journalism. The "Law on revocation of naturalizations and deprivation of German citizenship" (July, 14) robbed Jews, who had been naturalized before or had been born outside Germany, from their citizenship. In January, 1934, it was decreed that Jews could no longer be members of the Labour Front. When President Hindenburg died, on August 2, 1934, Hitler became President and Supreme Commander of the Army. On May 21, 1935, it was decreed that only "Aryans" could serve in the army. It is estimated that 37,000 Jews emigrated from Germany in 1933; in 1934, the number was 23,000, whilst 21,000 Jews left Germany in 1935. [105] <33> b. The Nuremberg Laws - Crystal Night. (Sept., 1935-Nov., 1938) On September 15, 1935, two fundamental laws were adopted by the Reichstag meeting at Nuremberg. One, the "Law Respecting Reich Citizenship", decreed that only a national of German or kindred blood, who proved by his conduct that he was willing and likely to serve the German people and Reich faithfully, could be a citizen. The second, the "Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour", specifically referred to the Jews and singled them out as undesirable aliens, impure of blood and dangerous to the honour and security of the German people. There followed seven paragraphs, the first of which dealt with the prohibition of marriages between Jews and nationals of German or kindred blood. Paragraph three prohibited Jews to employ in domestic service female nationals of German or kindred blood, under the age of forty-five years. On April 26, 1938, it was decreed that all Jewish assets in excess of 5,000 marks should be registered. On June 15, 1938, about 1,500 Jews were arrested and deported to a concentration camp. On July 25, it was decreed that Jewish physicians were no longer permitted to treat non-Jewish patients. In the same month, Jews had to apply for special identity cards. On August 17, 1938, the first name "Israel" for Jewish men and "Sara" for Jewish women was made compulsory in addition to their own names. In October, all passports of Jews were stamped with the letter J. Austria had been incorporated into the Third Reich, on March 13, 1938. The German anti-Jewish laws were also enforced in Austria, where about 180,000 Jews were living. It is estimated that 25,000 Jews emigrated from Germany in 1936, and 23,000 in 1937. [106] In March, 1938, President Roosevelt invited thirty-three governments to join in a co-operative effort to aid the emigration of refugees from Germany and Austria. On July 6, 1938, the Intergovernmental Conference met at Evian, France. Nearly all the delegates expressed their sympathy for the refugees but were very careful not to assume any obligations on behalf of their Governments. <34> It is important to keep some of the major political events of those days in mind. Italy attacked Ethiopia on October 3, 1935. In May, 1936, the Ethiopian emperor went into exile into Great Britain. On March 2, 1936, the Rhineland was remilitarized. On November 25, 1936, the anti-Comintern Pact with Japan was signed. On July 16, 1936, civil war in Spain broke out. On September 30, 1938, the Munich agreement was signed by Hitler, Chamberlain, Mussolini and Daladier. As a result, Sudetenland was occupied by Germany. Poland and Hungary also occupied part of Czechoslovakia. c. Crystal Night - the Outbreak of the War. (Nov., 1938-Summer, 1939) On October 28, 1938, 15,000-17,000 Jews of Polish origin were rounded up and expelled. On November 7, a seventeen-year-old Jewish boy, Herschel Grynspan, whose parents had been among the people expelled to Poland, shot Ernst vom Rath, a minor Nazi official in the Paris Embassy. He died two days later. This was the pretext for unleashing a pogrom that has entered history under the name Crystal Night: 7,500 Jewish shops were looted and windows of shops and houses were smashed; many synagogues were burned; more than 26,000 Jews were arrested, many of whom were sent to concentration camps; at least 91 were killed. [107] On November 12, the Jews in Germany were ordered to pay a collective fine of thousand million Reichsmark. On November 15, Jewish children were dismissed from German schools. Jews were prohibited from visiting theatres, cinemas, concert halls, museums and public baths. On December 8, a decree was issued expelling Jews from the universities. At the beginning of January, 1939, the "Aryanisation" of Jewish enterprises began. Since January 17, 1939, Jews were forbidden to be employed in the professions of dentist, pharmacist and veterinary surgeon. On January 30, 1939, Hitler publicly declared that the Jewish race in Europe would be annihilated if war broke out. <35> Hitler annexed Czechia, on March 15, 1939. Slovakia became "independent". In April, 1939, Mussolini occupied Albania. From the beginning of 1938 until October 1, 1941 (when further emigration was forbidden) an estimated 170,000 Jews left Germany. [108] Jews in Germany at the beginning of the Hitler regime, numbered 499,682. The 1939 census, registered within the borders of the pre-Hitler Reich, amounted to no more than 213,930. [109] 7 GERMANY The vast majority of the Protestants of Germany belonged to one of the 28 Landeskirchen (Lutheran, Reformed or Uniate), of which the largest was the Church of the Old Prussian Union, with 18 million members. The Landeskirchen were independent members of the German Evangelical Church Union, founded in 1922. In all, there were forty-five million Germans who were, nominally at least, members of the Protestant Church. In 1932, members of the Church who supported Hitler had founded the "German Christians' Faith Movement". These "GERMAN CHRISTIANS" demanded the creation of one Protestant Church, the application of the Fuehrer principle in Church affairs, the introduction of racialism within the Church, the "Germanization" of Christianity (the "Aryan Jesus"!) and the elimination of "Jewish influence" from teaching, liturgy and preaching. In 1933, some 3000 pastors belonged to this group. Church elections took place on July 23, 1933. On the eve of the elections, Hitler made an unexpected radio appeal asking the electorate to vote "GERMAN CHRISTIANS". They won a decisive victory. On September 21, 1933, Rev. Martin Niemoeller and others created the "Pastors' Emergency League", which opposed the "GERMAN CHRISTIANS". In the beginning, Niemoeller's group was definitely in the minority. By December, 1933, its membership had grown to 6,000. Between the two groups, a majority tried to remain neutral while more or less sympathizing with the group of Niemoeller, but in practice obeying Hitler's orders without open protest. <36> After a protege of Hitler, Ludwig Mueller, had been elected as Reich Bishop under pressure of the Government, Niemoeller's opposition group constituted the "CONFESSING CHURCH" which declared itself to be the legitimate Protestant Church of Germany and set up a provisional Church government. [110] The "GERMAN CHRISTIANS" had, in the meantime, gained control in several Landeskirchen, sometimes with the active help of the national-socialist party. In April, 1933, the Landeskirche of Thuringia required of its clergy a formal oath of allegiance to Hitler; the "Thuringian Christians" wanted to give this symbol of unconditional obedience to Hitler as a birthday present. There was a division in other Landeskirchen, as for instance in the largest: the Church of the Old-Prussian Union. In the summer of 1933, a law had been issued forbidding the appointment of pastors or Church officers of "non-Aryan descent" and ordering the dismissal of such pastors and Church officers. [111] In its session on Sept. 5, 1933, the Synod of the Old Prussian Union accepted this law; the opposition party protested and, when this was of no avail, left the meeting. Later on the opposition organized the "CONFESSING Synod of the Evangelical Church of the Old-Prussian Union". <37> It is not, as has been stated in the Preface, my intention to record the contents of statements issued by Churches or Church leaders on behalf of Christians of Jewish origin. It is of importance, however, to know to what extent the "GERMAN CHRISTIANS" supported discrimination against these members of the Church, and, also, to know that the CONFESSING CHURCH defended them. Thus I mention the more important statements, which were issued, without recording their full contents. [112] There was sharp controversy and much discussion as to whether the anti-Jewish laws should be applied within the Church. The following persons and institutions protested against such a measure: the Theological Faculty of the University of Marburg (Sept. 19, 1933); the Theological Faculty of the University of Erlangen (Sept. 25, 1933); Rev. Martin Niemoeller (Nov. 2, 1933), and Prof. Rudolf Bultmann (Dec., 1933). On the other hand, the "GERMAN CHRISTIANS" declared at the beginning of April, 1933, that only those who were "of pure German blood" should be admitted to the ministry. On May 26, 1932, they had already decided to consider Missionary work amongst the Jews as a great danger "as it is the entrance gate for foreign blood into our national body". The example of the Synod of the Old-Prussian Union (see above) was followed by other Landeskirchen, as for instance in Saxony, Thuringia and Braunschweig: ministers of Jewish origin were to be dismissed. The Church in Saxony even voted, on Dec. 10, 1933, to accept the principles of blood and race, and that only those who according to the laws of the State were compatriots should be members of the national Church! <38> The decision of the Church of Saxony was publicly rejected by the Theological Faculty of the University of Leipzig, and by the Pastors' Society of the Rhine. The majority of the Theological Faculty of the University of Berlin, however, supported the racialism of the Saxonians. This all happened in the years 1933-1934. In those days, it certainly needed courage to stand up publicly for the rights of Christians of Jewish origin in the Church. It should be noted, however, that the publications mentioned above did not publicly oppose discrimination against the Jews in general, nor even discrimination against Christians of Jewish origin outside the Church. In March, 1935, the CONFESSING Synod of the Evangelical Church of the Old-Prussian Union sent a "Word to the Congregations", which was read from the pulpits. We quote the following: "We believe that our nation is threatened by a mortal danger. This danger lies in a new religion.... in it, racial and nationalistic ideology becomes supreme. Blood and race, nationality, honour and freedom become its idols. ... Whoever substitutes blood, race and nationality as the creator and source of authority instead of God, undermines the state." [113] The Government struck back with arrests. 500 pastors were imprisoned. * * * After the notorious Laws of Nuremberg had been promulgated, only individuals in the CONFESSING Church pleaded for the issue of a public declaration. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said : "Only the man who loudly cries out on behalf of the Jews, is at liberty to sing the Gregorian chants". [114] The "Council of Brethren" of the CONFESSING Church stated, in a declaration in defense of the right to baptize Jews, in September, 1935: "We only say the necessary minimum (alas, perhaps even not the minimum) concerning things about which we are not allowed to keep silent..." [115] <39> The Provisional Church Council of the CONFESSING Church sent a Memorandum to Hitler, in May, 1936. We quote the following from it: "... When blood, race, nationality and honour are thus raised to the rank of qualities that guarantee eternity, the Evangelical Christian is bound by the first commandment to reject that assumption. When the Aryan human being is glorified, God's word bears witness to the sinfulness of all men. When in the framework of the National-Socialist ideology, anti-Semitism is forced on the Christian obliging him to hate the Jews, he has nonetheless the divine command to love his neighbour..." [116] The Memorandum, which was published in the foreign press without the consent of the CONFESSING Church, resulted in the arrest of Dr. Weissler who worked in the office of the Provisional Church Council. He perished in a concentration camp. [117] On June 23, 1937, several members of the Reich Brethren Council were arrested, and on July 1, 1937, Rev. Martin Niemoeller also. He remained a prisoner until the end of the war. The office of the Provisional Church Council was closed by the authorities, and thus the CONFESSING Church was to a large extent forced into underground resistance. * * * No public protest was voiced after the Crystal Night pogroms. In September, 1938, an office for helping persecuted Jews, but mainly Christians of Jewish origin, was opened under the direction of Rev. Grueber. Rev. Grueber also contacted the Jewish and Catholic relief-organizations. Repeated journeys to Switzerland, the Netherlands and Great Britain were made to find places for Jewish refugees. <40> At the end of 1940, Rev. Grueber was arrested and the office in Berlin was closed. The branches in Heidelberg, under Rev. Maas; in Breslau, under Vikarin Staritz; and in Kassel, continued to function, though under the pressure of fierce hostility. On the initiative of Rev. Werner Sylten, Grueber's deputy, an attempt was made to continue the work of the Berlin office on a smaller scale. Conversations with the Evangelical Church Council of Berlin took place; negotiations with the Gestapo were held. This eventually led to the arrest of Rev. Sylten, who perished in the concentration camp of Dachau, at the end of 1942. Only a few of the 35 members of Grueber's office, most of them of Jewish origin, lived to see the end of the war. Most of them died in the gas chambers. [118] In Dec., 1938, the Kirchentag of the CONFESSING Church stated: "... We again face the fact that many servants of the Church are being hampered in the execution of their ministry and are being expelled from their offices. In the hour of threatening war some fulfilled the duty of the Church, doing penance for the whole nation and beseeching forgiveness and deliverance from God's judgment. Thereupon, they were charged with high-treason. in view of what happened to the Jews others earnestly preached the Ten Commandments and were persecuted for it..." [119] The Thuringian Church, followed by Mecklenburg, Anhalt and Sachsen (all directed by "GERMAN CHRISTIANS") promulgated (February, 1939) a law which eliminated Jews from membership in their Churches. <41> In April, 1939, the infamous declaration of Godesberg was published. It accepted National-Socialism and stated that "the Christian faith is in irreconcilable opposition to Judaism". The declaration was accepted by the leaders of 11 Landeskirchen in which the "GERMAN CHRISTIANS" were the ruling party. The CONFESSING Reich Brethren Council sharply opposed the Godesberg declaration in a statement issued on April 13, 1939. One day later, it also opposed the law of the Thuringian Church (see above) which denied permission to Christians of Jewish origin to be members of the Church. The Reich Brethren Council stated: "... The men responsible for these laws thereby show themselves to be enemies of the Cross of Christ. They cannot exclude anybody from the Church of Christ. They have, however, separated themselves from the holy Christian Church, by the promulgation of these laws..." [120] The fundamental difference between "GERMAN CHRISTIANS" and the CONFESSING CHURCH is obvious: the former completely identified themselves with national-socialist racialism, the latter repudiated it verbally but showed weakness of action. One feared that, by an all-out intervention on behalf of all non-Aryans, the theological protest against the separation of Christian non-Aryans from the community of the Church would be politically misinterpreted, and that thus the intervention on behalf of them would become even more difficult. [121] That the CONFESSING Church hardly spoke out at all was not the worst fact; it seems infinitely worse that the so-called "GERMAN CHRISTIANS" supported Hitler and his racialism. One may agree with the words of the German Lutheran pastors in England: "It is not for us who now live in safety to criticise those who, under fire, have done their utmost not to bow to Baal". The fact remains, however, that so many did bow to Baal. [122] 8 THE NETHERLANDS <42> Before the second world war, no Church in the Netherlands publicly protested against German anti-Semitism, as distinct from Churches in Great Britain, France, Sweden, the United States etc. The following reasons for this can be given: 1. There was little co-operation between the Protestant Churches. 2. The Churches did not speak out publicly on any subject. 3. The spiritual life of many Churches was at a low ebb. 4. Many people were afraid of endangering Holland's precious neutrality and its economic interests with Germany. 5. Many Christians considered National-Socialism a bulwark against Communism. [123] The exceptions to the rule were provided by inter-denominational Church bodies. In April, 1933, the Dutch Council of the "World Alliance for International Friendship through the Churches" adopted and published the following motion: "The Dutch Council of the World Alliance for International Friendship through the Churches, aware of its duty to promote friendly relations among the nations, and convinced that the anti-Jewish measures taken and carried out in Germany must be regarded as a manifestation of racial hatred which considerably prejudices such an understanding, requests the International Executive Committee to define publicly its position with regard to these measures and, subsequently, to do everything in its power in accordance with the aims and principles of the Alliance, to disperse the tension and indignation which these measures have provoked in the Netherlands as well as in the entire civilized world, and to work towards the establishment of those relations which, according to the principles of the Christian conscience, ought to exist among the different races." [124] This appeal to the International Executive Committee was successful. [125] The same Council also sent a letter to the "Permanent General Committee of the Dutch Israelite Community", informing them that they had heard with a sense of shame and distress of the treatment of the Jews by the German government on grounds of racial hatred. The Council expressed its conviction "that this hatred is contrary to the Christian conscience" and quoted the letter sent to the International Committee. [126] <43> In May, 1933, a Manifesto was published, signed by many individual Dutchmen, denouncing anti-Semitism. [127] In the same month, Christians of Jewish origin turned to the "Synodal Committee of the DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH", requesting that on one particular Sunday the Jewish question should be the main theme of the sermon. The Committee replied that "they were convinced that it is the duty of the Church to pay attention to Israel and pray for it, but that in the present circumstances it would not be wise to set apart a special Sunday for this purpose". [128] On May 23, 1933, a public meeting of protest was held. Amongst other speakers was the Rev. J.J. Buskes, who later became one of the leaders of Church resistance during the war. He then spoke "as a member of a Christian Church". Dr. W. Banning also protested against the Nazi terror, "in the name of Socialism and of the Gospel". [129] * * * On September 19, 1935, a meeting of protest was held at Amsterdam. There were three Protestant speakers, one of them, Rev. J.J. Buskes. [130] In 1936, the Synod of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands declared that members of the Church who were members of the Dutch National-Socialist Party, must be advised to terminate their membership of the party. If they would not heed this admonition, they must be barred from participating in Holy Communion. This measure was maintained throughout the war. The report to the Synod on the N.S.B. (National-Socialist Movement of the Netherlands) says: "Even though the N.S.B. rejects idolization of the race, the manner in which it stresses in its Program the unity of the Aryan race [131] shows, that it is not blameless in this respect." [132] <44> A Protestant Committee for help to Protestant refugees of Jewish origin was formed on May 5, 1936. * * * In 1938, 7,000 Jewish refugees were admitted into the Netherlands. The Government was of the opinion that Holland could not bear too heavy a strain on the labour market. The Protestant Prime Minister declared: "If an unlimited stream of foreign Jews were admitted, public opinion regarding the Jews will take an unfavourable turn". [133] Thus the border was closed and Jews who had "illegally" entered into Holland were sent back to Germany, unless they could prove that their life was in danger there. Of course it is easy to be wise after the event, and in those days it was not yet clear to everybody that the life of all Jews in Germany was in mortal danger. The fact remains that these inhuman measures were taken by a Government of which most of the members were professing Christians. And no Church protested. Prof. D. Cohen states: "Our Committee [for help to Jewish refugees] had clashed vigorously with the Government on this point, notwithstanding our good relations and good co-operation with it. However, we had public opinion with us." [134] The last part of his statement is doubtful, at least regarding a large section of the Protestant press. [135] A national collection was held on December 3, 1938, and recommended by the Synodal Committee of the DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH: "The Committee, concerned about the bitter sufferings resulting from the persecution of the Jews, considers it to be the duty of the Church to practise Christian mercy. It urgently recommends that all local churches should take up a special collection, on behalf of the victims of this persecution, so that their suffering may be alleviated." [136] <45> Here help to the persecuted Jews in general was recommended, not just to Christians of Jewish origin. In November, 1938, the Executive of the Dutch Ecumenical Council turned to the World Council of Churches, Geneva, requesting it to organize immediate action on behalf of the German Jews. [137] 9 BELGIUM The Protestant Churches in Belgium are minority Churches, together comprising less than half a percent of the population. The following statements are all from the year 1933. To the best of my knowledge no other statements were issued after this year. On April 4, 1933, the Federation of Protestant Churches of Belgium sent the following letter to Dr. Kapler, the President of the Protestant Federation of Germany: "The Federation of Protestant Churches of Belgium has directed us to send a fraternal message to the Protestant Federation of Germany. We would ask you, Mr. President to accept it in the same Christian spirit, and to do us the honour of transmitting it to your Executive Council. We are much distressed by the events of recent weeks during which the German Jewish population has been subjected to discriminatory measures; the situation threatens to deteriorate even further. Our German co-religionists, imbued with a sense of justice, must certainly be equally distressed by these excesses. It certainly cannot be pleasing to them that, in most countries, spontaneous public opinion has espoused the cause of German Jewry. We would therefore ask you, Mr. President, if it would not be possible for the Federation of German Evangelical Churches itself to intervene, discreetly as they may deem fit, on behalf of the German Jews so that they may be reinstated in all their rights of citizenship. Would it not be a great triumph for the spirit of tolerance, which is certainly a Protestant attribute? Would it not mean a re-establishment, in the eyes of the world, of that reputation which your country has enjoyed for so long, of being a highly cultured country? May one not say that German Jews have, up till now, been much attached to their country; that they have added to its distinction in the field of science, art and literature. <46> In short, that they are known for their adherence to the principles of freedom of conscience? Inspired as we are by purely Christian and humane sentiments, we have no doubt that you will accept the above message in the spirit of grace." Yours faithfully, Henri Anet, Secretary; A. Rey, President. [138] This letter was certainly not lacking in courtesy and we get the impression that it was written in a spirit of moderate optimism. Apparently it was some months later that the President of the Synod of the Evangelical Protestant Churches of Belgium sent the following letter to the Chief Rabbi of Belgium: "Time has passed since, during the first explosion of hate throughout Germany, it might be supposed that a period of calm would follow. But according to accounts in the press, it seems that a general and lasting exclusion of all Jewish intellectuals cold-bloodedly continues. This illegal and cruel oppression of a highly respectable minority shows that the new Germany is descending into a mental attitude fit only for the Middle Ages. The destruction of such an out-grown mentality had been, until now, the noblest work and the most imperishable glory of the new spirit of the last four centuries." [139] Even more outspoken was the address of Rev. Schijns, the President of the Federation of Protestant Churches, at a Meeting of Protest in Bruxelles, on April 6, 1933: "You have heard the lay protests against anti-Semitic persecutions in Germany. You have heard the Catholic protest. May I be permitted to speak on behalf of the Protestant Churches of Belgium. It is true that the voice of Christ, who clearly proclaimed the inviolable rights and imperative demands of justice, has not always been listened to over the centuries; on many occasions Christians themselves have had recourse to violence; I cannot forget that in the 16th century my ancestors, the Huguenots, and the Beggars, [140] also suffered cruel persecution... Nevertheless, thanks to a clearer understanding of the demands of the Gospel, as well as to the progressive evolution of the lay conscience, we had become sincerely convinced that henceforth violence, which was unanimously condemned by public opinion, is morally inconceivable. Yet now we discover that violence has been 'honourably' reinstated, so that even today it is still attacking innocent victims." <47> We never supposed that, in our times, any person, on religious grounds, could be accused of a political offence! Yet, now we hear that in Germany a religion (the Jewish religion) is being formally and coldly proscribed, by the civil authorities. This inhuman attitude, inspired by a narrow, sectarian nationalism, stands in absolute contradiction to the Gospel: it is a monstrous heresy, which cannot but dwarf all other crimes. The ancient Jewish law contains the following beautiful maxim: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might'. It is therefore with all my heart, with all my soul and with all my might that I deliver here, in the name of my Protestant co-religionists, a message of vigorous and profound sympathy for all innocent victims of violence. The sufferings of today, like those in the past, tragically illustrate the struggle of brute force against the forces of the spirit. But just as moral strength has triumphed in ages past, we are sure that to-day also, by virtue of an eternal law, victory lies with the powers of the spirit!" [141] 10 FRANCE Though a small minority, numbering altogether not more than 800,000 souls, the spiritual sons of the Huguenots early and unequivocally protested against the persecution of Jews. They themselves had been persecuted. Rev. Marc Boegner, President of the Protestant Federation of France, sent the following letter to the Chief Rabbi of France, in 1933: "The Council of the Protestant Federation of France which reassembled to-day, for the first time since the beginning of the period of the great sufferings of your coreligionists in Germany, has asked me to assure you that the Protestants of France whole-heartedly associate themselves with the indignation of their Jewish compatriots and with the distress of the victims of such base fanaticism. The spiritual sons of the Huguenots are stirred with emotion and sympathy whenever a religious minority is persecuted. They are well aware how much Christianity, and in particular the Reformed Churches, owe to the prophets who paved the way for the Gospel, and feel afflicted by the blows descending upon their Jewish brothers. May God help your sorely tried co-religionists to find in Him their strength and consolation, as did their frequently persecuted ancestors. May He impart to you, and to the Jews of France, the secret of soothing pain and reviving hope. <48> I wish to reassure you, that we are certain, that all our Churches will unite, during the Holy Week, in fervent intercession on behalf of the Jews of Germany." [142] In the same year the following letter was sent by Rev. Cleisz, Honorary President of the Consistory of the Reformed Churches of Lorraine, to the Chief Rabbi of Nancy: "You will hardly be surprised to find me among those who energetically protest against the wave of anti-Semitism in Germany, which has cast so many Jewish families in distress. I abhor fanaticism, whatever its source, and am dismayed to observe in the middle of the twentieth century such an excess of folly. Therefore I join whole-heartedly with those who protest against such a tyranny. I wish to assure you of my deep compassion for so many human beings overcome by grief..." [143] Rev. Wilfred Monod sent the following letter to the French Committee for the Protection of Persecuted Jewish Intellectuals: "Allow me to express my feelings of relief at the thought that France is offering hospitality to Jews escaping from the darkness of a new Mediaevalism. Although Jews were crushed by the great Empires of the West; later becoming the vassals of the anti-Semitic Kings of Egypt and Syria; politically annihilated by the Romans; hated by the Moslems; persecuted by the Church; held in public disdain; treated as a stateless and homeless people even in the twentieth century, and sometimes deprived of their civil rights in the countries in which they were dispersed; the Jews have not disappeared as did the Phoenicians or the people of Nineveh. Without territory, without government, without currency, without flag, Abraham's race has kept itself alive. What marvellous obstinacy! What supernatural tenacity! In spite of all this, Judaism has given the human race that mysterious Book which maintains alive on this earth the inextinguishable flame of a universal, international ideal, the world-embracing ideal of human catholicity. Israel has bequeathed to men the Bible, Jesus Christ, and the Messianic vision of the Kingdom of God... On 29th August, 1914, up in the Vosges, one of our Catholic soldiers, mortally wounded, asked for a crucifix, and it was the Jewish chaplain who brought him this venerable symbol, some minutes before he himself gave up his soul in the arms of a Jesuit priest. This happened on a Saturday, the holy day of the Jewish Sabbath. Welcome to the representatives of the wandering nation! On French soil they will find a place to rest their head." [144] <49> On April 17, 1933, a Protest Meeting was held at Lille. Rev. Bosc was the Protestant spokesman, speaking in his "triple capacity as a human being, a Frenchman and a Christian". We quote the following: "... Finally, to protest against the persecutions and victimisations of the Jews is a task in harmony with the spirit of Jesus Christ, and here I thank Monsieur l'abbe who has just sounded forth a note of profound truth. Everyone of us knows that the spirit of Jesus Christ is the spirit of peace, the spirit of justice, and more than that: the spirit of brotherhood and of love. It is the spirit which to-day imbues all moral and social systems in the world, so that Jesus Christ is acknowledged as the unrivalled ruler not only by Christianity as a whole but also by all mankind... The spirit of Jesus Christ which, Ladies and Gentlemen, means the spirit out of which are woven the dreams we have of a better future for mankind, the dreams we dream when, surrounded by all sorts of iniquities and by all kinds of ugliness, we nevertheless look towards some glorious dawn! The spirit of Jesus means that spirit which will triumph because it is the living truth. It is in my triple capacity as human being, Frenchman and Christian that I fully pledge my entire, conscious support to this movement of truth in its efforts to infuse a little justice and kindness into mankind, against the attempt to lead humanity back to the night and the iniquities of the Middle Ages, from which it began to emerge." [144] * * * On November 20, 1935, a Meeting of Protest was held in the Hall of Chopin, Paris. Rev. Marc Boegner, President of the Protestant Federation of France, said the following: "... Since I am here representing both Christian and Protestant France, I should say that in the light of what is going on in Germany - whether it be the persecutions of Jews or of Christians - it is impossible for us not to add our most energetic protests to those you have heard so far. What Christianity Owes to Judaism "Christianity, as has been indicated by President Reynaud, is essentially a universal creed. Once one believes in Christ, whatever one's denomination may be, it is impossible not to subscribe fully to the words of that Jew of olden times St. Paul, the apostle, who having plumbed the depths of Christ's thought, exclaimed: 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus'. (Gal. 3, 28). This is the basic tenet on which, since July 1933, all preaching in the Churches of Germany has been practically proscribed. <50> First I wish to state that what has shocked and appalled Christian conscience, what has provoked protests from one end of the Christian world to the other? Protests which will certainly be reiterated and increased - is precisely the fact that this new gospel of racialism already has been applied to the Jews, and seems to have reached its culmination point in the Nuremberg Decrees. One cannot know whether even worse may not happen later on. I have met many Jews who had been driven out of Germany since the Hitler revolution, and when I went to Germany as recently as this year, on two occasions while travelling through a large part of Germany, I could not but feel intensely moved on seeing, at the entrance of villages and towns, large signboards forbidding access to the Jews; and on many trees along the roads, posters full of insults against them. Christian as I am, and knowing what Christianity owes to Judaism, I know that the Church of Jesus Christ is the daughter of what it calls the ancient Church of Israel. The Protestant in me knows what the Gospel owes to those prophets who, beginning eight centuries before Jesus Christ, have presaged the universalism which the religion of Christ would later proclaim throughout the world. Did not Isaiah welcome the day when all nations would flow unto the mountain of the Lord? And others after him, such as Jeremiah, did they not show their people, the only people ever elected, the road by means of which they were to bring to others the revelation which had been bestowed upon them, so that all nations might come to know the true God? The Gospel is the heritage and fulfilment of that great hope of the prophets. It is impossible for a Christian, when he sees the infamous crusades conducted against Judaism, not to be among those who declare that they are unable to forget what they owe to the Jewish people. We are among those who remember all this with deep gratitude. We believe that this gratitude, in view of the suffering of this people who are being crucified once again, ought to be shown in acts of sympathy and solidarity. Racialism inside the Christian Churches "The gospel of racialism of which you have just been told does not rear its ugly head solely outside the Church, but also inside the Christian Churches. Since July 1933, under the pretext of rallying the whole of Germany round the doctrine of racial superiority - you have seen the outcome of such teaching - and of purity of blood, they have begun to persecute those who are not 100 percent Aryan, even inside the churches. I was in Berlin in July, 1933, and there, where every wall might have been equipped with a hidden microphone, I met one of the most representative personalities of the Evangelical Church of Prussia. He informed me of what had been happening during the last few weeks. He said that he had felt compelled to resign from the high position he had occupied in the German Church, even though his resignation would mean a considerable financial sacrifice. He and those who were thinking and acting like him were now unable to speak, to write, to telephone, or to do anything whatsoever. <51> "But," said he, "how could I have agreed to go and tell the young Evangelical pastors whom I ordained two or three years ago, that they are not fit to preach the Gospel or to carry out the duties of their ministry, simply because they have a Jewish grandmother or grandfather? This problem of the non-Aryam has since then caused much anguish to many men who are pastors or simply beadles. The new gospel has made its appearance in the Church, propagated, preached and spread by groups calling themselves the 'Deutsch-Christliche' or the German Christians. It is necessary, they claim, to expel from the churches and from all church posts, in every denomination, those men who are not of absolutely pure Aryan blood for three or four generations back. The Church Resists "This has resulted in unbearably painful conflicts. It should be acknowledged that tremendous pressure was exerted by the State authorities as well as by the pressure of the opinion which increasingly tends to assert in religious circles that Adolf Hitler was the man through whom Germany was able to re-establish herself. in spite of all this, however, there have been instances of Catholic and Protestant consciences refusing to bow and submit. Resistance was organized in the Catholic Church, where the warning bell to the conscience of Christians was rung by that admirable man, the Cardinal Archbishop of Munich. In the Protestant Church, the great voice of the theologian, Kar1 Barth, and the voices of many others, have been raised to rally Christian consciences to their call. A completely new Confessing Church has sprung up comprising more than half of the pastors in Germany, quite apart from those who are still hesitating, because they must make a living, and, therefore, ask themselves what will happen to-morrow. About a thousand pastors have placed themselves behind Bishop Mueller, the 'German Christian', whom you, Mr. Paul Reynaud, have just mentioned. The "New Gospel" "It is not only through the persecution of the non-Aryans that the desire has arisen amongst many Germam to preach a new gospel, but because of a claim to meet Christ on a new basis, particularly on the basis of the glorification of the German race and blood. The most extraordinary statements have been made. Paganism has asserted itself on the fringes of the Church and its influence gradually has pervaded it. An effort even has been made in certain churches by pastors imbued with the spirit of national-socialism, to have the Old Testament - containing the magnificent history of the Jewish people and I even would say, of God's great acts toward the Jewish race - banned and barred from religious instruction. Included also is that moving page in the first book of your Bible, and ours - note this, any Jews who may be listening to me - where we are told that Abraham went so far as to be ready to sacrifice Isaac, his only son, to God! "Never will the Churches Agree..." <52> "Subsequently there have been attempts to make peace with the Churches, and the papers during the past few weeks have brought us news of 'peace feelers' offered to the Churches. Negotiations were envisaged both with the Catholic Church and with the Evangelical Churches. But they never will induce either true Catholics or Protestants, to put as a Gospel source, an affirmation of the superiority of the German race over the others, nor a denial of anybody's right to belong to the Church of Jesus Christ. They may again start their persecutions, and I think they will. They may chase pastors and priests from their churches and send them to concentration camps. They may resort to petty annoyance and to persecution; however, I am absolutely convinced that the Christian conscience has been aroused. Perhaps this experience was necessary to awaken it out of a certain stupor? The Christian conscience will absolutely oppose the events which have succeeded each other which such rapidity over the past few years and any attempt which may be made to persuade the Churches in any way to insert into the Gospel (which desires that all men should be considered the children of God and be reconciled in universal brotherhood) an addition which asserts that some shall rank first and others may be excluded. Never will the Churches agree that the Gospel of love, symbolized by the two arms of Christ extended on the cross, will be replaced by a gospel of race and blood. I am convinced that by affirming our sympathy with all in Germany who are being persecuted for their views, and with all in the Christian Church who make efforts to resist (as I have tried to show) the determined attempt to lead them onto the ground of racial discrimination, we are helping them in their resistance. We are helping them to discover that there is a Christian, as well as, a merely secular public opinion, throughout the entire world, which is aware of all that this resistance implies in the way of present sacrifice, and perhaps of still more suffering in the future. Let us therefore be among those who by word and example give evidence of that sympathy and solidarity. Let us unite here, as Mr. Paul Reynaud has asked us to do, without distinction of religious, philosophic or even political convictions, in protest against the besmirching of justice and the dignity of man." [145] * * * The Council of the Protestant Federation of France, in its session of November 29, 1938, unanimously adopted the following Resolution: "The Council of the Protestant Federation of France, reassembled for the first time since a terrible crime has provided a pretext for new persecutions against the Jews, feels itself to be the mouthpiece of all the Churches which it represents in our country, in making a solemn Protest against a similar outburst of violence and cruelty. <53> The Christian Churches will betray the message entrusted to them, if they do not unreservedly condemn racial doctrines which are contrary to the teaching of Christ and the apostles; and if they do not express their utmost disapproval of the barbaric methods by which such doctrines are practised..." [146] In the light of "the serious problem confronting the authorities by the arrival on French territory of numerous foreigners who had been expelled from their own country by persecution", the Council of the Protestant Federation in France instructed "all Protestant Frenchmen" as follows: 1. To aid the Government - in determined resistance to any suggestion of violence, wherever it may come from and in whatever manner it expresses itself - to solve so complex a problem in a quiet atmosphere and with respect for human dignity. 2. To contribute as much as possible, by their gifts and by their co-ordinated initiative, for the relief of the terrible distress which they are witnessing and which makes its appeal to them. The Council draws their attention to the existence of a French Committee for Protestant Refugees, Aryans and non-Aryans, which is now functioning and to which financial contributions can be sent... [147] 11 SWITZERLAND The Protestant Churches of Switzerland are cantonal Churches, distinct and independent from one another. In most of the cantonal Churches, the legislative body is the Synod and the executive organ the Synodal Council. The Federation of the Protestant Churches of Switzerland at first consisted only of National Churches, but it soon admitted the Free Evangelical Churches, the Methodist Church and the "Evangelische Gemeinschaft". The Federation has 2,888,122 baptized members. At the beginning of April, 1933, the following Declaration, signed by 21 Protestant ministers, was addressed to "various Protestant Ecclesiastical groups in French-speaking Switzerland": "Moved by the present situation of the German Jews, and unable to understand how the authorities, otherwise attentive to moral values, can ignore the right of freedom of conscience, and of work, as well as security to every human being, we, the undersigned, think that the time has come to draw the attention of Christians to the serious implications in an attitude which is the very negation of the evangelical spirit; a spirit which is synonymous with love, freedom and mutual assistance. We expect the Churches to raise their voices in order to claim for the Jews the same degree of justice, which it is their duty to demand for every oppressed minority." [148] <54> On May 31, 1933, the Synod of the Free Evangelical Church of the Canton Vaud sent the following letter to the President of the Council of the Federation of Protestant Churches of Switzerland: "We beg to bring to your attention the fact that the Synod of the Free Evangelical Church of the Canton of Vaud, at its annual meeting at Lausanne, unanimously resolved upon the following Declaration, which we now submit to use as you see fit. "Moved by the news which has reached us from Germany concerning the numerous and regrettable restraints imposed upon the freedom of conscience, and, in particular, concerning the ill-treatment of the Jewish population of that country; "and with the conviction that the Gospel of Jesus Christ constitutes an affirmation of freedom and love among the races of mankind; the Synod of the Free Evangelical Church of the Canton of Vaud, assembled at Lausanne, unites itself with all protests raised in favour of freedom of conscience and respect for the Jews of Germany." [149] In September, 1933, the Protestant Churches of Geneva published the following Declaration: "Events shocking and hurtful to a sense of justice are mounting in Germany and have repercussions here. Men are persecuted for their opinions. Dismissed, boycotted, ostracized, they are suffering as in the days when neither freedom of thought nor of conscience were tolerated. The mere fact of belonging to the Jewish race, even if only by descent, frequently incurs implacable treatment. These actions have given rise to protests in numerous countries and in the most varied circles. Here too, our Christian conscience has been roused. It would be dangerous to consider ourselves better than others. Intolerance and injustice have their roots in our own soil. We must be on our guard. Several papers make appeals for violence. The seeds of discord are being sown among our people. Anti-Semitism, which until now has been foreign to us, now finds its advocates among us. Members of our Churches, also, forgetting that the same blood flows in all mankind, and that, before God our Father, we are all brothers, have been swayed by the passions of these times. Let us not permit a spirit incompatible with the teachings of Jesus Christ to take root in our country." The National Protestant Church of Geneva; the Free Evangelical Church of Geneva; Evangelical Christian Association; the Committee for Popular Evangelism; the Council of the Methodist Church. [150] <55> It is striking that the declarations and resolutions issued in Switzerland, so many times mention the danger of anti-Semitic influences within the country itself, and sometimes within the Church. [151] * * * On November 14, 1938, the Church Council of Canton Zurich addressed the following public letter "To the Reformed People of Zurich": "In indignation and horror we recently have witnessed, in the state neighbouring us to the north, that Jew baiting has erupted and, in its dimensions, surpassed the severest atrocities yet experienced. We feel in spirit united with all our brothers and sisters in the neighbouring country who, whatever their attitude toward Jewry may be, deeply deplore such injustice, yet they must keep silent on the subject. We must not be silent. We must consider it a Christian obligation to cry out against it, not only within our church walls but to the world at large. It is a terrible injustice to exterminate, by all conceivable means, a nation which possesses, as does every nation, the right to exist. It fills us with deep humiliation and shame to discover in a country living for centuries under the influence of the gospel and of Luther, that sentiments of passionate hatred can break out and boil over against a small racial and religious minority, and that all humane and Christian feelings be suffocated. It plainly shows us, to our horror, what human hearts are capable of when racial hatred and blind raving passion win the upper hand, drowning the voice of justice, mercy and goodness. Can we Swiss suppose that we are immune against such frenzy? But are not the same dark powers active within our own people, openly at times and sometimes secretly, confusing conscience; stirring passions; igniting racial hatred? It pains us that consideration for so many unemployed citizens in our own nation prevents us from offering a protecting asylum to the suffering refugees, who, like wild game, are chased from country to country. <56> At least let us do for them all that is in our power! When in the next few days a general collection is made for the benefit of these refugees, among whom are not a few who, although Jewish by birth, are of the Christian faith and thus a part of the Evangelical Church, let us open our hearts and hands and express loving-kindness towards these remorselessly persecuted people. Let us close our hearts to all feelings of unchristian racial and religious hatred. Neither hate, slander, oppression nor violence, but Jesus Christ's love alone is capable of bringing longed for peace to restless humanity. But above all, let us pray to the Almighty that He will protect all those who are persecuted, and that He will save our Swiss people from the disgrace of an anti-Jewish campaign and deliver us, and all nations, from the forces of violence and injustice, and bring His Kingdom of justice, love and peace." [152] Again (as in 1933) the danger of anti-Semitic influences within Switzerland was mentioned. The letter also gave as an excuse for not admitting more refugees, that there were "so many unemployed citizens in our own nation". The same motive had led other Governments - as for instance the Dutch Government - to issue decrees restricting immigration. The members of the Ministers Union of Geneva wrote a letter to the Chief Rabbi of the City of Geneva in which they expressed their deep sympathy with the persecuted Jews. This letter, together with the declaration of the Church Council of Zurich (see above) was read at a service, held in the synagogue on a Sunday and not, as usual, on a Saturday. This postponement was in order that the prayers of that day could be united with those of all the Christian Churches in Switzerland for the persecuted Jews. [153] In December, 1938, the Synod of the Canton of Bern issued the following Declaration: "The Synod of the Evangelical Reformed Church of Canton Bern declares, that it views the merciless persecution of Jews and Fellow-Christians stemming from Jewry, as an expression of a spirit which has nothing in common with the spirit of Jesus Christ. It calls upon all members of our Church to intercede on behalf of the persecuted, especially our persecuted brothers; to stand up for them on every occasion; and to oppose any further attempt to poison the soul of our people with the spirit of racial hatred." [154] * * * <57> 12 DENMARK Leading Danish theologians - three professors and one lecturer of the Copenhagen University [155] and the Bishop of Copenhagen, Fuglsang-Damgaard - published a declaration on January 10, 1936, denouncing an anti-Semitic brochure, "The Christian Church according to the concept of the peoples of the North", based on the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion". Professor Frederik Torm related the history of this forgery in an informative article. The matter drew attention, even in Germany, where the "Volkische Beobachter" in its edition of January 14, 1936 reported the story as told by its correspondent in Copenhagen under the caption "Danish theologians grow nervous" and with the subtitle: "The Jewish question arises in Denmark". The report of the former German Envoy, Richthofen, dated January 13, 1936, shows the same attitude, considering the article of the theologians as an act of defence against "the ever increasing understanding of the Jewish question in Germany among the Danish public". [156] In the autumn of 1938, Bishop Fuglsang-Damgaard said in his sermon at the opening of a new church, Lundehuskirken, that it was with deep pain that the Christian community had heard about the persecution of the Jews in Germany, which had reached a culminating-point in those days. 149 pastors of Copenhagen supported these words by a public statement and pronounced their "deep sympathy with our Jewish countrymen on account of the sufferings which at this time befall their brethren and which must fill every Christian with horror". <58> Dr. Fuglsang-Damgaard asked the pastors to pray for the suffering Jews in the services the following Sunday, and he himself declared at a service in Helligkors Church, that we must pray to God "to protect our people against the poisonous pestilence of anti-Semitism, hatred of the Jews and persecution of the Jews. Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was David's Son after the flesh, and those who love Him cannot hate His people". [157] 13 SWEDEN The Swedish Ecumenical Council sent the following letter, dated April 3, 1933, to the German Evangelical Church Council in Berlin: "The Swedish Ecumenical Council, a representation of different Swedish Church communities, sincerely regrets the existing conditions in Germany and the boycott of German goods abroad, and is deeply concerned by the anti-Semitic action in your country, such as has been expressed in official statements and actions. We hope and pray that, with God's help, it will be possible for the German Evangelical Churches actively to stress the genuinely Christian principles, which you upheld in your appeal before the latest elections. "Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." As Christian brothers, we are anxious to be in communication with you in this matter and further hear your views. In sincere communion in the faith, for the Swedish Ecumenical Council: Arch-bishop Erling Eidem, Chairman. [158] The Appeal of the German Evangelical Church Council to which this letter referred, was published on March 3, 1933, just before the elections for the Reichstag. Unfortunately, we do not know whether any reply was received by the Swedish Ecumenical Council. In 1933, 64 prominent Protestant Church leaders also published an "Appeal to Swedish Christianity", warning against anti-Semitic influences in Sweden: "Action against the Jews in Germany seems to work as a stimulant - and no small one - for the anti-Semitism which exists in certain Swedish circles. Many of us may have been prone to consider this movement in our country as insignificant, and not worth combating. But the matter is more serious than that. If sufficiently great spiritual strength is not mobilized against this fanatical and shortsighted nationalism, it is difficult to foresee the result. <59> The undersigned regard it as their duty to express the worry and anger with which this anti-Semitic movement has filled them, and to appeal to Swedish Christianity of all denominations to fight against racial hatred, stressing Christ's valuation of man and his brother-love. <59> Already from a general and cultural viewpoint, anti-Semitism is an expression of ingratitude and shortsightedness. No less in our country, citizens of Jewish descent, have contributed in all fields to such a degree that, if all trace of what they have done were erased from the Swedish civilization, to-day, it would be much poorer. But first, anti-Semitism must be condemned from a Christian-religious viewpoint. Here too one can, rightly, speak of a debt of gratitude. The prophets and psalms of Israel also belong to our holy heritage. And in spite of all wild racial hypotheses, Jesus Christ is a son of Israel and a perfecter of these prophets' work. However, it is not only, and not first and foremost, the gratitude for a spiritual inheritance which urges Christian people to take their stand against anti-Jewish activity. They would be denying their Master if they did not do so. For in Him all racial differences are overcome, in the divine love, which has taken form in Him, we are all each other's brothers, no matter to which nation or race we belong. Whosoever professes himself a follower of Christ, yet lets himself be seized by nationalistic presumption, of which anti-Semitism is one of the most repellant expressions, must realize that any action designed to attach a stamp of inferiority on members of the Jewish people or deprive them of full civil rights, is in absolute opposition to the spirit and teaching of Jesus. The gravity of the situation has impelled us to make public this declaration, which is also an appeal to Swedish Christianity to oppose unmitigatedly a propaganda which is becoming louder and more aggressive anti-Jewish, and the mentality of violence from which it stems. Time must not be lost. Freedom of speech is not yet stifled. The gospel of Truth and Love may still sound its voice." [159] At a meeting of the Stockholm Pastors' Society, held in 1934, Professor Nygren of Lund opened the discussion on the subject: "What is the reason for the struggle within the German Church?" The Pastors' Society unanimously decided to publish in the press their agreement with the fundamental viewpoints expressed in Prof. Nygren's address. The Society's Resolution reads as follows: "The furious struggle now taking place within the German Church is not on a personal question, a question of rights or a question of organization. Nor is it a struggle for or against the National-Socialistic State or for or against the liberalistic freedom ideal. <60> The struggle concerns Christianity itself, its existence or non-existence. What is happening in Germany to-day is nothing more or less than the appearance of a new religion, beside and in contrast to Christianity - a religion based on 'Blut und Boden', on racial idealism and racial egoism. This has to some extent thrown Christians and non-Christians into jail. From a deeper viewpoint, the difference between 'German Christians' and the heathen 'German Faith Movement', therefore, becomes surprisingly small. If we observe the deepest tendency, of which, in general, the followers of these movements are quite unconscious, it can even be said that, for the former group, it is a question of the new religion in Christian guise; for the latter, the same religion in Germanic guise. The extraordinary danger is that the present Church management has not the least understanding of the reason for the struggle. It believes that it is fighting for the sake of Christianity and does not realize that it has slipped into a new racial religion. True, it often stresses that the Bible and the Confession should be left 'unas- sailed', but the tone of the voice itself reveals that it is on something else that one subsists. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The real pathos first appears when one can talk of 'Blut und Boden', 'Blut und Rasse', 'Blut und Ehre'. The god one really worships is the idol of one's own people. But in the German Church there are men - and fortunately these are not few - who understand what is at stake; what this new religion has to offer the people, from a Christian viewpoint, is nothing less than idolatry. One creates a new god in one's own image, the image of 'the German Man'. The Christians who see this must, through their faithfulness to the Gospel, be forced out into the struggle. Because of this they find themselves in tragic conflict; for there is so much in the new state to which, in their hearts, they say 'yes', and with joy. But when they fight this new heathen spirit that has penetrated the Church and seized the power in it, they are stamped as enemies of the state by the uncomprehending Church management. The point has been reached, where those who do not want to give up their Christian faith are attacked by the German Church management: with external means of power, the secret state police, removals from office and suspensions. We, Evangelical Christians of a kindred people, have seen with grief and concern that the German Church management through such activities has tarnished the Christian name. With the deepest sympathy we follow the oppressed Christians' brave and joyfully self-sacrificing struggle, in defence of Evangelical Christianity, not only in Germany but also the world over." [160] <61> The Resolution contains points that to-day are obvious to us, but in those days they undoubtedly enlightened many ignorant people. Much that has been said by the Lutheran Church leaders of Sweden, already in the first years of Hitler's regime, shows a deep theological insight into the nature of anti-Semitism. Few Churches in other lands showed this insight at so early a date. This fact should prevent us from over-simplifying the answers to the question, as to how far certain of Luther's views about the Jewish people influenced the Lutheran Churches in the twentieth century. * * * The following statement, signed by Erling Eidem, Archbishop of Uppsala, and 25 other Church leaders was issued by the Swedish Ecumenical Council, in autumn 1938: "A storm of violence and cruelty goes through the world. The Jewish people are severely hit by this. Their horrible fate must awake in Christian minds strong indignation, as well as deep sympathy for the victims. To belong to the Jewish race is becoming equivalent to being stateless within that portion of humanity which calls itself Christian. This brings shame upon the Christian name. Anti-Semitic Propaganda in Sweden "In our country, too, anti-Semitic propaganda is prosecuted, even though it may, in some respects, avoid publicity and, especially under the pressure of recent occurrences, has met with deserved resistance. More than others, Christians here must be on their guard. No racial differences exist in the Christian evaluation of man. Love of Christ forbids branding any person inferior. Persecution of the people of Israel on the one hand requests Christ's congregation to fight against violence and injustice, and preventive action on the other. The Swedish Ecumenical Council, representing the ecumenical world organizations as well as the larger Swedish Church communities, hereby begs to remind you of our Christian responsibility in this matter. We must not forget that we too, bear a measure of guilt for this evil power that has arisen through loveless ness and injustice in the world. We appeal to all who, in their capacity as pastor, congregation head or preacher, are responsible for the creation of public opinion in such circles as come under Christian influence, to resist the spirit of mercilessness and injustice in the anti-semitic propaganda, by all ways and means available in each community. It seems especially important to us to try to prevent its poison penetrating the minds of the Young. Not only religious instruction in the schools can give an opportunity for this, but also instruction in Sunday schools, confirmation classes and Bible classes. A few congregational evenings could be used to throw light upon the plight of the Jewish people and to stress our Christian responsibility towards them. The un-Christian element in all racial hatred could at times be stressed in the sermon. All discussion of politics naturally must be banned from such Christian instruction and preaching. <62> Aid of Refugees "Where the feeling of responsibility has been awakened, it must be transformed into action. This can be done by gifts to the relief organizations among the banished, which also have branches in our country. In co-operation with other organizations, the Swedish Ecumenical Council's Refugee Committee seeks to aid refugees both within and outside our country's borders, particularly Christians of non-Aryan descent. The money already collected is now almost spent, but the need for help is still very great. Gifts for this activity can be deposited under the name "Help for Refugees" on the Swedish Ecumenical Council's postal current account No. 80710, Stockholm. Recently, the Council's Refugee Committee, the Deacon Board's Social Committee and the Swedish Israel Mission have started other aid activities, such as accommodating children of Jewish refugees, preferably Jewish-Christian, in Swedish homes for a shorter or longer period, and trying to find places farmers' homes for about a year for Jewish-Christian youth, particularly male, who need re-education for later emigration to countries which have declared themselves willing to receive them. Information of such homes as well as financial contributions will be gratefully received by Pastor B. Pernow, Idungatan 4, Stockholm, postal current account No. 125545. Intercession "At this period, with the mentality of violence penetrating minds more and more, it is important not to neglect the possibilities we still have to make Christ's mind and Christ's thoughts heard regarding the relation between man and man, between people and people. Scarcely at any other point has this task seemed clearer and more demanding than as it concerns the Western peoples' conduct towards Israel. May Christ's love in our hearts light a flame of concern for a people who were the Lord's own, the people of the Prophets and the Apostles. May Christ's love make us burning and persistent in our intercession for those who suffer persecution, as well as, for those who persecute. May they receive the grace to repent. May Christ's love make us firm against all hatred, drive out all fear, and make our hands ready for service. Brethren, in the name of Christ we beg you to receive this appeal in a brotherly spirit." [161] It is difficult to understand how "all discussions of politics" can be banned from Christian instruction and teaching, as the statement demands, whilst at the same time resisting "the spirit of mercilessness...". <63> In this same statement, support was requested for the Refugee Committee, which sought "to aid refugees... particularly Christians of non-Aryan descent". We have seen the same trend in Churches in other countries. However, the appeal of the Bishops of Sweden, also in 1938, pleaded for aid to Jewish children and youth in general. This "Appeal for Help to Jewish Refugees" was signed by Archbishop Eidem and 12 other Church leaders: "With deep sorrow and sincere sympathy, we have witnessed the terrible sufferings to which the Jewish people, not least during recent months, have been exposed spiritually as well as physically. The question of the Jewish people has become a question for all mankind. No one can escape responsibility any longer. Our consciences shaken by the suffering of innocent people will not rest until peace and refuge has been provided for the Jewish people. Each one of us must be on his guard against contamination by the plague of racial hatred; we must not betray the Christian commandment of love to every suffering neighbour. May we willingly do our Samaritan service in aiding mercy. The duty and possibility nearest to us is to support Jewish refugees who have had to relinquish home and property. We must hurry to help provide a refuge and a new future for innocent children and youth. Various collections in this respect have already begun. We hereby wish to stress that collections for Jewish children and youth are being mediated by the Swedish Church's Deacon Board. Contributions should be sent to "Deacon Board, Help for Jewish children, Stockholm 7, Postal Cheque Account No. 155650'." [162] 14 HUNGARY The first anti-Jewish Law, restricting the economic activities of Jews, was enacted in 1938. The representatives of the Churches in the Hungarian Upper House, amongst whom was the Protestant Bishop Ravasz, voted for the passage of this law. [163] <64> "The only amendment the representatives of the Churches wished to be introduced was that certain modifications should be included for the benefit of the baptized Jews. Apart from that, they took the view that once the Bill had become law 'it would be possible to avoid emphasis being laid on the Jewish question and thus to allay anti-Semitism'. This attitude turned out to be a fatal mistake. It was the stone that started the landslide, and it is all the more regrettable that the Christian Churches lent this Bill their support." [164] Rabbi Fabian Hershkovits (former Chief Rabbi of Budapest, now living in Tel- Aviv, Israel) had the following to say: "Bishop Ravasz was certainly not an anti-Semite. After the war, in 1947, he was the President of the Council of Christians and Jews of which I also was a member. He and his friends intended, by supporting the anti-Jewish law in 1938, to guard the national Hungarian interest. He did not understand that Europe, after Hitler had come to power, had become a powder-magazine; one should not light a match in a powder-magazine; that was Bishop Ravasz's historical mistake." [165] The fact remains that Protestant Bishops supported an anti-Semitic Law. If this was an error of judgment, it certainly was a fatal error. In 1939, the Hungarian government introduced a bill for the enactment of the second anti-Jewish Law. The measures included drastic curtailments of personal rights. The representatives of the Churches "stood solidly against the passage of the bill" but ultimately "refrained from voting down the Teleki government," that is to say they did not vote against the passage of the Law but tried "to incorporate such provisions in the law as would insure the greatest possible benefits for particular Jewish categories, the first among these being the Jewish converts to Christianity". [166] Hilberg comments: "In waging the struggle for the baptized Jews in the first place, the church had implicitly declined to take up the struggle for Jewry as a whole. In insisting that the definition exclude Christians, the church in effect stated the condition upon which it would accept a definition that set aside a group of people for destruction." [167] <65> 15 RUMANIA We hardly found any statement against anti-Semitism issued by one of the Orthodox Church leaders in Eastern Europe, before the second world war. Rumania was notorious for the strong anti-Semitic influences in that country. The following Declaration, issued on April 15, 1933, by Mgr. Pimem, Metropolitan of Moldavia and Suceava, is the more striking: "We now are in the Holy Week and for a time we must forget petty affairs and acts of men. Nevertheless I wish to state one thing, namely, that I do not approve of the actions and policies of the Nazis with respect to the Jews of Germany, just as I disapprove of the anti-Christian campaign carried out in Russia. I desire peace for the entire world and on the occasion of this Holy Feast I express my wishes for the health and progress of our people. We should follow but one course: the way of Christ, for only thus can we be led to salvation." [168] 16 GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND Many leaders of the Churches in Great Britain publicly protested against the first anti-Jewish measures in Germany. Most of the protests were made by the leaders of the Church of England, though some made by other Churches are also recorded. The Church of England, however, certainly had the widest range of influence in England. I have not recorded all protests that were made. [169] <66> Already in 1933 the protests were clear and unequivocal, though the Church leaders seemed to be afraid of offending the German Government. The Archbishop of Canterbury said in the House of Lords, on March 30, 1933, in reply to statements made by Lord Reading: "I feel that it would be a decided omission on my part, were I not to state publicly, in the name of the worthiest citizens of our country, whom I represent here, that I entirely agree with the words just spoken by the Right Hon. Lord Reading, words which touched us all. I sincerely hope that His Majesty's Government will, as I know it hopes to do, be able to assure us that it is doing its utmost to express to the Jewish community the sympathy of this country and of all Christian subjects, - not least of those amongst us who have a feeling of sincere friendship for the German nation." [170] The Archbishop himself apparently belonged to "those amongst us who have a feeling of sincere friendship for the German nation". The Bishop of Ripon addressed the following Message to the International League combating Anti-Semitism and Racialism, on May 1, 1933: "Most gladly do I avail myself of this opportunity of expressing my sympathy with you and the International League in your struggle against anti-Semitism, on the occasion of the distressing situation created in Germany by the new form of government. It seems almost incredible that such things should happen in the 20th century, and above all in a country like Germany. The leaders of this country, - of the Church as well as of the State, - have not left the German government in doubt as to the feelings aroused in us by its policy of cruelty and suicide." [171] On May 5, 1933, the Archbishop of York issued the following Message: "Racial persecution is an insult to civilization and culture. It is our duty to endeavour to understand the cause and the character of the Nazi revolution in Germany, which has gained the support of a large number of the best citizens of the country. But although it generally happens that understanding produces sympathy, the persecution of Jews, Pacifists and others, such as has so far disgraced the conquests of the Revolution, cannot but alienate all sympathies. It is highly important that the government and leaders of the German nation should realize how great the animosity is which these acts provoke among the best British citizens. <67> Whatever excuses may be made for deeds of violence committed in the course of a revolution, no condemnation can be too severe for the persecution and the organized terror, which undeniably are typical aspects of the recent revolution." [172] No doubt the Nazi revolution in Germany had gained the support of a large number of citizens of that country. That the Archbishop believed that they belonged to the best citizens of Germany, is typical of the atmosphere that reigned in those days. Fortunately, however, "the best British citizens were provoked by the persecution". On May 15, 1933, a Meeting of Protest was held in Birmingham. The Bishop of Birmingham presented the following Resolution: "This meeting of Christian citizens of Birmingham who are anxious to promote friendly international relations, expresses its profound conviction that the discriminating measures adopted against the Jewish race, both in Germany and elsewhere, are contrary to the spirit and the principles of Christianity. It urges Christian men and women everywhere to exert their influence in order to do away with racial and national prejudice." [173] The resolution was adopted at the close of the Meeting. On May 31, 1933, the Archbishop of Canterbury addressed a Meeting of Anglican Clergy at Westminster. The English Primate appealed to the German nation: "to give up, without delay, the racial discrimination which is now being practised. The true strength of a nation and the respect owing to it by other nations lies in the impartial administration of justice to all those who live in its territory". [174] On June 27, 1933, the Archbishop of Canterbury addressed a Meeting of Protest, held at Queen's Hall, London: "We all know that at this very time while we are gathered here in an atmosphere of peace and security, the members of the Jewish community in Germany are being expelled from all public employment, from the posts which they had obtained in virtue of their qualifications, in law, in medicine, and at the universities, and that they are even excluded from concert halls, where music was always considered to be the language common to all mankind. They are being progressively deprived - even when permission is given to practise their profession or their trade - of every chance of earning a living... <68> I think with particular indignation of what I have heard concerning the treatment inflicted on Jewish children, who are set apart in schools, separated from other children as though they were unclean. Think of the effect this must produce on such children in whom the feeling is inculcated from their tenderest years that they are not worthy to mix with other Germans! And then picture to yourselves the effect this is bound to have on non-Jewish German children, who are thus taught from their earliest days to despise and look down upon other children. When injustice prevails to such an extent, it is impossible here or in any part of the civilized world, that men for whom justice is a part of the heritage they desire to keep intact should remain silent. They must needs speak, were it only to ease their own conscience." [175] The Archbishop showed a remarkable insight when he expressed his particular indignation about the separation of Jewish children in schools from other children. That was at a time when many Christians and Jews tended to underestimate the malevolent intentions of the rulers of the Third Reich. Representatives of all religious creeds, responding to an appeal of the United Council of Christian Churches in Ireland (now renamed the Irish Council of Churches) voted for the following Resolution, on the occasion of a public Meeting of Protest, held at Belfast, in May 1933: "We have met here in order to express our deepest regret that millions of law-abiding citizens who are not guilty of any crime or of any criminal intentions, should have been accused, persecuted and placed beyond the pale of the law, for the sole reason that they belong to the race which was, after all, the source of our European religion, and to which the founder of Christianity belonged. The meeting is horrified at the thought of the sufferings endured and the consequences, which are bound to ensue for Europe and the whole world. The history of the human race, of these islands, and of Ireland herself presents countless examples of the disastrous effects that persecution has had for us, not to mention the repercussion elsewhere. We know the obstacles that intolerance placed in the way of our national development, the harm it has done, the wounds it has inflicted, the hatred it has caused to accumulate in the course of centuries; hatred by which the minds of men are poisoned long after the actual grievances have disappeared. For this reason we deplore this new seed of death, the dire results of which we foresee, not only for Germany, but also for the whole of Europe."[176] <69> The Church of Scotland is by far the largest Church in Scotland. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is the final authority of that Church. It is convened annually in May and attended by about 700 ministers and 700 elders, delegated by the presbyteries of the Church. The following statement was issued by the General Assembly, in May, 1933: "The General Assembly rejoice that, in this country, the longstanding traditions of friendliness and goodwill to the Jewish people continue to be maintained; they deplore the growth of anti-Semitism in many lands to-day, and, in particular, its recent intensified manifestations in Germany; and they respectfully appeal to the sister German Churches to secure, through their influence with their fellow countrymen and governing authorities, that, notwithstanding the inevitable unsettlement of revolutionary conditions, the suffering of the innocent shall cease, and justice and charity towards all shall prevail." [177] The Church of Scotland apparently was optimistic about the "influence of the sister German Churches with their fellow-countrymen and governing authorities". We, who now live after the events, are not astonished that the General Assembly lamented, in 1937, that, "the protesting voice of the Christian Church has been so barren of results". [178] The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was the only ecclesiastical authority, which as far as I know, spoke out against anti-Semitism year after year. The contents of the statements show that it was not an automatic affair, for the changing character of the situation was reflected in these protests. In May, 1934, the following Statement was adopted: "The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, in light of the present world situation as concerns the Jewish race, place on record the following expression of their view and convictions. <70> Remembering the age-long sufferings of the Jewish people, their homelessness a nation which has lasted for centuries, the persecutions, injustices and hardships they have endured, from Governments, Churches and individuals; in view also of the present fresh outbreaks of anti-Semitic fanaticism manifested in many lands, the General Assembly offer to the Jewish people their heartfelt sympathy with them in their almost intolerable wrongs. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland desire to assure the entire Jewish world that ill-treatment of the Jews on account of their race or religion is to them abhorrent; that in their judgment it is a denial of the first principles laid down by the great Founder of the Christian Faith, who places love and kindness to all as fundamental laws of His Kingdom; and that it is their firm belief that any Church which claims to be animated by the spirit of Jesus Christ and which nevertheless acts with intolerance towards members of the Jewish race, is thereby denying the elementary doctrines of the Christian Faith. The General Assembly acknowledge with gratitude to God the great contributions to human knowledge which the Jewish race has made in many realms; in a special degree they express their debt to the Jewish people for the scrupulous care with which they preserved the early documents of Holy Scripture for the ultimate benefit of all nations, which for centuries have nourished the piety of myriads who thereby have learned of the grace of Almighty God. The General Assembly would, in conclusion, again express their sense of the profound significance of the fact that the One whom they rejoice to believe in as the divine Saviour of the world came, according to the flesh, of the Jewish race, and they feel that this thought imparts to the Hebrew nation a special and peculiar position in world history, rendering it a duty on the part of all who love the Lord Jesus Christ to love also the race from which He sprang." [179] It was then moved and resolved that the Assembly send to the Chief Rabbi a message of sympathy. The statement issued in May, 1935, is as follows: "The General Assembly renew their protest against the anti-Semitic spirit which still prevails in many countries, express their sympathy with the Jews in their sufferings, and urge their faithful people to a greater earnestness in commending the Gospel as the one sure basis of fellowship and peace among all men." [180] Not all statements and protests issued over this period in Great Britain and Ireland can be recorded here, but we mention in conclusion two statements issued by Churches, not yet mentioned. <71> In April 1933, the following Message was sent by Dr. Scott Midgett, President of the United Methodist Church, to a meeting at the White-chapel Art Gallery: "All the different branches of the Christian Churches share the Jewish Communities' horror of all deeds of violence against citizens, and especially of such outbursts of violence against any race or class of society. I feel convinced that I am interpreting the feeling of the Methodist Church in stressing our hope that measures will instantly be taken in Germany in order to prevent a recurrence of explosions of this nature in the future." [181] In 1934, the "Report to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in England" stated: "There has unhappily appeared in various parts of the world, notably in Germany, a recondescense of that irrational and wholly unchristian spirit of anti-semitism, which from time to time has disgraced European civilisation. A number of its victims have arrived in our country, and the Archbishops of Great Britain have issued a moving appeal for their relief. But we must do something more. To quote the News Sheet issued by the International Committee for the Christian Approach to the Jews: "We must play the part of the Good Samaritan". But that is only one of our objectives. Wise Christian statesmanship demands that in addition to our relief activities, we must also endeavour to eliminate the causes, which create anti-semitism and its victims. Those who are in a position to know, maintain that the outbreak in Germany is sure to spread to other lands. Indeed it has already begun to do so. We know of attempts to foster the spirit in our own country. And there are so-called Christians who attempt to justify it. But note the fact that anti-semitism is essentially anti-Christian. No conscious anti-Semite can do homage to Christ, the Jew." The Assembly adopted the following Resolution: "The Assembly regrets the spirit of anti-semitism now prevalent in Germany and other parts of Europe, and urges its faithful people so to act towards all Jews as to allay the spread of this spirit." [182] <72> * * * On November 20, 1935, the Bishop of Chichester (Dr. George Bell) moved a resolution in the Church Assembly. [183] The Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Lang) had to leave to officiate at the christening of His Majesty's grandson. He asked the Archbishop of York to take his place in the chair. Without a word of explanation, however, his absence might be misunderstood. "Speaking simply for himself, he felt bound to say that he did most strongly protest against the persecution of the Jews... He was sure that the continuation of the present modes of persecution must seriously affect the good will with which the people of this country desired to regard the German nation." The Bishop of Chichester then moved: "That this Assembly desires to express its sympathy with the Jewish people and those of Jewish origin in the sufferings which are being endured by many of their number in Germany, and trusts that Christian people in this and other countries will exert their influence to make it plain to the rulers of Germany that the continuance of their present policy will arouse widespread indignation and prove a grave obstacle to the promotion of confidence and good will between Germany and other nations". He said he moved the resolution with great reluctance, as one who had a profound admiration for Germany, as one who had many friends in that country, and desired the closest co-operation and the firmest mutual understanding between Germany and Great Britain. He was compelled to move his resolution because, as a human being, he saw a wrong done to humanity in one great area of German life and action. As a friend of Germany he saw the hoped-for friendship between two kindred countries tumbling into ruin through the prosecution of a policy against a section of its population, which was unworthy of a great civilized nation. He appealed to the rulers of Germany to desist from a course which shocked Christian opinion in this country in a way to which the nearest analogy was the oppression of the Jews in Russia by the Tsarist Government exactly 30 years ago. The hardships suffered by baptized persons of Jewish origin made a peculiar claim upon their Christian sympathy and compassion. There were two points of attack: <73> the casting out of the Jews from all cultural and professional life, together with the precariousness of their position in business, and the defamation of the Jews throughout Germany. The Nuremberg laws passed last September were supposed to give protection and security within limits to the Jews, yet suffering of individuals increased and the personal attacks grew bolder. No doubt they saw in The Times not so many weeks back that prayer was asked in all German synagogues for protection for the Jews against slander, with the result that the Chief Rabbi suffered imprisonment for one day and other Rabbis suffered punishment. He was sure that great masses of German people themselves abhorred the policy of persecution. They, too, must feel as we felt, that it was a great scar across the fair fame of Germany. The Bishop of Southwark (Dr. Parsons), in seconding the resolution, said they had hoped that the days of the Ghetto had passed for ever. Now the Jewish people in Germany apparently were being forced back into conditions which reminded them all too vividly of the Ghetto. Their whole position, if it could not be compared with that of slaves, could be compared with that of helots. An article in The Times had described the whole policy as a "cold pogrom". Mr. S. Carlile Davis, the German Vice-Consul at Plymouth, in opposing the resolution, said that every member of the Assembly would agree that they should all express sympathy with those who suffered from persecution, envy, hatred, malice, or any uncharitableness... The Jewish question, so far as it affected Germany, was purely a race question, and it was nothing new in Germany. It was not for us to dictate to any people how they should handle a race question... The Bishop of Durham (Dr. Henson) submitted that they had in the resolution brought before them by the Bishop of Chichester one of those matters which required from them as a great representative Assembly of Christian men a clear pronouncement of their convictions. One thing which they ought to emphasize was the solidarity of civilization... The Jews were just as mixed a race as the Germans - they could hardly be more. This nonsense about race - as if there were some poison in the ancestry of Judaism which must be guarded against - was sheer hallucination and nonsense. We knew in this country that the Jews could be as prominent in good citizenship as any other section of His Majesty's subjects. We, who were the children of Christendom, could not exclude from our minds the vastness of the obligations under which we stood to the Jewish people. Our Divine Lord, according to the flesh, was a Jew. His Apostles were all Jews. The Sacred Book, which we used was a Jewish Book. It was preposterous, base and almost incredibly mean that we, the children of Christendom, should turn on the ancient children of God, to whom religiously, spiritually and morally we owed almost everything we value. <74> "The least we can do," Dr. Henson concluded, "is to make it clear from our hearts that we loathe and detest this attitude which is obtaining in Germany, and protest against the continuance of this brutal oppression of a small minority of Jewish citizens in Germany." (Loud and continued cheers.)... Mr. G.F. Lefroy (Exeter), in opposing the resolution, said that Parliament itself would not dream of passing it. He moved, as an amendment, that only the first portion of the resolution should be moved, confining it to the words "That the Assembly desires to express its sympathy with the Jewish people and those of Jewish origin in the sufferings which are being endured by many of their numbers in Germany". On being put to the vote, Mr. Carlile Davis's motion for the previous question and Mr. Lefroy's amendment were rejected by very large majorities. The Bishop of Chichester's motion was then carried, with few dissentients. [184] Some of the Bishop of Chichester's words mentioned above could create misunderstanding, for instance, that he "had a profound admiration for Germany". Dr. Bell's record regarding the fight against anti-Semitism (as well as in many other respects) is outstanding. [185] One should note the policy of deception practised by the Germans: "The Nuremberg laws passed last September were supposed to give protection and security within limits to the Jews...". [186] That seems incredible, and yet it provided a pretext for people who wanted to do nothing. In the discussion on the above mentioned resolution, one Mr. Lefroy, in opposing the resolution, said: "Parliament itself would not dream of passing it. Therefore, why should the Assembly pass it?" Apparently it escaped the attention of Mr. Lefroy that a Church Assembly is not a Parliament, and that a Church body often can and ought to say things publicly, even though a Parliament is not prepared to do so, or perhaps for that very reason. However, the Bishop of Durham's speech, in the same meeting of the Church Assembly, is an outstanding example of how a Christian leader could and should speak. <75> The Chief Rabbi, Dr. J.H. Hertz, wrote to the Bishop of Chichester: "Your words will come as a ray of hope to hundreds of thousands whose annihilation seems to have been decided upon by the Nazi rulers." [187] At a meeting of the London Diocesan Conference [188] held in Central Hall, Westminster, in 1936, the following resolution was submitted for discussion by permission of the Bishop of London: "This Conference, while fully aware of the difficulties that must arise from the presence in certain districts of large populations of people of other religious beliefs and social habits, asserts that the Jew and the Christian are equal children of God, and therefore calls upon all Christians to stand firm against any and every attempt to arouse anti-Semitic feeling for political or any other needs." [189] The Bishop of Chichester was very active in promoting help for Christians of Jewish origin. [190] This subject is, however, beyond the scope of this book. In the summer session of the Church Assembly, in June 1938, Dr. Bell pleaded that the needs of Jews and Christians alike should be remembered. "The Bishop of Chichester moved: That this Assembly records its deep distress at the sufferings endured by 'non-Aryan' Christians, as well as by members of the Jewish race, in Germany and Austria, and urges that not only should everything possible be done by Government aid to assist their emigration into other countries but also that Christians everywhere should express their fellowship with their suffering brethren by material gifts as well as by personal sympathy and by prayer." He said he did not want to speak of political matters in a country with which they desired to be friends, nor to attack the leadership of the great German State. He asked the Assembly not to make any protest against a system, but to record its deep distress at the suffering of Christians and Jews... <76> What could members do? First of all they must not forget it, but let it be printed on their memory and never rest while the distress was unhealed. They must remember the needs of Jews and Christians alike. It was wrong to separate the Jews and leave the Jews to the Jews and the Christians to the Christians. They both made a deep appeal by their sufferings to all humanity and above all to the Christian Church.'... First of all they could pray for the sufferers; prayer from the heart availed and was a great bond of fellowship. Next they could feel deeply for and with them until something was done. Thirdly there was material help... He asked for their (the Assembly's) help and for the help of their constituents all over England and he asked for the awakening of conscience. They would not forget and he could not forget that their Master was a Jew, a non-Aryan. They thought in their hearts that if they saw their Master in sorrow they would wish to help him, but it was right to remember the parable that their Master uttered of judgment and what He said when He rebuked certain disciples: 'For I was an hungered and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger and ye took me not in: naked and ye clothed me not: sick and in prison and ye visited me not.' When the disciples in defending themselves asked what he meant, the Master added: 'Verily I say unto you, in as much as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me'. He was convinced that their attitude in England and in the Church of England to the needs of those suffering non-Aryan Christians and members of the Jewish race was the test of their attitude to their Master himself. It was because of that that he felt so deeply and that he asked them to give their prayers and sympathy and their material help. The motion was carried. [191] The Bishop of Chichester followed this move with a plea for more vigorous Government action in his maiden speech in the House of Lords, on July 27, 1938. He began with a strong condemnation of the Nazi persecution: "I cannot understand - and I know many Germans - how our own kinsmen of the German race can lower themselves to such a level of dishonour and cowardice as to attack defenceless people in the way that the National-Socialists have attacked the non-Aryans. <77> He then pleaded with the Government to follow up the initiative of President Roosevelt by increasing its facilities for training younger refugees in Great Britain, by providing greater scope for settlement in the Colonies, and by persuading the Dominions to open their doors more widely. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs assured him that the Government would do what it could. But Dr. Bell remarked a few weeks later in his Diocesan Gazette: "It is almost as hard to understand the seeming apathy with which the fate of the Jews and the non-Aryan Christians is being regarded by the people of the British Empire... These non-Aryans can no longer be called 'refugees' for they have as yet no country of refuge. We emphasize the responsibility of the British Empire in this connection, because the British Colonies and the British Dominions cover the larger part of the whole available globe. It seems to us impossible, both on the grounds of charity and on the grounds of statesmanship, that the doors can remain forever shut." [192] Resolutions adopted by the Presbyterian Church of England exposed the danger of anti-Semitism existing in England in those days. In 1937, the General Assembly stated: "The Assembly notes with concern the attempts which have been made to create racial antipathy against the Jews, with whom the Assembly expresses its sympathy. The Assembly expresses its conviction, that in a nation professing Christianity, no discrimination on grounds of race must be recognised. The Assembly urges that the freedom accorded by law in this country to citizens of any faith to live in peace and pursue their lawful callings shall be specially safeguarded. The Assembly resolves to send a copy of this resolution to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and to the Home Secretary." [193] In May, 1938, the General Assembly adopted the following Resolution: "The Assembly urges its faithful people to encourage every effort to overcome the evil spirit of anti-Semitism which thing we hate." <78> There was hesitancy in the minds of some about the word 'hate', when the Convener moved this resolution, but the Assembly overwhelmingly approved of it. [194] The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland certainly did not mince words. It declared in 1936: "The General Assembly learn with profound regret that the past year has brought no alleviation of the sufferings caused to the Jewish people by the inhuman political, social and economic persecutions prevalent in Central and Eastern Europe. They protest against the religious intolerance, the narrow nationalism and race-pride on which anti-semitic hatreds are based. They call on the Christian people of Scotland, in loyalty to the law of Christ and their own high traditions of liberty and toleration, to rid their minds of all narrow anti-Jewish prejudice, and to broaden out their obedience to the Gospel ever commanding peace and goodwill to all men. The General Assembly again commend to the liberality of their faithful people appeals made on behalf of refugee Jews from Germany and other lands, specially remembering the Christians of Jewish race who are involved in the terrors of persecution." [195] In 1937, the General Assembly declared: "The General Assembly renew in Christ's name their condemnation of the unabated brutality still being dealt to the Jewish minorities in Central and Eastern Europe, and lament that the protesting voice of the Christian Church has been so barren of result. They deprecate the attempts in certain parts of England to create antipathy against the Jews." [196] The statement adopted in May 1938, reads as follows: "The General Assembly renew their protest against the virulence and cruelty of the attacks still being directed against helpless Jewish minorities in Central and Eastern Europe, and they affirm that no Church can be truly Christian and anti-semitic at one and the same time." [197] * * * The first reaction to the horrors of the "Crystal Night" pogroms was a letter of the Archbishop of Canterbury to "The Times": "I believe that I speak for the Christian people of this country in giving immediate expression to the feelings of indignation with which we have read of the deeds of cruelty and destruction which were perpetrated last Thursday in Germany and Austria. <79> Whatever provocation may have been given by the deplorable act of a single irresponsible Jewish youth, reprisals on such a scale, so fierce, cruel and vindictive, cannot possibly be justified. A sinister significance is added to them by the fact that the police seem either to have acquiesced in them or to have been powerless to restrain them. it is most distasteful to write these words just when there is in this country a general desire to be on friendly terms with the German nation. But there are times when the mere instincts of humanity make silence impossible. Would that the rulers of the Reich could realize that such excesses of hatred and malice put upon the friendship which we are ready to offer them an almost intolerable strain. I trust that in our churches on Sunday and thereafter remembrance may be made in our prayers of those who have suffered this fresh onset of persecution and whose future seems to be so dark and hopeless." [198] The Archbishop's letter expressed "feelings of indignation", but also reflected the spirit of appeasement: the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had signed the Munich agreement with Hitler, only six weeks before. On November 16, 1938, during the Autumn Session of the Church Assembly, the Bishop of Chichester pleaded that help should be given to Christian refugees of Jewish origin. In January 1939, he was to urge "to aid the entire mass of non-Aryans". Now the tendency still was to stress the help to Christians of Jewish origin, not to the Jews in general. There was one notable exception, in which Jews and Christians jointly took action, without asking themselves whether the persons to be helped were Jews or Christians. Lord Gorell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury to be joint Chairman (with Lord Samuel) of the "Movement for the Care of Children from Germany", in February 1938. This movement succeeded in bringing over 9,354 children from Germany to England. Roughly nine-tenths were Jewish, and one-tenth Christian children. <80> "Where a Jewish child was received in a Christian home - which occurred frequently - it was prescribed by the Movement, and accepted by the foster-parents, that there should be no attempt to proselytise. The nearest Rabbi, or Jewish teacher, was put in touch with the child, and if personal contact was not possible, instruction was arranged by correspondence. The last transports of the children from Germany reached England a few days after the outbreak of the war." [201] A Joint Statement was issued by British Church leaders, in April 1939: "In making the following statement, we, the undersigned, - the Archbishop of York; Dr. Jas. Black, Moderator of the Church of Scotland; the Bishop of Edinburgh; Dr. S.M. Berry, Congregational Union of England and Wales and Federal Council of Free Churches; the Rev. M.E. Aubrey, Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland, - feel that we are giving expression to the convictions of a large number of Christians in Great Britain: 1. We believe that the following is an essential and basic principle of all true civilization: Religious freedom, freedom of opinion and action in accordance with religious beliefs, provided that social order is in no way endangered thereby; legal equality for all, independently of social position or race..." [202] In November, 1938, the Moderator of the Church of Scotland wrote a letter to the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, who replied as follows: London, 24th Nov. 1938/5699. Dear Dr. Black, "I am indeed touched by your letter of the 18th inst. conveying to me on behalf of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, the deep horror of the suffering inflicted on the Jewish people throughout Europe. In the agony through which hundreds of thousands of my coreligionists are now passing, it is fortifying to read your strong repudiation of all persecution as unchristian, inhuman and pagan; and to learn that the love of God, love of fellow-man, and love of freedom rule with undiminished strength in little, but great Scotland. I should be glad if you would kindly convey to the General Assembly the deep felt thanks of my community for their kind expression of Christian sympathy with the suffering of Israel. The General Assembly commented: <81> "It is now the duty of the Church to contrive that the wave of sympathy shall not ebb, but, while it is on the flow, shall be turned into the only channel, which, as we believe, reaches the heart of the Jewish problem. The immediate duty, however, is to direct sympathy towards practical and generous action with regard to the gigantic Refugee problem which confronts the free peoples of the world..." [203] The following statement was issued by the Conference of the Methodist Church in Ireland, in June 1939: "The Conference notes with grave concern the growth of anti-Semitism in Europe and America, and expresses its profound conviction that this tendency is directly contrary to the spirit of Christianity. It views with horror the treatment now being meted out to men, women and children in Germany on purely racial grounds, and regards with apprehension the possibility of the spread of such policy to other countries. It commands to the sacrificial sympathy of the Church, the efforts being made on behalf of non-Aryan Refugees both in Eire and in Northern Ireland, and suggests that they offer a most effective method of bearing Christian testimony against the terrible divisions of the present hour." [204] 17 THE UNITED STATES Protestant Churches in America have protested against racial discrimination in general. We only record, however, the resolutions and statements, which expressly denounced anti-Semitism. On March 22, 1933, American Christian clergymen and laymen appealed to the German people to put an end to the persecution of Jews. They urged preachers throughout the United States to rally their congregations on the following Sunday for a united stand against Hitlerism. The summons to the Churches was sponsored by the Interfaith Committee and signed by Bishop Manning (Episcopalian), Mr. Al Smith, the former Governor of New York State (a Roman Catholic), and others equally prominent. [205] <82> On March 28, 1933, a mass meeting was held in New York, Madison Square Garden, attended by 20,000 persons, as a protest against anti-Semitic activities in Germany. 38,000 swarmed round the building to hear the voice of speakers brought to them through amplifiers. The meeting followed a day of fasting and prayer with similar protests being staged in 300 other cities. Former Governor Alfred Smith, Bishop William T. Manning, and Senator Robert F. Wagner were among the speakers. [206] On May 26, 1933, a Manifesto signed by 1200 Protestant ministers from 42 States of the United States and Canada was published: "We Christian ministers are greatly distressed at the situation of our Jewish brethren in Germany. In order to leave no room for doubt as to our feelings on this subject, we consider it an imperative duty to raise our voices in indignant and sorrowful protest against the pitiless persecution to which the Jews are subjected under Hitler's rule. We realize full well that there are religious and racial prejudices in America, against which we have repeatedly protested and for this very reason we all the more deeply deplore the retrogression which has supervened in Germany where so much had been achieved while we in America were still fighting for human rights. For many weeks we have waited, refusing to believe all the reports concerning a State policy against the Jews. But now that we possess the irrefutable testimony of facts, we can no longer remain silent. Hitler had long vowed implacable hatred against the Jews. One of the fundamental Nazi doctrines is that Jews are poisonous germs in German blood and must therefore be treated as a scourge. Hitler's followers now apply this doctrine. They systematically pursue a 'Cold Pogrom' of inconceivable cruelty against our Jewish brethren, dismissing them from important positions they had occupied, depriving them of civil and economic rights, and deliberately condemning those who survive to a life without legal protection, - as outcasts, threatening them with massacre should they make the slightest protest. We are convinced that the efforts made by Nazis to humiliate an entire section of the human family, are liable to cast the civilized world back into the clutches of mediaeval barbarism. We deplore the consequences which may ensue for the Jews and also for Christianity which tolerates this barbarous persecution, and, more particularly, for Germany herself. We are convinced that in thus protesting against Hitler's cruel anti-Semitism we are acting as sincere friends of the German nation." [207] <83> Speaking of their "Jewish brethren in Germany", those 1200 Protestant ministers apparently had in mind the Jews of Germany in general, not just the Christians of Jewish origin. * * * The next statement to be recorded in this chapter was issued by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. This organization represented the great majority of American Protestants. The total membership of Churches affiliated with it was, in 1941-1942: 25,551.560. The Executive Committee of the Federal Council published the following statement in November 1935: "At a recent meeting of protest against the treatment at present inflicted on Jews in Germany, the Assembly of the Church of England expressed the hope that other Christian bodies would join in this protest. We feel constrained to do so. We are members of churches which have numerous and close bonds of union with the German church. We recognise our indebtedness to the great German preachers and teachers of Christianity, who have done so much to enrich our common heritage from the days of Luther to the present day. After the last war we protested strongly against the limitations to which Germany was subjected by the Treaty of Versailles and made constant efforts for their suppression. For this very reason we consider it our duty to speak equally freely now that Germany is pursuing a policy, which threatens her with moral isolation. We protest against this policy because the treatment of the Jews is unworthy of a great nation. To treat a considerable part of the population as being essentially inferior for racial reasons only, and to impose restrictions on the normal life of persons whose families have lived in Germany for generations, and who have rendered eminent services in the realms of education, art, and government, is to violate the codes of honour and good faith which are the common property of civilized nations. But our reason for protesting goes far deeper. We protest against this policy because the philosophy on which it is based is a heathen philosophy. Founded on a religious interpretation of race, the actual treatment inflicted on the Jews raises far greater problems than any former persecutions of Jews and other minorities, which were founded on political and incidental considerations. It is an attempt of a tribal heathen movement, based on race, blood, and soil, to separate Christianity from its historical origin and a Christian nation from its religious past. All the different branches of the Christian Church are, therefore, in duty bound to protest, not only in the name of the human brotherhood, but also in the name of our Christian faith. [208] <84> The meeting of protest mentioned at the beginning of this statement was held on November 20, 1935. [209] The response of the Federal Council came very promptly indeed. International contacts between Churches were a factor the importance of which can hardly be overestimated. Dr. Charles S. Macfarland, the then General Secretary of the Federal Council, had had a personal interview with Hitler in the autumn of 1933. Before accepting Hitler's invitation to call, he was warned that no one was even permitted to mention the Jewish issue to him. Dr. Macfarland, however, had made it clear that he was not going there to discuss Tennyson or Browning and that he would have to be permitted to choose his own subjects. Word came that "His Excellency desired me to talk freely with him". Dr. Macfarland relates: "I told Herr Hitler that, in my judgment, the German Evangelical Church could not and would not yield itself to his polito-social theory, including his so-called Aryan laws, and that if it did, it would not only cut itself off from the Christian churches of the world, but would cease to be Christian..." [209] Dr. Macfarland followed up this conversation by correspondence. In one letter he wrote that the near complete hostility of the American people was deeply ethical in nature and could be modified only by two processes: 1. "A constructive measure of justice in dealing with the Jews in Germany, stopping all continuation of the boycott, conferring with leading Jews of high character, and, while still recognizing the social problem involved, endeavouring to secure needed readjustments by friendly measures and, above all, restoring neighbourly good feeling between Jewish rabbis and Christian pastors and among Jews and non-Jews who live side by side... I also hope that, by a final settlement of the Jewish problem which will do full justice, this barrier between the German people and the peoples of the world may be removed." [210] <85> Apparently Hitler did not underestimate the influence of the American Churches: he replied to Dr. Macfarland's letters, stating that he wished "to promote the unity of the Church", that he accepted one of these letters "in the same spirit in which it was written" and that he thanked Dr. Macfarland for his "candid and sympathetic appeal". [211] On June 2, 1937, however, Dr. Macfarland published an open letter to Hitler, from which we quote the following: "You especially demarcated the church's "confession" as a sacred ground on which the State could not and would not intrude, and I handed you a memorandum calling attention to the fact that by that confession the church was supernatural, supernational and superracial and that the so-called 'Aryan paragraph' cut right across the confession; that if the church accepted it, it would make a breach between the church in Germany and the 'positive Christianity' for which you declared you stood. As previously mentioned, you replied to later correspondence that you accepted my appeal 'in the spirit in which it was given'. That appeal was for a constructive measure of justice in dealing with the Jews in Germany, stopping all continuation of the boycott, conferring with leading Jews of high character and, while still recognizing the social problem involved, endeavouring to secure needed readjustments by friendly measures and, above all, restoring neighbourly good feeling between Jewish rabbis and Christian pastors and among Jews and non-Jews who live side by side'. And I added: 'I hope that this barrier between the German people and the peoples of the world may be removed'... What now are the results of my continued study and how do they appear in the light of your earnest assurances?... Instead of doing justice to the Jews, you have permitted them to be harassed and despoiled. Your treatment of them has been ruthless, without the slightest appearance of mercy, even reminding one of the infamous edict of Herod in stretching the hand of violence to the littlest child. Your attitude toward the little handful of Jews in Germany and your so-called Aryan and Nordic ideas have had no little effect in confusing members of the Evangelical Church, so that, in this way, you divided instead of fulfilling 'the desire you expressed to me of uniting the church. You undermined the most basic ideal of Christianity, on which unity alone could be secured... I have been reading a paper called Der Stuermer. Not only does it explicitly teach and urge hate-hate-hate, but does it in forms whose viciousness never would be believed by one who had not seen it. The language in this paper is too vile for repetition, and its falsehoods are obvious to any ordinarily informed person who knows Germany. The best that one can say of the illustrations is to hope that they emanate from a disordered, rather than a depraved mind..." [212] <86> I think that, if Dr. Macfarland had been a citizen of my country (the Netherlands), legal proceedings might have been instituted against him in those days, for "public offence to the Head of a friendly State". The Home Missions Council, early in December 1937, issued a special Christmas message concerning Jewish and Christian relations which it addressed to all Christians of North America. We quote the following from this message: "As Christians of the United States and Canada we desire to express to those Jews who are the victims of injustice and abuse our sincere sympathy, and we emphatically declare that such conduct is utterly alien to the teaching and spirit of the faith we profess and an affront to all our ideals of civil liberty and justice." [213] * * * The Executive Committee of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America proposed to set aside November 20, 1938, as "the occasion when prayer will be sought in the United States for refugees, both Christian and Jewish". [214] The officials of both the Roman Catholic Church and Jewish Organizations, following the example set by the Federal Council, designated the same date for a period of prayer and intercession. The Governors of about a score of States issued statements or proclamations urging citizens to repair to their places of worship on that day for united prayer for the suffering. The day of prayer was widely observed in all parts of the country and in all the churches. [215] The Executive of the Federal Council had issued "an appeal to all church people to respond generously to the efforts for the relief of refugees as carried on by the American Committee for Christian German Refugees and also by the Catholic and Jewish organizations". [216] When the first reports of the new measures of oppression and persecution of the Jews in Germany appeared in the press, the Federal Council's office invited outstanding Christians, both ministers and laymen, to express their views and give wide publicity to them. <87> Among the lay voices, which were most widely heard across the nation was that of Honourable Herbert Hoover, who, in a message telegraphed to the Federal Council, gave expression to the sympathy of all thoughtful Christian people. A statement of Dr. Edgar De Witt Jones of Detroit, President of the Federal Council, was also quoted in all parts of the country. [217] On the evening of November 13, 1938, the Federal Council of Churches sponsored a national broadcast over the Columbia Broadcasting System in which Christian sympathy was again expressed and carried to every part of the nation. There also was a national broadcast under the auspices of the National Conference of Jews and Christians, on November 20, 1938. [218] On January 9, 1939, a petition on behalf of German refugee children was left for President Roosevelt at the White House by a deputation of clergymen. The petition was signed by leaders of the Catholic and Protestant Churches. It read as follows: "The American people has made clear its reaction to the oppression of all minority groups, religious and racial, throughout Germany. It has been especially moved by the plight of the children. Every heart has been touched, and the nation has spoken out its sorrow and dismay through the voices of its statesmen, teachers and religious leaders. Americans have felt that protest, however vigorous and sympathy, however deep, are not enough, and that these must translate themselves into such action as shall justify faith. We have been stirred by the knowledge that Holland and England have opened their doors and their homes to many of these children. We conceive it to be our duty, in the name of the American tradition and the religious spirit common to our nation to urge the people, by its Congress and Executive, to express sympathy through special treatment of the young, robbed of country, homes and parents. A heartening token of the mood of America is to be found in the fact that thousands of Americans of all faiths have made known their eagerness to take these young children into their homes, without burden or obligation to the State. Working within and under the laws of Congress, through special enactment if necessary, the nation can offer sanctuary to a part of these children by united expression of its will to help. <88> To us it seems that the duty of Americans in dealing with the youthful victims of a regime which punishes innocent and tender children as if they were offenders, is to remember the admonition of Him who said, 'Suffer little children to come unto me'. And in that spirit we call on all Americans to join together without regard to race, religion or creed in offering refuge to children as a token of our sympathy and as a symbol of our faith in the ideals of human brotherhood." [220] Senator Robert F. Wagner, attempting to implement the clergymen's proposal, introduced a resolution in the Senate. Known as the Child Refugee Bill, it proposed that a maximum of ten thousand children under the age of fourteen be admitted in 1939, and a similar number in 1940. Their entry would be considered apart from and in addition to the regular German quota. [221] The Executive of the Federal Council supported the Bill: "In the extraordinary circumstances which have created the problem of Jewish and Christian refugees from Germany, we feel that it is not enough to call upon other nations to help or to voice our protests but some such practical step as the one here contemplated is imperative and will do much to facilitate a larger approach to the problem of which it is but one part." [222] On July 1, 1939, the proposed Bill was modified: the twenty thousand childrens' visas would be issued against the German quota, not in excess of them. Senator Wagner, realizing that the twenty thousand children's visas might become twenty thousand death warrants for adults they would replace, withdrew his proposal. [223] <89> In March 1939, the Federal Council urged the United States to continue to provide asylum for refugees of other countries in the face of any legislative proposals to suspend immigration or curtail existing quotas. Declaring that the Churches were deeply concerned with the refugee problem and that "as Christians we have responsibility for suffering human beings as children of our common Father wherever they may be", the Council said: "We, therefore, urge our government to maintain its historic policy of friendliness to refugees. We oppose legislative proposals, which would suspend immigration at this time or curtail the established quotas." In its objection to any change in the immigration policy the Council pointed out that refugees "would be consumers as well as producers" and added: "However, even if they were not an economic asset as well as a liability, we would still have a Christian responsibility to them." [224] In April 1939, the National Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church issued the following Resolution on behalf of aid to refugees: "In view of the persecution of minorities now taking place in Europe, we, as Christians and members of the National Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and in keeping with the traditional spirit of our country, reaffirm our conviction that the United States should continue to show its spint of generosity and hospitality in opening its doors to afflicted people. We commend the program, as prepared by the Episcopal Committee on German Refugees, to the interest and support of all members of the Church, reminding ourselves of our Lord's admonition: 'in as much as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me'." The program prepared by the Committee on German Refugees called for co-operation with local refugee committees in helping to obtain employment, in placing children in homes and in obtaining affidavits of support for individual immigrants. [225] To the best of my knowledge, there is no other country in which Churches and Church leaders in those days so unequivocally demanded asylum for the refugees. So far we have recorded actions and statements on behalf of the refugees only. The following statements also denounced anti-Semitism in Germany and/or in the United States. <90> The Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. stated, at the end of 1938: "... We are deeply shocked at the continuance of persecutions based on race in Germany, Austria, Rumania and other nations. We sympathize with our Jewish brethren in the United States, many of whose relatives are the innocent victims of fanatical hatred abroad. We commend the National Conference of Jews and Christians for all its labour to the end that race murders and race discriminations shall not happen here..." [226] In its Bulletin (February, 1939) the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ published the following article: The Christian Attitude towards Anti-Semitism Every thoughtful Christian must gratefully acknowledge his spiritual indebtedness to the Hebrews. We Christians have inherited the ethical and religious insights of Israel. We hold them with a difference - at one point with a momentous difference - but we can never forget that the historic roots of our faith are in the Hebrew people. From Israel we inherit the Ten Commandments, which are still our basic moral standards. From Israel we inherit the priceless treasure of the Psalms, which are an essential part of Christian worship around the world. From Israel we inherit the vision of social justice which has come to us through Amos and Isaiah and Micah. From Israel we inherit even our own unique Christian classic, the New Testament, nearly all of which (if not all) was written by Jews. A Christian who faces the modem world must also be conscious of a present spiritual kinship with his Jewish neighbours to whom their religious heritage is still a vital force. That kinship is grounded in our common faith in the ultimate spiritual foundations of the universe. Over against those who adhere to a materialistic philosophy of life and a mechanistic conception of human destiny, we recognize ourselves as at one with the Jews in the first sublime affirmation of the Pentateuch: 'In the beginning God'. Over against current disillusionment and despair Christian and Hebrew stand together in their belief in the one Holy God Who is the Creator of all and whose righteous will gives meaning and direction to life. A Christian who knows anything of history must also speak a word of confession. For he cannot help recalling how grievously the Jewish people have suffered at the hands of men who called themselves Christians. The record of the treatment of Jews in Europe through long centuries is one which Christians of to-day view with penitence and sorrow. One has also regretfully to admit that the day of cruel treatment of the Jews by some who call themselves Christians is not yet a thing of the past. Even in our own country there are misguided groups which circulate statements that spread a poison of mistrust and hate which is antithetical to the true genius both of America and of the Christian religion. Anti-Semitism is inherently un-Christian, contrary to the plain teaching and spirit of our Lord, and it can be asserted with confidence that an intolerant attitude towards the Jews is opposed by the great body of American Christians... <91> But everything which has happened since shows that what started as a movement against the Jews turns out to be a movement against Christianity also... [227] In May 1939, the Commissioners of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. stated: "... We confess the sins of our country in this respect. We condemn the attacks on Jews and Christians and other minority groups throughout the world. We would be lacking in a sense of common morality and decency if we did not express our strong disapproval of such an outrageous assault by any government upon an innocent and defenceless people. We urge our government to continue its efforts to make generous arrangement for the settlement of refugees, so continuing our national tradition of being an asylum for the oppressed of all the nations." [228] The General Synod of the Reformed Church in America, attended by 200 pastors and delegates, adopted (June, 1939) the social welfare report which said in part: "The failure of the Church to recognize the Jew has behind it a record of misunderstanding, intolerance and spiritual malpractice that has been unequaled in dealing with any other people. Even America is not free from the blight of anti-Jewish prejudice. Both Jew and Gentile are responsible for existing conditions and both must co-operate for their betterment. Christians must rebuke all anti-Semitism... Third, in reference to the refugee problem, a linking up of our efforts and agencies with all others in more adequately caring for those who are so greatly in need. Fourth, a wholehearted endorsement of the legislation permitting 10,000 children (refugees) to be received each year for two years." [229] 18 INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS OF CHURCHES The World Alliance for International Friendship through the Churches was constituted at Constance, in 1914, at the eve of the first world war. Its supreme body, the International Council, was composed of some 145 members appointed by the various National Councils. <92> In some countries, especially on the continent of Europe, the National Councils worked in close relation with ecclesiastical authorities; in most areas, however, they remained entirely independent agencies, based on the personal adhesion of their members. The Executive Council of the "World Alliance", at its meeting in Sofia, 1933, unanimously adopted the following Resolution: "... We especially deplore the fact that the State measures against the Jews in Germany have had such an effect on public opinion that in some circles the Jewish race is considered a race of inferior status. We protest against the resolution of the Prussian General Synod and other Synods [230] which apply the Aryan paragraph of the State to the Church, putting serious disabilities upon ministers and church officers who by chance of birth are non-Aryans, which we believe to be a denial of the explicit teaching and spirit of the Gospel of Jesus Christ." [231] The International Council of the "World Alliance", at its meeting in Chamby (August, 1935), adopted the following Resolution: "In view of the pitiable situation of refugees and stateless persons in Europe, having regard to the policy of expulsion which is being pursued by the majority of the European States, to the inadequacy of the measures for providing refugees with valid identification papers and residence and labour permits, and recognising the fact that a turn for the better cannot be attained by legislation undertaken by individual States but only on the basis of international agreements, the World Alliance most warmly welcomes the initiative taken by the Norwegian Government which, in the spirit of Fritjof Nansen, has proposed to place the situation of the refugees upon the agenda of the next plenary assembly of the League of Nations. It expresses the hope that in this way it will be possible to secure for refugees and stateless persons a minimum of individual rights and, by the setting up of a central organisation for refugees, within the framework of the League of Nations, to provide a basis for the settlement of the problem. In order to make this resolution effective, the World Alliance resolves: a. to bring the text of this resolution of the Norwegian Government to the knowledge of the General Secretary of the League of Nations and of all States members of the League of Nations; b. to request the Churches and organisations affiliated to the World Alliance in the different countries to make representations to their governments in the spirit of the resolution before the next meeting of the League of Nations in order to obtain the support of these governments for the Norwegian initiative." [232] <93> Another International Organization of Churches, more influential than the "World Alliance", was the Ecumenical Council for Life and Work, which had its first world conference in 1925, in Stockholm, and its second in 1937, in Oxford. Its purpose was "to stimulate Christian action in society". Its President, Dr. George Bell (Bishop of Chichester) wrote a letter to Dr. Kapler, President of the Federation of Protestant Churches in Germany, dated May 17, 1933: "... We do not wish to enter into political questions, nor indeed is it our business to do so. At the same time it would not be fair to disguise from our friends in Germany that certain recent events, especially the action taken against the Jews, have caused and continue to cause us anxiety and distress; and we feel that we ought to share our concern with you here..." [233] The annual meeting of Life and Work was held at Novi Sad, in Yugoslavia, on 9-12 September, 1933. A German delegation under the leadership of Dr. Heckel, who supported Hitler's policy, was present at the meeting. The minutes record that representatives of other Churches had expressed grave anxiety over the severe action taken against people of Jewish origin. [234] Bishop Bell proposed that, in addition to this, he should write a letter to the leaders of the German Church. This proposal was adopted unanimously. Only Dr. Heckel abstained from voting. Bishop Bell wrote this letter to the German Reich Bishop Mueller, on October 23, 1933. He referred to two features, which were gravely disturbing to the Christian conscience, namely, the adoption of the Aryan Paragraph by the Prussian Church Synod [235] and certain other Synods, and the forcible suppression of minority opinion. Mueller's reply of 8 December was intended to be reassuring. The enactment of the Aryan Paragraph had been stopped, and he hoped for an opportunity when they might discuss together the problems of race, the state, and international order. [236] The Executive Committee of the Ecumenical Council of Life and Work at Novi Sad issued the following "Appeal on Behalf of German Refugees" in November, 1933: <94> "A new appeal is hereby addressed to Christians, at this Christmastide. It is an appeal to help those who are suffering because there is no place for them in Germany: Jews, Christians of Jewish origin and political refugees. They are dispersed in Palestine and in different lands of Europe. They are in a deplorable situation and a great number of them are destitute... The gifts of the Churches will constitute a welcome proof of that truly ecumenical and Christian spirit which, beyond all differences of race and class, regards every man as a brother." George Cicestr, President of the Ecumenical Council for Life and Work; Germanos, Archbishop of Thyatira, Co-President; W.A. Brown, President of the Administrative Committee; Waldemar Ammundsen, Interim President of the European Section; Wilfred Monod, Vice President. [237] * * * The International Missionary Council was organized in 1921, to co-ordinate missionary work throughout the world. Its "Committee on the Christian Approach to the Jews" met at Vienna, 28 June-2 July, 1937. A report of the Subcommittee on Anti-Semitism and the Church was submitted, and adopted in the following form: "We desire to record our conviction that in contemporary anti-Semitism we face an extraordinary menace against which all Christians must be warned. All forms of hatred and persecution must be deplored by Christians, and their victims must be succoured; but there exists to-day a type of racial anti-Semitic propaganda inspired by hatred of everything springing from Jewish sources; and this creates more crucial issues for Christianity than ordinary outbursts of race feeling. Christian Churches must be warned that they cannot be silent in the presence of this propaganda, still less connive at or participate in the extension of its errors and falsehoods, without betraying Christ, undermining the basis of the Church, and incurring the most severe judgment of God. The Christian Church must let no doubt about this attitude prevail in the eyes of the world. Realizing that enmity to the Jews has now become a cloak for the forces of anti-Christ, and conceals hatred for Christ and His Gospel, the Christian Church must reject anti-Semitism with complete conviction. <95> To realize its true nature and to vindicate its right to the title of the 'Body of Christ', the Church must preach the Gospel and open its fellowship to men of all race, including the Jews. Our mission to the Jews cannot consistently be carried out without at the same time combating anti-Semitism among Christians, and giving more tangible evidence than has been given of our sympathy with Jews and Hebrew Christians in their present distress. Anti-Semitism can and should be combated systematically: 1. By suitable literature, capable of influencing specially wide classes, also by sustained treatment in Christian Reviews and newspapers. 2. By occasional conversations, discussions, and lectures, on the destiny and the hope of the people of Israel. 3. By sincere and friendly discussion between Jews and Christians. 4. By the realization among Christians of the treasures committed to them (Christianizing of Christians)." [238] The same Committee submitted the following resolution to the Oxford Conference, in 1937: "The International Committee on the Christian Approach to the Jews desires to lay before the Oxford Conference on Church and Community and State the problem of Anti-Semitism. The fact of Anti-Semitism is proved, by the ample material in the possession of the Committee to be of growing importance and menace in the world. It constitutes one of the principal denials of modern life of the Christian doctrine of man. It is an attack upon the unity of the Una Sancta, it is even a denial of the person of Christ Himself. It has been largely instrumental in aggravating existing economic and social strains until they have become intolerable. The human misery created, maintained and at the same time concealed by the influence of Anti-Semitism is difficult to estimate. Graver, however, than the volume of human misery is the poisoning of the spirit, the drying up of sympathy and the warping of judgment caused by the influence of Anti-Semitism, especially among the young. Deepest of all is the denial which Anti-Semitism offers to the Unity of the Church, and to the meaning of the Person of Christ Himself. The Committee would further ask the Conference to consider the terrible fact that this problem is not, like many on the Conference will consider, that of an influence external to the Christian Church with which it must make its account, but also of an evil within the Church. Anti-Semitism antedates Christianity and it is not suggested that it is a purely Christian phenomenon, but it is aided by false Christian teaching and it results in the appalling situation, present in several countries where Christian Churches are reluctant, or frankly refuse, to receive a Jewish convert. <96> It is plain that where racial and physical conditions of church membership override the conversion of heart and will, the Christian religion has ceased to exist except in a vain form. But this devitalising influence is present within the Church, not only in one country but in many, and far more widely than is suspected. The Committee therefore invites the Oxford Conference to do two things: in the first place, realizing that the Conference can make its voice heard widely among the Churches of all lands it begs the Conference to speak out clearly on the dangers of Anti-Semitism to the Church itself and to recognize openly the total impossibility of a Church tainted with this form of racial absolutism bearing any valid witness to the word of God in the world. Secondly, it asks that in any provision that is made after the Conference for international Christian study of the great problems that confront the Church in the modem world, attention shall be given to this problem of Anti-Semitism. The International Committee which has already collected a certain amount of information on the subject would gladly co-operate in such a study." [239] The Oxford Conference (July, 1937), organized by "Life and Work", was an event of major importance. [240] The 425 regular members of the Conference included 300 delegates officially appointed by the Churches, representing 120 communions in forty countries, and constituting a cross-section of Christendom, with the exception of the Roman Catholic Church; only some personal observers from that Communion were present by invitation. Not less than 300 delegates came from the United States and the British Common-wealth. The Orthodox Churches and the Lesser Eastern Churches were represented by some two score dignitaries and scholars. This delegation represented the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Patriarchates of Alexandria and Antioch, the Churches of Cyprus, Greece, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Poland, the Russian Church in Exile, the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Armenian Church, and the Church of the Assyrians. <97> German Church leaders had taken a prominent part in the preparations for the Conference, but the German secret police had seized the passports of leading members of the Confessing Church, including those of Dibelius and Niemoeller, who had been chosen as delegates to Oxford. On July 1, 1937, before the Conference opened, Niemoeller was arrested. Other delegates of the Confessing Church who still retained their passports decided that, unless all the representatives of the Confessing Church were allowed to attend, none of them would come, thereby demonstrating their unity. [241] The German authorities must have realized that the absence of the leaders of the Confessing Church would make a bad impression on world opinion, but apparently they were also aware that the position of Niemoeller and his friends would have been strengthened, if they had been able to attend the Conference. The Oxford Conference sent a "Message to the Churches of Christ throughout the World". We quote the following: "The Christian sees distinctions of race as part of God's purpose to enrich mankind with a diversity of gifts. Against racial pride or race-antagonism the Church must set its face implacably as rebellion against God. Especially in its own life and worship there can be no place for barriers because of race or colour. Similarly the Christian accepts national communities as part of God's purpose to enrich and diversify human life. Every man is called of God to serve his fellows in the community to which he belongs. But national egotism tending to the suppression of other nationalities or of minorities is, no less than individual egotism, a sin against the Creator of all peoples and races. The deification of nation, race, or class, or of political or cultural ideals, is idolatry, and can only lead to increasing division and disaster." [242] We also quote the following from the Oxford Conference's "Longer Report on Church and Community": "Each of the races of mankind has been blessed by God with distinctive and unique gifts. Each has made, and seems destined to continue to make, distinctive and unique contributions to the enrichment of mankind. All share alike in the love, the concern and the compassion of God. Therefore, for a Christian there can be no such a thing as despising another race or a member of another race. Moreover, when God chose to reveal Himself in human form, the Word became flesh in One of a race, then as now, widely despised... <98> Against racial pride, racial hatreds and persecutions, and the exploitation of other races in all their forms, the Church is called by God to set its face implacably and to utter its word unequivocally, both within and without its own borders. There is a special need at this time that the Church throughout the world should bring every resource at its command against the sin of anti-Semitism... The recrudescence of pitiless cruelty, hatred, and race-discrimination in the modern world (including most notably anti-Semitism) is one of the major signs of its social disintegration. To these must be brought not only the weak rebuke of words but the powerful rebuke of deeds. For the Church has been called into existence by God not only for itself but for the world; and only by going out of itself in the work of Christ can it find unity in itself." [243] An immense effort was made, notably in the Anglo-Saxon world, to bring home the message of the Conference to the rank and file of the Churches. The message was referred to by Church leaders when the fight against anti-Semitism intensified as, for instance, by the 170 ministers in the city of New York, 1941, [244] and Rev. Bertrand in France, in his circular letter of June 11, 1942. [245] Many Church leaders who were present at the Oxford Conference were to denounce anti-Semitism vehemently and publicly, during the Second World War. We mention: Dr. Visser 't Hooft, the General Secretary; the Archbishop of York (Dr. Temple); the Bishop of Chichester (Dr. Bell); Archbishop Eidem, of Sweden; Bishop Fuglsang-Damgaard, of Denmark; Archbishop Stephan, of Bulgaria; Dr. Samuel Osusky, Czechoslovakia; the Rev. Marc Boegner, France; Prof. Emil Brunner, Switzerland; and Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert, the United States. Another statement to be recorded in this chapter was adopted by the World Alliance for International Friendship through the Churches, on its meeting at Larvik (Norway), in August, 1938: "The Council appeals to its members to do all they can to awaken public opinion in their own countries to the great evils involved in the systematic ostracism and persecution now being directed against the Jewish race and against thousands of Christians who have kinship with the Jews. Whilst acknowledging the weakness, hesitancy and failure of Christians in this matter, it is appalled by the growth of racial and religious intolerance throughout the world. <99> It holds it to be a total denial of faith in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men as revealed in Jesus Christ and it calls upon all Christians to unite their efforts so that in a distracted and divided world Christ may be made manifest 'Who is our peace. Who made both one and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us'." [246] * * * In 1938, two great Ecumenical Movements - Faith and Order and Life and Work - associated together in forming a Provisional Committee of the World Council of Churches (in process of formation). The World Council of Churches was officially constituted in Amsterdam, in 1948. On November 16, 1938, Dr. Visser 't Hooft, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, H. L. Henriod, General Secretary of the World Alliance for International Friendship through the Churches and Adolf Keller, Director of Inter-Church Aid sent the following letter to the member Churches: "At the moment when the terrible persecution of the Jewish population in Germany and in other Central European countries has come to a violent climax, it is our duty to remind ourselves of the stand which we have taken as an ecumenical movement against anti-Semitism in all its forms. The World Alliance at the meeting of its Executive in Sofia in 1933 and at its recent Assembly at Larvik in August 1938, and the Conference on Church, Community and State at Oxford in 1937 have unequivocally expressed the Christian attitude on this point and called upon the Churches to help those who suffer from racial persecution. We suggest that at this time all Churches should take immediate action based on these statements. The most practical action would seem to be: 1. Corporate prayers of intercession. 2. An approach to the Governments of the various countries requesting that they should act immediately. a. in order to allow a larger percentage of non-Aryan refugees to enter provisionally or definitely into the country concerned; b. to further without delay the plan proposed by the Evian Conference [247] for securing a permanent settlement of a large number of actual and potential non-Aryan refugees. 3. Undertake as a Church the responsibility of the maintenance of some non-Aryan and Christian families and particularly of at least one non-Aryan pastor or theological student. <100> We put ourselves at your disposal for further information on any of these projects." [248] We know that Church leaders in the United States made the requested "approach to the Government". [249] The International Missionary Council held a large international conference at Tambaram, Madras, in December, 1938. It reiterated the Vienna (1937) statement of the International Committee on the Christian Approach to the Jews on anti-Semitism [250], expressed "its deep concern about the increasingly tragic plight of the Jews", and urged "that this constitutes a claim of first importance on the Christian Church". It recommended: 1. That prayer should be regularly made in Christian Churches, and particularly on Good Friday and the Jewish Day of Atonement, for all Jews and non-Aryans who are suffering persecution. 2. That individuals, Churches and Christian Councils in countries suitable for the reception of immigrants should use their influence, wherever possible, to secure an open door for refugees. 3. That Christian people in all countries should make a special effort to welcome and help such of their refugee brethren as arrive in their country. 4. That an appeal be made in all churches for help for recognized refugee funds..." [251] In January 1939, at the First ordinary session of the Provisional Committee of the World Council of Churches, the Bishop of Chichester proposed that the Council create a special department to deal with refugee problems. "He felt that the time had come to aid the entire mass of non-Aryans. He meant not only the non-Aryan members of the Church but also the others, albeit there being a special responsibility towards members of the Christian Church. Soon afterwards Dr. Adolf Freudenberg was appointed the first secretary of this new Department for Aid to Refugees." [252] <101> III DURING THE WAR 19 HISTORICAL EVENTS, 1939-1945 1939 Sept. 1 Germany attacks Poland. Sept. 3-4 Great Britain and France declare war upon Germany. Sept. 17 Russia invades Poland. Nov. 30 Russia attacks Finland. 1940 March 20 Finland accepts peace with Russia. Apr. 9 Germany occupies Denmark and attacks Norway. May 10 Germany attacks the Netherlands and Belgium. May 14 Capitulation of the Netherlands. May 28 Capitulation of Belgium. May 20-June 4: Evacuation of the British expedition force at Dunkirk. June 10 Italy attacks France. June 24 France concludes armistice with the Axis. Aug.-Nov. The "Battle of Britain": Hitler tries to subdue Great Britain by air raids. Oct. 28 Italy attacks Greece. Dec. 7-11 Victory of Great Britain in North Africa. 1941 April Victory of Germany in North Africa. April 6 Germany attacks Yugoslavia and Greece. April 13 Belgrade occupied. April 27 Athens occupied. May 10 Rudolf Hess flies to Scotland. June 22 Germany invades Russia. Dec. 6 Russian counter offensive; Germany fails to take Moscow. Dec. 7 Japan attacks Pearl Harbour. Dec. 11 Hitler declares war upon the United States. 1942 Jan. 20 The Wannsee Conference on the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" in Europe. June Rommel defeats Great Britain in North Africa and captures El Alamein. Aug. 23 Germany's sixth army reaches the Volga near Stalingrad. Nov. 2 Montgomery breaks through at El Alamein. Nov. 8 Allied forces land in Morocco and Algeria. Nov. 11 Germany seizes the unoccupied zone of France. Nov. 19 Russia launches its counter offensive near Stalingrad. 1943 Jan. 3 End of the Battle of Stalingrad. April 19-May 16 Warsaw Ghetto uprising. July 10 Allied forces land on Sicily. Sept. 3 Allied forces land in Southern Italy. Dec. The Soviet armies approach the Polish and Rumanian frontiers. 1944 June 6 The beginning of the Invasion. July 20 Attempt on Hitler's life. August Russia conquers Rumania. Aug. 25 Liberation of Paris. Sept. 3 Liberation of Brussels. 1945 Jan. 17 Russia captures Warsaw. Feb. 13 Russia captures Budapest. Apr. 30 Hitler commits suicide. May 2 Capitulation of Berlin. May 7 Unconditional surrender of Germany. <106> 20 GERMANY Deportations from Austria and the Protectorate (Bohemia-Moravia) began in the winter of 1939/1940. On February 12, 1940, Jews were deported from Stettin. On July 31, 1941, Heydrich was charged by Goering with the preparation and execution of the "Final Solution". On October 14, 1941, the systematic deportation of the Jews from the Reich began. On January 20, 1942, the Wannsee-Conference on the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe" was held. From July, 1942, the selections for the gas chambers took place in concentration camps such as Auschwitz. On June 19, 1943, Goebbels declared Berlin to be free of Jews. An estimated number of 3,000 Jews, however, succeeded in surviving "illegally", until the end of the war. It is, as has been explained before, not my intention to record the help rendered by individuals to Jews. There are, however, indications that organized help to Jews did not wholly stop with the closure of Rev. Grueber's office. [253] Mr. Krakauer relates how he and his wife were helped and hidden during the last years of the war. [254] Not less than 34 ministers of the CONFESSING Church were involved in the rescue of these two people. They all had them in their homes for some days or longer, as staying at the same place for too long a period was too dangerous. It appears that there existed a kind of organization of pastors who passed on persecuted Jewish people from one manse to another. The book also shows how difficult it was in those days, to help and hide people who had no identity cards and no ration cards. Mr. Krakauer stated: "On May 20, 1945, I had the opportunity to speak with Landesbischof D. Wurm, the highest prelate of the country (of Wurttemberg), and to thank him for the fact that by his attitude he had made it possible for his pastors to interest themselves actually on our behalf". [255] Some Church leaders did not speak out publicly, or, only spoke when it was too late; the reason may just have been that they were afraid to accept the personal risk involved. We know of Bishop Wurm's protests, which came late, even too late to do any good for the Jews in general. <107> I do not know very much about his "attitude" in the time before he took official action. The fact that Mr. Krakauer felt that he should thank the Bishop, throws an important sidelight on the dilemma which Church leaders sometimes had to face. If they spoke out publicly against the persecutions, they did not only risk their own freedom and life, but they also risked the lives of the persecuted Jews whom they secretly tried to save. Mr. Krakauer's story should certainly be read by anyone who is interested in the attitude of Protestants in Hitler's Germany toward the Jews. No public statement whatsoever against anti-Semitism was issued by the CONFESSING Church in Germany, or by any of its leaders, from the end of 1938 until 1943. In April, 1943, a letter was sent by a group of Christian laymen to the Lutheran Bishop of Bavaria. The Bishop asked for at least two signatures to enable him to raise the matter officially, but no one was willing to sign. However, the letter had an indirect influence because Bishop Wurm of Wurttemberg read it, and then sent two letters to the German Government. Letter of a Group of Christian Laymen: "As Christians we no longer can tolerate that the Church in Germany should keep silent in regard to the persecution of the Jews. in Churches where the true Gospel is preached, all members are equally responsible for supporting such preaching. We are therefore aware that we also, are equally guilty for the Church's failure in this matter. The inclusion of the so-called 'privileged' Jews in this persecution is the next threat: the dissolving of marriages which are valid according to God's law, should cause the Church to protest, in faithfulness to the World of God, against this violation of the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth commandments, thus, at last, doing what it should have done long ago. What moves us is the simple commandment to love one's neighbour, as expounded by Jesus in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Here He explicitly precluded any limitation of our love only to members of our own faith, race or nation. At this time every 'non-Aryan' in Germany, whether Jew or Christian, 'has fallen among murderers'; we are challenged as to whether we will act towards him as did the priest and the Levite, or as the Good Samaritan? The Duty of the Church <108> No 'Jewish Question' can release us from this decision. Rather should the Church declare that the Jewish question is primarily an evangelical question and not a political one. The politically unusual, and unique existence and character of the Jews is, according to the Holy Scriptures, based on the fact that God has chosen this people as the instrument for His revelation. The Church, just as the first apostles after the crucifixion, must tirelessly testify to the Jews: 'Unto you first, God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities' (Acts of the Apostles 3, 26). This testimony of the Church will only seem worthy of belief to Israel, if the Church is also concerned about the Jews who 'have fallen among murderers'. The Church must especially resist 'Christian' anti-Semitism within its borders, which excuses the actions of the non-Christian world against the Jews, as well as, the inactivity of the Church in this matter, by saying that a 'deserved' curse lies upon Israel. Let us not forget the apostle's exhortation to us Gentile Christians: 'Be not high-minded, but fear: For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee' (Romans 11, 20, 21). The Church must testify to the State about the purpose of Israel in the plan of salvation, thus actively resisting every attempt, to 'solve' the Jewish question, according to a man-made political gospel, which brings about the annihilation of the Jews. This is an attempt to fight against God and his first commandment. The Church must confess that she, as the true Israel, is united with Jewry by indissoluble ties, both in her guilt and in her right to the promises of God. She must not try any more to remain in safety while Israel is attacked. Rather, she must testify that by the attack on Israel, the Church and her Lord Jesus are also being attacked. God remains faithful to his Covenant. The parable of the Good Samaritan reveals the kind of example which should be given by the Church, in regard to the Jewish question. The phenomenal history of the Jews, in which the prophecy has been fulfilled: 'they shall be a curse, and an astonishment, and a hissing, and a reproach, among all the nations' (Jeremiah 29, 18), proclaims to the whole world that the God who gave the first commandment, by his dealings with Israel has manifested to the nations his sovereignty. The Church must explain this phenomenon. She also must, by her faithful testimony, make certain that the authorities are not able to avoid the challenge by obliterating the phenomenon of the Jews. She must therefore proclaim the message of God, who brought both Israel and the Church 'out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage' (Exodus 20, 2). Notwithstanding all the unfaithfulness of those He has elected among both Jews and Gentiles, He remains faithful to his Covenant. The Church thus proclaims to the authorities that only by faith in Jesus Christ can they be delivered from their demonic political 'gospel', which they in their obsession wish to realize, being unrestrained by the law of God. The Church, therefore, must proclaim the commandments concerning our neighbour to the authorities in connection with their attitude to Israel, but also the first commandment concerning their attitude towards God. For the rulers can only exercise their powers rightly by upholding the law rightly, in obedience to the first commandment. <109> A Public Protest Demanded The protest of the Church against the persecution of the Jews in Germany thus becomes a specially important example of the witness she is charged to give against all violations of the ten commandments by any power. The Church must warn the State, in the name of God, not with political arguments, as has happened occasionally, that it must 'not oppress the stranger, the fatherless and the widow' (Jeremiah 7, 6). She must remind the State of its duty to maintain public justice in an orderly, legal system based on humane laws; of the commandment to execute punishment in righteousness; of its duty to protect the oppressed and to respect certain basic rights of its citizens, etc. This witness of the Church must be made publicly, either through preaching or by means of a special pronouncement of the Bishop in his function as Shepherd and Watchman. Only thus can the Church fulfil her duty towards all who, either in a legislative or in an executive capacity, participate in this persecution. Also the conscience of the stricken Jews and the Christian community, which is tempted to deny its faith, must be instructed. So far the Church in Germany cannot be said to have made such a witness, for nothing that she has said in public has done justice to her responsibility to preach the truth in this respect. [256] It is significant that the authors of this letter claimed that as Christians they no longer could tolerate that the Church in Germany should keep silent regarding the persecution of the Jews; that all members of the Church are equally responsible for supporting such preaching (of the true Gospel) and that the protest of the Church must be made publicly. Yet, they themselves refused to sign their own letter. On January 28 1943, Bishop D. Wurm of Wurttemberg sent a letter to a "Senior State Official" (Ministerial Director Dr. Dill, of the Ministry of Interior). We quote the following: "... Apart from these matters, ecclesiastical in the limited sense of the word, I would like to raise another delicate and difficult, but unfortunately, unavoidable point. Wide circles, and not only those in the Confessing Church, are unhappy at the manner in which the war against other races and nations is conducted. <110> From soldiers on home leave we learn how Jews and Poles are systematically murdered in the occupied territories. Also those who objected to Jewish predominance in public life (even at a time when the entire press was in favour of the Jews), cannot assume that one nation is entitled to exterminate another through measures applied to individuals irrespective of their personal blame. The putting to death of people without any trial, solely on the basis of their belonging to a different nationality, or on account of their diseased health, clearly contradicts the divine commandments, and therefore also every concept of justice and humanity which is indispensable in a civilised nation. There can be no blessing on such an attitude. It leads one to consider the fact that from the time these measures were adopted, the German forces have not been as successful as they were at the beginning of the war. Many Germans see in these occurrences not only a disaster but also a sign of guilt, which will bring its own vengeance. Their moral burden would be lightened, if a courageous and noble-minded decision were taken by the Government, which would cleanse the besmirched shield of honour of the German nation. The Evangelical Church has not publicly protested before, to avoid embarrassing the German nation in the eyes of foreign countries. But now that new and great sacrifices are being demanded of the German people, it should also be granted relief from its moral burdens." [257] On July 16, 1943, Bishop Wurm sent a letter to all the Members of the Government, in which he pleaded for the "so-called privileged non-Aryans". We quote the following: "... In the name of God, and for the sake of the German nation, we urgently request that the responsible leaders of the Reich stop the persecution and the annihilation of so many men and women, which under German domination is being carried out without any judicial sentence. Now that non-Aryans under German domination have to a great extent been removed, it is much to be feared that individuals, the so-called privileged non-Aryans, who until now were spared, are now in danger of being treated likewise. In particular we emphatically protest against those measures which threaten to dissolve legal marriages and thus penalize the children born out of these marriages. These aims are, like other actions of annihilation taken against non-Aryans, in flat contradiction to God's commandment, and they violate the foundation of all Western existence and human values in general..." [258] <111> On December 20, 1943, another letter was sent by Bishop Wurm, to the Chief of the Reich Chancellery, Lammers: "... Not because of any philosemitic sympathies but solely from religious and ethical considerations, I must declare, in accordance with the opinion of all positive Christian circles in Germany, that we as Christians consider the policy of annihilation of the Jews as a terrible injustice, fatal to the German people. Killing without military necessity and without trial is contrary to God's commandments, even though it is ordered by the Goverment. Just as every conscious transgression of God's commandments, it will recoil sooner or later on its perpetrators. Our people in many respects is experiencing sufferings which it has to bear from the air-attacks of the enemy, as if in retribution for what was inflicted upon the Jews..." [259] A Public Protest, issued not by one Church leader but by the CONFESSING Synod of the Evangelical Church of the Old-Prussian Union, was the "Interpretation of the Fifth Commandment": 14. "The sword is given to the State only that it may execute criminals and for the destruction of enemies in war-time. What it does beyond that, it does arbitrarily and to its own detriment. When life is taken for other reasons than those mentioned, men's confidence in one another is undermined and thus the unity of the people is destroyed. The divine world order knows no such terms as 'to expunge', 'to liquidate' or 'valueless life' with regard to human beings. To slay human beings simply because they are related to criminals, because they are old or mentally afflicted, or because they belong to a different race, is not the use of the sword sanctioned by the Scripture... 17. In our time, especially, elderly people are more than ever before dependent on our help. The same is the case with the incurably ill, the weak-minded and the mentally diseased. We must also not forget those who receive no support - or almost no support - from public funds. In such matters the Christian is not concerned with public opinion. His neighbour is always the one who is helpless and who especially needs him, and he makes no distinction between races, nations or religions. <112> God alone has authority over human life. All life is sacred to him, even that of the people of Israel. Israel has indeed rejected the Christ of God, but neither as human beings nor as Christians are we called upon to pass sentence on their unbelief..." [260] The publication of the "Interpretation of the Fifth Commandment" was an act of courage but one shudders to read the opinion that "Israel has indeed rejected the Christ of God". It was only after the war that the Kirchentag (1961) declared: "Jews and Christians are insolubly linked with each other: ...God hath not cast away his people, which He foreknew". [261] Such declarations were lacking at the time when they were most necessary. Several leaders of the CONFESSING Church have severely criticized their Church, and themselves. Rev. Martin Niemoeller, who himself was imprisoned from 1937 until the end of the war, stated: "Nobody wants to take the responsibility for the guilt. Nobody admits to guilt but instead points to his neighbour. Yet the guilt exists, there is no doubt about it. Even if there were no other guilt than that of 6,000,000 clay urns; the ashes of burnt Jews from all over Europe. This guilt weighs heavily on the German people, on the German name, and on all Christendom. These things happened in our world and in our name... I regard myself as guilty as any SS man." [262] Rev. Grueber, who himself suffered in a concentration camp because of his help rendered to Jews, said: "In a few meetings of the Confessing Church a call to protest was given. But protests were made by the few, in comparison with the millions who co-operated or kept silent, who, at best, played the ostrich or clenched their fists in their pockets." [263] <113> The following is the opinion of Dr. Freudenberg, who was the Director of the World Council of Churches' Secretariat for Refugees, during the war: "The attitude of the Christians, also of the adherents of the Confessing Church, towards the national-socialist persecution of the Jews, shows great weakness and uncertainty. The anti-Semitic outcry of the environment made a greater impression than the word of Jesus Christ, the Son of David... But even the apparently feeble witness of the Church demanded great confessional courage in the situation of that time. One wrestled to give many a witness, and one suffered when the right word at the right time was not given... It certainly is not accidental that even the Confessing Church, though offering determined resistance against the introduction of the Arierparagraph within the Church, only very hesitatingly made its stand against the anti-Semitic laws and the persecution of the Jews in the State... The fact that the policy of the State towards the Jews ultimately is the policy of the Church and that persecution of the Jews is persecution of Christ, was not acknowledged in time, and when finally it was made, it was far from adequate. Moreover, this policy was effectively veiled by the national-socialist methods of camouflage. At the beginning of the regime one simply could not believe that the rulers relentlessly pursued a plan for the annihilation of the Jews and the elimination of the Christian Church from public life... If we want to evaluate the documents correctly, we must always consider Hitler's incomprehensible terrorization in the Reich. It may disappoint us that the matter was not raised more often and more forcibly. We should, however, bear in mind under which circumstances speaking or keeping silent took place. We should keep in mind that only now, after all the atrocities have become known, has it become customary to make a categorical condemnation of national-socialism. But this phenomenon was, in general, judged quite differently, that is to say, much more positively, not only by the Germans but everywhere in the world, at the time when (some of) these documents were issued." [264] The Evangelical Church in Germany herself, after the war, pleaded guilty, unequivocally and repeatedly. [265] The verdict seems obvious: even the Protestant group in Germany which resisted Hitler, totally failed when they should have stood up in the defence of the Jews. After all this has been said, however, something should be added. 1. The CONFESSING Church in Germany did speak out against anti-Semitism in 1936, and, indirectly, also in 1935 and 1938, when already this meant martyrdom. Churches in other lands, for instance in the Netherlands, did not speak out in those days. Many Churches outside Germany denounced anti- Semitism long before 1940, but it cost them little, if anything. <114> 2. The CONFESSING Church, when speaking on behalf of the Jews, spoke against its own Government and seemingly against national interests. Church leaders in countries occupied by the Germans also risked their lives when denouncing German anti-Semitism, but they spoke against the national enemy. Public declarations of Church leaders in Germany were used by foreign propaganda media against the Third Reich. [266] Fortunately, this served to open the eyes of many blind people outside Germany, but it certainly made things even more difficult for Church leaders in Germany: many of their compatriots regarded the issue of such declarations as an act of high-treason. 3. Guenter Lewy, discussing the attitude of the Roman-Catholic Church in Germany, states: "The concern of the Gentile populations of these countries (France, the Netherlands and Belgium) for their Jewish fellow citizens was undoubtedly one of the key factors behind the bold public protests of the French, Dutch and Belgian bishops - just as the absence of such solicitude in Germany goes a long way toward explaining the apathy of their German counterparts." [267] This is also applicable to the leaders of the CONFESSING Church. <115> THE OCCUPIED COUNTRIES 21 NORWAY Only 1,700 Jews were living in Norway. In October 1940, the Jews were barred from certain professions. In June 1942, registration was ordered and in October confiscation of Jewish property was decreed. The Jews received identity cards stamped with the letter J; at the same time, arrests of Jews began. On October 25, 1942, all male Jews of sixteen and over were arrested and interned. On November 25, the women and children were seized. 770 Jews, including 100 refugees from Central Europe, were deported by boat to Stettin and thence to Auschwitz. The majority of Norwegian Jews (930) were smuggled to Sweden. [268] The Constitution of Norway proclaims: "The Evangelical-Lutheran religion shall remain the official religion of the State". The majority of Government ministers must be members of the Church of Norway. Quisling had received the title of Minister-president on February 1, 1942. The Bishops of the Church of Norway decided unanimously, on February 24, 1942, to "cease administrative co-operation with a State which practices violence against the Church", although maintaining the right to exercise the spiritual vocation given them by ordination at the Lord's altar. On April 9, 1942, the Quisling authorities imprisoned Bishop Berggrav and four other Church leaders. Later on Bishop Berggrav returned from the concentration camp in which he was held, but remained under house arrest. <116> On November 11, 1942, the (Lutheran) Bishops of Norway sent a letter of Protest to the Minister President Quisling. This Protest was also signed by the Baptists, the Methodist Church, the Norwegian Mission Association, the Norwegian Mission Alliance, the Sunday School Union and the Salvation Army. Following is the text of the Protest: "The Minister President's law, announced October 27, 1942, regarding the confiscation of property belonging to Jews have been received by our people with great sorrow, and was deepened by the decree that all Jewish men over 15 years of age were to be arrested. When now we appeal to the Minister President, it is not to defend whatever wrongs Jews may have committed; if they have committed crimes they should be tried, judged and punished according to Norwegian law, just as all other citizens. But those who have committed no crime should enjoy the protection of our country's justice. For 91 years Jews have had a legal right to reside and to earn a livelihood in our country. Now they are being deprived of their property without warning; men were being arrested and thus prevented from providing for their property- less wives and children. This not only conflicts with the Christian commandment to 'love thy neighbour', but with the most elemental of legal rights. Jews have not been charged with transgression of the country's laws, much less convicted of such transgressions by judicial procedure. Nevertheless, they are being punished as severely as the worst criminals are punished. They are being punished because of their racial background, wholly and solely because they are Jews. This disaffirmation by the authorities of the Jews' worth as human beings is in sharp conflict with the Word of God which from cover to cover proclaims all racial groups to be of one blood. See particularly Acts 17, 26. There are few references where God's Word speaks more plainly than here. God does not differentiate among people. Romans 2, 11. There is neither Jew nor Greek. Galatians 3, 28. There is no difference. Romans 3, 22. Above else: When God through incarnation became man, He allowed Himself to be born in a Jewish home of a Jewish mother. Thus, according to God's Word, all people have, in the first instance, the same human worth and thereby the same human rights. Our state authorities are by law obliged to respect this basic view. Paragraph 2 of the Constitution states that the Evangelical Lutheran religion will remain the religion of the State. That is to say, the State cannot enact any law or decree which is in conflict with the Christian faith or the Church's Confession. When now we appeal to the authorities in this matter we do so because of the deepest dictates of conscience. To remain silent about this legalized injustice against the Jews, would render ourselves co-guilty in this injustice. If we are to be true to God's Word and to the Church's Confession we must speak out. <117> Regarding worldly authority, our Confession states that it has nothing to do with the soul but that it shall 'protect the bodies and corporal things against obvious injustice, and keep the people in check in order to maintain civic peace and order'. (Augustana, Article 28). This corresponds with God's Word which says the authority is of God and established by him, not as a terror to good works, but to the evil. Romans 13, 3. If the worldly authority becomes a terror to good works, that is, to the one who does not transgress against the country's laws, then it is the Church's God-given duty as the conscience of the State to object. The Church, namely, has God's call and full authority to proclaim God's law and God's gospel. Therefore it cannot remain silent when God's commandments are being trampled underfoot. One of Christianity's basic values now is being violated: the commandments of God which are fundamental to all society, namely law and justice. One cannot dismiss the Church with a charge that it is mixing into politics. The apostles courageously spoke to the authorities of their day and said: 'We ought to obey God rather than men'. Acts 5, 29. Luther says: 'The Church does not interfere in worldly matters when it warns the authority to be obedient to the highest authority, which is God'. By the right of our calling we therefore warn our people to desist from injustice, violence and hatred. He who lives in hatred and encourages evil invokes God's judgment upon himself. The Minister President has on several occasions emphasized that Nasjonal Samling, according to its program, will safeguard the basic values of Christianity. To-day one of these values is in danger. If it is to be protected, it must be protected soon. We have mentioned it before, but re-emphasize it now in closing: This appeal of ours has nothing to do with politics. Before worldly authority we maintain that obedience in all temporal matters which God's Word demands." [269] The close relationship between Church and State in Norway is reflected in the protest: "The State cannot enact any law or decree which is in conflict with the Christian faith or the Church's Confession". Important is the reference to Luther; the attitude of the Lutheran Churches in Germany has been explained by recalling Luther's conception of the two dominions through which God rules this world: the spiritual one, or the Church, and the secular one, or the "worldly authorities". The people, according to Luther, have not the right to resist the authorities; only princes have. <118> The Lutheran Church of Norway, however, quoted the Confession (Augustana) and Luther, in order to stress that it was "the Church's God-given duty as the conscience of the State to object" (to the anti-Semitic measures). The letter of Protest won response throughout the country. It was read in the churches on the 6th and 13th December, 1942. It was also noted outside the borders of the country. The Swedish newspapers quoted it in full. The Swedish Lutheran Bishops referred to it in a pastoral letter which they issued at the beginning of December. [270] In radio London the Protest was quoted in full. "Breaking the wall of silence" did not help much, if at all, the Jews of Norway; but it warned people in Sweden and Denmark, so that they were on their guard when the Germans tried to apply their 'final solution' to the Jewish community in Denmark. Naturally enough, the attitude taken up by the Christians earned them fresh attacks from the Quisling followers. On December 30, 1942, the Trondheim paper Adresseavisen concluded an editorial on the 'detrimental Jewish influence' in Norway with these words: "... But now all this is forgotten. On Boxing day the Norwegian clergy read a new pastoral letter from the pulpits, glorifying the Jews and their activities, sighing and lamenting because the chosen race of Israel is not allowed to pursue its activities among the Norwegian people as before, but must be held responsible for its actions." [271] Nevertheless, in a New Year's message for 1943, which was read from the pulpits throughout the country, the Provisional Church Council boldly declared that it would continue to fight Nazism to the end. The Council called upon the congregations to pray for imprisoned clergymen and persecuted Jews. It added: "The appeal which the Norwegian Church and the Christian people recently sent to the Minister President on account of the atrocious treatment of the Jews, has not yet been answered. In this case we have clearly seen what may happen when God's words concerning the worth of man and love are being trampled underfoot." [272] <119> 22 THE NETHERLANDS a. The Preliminary Phase On May 14, 1940, the Dutch army surrendered to the Germans. Seyss-Inquart was appointed Reich Commissioner to the Netherlands; Rauter was Chief of Police and Security; General Christiansen was head of the military administration. The political situation in the Netherlands was better than in occupied Poland and Bohemia, but worse than that in most of the other occupied countries, such as Denmark. The Queen and the Cabinet were in exile. The German rulers in the Netherlands were ruthless and efficient. In October, 1940, the first anti-Jewish decrees were promulgated. In November, Jews were dismissed from public posts. On January 10, 1941, the decree ordering registration of the Jews was signed. On February 9, 1941, the first raid on the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam was made. On February 25, 1941, a general protest-strike was declared in Amsterdam which paralyzed transport and industry, spreading to other districts. It was suppressed by force within three days. In May, 1941, the Jews were banned from parks and places of public amusement. In July, 1941, identity cards of Jews were stamped with the letter J. Between January and April of 1942, thousands of Jews were deported to labour camps. After May, 1942, the Jews had to wear the yellow star.' [273] There are people who believe that the record of Dutch resistance against National-Socialism is outstanding and that the majority of the population was engaged in rescue activities on behalf of the Jews. To those who believe this, the reading of Dr. J. Presser's book "Destruction" must be a shattering experience. On June 20, 1940, the Synodal Committee of the DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH [274] invited seven other Protestant Churches to a consultation. <120> The Churches invited were: The Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, the Christian Reformed Church, the Re-united Reformed Churches, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Re-united Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Brotherhood of Remonstrants and the Society of Mennonites. Representatives of these Churches convened for the first time on June 25, 1940. A "Council of Churches" was established, and later on, became known as the "Inter- Church Consultation". [275] Most of the public protests were issued by this Council. Particularly at the beginning, the attitude of several members of the "Council of Churches" showed a lack of determination. One of the factors that led the Council, as well as the Churches themselves, to a more determined attitude, was the influence of the "Circle of Lunteren". This group, consisting of ministers belonging to different Churches but mainly to the DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH, had followed the plight of the Confessing Church in Germany with deep sympathy; many of them were influenced by the clear stand and the teachings of Prof. Karl Barth. [276] The "Circle of Lunteren" secretly met for the first time in the village of Lunteren, on August 22, 1940. A letter was sent to the Synodal Committee of the DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH, urging the Church to give clear advice to the local churches and to the nation at large, especially regarding increasing anti-Semitic propaganda. [276] The reply of the Synodal Committee, however, was both reserved and evasive. [277] The "Circle of Lunteren" also published clandestine brochures; 50,000 copies of the brochure "Almost too late" were distributed. It was written by Rev. J. Koopmans. He spoke of the danger of following new Messiahs, instead of the Messiah who came "not from our race, but from the much hated Jewish race". <121> He especially mentioned the fact that people in official posts were commanded to sign a document stating that they were "Aryan", and that the vast majority of those concerned had signed it, perhaps not even realizing its implications for the Jews. [278] Rev. Koopmans pointed out that it was a grave mistake to sign the document, and since many people had already signed it, indeed it was "almost too late". Therefore quick action should be taken if it would not be too late altogether. Everyone should explicitly declare that he would not take part in the expulsion of the Jews from public life. The pamphlet closed with the words: "Dutchmen, it is almost too late, but still not too late! It is still not too late to return to the Christian faith and to a clear conscience. It is still not too late to stand up for our Jewish compatriots, for the sake of mercy and on the grounds of Holy Scripture. It is still not too late to show the Germans that their wickedness has not overcome everything, but that there are people who are determined not to be robbed in this way of their Christian faith and their clear conscience." [279] Someone was caught distributing this brochure; he was sentenced by a German judge to one and a half year imprisonment. [280] Another clandestine pamphlet was published by the "Circle of Lunteren": "What we believe and what we do not believe". It was written in the summer of 1941 and widely distributed. We quote the following: "Therefore we believe that he who stands up against Israel, stands up against the God of Israel... Therefore we believe anti-Semitism to be something much more serious than an inhuman racial theory. We believe it to be one of the most stubborn and most deadly forms of rebellion against the holy and merciful God whose name we confess." [281] <122> On October 24, 1940, the Protestant Churches sent a letter to the Reich Commissioner for occupied Holland, protesting against the discriminatory regulations against Jewish officials. The letter reads as follows: "We, the undersigned, representing the following Protestant Churches in questions regarding the relations between the Church and the civil authority: The DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH; the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands; the Christian Reformed Church; the Re-united Reformed Church; the Brotherhood of Remonstrants; the Society of Mennonites, feel impelled to appeal to your Excellency in view of the regulations recently issued forbidding the appointment or promotion in the Netherlands of officials or other persons of Jewish blood. In our view the spirit of these regulations, which bear in a special way upon important spiritual questions, is contradictory to Christian mercy. Moreover, these regulations also effect members of the Church itself insofar as they have adopted the Christian faith in recent generations and who have been received as perfect equals into the Churches, as is expressly demanded by the Holy Scripture (Rom. 10, 12; Gal. 3, 28). Finally, the Churches are deeply concerned since this affects the people from whom came the Saviour of the world, and for whom all Christians intercede that they may recognize in Him their Lord and King. For these reasons we urgently appeal to your Excellency to induce the authorities to abolish the said regulations. Moreover, we refer to your Excellency's solemn promise to respect our national character and to refrain from enforcing on us any ideology alien to us." [283] As the Boards of both the Lutheran Churches refused to associate their Churches with this protest, it was only submitted on behalf of six of the eight Protestant Churches. The text was made public in an abbreviated form on Sunday, October 27, in most of the churches. However, the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and the Christian Reformed Church did not make the protest public to their congregations. Therefore Prof. H. H. Kuyper, who was the representative of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, was sharply criticized and some of the other members of the Council refused to co-operate with him further. He then resigned on account of his "deafness", and another was appointed in his place. [284] <123> On January 10, 1941, the decree ordering registration of the Jews was signed by Seyss-Inquart. On February 9, 1941, a general protest-strike was declared in Amsterdam which paralyzed transport and industry, spreading to other districts. It was suppressed by force in three days. The next protest of the Churches was a letter, dated March 5, 1941, and sent to the Assembly of General Secretaries (an Assembly which, in the absence of the Ministers of State, represented the supreme Dutch authority in the Netherlands). The Evangelical Lutheran Church also signed this protest; thus seven Protestant Churches participated in this action. Here follows the text: "The Churches are deeply distressed about the development of events, which is becoming increasingly clear. The proclamation of the Word of God entrusted to the Church charges us with the express duty to make its stand for right and justice, truth and love. It must raise its voice when these values are threatened or attacked in public life. The fact that these values are being seriously threatened cannot be denied by anyone who observes the present situation of our nation. Clear symptoms of this state of affairs which not only weighs as a heavy burden on the conscience of our fellow citizens but is also, according to the deep conviction of the Church, contrary to the Word of God, are incidents in the public street and the treatment to which the Jewish part of the Dutch population is being increasingly subjected. There is growing insecurity in the administration of justice and a continual attack on the freedom indispensable to the fulfilment of Christian duties. For this reason the Churches deem it their duty to request the Assembly most urgently to employ all means at its disposal to ensure that also at this time, justice, truth and mercy may be guiding principles of Government action. The Churches humbly consider it their bounden duty to influence the lives of the people as to inculcate in them these spiritual values. We trust that you will be prepared to pass on the word of the Churches as expressed in this document in any way you deem expedient to those who, in the present period of occupation, bear the ultimate responsibility for the course of events in our country. We fully realize the extremely difficult task which faces the Assembly at this juncture, and we pray God that He may give it His light and His help." [285] <124> The Churches intended to inform all the congregations of the nature and contents of this letter by a short announcement from the pulpits. The necessary circulars had been prepared in time for the reading of the declaration on Sunday, March 23, 1941. But on March 20, the secretary of the Synod of the DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH and the Chairman of the "Council of Churches" were arrested. The authorities were sure that the reading of the declaration would become the signal for an insurrection and that the Churches would be responsible for a disturbance of public order. When it was shown that this was a misunderstanding, the two representatives of the Churches were released. To show that the Churches had not intended political action, the pastors who could still be contacted were asked not to read the letter from the pulpit. Thus it was only read in those towns and villages which did not receive the counter-order until too late. [286] On March 23, 1941, a Pastoral Letter of the General Synod of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands was read from the pulpits. We cite the following: "In our time the notion is advanced with ever increasing emphasis that it is not personal relationship to God's Name but belonging to a certain people or race which determines the meaning of a person's life and which divides mankind into distinct divisions. You will always be able to give the right answer to this doctrine (which has already been accepted by many) if you are faithful to the Holy Scripture. In repudiation of this doctrine the Church should not present its own ideas but only convey the powerful Word of God. You have already shared the anxiety which has filled the hearts of so many of our compatriots in recent months. This is a matter of course because, as the Church of Christ well knows from the Gospels, it was in the course of the history of the Jewish people that Christ was born. Therefore the fact of belonging to a special race must never limit our love towards our neighbour, nor the mercy that we owe him." [287] On January 5, 1942, delegates of the Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches together applied to the General Secretary of the Ministry of Justice for an interview with the Reich Commissioner, Seyss-Inquart. <125> This was the first time in Dutch history that the Protestant and Catholic Churches acted together and signed a document of protest. Moreover, this was a unique proceeding in occupied Europe and considerably increased the impact of the protests. The National-Socialist daily "Volk en Vaderland" commented: "What God has been unable to achieve for centuries, the Jewish star has achieved. Churches which were never able to unite for the greater glory of God, now conduct a united action." [288] An interview was arranged for February 17, 1942. Two delegates of the Protestant Churches and one from the Roman Catholic Church submitted a translation into German of the Memorandum to the Reich Commissioner which had previously been given to the General Secretary of the Ministry of Justice, who had already passed on a copy to Seyss-Inquart. In handing over the document the delegates declared that they were speaking in the name of the entire Christian Church of the Netherlands. We quote the following: "Then the treatment of people of Jewish origin must be mentioned. At the moment the Churches do not offer judgment on anti-Semitism which, incidentally, they reject utterly on Christian grounds; nor do they wish to initiate a discussion on the political measures taken against the Jews in general. They wish to confine themselves to the fact that a large number of Jews were arrested in the course of the year 1941 and deported, and that since then an alarmingly large number of official announcements of death among these deportees has been received. The Churches would be neglecting their elementary duty if they did not insist that the authorities should put an end to these measures. This is a duty of Christian mercy." [289] Prof. Aalders, one of the spokesmen, then gave an oral explanation of the Memorandum. In his reply the Reich Commissioner said: "... In our treatment of the Jews there can be no talk of mercy; only, at best, of justice. The Jewish problem will be solved by the Germans and no distinction will be made between Jews and Jews..." [290] <126> The results of the interview were negative. Shortly afterwards, Prof. Aalders was arrested. The Churches intended to inform all the congregations of the interview from their pulpits. The German security service, however, threatened heavy punishment, if this intention were carried out. The DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH protested against this in a letter sent to Seyss-Inquart, dated March 17, 1942. [291] Moreover, a short message was read from the pulpits on April 19, 1942: "... The Church has protested against the lawlessness and cruelty to which those of Jewish faith in our nation are being subjected and against the attempt to enforce a national-socialist philosophy of life which stands in direct contradiction to the Gospel..." [292] A full report was sent to all local Church councils, at the same time. A decree, which initially did not seem so dangerous, actually resulted from the desire to isolate the Jews from other Dutchmen in order to exterminate them more easily. It was the regulation to place a notice "Forbidden to Jews" on public gardens, public baths and cinemas. At the beginning of 1942 it was ordered that such a notice must be placed on all public buildings. The Churches refused to obey this order: "It is absolutely forbidden to place the notice on any church building or on premises used by the Church. On a building with Christian purposes the notice in question cannot be permitted as a matter of principle, because it would be a denial of the Gospel." In some church buildings concerts were held, which required placing the notice. But the advice of the leaders of the Church was, that in such cases the concerts must be cancelled. The advice to sports clubs which were compelled to display the notice was: "For reasons of principle there is no other way but to stop the activities". [293] Many ministers of religion were fined or imprisoned because of their refusal to display this notice. <127> b. Mass Deportation Mass deportations of Jews began in June, 1942. The Jews were assembled in Westerbork camp; trains to the extermination camps in Poland left every week. The last large-scale deportations were in the spring and summer of 1943. In January, 1941, there were 160,000 Jews in the Netherlands, of whom 138,000 were Dutch citizens, and 22,000 foreign Jews. At least 104,000 of them were murdered. After the systematic rounding up of Jews had started in Amsterdam, the representative of the Remonstrant Fraternity proposed to the Council of Churches, to turn the "New Church", in the centre of Amsterdam, into a house of refuge for persecuted Jews, and that attired in their robes of office the ministers of the different Churches should occupy the entrances of the church and stand or fall with the Jews in the church. The proposal was not accepted. The majority of the Council believed that it would be a sublime but useless gesture which might well cause a bloodbath and at the very least an acceleration of deportations. [294] The Council decided, however, to send a telegram of protest to Seyss-Inquart, to General Christiansen, and to the two German General-Commissioners Rauter and Schmidt. The telegram read as follows: "Dismayed by the measures that have been taken against the Jews in the Netherlands by excluding them from participation in the normal life of the community, the undersigned Churches have now learnt, with horror, of the new measures whereby men, women and children, as well as whole families, are being deported to Germany or countries now subservient to it. The suffering which this brings to tens of thousands, the recognition that these measures offend the deepest moral sense of the Dutch people, the opposition to God's laws of justice and mercy, all this forces us to address to you the most urgent plea not to implement these measures. Moreover, as far as Christians of Jewish origin are concerned this plea is strengthened by the fact that they have been debarred by this decree from participation in the life of the church." [295] <128> Thereupon the Germans offered a concession. They declared their readiness not to deport Christians of Jewish origin. On the other hand, they made it clear that the sending of the telegram of protest had better not be made public during church services. This was accepted by the General Synod of the DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH. The Synod considered that "among decent people one party does not publish any document if the other party objects". Another important argument was the fear that all that had been gained in favour of the Christians of Jewish origin might be lost. [296] None of the other Protestant Churches followed the example of the DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH, nor did the Catholic Bishops. [297] The Germans took their revenge: all Roman Catholics of Jewish origin (amongst whom was the philosopher Edith Stein) were deported, on July 26, 1942, and perished, while most of the Protestants of Jewish origin survived. On September 24, 1942, Rauter wrote to Himmler: "... Since my last report the Catholics among the Christian Jews have been deported because the five Bishops, with Archbishop de Jong of Utrecht at their head, did not abide by our original agreements. The Protestant Jews are still here, and attempts to break through the united front presented by the Catholic and Protestant Churches have indeed been successful. Archbishop de Jong declared at a Conference of Bishops that he would never again form a united front with the Calvinists and other Protestants. The storm of protest raised by the Churches when the evacuation began has thus been greatly undermined and has now subsided..." [298] <129> Rev. H.C. Touw, the historian of the resistance of the DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH, asked the questions: "Did the Synod take the right decision? Or did it succumb to a satanic temptation? Was it unfaithful to its Lord in order to save the lives of its own members?" [299] The question of choosing between "quiet diplomacy" and public protest now seems to be easy: negotiations with the devil are senseless. We should not forget, however, that Church leaders who issued a public protest not only took considerable personal risks, but also took upon themselves the responsibility for endangering the freedom and life of others. Noteworthy is the opinion of a group of Christians of Jewish origin who addressed themselves to the Synod of the DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH: "Be assured that - if the proclamation of the Word of God (concerning the persecution of Jews) needs to be more clearly emphasized at this time - those among us who truly belong to the Lord are willing to be deported to Poland, confidently trusting in the lord." [300] In the summer of 1942, regular contact was established between Protestants in Holland and Dr. Visser 't Hooft, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, Geneva. Couriers brought copies of protests of the Churches (and much other information) in microfilm to Geneva, Dr. Visser 't Hooft sent the microfilms to the Dutch Government in London. The Churches expressed themselves again in a protest which was sent to Seyss-Inquart on February 17, 1943, and which was read from the pulpits in all the churches. We quote from this protest the following: "The Churches would be culpable if they failed to point out to the authorities the sins they committed in the execution of their authority, and if they failed to warn them of God's judgment. The Churches have already drawn your attention to the increasing lawlessness, the persecution unto death of Jewish compatriots... <130> But it is also the duty of the Churches to preach this Word of God: 'We ought to obey God rather than men'. This commandment is the touchstone in all conflicts of conscience, also in those that arise out of the recently taken steps. Because of God's justice, no one may participate in unjust actions since thereby he would become equally guilty of injustice." [301] It was important that this protest was read out in all the local churches for it frequently happened that Dutch police agents were ordered to arrest Jews and others. The Churches thus warned the faithful that "no one may participate in unjust actions". [302] c. The "privileged categories"; the "other God" In spring 1943, after nearly all Jewish families had been deported, the occupying authorities confronted Jews in mixed marriage with the alternative of being deported or sterilized. We quote below the protest of the Churches. It was sent on May 19, 1943, and signed by the delegates of the nine Protestant and the Roman Catholic Churches, while the Bishop of the Old Catholic Church sent a letter of adherence to the protest, a month later. "Following on the many happenings in the years of occupation which have forced the Christian Churches of the Netherlands to complain to your Excellency - especially in the matter of Jewish citizens of our county - something so frightful is now being perpetrated that we cannot but address a word to your Excellency in the name of our Lord. We have already protested about several acts committed by the occupation authorities, which are in absolute contradiction to the spiritual principles of our people - a people and its Government which, from the very beginning, have at least endeavoured to live under God's Word. In the last few weeks the sterilisation of so-called mixed married has begun. But God who created heaven and earth and whose commandments are for all men, to whom even your Excellency will have to give account one day, has said to mankind: 'Be fruitful and multiply' (Gen. 1, 28). Sterilisation is a physical and spiritual mutilation directly at variance with God's commandment that we shall not dishonour, hate, wound, or kill our neighbours. <131> Sterilisation constitutes a violation of the divine commandment as well as of human rights. It is the latest consequence of an anti-Christian racial doctrine which destroys nations, and of a boundless self-exaltation. It represents a view of the world and of life which undermines true Christian human life, rendering it ultimately impossible. At the present time your Excellency is de facto the highest political authority in the Netherlands; you have been entrusted with the task of maintaining law and order in this country - entrusted not only by the leader of the German Reich but also by the inscrutable will of the God whom the Church proclaims here on earth. The commandments of this God and Judge of all the earth apply to you as much as to anybody else and all the more in view of your high position. It is for this reason that the Christian Churches of the Netherlands say to your Excellency in the name of God and of His Word: It is your Excellency's duty to stop this shameful practice of sterilisation. We have no illusion. We are well aware of the fact that we can hardly expect your Excellency to listen to the voice of the Church, which is the voice of the Gospel, which is God's voice. But things that cannot be expected of men, may be hoped for in the Christian faith. The living God has the power to incline even the heart of your Excellency to repentance and obedience. For that we pray God, both for the benefit of your Excellency and of our suffering people." [303] This time again no official reply was received from Seyss-Inquart. However, he communicated by a verbal message that all cases which had occurred up till then, were dealt with on a voluntary basis and furthermore, that he had transferred the matter to General-Commissioner Rauter to deal with. Thus the Churches were advised to send any further protest to Rauter. The Churches turned again to Seyss-Inquart in their letter of June 24, 1943, in which was written, amongst other things: "The Churches must, irrespective of the question of who is charged with a particular matter, consider your Excellency as ultimately responsible for everything that has happened, and is happening, in our country during the years of occupation." [304] The letters had no practical effect. Many hundreds of Jews of mixed marriages were forced to undergo sterilisation; some, by using bribery or appealing to patriotic physicians, were able to arrange sham operations or get certificates of exemption. [305] <132> German racial policy encouraged the partners of "mixed marriages" to divorce the "non-Aryan" spouses. By a nominal formality, a partner could part from the one to whom he was legally married. The reaction of the Churches to this is laid down in their letter to Seyss- Inquart of October 14, 1943, which ran as follows: "Time and again the Christian Churches in the Netherlands have approached your Excellency in matters concerning the Jews of our country, who long have been settled in the Netherlands, and who have been integrated into the life of our people. Your Excellency decided not to listen to the urgent words of warning from the Churches. Most of our Jewish compatriots who, until now enjoyed a limited liberty, have been deported. For them as well as for the very small group which yet remains, we appeal urgently to your Excellency, to prevent deportation and allow them privileged treatment in the Netherlands. Further, the Churches are seriously alarmed by indications that the German administration is again paying particular attention to the so-called mixed- marriages, with the aim of bringing about divorce, at least in a number of these marriages. This aim may, as happened in the case of sterilisation, be made to appear more harmless by a pretension that each divorce is a voluntary one. As before, the Churches beg emphatically to stress to your Excellency that this way of dissolution of marriage may not be followed. The Lord Jesus says, and He does not say that to His Church alone, but to the whole world, and thus also to your Excellency: 'What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder' (Matthew 19, 6). Therefore the Churches urgently appeal to your Excellency to let these small groups which are at present under consideration for the clauses of exemption, share also in the possibility recently opened for some of them, i.e., to be exempted from the restrictions that are in force for Jews. Commotion and indignation cannot diminish if actions are continued which injure the Dutch people in their deepest religious and moral convictions." [306] In the autumn of 1943 a pastoral letter was sent to parochial church councillors of the DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH, to give them the necessary basis for their opposition in the struggle against national-socialist ideology. After sections on "Another God" and "Another Morality", there follows the section on "Anti-Semitism". We quote the following from this section: <133> "This 'other god' and this 'other morality' is clearly recognizable in deliberate anti-Semitism. That the people of Israel should be hated and persecuted with fanatical passion and systematically annihilated with malice aforethought, is a phenomenon which has never before appeared in history in this form; for in the last resort there are no strategic, economic or cultural reasons to be adduced for this; the basis of anti-Semitism lies deeper, and this the Church should clearly perceive. The boundless and unrestrained hatred of the Jews comes from natural aversion to the 'Jewish God' and the 'Jewish Bible'. This outrage, this blasphemy, spread as it has in many written tracts and his been made into the spiritual nourishment of millions (of course under a regime where the state and the state alone is responsible, and intends to make itself responsible for the guidance of the people, and where public utterances and printed statements can thus never be attributed to the whim of private persons or groups as is the case under a democratic regime), must be an absolutely clear indication to the Christian Church that Faith, itself, is being attacked in its deepest foundations. The Church must not overlook the fact that in this respect, too, its members urgently need guidance based on the Scriptures. There are still members of the Church who, while detesting the systematic annihilation of our Jewish fellow-men and fellow-citizens, yet justify their aversion to the Jews by adducing the judgment of God." [307] d. Some Comments and Evaluations It is to the honour of the Churches in the Netherlands, that they already protested against one of the first steps taken against the Jews, in October, 1940. It is regrettable that sometimes the Churches chose to ask for "mercy" on behalf of the Jews instead of demanding the maintenance of justice. It is even more regrettable that the Churches never publicly exhorted their members, to actively help and hide Jews. Much in the declarations and protests issued, however, shows a deep Biblical insight, in contrast to protests of Churches in other countries in which the national-socialist terminology often was used, or national reasons were stressed rather than the Biblical viewpoint. There have been many comments on the attitude of the Churches in the Netherlands, and we quote some of them below. <134> Dr. W.A. Visser 't Hooft, general Secretary of the World Council of Churches: "These documents must be read carefully. They are precious, for those who composed them and also those who read them from the pulpit were in great danger; they risked much when giving their witness." [308] Rev. H.C. Touw, the historian of the resistance of the DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH: "The Church's struggle on behalf of the Jews was a struggle of mixed failure and success. Nevertheless this struggle was the most moving, the most dramatic, and the most persistent part of the resistance of the Dutch Church." "Just as too many kept silent in the pulpits, certainly too few took persecuted persons into their houses. Many felt that the Synod had failed to give sufficient guidance in this respect. It did not issue any exhortations, nor did it find any way by which to quicken the conscience of the people. This must be considered a great, collective guilt. Here there is no reason whatsoever for Christian self-glorification, but there is every reason to be ashamed." [309] H. Wielek: "In April 1942, important declarations showing dignity and courage were proclaimed from the pulpits of the churches. The activity of the Church did not slacken. The pastors evinced personal courage; even without Synodal exhortation they understood how to act. Their sermons did not lack clarity, particularly in regard to the persecution of the Jews and their persecutors. Many pastors had to pay for their courageous attitude by a term in a concentration camp." [310] W. Warmbrunn: "The attempt of the churches to caution the Germans in their actions, especially with respect to the persecutions of the Jews, could not be effective, since the course of action in major matters of this kind was determined by the Reich leadership." [311] "It appears to this writer that groups that excelled in effective resistance were voluntary organizations independent of state control that were conveyers of religious or ethical norms. The moral implications of Christian doctrine motivated the resistance of the Churches." [312] Rev. J.J. Buskes: "Why did I let myself be seduced? Yes, indeed, seduced into making compromises. Why did I not say: 'Thus speaks the Lord'? <135> It is a painful matter also for others of whom it is said (as of myself) that they have behaved excellently. For it depends on the standard by which one judges." [313] Message of the DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH to the Church in Germany, March 9, 1946: "...We publicly confess before God and the world, that in this struggle we have not been sufficiently faithful, nor willing to accept suffering gladly and courageously." [314] 23 FRANCE The armistice was signed on June 22, 1940. It was stipulated that 3/5 of the French territory would be occupied by the Germans. In the unoccupied zone a nominally independent regime was established. Marshall Petain became President; Laval was Vice-president until April, 1942, when he was succeeded by Admiral Darlan. Delegate for the occupied zone was Ambassador Brinon. In November, 1942, the Germans occupied Vichy France. Thus we have inserted this chapter under "Occupied Countries", not under "Satellite Countries". It should be noted, however, that the Vichy Government maintained diplomatic relations with the outside world and that it had at least a certain freedom of action in its own territory, until November, 1942. Laval was in a position to bargain for the French Jews by sacrificing the foreign Jews in France. [315] a. The Preliminary Phase <136> At the end of 1939 the Jewish population of France had reached a total of about 270,000. After May, 1940, more than 40,000 Jews streamed into France from Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. [316] The number of Jews deported from France is estimated to be approximately 80,000 persons. [317] According to Tenenbaum, the number was 100,000 out of a total pre-war Jewish population of some 350,000. "This relatively favourable result in comparison with the other countries is due primarily to the determined attitude of the French people with regard to their Jewish neighbours." [318] Chief Rabbi Kaplan shows us the other side of the picture: "I do not forget, when recalling these dreadful crimes, that priests, pastors, men and women of all confessions and philosophical doctrines and of all classes, exposed themselves to the greatest dangers in order to come to the rescue of the persecuted Jews. Here I wish to mention particularly, the energetic and courageous protests issued by the eminent leaders of French Catholicism and Protestantism. Nonetheless the undeniable fact remains, that Christian ethical education - inculcated over a long succession of generations - has not prevented the majority of the people of a nation claiming to be Christian, from becoming more or less responsible for the abominable Hitlerite persecution." [319] Many factors played their part. It was easier to go into hiding in France than, for instance, in the Netherlands. The attitude of the Italians who held part of occupied France was an important factor: they either found excuses for their non-cooperation with the Germans or just refused. France was the first country to be liberated: the invasion started on June 6, 1944. On September 27, 1940, the decree for compulsory registration of Jews was promulgated in the occupied zone, including the marking of Jewish stores with the star of David. A few days later - October 4, 1940 - the Vichy French Council of Ministers decreed the Statute des Juifs which disfranchised the Jews in all France. On March 29, 1941, a "Department for Jewish Affairs" was created by the Vichy Government. In May, 1941, 3,600 Polish Jews were rounded up in Paris. In August, there was another raid. The victims were placed in three camps (Drancy, Pithiviers and Beaune la Rolande). On June 2, 1941, Jewish registration was made compulsory in both zones. On November 29, 1941, the Vichy regime decreed that all Jewish organizations were to be dissolved. <137> The Protestants in France are a small minority, numbering altogether not more than 800,000 souls. France is, to my knowledge, the only country where a small minority group of Protestants publicly protested against the persecutions. Poliakov stated one of the reasons: "It must also be remembered that the French Protestants are themselves a minority and have known centuries of persecution - such trials, when they are surmounted, sharpen one's sensitivity to injustice." [320] Another positive factor was the fact that the President of the Protestant Federation of France, Rev. Marc Boegner, was also one of the three Vice- chairmen of the Provisional Council of the World Council of Churches. He had many international contacts. This fact gave an additional impact to the protests. Rev. Boegner did not only speak in the name of the French Protestants, but also informed Marshal Petain "of the deep emotion felt in Swiss, Swedish and United States Churches". [321] Rev. Boegner relates that he first stayed in Vichy at the end of July, 1940. A "very highly placed personality" told him: "The Jews have done so much damage to the country that they need collective punishment". He himself realized then "where we are going to be dragged and what would be the responsibility of the Churches". [322] The establishment of the Department for Jewish Affairs, in March, 1941, aggravated the situation. German pressure on the Vichy Government became stronger. Rev. Boegner spoke of this to Admiral Darlan, who tried to calm him by saying that "it primarily was a matter of saving the French Jews". A high police officer sought to persuade him that this was a government matter which was no business of the Churches. [323] <138> In Lyon, where the National Council of the Reformed Church had convened before the end of 1940, Rev. Bertrand informed Rev. Boegner that the Council of the Protestant Federation wanted a written protest without delay. It was agreed, however, that Rev. Boegner should continue with his oral interventions for some time longer. But when the National Council of the Reformed Church reconvened in March, 1941, it was unanimously resolved that the position of the Reformed Church should be set down in writing without delay. It was on these instruction that Rev. Boegner wrote two letters. The first was sent to the Chief Rabbi of France, on March 26, 1941: "The National Council of the Reformed Church of France has just convened for the first time since the law of October 3rd, 1940, came into force. It has instructed me to express to you the grief we all feel at the introduction of racial legislation in our country, and at the trials and innumerable injustices which it has brought upon the French Jews. There are some among us who have thought that the State has been faced with a great problem as a result of the extensive immigration of a large number of foreigners - Jews and non-Jews - and by hasty and unjustifiable naturalisations, but they have always expressed the conviction that this problem should be handled with the respect due to human beings; with strict adherence to State undertakings; and in accordance with the demands of justice which France has always championed. They are all the more distressed because of the rigorous enforcement of a law which, applying exclusively to Jews, makes no distinction between Jews who have been Frenchmen for many generations, in many cases for centuries, and between those who received their citizenship only yesterday. Our Church which has in the past known all the sufferings of persecution, harbours feelings of warmest sympathy for your communities whose freedom of worship in certain places has already been restricted and whose faithful members have so suddenly been afflicted with misfortune. It has already taken steps - which it will not fail to pursue vigorously - for the necessary repeal of the law." [324] This letter shows hesitation: it considers the "extensive immigration of a large number of foreigners" as a problem and creates the impression that the French Protestants cared less for the Jews who had "received their citizenship only yesterday" than for the Jews who had been Frenchmen for many generations. <139> The same applies to the letter sent to Admiral Darlan, also on March 26, 1941: "We have just convened at Nimes, for the first time since the enforcement of the Law of October 3rd, 1940, concerning the status of the Jews. On the eve of our meeting we learned from a notice in the press, of your intention to set up an office for Jewish Affairs. We consider it our duty to inform you in the name of the Reformed Church of France, comprising the vast majority of French Protestants, of our feeling on this painful question. We in no way disregard the seriousness of the problem which the State has to face in view of the recent, large immigration of a great number of foreigners, many of them of Jewish origin; and in view of hasty unjustifiable naturalisations. We are convinced that this problem ought, and can be, resolved with due respect to individual people and due care for the justice, of which France has always desired to be a champion. We also know that under the present circumstances strong pressure is undoubtedly being exerted on the government of France in order to force its decision to pass anti-Jewish laws. We are nonetheless deeply distressed, as Frenchmen and as Christians, by a law which introduces the principle of racial discrimination into our legislation, the strict enforcement of which entails severe trials and tragic injustices for the French Jews. Especially, do we protest against the principle of racial discrimination, because it has caused the State to break its formal undertakings on behalf of men and women, the vast majority of whom have served it loyally and disinterestedly. We are assured that the Law of October 3rd, 1940, is not a law of religious persecution. But if freedom of worship really remains untouched, for Jews as for Catholics and Protestants, why then is it, in fact, already being barred or threatened in certain places? The fact is, that a religious minority is being wronged. Our Church which has known all the sufferings of persecution, will fail in its primary mission if it does not raise its voice on behalf of this minority. We know that by setting up an office for Jewish Affairs, you sincerely wish to do whatever is in your power, to avoid even greater hardship from befalling the French Jews. We believe we may give you our assurance that the Christian denominations will give their unreserved approval to your effort, the difficulty of which they are well aware of. At the same time, however, we would ask you most earnestly to take even further measures, and as from now, to amend the law imposed on the French Jews, so that, on the one hand, further injustices may be prevented, and on the other hand, the disastrous impression made on a large part of the civilised world by the law of last October, may be removed. The defeat suffered in the war, the painful consequences of which we are now experiencing, constitutes a further reason why France should seek to safeguard those values which, in the moral sphere, have gained it the respect and affection of Christian nations." [325] <140> Admiral Darlan did not reply to this letter in writing. He told Rev. Boegner that he wanted to discuss the matter with him. Rev. Boegner relates: "In May (1941) I had a long meeting with him. He informed me that a new draft law was being studied, certain provisions of which would seem very severe to us, but there were others which would attenuate their effect. His sole care was to save those Jews who had been established in France for several generations. Regarding the others, who had recently immigrated, his one wish was that they should leave the country." [326] On May 29, 1942, it was decreed that every Jew who had reached the age of six must wear the yellow star. The Council of the Protestant Federation, under the chairmanship of Rev. Bertrand (in the occupied zone) decided to express the feelings of the Churches in the occupied zone directly to the Chief of State, Marshal Petain. Their letter read as follows: "The Council of the Protestant Federation of France, assembled in Paris, takes the liberty of addressing itself with respectful confidence to the French Chief of State to express to him the painful impression made upon its affiliated Churches by the new measures taken by the Occupation Authorities with respect to the Jews. The decree of May 29th, compelling our compatriots of the Jewish race to wear a distinctive badge, has in fact deeply moved thousands of Protestants in the occupied zone. Our President, Rev. Marc Boegner, has already had the honour of informing you, as well as Admiral Darlan of the Fleet, who is Vice President of the Council of Ministers, of the unanimous desire of the Protestants of France that the solution of the Jewish question, the importance of which none of us can fail to recognize, shall be found in a spirit of justice and understanding. Yet at present we are faced with a measure which far from contributing to the proper solution of this problem, seems to aggravate it further. Socially and economically unworkable, it is designed to inflict uncalled for humiliation on Frenchmen, many of whom have shed their blood fighting under our Rag, by pretending to set them apart form the rest of the nation. It exposes six year old children to mischievous behaviour, easily liable to occur in the disturbed atmosphere prevailing among the population. Finally, it compels converts to Catholicism or Protestantism to wear before other men, the visible sign of being Jewish, whereas, before God, they have the honour to be acknowledged as Christians. <141> The Churches of Christ also cannot keep silent in view of the undeserved suffering imposed on Frenchmen, and sometimes on Christians, which ignores their dignity as men and as believers. The Council of the Protestant Federation has therefore instructed me to convey to you our feelings of distress. It hopes that you may consider it as a sign of confidence and respect that it submits this expression of pain and distress to the heart of a great soldier who is the Chief of State of France." [327] The letter was handed over to Marshal Petain by Rev. Boegner. The subsequent conversation left him with the same impression as that on his previous meeting with the Chief of State: deep emotion, complete impotence. In a circular letter dated June 11, 1942, Rev. Bertrand informed the pastors in the occupied zone that the Council of the Federation had instructed him to write to Marshal Petain. After having quoted part of his letter to Marshal Petain, he reminded his colleagues that "the spiritual value of such interventions depends on careful avoidance of any allusion to political events or worldly ideologies, and on strict adherence to the sphere of thought and of Christian action alone". Rev. Bertrand added: "In particular the Ecumenical (Oxford) Conference of 1937 affirms that 'all men are by birthright children of God.' 'Therefore, for a Christian there can be no such thing as despising another race or a member of another race.' 'All races share alike in the concern of God.' 'The sin of man asserts itself in racial pride, racial hatred and persecutions, and in the exploitation of other races. The Church is called upon by God to express itself unequivocally on this subject." [328] Perhaps more important than the protests sent to the French Government, was a Message issued by the National Synod of the Reformed Church of France, in May, 1942, which was read out publicly in all the local churches. This Message included the following passage: "The Church has been commanded by God to resist the attack of every doctrine and every ideology, every threat and every promise which seeks to assail the message of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. <142> It must proclaim absolute sovereignty of God, who creates His own people For Himself by calling to Him men of every race, nation and language, in spite of the rights and privileges to which men may deem themselves to have a claim. It knows that all men were created equal, equal in perdition and equal in salvation, and that God's justice demands that every man shall be respected." [329] b. Mass Deportations On July 16, 1942, mass raids struck the stateless Jews living in Paris. In two days 12,884 of them, including 4,051 children, were rounded up by the French police. [330] Thereupon, the President of the Protestant Federation in the occupied zone, Rev. Bertrand, sent the following letter to Mr. de Brinon, General delegate of the French Government to the Occupation authorities: "When the German authorities made it incumbent upon the Jews living in the occupied zone to wear a distinctive badge, the Council of the Protestant Federation of France submitted a letter to the French Chief of State which was well received by him and of which I enclose a copy. One would have thought that now the anti-Jewish laws have reached their climax with this humiliating measure designed to place the Jews apart from the rest of the nation and to single them out for the kind of malevolence, systematically meted out to them since the beginning of the occupation. However, the month of July has seen an increase of personal violence on a scale never before attained; and we have noted among the general population of Paris a feeling of distress and disapproval which the present generation undoubtedly will never forget. The Churches of Jesus Christ to whom God has entrusted the message of peace, love, and mutual respect among men, cannot keep silent in view of events which for many years have threatened any possibility of a normal relationship between two great nations. Because Frenchmen at present have no means of making their opinions and feelings known, it should not be inferred that they are indifferent onlookers at the extermination of a whole race, and at the undeserved martyrdom of its women and children. The men who profess to be working towards closer relations between the conqueror and the nations over which he exercises his authority, surely should be able to make the occupying forces understand that declarations of good will during these years cannot efface the effect of the cruelties we have witnessed. <143> A Christian Church would be failing in its vocation were it to let the seeds of hatred be sown in this fashion without raising its voice in the name of Him who gave His life to shatter all barriers between men. I leave it to Your Excellency to judge whether the appeal I have made to you to-day should be brought to the notice of the occupying authorities, and whether the voices of Christians, who are solely concerned with seeking to alleviate suffering and hatred, ought to be ignored, rather than those of men who know no other response to violence than that of hatred. Before concluding this letter I wish expressly to state that the message to Marshal Petain was the only subject of the deliberations of the Council of the Protestant Federation, which has just ended its sessions and it is collectively responsible for it. With regard to the present letter, I take upon myself full responsibility for it, not only before the Church and the French nation but also - eventually - before the German authorities." [331] Rev. Boegner relates: "Events succeeded one another precipitately. After the occupied zone came the turn of the so-called 'free zone'. We saw a new wave of horror unleashed in camp, town and village. Our chaplains, together with the 'Cimade' [332] and the parish pastors, in the face of tremendous suffering, accomplished a task of Christian love which was a powerful testimony to Jesus Christ. I supported their efforts to the best of my ability. But renewed appeals became necessary. I thought that at this tragic juncture the Catholic Church and the Protestant Churches should at least unite in making their appeals. I spoke of this to Cardinal Gerlier on August 13th. It was agreed that each of us should write an urgent letter to Marshal Petain. Mine was sent on August 20th." [333] The letter read as follows: "When you did me the honour of receiving me on June 27th, I placed in your hands a letter whereby the Council of the Protestant Federation of France entrusted to your soldier's heart the pain and agitation caused in the Protestant Churches by measures taken in the occupied zone against the Jews, and those Christians whom the law has marked as Jews. <144> To-day it is my regrettable duty to write to you in the name of the same Council in order to express the unspeakable sorrow felt in our Church, in face of new measures ordered by the French Government and directed against the foreign Jews (baptised and unbaptised), and the ways and means of their execution. No Frenchman can remain unmoved in view of the events occurring since August 2nd, in concentration and internment camps. As is known, the reply is that France is only returning to Germany those Jews whom the latter had sent in autumn 1940. In truth, however, man and women who for political and religious reasons fled to France, and who know the terrible fate awaiting them, are now being deported or facing immediate deportation to Germany. Christianity has hitherto inspired nations, and especially France, with respect for the hallowed right of sanctuary. The Christian Churches, irrespective of their different confessions, would be disloyal to their original calling if they did not raise a protest against the abandonment of this principle. I am forced to add that in several places these 'deliveries' have occurred under such inhuman conditions that they shock the most hardened consciences, and brought tears to the eyes of witnesses: herded together in goods trucks, without the slightest hygienic precautions, foreigners intended for deportation were treated like cattle. The Quakers, who were doing the utmost possible for those who suffer in our country, were refused permission to feed the deportees at Lyons. The Israelite Consistorium was not allowed to give them foodstuffs. Respect for the human personality which you intend to maintain in the Constitution and which you want to grant to France has often been trodden underfoot. Here, also, the Churches see themselves obliged to protest against such a grave misunderstanding of undeniable duties. The Council of the Protestant Federation appeals to your high authority to order the introduction of absolutely different methods in the treatment of foreigners of the Jewish race, whether baptized or not, whose deportation has been admitted. The tenacious fidelity of France, especially during the tragic days which it has lived through in the past two years, towards its traditions of human generosity and noble-mindedness, remains one of the main grounds of respect which certain nations still have for us. As Vice President of the World Council of Churches which includes all great Christian Churches, with the exception of the Roman Catholic Church, I am compelled to inform you of the deep emotion felt in Swiss, Swedish, and American Churches, in face of the events now occurring in France, and with which the entire world is acquainted. I beg you to dictate the indispensable measures in order that France may not inflict upon herself a moral defeat of unfathomable weight." [334] Some days later, the letter was broadcast over the American and British radio, and subsequently reproduced in the foreign press. <145> The deportations continued. By September 1, 1942, the Vichy authorities had handed over 5,000 Jews to the Germans and another 7,100 had been arrested. [335] On August 27, 1942, Rev. Boegner sent the following letter to the Chief of the Government, Laval: "Authorized to speak on behalf of the Protestant Churches of the entire world, many of which have already asked for my intervention, and aware of the events of the past few days, I beg to urge you to give me your assurance that in no event shall foreigners be convicted in their own countries for political reasons, and those who have sought refuge in France, for similar reasons, be expelled to the occupied zone." [336] He then had an interview with Laval, who said that foreign Jews must be handed over to the Germans in order to save the French Jews. "Would you agree that we save their children?", asked Rev. Boegner "The children must remain with their parents", was the reply. Laval then asked: "What would you do with the children?" Rev. Boegner. answered: "French families will adopt them". Laval retorted: "NO, not one must remain in France". Rev. Boegner than had an interview with the Charge d'Affaires of the United States, who promised him to cable to Washington, to be authorized to tell Laval that the United States would accept the children of deported parents. [337] As the Council of the Federation of Protestant Churches in France could not be convened, Rev. Boegner then urgently called a gathering of the National Council of the Reformed Church. It addressed to the faithful the following Message, dated September 22, 1942, which was read from nearly all the pulpits: <146> "The National Council of the Reformed Church of France, being convened for the first time since the application of measures against the Jews, among whom are many Christians, was informed of the demarches which its President had made, in writing and verbally, to the highest State authorities in the name of the Federation of French Protestants. The Council associated itself fully with the President. Without ignoring or belittling the extreme complexity of the situation with which the authorities of our country are faced and more than ever determined to exercise loyally - among the people - the spiritual vocation to which God has called her; although composed of people faithful to the old principle of abstaining from any intrusion into the sphere of politics, the Reformed Church of France cannot keep silent in face of the suffering of thousands of human beings who have received asylum on our soil. A Christian Church would lose its soul and the very reason for its existence, were it not to maintain - for the safeguard of the whole nation in the midst of which God has placed it - the Divine law above human contingencies. That Divine law does not permit families created by God to be broken up, children to be separated from their mothers, the right of human beings to asylum and pity to be disregarded; nor respect for human rights to be trodden upon, nor defenceless beings to be delivered to a tragic fate. Whatever the problems may be which are beyond the scope of the Church and which the Church is not called upon to resolve, it is its duty to assert that they shall not be resolved by means which contravene the law of God. The Gospel commands us to consider all men, without exception, as our brothers, for whom our Saviour has died on the cross... How can the Church ever forget that it was among the people from whom the Jews are physically descended, that the Saviour of the world was born? And how can it be anything but profoundly grieved - as a Church which must affirm the unity of the body of Christ - by measures which also effect non-Aryan Christians, who are members of our Protestant parishes? In the face of these painful facts the Church feels compelled to make heard the cry of its Christian conscience, and to implore, in the name of God, those who exercise authority in the world, not to aid to the natural horrors of war - in itself a violation of Christ's commandments - still worse violations which will in the most fearful manner hinder reconciliation between the nations, in a repentant and peaceful world, submissive to God. It calls upon the faithful to incline toward the distressed and the suffering with the compassion of the good Samaritan, and to intercede ceaselessly with God on their behalf, for He alone can deliver us from evil by the grace He has revealed in Jesus Christ." [338] <147> Everybody knowing the parable of the Good Samaritan [339] must have fully understood that the last sentence of this message was a call to practical and effective acts of rescue, on behalf of those who had fallen "among thieves" and murderers. No public protests were issued by the French Protestant Churches after that of September 22, 1942. On November 11, 1942, the Germans seized unoccupied France. The demarcation line had disappeared. The deportations continued. c. Practical Help It is difficult to assess the practical results of public messages such as the one mentioned above. They certainly made more impact than protests sent by Churches to the authorities. S. Lattes is of the following opinion: "Also, as might have been expected, when the first anti-Semitic measures were taken by the Germans and the Vichy government, many authoritative voices, Catholic and Protestant, were raised in demonstration of their sympathy towards the Jews... These written manifestos had hardly any practical effect, but they were a display of true courage and by their distribution exercised a deep influence on the conscience of the French. They also afforded moral encouragement to the Jewish victims." [340] L. Poliakov gives the following account of the results of the public appeal, made by Rev. Boegner in the name of his Church, and he also gives an interesting analysis of what moved the ordinary Protestant to help the Jews: "A picturesque little town of 2,000, Chambon-sur-Lignon lies at the foot of Mont-Lisieux, in the centre of a little plateau almost exclusively inhabited by Huguenots. The word Huguenot immediately calls to mind the thousands of victims of persecution who, escaping from France in the 17th century, settled in Prussia, the Netherlands and the United States. One section, however, instead of leaving their country, fled to the savage region of Velay. Protected by practically impassable ravines, they hid in the woods, and remained faithful to their religion. Only in the 19th century were they able to resume their religious worship openly. This period of persecution has made them deeply pious, melancholic and austere; they are suspicious of any authority but unquestioningly follow their pastors. It is here that they have preserved almost intact the customs and virtues of the past centuries. <148> immediately after the terrible raids of July 1942, Pastor Boegner, President of the Federation of Protestant Churches of France, issued an appeal to all this followers, asking them to do everything in their power to help the Jews. The appeal was heeded. Nearly every Sunday the pastors of Chambon, Mazet and Fay-Le-Froid, exhorted their congregations to renewed efforts. The country-people never tried to evade their responsibility. The persecutions which their own grand-parents had suffered were still alive in their memory. They provided food and lodging for the persecuted; in certain small hamlets in the area there was not a single farm which did not give shelter to a Jewish family... On the evening, at the hotel May, I witnessed a spectacle typical of the whole region of Chambon: a social worker arrived with several children whose parents had either been deported or were in hiding in Marseille. They huddled together in fear, in a corner of the room. A couple of country people first came in. 'We should like a little girl of eight or ten,' explained the woman. Little Miriam is called. 'Would you like to go with this uncle and auntie?' Intimidated, the little girl does not answer, but she was muffled up in blankets and carried into the sledge; and so she left for a home where, until the end of the war, she would live a simple, healthy life with temporary foster parents. And as if by sleight of hand, all the other children were taken care of in the same way." [341] Perhaps France was the only occupied country where an official Protestant organization rendered direct and practical help to the persecuted Jews. The Cimade [342] was a Protestant Youth organization which sent teams of young Protestants into the camps, in order to render relief to the internees. Miss Madeleine Barot, general secretary of the Cimade, states: "All racialism is inadmissable from the Christian point of view. It was necessary to give tangible signs of this conviction, to alert public opinion, to protest to the responsible authorities, to mobilize the forces of <149> Protestantism, and, above all things, to help those who suffered most." [343] The first relief team was installed in the camp of Curs. It was partly justified to the police by the presence of a number of baptized internees, who were registered as Protestants. "Our work was labelled as 'Protestant assistance', which was of a great help, though we ourselves did not even consider for one moment restricting our help to the Protestants." [344] Thanks to the financial support of the Ecumenical Committee for Aid to Refugees, Geneva, the number of rations to be distributed in Gurs could be increased. [345] In 1941, teams were also placed in the caps at Rivesaltes, Brens, le Recebedou, and Nexon. In the spring of 1942, the Cimade opened four houses (at Chambon-sur-Lignon, Tarascon, le Tarn and Marseilles) for the accommodation of old or sick people and women with little children, who were permitted to leave the concentration camp if an authorized organization took charge of them. The Swedish Church and the World Council of Churches rendered financial aid. [346] The leaders of the Cimade permanently kept in touch with the Rev. Marc Boegner so that he, when he intervened with the Vichy Government, could make proposals which corresponded with the actual situation in the camps. [347] After mass deportations had begun, the members of the Cimade became more and more involved in "illegal" activities. The Secretariat of the Cimade at Nimes provided false identity cards. "We set up a record by once producing fifty identity cards in one night." [348] Several members of the Cimade were active as guides, bringing refugees through the mountains to safety in Switzerland. "According to my estimations, we helped to evacuate about four hundred persons, from August, 1942, until December, 1943." [349] After the Swiss Government had ordered that refugees who had illegally entered into Switzerland be returned to France [350] the Rev. M. Boegner obtained in Berne the agreement that non-Aryans coming from France for whom he had given personal guarantee, would be admitted. [351] <150> 24 YUGOSLAVIA On April 5, 1941, Yugoslavia concluded a treaty of friendship with Moscow, and within hours Belgrade was bombed by the German air force. Yugoslavia was dismembered by the Nazis. The north-eastern part, the Backa basin, with 20,000 Jews, came under Hungarian annexation. Old Serbia, where 12,000 Jews lived, came under German occupation. In Croatia, with 21,000 Jews, a puppet regime was established. The Bulgarian-annexed territory of Yugoslavia (Serbian Macedonia) contained between 7,000 to 8,000 Jews. Before the war, Yugoslavia harboured some 70,000 Jews. Fifty-five thousand of them were murdered. [352] The greatest non-Roman Catholic Church in Yugoslavia is the Serbian Orthodox Church. Much smaller Churches are: the Reformed Christian Church of Yugoslavia and the Slovak Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Yugoslavia. None of these Churches replied to my circular letter. The persecution of Orthodox Serbs matched the persecution of Jews, both in cruelty and fanaticism. [353] I hardly found any material about the attitude of the Churches in Yugoslavia; only the following quotations can be mentioned: "High Orthodox and Catholic circles were unanimous in condemning anti- Jewish propaganda. Early in 1940, the Serbian Patriarch Gavrilo, while visiting a synagogue near Belgrade, deplored religious persecution, and the official Catholic organ die Donau condemned racialism. In October, the Patriarch of Sarajevo expressed to representatives of the Jewish community his sympathy for their sufferings." [354] "At the end of May (1943), some Jews who were still living in Zagreb under the protection of the Archbishop, were seized one night and deported, before the churchman could intervene to save them." [355] <151> "Contrary to what we know about the attitude of the Catholic and Protestant Churches on the Jewish question, we have only meagre knowledge of the aid and comfort rendered by the Orthodox Churches in Nazi-subjugated Europe. [356] Nazi persecution of the Orthodox faith was not checked by the minor hesitation the Nazis showed in their dealings with the other Christian denominations. A few enlightening examples of a deeply humane attitude in some of the conquered countries rend the mist surrounding the tragedy into which these unhappy lands were thrust. Thus it is known that the heads of the Yugoslavian Orthodox Church bravely protested against the atrocities perpetrated on the Jews and exhorted priests and people to abstain from participating in the outrage of Nazis and Ustasa (Croation Fascists) alike." [357] 25 GREECE a. Salonika Greece was overrun by the Germans on April 6, 1941; the armistice was signed on April 23, 1941. There were three separate occupation zones: Italy was assigned the territory comprising "old Greece", with Athens as capital, and the Ionian islands; Bulgaria occupied Western Thrace and Greek Eastern Macedonia; Germany had a narrow belt of Eastern Thrace bordering on Turkey, along with the Salonika harbour and the island of Crete. A puppet government, seated in Athens, functioned in both Italian and German zones. About 13,000 Jews lived in the Italian zone, but the number of Jewish inhabitants in German dominated territory was over 55,000. In March, 1943, the Jews of Salonika were put in a concentration camp. From the middle of March, through May, deportation trains rolled from Salonika to Auschwitz. About 46,000 Jews were deported. [358] Friedman is of the opinion that "the Greek Orthodox Church, always a power in the political life of the country, used its considerable influence to oppose anti-Jewish laws, and, later, to help rescue the victims. The humblest papas of remote villages as well as the highest dignitaries of the Church enlisted in the crusade to help Jews". [359] <152> It is doubtful, however, whether any Church in any country had a "considerable influence" with the German occupying forces. The Church did not, and probably could not, prevent the extermination of the great majority of the Jews of Greece. At the end of February, 1943, two lawyers turned to Genadius, Bishop of Salonika, and submitted to him a Memorandum concerning the danger threatening the Jews. Bishop Genadius immediately went to Dr. Merten, who was in charge of all civilian affairs in Salonika, and protested, in the name of his Christian faith, against the preparations for the transports. Replying hypocritically, Dr. Merten stated: "I expected this step of yours, but all your efforts are in vain, for the orders are official and no intervention can change them". [360] Mr. Moissis, a Jewish lawyer in Athens, commented: "The attitude of Genadios, Bishop of Salonika, was excellent. He submitted a vehement protest to the military commander of the Macedonian capital who had issued the order of deportation, in March, 1943, in which Bishop Genadios characterized the order as inhuman and anti-Christian. During the deportations, he secretly received Chief Rabbi Koretz and other representatives of the Jewish community, and it was at his residence that the meeting took place of Rabbi Koretz and the Greek Prime Minister, John Rallis, who had come to Salonika especially, and solely, in order to save the Jewish population." [361] As soon as the measures against the Jews started, desperate appeals were addressed to Damaskinos, Archbishop of Athens and Primate of all Greece, by the Jews of Salonika, begging him to mediate with the representatives of the Reich in order to prevent their extermination. [362] Greek delegations went to see the Archbishop asking him to intervene. Archbishop Damaskinos, who shared the feelings of his followers, asked to see Altenburg, the representative of the Reich. He expressed to him the anguish of the Greek people at his inhuman and anti-Christian measure, and asked for his intervention to stop persecution. <153> Altenburg replied that the Jewish question was of capital importance to National Socialism; that it was dealt with by the central administration and that, consequently, he, personally, could do nothing on behalf of the Jews of Greece. Actually, he shared the opinion that this measure should be taken, and should be applied to Jews throughout Greece. In spite of all protests, Jews of Greek nationality should be forced to go to Poland, while those of other nationalities should be returned to their countries of origin. The Archbishop asked: "Why should Jews of Greece, who are of Spanish nationality, go to Spain, and those of Italian nationality to Italy, whereas, Jews of Greek nationality should be sent to Poland rather than be allowed to stay in Greece?" Annoyed by this question, Altenburg refused to answer, except to say that Jews of Greek nationality were sent to Poland 'to work'. "If they are sent to Poland 'to work', 'the Archbishop asked, why are women, children and aged people also sent?" "Because it is cruel to separate the families; if they are united they will have a better life", the representative of the Reich replied. Another strong appeal to the German representative, based on the claims of a humane and Christian civilization, was made by the Archbishop. Altenburg vaguely replied that he would try to ease the strictness of the measure. The extermination of the Jews of Salonika, however, continued unabated; the anguish of the Greeks increased. Greek organizations from all the towns sent appeals to the Archbishop of Athens who received an incessant stream of protestations and appeals from the Jewish organizations of Larissa, Chalkis, Volos and Verria, declaring their solidarity with the Jews of Salonika. The Archbishop decided again, to convey this general concern to the German authorities. He invited the representatives of the chief intellectual Institutions and of the scientific and professional organizations in the Archbishopric, to join with him. Under the auspices of the Church, they addressed a strong protest to the Greek Prime Minister, and to the representative of the Reich. The memorandum sent to the Prime Minister was as follows: <154> Athens, March 23, 1943. Mr. Constantine Logotheropoulos, Prime Minister, In Town. The Greek people have recently learned, with great surprise and grief, that the German military occupation forces in Salonika have begun the gradual expulsion of Jews living in Greece, and that the first groups of displaced Jews are already en route to Poland. The grief of the Greek people is even deeper because: 1. According to the spirit of the armistice terms all Greek citizens were to be treated equally by the occupation forces, irrespective of religion and race. 2. Greek Jews not only have been valuable contributors to the financial progress of the country, they generally have been loyal and have shown full understanding of their duties as Greek citizens. They have shared in the common sacrifices on behalf of their Greek mother country, being among the first to join in the struggle of the Greek nation to defend its historical rights. 3. The well-known loyalty of the Jews living in Greece already rules out any claim that they participated in actions likely to endanger the security of the Military Forces of Occupation. 4. In the conscience of the Nation, the children of our common Mother Greece are regarded as being an integral part of the Nation, entitled to enjoy all the privileges of the national community, independently of any religious or dogmatic differences. 5. Our holy religion repudiates any racial or religious distinctions, supremacy or inferiority, stating that 'there is neither Jew nor Greek' (Gal. 3, 28), and condemns every tendency to create distinctions on grounds of racial or religious differences. 6. The sharing of a common fate, both in days of glory and in periods of national disaster, has produced unbreakable bonds between all Greek citizens of every race. We are well aware of the deep opposition between the new Germany and the Jews, nor do we intend do defend or criticize international Jewry and its activities in the sphere of the political and financial problems of the world. We are only interested in, and concerned with, the lives of 60,000 fellow-citizens. We deeply appreciate their noble feelings, brotherly disposition, progressiveness, economic activities, and, above all, their incontestable love for their country during the long periods we have lived together. As a proof of this last statement, we point to the great number of Greek- Jewish sacrifices offered, without complaint or hesitation, on the altar of duty for our common homeland. We are sure that the Government and the people of Greece are agreed on this matter. We are confident that you have already taken the necessary steps to plead with the Occupation Forces, to defer this painful measure of the expulsion of Jews living in Greece. We are hopeful that you already have pointed out to the highest authorities that such treatment of the Greek Jews - cruel in comparison with what happened to the Jews of other nationalities - makes this measure even more unjust, and thus morally inadmissible. <155> If they pretend that these measures are taken for security reasons, an adequate solution should be possible. Preventive measures could be taken, such as the confinement of the males only (except aged men and children) in a place in the country, under the supervision of the Occupation Forces. Thus, security will be protected even against imaginary dangers, and the Jews of Greece will not suffer the adversities of the expulsion. The Greek people will be ready, if asked, to give their full guarantee for a measure taken on behalf of their brothers in distress. We hope the Occupation Forces will understand the senselessness of the persecution of Greek Jews, who are considered the most peaceful, loyal and productive elements in our country. If, however, the Germans insist, against every hope, on their policy of expulsion, we think that the Government, as the holder of the remaining political power in our country, should take a firm stand against these actions. It should be made clear that full responsibility for this injustice will lie with the foreigners. Let no one forget that all acts committed during this difficult period, even those committed against our will and beyond our power, will one day be examined by our Nation; it will ascertain the responsibility of everyone. On that day of National judgment, the moral responsibility of those in authority, who have failed to express by some courageous gesture the unanimous anguish and protest of the Nation against all actions which are derogatory to our unity and pride, such as the expulsion of the Jews, will weigh heavily. [363] Yours Truly, Damaskinos, Archbishop of Athens and Primate of all Greece. The memorandum was signed by the president of the Greek Academy; the rectors of the University and the Polytechnic Institute; the chairman of the Association of writers, painters and artists; lawyers, surgeons, industrialists, and chambers of commerce. It should be noted that the memorandum mentions six reasons why the Jews should not be deported; only one of them is strictly religious; four reasons stress that the Jews were loyal citizens of Greece and that they belonged to the nation. <156> The Archbishop and his friends did not intend "to defend or criticize international Jewry and its activities in the sphere of the political and financial problems of the world". It is not clear whether they really meant this or tried to appeal to the mind of the addressee. At all events, the remark is regrettable. Another memorandum was sent to the Representative of the Reich. It read as follows: Athens, March 24, 1943. To His Excellency the Representative of the Reich for Greece, Mr. Guenther Altenburg, In Town. Excellency, The undersigned are not seeking at present to interfere in any way in the questions of general tactics of the German forces in our country or elsewhere, but simply to submit certain views, regarding a question which is keeping the entire Greek population in suspense and anxiety; we are sure that you will examine these views in a spirit of benevolence and understanding. They concern the persecution of the Greek Jews of Salonika, who have long been legally under the jurisdiction of our country. Not only have they never given occasion for complaint, but on the contrary, they have always offered proof of earnest and sincere collaboration. In critical times, their acts of self-sacrifice and self-abnegation were apparent. We must add that the above mentioned Jews have never acted against our interests, even in the smallest matters; on the contrary, they have always felt a sense of responsibility towards the Greek majority. Most of them belong to the poorer classes. It should be noted that Greek Jews have quite a different mentality to that of the Jews living in Germany and have no knowledge whatsoever of the language of Poland where they are being sent to live. in addition to the above facts, we wish to add that during the long course of our history, ever since the era of Alexander the Great and his descendants, and through all the centuries of Greek Orthodoxy down to the present time, our relations with the Jewish people have always been harmonious. We believe therefore that, in your high office as ruler of our country during the present war, you will not hesitate to accept our present request and decide, even if provisionally, to suspend the expulsion of Greek Jews from Greece until the Jewish question can be examined in the light of a special and detailed investigation. Our present request is based upon the recent historical fact, that during the surrender of Salonika and, later, that of the whole of Greece, among the clauses of the protocol, the following is included: 'The Occupation forces promise to protect the life, the honour and the properties of the population'. Certainly this clause implies, that no persecution would be made against Greek subjects, on the account of religion and race, and that consequently the theory relating to racial or religious discrimination would not be applied in Greece. <157> This was further confirmed later by a clear declaration made by General Tsolakoglou, to whom the Occupation Forces had entrusted the Presidency of this country, and who stated explicitly: "There is no Jewish question in Greece and there never will be." "All Greeks occupied in peaceful work may rest assured that their honour, life and property are under protection of the Occupation Forces and of the Government. Excellency, some days ago the Berlin radio transmitted an article of a German reporter, which was a real hymn to the traditional quality of hospitality of the Greek people in all occasions, even in the cases of supposed enemies. What must be the anguish of these people, who have been infused by thousand years of Christianity and its message of love of one's neighbour, when they see their brothers tom away from their homeland. Especially, when, for many years they have embraced it with unlimited confidence and a spirit of irreproachable solidarity towards us. Excellency, in the name of the lofty ideas of the Greek spirit, and of the culture of your country, both of which have so powerfully influenced the whole world, we beg that the expulsion of our Jewish fellow-citizens be halted as soon as possible. We assure you that the whole Greek nation will sincerely appreciate a gesture of such historic importance. Damaskinos. Archbishop of Athens and Primate of All Greece. (This Memorandum was also signed by the leading citizens who had signed the Memorandum sent to the Prime Minister). There are some dubious remarks in this Memorandum: "It should be noted that Greek Jews have quite a different mentality to that of the Jews living in Germany", and "In the name of the lofty ideas of the Greek spirit and of the culture of your country (Germany)". That does not alter the fact that much in the Memorandum is to be lauded. Archbishop Damaskinos did not cease his activities. He again saw Altenburg asking for his intervention. Following the formation of the new Government of John Rallis, he briefed the new Prime Minister and asked him to discuss fully the question with the commander-in-chief of East-Europe, Marshal Loehr. At the same time he took the following steps: <158> a. He requested the President of the International Red Cross in Greece to ask the Governments of the European countries, to interest themselves on behalf of the Jews of Greece, considering that their expulsion to Poland would mean total extermination. b. He negotiated with the International Red Cross to supply food for the kitchen established for the Jews of Salonika who had been put into a concentration camp. He then asked the Greek Government to furnish the necessary technical means. In fact, the kitchen started operating immediately. The Ministry of Social Welfare undertook its organization and the International Red Cross provided large supplies of food. c. He undertook, secretly, to send to Salonika the contribution of the Jews of Athens to the Jews of Salonika. Their contributions were sent by the Archbishop to Genadios, the Bishop of Salonika. Thus far the biographer of Archbishop Damaskinos. Comments on the attitude of Church leaders and lower clergy are favourable: "Monks, regardless of the great dangers or considerations of religion or faith, hid persecuted families and rendered secret but effective help to multitudes of unfortunate people, who could no longer subsist without employment, and thus had to leave their hiding place and give themselves up to the Germans." [364] "The heads of the Orthodox Church in Greece defied the Nazi edicts and exhorted their faithful followers to shun anti-Semitic slogans and outrages. It is reported that in May 1943 alone, six hundred Greek priests were arrested and lodged in concentration camps because they refused to obey a Nazi order to preach anti-Jewish sermons. Much help and Jewish rescue work go to the credit of the Greek Orthodox clergy." [365] What happened in Salonika enables us to realize that the attitude of Church leaders frequently had a very limited influence on the population, even in Greece. Dr. Nathan Eck, the editor of the revised edition in Hebrew of the book of Michael Molho and Joseph Nehama, has the following to say about the situation in Salonika: "... The attitude of the non-Jewish population in Salonica to their Jewish neighbours was not very friendly. <159> Many of them were former residents of Turkey who, in 1922, were transferred to Greece on an exchange basis, and their economic and social status was similar to that of the Jews. As a result of their feelings of hatred and competition, it was not easy to find anyone among the non-Jews who would agree to endanger his life and the life of his family in order to hide Jews in his home... The authors Molho-Nehama are wary of casting aspersions and blame on the general non-Jewish population but remain satisfied with mere hints. Here and there, there is a short remark which outweighs a host of express statements. For example, the following remark: 'It is likely that local factors (in Salonica) were active in the implementation of the deportations in order to get rid of competitors who proved a burden to them in their commercial life' (Part II, p. 11). Indeed, as the authors point out, only seventy Jews, most of them married to non-Jews, succeeded in finding hiding places in Salonica..." [366] Another comment: "The great bulk of the population, while not indifferent, played the role of an interested if shocked spectator. However, this situation began to change after Archbishop Theophilos Damaskinos, who later became a regent, intervened forcefully on behalf of the Jews threatened with deportation. The Archbishop's vigorous protest about the action contemplated against the small Jewish population of Greece created a stir throughout the country." [367] The attitude of the non-Jewish population in Salonika, where most of the Jews were living, was lamentable. Such information should prevent us from accepting stereotypes such as "the Greek - or the Dutch, or the French - population has done everything to save the Jews". b Athens and Southern Greece Following the Italian armistice, the Germans took over the administration of Athens and other parts of Southern Greece. General Stroop, the "Conqueror of the Warsaw Ghetto", arrived in Athens on September 10, 1943, and took over the function of Higher SS leader. <160> On October 3, 1943, the Jews were ordered to register. The seizure of the Jews on the Greek mainland was to be completed in three days, from March 23-25. Jews living on the Greek islands were deported in June and Jule, 1944. More than sixty thousand Jews out of the 79,950 who had been living in Greece, were deported. [368] The following is quoted from "The Destruction of Greek Jewry, 1941-1944": "... On Tuesday, September 21, 1943, Athens' Chief Rabbi, Elia Barzilai, was ordered to submit to the German authorities a list containing the names and addresses of all Jews living in Athens... A delegation led by Rabbi Barzilai paid a visit to the Archbishop who declared that, to his deep regret, he did not see how he could do anything on behalf of the Jews, despite his willingness to help them. The only alternative left was to go into hiding, or disappear, the Archbishop said. When the Rabbi requested permission for the Jews to hide in the churches, the Archbishop replied: 'Willingly, but it is a mistake to think that there you will be safe. They will not hesitate to seize you. However, I could, with the help of the English, arrange a transfer to the Middle-East for those Jews who are prepared to go...'" [369] At the instigation of Archbishop Damaskinos, priests preached in the churches that Jews should be aided. He also intervened with the German authorities so that children younger than 14, as well as, persons married to parties of the Greek Orthodox faith, should be exempted from the strict anti-Jewish regulations. [370] According to Moissis, the fact that more than 10,000 Jews saved themselves was largely due to the efforts of the Orthodox Church under Archbishop Damaskinos. A few days proceeding the German attempt to corral the Jewish population, the Church issued a circular to all priests, parishes and convents, exhorting them to lend succour and safety to the victims of Nazi barbarism. [371] <161> I have not succeeded in retrieving a copy of this circular, nor was Mr. Moissis able to give any additional information. He confirmed to me that Archbishop Damaskinos had done much for the rescue of the Jews: "Archbishop Damaskinos knew my place of refuge, in the neighbourhood of Athens, and sent me provisions every month. He did the same for other Jews ...whose hiding place he knew." [372] It seems unlikely that a circular letter was issued: a copy might easily have fallen into the hands of the persecutors. In those days one did not put such a message in writing but it was passed on orally. 26 DENMARK a. The Time of Moderation Germany occupied Denmark on April 9, 1940. The position of Denmark under the German occupation was unique in many respects: the King had remained; the Danish Government continued to function until August, 1943; the Germans were interested in keeping things as quiet as possible and granted to Denmark a certain independence in internal affairs, and the attempt to deport and exterminate the Jews of Denmark started relatively late: September, 1943. A total of 7,700 Jews were living in Denmark, a number of them refugees from Germany and elsewhere. <162> In December 1941, participants in a conference of Danish pastors [373] considered the possibility of presenting a petition to Parliament demanding that all members of Parliament should vote against any racial legislation. But the proposal was withdrawn as it was considered undesirable to focus to much public attention on the question. [374] The same question was discussed at another conference of pastors which met in the provincial town of Askov. One of the participants wrote to Rabbi Friediger: "... For us it is not just a question of the Jews and their rights; for the Danes this first of all must be the question of the right of a small nation to exist, particularly as this is also a question of our whole national attitude and the basis of democracy: equality and human dignity." [375] Frederik Torm, a professor of theology at the University of Copenhagen, brought about a common decision of the theological faculty and of the students, declaring that, should persecution of the Jews begin, they would voice their opposition vigorously and publicly. This internal decision was put into practice, in October, 1943. [376] The Church Press in Denmark could publicly denounce anti-Semitism at a time when the Press in other countries had long since been completely silenced. The Rev. Johannes Nordentoft, in one of his articles, called for an active war against the anti-Semitic propaganda of the Nazi press. He pointed out that "those who remain silent or disapprove by merely shrugging their shoulders become accomplices". [377] An article in the Church gazette of Sonderbourg, edited by Dean Halfdan Hoegsbro, stated: <163> "Hatred of the Jews is prompted by the demand for a scapegoat... We will not lend our support to the introduction of anti-Jewish laws; Jew hatred is an infectious disease, to which the innate sense of justice of the Danish people will not permit them to succumb. It is a disease that we shall cast out from our midst. Shame upon us if we ever allow ourselves to fall victim to it." [378] The Skydebjerg-Aavup Church Gazette, comparing the anti-Jewish drive to that of medieval times, wrote: "Our Danish minds will not let themselves become infected by this disease... Anti-Jewish legislation is tantamount to lawlessness, and if we forsake justice, then we will be submitted to a degradation worse than war and suppression." [379] In January, 1943, the Bishop of Copenhagen, Dr. Fuglsang-Damgaard, publicly warned against racial hatred. [380] The pro-Nazi press frequently attacked "the Church's dogged opposition to attempts to initiate anti-Jewish restrictions". [381] The first occasion on which the Danish Bishops approached the authorities en bloc to protest on behalf of the Church of Denmark, was when they addressed a protest to the Minister of Justice containing the following paragraph: "... We draw to your attention the feeling of protest which is spreading in the Church of Denmark. This feeling of protest is due, above all, to the way in which justice is administered in these days. Men are being arrested without the public being given any information about how the arrested persons are treated in prison. Anti-Semitic propaganda is being artificially incited. At the same time pastors receive warnings from the Government that they must not comment on the persecution of the Jews..." [382] <164> b. The Deportation Attempt; the Protest In the summer of 1943, disturbances occurred in several provincial towns. The Germans took reprisals and the people reacted to this by proclaiming strikes. A German ultimatum was rejected by the Danish Government. Thereupon martial law was proclaimed on August 29, 1943. Dr. Werner Best, the German envoy in Copenhagen, received full powers as Reich pleni- potentiary. The Danish Government had resigned. The day to day affairs of its ministries remained in the hands of the permanent Department directors; the director of the Danish Foreign Ministry, Nils Svenningsen, became the chief spokesman of the administration. The Germans now planned the deportation of the Jews in one night, October 1-2. On September 28, however, a German in Copenhagen, Duckwitz, revealed this to Danish friends of his, H.C. Hansen and H. Hedtoft, who warned Henriques, the president of the Jewish community. On the morning of September 29, the Jewish congregations which met in their synagogues for the services of the Jewish New Year were warned. The raids took place as planned. In the night of October 1-2, 202 Jews were captured in Copenhagen and 82 elsewhere in Denmark. About 200 others were arrested later on, most of them caught in flight. The great majority, however, succeeded in hiding themselves. The Swedish Government had publicly expressed its willingness to admit the Danish Jews into Sweden. 7,220 Jews were secretly moved to the beaches and then ferried by Danish fisherman to safety. [383] At the end of August, 1943, the Bishop of Copenhagen, Dr. Fuglsang-Damgaard, asked for an interview with the Director of the Foreign Ministry, who declared that the Jewish question had not been raised. Nobody had been arrested because of race or religion. When the Director had asked Dr. Best about this matter, he had answered: "The question has not been broached at all". [384] <165> Dr. Fuglsang-Damgaard reported this in a letter to the pastors of his diocese, dated September 4, 1943, adding that later developments would be followed attentively. "From our experience with the German habit of breaking promises, it was not thought wise to take Dr. Best's words too seriously. Unfortunately however, his words perhaps did set our minds too much at rest." [385] The Churches, however, made necessary preparation in case persecution of the Jews would begin. Bishop Fuglsang-Damgaard convened with pastors belonging to the unofficial Pastors' Organisation P.U.F. [386] and asked them to prepare a draft for a public protest, to be read out from the pulpits. It was ready a short time later. The Bishop suggested some changes but there was hardly time to make them as events developed rapidly. On September 17, 1943, some Jewish houses in Copenhagen were raided. Bishop Fuglsang-Damgaard thus had another interview with the director of the Foreign Ministry, Svenningsen. In a letter to the Bishops, dated September 23, he informed them that: "... the raid did not indicate that they (the Germans) would raise the Jewish question, but that it was connected with a suspicion of certain persons. Thereafter I asked the Director of the Department to inform the German authorities that their raising of the Jewish question would be met by a joint protest by the Church and the Bishops. The Director promised to inform the Germans of this..." Bishop Fuglsang-Damgaard relates: "The Jewish community was in a very difficult situation. The chief-rabbi, Dr. Friediger was interned in the camp of Horsercad, just as the time of the great feasts of the year was approaching. We did what we could to obtain his release, so that at least he could lead the services during the feasts. At the beginning of the fateful week (during the night of the first October) I paid a visit to the chairman of the Jewish community organisation, the advocate of the Supreme Court, C.B. Henriques. <166> I shall never forget it. I came to express our heartfelt fellowship with his community and to say that we were remembering the Jews in our prayers, not the least in those days when they celebrated their great feasts, and also in order to assure him that we would do what we could to help the interned to get their liberty again..." [387] "On 29th September, about 10 o'clock, the chairman of the Jewish community organisation, Advocate Henriques, came to me and told me that it was almost sure that the Jewish question would now be raised. There existed an order from Hitler himself to raise it. The ships for the deportation were said to be in the harbour. I went at once to the Department of Religious Affairs and asked for an interview with the Director of the Department who, however, at that time did not know anything about such imminent action. Immediately after this I went to the Department of Foreign Affairs and obtained an interview with the Director. He told me that, according to information he had received from different sources, there could be no doubt that the situation was very serious. A meeting of the Directors of the Departments was to be held on the question at two o'clock...I returned to the Ministry of Religious Affairs, in order to tell Mr. Thomsen, the Director of the Department, how serious the situation was, asking him to present a protest to the meeting and to inform the German authorities also about the contents of the protest." [388] Bishop Fuglsang-Damgaard then returned to his residence. The protest was written in the presence of his assistants in the office. He signed it on behalf of the Bishops. "We were conscious that this was a decisive moment. We expected at the time, that the signature would cost me both my office and my freedom. The protest was sent by a messenger to the Director of the Department to whom personally it was handed. I went to the Dean in order to arrange with him the things to be done if I should be arrested." [389] All the Bishops received the protest by express letter, with a request for their immediate support and with the appendix: "In case persecution of the Jews should begin, this Protest must be read in the churches, and I propose that the pastors commence the reading with the following sentence: 'On the 29th September of this year the Bishops sent to the leading German authorities, through the Directors of the Departments, a letter with the following contents:...'" <167> On Saturday, October 2, 1943, theological students despatched the Protest to all the manses in Bishop Fuglsang-Damgaard's diocese. On that same evening, the Bishop again was advised by the Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to consider the consequences. "But there was nothing to reconsider. The matter had to be completed." [390] The Protest "Wherever persecutions are undertaken for racial or religious reasons against the Jews, it is the duty of the Christian Church to raise a protest against it for the following reasons: 1. Because we shall never be able to forget that the Lord of the Church, Jesus Christ, was born in Bethlehem, of the Virgin Mary into Israel, the people of His possession, according to the promise of God. The history of the Jewish people up to the birth of Christ includes the preparation for the salvation which God has prepared in Christ for all men. This is also expressed in the fact that the Old Testament is a part of our Bible. 2. Because a persecution of the Jews is irreconcilable with the humanitarian concept of love of neighbours which follows from the message which the Church of Jesus Christ is commissioned to proclaim. With Christ there is no respect of persons, and He has taught us that every man is precious in the eyes of God. 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.' (Gal. 3, 28). 3. Because it contradicts the sense of justice, inherent during centuries in our Danish civilisation and which lives in the Danish people. In accordance with the above principles, all Danish citizens have equal rights and duties before the law and freedom of religion assured to them by the constitution. We understand by freedom of religion the right to exercise our faith in God according to vocation and conscience, in such a way that race and religion can never be in themselves a reason for depriving a man of his rights, freedom or property. Despite different religious views we shall therefore struggle to ensure the continued guarantee to our Jewish brothers and sisters of the same freedom which we ourselves treasure more than life. The leaders of the Danish Church are conscious of our responsibility to be law-abiding citizens; we do not needlessly revolt against those who exercise the functions of authority over us; but at the same time, we are obliged by our conscience to maintain the law and to protest against any violation of human rights. Therefore, we desire to declare unambiguously our allegiance to the word that we must obey God rather than man." On Behalf of the Bishops: Fuglsang-Damgaard. [391] <168> What strikes us is that the Public Protest stressed the special relationship existing between Christians and Jews, while the second point of the protest states that "every man is precious in the eyes of God". The text mentioned (which also was quoted by many other Churches in different lands) seems more applicable to the position of members of the Church who are of Jewish origin ("There is neither Jew nor Greek,... for ye are all one in Christ Jesus"). However, Christians of Jewish origin were not mentioned in the Protest at all. This in itself was certainly fortunate, for reasons discussed in ch. 4. Finally, the letter of Protest states that "we must obey God rather than man". It must have been clear to every church goer that, in fact, the Bishops were summoning him to active resistance against the German measures. In one of the churches in Copenhagen the Bishop began his sermon on that particular Sunday by telling what had happened and unequivocally expressing his own view. Finally, when the protest was read out to the congregation as a Pastoral Letter of the Church leaders, all those who were present stood up in order to express their approval. [392] A Danish Lutheran pastor informed me that whenever the Danish Bishops issue a public declaration, the faithful consider two questions: 1 Is what the Bishops say right? 2 What gave them the right to speak on my behalf? When, therefore, the congregation stood up when Bishop Fuglsang-Damgaard read out the protest, this can be seen as expressing the congregation's opinion that he had rightly spoken on their behalf. No Bishop nor pastor, to the best of my knowledge, directly suffered or was even arrested because of the public protest. In conclusion of this paragraph we record Bishop Fuglsang-Damgaard's comment on the situation after the Church had given its testimony: "The protest had been made and it was not repeated. A repetition would have meant a weakening of it. Furthermore, it would not have been of any use. That was clear to everyone who knew the situation. What had now to be done was to bring help to those compatriots who were deported, persecuted or in hiding. <169> The whole Danish population understood this and all circles in our country came together to render this help. This was a time when there was no rest by day or by night; when it happened that a man in the street would come and give one 10,000 kroner; when a code-language developed in order to keep the mutual contact alive; when one felt an unspeakable happiness and gratitude whenever somebody was saved." [393] c. After the Rescue Operation Bishop Fuglsang-Damgaard and other Church leaders also contributed to the sending of gift parcels to the Jews who had been deported. On November 29, 1943, the Bishops jointly addressed Dr. Best through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to gain his support for this work. The appeal read as follows: "It is with deep sorrow and disappointment that we perceive through developing circumstances, that our appeal to the German authorities over the Jewish question has not born fruit. But our interest in, and deep sympathy with, our deported countrymen is undiminished, and as there now seems to be a possibility that we can send support and aid in the form of food from this country, we wish to suggest to the Danish Church communities that they should send help to the interned Jews, in the form of gift parcels, through the Red Cross. In our relationship with the community, we know that the Christian conscience of our people and their conception of justice has suffered a painful wound, and how deep a need they feel to help. We would therefore be grateful to the Director of the Department of Foreign Affairs if he would inform Dr. Best of our attitude and point out to him that support from competent German representatives towards a good solution of this question would be met with deep satisfaction within Church circles, the members of whom would, through this Christian and humane activity, find a way to express their deep concern over this matter." [394] The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Social Affairs, the Red Cross and the pastors of Copenhagen acted unanimously in this large-scale assistance to the Danish Jews in Theresienstadt, an action which was successful beyond all expectation. Of the 475 Jews who were deported to Theresienstadt, all returned with the exception of 53 who had died. <170> In December, 1943, Bishop Malmstrom prayed for the Jews in a broadcast religious service. Thereupon the German authorities demanded the right to make a preliminary censorship of broadcast services. Bishop Fuglsang-Damgaard then sent a statement through the Foreign Ministry to the German authorities, in which he stated that if censorship was introduced, neither the Sunday services nor the morning devotions would continue to be broadcast, and that the reason for this measure would be made public from all pulpits. A week later, the Bishop was informed by the German authorities that "the incident was due to a misunderstanding". [395] In February, 1944, the Bishops sent a letter to their congregations in which they requested prayer "for God's ancient chosen people, trusting that God will help where we see no way to do so." [396] <171> The crucial question, whether the Church was influenced by general public opinion or whether it was the other way round, has been discussed in ch. 2. THE SATELLITE COUNTRIES 27 SLOVAKIA On the eve of the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, on March 14, 1939, Slovakia declared its independence, and on March 23, the agreement of German protection was signed. Following the first Vienna award on November 2, 1938, parts of former Slovakian territory with about 40,000 Jews were annexed by Hungary, together with parts of Sub Carpathian Ruthenia. After the occupation of all of Carpatho-Ruthenia containing 100,000 Jews, by Hungary, about 90,000 Jews remained in "independent" Slovakia. A Catholic priest (Dr. Josef Tiso) was head of the Slovakian State. On April 18, 1939, the first anti-Jewish decree was enacted. A special Department for Jewish Affairs was opened in the Ministry of Interior. It co-operated with the Hlinka Guard. The Council of the Evangelical (Lutheran) Pastors' Union decided, in its session of November 21, 1939, to send a Memorandum to the President and the Government of Slovakia, regarding the Hlinka Youth organization and the Hlinka Guard. We quote the following: "We, as Evangelical Christians and as citizens, cannot agree with the following facts: the annulment of individual rights and freedom of certain people; the taking of steps against the Jews without legal basis, by means of violence, for instance, that the men of the Hlinka Guard, during the night, dragged Jews - women, mothers and children - out of their beds and transported them to concentration camps; illegally imposing of fines etc.; transgressions which are performed though they are contrary to the law and to Christian ethics." [397] <172> The first deportation train left Slovakia on March 26, 1942. In August 1942, the Jewish population had been reduced to 25,000. On August 23, 1944, a rebellion broke out which was ruthlessly quelled. In the autumn of 1944, 13,500 of the remainder of Slovakian Jewry were deported. In the whole of Slovakia there remained not more than about 4,000 to 5,000 Jews. [398] The Convent of (Lutheran) Bishops, under the Chairmanship of Dr. Vladimir Cobrda and Dr. Samuel Stefan Osusky, decided to issue a Pastoral letter about the "Jewish Question", on May 20, 1942. We quote the following: "... The Evangelical (Lutheran) Church neither can nor wishes to interfere in the executive power of the competent government departments, whose duty it is to solve the problems. The Church, however, is convinced that it is possible and thus also necessary to solve this problem in a just, humane and Christian way, according to the Christian principles which are based on the eternal laws of God and the teaching of Christ. According to this teaching, all men are endowed with the right to live, to earn a honourable livelihood, and the right to family-life. It also protects the honour of the Jews as human beings, so that not one of them should feel deprived because of his national, religious or racial attachments. The racial law however, which some people champion, is contrary to the Christian faith, which accepts the biblical message that God is the Creator of all things and of all mankind, 'from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name' (Ephesians 3, 14). 'He is the head, and on him the whole body depends. Bonded and knit together by every constituent joint, the whole frame grows through the due activity of each part, and builds itself up in love' (Ephesians 4, 16). To our sorrow we have been compelled to witness deeds which cannot be justified. They are contrary to human feelings, to justice and to the law of God; they are in no way related to love. Such things could not happen, if all would honour the declaration broadcast by the Ministry of Interior, that no harm would be done to the Jews, that they would be treated in a humane and Christian way, and that they should just have to work as the other citizens. <173> The Church cannot reconcile itself to these deeds which we have witnessed in many places. The Church cannot but express its sorrow about them and reject them. If members of the Evangelical Church participated in these deeds, they must be severely condemned for this..." [399] "The Times" of August 11, 1942, commented on this pastoral letter as follows: "The Slovak Lutheran Church, under the leadership of the Bishops Dr. Cobrda and Dr. Osusky, has taken the lead in the fight against Nazism in Slovakia. From the pulpits of all Protestant Churches in Slovakia a pastoral letter was read on May 31. In this the bishops condemned an 'immature political ideology' modelled on Nazi and Fascist lines and emphasized loyalty to the Gospel of Christ. They also condemned the anti-Jewish policy and defended the right of the Church, to baptize proselytes from Judaism on religious grounds. The pastoral letter, the first of its kind in this part of Europe, has caused a profound sensation in central and south-eastern Europe (particularly in Hungary, where a substantial Protestant congregation exists). Nazi circles in Slovakia are particularly aggrieved since the bishops in question are considered as leading authorities in Church matters, even outside Slovakia... Roughly one sixth of the Slovak population are Protestants." We have discussed the matter of the so-called "mercy-baptisms" in chapter 5. Suffice it here to mention that pastors in Slovakia were in peril of their life if they dared to baptize Jews, during the second world war. 28 RUMANIA In June, 1940, the Russians took back Bess Arabia and occupied Northern Bucovina. In August, Hungary carved out for itself Northern Transylvania and the Bulgarians occupied Southern Dobrudja. On September 5, General Ion Antonescu took over the government as Conducator of Rumania, and on October 7, 1940, German troops arrived in Rumania. At the beginning of 1941, the Fascist Iron Guard tried to overthrow General Antonescu. The revolt was crushed, but members of the Iron Guard had murdered hundreds of Jews in Bucharest. <174> In June, 1941, Germany invaded Russia; Rumania reconquered Bucovina and Bess Arabia. On July 29, 1941, Rumanian soldiers murdered at least 4,000 Jews in Jassy. The Rumanians deported an estimated 185,000 Jews from Dorohoi, Bucovina and Bess Arabia to Transnistria, in the Soviet Ukraine. By May, 1942, about two-thirds of these Jews had died. [400] Strong anti-Semitic influences were manifest in the Rumanian Orthodox Church. On August 18, 1937, Patriarch Miron Cristea had issued a statement calling upon the Rumanian nation "to fight the Jewish parasites". [401] Chief Rabbi Dr. Safran relates his frantic efforts to try to avert the deportation of the Jews in the districts of Dorohoi, Bucovina and Bessarabia. It was decided that he should approach the head of the Orthodox Church, the old Patriarch Nicodemus. "... During the dramatic conversation I had with the Patriarch, who was rather indifferent at the beginning pretending that it was all the affair of the government, he changed his attitude in view of my growing emotion which I was unable to hide from him. I spoke of the terrible responsibility he was taking upon his conscience in the eyes of the Supreme Judge, and ended by throwing myself at the feet of his pontifical seat. Deeply moved, the Patriarch lifted me up and promised to do his best. On taking my leave of him I sensed that he intended to ask for the support of the Queen-mother." [402] Chief Rabbi Safran immediately took steps to get in touch with King Michael and the Queen-mother Helena to prepare them for a possible appeal from the Patriarch Nicodemus. "The Patriarch, on his part, first sought unsuccessfully, to intervene with Antonescu; and then addressed himself to the King and the Queen-mother. <175> The Queen-mother suggested that Baron Manfred von Killinger, the German ambassador, should be invited to the palace for a meal during which a last appeal should be attempted. In the course of this dinner the Queen-mother spoke fervently on behalf of the innocent victims, but he, in the presence of the King and the Patriarch, responded with an obstinate, brutal refusal." These interventions of the Queen-mother and the Patriarch (who unfortunately was to disappoint Dr. Safran later on) nevertheless helped to make it possible for the rest of the Jewish population of Czernovitz to stay in the Bucovinian capital. [403] Chief Rabbi Safran then heard of the arrival of the Metropolitan of the Bucovina, Tot Simedrea, in Bucharest, whose anti-Semitic feelings were known. Nevertheless Dr. Safran called on him. "Contrary to my expectations, Mgr. Simedrea revealed an understanding attitude. He told me of the feelings aroused in him by the sight of the Jews of Czernovitz being deported to the ghetto, during which he had seen a Rumanian soldier carrying a sick old Jewish women on his shoulders. He also had heard the heart-rendering cries of Jewish mental patients who formed part of this tragic convoy. The Metropolitan effectively intervened with the Government of Bucharest and on his return to Czernovitz exerted pressure on the Governor-General of the Bucovina. These, together with other similar appeals, brought to an end the deportation of Jews from the capital of this province." [404] In the summer of 1942, pressure was exerted on Antonescu by the Germans, to order the deportation of all Jews of Rumania. The Germans obtained the consent of the Rumanian Government for this. Trains were already prepared for the deportation. Then a delegation of the Jewish communities of South Transylvania informed Dr. Safran that all technical steps for the operation had just been taken in their province. Appeals to the authorities had been in vain. Dr. Safran relates: "One sole course remained to be tried - an appeal to Metropolitan Balan, head of the Orthodox Church of Transylvania, well-known both for his anti-Semitism and for the great influence he had with leading figures in the government, and with Marshal Antonescu in particular. <176> Following a brief consultation we gave up the original idea of my proceeding to Sibiu, for fear of arousing the attention of the Gestapo and the Centre for Jewish Affairs. I accordingly adopted a most daring course. Using the services of an intermediary, I begged the Metropolitan to come to Bucharest." In the meantime, Metropolitan Balan had come to the capital and informed Dr. Safran by telephone that he would be waiting for him at the house of General Vaitoianu with whom he was staying. "Our meeting took place in an extremely tense atmosphere. I assumed an accusing tone which could only have been inspired by despair. [405] The Metropolitan walked up and down the room without saying a word. Finally he took up the telephone and called Marshal Antonescu with whom he asked for an urgent interview. The Marshal was reported to be busy, but they agreed to have lunch together. In the meantime I communicated to Mgr. Balan the news that for several weeks the authorities in Bucharest had been deporting not only Jews, condemned without trial, of not having reported for compulsory labour, but also their parents and children. The Metropolitan immediately telephoned the Vice-Premier, Minister Michael Antonescu, and told him what he just had learned. The Minister promised to look into the matter. As a result, after a few days there were no more deportations from Bucharest. I accompanied the Metropolitan to his car which was to take him to the Dictator, pleading with him to use all the means in his power to obtain a favourable decision. My prayers followed him after he had left... Three hours later the sonorous voice of the Metropolitan told me over the telephone that the Marshal had given in. The Jews of South Transylvania had been saved." [406] There are other countries in which Church leaders courageously and whole heartedly stood up for the Jews and yet their interventions seldom had any result at all. In Rumania, however, the intervention of the Orthodox leaders seems to have been quite successful. It is typical of Rumania that no public protests were issued. Church leaders personally intervened. These interventions took place only after Chief Rabbi Safran had implored the Orthodox leaders to come to the rescue of the Jews. <177> It is difficult to ascertain what exactly moved these apparently reluctant saviours to take action. The change of heart with Patriarch Nicodemus seems to have come after Dr. Safran had spoken "of the terrible responsibility he was taking upon his conscience in the eyes of the Supreme Judge". Metropolitan Simedrea told Dr. Safran "of the feelings aroused in him by the sight of the Jews of Czernovitz being deported to the ghetto ". According to a report of Matatias Carp, there was in 1940 a Jewish population in Rumania of approximately 760,000, of whom 400,000 were massacred. "Among the victims, 250,000 lie on the conscience of the Rumanian Fascist Government directly. [407] There are two other non-Roman Catholic Churches of some importance in Rumania. The Reformed Church of Rumania is the Church of the Hungarian national minority. I have not been able to find any particulars about the attitude of this Church regarding anti-Semitism. The Evangelical (Lutheran) Church of the Augsburg Confession is mainly the Church of the German immigrants. In spring 1942, the National Consistory of this Church decided, on a motion of Bishop Staedel, that their Church would join the "Institute for Research into the Jewish influence upon German Church life", founded in Eisenach (Germany). A study group was formed, which, in close contact with the Eisenach Institute, sought "to make the results of its scientific work fruitful for the life and future form of the Lutheran Church in Rumania". At the first conference of the study group, at the beginning of March, 1942, the following statement by Bishop Staedel was accepted as the guiding principle for the work as a whole: "We are deeply convinced that at this time of national revival, we are making it extremely difficult for a German to come to Jesus Christ if we present him with a continuous and detailed treatment of the Old Testament. In the two hours every week, which are meant to be devoted to bringing the message of the Saviour to the German in his national character and community, we have absolutely no room for the national and messianic history of the Israelite-Jewish people. <178> Therefore we advocate the elimination of the Old Testament so far as possible from the religious life of the Germans, and thus from the Lutheran religious instruction." [408] A statement made by the leader of the "scientific work" of the study group described the motives underlying its work as follows: "The decisive impulse has come to us from outside, from the political life of the German people. In the national-socialist revolution, however, this nation has confessed to a year-long guilt, for having failed to guard its God-given torch of the Nordic Aryan vision of life, allowing it to flicker and die out under the influence of foreign, especially Jewish, intrigues. Now this light will once again burn for the nation in all its purity. What wonder then that people are now coming to the Church, demanding of it the same confession of guilt, even more insistently because the Church has taken the Bible of the Jews into its own canon of Scripture. Thus it has consciously held open at least an aperture through which an essentially foreign spirit could infiltrate into our national life. [409] Bishop D. Friedrich Mueller, the present head of this Church, replied to my circular letter and stated: "As soon as the alliance (between Germany and Rumania) came into force, the fascist government of Rumania promulgated a law by which a 'German community in Rumania' was constituted. Par. 4 of this law granted to the leader of this community the right, to issue decrees compulsory upon the Rumanian citizens of German descent. Thus supported, the 'leader of the community' succeeded in compelling Dr. Victor Glondys, the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Rumania, to resign, whereupon he appointed his political associate, Wilhelm Staedel, as the head of the Church. Even Staedel did not give in to him completely but tried to follow the policy of the 'German Christians'. [410] In a admonition to my congregation I made a stand against both attempts. This led to several actions of persecution... By secret consultations we could win about 80 per cent of our pastors for resistance and a clear Christian preaching, based on the Old as well as the New Testament... I do not know of any case in which members of my Church co-operated in the persecution of the Jews. Unfortunately there are no documentary proofs of this, because of the atmosphere of the time. During the fascist dictatorship in Rumania censorship existed, which prevented publication of statements on behalf of the Jews. <179> I could not, for instance, publish my warning mentioned above nor send it by mail. Copies of it had to be passed on from hand to hand. Similarly, as a precaution, I had to destroy my archives during the persecution. I myself no longer have a copy." [411] I requested Dr. Safran to comment on this letter. He replied: "Concerning the attitude of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Rumania towards my co-religionists in distress during the period of Nazi oppression, I must tell you that we did not receive any help or comfort from this Church in our terrible suffering, not even a token of human compassion. In 1942, in order to request his intervention on our behalf, I intended to go to the Metropolitan of the Orthodox Rumanian Church, Mgr. Balan, whose residence was in Sibiu, where also was the Centre of the Evangelical Church. I was warned, however, that the members of this Church living in Sibiu were capable of betraying me to the Gestapo - with which they maintained direct relations - in order to prevent me from approaching Mgr. Balan." [412] The letter from Bishop Mueller seems to suggest that there existed a kind of "Confessing Church" in Rumania. If this name is correct for the group mentioned by him, it should be added that the existence of this "Confessing Church in Rumania" was not, contrary to what can be said about the Confessing Church in Germany, a very manifest phenomenon. Apparently its existence was not manifest to Dr. Safran. Bishop Staedel "tried to follow the policy of the German Christians". He certainly matched them in anti-Semitic heresies. 29 BULGARIA a. The Preliminary Phase Bulgaria was part ally, part satellite of Germany. In September, 1940, it acquired southern Dobrudja from Roumania. In March, 1941, the German army was admitted to Bulgaria. The Germans took Macedonia from Yugoslavia, Thrace from Greece, and handed them over to Bulgaria. <180> The number of Jews in Bulgaria at the end of 1939 amounted to 50,000. Approximately 15,000 more were added to the Bulgarian power sphere in the newly won territories. [413] The "Law for the Protection of the Nation'; containing provisions for the definition, expropriation and concentration of the Jews, was adopted by a majority of the Parliament at the end of December 1, 1940, and promulgated on January 21, 1941. In August, 1942, wearing the yellow star was made compulsory for the entire Jewish population. At the same time Belev was appointed as Bulgarian Commissioner for Jewish Affairs. On November 15, 1940, the "Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Church" sent a letter of Protest to the Prime Minister (Filov), with a copy to the Speaker of the Parliament. The letter was signed by the Deputy Chairman of the Holy Synod, Metropolitan Neophyte. It read as follows: "The Bulgarian Church has always kept a faithful and watchful eye on the destiny of the Bulgarian people throughout its existence. She has always had an unbroken link with its destiny, and shared in its wishes and longings, its joy and sorrow, its pain, its misfortunes and ideals. This concern of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church for the Bulgarian people was strongest in days of trial and danger. In such days she did everything in her power to prevent the nation from making big mistakes, as it was capable of doing, and to protect it from the dangers and calamities that threatened it. And whenever the warning voice of the national Church was heeded our people was kept from major disasters. On the other hand, when it ignored the warning voice of the Church, our people underwent danger and suffering. The Bulgarian Church follows with great satisfaction the efforts of our people and those of the Bulgarian authorities to protect the people and the fatherland from dangers that lie in wait for them from different quarters. Therefore, now too, the national Church is very glad to note that the Government is preparing a 'Law for the Protection of the Nation', to protect our people and everything Bulgarian from such dangers. The Church considers it her duty, however, precisely for the benefit of the nation, to draw the attention of the competent authorities to several defects in the proposed law, which could have bad consequences, and which also touch the Church as a divine institution, whose duty it is to watch over all her spiritual children and cause the will of God to rule in the cause of righteousness and mercy among human beings and the nations... <181> Let no account be taken of laws against the Jews as a national minority, but let purposeful steps be taken against all the real dangers to the spiritual, cultural, economical, public and political life of the Bulgarian people, from whatever direction these dangers come." [414] It is typical of this letter that most of its contents could also have been written by any anti-fascist political, party, instead of by a Church. Early in 1941, it became known that the "Law for the Protection of the Nation" was going to be ratified. Metropolitan Stephan then called for a plenary session of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Church, which passed a resolution agreeing to send a letter of protest to the Prime Minister and to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, in which it was pointed out that: "... The principle of racialism which is the basic idea on which the above mentioned law is founded, has no justification from the point of view of the teachings of Jesus... The principle of racialism which encourages persecution and denies the rights of people, merely because of their race, in this case the Jewish race, has no justification, and therefore one cannot base the 'Law for the Protection of the Nation' on the principle of racialism. One cannot turn the 'Law for the Protection of the Nation' into a means of oppression and persecution of the Jewish minority in the land." [415] On September 9, 1942, the Metropolitan of Sofia, Stephan, preached a sermon, probably in preparation of the "Feast of the Exaltation of the Honourable and Life-giving Cross". This feast of the Orthodox Church falls on September 14. The Metropolitan declared that: "... God had punished the Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus in that He had expelled them from their country and had not given them a country of their own. And thus, God had determined the destiny of the Jews. <182> However, men had no right to exercise cruelty towards the Jews and to persecute them. Especially Christians ought to see their brothers in Jews who had accepted the Christian religion and to support them in every possible way. He stressed several times in his sermon that truly it is in God's hands to punish twice and three times, but it is forbidden for Christians to do such a thing." [416] Apparently there existed a brand of "theological" anti-Semitism in the Church of Bulgaria. Fortunately, it is difficult to state that "God had punished the Jews ... and had not given them a country of their own", since, in 1948, the State of Israel came into being. Perhaps we may consider it an encouraging fact that people who held such views of "theological" anti-Semitism, nevertheless have such an excellent record when practical help to the persecuted was proved necessary. This consideration, however, should not be used to exempt Church leaders from their duty to educate the faithful in a more Biblical and thus more humane spirit than that of Metropolitan Stephan's sermon, in 1942. b. The Attempt to Deport the Jews In January, 1943, Eichmann's representative Dannecker arrived in Bulgaria. On February 22, 1943, he concluded a written agreement with the Bulgarian Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, Belev, which provided for the deportation of 8,000 Jews from Macedonia, 6,000 from Thrace and 6,000 from Old Bulgaria. In March, deportations from the occupied Greek and Yugoslavian territories started. 11,363 Jews were deported from these regions. [417] There were personal interventions by Church leaders, and an official Protest from the Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was issued, on behalf of the Bulgarian Jews who were threatened with deportation. <183> Abraham Alphasy, who was then Head of the Jewish Community of Sofia, relates: "... At that time I went, as the Chairman of the Jewish Congregation, to Metropolitan Stephan, a man with a highly-developed sense of justice, who was a faithful friend of the Jews. When I informed him about the preparations to deport the group of Jews to Germany and requested his intervention, he asked me from whom I had received this information. I replied that it was from a reliable source but for obvious reasons I could not reveal it. Then he immediately dressed and went to the palace of King Boris. The King, who guessed for what reason the Metropolitan had come, sent a message informing him that he was ill and could not receive him. The Metropolitan intimated, as he himself told me, that he would not leave the palace before he had seen the King. Finally, the King was compelled to receive him. The Metropolitan requested him to cancel the order to deliver the Jews to the Germans. The Metropolitan told him that, in the event that they would assault the Jews in order to send them to Germany, he would give instructions to open the gates of the churches and monasteries. They would give the Jews shelter. 'In this situation the King was compelled to promise to do as requested,' the Metropolitan told me..." [418] We quote the following from the testimony of Joseph Geron, who served as head of the Jewish Community in Sofia, and afterwards became the Chairman of the Union of Jewish Congregations in Bulgaria: "... Continuing, the witness gave details about united action with the head of the Church in Sofia, Metropolitan Stephan, by whom he was received three times. Dr. Kalmi, one of the leaders of Jewry, kept in touch with the general secretary of the Holy Synod, the body authorized to direct religious affairs in Bulgaria. Thanks to these contacts a meeting between the King and representatives of the Church took place concerning the rescue of the Jews... During his first meeting with the head of the Church in Sofia, the Metropolitan Stephan, he had said to him among other things: 'Cannot the Bulgarian Church do something similar to what the Catholic Church and the Pope himself are doing for the Jews, with an action for their rescue?' To this Stephan answered that the Bulgarian Church would follow the example of the Catholic Church and would do, and allow to be done, everything possible on behalf of the Jews..." [419] <184> In March, 1943, Metropolitan Stephan called for a plenary session of the Holy Synod which was held April 2, 1943. He informed all the Metropolitans of the danger that was threatening Bulgarian Jewry. The Metropolitans unanimously decided to send a letter of Protest to the Prime Minister, Filov, and to the Minister of the Interior and of Religions. The letter read as follows: The Law for the Protection of the Nation "The idea of passing a Law for the Protection of the Nation which would annul dangers to our people and our state, on which the national, spiritual and moral unity of the Bulgarian people is founded, was accepted by our Holy Orthodox Church, which is the eternal guardian of the destiny of the Bulgarian people, and which knows better than others, from bitter historical experience, what it would mean to our people to be divided by false religious, national and economic teaching, and to be exploited by any minority. The need to restrain such disintegrating political and religious-sectarian ideas, has always existed in our country, as it also exists now. To-day, too, when the new destiny of our people is being decided, it is more than ever necessary to limit, with the help of the law, disintegrating factors in our land and, to harness them to the building of the healthy spiritual powers of our people and, to guarantee economic opportunities for every Bulgarian. However, already when this Law for the Protection of the Nation was made, the Holy Synod of our Church gave warning and begged that it should not be only based on the existing foundations and concepts, because in that case it would not meet the great objective standing before it: to safeguard against disintegrating influences and, to unite the Bulgarian people in a spiritual entity. The Law for the Protection of the Nation was created with the express purpose of limiting the Jewish minority; the main concept of the law is based on racialism. At that time the Holy Synod informed the Government, that the principle of racialism cannot be justified from the point of view of the Christian doctrine, being contrary to the fundamental message of the Christian Church, in which all who believe in Jesus Christ are men and women of equal worth. 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus' (Gal. 3, 28). The principle of racialism, according to which certain members of the community can be persecuted, restricted and deprived of their rights only because they belong to a certain race, in this case the Jewish race, cannot be justified from the standpoint of Christian ethics. Therefore the Church emphatically demands that the Law for the Protection of the Nation shall not be based mainly on the principles of racialism, but on those of spiritual wholeness and the protection of our people, so that it may safeguard them from those disintegrating influences which affect spiritual and religious values, and also from economic financial exploitation. <185> They did not listen to the voice of our Holy Synod. We now see, that the Law for the Protection of the Nation, nearly two years after its promulgation, instead of meeting its great task of safeguarding the Nation from damaging and disintegrating influences, and uniting its creative, healthy, spiritual and economic powers into a spiritual and moral unity, has turned into a means of restricting and persecuting the Jewish minority in our country." Christians of Jewish Origin "Many times our Holy Synod has requested in writing the honourable Government, from the promulgation of the Law until to-day, to ease the restricting passages of the Law against Christians of Jewish origin, and against the Jews in general. Until now both the written requests and the interventions of the Holy Synod have remained unanswered. Neither has any alleviation in the fate of the Jewish minority been granted. The Christians of Jewish origin are still forced to wear the star with the six points, the symbol of the Jewish religion, and they pay taxes to the Jewish consistory; in fact this is a gross profanation of our holy Orthodox religion, in as much as they have been baptized and received into the Church, some of them long before there was any word at all about the Law for the Protection of the Nation. In spite of our repeated requests to exempt them - what insults they have to bear as Christians - there has been no alleviation whatsoever." The Jewish Minority "Neither has there been any easing in the situation of the Jewish minority as a whole. Quite the contrary, restrictions are increasing daily. It has gone so far that these citizens of our country are deprived of the most elementary rights, and the Department for Jewish Affairs is free to do with them as it wishes; sending them to camps and deporting them from the country. Our people, with soul and conscience, mind and conviction, cannot tolerate injustice, cruelty and violence against anybody. It cannot accept what is being done now to the Jewish minority. Its human and Christian conscience is perplexed. The Holy Synod has also received requests from different quarters - from leading citizens who are outstanding Bulgarians, from well-known businessmen who love their fatherland, from Bulgarian mothers - to demand righteous and a humane treatment of the Jewish minority in the country. The Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Church cannot ignore its divine command and its holy duty. It must, according to the teaching of the Gospel concerning love of one's neighbour, raise a compassionate and defending voice in aid of the suffering sand wronged people; it must beg, guide and convince, so that the measures in general against the Jews may cease or at least be eased. God's law, which transcends all human laws, definitely obliges us not to be indifferent in the face of the sufferings of innocent people, of whatever race. The majority of our people also place their relationship with the suffering Jewish minority on this biblical and humane foundation. <186> Understandably our Holy Synod, as we have already stressed in another letter to the honourable Government, does not deny the right of the Bulgarian authorities to preserve the security of the State and to take all steps to safeguard this security; to persecute, to restrict, to punish. But the Holy Synod is charged with the divine duty to remind the Government that these steps must be taken with justice and in a humane spirit, so that they may surely attain their aim and be effective and lasting for the protection of the State. Until now, a historical line of justice and integrity has been the sure means for the protection of our people and our State. On these eternal foundations we also base our national and righteous demands, side along our hopes. The Bulgarian people as a whole has always, until now, been just and tolerant. Our nation, although it has suffered more than all the nations, does not love, nor tolerate, violence and cruelty We have this name and by it we are known amongst the other nations. We have realized our national aspirations, precisely because we knew they were just; and we wanted justice, both for ourselves and for others. May we Bulgarians, who have longed so much for a fair and decent attitude towards ourselves, now forsake our strongest weapon? The Bulgarian Orthodox Church fears that, if we destroy the eternal foundation - the right to live as free men and the divine commandment to be just - there no longer will be left to us, as a small people, any other strong support for our existence. The Bulgarian State must, therefore, abide by these truths, and apply them to all its subjects, who are guiltless (except for the fact that they were born in Bulgaria, but not of Bulgarian parents). A divine command and divine justice cannot be disregarded. The Holy Synod, meeting in the special session of April 2, of this year, has decided - after considering its deep concern for the honour and future of the Bulgarian people, and its responsibility before God - to inform you that the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, as a national and divine institution, cannot agree to principles such as racialism, in which it is possible to foment hatred and to indulge in violence and cruelty. It cannot accept the principle that any race be deprived of the human right to live, since this right is in accordance with the fundamental principles of Christian religion and morality. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church is of the opinion that she cannot deny help and protection to the persecuted and oppressed. If she were to refuse such help, she would be unfaithful to herself. In this case our Holy Church was asked for help, by the Jews as well as by Christian Bulgarians, in order to improve the fate of the Jews in general. The Church does not deny and even especially stresses the duty and the right of the honourable Government to take the necessary steps to protect the people and the State from all dangers. However, she must stress the duty of the State to abide by the principles of justice and the Christian Gospel." Three Requests "In consideration, therefore, the Holy Synod has decided to request you urgently: <187> 1. Not to deprive the Christians of Jewish origin and the Jews of our country in general of the elementary rights of human beings and of citizens; not to deprive them of the right to live in the country and of the possibility to work and to live as human beings. 2. The restricting decrees regarding the Jews must be both eased and not be enforced too strictly. 3. To cancel the unjustifiable obligation whereby Christians of Jewish origin wear both the Christian cross and the Jewish star, and whereby they pay taxes to the Jewish community. The Bulgarian Church considers herself especially obliged to raise her voice for the protection of the Christians of Jewish origin, who have cut themselves off from the Jewish community and who have been received into the bosom of the Bulgarian Church. She cannot accept that these Christians wear the symbol of the Jewish religion and that they pay taxes to the Jewish religious community, or that they be deported from their fatherland. In this case the Church cannot help but recall to mind the words of our Lord: 'and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again' (Matthew 7, 2), and with concern raise her voice in warning. We pray that God's blessing may be upon you, and fervently praying in the name of Jesus, we remain,..." [420] Unfortunately, this Protest complained that "Christians of Jewish origin are still forced to wear the star with the six points", stating that "this is a gross profanation of our holy Orthodox religion". It also defended the Jews in general, stating that "the principle of racialism cannot be justified from the point of view of the Christian doctrine, being contrary to the fundamental message of the Christian Church." However, much of the argumentation was still national, rather than religious. Typical is the expression: "The Holy Synod,... after considering its deep concern for the honour and future of the Bulgarian people, and its responsibility before God... (in that order!). Absence of sound theology as regards the position of the Jewish people, combined with national considerations, is especially dangerous when one considers that (contrary to the case in Bulgaria) the national interest does not require to stand up for the persecuted Jews. <188> After meetings had been held between the Metropolitan Stephan and Jewish businessmen, it was deemed essential to bring about a meeting between King Boris and the Holy Synod. However, the meeting did not take place immediately. This moved the Metropolitan of Vidin, Neophyte, the Chairman of the Holy Synod, to appeal to members of his flock (and intentionally, wide publicity was given to this letter) expressing opposition to the anti-Jewish measures. The Metropolitan Stephan, for his part, preached in the churches of Sofia, condemning the anti-Semitic policy of the Government and thus defending the Jews of his town. "In that period, nobody in Bulgaria could compare with the higher clergy in courage. As a result of this outcry, the Government was compelled to arrange an audience between the King, the Cabinet and the higher clergy. The meeting took place on April 15, 1943, in the royal palace in Sofia. King Boris, the Metropolitan Stephan, Neophyte, Kyril, the Prime Minister Filov and others participated in the discussions in which the clergy defended the Jews with great courage." [421] In May, 1943, the Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, Belev, submitted to King Boris two alternate plans: one for the deportation of all Bulgarian Jews to Poland, the other for their evacuation to the country. The King chose the latter. The expulsion order was published on May 25. [422] The Jews expelled from the cities were housed with Jewish families in the country and in schools. They were never deported from Bulgaria. On May 23, instructions concerning the deportations from Sofia began to be received by the Jews. Rabbis Daniel Ben Zion and Dr. Hanael, together with the lawyer Adolf Chaymov and Mr. Menachem Moshonov, decided to go to Metropolitan Stephan, who had called for them, in order to beg his intervention for the cancellation of the deportation decision. Mr. Moshonow relates: <189> "... We went to the Metropolitan at 8,30 a.m. He wanted to know what we were doing and we told him everything in detail. He received us early and apparently was greatly concerned about our situation, because he was still in his dressing gown. After he had listened to us, he calmed us and promised to continue to do everything in his power to prevent the deportation of the Jews from the country. Metropolitan Stephan added that at the ceremony in honour of the feast of the saints Kyril and Methodius, which was taking place on that same day, May 24, 1943, he would meet the King and would speak to him again about that same matter. He seemed to be very moved and full of hope. He stressed anew that at one of his last meetings with the King, the latter, in the presence of the ecclesiastical high official Kyril, had specifically stated that the Jews would not be deported from Bulgaria. When we parted from the Metropolitan, he reassured us saying: 'Go and calm your brethren, tell them from me that the King has promised, and a King's word is not reversed'." [423] Contrary to the situation in Rumania, the Church leaders in Bulgaria could indeed claim to express the feelings of "the majority of our people", [424] when they stood up for the Jews. Moreover, the great majority of the Bulgarians belonged to the Orthodox Church. Seldom, however, can a Church leader afford to address his King as Metropolitan Stephan addressed King Boris, in the telephone conversation which is related by Solomon Mashiach. His visits to Metropolitan Stephan probably took place on May 25 and 26, 1943. <190> "I went to the residence of prelate Stephan. He gave me a kind welcome and ordered that we should not be disturbed. He locked the door and I began to tell him our troubles. After he had listened to me with emotion and attention for nearly half an hour, he said: 'This I cannot permit as long as I live. There are many among the Jewish people who have rescued Bulgaria; they sacrificed much on behalf of the nation. I shall speak with the King immediately. I wish you to hear our conversation.' The prelate took the telephone and was connected with the King. After an exchange of words of no interest as far as the Jews are concerned, the prelate said: 'Boris, my son, I am not at all satisfied about you. One hears lately of many things done to our Israelite brethren. Think very hard [425]; it is unworthy of you and of the Bulgarian people.' The King asked: 'But what - what did you hear and from whom?' 'Things have come to my knowledge which I would rather not believe. They are a disgrace and shame to you and to the Bulgarian people. I cannot explain them to you by telephone. If you wish, come to me, or I shall come to you at once, to see with my own eyes what your reaction will be.' The King began to stammer and to excuse himself, saying that he could not meet Stephan on that day. He then made an appointment with him for the next day. I whispered to prelate Stephan: 'That will be too late'. Then the prelate said to him: 'Boris, let it not be too late. Pull yourself together, my son.' 'It will not be too late, I promise you. To-morrow we shall see one another.' Thus ended the first conversation. Prelate Stephan said to me: 'Come to-morrow morning, between 9 and 10. He is trying to give me the slip but I shall not permit him to bring such a disgrace, even if I would lose my head..." "Next morning I again went to the Metropolitan Stephan to hear the outcome. He immediately took the telephone and was connected with the palace. The King's Councillor (Dr. Neshev, if I am not mistaken) replied. He said that the King had been urgently called away and had not intimated where he was going or when he would return. Metropolitan Stephan got very angry and said: 'Tell me where the little king is, you milksop. Tell others that you do not know, but beware if you continue to be stubborn'. Dr. Neshev apologized, saying he had been instructed not to reveal that the King was in his palace Krichim. He begged the Metropolitan not to divulge this information, as it would cause him trouble. Metropolitan Stephan promised to say nothing, but he asked Dr. Neshev: 'Did he expressly instruct you that you should not even reveal his whereabouts to me'? Dr. Neshev replied in the affirmative." <191> "Metropolitan Stephan was very angry and said to me that the King would regret his deed very much. 'At one time I saved his father's head and to him I gave the throne; now this is his reward to me.' In a great perturbed state of mind he took the telephone and spoke to the King in Krichim palace. I heard, word for word, the following: 'Boris, you forget yourself. You elude me and hide. You know that for me there are no secrets under the sun. You know that at one time I saved your father's head and your throne. But it is doubtful whether I, after these acts of yours, shall be able to save your head. Give the matter serious thought and uproot this demoniac influence from your heart.' He then put down the receiver. Afterwards the telephone began to ring. I said to Metropolitan Stephan: 'They are calling you'. He replied: 'I know; he wants to speak to me over the telephone but I shall not answer him unless he will come personally to apologize to me. You will see that he will not dare to cause you evil.'..." [426] The last recorded activity of Metropolitan Stephan on behalf of the Jews is a telegram sent to the King, in which was written: 'Do not persecute, so that you may not be persecuted. With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. I know, Boris, that from heaven God will keep watch over your actions.'" [427] Another outstanding leader of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church who intervened on behalf of the Jews was the Metropolitan of Plovdiv, Kyril. Belev had ordered the internment of the "influential Jews" in several cities. On March 10, 1943, some of the Jews in Plovdiv were arrested. Early in the morning of that day, Kyril sent a telegram to the King and called upon the representatives of the regime, to inform the government that from that very moment, because of the action against the Jews, he (Kyril) had ceased to be a loyal citizen and would act according to the dictates of his conscience. [428] <192> Leviev relates another incident in which Metropolitan Kyril was the hero: "It is fitting to bear in mind, as a token of the personal courage of Metropolitan Kyril, the date of May 20, 1944. Early in the morning, when it was still dark, he was awakened by a Jewish boy, who had been sent to inform the Metropolitan that during that night large groups of Jews had again been arrested. The Metropolitan went to the Jewish quarter, where many Jews were gathered in a square; Rabbi Samuel, who was wholly dedicated to his people, was at their head, giving them courage. The appearance of the Metropolitan was received by the Jews with relief and hope. The Metropolitan immediately went to the district office where he only found Kolev, the deputy district officer, of whom he demanded particulars about the extent and the meaning of the arrests. Kyril draw his attention to the dangerous consequences which might result from the confusion, created in the mind of the public, and who were not likely to remain inactive in the face of renewed injustice and violence. It was explained to him that about 2,000 Jews had been arrested because a group of five Jewish youngsters had joined the underground movement. The Metropolitan demanded that they set the arrested Jews free; otherwise great public disturbances would occur. After having obtained a promise in this respect, he went to the police station, where the arrested people were held, and encouraged them. He met with the police commander and with his assistants, and pointed out to them that the entire public was following with attention the fate of the arrested Jews. The arrested people were set free at the end of that day." [429] It appears that an important factor influencing Church leaders in Bulgaria to act was their genuine concern. Thus they were easily accessible whenever their help was needed. It seems to be a small feature in the over-all picture, but it is significant: Kyril got up early in the morning when it was still dark and rushed to the rescue of the arrested Jews in Plovdiv; Stephan received Jewish leaders when he was still in his dressing gown. Jewish leaders in Israel as well as Jews in Bulgaria who now live under a Communist government, have expressed their appreciation of the help rendered by the Church in Bulgaria. We quote the following from the testimony of Joseph Geron, who served as head of the Jewish community in Sofia, and afterwards became the Chairman of the Union of Jewish Congregations in Bulgaria: <193> "... The witness stressed the fact that the Bulgarian Church, on many occasions and at different periods, revealed understanding and sympathy for the Jews, and took important actions for their rescue... Concerning the Bulgarian Church, her attitude to the Jews was always very correct, but during the events which accompanied Jewish life under the rule of Prime Minister Filov, the Church revealed an attitude of open sympathy, and exercised strong moral pressure on all the decisive factors in Jewish affairs... What then were the factors that, directly and indirectly, helped in the rescue of the Jews of Bulgaria? One may answer that there were collective and individual factors. Among the former, the Orthodox Bulgarian Church, with its leaders Stephan, Neophyte and Paisly, take the first place..." [430] Of course, in Bulgaria just as in other countries there were many factors helping to influence the outcome. King Boris and the Cabinet were in a position to withstand German pressure to some extent if they wished so. The victories of the Soviet armies made their mark on the minds of the people. It appears, however, that the activities of the leaders of the Orthodox Church were an important contribution to the positive outcome. All the Jews of Bulgaria survived. Yet, there remains one nagging question: did the Orthodox Church of Bulgaria try to render any aid to the more than 11,000 Jews who were deported from the Greek and Yugoslavian territories occupied by Bulgarian troops? It seems that they did not, but perhaps there was no time to intervene. [431] 30 HUNGARY a. The Preliminary Phase In November, 1938, Hungary annexed some Slovakian districts and part of Sub Carpathian Ruthenia. In March, 1939, the remainder of the latter territory was annexed. In August, 1940, Hungary occupied Northern Transylvania. In April, 1941, part of Yugoslavia was occupied. In its enlarged state, Hungary had a Jewish population of 750,000 within its borders. [432] <194> On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded Russia and the Hungarians joined forces with the Germans. On August 8, the third anti-Jewish law was enacted. [433] This law defined who was to be considered a Jew, according to the well-known principles of the Nuremberg laws. "Bishop Ravasz, the leading speaker of the representatives of the Reformed Church, after having delivered his address of refusal, read a solemn declaration signed by all the Bishops, and by four general elders, in which the signatories protested against the passage of the law and disclaimed all responsibility for its passage." [434] I have tried to obtain a copy of Bishop Ravasz's address of refusal and of the declaration mentioned above. Dr. Elek Mathe, of the Reformed Church of Hungary, replied to my request: "Unfortunately there is no available copy of the address referred to in your letter...; even less, newspaper cuttings, for the simple reason that at that time the daily press was under strict government control and the text of such an address could not be printed. [435] In the summer of 1941, the Hungarian government ordered an inquiry into the citizenship of all the Jewish residents of Northern Hungary. 11,000 Jews unable to give satisfactory proof of their citizenship were deported to Galicia, where a systematic extermination was carried out by the German troops. "Baroness Edith Weisz called on Bishop Ravasz, and asked for his intervention. The Bishop requested an audience with the Regent, and appearing before him, informed him of the situation and asked that the Minister of Interior be instructed to give due regard to humanitarian viewpoints. <195> Bishop Ravasz then called on Francis Kereszres-Fischer, Minister of the Interior, who himself later on was carried away by the Germans, warning him that after the conclusion of the war an account would have to be given before world Protestantism, of the fate meted out to the Jews. He requested the adoption of such measures as would enable him to appear before any foreign Church body in future days, with a clear conscience regarding these matters. An end was put to all abuses and the lives of many persons were saved." [436] Bishop Ravasz thus tried to do something on behalf of non-Hungarian Jews, this in contrast to the tendency of those in other lands who rendered resistance only when Jews of their own nationality were deported. From March, 1942, to March, 1944, Kallay was Prime Minister. His Cabinet withstood German pressure to deport the Jews. b. Mass Deportations On March 17, 1944, Regent Horthy was "invited" to a conference with Hitler, who informed him of the imminent occupation of Hungary by German troops. Horthy had to agree to Kallay's dismissal. The aerodromes of Budapest were seized by a German task force. A new Government was appointed under Sztojay. The Arrow Cross leader, Laszlo Baky, was appointed Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Interior, and Laszlo Endre Administrative Under-secretary and expert on Jewish affairs. Veesenmayer was appointed as Ambassador to Hungary and as Plenipotentiary of the German Reich. Eichmann came to Budapest at the end of March. On March 29, 1944, it was decreed that all Jews must wear the yellow star. Concentration of all the Jews took place at a rapid pace. In May, the first deportation trains left for Auschwitz. At the end of June, 381,661 Jews had been deported. On July 9, 1944, the total number was 437,402. The evacuation of the Jews of Budapest was planned for July. <196> Concerted pressure was exerted on Regent Horthy to stop the deportations. Switzerland and Sweden made urgent requests. The Turkish and Spanish governments also intervened. The Papal nuncio was, according to Sztojay, calling "several times" a day. On July 6, Sztojay informed Veesenmayer that the Regent had given the order that the deportations should stop. In fact, the stoppage occurred in the middle of July and it lasted until October. On April 3, 1944, Bishop Laszlo Ravasz addressed a letter of protest to the Minister of the Interior. In this document Bishop Ravasz did not object to the stigmatization of the Jews, but to the regulations that required members of the Reformed Church to wear the star of David. [437] At the same time he called on Ambrozy, the Regent's chef de cabinet, and asked to be granted an audience with the Regent. He was informed that "the Regent regards himself a prisoner and will not receive anyone". Subsequently Bishop Ravasz called on the Minister of Interior, who asked him to return at 7 p.m. the same day. "Jaross, who kept the Bishop waiting till 8 p.m., agreed, after a heated argument, to exempt certain Church dignitaries and persons of Jewish origin who had contracted mixed marriages." [438] On April 6, the General Assembly of the Reformed Church addressed a petition to the Prime Minister, urging him to be mindful of the claims of humanitarian thinking, and demanding the extension of granting exemptions. "All the activities carried on by the Churches in these days, centred around the Jewish question. However, as the government was but a mere tool in the hands of the Nazi regime, expressly antagonistic toward the Churches, it paid little regard to the action of the Churches. The results reached accordingly were rather meagre. Yet, meagre as they were, they meant the saving of many lives. The most important result was the exemption secured for members of mixed marriages. This one measure alone meant exemption from the wearing of the yellow star and its fearful consequences for several thousand families <197> The Churches already at that time demanded the formation of a body authorised to grant exemptions whenever individual merits made the granting of the same justified. This demand, although not granted in its original form, led later on the recognition of the Regent's right to grant exemption, through which channel some twenty thousand persons were given exemption. [439] Under the influence of the news reaching the capital, Bishop Ravasz asked the Regent - a Protestant - for an audience, which was granted on April 12, 1944. "He entreated the Regent to abstain from any action in connection with the Jewish question, for which at some future date he might have to bear the responsibility, pointing out that the blame for cruelties, should these occur, would be laid at his door and that he would render himself liable to trial for same. 'The desperadoes,' said the Bishop, 'will not fail to make an attempt to have their own accounts paid out of the moral capital of others'. Horthy reassured the Bishop." [440] A few days later, however, Baron Zsigmond Perenyi, President of the Upper House, called upon Bishop Ravasz and informed him of his sad experiences in Northern Hungary. On April 28, Bishop Ravasz was again received in audience by the Regent, to whom he passed on the information gathered by Perenyi. Horthy's answer was as follows: "Only a few hundred thousands Jews were scheduled to leave the country with the labour battalions. No harm will befall them, not a hair of their heads will be touched. They will enjoy the same treatment as the nearly hundred thousand Hungarian labourers employed abroad?..." The Regent admitted that complaints had been received from Nyiregyhaza, whereupon he had sent for the Minister of Interior, Jaross, and had asked for an investigation to be instituted. Jaross had charged his two Under- Secretaries with the investigation, and had since reported that a stop had been put to the scandalous treatment. [441] On May 9, 1944, Bishop Ravasz called on Prime Minister Sztojay and protested against the atrocities committed against the Jews. <198> "He presented the petition of the Reformed Assembly referring to the horrors which occurred during the concentration of the Jews at Marosvisihely, Kolozsvir, Kassa and Nagybanya. The Prime Minister seemed to have been informed about the situation and declared that he condemned the brutalities, stating that he had given instructions for the separation to be carried out drastically, but humanely. "The Jews are a race", he said, "and thus the regulation of the Jewish problem is not a question of religion, but of race". [442] On May 17, 1944, the Assembly of the Reformed Church sent a letter to Prime Minister Sztojay in which two matters were emphasized. First, it recalled the promises which the Prime Minister had made regarding amelioration of the cruel measures and, second, it protested against the segregation of the Jews which had already begun. "We are compelled to declare that we most resolutely disapprove the segregation of persons classified as Jews. We are of the opinion that the measures adopted by Christian Society in times past in this direction, must not be repeated... The second thing which we have to mention is as yet an anxious presentiment. Signs are not lacking to show that, besides segregation, the deportation of the Jews beyond the country's boundaries is also in preparation. We have to call your Excellency's attention to the tragic developments which mark the conclusion of Jewish deportations in other countries, and we beg your Excellency to do all that can be done in order to impede such happenings and to avert responsibility for such acts from the Royal Government and from the whole nation." [443] Bishop Ravasz then tried to join forces with the Roman Catholic Church and informed the Chairman of the Holy Cross Society (which was charged with the protection and care of Catholics of Jewish origin) of his willingness to make the introductory steps for a united action. On June 15, 1944, he sent a letter to the Primate, Justinian Serkdi, saying that he had already prepared the draft for a memorandum (of which a copy was included) to be sent to the Government, as "a final earnest warning" before the Churches should "voice their solemn declaration in protest, in the presence of the country and the world". No reply from Primate Seredi, however, was received. [444] <199> As nothing could be learned from the press, the authorities of the Church sent a young pastor to Kassa, the largest ghetto. He returned from his trip of inspection, reporting that, notwithstanding the protestations and promises of the Prime Minister, the deportation of Jews had begun. Therefore pastors were dispatched to carry the text of the memorandum that had been prepared, to the nine Bishops, in order to obtain their consent. After they had signed it, a deputation presented it to the Prime Minister, on June 23, 1944. Its text was as follows: "In our memorandum of May 19 we mentioned, with foreboding, that there was a possibility of the deportation of the Hungarian Jews to an unknown destination. Since then information has reached us, according to which Jews have been crossing the frontier in sealed wagons day after day, disappearing from our sight, bound for an unknown destination. Each of these wagons contained about 70 to 80 persons of different sex, age and social standing, of both Israelite and Christian faith. The persons deported, as well as, their relatives are convinced that this journey is leading to final destruction. The solution of the Jewish question is a political task. We now are not dealing with politics. The execution of this solution is a great work of administration. We are not experts on that. But the moment the solution of the Jewish question challenges the eternal laws of God, we are in duty bound to raise our voice, condemning, but at the same time imploring, the head of the responsible Government. We cannot act otherwise. We have been commanded by God to preach His eternal Gospel, to give evidence of the unalterable laws of His moral order for this generation, whether people like it or not. Although humble and sinful men, we, in the bondage of faith and obedience to this heavenly command, possess the right to give evidence of the Word of God and to condemn every action which outrages human dignity, justice or charity, and which loads upon the head of our people the horrible responsibility of innocently shed blood. As Bishops of the two Protestant Churches we protest against devout members of our congregations being punished merely for being considered Jews from a racial point of view. They are being punished for a Jewish mentality from which they, and in many cases their ancestors, have solemnly disconnected themselves. Their lives, as regards Christian spirit and morality, are not considered in the least. <200> Finally we, as Hungarians and as clergymen, repeatedly implore Your Excellency to put an end to the cruelties, even disapproved of by yourself, and to enforce the declaration made by a prominent member of your Cabinet, protesting against the very idea of a senseless and cruel destruction of the Jews. We do not wish to aggravate your Excellency's political position; we even wish to promote the solution of the great task you have taken upon yourself. For this reason, for the time being, we do not carry our protest before the Hungarian public, although this course will incur for us the reproach and accusation of the leading bodies of the Christian Churches. Should, however, our intervention prove ineffective, we will be obliged to testify before the congregations of our Church and the Protestants of the world, that we did not suppress the message of God. As a last attempt we appeal, through the kindness of your Hungarian heart and the Christian feelings of your Excellency, to the leniency of the Royal Hungarian Government. We desire that this, the most painful manifestation in our whole history hitherto, should become the case of the Government." [445] The Bishops were afraid of "the reproach and accusation of the leading bodies of the Christian Churches", in the event of remaining silent. Apparently the anticipated verdict of Churches in other countries, and of the World Council of Churches, was one of the factors which urged action. The Churches made a clear stand in this memorandum, though certainly not everything in it is of prophetic power. The deputation submitting this memorandum, which in its way was a kind of ultimatum, supported it by word of mouth. Prime Minister Sztojay answered bluntly: "The two Secretaries of State of the Ministry of Interior have reported that, except in certain cases, no atrocities have been committed. Germany has need of man power, and the Jews are being taken there for labour purposes." In their reply, the members of the Protestant deputation pointed out to the Prime Minister that deported babies, pregnant women and old people were certainly of no use for that purpose. Sztojay's answer to this was that the authorities did not want the Jews working abroad to feel anxious about the families they had left behind, nor the families to worry as to the fate of the deported Jewish men. <201> The deputation proposed that the Churches be permitted to care for children whose parents had been selected for such "labour purposes". The Prime Minister consented to this request, but asked that it be submitted in writing. The deputation immediately composed and handed over the written request. It was never answered. [446] A Confidential Report sent by the Hungarian Protestants to the Secretary of the World Council of Churches, Geneva, states: "... Not a single line on all this has been published, either in the ecclesiastical or in the daily press; for when the first Memorandum was personally handed over, the Government made it a condition that the whole intervention be handled with the utmost discretion and no press-comments whatsoever were to be made: in this case the Government were willing on their part to do everything possible; if press-comments were made it would appear as though the Government, considering the echoes in the press, had taken alleviating i.e. modifying measures in their sudden fear. The date to answer the last Memorandum expires to-morrow and if no adequate essential measures are taken by then, uniform sermons and a strongly worded pastoral letter will be read from every pulpit on next Sunday." [447] No answer came to the Memorandum. Thus Bishops Ravasz and Kapi decided to address an open declaration to the congregations and to the Protestant Christianity of the world: "We request all our brethren, the pastors belonging to our communions, that they read the following message to the congregations at the conclusion of next Sunday's morning service: To all congregations of the Hungarian Reformed Church and of the Hungarian Lutheran Church, Grace unto you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. Brethren in Christ! The undersigned Bishops of the Hungarian Reformed Church and of the Hungarian Lutheran Church address you and inform you, in the presence of God, of the steps taken before the Royal Hungarian Government in the name of the Protestant Churches. <202> We notify the congregations that the two Protestant Churches, after several proposals both by word of mouth and in writing, on June 21st presented to the Royal Hungarian Prime Minister a solemn memorandum of request and protest. This memorandum pointed out the more than regrettable events accompanying the concentration and deportation of Jews, whether Christian or not. After having stated that the solution of the Jewish question violates eternal Divine laws, the memorandum continued its proposals as follows: 'We have been commanded by God to preach His eternal Gospel, to give evidence of the unalterable laws of His moral order in this generation, whether people like it or not. Although humble and sinful men, we, in the bondage of faith and obedience to this heavenly command, possess the right to give evidence of the Word of God and to condemn every action which outrages human dignity, justice or charity, and which loads upon the head of our people the horrible responsibility of innocently shed blood.' At the same time we beseeched the Royal Hungarian Government to put an end to the cruelties which were also condemned by members of the Cabinet, and to enforce those declarations that protested against the very suggestion of the destruction of the Jews, while at the same time they issued orders that the Jews should be treated humanely. We were deeply afflicted when we were forced to admit that our entreaties had been in vain. We, the Bishops of the two Protestant Churches, considered it to be our duty to inform our faithful, as well as, every member of our congregation and the universal community of Christ's Holy Church of these events. We summon the congregations to repentance and the entire Hungarian nation to penitence under the mighty hand of God. Pray to Him and beseech Him to turn His mercy and His supporting Grace towards our Hungarian nation." Your loving brethren in Christ: the last Sunday in June, 1944. [448] The proclamation was lithographed and, as a necessary precaution, put into differently coloured envelopes. It was intended to post it to the two thousand clergymen in the country from different provincial post offices. At this juncture, the Minister of Religion and Education sent word by telephone that a pastoral letter of the Primate, addressed to the Bishops and priests of the Roman Catholic Church, had been intercepted and that the Government wished to have a conference with the Churches. On July 11, 1944, the Minister visited Bishop Ravasz, who was ill. "The Minister declared that the Prime Minister had promised the abolition of atrocities, the cessation of further deportations and that the isolation of the Jews would be carried out in a humane manner. 'That,' he said, 'was the agreement with the Catholic Church'. <203> He could not at that time produce it in writing, but that was the text and essential contents of the agreement with the Catholics. At great length he persuaded and threatened the sick Bishop that if they persisted in protesting in public, the Church would be 'overwhelmed', or the Government might resign, thereby paving the way for the coming into power of the Arrow Cross Party. If, however, they came to an agreement, the lives of 250,000 Budapest Jews would be saved." [449] Bishop Ravasz believed the Minister's statement regarding the agreement with the Primate, but he insisted that the clergy should, at any event, be allowed to read out a short note in the Reformed Churches. This note was immediately drafted. It reads as follows: "Reverend Pastor! We request that you read the following announcement at the conclusion of next Sunday's morning service [July, 16]: 'The Bishops of the Reformed Church of Hungary and the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church of Hungary wish to inform the congregations that in connection with the Jewish question, and particularly in the case of baptised Jews, they have repeatedly intervened with the competent Government authorities. Their endeavours in this respect are continuing'." [450] It is difficult to answer the question whether it was the right decision to cancel the public proclamation of the pastoral letter form all the pulpits. Dr. Mathe wrote to me: "... This circular [the pastoral letter] reached all the pastors, and they undoubtedly communicated its contents to most of their parishioners." [451] The deportations were stopped. The Archbishop of Canterbury addressed "the Christian people of Hungary" through the B.B.C., in July, 1944. He begged them "to do your utmost, even taking great personal risks, in order to save some if you can". [452] This appeal may have had more direct, practical effects than the short note that was read out from the pulpits. <204> c. The Terror at the End On October 15, 1944, Regent Horthy was arrested by the Germans and the new Nazi-dominated regime of Szalasi was installed. On October 20, 22,000 Jewish men were rounded up. By the end of October, 35,000 Jewish men and women had been seized. The majority of them were marched off to Austria, without food. All who fainted and fell, were killed on the spot. The 160,000 Jews who had remained in Budapest were herded into a ghetto where they were exposed to raids by German and Hungarian Nazis, and to the bombardments of the Russian guns. On December 13, 1944, the Russians stormed Budapest. On January 18, 1945, the ghetto was liberated by the Red Army. The fighting for the Buda citadel continued until February 13, 1945. After Szalasi's reign of terror had begun, Bishop Ravasz intervened in the name of the Protestant Churches. He demanded the fulfilment of five points. Three of them were in connection with the Jews: ... c. Humane methods in the treatment of Jews. Revocation of the order which, in cases of mixed marriages, empowered the non-Jewish party to obtain a divorce, and declared as Jewish the party that failed to comply with this regulation. d. The cessation of the deportations. e. Security for the lives of the Jews. On November 24, 1944, the Deputy Prime Minister replied in the name of the Government. He informed then that Szalasi had succeeded in obtaining the Fuehrer's permission to grant the following points: "No alteration to be made in the legal status of mixed marriages, the Jews to be separated from the rest of the population of Budapest, and the labour service companies to be directed towards the German frontier, because it was to be feared that they might commit atrocities in the case of a Russian occupation. When carrying out these measures, however, the principle of humanity would be respected." [453] <205> On November 26, 1944, Bishop Ravasz again wrote to the Roman Catholic Primate proposing united action. "The Primate, tired and very ill, replied that he had already intervened with Szalasi and that he did not feel like repeating the intervention in the company of others." [454] On Dec. 1, 1944, the Bishops of the Reformed and Lutheran Churches presented a note to the so-called "Leader of the Nation". "It follows from the prophetic office of Christ's Church that the servant of the Church should always raise his voice when men's acts gravely violate God's laws", wrote Bishop Ravasz. The letter stressed, that "the treatment meted out mocks God's eternal laws which prescribe humane treatment even toward one's enemies, and brings down God's anger on the head of the nation. This treatment casts a dark blot on the name of the Magyar nation which, for a thousand years, had been known to the world for its generosity and chivalry." [455] A pastoral letter issued in December, 1944, called on the pastors to pray at the services for "the scattered flock of Israel, the homeless and the persecuted." [456] On May 9, 1946, the Hungarian Reformed Church declared that "in deep humility she confesses her guilt and offence against God's honour... She had not laboured in time to warn the people and the rulers, when they embarked on a course contrary to God's laws, and she had not strongly taken her stand on the side of the innocent persecuted human beings." [457] <206> THE NEUTRAL COUNTRIES 31 SWITZERLAND a. Press Censorship Switzerland remained neutral throughout the second world war, but it was surrounded by the Axis powers and to a great extent economically dependent on them. The Swiss Government tried to avoid offending the Germans, and thus the press was forbidden to make foreign propaganda or to publish stories about atrocities committed by the warring parties, "of which the objective correctness could not be verified". Even in June, 1943, the press censorship issued the following order: "There recently appeared several articles about Jews and Polish clergy, without mentioning their source of information. It is understandable that our conscience should be moved by all such inhuman treatment, but yet we must strictly obey the instructions of the Press emergency law, which stipulates that it is our duty to suppress rumours and foreign propaganda." [458] Thus censorship imposed silence on the press concerning reports of "bloody murders of hostages and persecution of Jews". The first time, however, that, to the best of my knowledge, Church leaders in Switzerland spoke out about the persecution of the Jews during the second world war, they did so in a protest against censorship of the Press. On October 27, 1941, the following Petition was presented by the "Social Study Committee of the Swiss Reformed Pastors Union" to the Swiss Federation of Churches: <207> 1. We take the liberty of drawing the attention of the Swiss Federation of Churches, which is the spokesman of the Swiss Churches to the Federal Authorities, to the alarming position of the Evangelical Reformed Church. 2. The press-censor has repeatedly taken severe measures against men who, as representatives of the Evangelical Church, have raised their voices to inform public opinion. These measures have aroused deep and widespread concern in many circles to whose notice they have come, despite the ban on the publication of such matters, and have led to the opinion that the Evangelical Church is no longer allowed to pronounce the truth entrusted to its care... 3. We especially bear in mind the silence imposed on us by our censorship concerning the injustice of the bloody murders of hostages and the persecution of Jews. When mentioning this subject, we should certainly not shout about it from the roof tops, but under no circumstances should our sense of justice and injustice be blunted within our national conscience. Otherwise we shall invoke God's heavy punishment on our country. Therefore, we take exception to the reproach levied at us by some, that such intrepid talk of injustice by a foreign nation, is a misjudgement. 4. The apprehension we bring to your notice particularly gains alarming weight by the fact that we, as Evangelical and democratic citizens of Switzerland, have to look on while un-Christian and undemocratic ideologies and deeds cross our borders unhindered in the form of many foreign newspapers and illustrated periodicals, which are thus able to exert their influence on young and old. Does not this give rise to the impression that our highest authorities do not sufficiently recognize the danger of a moral and spiritual capitulation on our part, or consider it to be of only secondary importance? We therefore request the Federation of Churches: a. That it remonstrate with the highest responsible authorities of our country and draw their attention to the deep concern and alarm which these measures by our censorship have aroused in large circles of our Evangelical Church. b. That it publicly voice its opinion on the matter and unequivocally make known its stand, with the full weight of its authority. c. That it emphatically take a stand on behalf of all persons in our Church, whose freedom of speech is endangered or impaired, and that it encourage our Church authorities and Synods to make use of their divinely authorized right of freedom of speech. [459] On November 17, 1941, a conference of the "Swiss Protestant Relief Society for the Confessing Church in Germany" was held at Wipkingen near Zurich. It was attended by 300 churchmen from all parts of Switzerland. A Resolution regarding the Censorship of ecclesiastical publications was presented and unanimously adopted. We quote from this resolution the following: <208> "The undersigned Reformed Swiss Pastors have taken note of the following facts: That the Department for Press and Radio of the army has imposed preliminary censorship on the periodical Neue Wege, and thus has prevented its further publication; ... that the same office has demanded of the Swiss press that they refrain henceforth from taking any stand on the execution of hostages by a foreign power;... They herewith publicly protest against these measures, as they are concessions to the spirit and methods of a policy incompatible with the Reformed Confession and pernicious to the Swiss Federation. They herewith publicly declare that they are determined to continue to fulfil their duty, to declare the truth to our people, the suppression of which is attempted by these measures." One hundred pastors signed this "Protest and Declaration", which was submitted to the Federal Government and to the Army Commanders. [460] The same Conference adopted the following Resolution on "The Jewish Problem": "The Conference meeting to-day at Zurich-Wipkingen sends to the Committee of the Swiss Protestant Church Federation the urgent request that it should take action so that all the Reformed Churches in Switzerland may make a public statement on the Jewish problem. Not only the most recent deportations of the Jews, whose number and character are particularly frightful, but also certain announcements which have appeared even in the Swiss press, make it a duty for the Church, for the sake of its own members, to proclaim before the whole world: 1. That the Church, to which the Gospel of the mercy of God is entrusted, calls its members to pray for the suffering Jewish people and to do everything they can to alleviate this suffering. 2. That the Church, to which the message of the creation of man in the image of God is entrusted, condemns as a revolt against the will of God as Creator the violence which is done to the image of God in persecuting a race and humiliating it. 3. That the Church, to which the message of the Revelation of God in the people of Israel is entrusted, knows itself, as the Church of Jesus Christ, to be bound up in a special way with the fate of the Jewish nation. Because 'salvation comes of the Jews' (St. John 4, 22), anti-Semitism is incompatible with membership in the Christian Church." [461] <209> On August 30, 1942, a meeting was held of the "Young Church", attended by about 6,000 young people. Supreme Court Justice Dr. M. Wolff, who in his capacity as President of the Synod conveyed the greetings of the Church of Zurich, declared: "Switzerland is in extremely danger. One speaks of a new order in Europe, but this order is characterised by attacks on other nations; by the murdering of hostages and the persecution of Jews. This new order means a denial of the Christian faith... The best contribution the Church of Switzerland can render to-day is, to be a true Church, faithfully proclaiming the word of God. Its freedom to preach must therefore be preserved unrestrictedly. We shall be grateful for a State Church, so long as the State recognizes the Church's right to exercise its function as Watchman. Zwingli has unequivocally insisted on this. Unfortunately, the Church's function as Watchman is now being threatened by press censorship. The State must not demand that the Church should refrain from clearly distinguishing between right and wrong. The Church must now fight for its right to raise its voice against the rejection of poor refugees; in a clear "Yes" to Jesus Christ, and in a clear "No" to the dark powers of this world." [462] On October 28, 1942, Dr. Wollf said in his Opening Address to the Synod of Zurich: "... It is therefore not surprising that, when a clearer profession resulted through the awakening of the Church in recent years, its freedom of speech was often denied by political coercion, and the Church was told that it had no right to interfere in Government matters. ... The Gospel knows nothing about neutrality of opinion and nothing of a policy of false silence, advocated currently by higher circles." [463] b. Anti-Semitism within and outside Switzerland In several declarations anti-Semitism within, as well side, Switzerland was denounced unequivocally, but the name of Germany was seldom mentioned. In May, 1942, the Synodal Council of Bern published the following Declaration: <210> "Deeply concerned by the fact that hatred of the Jews is being stirred up both openly and secretly also in our country, the Council of the Evangelical Federation of Churches has requested the cantonal Church authorities to use their good offices so that our attitude as Evangelical Christians towards the Jewish question be maintained against all such plots. Our attitude towards Jewry is not based on economical or racial problems. It is not even a matter of conducting oneself humanely and decently; the question has a far deeper significance and only can be understood correctly and answered in the light of biblical teaching. Therefore above all it is essential, that we reach a Christian understanding of the Jewish question; only then shall we be able to overcome, on the basis of a deeper understanding, the common prejudices and slogans; and especially, the latent disparaging attitude towards the Jews. Wherever anti-Jewish attitudes appear within a congregation, we must not remain passive; we have an obligation to emphasize the Evangelical stand on this matter, and to admonish and counsel. Above all, we should not slacken in our intercession on behalf of the people of Israel." [464] In June, 1942, a similar Declaration was issued by the Council of Pastors in Geneva: "Our Church cannot keep silent in face of anti-Semitic propaganda which is in danger of becoming stronger in our own country. At a time when the Jews elsewhere are the victims of plunder and persecution, the Church must define her spiritual position. 1. The Apostolic message which declares that there is no longer Jew nor Greek in Jesus Christ forbids us to make any distinction in the community of the baptized. A Jew attached to the Christian Church by his conversion and baptism is a member of it on exactly the same basis as every other faithful Christian. 2. Christendom has denied the spirit of her Lord every time she has maltreated or persecuted the descendants of those for whose pardon Jesus prayed to the Father. Our obligation is to deal with all men in justice and charity on the grounds that they are indeed our brothers. 3. The race from which came the prophets and the apostles, and to which Jesus Christ belonged, deserves our respect. We owe Jews a debt of gratitude, and if Christians pray to God for the conversion of the chosen people they must also implore divine mercy for persecuted Israel; they must sympathize with the grief which they are suffering; they must suffer in sympathy the injustices which Jews once more are suffering. Strong in the convictions of our Evangelical faith we invite members of our Churches to resist all efforts to introduce in our country anti-Semitic racialism which is condemned by the spirit of our Master and by all teaching which is derived from the Holy Scriptures. [465] <211> On September 30, 1942, the Assembly of the Swiss Pastors' Union, meeting at Liestal, adopted the following Resolution: "We confess on the basis of the Holy Scripture that the hope of the Church through the grace and faithfulness of God in Jesus Christ is indissolubly bound up with the hope for the Jews. We therefore declare that all anti-Semitism is irreconcilable with confession of Jesus Christ. It is the holy duty of every Christian to help the tortured Jews by intercession and active love." [466] That warnings against anti-Semitic influences in Switzerland were not superfluous, was shown in the Report concerning the Fund Drive for Aid to Refugees, which was held in October-November, 1942. The Report stated: "... The reasons for the diverse reactions to our fundraising appeals in the German and the French-speaking parts of Switzerland, are of a complex nature. From an inquiry made by the cantonal committees we learn that the press in general took a stand against aid to refugees. An article by Pierre Grellet, the Bern correspondent of the 'Gazette de Lausanne', published in November, had a distinct undercurrent of anti-Semitic feeling, characteristic of his attitude. There were also other expressions of anti-Semitism in the press. In contrast to the German-speaking press which protested against the turning away of refugees from our borders, this action triggered no particular reactions in the French-speaking press. [467] c The Admission of Refugees Like the Government of the Netherlands, the Swiss Government had already closed the Swiss borders before the war. <212> The Church Council of Canton Zurich stated, in 1938: "It pains us that consideration for so many unemployed citizens in our own nation prevents us from offering a protecting asylum to the suffering refugees, who, like wild game, are chased from country to country." [468] In the summer of 1942, mass raids took place in France and many Jewish refugees tried to find asylum and safety in Switzerland. They often crossed the French-Swiss frontier "illegally". On August 13, 1942, the border police were instructed to send back civilian refugees from France who had entered into Switzerland illegally, with the exception of political refugees. "Refugees for racial reasons only, for instance Jews," were not considered political refugees. [469] The Federation of the Protestant Churches as well as other organizations turned to the Federal authorities. [470] Their protests were not ineffectual. On August 23, Federal Councillor von Steiger ordered that in special cases rejection should be waved. On August 24, a meeting was convened with the "Swiss Central Office for Refugee Aid", where all the Institutions for refugee aid were represented. The "Central Office" informed the press of the result of this partly tumultuous meeting on the same day: "Foreign refugees, who had entered Switzerland before 13th August, 1942, and register with the police, will be sent back only if, after careful investigation, they must for important reasons be considered undesirable." [471] <213> On August 30, 1942, at the meeting of the "Young Church" which has been mentioned before [472], Rev. W. Luthi said: "Sin separates us from God. What has happened in the case of the refugee problem comes under the same heading. Even though we understand that events may be motivated by political considerations, our conscience is burdened by such events in three ways. First, because the rejection of the poorest of the refugees was not an act of humanity. Second, because any claim to humanitarianism becomes hypocritical. And third, because it was an act of ingratitude towards God, who has so graciously protected our own country. Now we may well fear that, after what has happened, God will no longer be for us, but against us." The morning session ended with words of greetings by the Rev. Hans Roduner, who thanked the authorities for their consent "to revoke the painful measures in force against the refugees". He called upon the Young Church to make great sacrifices for the refugees and ensure the support of fifty of them. The reply of Federal Councillor von Steiger, who spoke in the afternoon, was typical of the Government point of view: "Of course the Federal Councillor would like to help all the refugees. However, when thousands of victims of a shipwreck cry out for help, the one in command of a small and fully occupied lifeboat, that is limited in capacity and provisions, must seem heartless if he cannot take them all into his boat. Nevertheless, it is humane to give warning against false hopes, and at least try to save those already aboard. As regards the measures adopted concerning the refugee problem, Federal Councillor von Steiger is prepared to accept full responsibility." [473] Since September 26, 1942, the following categories of refugees were admitted: a. Obviously ill persons and pregnant women. b. Refugees over 65 years old; married couples if at least one of them was over 65 years. <214> c. Children under the age of 16 travelling alone. d. Parents with children under 16 years. e. Refugees who claimed and could prove that they had close relatives in Switzerland or, otherwise, close relations with Switzerland (Residence for a long time). However, French Jews without exception had to be deported "as they were in no danger in their own country". In doubtful cases (when it was not clear whether a refugee came under one of the categories mentioned, or when deportation appeared to be exceptionally severe) the Police Department had to be contacted by telephone. It was ascertained that 3,800 persons had entered Switzerland illegally during September. [474] On October 28, 1942, in his opening address to the Synod of Zurich, Dr. Wollf said: "... The dominant spirit, in no way identical with the sentiments of the people, has become despondent and even pitiable. Its exponents, who can be found not only in the Federal Council but also in the Parliament, pay homage to the opinion that expediency, craftiness and a so-called realistic policy are greater importance to our salvation than the spirit of the Gospel and of freedom and of truth. The misery of the dominant spirit has become evident in recent months in the shameless treatment of the refugees. We must not pass over in silence the disgrace and shame we have brought upon ourselves when, because of cold political calculations, we returned to misery and threat of death, those refugees who believed they had found within our borders a refuge from danger... It is not the beauties of our country nor our safe existence, which make Switzerland worthy of our defence and devotion, but the fact that it is the centre of freedom and justice. The Declaration of the Federal Council and the three coalition parties, contained no sign of their having grasped the challenge of the hour. [475] In contrast to this, it may be said that the Reformed Church, and, in particular, the Executive Committee of the Swiss Federation of Evangelical Churches, has in no uncertain manner fought for recognition of the demands of our Christian conscience. These have found their most impressive formulation by the President of our Federation of Churches: <215> 'God, through His commandments in the Old and New Testament, has placed us unequivocally on the side of the weak, the oppressed and the destitute, no matter what their race or nationality. Confession of faith in Jesus Christ is, for the Christian, almost always also related to recognition of our responsibility to our suffering brothers. The least of His brethren to-day are the oppressed refugees in their physical and mental distress. Christ will either find us on their side or on the side of His persecutors.' The mitigations, now granted by the authorities, may be accepted as revoking their heartless orders. But this is not a lasting or definite solution. The fight for an honourable and humane conduct must continue. Protests alone will not suffice. Indignation is shallow if it is unaccompanied by the will to act. The members of the Church, as well as its critics, justly demand that it put up a determined stand on behalf of the outcasts. Generous contributions to the Refugee fund, and willingness to accept refugees in our homes, must now furnish proof that our nation wishes its ancient Christian traditions to be upheld. Each one of us should do his part to atone for our guilt in this matter. Injustice, force and inhumanity triumph around our borders. These terrible events can no longer allow us only to consider expediency. The only truly realistic policy is the one which accepts God as the highest Reality, and considers Him more important than all calculations of worldly wisdom, which only lead us astray." [476] In the months October and November, 1942, a general collection for the Aid to Refugees was held. Because of political considerations on the part of the authorities concerned, the planned 5-minute broadcasts could not take place. Nevertheless, the General Management of the broadcasting services agreed to broadcast short appeals under the slogan "Contribute towards an Asylum for the Homeless". [477] The "Swiss Central Office for Aid to Refugees" stated: "If, however, the result of the fundraising is disappointing, all is lost. Not only will the organizations have no more money, but our opponents who even now are urging the complete closing of our borders, will then say to the Federal Government: 'Close the doors, let nobody in. The Swiss people do not want them...'" [478] Many Church leaders publicly recommended this collection. Prof. Karl Bart did so in the following words: <216> "There are reasons for and against aid to refugees as currently suggested to us Swiss. The reasons for are: The Christian reason. 'In as much as ye have done it unto one of these least, ye have done it unto me.' The refugees are our concern: not because they are valuable or agreeable human beings, but because in all the world they are to-day the lowest and the most miserable people, and as such they, with their inseparable companion the Saviour, knock on our door. They are our concern, not in spite of their being Jews but just because they are Jews, and as such are the Saviour's brethren in the flesh. (I suggest that this first reason is the strongest and may well be the one decisive and effective reason in this matter). The Swiss reason. The refugees (whether they are aware of it or not) do us a great honour, in looking upon our country and seeking it out as the last refuge of justice and mercy. Many of the great and dreadful things which occurred in our time will be forgotten. After centuries, however, it will still be asked, whether Switzerland proved true to its name as the free Switzerland in these days, or renounced it. The question whether the Lest that we Swiss are capable of and have, can be preserved throughout the present crisis, will be decided only by opening our hearts and hands to these refugees, or by turning our backs upon them. The Humane reason. We see in these refugees the fate we have miraculously been spared. It is quite true that we also are not too well off to-day. It is, however, equally true that we are well enough off to be in a condition exactly opposite to these unfortunate fellow-creatures: well-fed and even rich. Can we bear this, without wanting to help them to the best of our ability? Would it not be disgraceful, even to let our lips suggest any reasons at all against offering such aid?" [479] In December, 1942, 1,595 refugees were admitted and 330 sent back. At the end of December, the number of immigrants and refugees amounted to 16,200. Of the refugees, 8,467 had entered Switzerland illegally between August 1, 1942, and Dec. 31, 1942. This development led the Department of Police to propose to the Federal Council that new decrees, more stringent than the preceding ones, be issued for the whole of the Swiss border. Apparently the order of Sept. 26, 1942, that being a Jew was no reason for admittance, mostly was not observed. [480] <217> The decree of Dec. 29, 1942, ordered that foreigners arrested whilst crossing the border or in the region of the border (up till 10 kilometres) must be turned back immediately. Exemption would be granted to the categories a, b and c mentioned in the decree of Sept. 26, 1942. [481] "Further, parents with children not over six years old; or if at least one of their children is not older than six; refugees who can prove that they have a spouse, parents or children in Switzerland; or when at least one of a married couple has been born in Switzerland. [482] The "Report of the Swiss Protestant Relief Society" comments: "We are grateful that a Delegation of the Federation of Churches also remonstrated with the Federal Government in the matter. No substantial amendments to the decree were obtained, but in practice the attitude of the authorities was more obliging than the wording of the decree leads one to assume. The possibilities of providing asylum, and the readiness of the authorities to grant it, are in no small measure dependent on the willingness of the Swiss people to make sacrifices for the refugees. We therefore emphatically insisted that the congregations of the Evangelical Church should take upon themselves the financial responsibility for the upkeep of as many refugees as possible, and so to fulfil towards individual refugees Christ's commandment of love. [483] In the first seven months of 1943, 1,821 refugees were sent back and 4,733 admitted. "Its is impossible to determine, how many Jews were among those admitted; apparently they made up the vast majority." [484] On May 9, 1943, the Synod of the Evangelical-Reformed Church of the City of Basel adopted the following Resolution: "The Synod, deeply concerned by the information received regarding instruction given by the authorities to the border guards and the dreadful horrors still being undergone by refugees wanting to cross our borders, charges the Church council to urge the Executive Committee of the Federation of Churches to remonstrate afresh with the responsible authorities on behalf of the refugees according to the Church's responsibility to be a Protector, and desires that the congregation, through the 'Church Messenger', be kept suitably informed of the Synod's negotiations concerning the refugee and asylum problem. [485] <218> In October, 1943, the Church Council of Zurich addressed the following message "To the Reformed People of Zurich": "... We are able only through rumours to gain a vague impression of the dreadful reality. And because it is beyond the powers of our imagination, we are in danger of closing our hearts and trying to suppress any awareness of the fact that daily, hourly, indeed every single moment, thousands suffer, bleed, starve, despair, die. We also let ourselves be misled by a falsely understood neutrality, which freezes our feelings towards the distress of foreigners, or causes in us a moral apathy towards injustice and inhumanity, sometimes even making us adopt the catchwords and evil slogans of anti-Semitism and racial hatred, and persuading us to accept ideals which are hostile to the Gospel of love to God and to ones neighbour... All humane people are haunted by descriptions of the sufferings to which members of the Jewish people have been exposed during these past four years of war, this following centuries of being slandered, ridiculed, beaten and persecuted throughout the Christian era! Expelled from home and work, forcibly separated, children tom from the arms of their mothers, mothers from the arms of their children, anew they are uprooted just when they had supposed they had found a protecting refuge. They have been tossed towards an uncertain destiny, which all too often only spelled destruction, misery, starvation, beatings, despair and death. Indeed, no other nation has been so overwhelmed by storms of persecution and deluged by sufferings, as has been the people of Israel. Who as a Christian, or as a Swiss, can fail to be oppressed by the distress of the Jewish people, or to be confronted by questions unsolvable by the words guilt and atonement, because we have certainly sufficient cause to ask questions about our own guilt in this matter and to apply to ourselves Christ's word: 'Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.' Such an admission can result only in one thing: the emergence of a deep sympathy and a desire to help wherever and however we can, to grant refuge to the homeless, to shelter the exposed, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit the imprisoned, to support the weak, to comfort the mourning; in accordance with the example of the good Samaritan and the teaching and promise of our Master: 'In as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me'..." [486] In November, 1943, the "Social Study Committee of the Swiss Union of Reformed Pastors" published the following Statement: <219> "... With shame and sorrow we see this purposeful turning away from Christ in a monstrous effort to exterminate entire races and peoples. The Christian conscience cries out against this. We therefore appeal to all those in responsible positions in the world, to save what still may be saved. We demand that the Swiss Government which maintains diplomatic relations with all governments in the world, devise with them and with the International Red Cross, a plan of rescue. In the name of Jesus we demand that our authorities put a stop to the driving back of refugees to their death, until final measures are taken, and to grant them a safe, Christian asylum. Our thanks go to the people of Switzerland for their cordial hospitality, even though it is hampered by authority!..." [487] In my opinion this is the sharpest protest against the official refugee policy of the Swiss government that was ever published during the second world war. At the end of 1943, it was ordered not to send Jewish refugees back if they objected. Thus Jews who fled Italy after its occupation by the Germans, were to be admitted; however, in the case of a real 'run' one might have to stop admitting them for some time. [488] It is, in my opinion, undeniable that the protests of the Churches and Church" leaders contributed to alleviating the measures against the refugees and their ultimate cancellation in practice. In the meantime, unspeakable sufferings had been inflicted on refugees who had been sent back and fell into the hands of their mortal enemies. d. Aid to Refugees We already mentioned some of the activities of the "Swiss Protestant Relief Society for the Confessing Church in Germany", [489] for instance the Annual Conference held on November 17, 1941, and its participation in the general collection for Aid to Refugees, held during October-November, 1942. In order to show the spirit in which this refugee work was done, we record the following letter which was sent by the Executive Council of the Society to the Swiss-Israelite Union of Congregations, on June 22, 1943: <220> "You have ordered a call to an Assembly of Mourning, for next Sunday, 27th June, 1943. You will then recall the horrible decrees to which Jews in Europe are subjected, and the unspeakable hardship and oppression under which people nowadays suffer and die. Together with you we are deeply shocked at the mass murder that has engulfed European Jewry. Only with dread and horror can one read of the number deported from Germany, France, the Netherlands, Rumania and Greece. We fight against allowing suffering to become a familiar routine, and against blunting of concern on the part of our people of Switzerland at such distress. To us these dry figures represent human beings, who have lived, suffered and died. Their mass graves and their ashes will, till the coming Day of the Lord, be a shocking accusation against a Europe which forgot God. As Christians we cannot let the Assembly of Mourning of the Swiss-Israelite Union of Congregations pass without a cordial word of sympathy and participation. Deeply moved, we shall join our thoughts with yours in intercession. We know that each murder and every act of violence is rooted in the godless thinking of godless minds. The unkind word and the unappreciative gesture are signs of poisoning of the minds. The fact that this poisoning could assume such terrible proportions in 'Christian' Europe, where especially the Jewish people are victimised, shames us and gives us cause for severe self-accusation. So little have we Christians understood Jesus Christ and so far apart from him have we lived, that godless thinking was able to create this insane racial hatred and merciless cruelty in our midst, raging as a demon against the Jews. On your day of mourning we join hands with you in sympathy and sorrow. At the same time we confess our guilt before God and mankind. We regret every word of contempt, we Christians ever uttered against Jews. We regret that we have shamed Jesus Christ by our self-righteousness and our hardness of heart. We regret that we Christians were not more loyal to our Master and thus failed courageously to struggle, in time, against every expression of anti-Semitism. On this day of your mourning we implore the Almighty for his mercy, for the sake of Jesus Christ, with the publican's prayer of penitence: 'God be merciful to us sinners'. On your day of mourning we pray that God's mercy may be upon you, and the deep consolation of His promise from the precious Old Testament, which also has comforted us again and again: 'And I will cause the captivity of Judah and the captivity of Israel to return, and will build them, as at first. And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me. And it shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and an honour before all the nations of the earth, which shall hear all the good that I do unto them: and they shall fear and tremble for all the goodness and for all the prosperity hat I procure to it' (Jeremiah 33, 7-9). <221> 'The Lord thath sent me to bring good tidings, to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn' (Isaiah 61, 1-2). 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me' (Psalm 23, 4). 'For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee' (Isaiah 54, 10)." [490] Strong powers in Switzerland objected to the admission of refugees. Therefore the "Protestant Relief Society" undertook action in two different but interdependent fields: influencing public opinion, and rendering practical aid. Books and pamphlets were published and distributed. [491] Rev. Paul Vogt was appointed 'Refugee pastor', and was later joined by two other ministers. They launched the "Place of Refuge Operation", [492] asking members of the Church to provide places in their homes to Jewish refugees who were unable to work: pregnant women, mothers with little children; people ill, invalided or old. Another way to help for the local churches was to pay the maintenance (120 Franc per month) of a refugee being cared for in one of the houses of the homes of the Society. [493] "Help was not just rendered to Protestant refugees; the majority of them were Jewish... We are convinced that we may not exploit the difficult situation of our proteges by trying to convert them. Rather, we respect the religious conviction of the Jews, whose care has been entrusted to us. <222> Therefore two Refugee homes were opened for observant Jews;... one accommodating 35 refugees, the other 26. Plans for a third refugee home were prepared. In order to reunite married couples and families, houses were rented in which a total of 111 persons were accommodated. Up till the end of 1943, 348 persons were helped and places for another 219 persons were in preparation." [494] On October 1, 1944, 868 refugees who were unable to work were accommodated by the Protestant 'Place of Refuge Operation'. 739 of them were Jewish, 115 Protestant, 8 Catholic (mixed marriage) and 6 without religion. One hundred and seventy-nine places, especially for children, were reported to the Committee for Aid to Children. [495] Far be it for us to belittle the efforts of Rev. Paul Vogt and others, who did what they could. Yet the number of refugees who were helped is small in relation to the terrible need that existed. Moreover, in Switzerland, people did not risk their lives or freedom by taking in a Jewish refugee, as happened in many other countries. e. The Deportation of the Hungarian Jews On July 4, 1944, the following circular letter was sent by Prof. Karl Barth, Prof. Emil Brunner, Dr. W.A. Visser 't Hooft and Rev. Paul Vogt to pastors in Switzerland: "We send to you, enclosed, two messages from Hungary and a covering letter dated June 19, 1944, which came from reliable sources and reached Switzerland through diplomatic channels. The messages have shocked us deeply. Out of a sense of responsibility we feel it our duty to convey these messages to you. We do not doubt that you will read them and let them circulate within your own group. They are also known to the competent authorities." [496] There followed a wave of public protests. We quote some of them. [497] <223> On July 9, 1946, the Church Council of the Canton Zurich urged that the following message be read from every pulpit: "The present day truly has revealed enough frightful things, but in the last weeks one piece of news has reached us which far exceeds anything that we have heard for years. Reliable witnesses inform us of terrible persecution of the Jews in Hungary. In a few weeks between three and four hundred thousand people have been sacrificed, and who knows how many more there will be. Many are dying of exhaustion or hunger, but the majority meet their death by gas. In one single place, at Birkenau, four crematoria are in use, in which every day six thousand people can be gassed and burned and incinerated. Hitherto Hungary had more than a million Jews. A number of towns already have been cleared of Jews. Persecution is said to be impending in the capital, if it has not already begun. We do not know what can have induced the government to take these dreadful measures and at whose door the responsibility for this dreadful deed must lie. What can we do? It is not for us to pass self-righteous judgment on the acts of other peoples, for we are not guilt-free. It does not lie in our power to order the cessation of atrocities. The Swiss Protestant Church Federation addressed an urgent request to the Federal Council and to the International Red Cross that they would do everything possible to rescue the Jews still living in Hungary. We invite congregations to make solemn intercession for all those who must tread this dark road simply because they belong to another race. Let us also pray for our sister-Evangelical Church in Hungary, that strength and guidance be granted to her at a time when her people is taking upon itself such a terrible load of guilt. Let the word of the Psalmist be our prayer: 'Keep not Thou silence, O God: hold not Thy peace, and be not still, O God'." [498] The Council of the Evangelical Church of Canton Glarus, on July 12, issued a circular letter to all local ministers, drawing attention to the horrible reports of the extermination of Hungarian Jewry and stressing that, in all probability, reality would prove even more horrible than those reports implied. After having mentioned the appeals made by the Federation of Churches to the Federal Council and the International Red Cross, the circular letter continued: <224> "We fully realise that at present we are incapable of stopping the demonic powers by any human means. Only God can do that, and we invoke His aid. We request you to inform your congregation of these horrors in a fitting manner, and in your prayers to intercede with God on behalf of those that are threatened. Finally, the Church Council hereby issues a call to leave all vengeance and retaliation to Him who has proclaimed: 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord'." [499] At about the same time, the following Proclamation was issued by the Council of the Synod of Bern: "Added to the untold miseries that the Jews have had already to suffer in various countries, the terrible mass murders of the Jews in Hungary which, according to reliable information were carried out recently, surpass all imagination and defy any description. The inhuman removal of people of all ages who, solely on account of their racial origin, no longer are considered fit to exist, is a monstrosity unparalleled in history, as well as a grievous sin and guilt before God. As Christians who have received light and life, salvation and mercy from Jesus Christ, we feel a painful indignation in the face of such methods of extermination. We declare that such destruction of our fellow-men was conceived by a spirit and will which came from below, and which will bring a curse and doom on humanity. A deep sympathy unites us with the countless victims. We thank our brethren of the faith in Hungary for their courage in standing up, in time, against these monstrosities in spite of great difficulties, and we urge them to continue to do everything in their power to stop these horrible mass murders. We call on Christians in our own country to fight all hatred and thirst for revenge among people of different origin and race, and to resist all prejudices and offensive slogans wherever they may appear. Let us not tire of intercession on behalf of the ancient people of the Covenant, of Israel." [500] In August, 1944, the following circular letter was published by the Church Council of Canton Graubunden: "Ecclesiastical and other proclamations and directives draw our attention to the fate of Hungarian Jewry. No pen is able to describe, no soul can sense, and no Christian mind can imagine what is being done to these unfortunate people. The human mind is powerless to grasp the horrors, day by day enacted with cool determination and limitless hate. Shocked cries, objections and protests, to those in authority have remained ineffective. Brotherly help to those threatened by death is not possible. <225> Only one thing remains to the Christian, of which he cannot be deprived: prayer. Dear brethren, prepare the people, before offering your public prayers, by referring to the sufferings of the Jewish people of whom the Son of God was born. Tell openly from the pulpits how many hundreds of thousands are being exterminated in gas chambers and crematoriums, while further multitudes tremble in desperation, because the hour is at hand when they too will be herded like cattle, deported and slaughtered. Tell how human dignity is degraded, how man's rights are trampled upon, so that all Christian feelings have received a deadly wound. Remember in your prayers at church the unfortunate who are persecuted, urging all members of your congregations likewise to remember them in their prayers at home in solitude. The prayer of the merciful heart availeth much. Through it God's presence may become real in distant gas chambers; consolation and indestructible faith may shine in their horror-stricken eyes and upon their deadly-pale faces. Such prayer may also have the power to reawaken petrified consciences, and to paralyse the hands engaged in deadly tasks. The prayer should be said in repentance over unbrotherly words also spoken in our country about Jews now and in the past..." [501] 32 SWEDEN The political situation of Sweden was comparable to that of Switzerland: each country tried to preserve its neutrality, was afraid of a German attack, and sometimes gave in to German demands. Yet Sweden expressed its willingness to receive all the Jews from Denmark, whilst Switzerland closed its borders. We should, however, bear in mind that to Switzerland, owing to its geographical position, the challenge of the refugee problem was much greater than to Sweden. The Swedish Church denounced the persecution of the Jews more sharply than did the Swiss Churches. Apparently Swedish Church leaders were not afraid of offending Germany. But in Sweden there was no press censorship, as was the case in Switzerland. On November 29, 1942, Manfred Bjorkquist was consecrated first Bishop of Stockholm. Along with the Bishops of the Swedish Church, there were also present representatives of the Church of Denmark and the Church of Finland. The Quisling Minister for Church Affairs in Norway sent an indignant letter to Archbishop Eidem, because he had not been invited to send a representative to the consecration. Dagens Nyheter, commenting on this report, wrote: <226> "What happened in Norway recently is sufficient explanation, if it is confirmed that Sweden's Archbishop did not reply to the letter. Archbishop Eidem's warning at Lutzen on November 6th against national self-sufficiency and arrogance provides an adequate answer. When now for the first time we see these things happening near at hand we are aghast at this self-sufficiency and arrogance; this complete contempt for human values." [502] The last sentence refers to the deportation of the Jews of Norway. On the first Sunday in Advent, 1942, the following Proclamation was issued by the Swedish Bishops: "Hatred blinds and hardens. Hatred leads to destruction. Hatred is the most frightful and monstrous of the dark powers which now are dominating an unhappy earth. Jesus Christ condemns hatred in all its forms without exception. His words and deeds, His life and death, all mean an absolute judgment upon hatred. Whatever stands in contradiction with the royal command of love, which is the sum of the will of God, is sin, sin against the living God. Men may trample upon the commandments of the All-Highest. But God Almighty lives. And whoever turns away from Him has deserted the springs of life and is walking in the way of death. If we really want to be Christians, we must in all seriousness take up the fight against hatred, against all hatred. We must be strictest towards ourselves, so that we may not leave the smallest room in our heart for the evil spirit of hatred. So far as our voice reaches, we must, each in his own circle, stand up for love in word and deed, and fight hatred and the deeds of hatred. With horror and dismay we have learned in the last two days how an un-Christian racial hatred, which has spread over many lands in the world like a mortal pestilence, has now expressed itself in shocking acts of violence in our immediate neighbourhood, on our Scandinavian peninsula. Human beings are being subjected to the greatest sufferings, not because they have been legally convicted of misdeeds - they have not even been accused of such things by regular legal procedure - but solely because they belong by descent to a certain race. <227> We have been deeply moved to hear the courageous Christian admonitions which our oppressed Norwegian sister-Church has directed to those in power in their country, not to rebel against the clear Word of God by doing deeds of violence in blind racial hatred. Everything that lies in our power to assist the poor people affected by this hatred is being done. That is our elementary duty as Christians and as human beings. But even if we cannot do much to help the unfortunate, we can and must bear them and their needs upon our hearts. We Bishops of the Swedish Church call all our fellow-Christians in Sweden, in the Name of God, to include these our tortured brethren of the race of Israel in our faithful and constant intercessions, and to make daily prayers to our Father in Heaven for the many who are suffering violence and disaster at this time." [503] At a service of intercession in Goteborg Cathedral on the first Sunday in Advent, Dean Nysted said: "Everything we have heard of the nameless sufferings of the Jewish people in past times dwindles to nothing in comparison with the fate that has overtaken them in recent years. We have read with disgust of the slave hunts of former times and the cargoes of slaves which were carried like cattle to America. Who could have dreamt anything so frightful as that such a ship would sail along our coasts last week, laden with men, women and children, who have no other fate to expect than that of the slaves or cattle for slaughter, and that not because of any crime of which they have been convicted but because they are of Jewish descent. The Church of Sweden must not keep silent when such a thing happens at our frontiers. If we were to keep silent, the stones would cry out. We are shocked to the depths of our hearts when we think of the sufferings of these unhappy people. We tremble at the dragon's teeth of hatred which are senselessly being sown... What harvest must grow from such seed? We stand powerless. What is being prepared for the Jews who have remained in Norway? Can our authorities do anything to save them? We implore them to consider this question seriously and without delay." [504] In a broadcast sermon, Bishop Aukn of Strangnas commented upon the events of the time: "Violence is triumphing, and the commandments which form the bases of our human common life are remorselessly being trampled upon. Every day brings new pictures of horror. Recently we received the news that the frightful plague of racial persecution has descended upon our Scandinavia... There are probably no limits to the depths to which people who are blinded by hatred may sink. <228> But at the same time a wonderful thing is happening: in the midst of this darkness we are witnessing a bold and firm steadfastness which remains unmoved even when it leads to persecution and martyrdom. Such events have opened the eyes of many people who were subject to the prejudice that we have only to reckon with material factors and the resources of outward force. They bear witness to the power of the Holy Spirit, to the power of Christ, which works in secret and is unconquerable. If we in our Swedish Church are able to begin the new Church year as a free Church in a free country, that lays upon us a great responsibility: to stand up in unshakable faithfulness for the holiness of the laws of God, when the most elementary demands of justice are trampled upon." [505] At a Meeting of Protest, held in Stockholm on the same Sunday, Dr. Natanael Beskow said: "Here we are not concerned with neutrality or politics, but with humanity or inhumanity. Nothing of that kind must ever happen in Sweden. Indifference in face of a crime is in itself a crime." The meeting passed the following Resolution: "In the name of Christianity and democracy, humanity and justice, we protest against the mass deportations of Jewish citizens from our nearest neighbour country, not for crimes committed but because of their race. We do this for the sake or our Northern community, but we are angry and distressed that Northern men have been able to commit this deed of shame. We protest in the name of international law, for without security in law all human order collapses, whether it be called old or new." [506] Svenska Morgonbladet reported that it had received expressions of sorrow and sympathy from the leaders of various Church congregations. Bishop John Cullberg said at Strangnas: "After what happened earlier in Norway, the latest telegrams about the persecution of Jews are not surprising. But we are profoundly shocked. The Norwegian Church has, through its statements, already interpreted the Christian conscience's protest against these atrocities. It must be loudly proclaimed that we in Sweden support this protest. <229> With bleeding hearts, we think of the martyrs. And what should we say of their tormentors? All we can say is: 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do'." [507] Although leading men within the Swedish Free Churches already at an early stage had separately expressed their feelings in the press regarding the persecution of the Jews in Norway, the Free Churches' Co-operation Committee wished to emphasize their mutual standpoint: "God is the Father of all, and all men are called to receive the advantage of the adoption of sons, independent of race and birth. Racial persecution is thus a sin and a rebellion against God. The Jew is our neighbour, and we wish to love him as ourselves. Facing what is happening in Norway, we feel grief and distress. We are onlookers at a situation where our neighbour is being treated as something sub-human. We cannot remain silent witnesses to this We wish that our deeds could bring help, to undo what has been done. Our hope is that God will turn evil to good. We wish to join in the appeal of the Bishops of the Swedish Church, in the name of God, for intercessions for our tortured brethren of the race of Israel, and to make daily prayers to our Father in Heaven for the many who are suffering violence and disaster at this time." [508] Under the subject heading "Christian Gathering", a meeting was held on December 6, 1942 at Hedvig's Church at Norrkoping. This meeting was arranged by clergymen. Speakers were Vicar Thysell, Pastor Einitz Genitz and Vicar Knut Ericson. We quote the following from Vicar Thysell's address: "The information concerning 1,000 Jews driven from their homes, robbed of their property and transferred to Germany to meet a most cruel fate, has shaken us thoroughly and deeply. Those Jews were loyal Norwegian citizens: they had done nothing wrong. They were punished because they were Jews, without trial or verdict. <230> The people of Norway were the first to speak up and protest through their Church. The brave and strong words from Norwegian Church leaders, themselves oppressed and persecuted, have moved us profoundly. Now we, too, must speak. There are occasions when it would be denying truth to remain silent. We bear a special responsibility towards God and humanity when such things are happening around US. We Swedes are best able to represent the world's conscience in this case, and we feel that we also owe our Norwegian brethren a clear and unequivocal declaration on our stand. We also have another responsibility in this case, one that lies even nearer to us: our responsibility towards the Jewish brethren, who belong to our own people. The contamination of anti-Semitism has also reached our own country. Infamous and false propaganda is being spread from plague centres within our own borders. We have hitherto belittled this danger. Now we see to where it is leading. It is time for us to wake up! We must also at this hour think of the mass persecution of Jews which is taking place in other countries. From available information it appears that the anti-Semitic wave is still rising. The threat now also concerns half-Jews. Our taking a stand might seem meaningless to all of these. We cannot stop violence. It may, however, in a secret way, bring a ray of consolation and hope into despairing hearts. We have named our meeting 'Christian Gathering'. That our consciences react to the outrage which is happening, is the result of the spiritual values of life which we have received from Christ and the Prophets of Israel - from the very people who are now being persecuted in so many countries. On those basic values rests our Nordic judicial culture. We pride ourselves on Sweden being a constitutional state. Here no one can be sentenced and punished except on the basis of justice. Here, right is not equal to might. Above the power of the state stand those eternal truths of our relation to God and each other, which have been revealed to us and which, in our consciences, appear as indefeasible values of life. Arnulf Overland says: 'Some things are greater than you. There are mountains with snow. There are dearer things than your life; you shall fight for it'. The dearest thing we have are those values of life that Christ gives us. The persecution of the Jews is not the only proof - but the most horrible of all - of a denial of these values of life. We are here to-day to confess our belief in these eternal foundations for human society, which God himself has laid. We believe in God, our Lord Jesus Christ, and our Father, who has called us all, independent of race and all other differences, to receive the adoption of sons and to live in communion with Him and each other. We wish to adhere to this Christian evaluation of man. And we reject as hostile to God and anti-Christian that brutal conception of man, and that contempt of mankind, which forge the acts of violence in anti-Semitism. We regard the brotherhood of humanity as holy, and brotherly action as our goal. We feel it our obligation to act towards our Jewish brethren in accordance with Jesus' rule of life: 'All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them'. <231> Do we seriously mean them to be our confession of faith? Do we dare uphold it, as our Norwegian brethren have done, even if our faith should be tried as gold is tried in fire? Whatever happens, we need not fear, if we follow Jesus Christ, the eternal King. The weapons of iniquity are doomed annihilation. Christ stands on the side of the persecuted. His spirit, the Spirit of Truth, Righteousness and Love, is strongest of all. The day of freedom shall again dawn for the persecuted and oppressed." [509] It is remarkable that earlier deportations of Jews in countries such as Germany, France and the Netherlands, did not prompt the Swedish Church leaders to raise their voices, though the number of deportees was much greater than that of the Jews deported from Norway. It seems likely that what was happening in Western Europe was less known in Sweden than what was happening in Norway. Moreover, human beings generally are more moved by cruelties committed on their doorstep, than by what happens further away. The Proclamation of the Swedish Bishops expressed "horror and dismay" because "an un-Christian racial hatred... has now expressed itself... in our immediate neighbourhood, on our own Scandinavian peninsula". As far as we know, the Swedish Church did not issue a Protest against the persecution of the Danish Jews. In fact, events in Denmark took place so rapidly that a Protest would hardly have done any good. The pressure of the Swedish Archbishop (and others) on the Swedish Government to make public their willingness to receive all Danish Jews, was important. It appears that this step, indirectly, saved many lives. Dr. Leni Yahil relates the following: "The Swedish Foreign Office contacted Richert, the Swedish envoy in Berlin, on the same day, September 29 [1943], and again on the next day, September 30, in order to plan with him the appeal to the German Foreign Office. It was decided that Richert would ask the Germans whether there was a basis to the rumours about an impending deportation of the Jews from Denmark, and that he would stress the fact that such a deportation would cause great indignation in Sweden. Moreover, he was to propose that all Danish Jews be transferred to Sweden and concentrated there in a camp and that the Swedish Government would be responsible that 'they would not be able to undertake any activity that might be harmful to Germany'. <232> It became evident that the Swedes did not intend to take any further action. [Niels] Bohr, Ebbe Munk and their friends, however, were of a different opinion. As we know from entries in Ebbe Munk's diary and from his letters to Christmas Moeller in London, it was the Danish group with the active support of prominent Swedish circles which brought about the publication by the Swedish Government of the appeal to the Germans. On October 2, the day following on the night of the persecution in Denmark, Bohr had an interview with the Foreign Secretary, Guenther. It seems that already on the preceding day the Danes had tried to persuade the Swedes to publish their appeal to the Germans in the hope that such a publication might prevent the deportation. Since this had not been done, Bohr requested the Swedish Foreign Secretary to repeat his appeal to the Germans and to propose to them that the boats on which the Jews were concentrated, be directed to Sweden instead of to Germany. Guenther proposed this to the German Ambassador Thomsen, who called on him at 9 o'clock in the evening on that day. A reply to this proposal was never received. Through Kammerherr von Kruse, the Danish Ambassador in Stockholm, and with the active support of Prof. Stefan Hurvitz, an audience with the King of Sweden was arranged for Bohr, in the afternoon of the same day. During this audience Bohr proposed to the King that the Swedish appeal to Germany be published. The King did not reply, but at the end of the audience the Foreign Secretary was called in. That same evening the Swedish radio broadcasted an announcement about the steps taken by Sweden in Berlin. The announcement stressed that the Swedish Ambassador, on behalf of his Government, had declared that Sweden was willing to receive all the Danish Jews. We know that this announcement encouraged the Jews as well as their Danish helpers to organize the mass escape. In his letter to Christmas Moeller, dated October 12, Munk told that the Swedish Government only agreed to publish the announcement, after the Arch- bishop, professors and other prominent persons had declared that they were prepared to sign an open letter to the Government about the subject." [510] The King of Sweden was present when, in May, 1944, Archbishop Eidem delivered his opening address to the General Assembly, to which 2,600 parish-delegates and guests from all over the country had come. Archbishop Eidem said: "... Our Christian conscience must keep constantly on the alert in the face of all that is happening in the world around us. Might is not right. Power is not justice. Torture is not permissible in any circumstances. Innocent people must not be made in any way responsible or punished for the acts of others. Houses and entire communities must not be purposely destroyed in order to intimidate or cripple an enemy. <233> People of a particular racial and national group, such as the unhappy people of the Jews, must not be persecuted and martyred because of their membership in that race or national group. All such actions are not only barbarism but sin... It is indeed no wonder that a frightful harvest of hatred and vengefulness is growing from the sowing of such seeds on our poor earth. As Christians we are called to take up the fight against hatred in every shape and form in this world, which now seems to be a free field for unleashed evil forces; and we must conduct this fight first of all in our own hearts, but each man also in the place where he lives. And we must not grow tired or weary in this fight." [511] It would be interesting to know how far the King was influenced by this stand of his Archbishop when, shortly afterwards, he appealed to Regent Horthy on behalf of the Hungarian Jews. It is my impression that the Church of Sweden also undertook steps on behalf of the Jews about which we know nothing, and perhaps never shall. Concerning two steps, we do know at least something. Firstly, the secretary of the Church of Sweden's Committee for Foreign Affairs, Rev. Johansson, communicated to me: "It is true that Archbishop Eidem paid a visit to Hitler himself, but no details are officially known". [512] Secondly, the German Ambassador in Slovakia, Ludin, informed the German Foreign Office in a letter dated January 3, 1945, that the Archbishop of Uppsala had addressed the Slovak Prime Minister (Tiso) with a plea for the transfer of "the unfortunate Jewish brethren" to neutral territories. [513] We have, however, not succeeded in retrieving a copy of Archbishop Eidem's letter. <234> COUNTRIES AT WAR WITH GERMANY 33 GREAT BRITAIN a. The First Period Few voices were publicly raised in England during the years 1940 and 1941. In 1940, the Battle of Britain apparently occupied the national attention so much that people tended to forget everything else. If any statements made by ecclesiastical leaders were issued in 1941 (except the statement of the Church of Schotland, mentioned below), I have failed to find them. The Beckley Social Service Lecture is delivered annually in connection with the Methodist Conference in Great Britain. Its purpose is to review certain major problems in the field of social service from the point of Christian responsibility. In the year 1940 the Rev. W. W. Simpson, now secretary of the Council of Christians and Jews, was invited to deal with the refugee problem and the fight against anti-Semitism. His lecture was published in book-form. [514] In May 1940, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland issued the following statement: "The General Assembly deplore the continued persecution of Jewish minorities in Central Europe, and deeply regret that the situation has worsened in Hungary. The General Assembly warmly appreciate the vigorous protest against the new anti-Jewish legislation made by the Hungarian Reformed Church, and assure the Committee and the missionaries themselves of their sympathy with all endeavours to minister relief and comfort and hope to suffering Jews, so far as it may be in their power to do so." [515] <235> I regret that I have not succeeded in finding any confirmation of the "vigorous protests" made by the Hungarian Reformed Church. In May 1941, the Assembly anew expressed: "their deep sympathy with the Jewish people in their tragic sorrow, and, realising the gravity and intricacy of the problem, approve the settling up of a Sub-Committee to survey the whole situation, and they resolve to appoint six members ad hoc to assist in this survey." [516] This expression of sympathy was repeated in May, 1942, whilst the General Assembly also warned "their faithful people against the growing menace of anti-Semitism." [517] We record the statements issued by the Presbyterian Church of Ireland during the second world war in this chapter, as most of the members of this Church live in the Northern part of Ireland which is under the sovereignty of Great Britain. In June, 1942, the Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland issued the following "Resolution anent the Jewish People": "That the following resolution, adopted at a recent conference in connection with the Presbyterian Alliance, be given the warm approval of the General Assembly: 'That this Conference of representatives of the Presbyterian Churches of Great Britain and Ireland, held at Edinburgh on the 28th day of January, 1942, having considered the position of the Jews in the problem of post-war reconstruction, deplores any denial to persons of Jewish descent of the right of equal treatment before the law and of other rights due to their status as ordinary citizens, and urges that all Governments shall take immediate steps to restore to the full status of human dignity such Jewish people as have been deprived of it, and, in particular, that all legislation unjustly diminishing the rights of Jews, as such, shall be repealed at an early date; recognising also that liberty of conscience is an essential part of civil liberty, and that a free exchange of religious convictions is a necessary condition of all understanding between races and nations, the Conference urges on all Governments the recognition of the unfettered right of every individual to free choice in religious faith and to the public profession and preaching of it so long as these rights do not run counter to public law and order. The Conference urges His Majesty's Government, in conjunction with other allied and friendly nations, to provide for some scheme of emigration for Jews who cannot find a home in Europe." [518] <236> b. Mass Massacres. The Fate of the Refugees On June 26, 1942, Reports of the massacre of Jews in Poland were broadcast by the B.B.C. The Chief Rabbi, Dr. Hertz, based a special Sunday evening broadcast on the reports. On July 8, 1942, the Archbishop of Canterbury inveighed, on the European service of the B.B.C., against "so terrible a violation of human and Divine law." [519] On October 15, 1942, the Bishop of Chichester spoke in the Upper House of the Convocation of Canterbury: "The torture and the ceaseless and systematic deportation of the Jews form some of the darkest chapters in the tragic history even of that people, and the latest report which has reached this country tells of the deportation, in terrible circumstances, of thousands of Jewish refugees from Vichy France, where they had thought they were safe from the oppressor, to Occupied France and thence to Eastern Galicia, leaving behind them between five thousand and eight thousand children of whom many are now orphans, while large numbers do not know their parents or their own names, and all are waiting for the charity of Britain, or America or Switzerland to give them sanctuary." [520] Also in October, the Archbishop of Canterbury sent the following Message to the Jewish Bulletin: "The situation of the Jews is unique, and yet has lasted for many centuries. They are a people conscious of close and real unity, and yet they have no motherland. Other people have survived and maintained their identity when there was no national State to which they could be loyal; but there was always a homeland inhabited by the people who remembered their days of independence and hoped for its restoration. For the Jews there has been no such a homeland. Their eyes might turn to Palestine; but though there were Jews among the population there, they did not form the bulk of it. The Jews as a people have been homeless. They have lived among the other peoples of the earth, and they have been loyal citizens of the nations which have made them welcome. But if their hosts turn against them they have no remedy. In earlier periods this has happened from time to time. In our day it has happened on a scale without parallel. Their sufferings are appalling and entirely undeserved. It should be our aim to assist them in all ways in our power; for their need is desperate. <237> But there is more in their claim than a plea for sympathy. One of the tests of a people's civilisation is its capacity to treat well a defined minority. To fail in this is to revert to the ethics of the wolf-pack; and to succeed is the evidence of moral stability. In the case of the Jews our task is the easier because the moral principles which we profess are largely drawn from that sacred literature which we share with them. We should be standing together in loyalty to those principles against all who repudiate or ignore them. Anti-Semitism is evidence of a barbarous outlook and a religious apostasy." [521] In the same month, the Free Church Federal Council sent a letter to the Chief Rabbi, Dr. Hertz, expressing "the deep feelings of indignation and sympathy with which the Free Churches of this country regard the cruel persecution from which the Jewish race is suffering through the tyranny exercised by the Axis powers". The message continued: "We assure you of our continued prayers to Almighty God that its sufferings may speedily be brought to an end, and that all peoples may once again enjoy freedom of worship, preaching and teaching according to conviction without incurring civil disability or penalty in any form." [522] On October 29, 1942, an audience of 10,000 assembled in the Albert Hall to voice their protest against "the ruthless policy of extermination decreed by the Nazis and their satellites against the Jewish population in all territories under their sway". The Archbishop of Canterbury was in the chair. "Speaking about the deportations from France, the Archbishop mentioned the fact that children from two years upwards are now also being deported. 'There is something familiar about that,' he said, 'but when the earlier Nazis massacred the Innocent of Bethlehem it was on those of two years and less that destruction fell; and that in a smaller number.'... The Archbishop concluded by saying that: "he was grateful for this opportunity to share in the effort to express our horror at what has been and is being done, our deep sympathy with the sufferers, our claim that our own Government should do whatever is possible for their relief, and our steadfast resolution to do all and bear all that may be necessary to end this affliction." <238> Dr. I. S. Whale, Moderator of the Free Church Federal Council, speaking in the name of the Free Church, declared that anti-Semitism in all its forms was "an outrage against that sanctity of law which is one of the most precious gifts of ancient Israel to modern Christianity". Bishop Matthew spoke on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church. The following resolution, moved by the Archbishop of Canterbury, was unanimously adopted: "This meeting, representative of British public opinion and of the United Nations fighting in the cause of freedom, places on record its profound indignation at the unparallel atrocities which have been and are being committed daily by the German Government and its satellites against the unarmed citizens of countries under the Nazi yoke. It records its horror at the deliberate policy of extermination which the Nazis have declared against the Jews wherever they are to be found, and extends its profound sympathy to the families of the unhappy victims of a systematic terror carried out by wholesale massacre, the murder of innocent hostages, the inhuman separation of children from their parents and other unspeakable cruelties and atrocities. This meeting expresses its heartfelt admiration for the heroism and gallantry of the fighting forces of the United Nations now leading us to victory, and desires to convey its deep sense of gratitude to those people in the occupied territories who, despite the terror, have done so much to help and succour their Jewish fellow-victims." [523] On November 10, 1942, the Archbishop of Canterbury, inaugurating a new Parliamentary session, drew once more the attention to the extermination of the Jews, that "horror which is going on almost at our door". Contrasting "what is still our standard of living" with the ordeals of the afflicted, "packed in cattle trucks... sixty in each...given little food" so that "on one occasion they all died of starvation", he inquired "whether it is thought possible that we may be able to do something to bring relief to these sufferers". He mentioned as a shining example "the amazing generosity" of the Swiss whose "frontier has been technically closed but actually open" and suggested that Britain should give aid to the Swiss in support of refugees who can make their way there. He also recommended the granting of visas to those able to reach Britain: <239> "I hope that we should not in such a case waste our time in considering whether we have done as much or more than other nations for people who are in this kind of distress; the only question which really matters is whether we have done all we can... Again I hope we shall not waste time by considering whether these people fall into the categories drawn up to regulate such matters. Categories are nothing but administrative headings, and can be altered, if we wish, to include some who do not fall under them..." [524] The Archbishop of Canterbury again urged the Government, in a letter to "The Times" [525], to admit to Britain "any refugee who might succeed in escaping". c. Retribution for the Persecutors; Intercession for the Persecuted At the beginning of December, 1942, the Archbishop of York delivered a speech in the House of Lords. The Archbishop said: "Men, women and children are being ruthlessly put to death by massacre, poison, gas, electrocution, or being sent long journeys to unknown destinations in bitterly cold weather without food or drink. Children that die on the way are cast out from the open trucks to the side of the railway. Such is Hitler's new order." The Archbishop called upon the Government "...to state solemnly that when the hour of deliverance comes, retribution will be dealt out not only on the cold-blooded and cowardly brutes who order these massacres, but also on the thousands of underlings who appear joyfully to be carrying them out." [526] The "Solemn Statement" requested by the Archbishop of York (and many others) was published on December 17, 1942, simultaneously in London, Washington and Moscow, with the assent and support of all the Allied Governments and of the British Dominions. The text was as follows: <240> "The attention of the Governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the United States of America, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, and Yugoslavia, and of the French National Committee, has been drawn to numerous reports from Europe that the German authorities, not content with denying to persons of Jewish race in all the territories over which their barbarous rule has been extended the most elementary human rights, are now carrying into effect Hitler's oft repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe. From all the occupied countries Jews are being transported, in conditions of appalling horror and brutality, to Eastern Europe. In Poland, which has been made the principal Nazi slaughterhouse, the ghettos established by the German invaders are being systematically emptied of all Jews except a few highly skilled workers required for war industries. None of those taken away are ever heard of again. The able-bodied are slowly worked to death in labour camps. The infirm are left to die of exposure and starvation or are deliberately massacred in mass executions. The number of victims of these bloody cruelties is reckoned in many hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent men, women and children. The above-mentioned Governments and the French National Committee condemn in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination. They declare that such events can only strengthen the resolve of all freedom-loving peoples to overthrow the barbarous Hilarity tyranny. They reaffirm their solemn resolution to ensure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution, and to press on with the necessary practical measures to this end." [527] The Bishop of London, Dr. Fisher (later on to be the Archbishop of Canterbury) voiced in the House of Lords "the whole hearted support for the statement which is forthcoming from Christian circles". Referring to the appeal made by the Archbishop of York, the Bishop said: "It would be a satisfaction to the Archbishop and others if it were made clear that retribution will be exacted not only from those who devised and ordered these proceedings, but also in due degree of responsibility from those who carried out joyfully and gladly the orders which were given to them. The deeds were so repugnant to the laws of God and to every human instinct of decency that whoever took a share must receive due retribution for them. He hoped that it would be made clear that we and all our Allies would offer free asylum gladly to all who could escape." The Bishop also urged that: <241> "Neutral countries should be encouraged to grant sanctuary to refugees by a guarantee that for every Jewish refugee from Nazi tyranny they would receive, the United Nations would undertake to share in the cost of maintenance and would make possible the resettlement after the war of refugees in a permanent and abiding home." [528] At the end of January, 1943, the Archbishops of Canterbury, York and Wales issued, "in the name of the Bishops of the three provinces", a statement in which they again stressed the two main points in the Bishop of London's speech in the House of Lords in December, 1942, namely: support of the Declaration made by the Allied Governments that "those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution and the demand to provide a sanctuary for the victims. The "Appeal to the Government" reads as follows: "The Bishops of England and Wales have been profoundly stirred by the declaration made in both Houses of Parliament on behalf of His Majesty's Government on December 17th, 1942, describing the barbarous and inhuman treatment to which the Jews are being subjected in German-occupied Europe. They note that the number of victims of this policy of cold-blooded extermination is already reckoned in hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent men, women and children. They note further that the extermination already carried out is part of the carrying into effect of Hitler's oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe, which means in effect the extermination of some six million persons in the territories over which Hitler's rule has been extended. The Bishops of England and Wales declare that the sufferings of these millions of Jews and their condemnation, failing immediate rescue, to a cruel and certain death, constitute an appeal to humanity which it is impossible to resist. They believe that it is the duty of civilised nations, whether neutral or Allied, to exert themselves to the utmost possible extent to provide a sanctuary for these victims. They therefore urge the Government of the United Kingdom to give a lead to the world by declaring its readiness, in consultation with the Dominion Governments, to co-operate with the Governments of the United and neutral nations in finding an immediate refuge in territories within the British Empire as well as elsewhere for all persons threatened with massacre who can escape from Axis lands, or for those who have already escaped to neighbouring neutral countries and can make room for other refugees to take their place." [529] <242> That not everyone agreed with the demand for retribution becomes evident from a speech given by the Archbishop of York at a city meeting in Leeds, on March 14, 1943. The Archbishop had been told that he was unchristian in asking for retribution. Objections were evidently made to the Archbishop's request that "refugees from this horror can find a refuge wherever the British flag flies". Apparently there was the feeling that there might be spies amongst the refugees; that the territories under the British flag would be flooded by a mass immigration of Jewish refugees, and that this would create insurmountable problems after the war. The Archbishop said the following: "...The persecution of the Jews is, however, unique in its horror. It has the characteristics which make it stand by itself in the long history of cruelty and tyranny. It is a deliberate policy of extermination directed against, not a nation, but a whole race. Neither their nation, nor their profession, nor their character will save Jews from this sweeping sentence. They are doomed without trial, without crime, without the possibility of defence, simply because they belong to the race from which the prophets came, and of which our Lord and His disciples were members. They are condemned to death to satisfy the blood lust of a cruel and wicked megalomaniac who by fraud and violence now holds the greater part of Europe in his grasp... What can be done? 1. Let the German people know what is being done in their name. 2. Let the German people also be told solemnly and repeatedly that sure retribution awaits not only the master criminals who have ordered these horrors, but also their brutal underlings who are carrying them out, often apparently with zest. I have been told that I am un-Christian in asking for retribution. Have those who thus criticise never read that the Christ said that rather than a man should offend one of these little ones it were better that a millstone should be hanged about his neck and he be cast into the sea. I ask for this broadcasting of the Allies' determination to punish, in the hope that it may stay the hands of at any rate some of the criminals. Fear is sometimes effective when mercy makes no appeal. 3. We must make it plain that refugees from this horror can find a refuge wherever the British flag flies. Every precaution will have to be taken against spies. And the refuge will only be promised for the period of the terror. Few will be able to reach our shores. But give them this hope of refuge. 4. Support the Government in the efforts they are now making, with other allied powers and the neutrals, to help the Jews now in danger and to provide succour for their refugees. <243> We must do all we can in the name of Christianity and humanity to save at any rate a remnant from these foul murderers. Victory is the only sure road to their deliverance. The war becomes increasingly a crusade not only to preserve freedom and justice, but also to overthrow and shatter cruelty and tyranny in their most savage and hateful forms." [530] At the end of 1942, a statement was issued by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Moderator of the Free Church Federal Council, urging that special intercessions be offered in all churches on the first Sunday of the New Year: "We do not doubt that in all congregations prayer is throughout this time being offered for the Jews of Germany and the occupied countries, who are suffering so terrible an affliction and over whom the threat of extermination is hanging. It is a bitter grief that our nation can do so little to help, but short of victory in the war there is no way in which we can ourselves effect anything comparable with the need, and the massacre goes on day by day. We should be united in constant prayer to Almighty God that this monstrous evil may be checked and the Jews delivered from their tormentors; and as a focus for such united prayer we urge that special intercessions be offered in all churches on the first Sunday of the New Year." [531] Seven "representative German Lutheran Pastors in England" commented, in a letter published in "The Times", as follows: "On the first Sunday of the New Year when the Gospel appointed to read in all German Lutheran Churches is the story of the murder of the innocent (St. Matthew 2, 16-18), we ministers of the German Lutheran Church in England feel in duty bound to call our congregations to solemn prayer and intercession for the Jewish people in their unparalleled sufferings. It was the anti-Jewish legislation as applied to the ministry which brought the Lutheran Church in Germany to its first witness against idolatry and barbarism and caused it to become a 'Confessing Church'. Some of us wish that the protest then made had been stronger, more general, more frequent; but it is not for us who now live in safety to criticise those who under fire have done their utmost not to bow to Baal. While they are silenced by the terrors of persecution, we know that they would want and expect us to speak on their behalf and in the name of all who confess themselves Christians in Germany. <244> In fellowship with them and in solidarity with the people of whom Christ our Lord was born, in solemn protest and deep repentance we recall the words of the Old Testament: 'Open thy mouth, judge righteously and plead the cause of the poor and needy'. (Prov. 31, 8-9)." [532] d. Practical Steps Demanded; the Bermuda Conference Many times Church leaders in Great Britain demanded that their Government should take practical steps for the rescue of the Jews of Europe. Some of their statements on this subject have already been recorded in the preceding paragraph. In a letter to "The Times", the Bishop of Chichester recommended that Germany should be officially requested to let Jews emigrate to neutral countries. [533] In Parliament, an all-party committee of members of both houses was formed to prod the Government into action. Its first meeting, on January 27, 1943, was addressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. [534] On February 4, 1943, at the annual meeting of the Council of Christians and Jews, the Archbishop of Canterbury referred to "the deep concern felt by all sections of the British public at the reports of mass extermination of Jews and others at the hand of the Nazis". He outlined "the steps which he had taken as one of the Joint Presidents of the Council, and in association with the leaders of the other sections of the Christian community, in the hope of securing some measure of relief to the victims of this persecution." [535] On March 23, 1943, the Archbishop of Canterbury presented the following Resolution to the House of Lords: "To move to resolve, that, in view of the massacres and starvation of Jews and others in enemy and enemy occupied countries, this House desires to assure His Majesty's Government of its fullest support for immediate measures, on the largest and most generous scale compatible with the requirements of military operations and security, for providing help and temporary asylum to persons in danger of massacre who are able to leave enemy and enemy-occupied countries." <245> The Archbishop said: "...We are wisely advised not to limit our attention in this connection to the sufferers of any one race, and we must remember that there are citizens of many countries who are subject to just the same kind of monstrous persecution, and even massacre. None the less, there has been a concentration of this fury against the Jews, and it is inevitable that we should give special attention to what is being carried through, and still further plotted against them... "We are told that the only real solution is rapid victory. No doubt it is true that if we could win the war in the course of a few weeks we could still deliver multitudes of those who are now doomed to death. But we dare not look for such results, and we know that what we can do will be but little in comparison with the need. My whole plea on behalf of those for whom I am speaking is that whether what we can do be large or little it should at least be all we can do." The Archbishop then told of the deportation of Jews from Moravia, Germany, Rumania, and Holland, and of the slaughter of Jews in Poland. He continued: "I believe that part of our difficulty in arousing ourselves and our fellow- countrymen to the degree of indignation that it would seem to merit is the fact that the imagination recoils before it. It is impossible to hold such things at all before the mind. But we are all agreed in this House on the main purpose of this Motion, to offer our utmost support to the Government in all they can do; but with all sympathy for members of His Majesty's Government, I am sure they will forgive some of us who wonder whether quite everything possible has really already been done." The Archbishop recalled "the solemn statement of the United Nations made public on December 17", and contrasted "the solemnity of the words then used, and the reception accorded to them, with the very meagre action that had actually followed". "It is the delays in the whole matter while these horrors go on daily that make some of us wonder whether it may not be possible to speed up a little. One must admit that some of the arguments hitherto advanced as justifying the comparative inaction seem quite disproportionate to the scale of the evil confronting us. As reasons for no further action, "the great part that has been taken by this country and other countries in the relief of the refugees" was pointed out. <246> "That, of course, would be relevant if the people in the other lands were suffering great discomfort or great privation, but when what you are confronted with is wholesale massacre, it seemed to most of us not only irrelevant but grotesquely irrelevant." The Secretary of State for the Colonies had given a promise with regard to the admission of Jews to Palestine, on February 3, but on February 24 no attempt to move these persons had yet taken place. The Archbishop made a plea that action should be taken as promptly as possible to carry out the promises given by the Colonial Secretary. He also urged, "that we should revive the scheme of visas for entry into this country". "We want to suggest the granting of blocks of visas to the Consuls in Spain and Portugal and perhaps in Turkey to be used at their discretion. We know of course that the German Government will not give exit permits. What matters is that we should open our doors irrespective of the question whether the German door is open or shut, so that all who can may come... It is of the greatest importance to give relief to those neutral countries because there is at present a steady stream or perhaps more accurately a steady trickle of refugees from France both into Spain and into Switzerland. The numbers that those countries, already suffering a good deal in shortage of food and with their standard of life so far below our own, will be able to receive are of course limited. If we can open the door at the other side and bring away from Spain and Portugal and (if transport is available but probably it would not) from Switzerland and also from Turkey those who are able to make their escape there, we shall render it far more probable that the channels through which that trickle percolates will not be blocked... Then, once more, it is urged, that we should offer help to European neutrals, to encourage them to admit new refugees, in the form of guarantees from the United Nations to relieve them of a stipulated proportion of refugees after the victory, or, if possible, sooner; that we should offer direct financial aid... There is one point I would raise more tentatively... It is that through some neutral power an offer should directly be made to the German Government to receive Jews in territories of the British Empire and, so far as they agree, of the other Allied Nations on a scheme of so many each month. Very likely it would be refused, and then Hitler's guilt would stand out all the more evidently. If the offer were accepted there would of course be difficulties enough, but it would be the business of the Germans to overcome these so far as concerns the conveyance of the refugees to the ports, and efforts could be made to secure help from Sweden and other neutral countries for shipping from the ports... Some of us have wondered how far the possibility has been considered of receiving any considerable number, particularly of children, in Eire and whether the Government of Eire have been consulted about this... <247> "It is said that there is a danger of Anti-Semitic feeling in this country. No doubt that feeling exists in some degree, and no doubt it could very easily be fanned into flame, but I am quite sure it exists at present only in comparatively small patches. It is very local when it exists at all, and therefore it receives a degree of attention beyond what it deserves. But if the Government were to decide that it was wise and practicable to put in action any of the proposals that I have laid before your Lordships, it would be very easy for the Government, by skilful use of the wireless, to win the sympathy and confidence of the people for their proposals, especially if a large number of those who were brought out were children and were being delivered from almost certain death... The whole matter is so big and other claims are so urgent that we want further to make the proposition that there shall be appointed someone of high standing for whom this should be a primary responsibility... My chief protest is against procrastination of any kind. It was three months ago that the solemn declaration of the United Nations was made and now we are confronted with a proposal for an exploratory Conference at Ottawa. That sounds as if it involves much more delay. It took five weeks from December 17 for our Government to approach the United States, and then six weeks for the Government of the United States to reply, and when they did reply they suggested a meeting of representatives of the Government for preliminary exploration. The Jews are being slaughtered at the rate of tens of thousands a day on many days, but there is a proposal for a preliminary exploration to be made with a view of referring the whole matter after that to the Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees. My Lords, let us at least urge that when that Conference meets it should not meet for exploration only but for decision. We know that what we can do is small compared with the magnitude of the problem, but we cannot rest so long as there is any sense among us that we are not doing all that might be done. We have discussed the matter on the footing that we are not responsible for this great evil, that the burden lies on others, but it is always true that the obligations of decent men are decided for them by contingencies which they did not themselves create and very largely by action of wicked men. The priest and the Levite in the parable [536] were not in the least responsible for the traveller's wounds as he lay there by the roadside and no doubt they had many other pressing things to attend to, but they stand as the picture of those who are condemned for neglecting the opportunity of showing responsibility. We at this moment have upon us a tremendous responsibility. We stand at the bar of history, of humanity and of God. I beg to move." [537] <248> After the Archbishop of Canterbury had spoken, Lord Rochester spoke "as a Methodist layman": '...No one can preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and remain indifferent to social institutions which contradict that teaching. Wherever the Churches find practices which are contrary to Christian doctrine, whether they be such diabolical and horrifying practices as these we are more especially considering this afternoon, or others, it is no more than their bounden duty to denounce them... We are concerned with all persecuted minorities, but the Christian necessarily feels an intimate responsibility in regard to the Jews, since Christ 'according to the flesh' came out of Israel. Almost every page of the New Testament shows how close was the association between religious Judaism and the first followers of Christ... 'I must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.' [538] And woe to us if we leave any stone unturned in seeking to aid and succour those of our fellow human beings who are suffering this cruel Nazi stumbling- block of offence. The Nazis have indeed debased themselves even unto hell, but let us remember' the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity,' as we recall those words in the 57th chapter of Isaiah: 'Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumbling-block out of the way of my people'. [539] I support the Motion of the most reverend Primate, and I would urge the redoubling of our efforts to succour 'one of the least of these', as we recall the latter part of the 25th chapter of St. Matthew." [540] It is remarkable that, contrary to what one might have expected, it was the Archbishop who made the practical suggestions and the "Methodist layman" who cited texts from the Bible. It is a pity that one expression in the Archbishop's motion ("immediate measures, on the largest and most generous scale compatible with the requirements of military operations and security") provided the Government with an excuse to do practically nothing. In order to understand the Archbishop's words, one should, however, try to realize how manifold were "the requirements of military operations and security" in those days. <249> Obviously the Archbishop was well-informed about the persecutions on the continent of Europe. He had received (as he himself stated in his speech) reports from the World Jewish Congress, Geneva, and from the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Dr. Riegner, of the World Jewish Congress, sent an aide-memoire to the British Ambassador in Bern "on behalf of the secretariats of the World Council of Churches and of the Jewish Congress". The covering letter, dated March 22, 1943, stated: "We should also appreciate it if His Majesty's Government would see fit to pass on the main contents of this aide-memoire to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the British Section of the World Jewish Congress". [541] But if the aide-memoire was passed on, it must have come too late for the meeting in the House of Lords. The speech of the Archbishop in the House of Lords deserves careful study. It sheds an important light on the attitude of the Government regarding the Jewish refugees. The Archbishop mentioned the proposal for an exploratory Conference at Ottawa. The country (Canada) in whose capital the conference was to be held, however, had not been informed, and thus the conference was held at Bermuda, on 19-29 April, 1943. The statement issued at the end of its deliberations merely promised recommendations - which were not disclosed - and the setting up of an inter-governmental organization to handle the problem in the future. The verdict on the allied Governments that "History will record the Bermuda Conference as a monument of moral callousness and inertia" is not too severe. [542] The British Council of Churches, made up of the official representatives of the Church of England, the Church of Scotland and the Free Churches, met in London on April 13th and 14th under the presidency of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The following resolution was passed on anti-Semitism: <250> "The British Council of Churches warmly welcomes the statements made by the leaders of many Christian Churches expressing fellow-feeling with the Jewish people in the trials through which they are passing and the desire to aid them in every practicable way. In particular the Council notes with admiration and thankfulness the statements on this subject which have issued from Christian leaders in enemy-occupied countries. The Council affirms that anti-Semitism of any kind is contrary to natural justice, incompatible with the Christian doctrine of man and a denial of the Gospel. Malicious gossip and irresponsible charges against Jews, no less than active persecution, are incompatible with Christian standards of behaviour. The Council welcomes the decision to hold in Bermuda a Conference in which the British and American Governments will seek jointly to find practical ways of rendering immediate and continuing assistance to Jews and other imperilled people. The Council considers that every possible step ought to be taken to rescue from massacre the Jews in enemy and enemy occupied territories. It is convinced that both Christian and Jewish people in this country would give strong support to a lead from His Majesty's Government in offering sanctuary in Great Britain for a considerable number of children and adults, additional to those received before September, 1939, and would be ready to make sacrifices so as to provide hospitality for them during the war. The Council further asks that the Bermuda Conference will suggest measures for rendering the requisite material assistance for the maintenance of refugees who reach neutral countries, and will give assurance to those countries of readiness to cooperate in plans for post-war settlement of the refugees in other parts of the world." [543] In May, 1943, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland stated: "The General Assembly protest anew against the atrocious persecution of the Jews in Nazi-occupied countries, and in the name of Christ condemns the inhumanity and sacrilege of anti-Semitic policy. They warmly approve of the steps taken by the Government to assist refugees, and respectfully urge it to continue and extend its efforts as far as possible. They assure the Jewish people of their deep sympathy in their grievous distress, and earnestly commend them to the prayerful concern and compassion of the Church." [544] The Assembly of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland passed the following Resolution (also in May, 1943): "They call upon His Majesty's Government to promote, in concert with the Governments of the United States of America and other associated nations, effective measures for enabling Jews and other victims of German brutality to escape and find refuge. <251> In their view the strong abhorrence and detestation of the persecutors, which are felt throughout the civilised world, and of their purpose of exterminating the Jews, should be followed by energetic action, not only to bring to justice in due course the instigators and perpetrators of the massacres, but to give immediate aid, welcome and asylum in this and other free countries to those in peril, even though some risk to our own country may be involved. To this end they ask that restrictions regarding age, country of origin or means of support should not be put in the way to liberty and safety. They ask the Churches to show and inculcate a friendly and helpful attitude to such refugees, to pray for the deliverance of those who cannot escape beyond the reach of their barbarous enemies, and to resist as un-Christian all tendencies to anti-Semitism. [545] On June 10, 1943, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland adopted the following Resolution: "The General Assembly has learned with great satisfaction that His Majesty's Government is prepared to collaborate with the United States of America in providing asylum for as many victims of German hate as can escape or be rescued from the danger which threatens them, and to consult with the Dominion Governments and the Governments of neutral countries with regard to united action, so that as many of the threatened people as ever possible may be helped. In view of the tremendous urgency of the situation, the General Assembly requests His Majesty's Government to carry out their promises to provide immediate and effective relief for those in such dire peril." [546] Churches and Church leaders had, as quoted so far, expressed their desire and hope that the Government would take practical steps for aiding refugees. The Bishop of Chichester, however, expressed his disappointment in a letter to the Editor of "The Times": "The Foreign Secretary is about to make a statement in the House of Commons on the result of the Bermuda Conference, and the policy of His Majesty's Government with regard to refugees. It will be almost exactly five months after the declaration of December 17, condemning the wholesale massacre of the Jews by the Nazis 'in the strongest possible terms'. It is a historic moment in the record of our dealings with the persecuted and the oppressed. It is quite certain that if the British and American Governments were determined to achieve a programme of rescue in some way commensurate with the vastness of the need, they could do it. Nor can there be any doubt about the response which would be given in Britain to a clear lead based on the principles of humanity. <252> There are difficulties. But so far as shipping is concerned, these should be greatly reduced as a result of the victories in North Africa. The need of a big camp to which those now in neutral countries could be sent must be patent to everybody. And the case for a revision of the regulations to allow many more to enter the United Kingdom is overwhelming. The guilt of 'this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination' lies with the Nazis. But can we escape blame if, having it in our power to do something to save the victims, we fail to take the necessary action, and to take it swiftly?" [547] A few days later the Bishop of Chichester published the following letter in "The Times": "In the House of Commons on Wednesday Mr. Peake referred to my letter printed in your issue of May 18. His principal charge was 'that the Bishop made no attempt to indicate what was the programme of rescue which he suggested'. He added that he had searched Hansard for the House of Lords ever since December 17, but had failed to find any speech by myself on the subject. I was present at the debate opened by the Archbishop of Canterbury on March 23 and was prepared to speak. But owing to the number of speakers, representing all shades of opinion, on that occasion I, with others, stood down. It is not, however, true to say that I have made no suggestions as to a programme of rescue. In a letter in your columns on December 28, 1942, I referred to the suggestion made by Sir Neill Malcolm in his letter of December 22, and made further suggestions, such as the obtaining of facilities from the protecting Power for the transportation of Nazi victims from Germany and German occupied territories to the nearest frontier, with a view to entry into places of refuge; a guaranteeing to neutral Governments willing to give sanctuary to such victims of an evacuation of as many as possible after the war; and the establishment of reception areas in lands outside Europe. I am also a member of the Parliamentary Committee, and I support the 12-point programme for immediate rescue measures drawn up by the National Committee for Rescue from Nazi Terror, and widely published. I am glad to hear of the extension of categories of individuals eligible for visas, which forms a portion of the first of these points. I entirely agree that a programme of rescue must be a programme of victory. But this is not inconsistent with a determination by the Government to do everything possible for temporary sanctuary. There is a great difference between the spirit of a Government which says, 'We are resolved to do everything in our power, we wish we could do more, but such and such steps shall be taken at once in spite of all the difficulties', and the pessimistic attitude which simply repeats, 'We are filled with burning indignation at the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis against these people. We are determined to punish the guilty when the war is over. But for the present these people are beyond possibility of rescue." [548] <253> On July 28, 1943, the Bishop of Chichester strongly supported the plea for urgent government action in a speech in the House of Lords which was very critical of official policy and action. He contended that: "...in the matter of the systematic mass murder of the Jews in the Nazi- occupied territories of Europe, which was the reason why the Bermuda Conference was called, there has been a deterioration in the determination to grapple with the problem." After quoting earlier promises made on behalf of the Government, he criticized the achievement of this Conference. "...On April 19-29 the Bermuda Conference took place. It began in a spirit of pessimism. Its official pronouncement at the end said that the delegates 'had examined the refugee problem in all its aspects'. The Jews were not mentioned. Agreed confidential recommendations were made which were designed to lead to the relief of a substantial number of refugees of all races and nationalities. Not a word was said about 'temporary asylum'..." Particularly the Bishop emphasized the obligation to give priority to the persecuted Jews, and the responsibility of both neutral countries and of the Allied Governments to find temporary asylum for Hitler's victims. "... It is in the face of this systematic murder, especially in the last twelve months, that I and so many others plead with the Government to act in a new way. With the appeal of the stricken people ringing in our ears, we would be false to our tradition if we failed to do everything we can." [549] e. Towards the End As far as we know, few statements were issued during the last period of the war. Significant was the Archbishop of Canterbury's warning, on Dec. 8, 1943, that "the sufferings of the Jews be kept in full view of all people so that the spirit of indignation and compassion in them will not die out". <254> "It is one of the most terrible consequences of war that the sensitiveness of people tends to become hardened, "Dr.Temple said. "We could hardly live these days if we felt the volume of suffering of others in the world as acutely as we felt in peacetime". "There is a great moral danger in the paralysis of feeling that is liable to be brought about. It is most important for our own moral health and vigor that we express horror at the persecution of the Jews." Dr. Temple said the persecution of Jews on the Continent, and particularly in Poland, "almost baffles imagination and leaves one horrified at the power of the evil that can show itself in human nature." [550] Another warning came from the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (May, 1944): "The General Assembly express their profound sorrow at the lamentable condition of the Jews in Europe, and in the name of Christ renew their reprobation of the inhuman atrocities committed against them. They assure the Jews of their deep concern and sympathy, commend them to the brotherly offices and prayerful compassion of all Christian men and women, and warn the members of the Church of Scotland against the growing danger of anti-Jewish prejudice and propaganda. They respectfully urge the Government to continue to offer every facility to enable refugees to escape from the tyranny and oppression of Nazism." [551] In June, 1944, the Archbishop of Canterbury, presiding at a meeting of the Council of Christians and Jews, denounced the continued persecution and attempted extermination of the Jews by the Germans, whose activities he described as "one of the most hideous of the elements even in the recent German record". Dr. Temple moved a resolution expressing concern at the increasing peril to the Jewish communities involved in the extension of Nazi domination in Central and South Eastern Europe, coupled with satisfaction at the steps taken in North Africa and southern Italy to remove all discriminatory legislation against Jews and other victims of Nazi intolerance. He and many others, he said, had been disappointed that there had not been a greater willingness shown on the part of the authorities to help those who were trying to escape from German-dominated countries... [552] <255> On July 7, 1944, the Archbishop of Canterbury addressed the following message to Hungary through the B.B.C.: "I am eager to speak to the Christian people of Hungary, so far as I can do so, because of news sent to me through one of the most reliable of ecclesiastical neutral sources - and what I hear from that source only confirms what is reported also through other channels. The report is that a wholesale round-up of Hungarian Jews is taking place under orders from the German Government, and that those who are carried off have little chance of survival. According to this report, the Jews are being deported daily. Already the Eastern provinces have been cleared of Jews. Now the process is beginning in the Western districts including the capital. The conditions of travel are such that on arrival many already are dead; others are killed and cremated at Auschwitz. If the Christians of Hungary know the facts I am perfectly confident that they are also doing everything they can to save these doomed people by hiding them and helping them to escape. But it may be that inside Hungary the facts are concealed. It is for this reason that I feel bound to tell you of them, and beg you to do your utmost, even taking great personal risks, in order to save some if you can. Then you will earn in very special degree the words of approval and thanks: 'In as much as ye did it unto one of these My brethren ye did unto Me' (Matthew, 25, 40). I speak as a Christian who cannot help to Christians who can. For the honour of our common Christianity I implore you to do your utmost." [553] 34 THE UNITED STATES a. The Time of America's "Neutrality" It would have been possible to record the statements in this paragraph under "The Neutral Countries". The United States officially entered into the war in December, 1941. Japan attacked Pearl Harbour on Dec. 7 and Hitler declared war upon the United States, on Dec. 11, 1941. Until that time, it was at least pretended that the United States was neutral and the spirit of isolationism was still strong. Before 1942, strong statements against anti-Semitism were issued by Protestant Churches in the U.S.A., especially by the Federal Council of Churches. After Hitler's declaration of war, however, the statements took on an additional clarity: "Anybody spreading anti-Semitism is helping Hitler just as much as if he were a paid agent of the Reich." [554] Anti-Semitism became "treason against God, treason against the country." [555] <256> On the evening of December 14, 1939, a mass meeting was held at Madison Square Garden, New York, for the purpose of registering a protest against the treatment of the Jews in Poland and other areas under the Nazi regime. The meeting was attended by 20,000 people. Expressing the sympathy of Christians, Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert, General Secretary of the Federal Council of Churches, pointed out, that Christians as well as Jews were suffering in Poland and other parts of Europe and that "Christians have a direct stake in what is happening". In conclusion, he said: "Out of the calamity in Europe, there emerges one by-product for which we may be thankful - the new sense of fellowship between Jew and Christian in America. Nothing so quickly unites men as a cry of desperate human need. I do not believe there has ever been a time when Christian hearts in America beat in such sympathy for their Jewish neighbours. There are differences of religious conviction between Jew and Christian - at one point a momentous difference - but we share together the priceless spiritual heritage of Israel. As His Holiness Pope Pius XI truly and nobly said, 'Spiritually we are all Semites'." [556] The United Church of Christ issued the following statement in 1940: "One of the most disturbing currents in America to-day is anti-Semitism. Under the cover of an attack upon the Jews a covert attack is being made on Christianity. The manipulators of anti- Jewish propaganda are not concerned with the alleged evils they denounce; but they are concerned to destroy the teachings of the Bible - that God, the Lord and Creator of all men, is a holy God - and the prophetic morality of the Old Testament. They attack under cover of anti-Semitism God the Lord who is not bound to any nation but is Lord of all nations. They attack justice, righteousness, mercy and the divine command for holiness. They attack the law which Christians and Jews alike acknowledge as God's requirement. Twentieth century anti-Semitism reveals its true character in its demand on the Church to surrender the Old Testament and to deny that the God of Abraham, of Moses and the Prophets is the Father of Jesus Christ. <257> Anti-Semitism is flatly contradictory to the express teaching of St. Paul. In Romans 11, St. Paul reminds the Gentile Christians, just as we need to be reminded today, that Israel is the stem on which Gentile Christians have been grafted. 'You owe,' he wrote, 'your position to faith. You should feel awed instead of uplifted.' And again, 'So far as the gospel goes, they (the Jews) are enemies of God, which is to your advantage; but so far as the election goes, they are beloved for their father's sake. For God never goes back upon his gifts and call.' St. Paul discovered in anti-Semitism a pride which needed to be rebuked. 'You owe your position to faith'; that means, not something we have by right of possession, not something we can take for granted, not any kind of inherent superiority at all. Faith is the gift of God. Moreover, God has not repudiated Israel. They are still beloved. Anti-Semitism is not only one form of human pride; it is repudiation of the declared purpose of God. We recommend that General Synod declare its condemnation of anti-Semitism and urge upon the members of the Church in the name of Christ the duty to serve in love the brothers of Christ according to the flesh." [557] The Federal Council of Churches of Christ in the United States published the following Resolution, in December, 1940: "We express as Christians our sympathy with the Jewish people in this hour of calamity for so many of their group in Europe. We deplore the existence of anti-Semitism in America and declare our opposition to it because it is contrary to the spirit and teachings of Christ. We call upon His followers to create Christian attitudes toward the Jews. This should be a matter of primary concern for every Christian Church in every community." [558] On September 19, 1941, the Executive Committee of the Federal Council adopted the following statement: "On many previous occasions we have expressed our abhorrence of the religious and racial intolerance which afflicts our world today. We have especially emphasized our opposition to unjust and unchristian attacks upon the Jews. In so doing we have been whole-heartedly supported by similar utterances officially made by the highest governing bodies of the great dominations which cooperate in the Federal Council of Churches. <258> Recent evidences of anti-Jewish prejudice in our own country compel us to speak again a word of solemn warning to the nation. Divisiveness on religious or racial grounds is a portentous menace to American democracy. If one group be made the target of attack today, the same spirit of intolerance may be visited on another group to-morrow and the rights and liberties of every group thus be put in jeopardy. We condemn anti-Semitism as un-American. Our nation is a free fellowship of many racial and cultural stocks. It is our historic glory that they have been able to live together in mutual respect, each rejoicing in the rich contribution which the others have made to the common good. Anti-Semitism is an insidious evil which, if allowed to develop, would poison the springs of our national life. Even more strongly we condemn anti-Semitism as un-Christian. As Christians we gratefully acknowledge our ethical and spiritual indebtedness to the people of Israel. No true Christian can be anti-Semitic in thought, word or deed without being untrue to his own Christian inheritance. In behalf of the Christian churches which comprise the Federal Council we voice our renewed determination to unite in combating every tendency to anti-Semitism in our country. We recognize that a special responsibility rests upon us who belong to the numerically strongest group, to be staunch advocates of the rights of minorities." [559] In 1941, the following "Manifesto to our Brethren and Fellow Citizens of Jewish Race and Blood" was signed by one hundred and seventy Protestant ministers representing one hundred and sixty-six churches and twenty-four denominations in the City of New York: "With genuine anguish of heart we behold how in many places across the world today cruel forces of oppression and persecution are being released upon men and women and children of Jewish race and blood. With profound concern we note from time to time within our own beloved nation the manifestation of a spirit of anti-Semitism. The conscience of Protestant Christendom, as recorded at the great ecumenical conference held at Oxford, England, during July of 1937, expressed itself in no uncertain terms when with unanimous voice it affirmed that 'against all racial pride, racial hatred and persecution and the exploitation of other races in all their forms, the church is called by God to set its face implacably and to utter its words unequivocally both within and without its borders. There is a special need at this time that the church throughout the world brings every resource at its command against the sin of anti-Semitism.' With this pronouncement we are in complete accord of heart. Therefore, we would disavow any words or action promoted by the spirit of anti-Semitism, which emanate from sources that purport to be Christian. Such words and actions label themselves unchristian. <259> We call upon our Christian brethren to guard their hearts, their minds, their lips, their hands from emotions, thoughts, words or deeds that partake of 'the sin of anti-Semitism'. To that end we command to them the quest for 'the fullness of Christ' within their lives. We call upon our fellow citizens to remember that anti-Semitism is a threat to democracy and a denial of the fundamental principles upon which this nation is founded. We extend to our brethren and fellow citizens of Jewish race and blood our solemn assurance that by the constraint of our deepest Christian conviction we shall oppose unceasingly 'the sin of anti-Semitism' and we shall strive continuously for the realization of that brotherhood which humanity needs, democracy requires and Christianity demands." [560] b. At War with Germany. Co-operation with Jewish Leaders The Executive of the Federal Council addressed the following "Message for Race Relations Sunday" (Febr. 8, 1942) to its members: "For all the law is fulfilled in one word even this: thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Gal. 5, 14. Let us translate this pattern into a social program. Our pronouncements must now be supported by our practices. Where attacks are made upon Jews or the sinister spirit of anti-Semitism appears, we must protest in the Name of Christ and the Church... Where any racial minority within our borders is exploited or barred from equal opportunity, we Christians must take a stand for the sake of our faith. We must, furthermore, create a genuine fellowship that will prevent the development to such injustice towards any group. Our love for the Church requires that it be pre-eminently the abode of fellowship. The Church, by reason of its origin in the universal Christ, must be a brotherhood of all peoples, remembering that in Him there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free. Therefore, let every follower of Christ search in his own soul to see if any enemies of brotherhood are lurking there. Let him examine his own daily relationships. Let us all in this awful and creative hour march resolutely forward, not faithless nor fearful, but confident in the future when democracy and brotherhood are one. "If a man say I love God and hateth his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen." 1 John 4, 20. [561] <260> In September and October, 1942, the General Secretary of the Federal Council, Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert, visited France and Switzerland. The Director of the World Jewish Congress at Geneva, Dr. Gerhart M. Riegner, stated: "With regard to our knowledge of the Nazi plan of total extermination of European Jewry, I wish to state that the first report on this plan reached me in the last days of July 1942 and I communicated it to Rabbi Wise in New York and Mr. Silverman in London during the first days of August 1942 (through diplomatic channels). Dr. Wise received the message during the last days of August 1942 and asked Mr. Cavert to use his visit to Geneva at the beginning of September 1942 to find out from us whether deportation really meant extermination. After having spoken to one of us - I believe to Prof. Guggenheim - he confirmed this in a cable to the United States." [562] On Dec. 11, 1942, at the great Biennial Assembly of the Federal Council, the following Resolution on Anti-Semitism was adopted: "The reports which are reaching us concerning the incredible cruelties towards the Jews in Nazi occupied countries, particularly Poland, stir the Christian people of America to the deepest sympathy and indignation. It is impossible to avoid a conclusion that something like a policy of deliberate extermination of the Jews in Europe is being carried out. The violence and inhumanity which Nazi leaders have publicly avowed toward all Jews are apparently now coming to a climax in a virtual massacre. We are resolved to do our full part in establishing conditions in which such treatment of the Jews shall end. The feelings of the Jewish community throughout the world have recently been expressed in a period of mourning, fasting and prayer. We associate ourselves with our Jewish fellow-citizens in their hour of tragic sorrow, and unite our prayers with theirs. We confess our own ineffectiveness in combating the influences which beget anti-Semitism in our own country, and urge our constituencies to intensify their efforts in behalf of friendly relations with the Jews. We urge that all plans for reconstruction in Europe shall include measures designed to secure full justice for the Jews and a safe and respected place for them in western civilisation. For those who, after the war, will have to emigrate from the war-ridden lands of Europe, immigration opportunities should be created in this and other lands. We recommend that the officers of the Federal Council transmit this action to the Jewish leaders in person." [563] <261> On Dec. 31, 1942, the Synagogue Council of America published a New Year message it had addressed to the Rev. Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert, secretary of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, and to Mgr. Michael J. Ready, general secretary of the National Catholic Welfare Conference. The message was signed by Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the Council. "American Jews," the message said, "share with their Christian brothers the sense of having been privileged to bear burdens not only in answering the call of our nation's defence needs, but also in heeding the call of human needs overseas. "To the Jews of Hitler-ridden Europe the year 1942 has been the most catastrophic in their tragedy-laden history. Helpless women, aged and children, and defenceless men have been slaughtered wholesale and a whole people has been marked for extermination. Among no other people is such a toll being taken. If the executioner's hand is not soon stayed, all the Jews whom it can reach will perish." The message said the greeting was "preferred to you and to the great body of Christians whom you represent", and expressed hope for an Allied victory and a just peace in 1943. [564] On January 6, 1943, the heads of the six Jewish organizations which comprised the Synagogue Council of America, under the chairmanship of Rabbi Israel Goldstein, met in conference with official representatives of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. The purpose of the meeting was to afford an opportunity to discuss together what the Christian Churches could do to assist the Jews of Europe. Desiring to express its sympathy in something more than resolutions, the Federal Council arranged for the conference with the Jewish leaders. Several fruitful suggestions emerged as to ways in which the Churches might help to develop stronger support for the needs of refugees from Europe, a measure of relief in the form of food for at least some of the Jews in Europe, and a safe and respected place for Jews in the post-war world. [565] c. Practical Steps Demanded; the Bermuda Conference <262> "On March 1, 1943, a great demonstration, one of the largest ever held in the United States, took place in Madison Square Garden at the initiative of the Congress and under the joint auspices of the American Jewish Congress, the American Federation of Labour, the CIO, and the Church Peace Union. Twenty-two thousand people crowded into the great hall, while 15,000 stood outside throughout the evening listening to the proceedings through amplifiers. The demonstration was addressed by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, Dr. Stephen S. Wise, Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, Senator Robert F. Wagner, William Green, and others. The British Section transmitted cable messages from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the late Cardinal Hinsley, whose last public utterance it was before his death a week later. The meeting laid down a 12-point program for the rescue of European Jewry prepared by World Jewish Congress experts. The effect was immediate. On the following day, Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles declared that a note had already been sent to Great Britain on February 25 offering the cooperation of the United States in organizing an intergovern- mental meeting for study of methods to save 'political refugees' in Europe. The meeting came to be known as the Bermuda Refugee Conference..." [566] On March 1, 1943, the Executive Committee of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America appealed to the Governments of the United States and Great Britain "to consider offering financial assistance to Jewish refugees who have escaped to neutral countries from Nazi held territory, and the possible establishment of temporary places of asylum for those evacuated from Europe". The committee urged that the proposals be considered at the forthcoming conference in Toronto of representatives of the two governments on the Jewish problem. The suggestion was part of a three-point program calling for a report by the council's department of research and education on the treatment of Jews under the Nazi regime and setting aside May 2 for observance in churches as a "Day of Compassion" for the Jews in Europe. The committee's action was a sequel to the adoption at the council's biennial meeting in Cleveland in December of a statement setting forth the organization's determination "to do our full part in establishing conditions" in which harsh treatment of Jews should end. The proposals outlined by the committee for consideration of the British and American representatives at Toronto were: <263> "To offer financial assistance for the support of refugees that neutral governments (for example, Switzerland, or Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Turkey) may receive from areas under Nazi control, as a result either of infiltration across their borders or of negotiations with the Axis powers, with the expectation that, after the war, such refugees would be repatriated in their own countries. "To provide places of temporary asylum to which refugees whom it may be possible to evacuate from European countries may be removed, these refugees to be supported in camps for the duration of the war, with the understanding that they will then be repatriated in their own country or be provided with permanent homes in other ways." At the same time the committee urged Christians throughout the country "to give their moral support to whatever measures afford promise of rescuing European Jews whose lives are in jeopardy." The committee invited all Christians to "join in united intercession on May 2 for the victims of racial and religious persecution as a special occasion for the expression of Christian sollicitude." [567] The practical steps proposed by the Executive Committee of the Federal Council to the Governments of the United States and Great Britain were similar to the steps proposed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the House of Lords at about the same time, [568] and to the Aide-memoire sent by the Secretariats of the World Council of Churches and of the World Jewish Congress (Geneva), to the American and British Governments. [569] Not withstanding all this, the Bermuda Conference became "a monument of moral callousness and inertia". [570] d. Different Churches Speaking on Different Occasions The following is a chronological record of statements made by Churches or Church leaders in the United States from May, 1943, until the end of the second world war. Henry St. George Tucker, Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church and president of the Federal Council of Churches, in a statement on the observance by the Council of a "Day of Compassion" for persecuted European Jews, said that there had been found a "rising tide of concern among Christians" over their fate. <264> Dr. Tucker said it was the first time Christian churches had set aside a specific day for a "united expression of their sympathy with a suffering and persecuted Jewry". "What is happening to the Jews on the Continent of Europe is so horrible that we are in danger of assuming that it is exaggerated," he said, and cited a recent survey by the council of evidence that he said indicated that under the Nazis a policy of deliberate extermination of Jews was carried out. "The survey shows that the actual facts are probably more, rather than less, terrible than the reports," he continued. "The Christian people of America vigorously protest against this brutal and cruel persecution. But protest is not enough." Two remedial measures have been set forth by the council: First financial assistance for support of refugees reaching neutral countries from Nazi- occupied areas, and second, provision of temporary asylum to which refugees evacuated from European countries may be removed. [571] On October 20, 1943, American religious leaders denounced "the recent acts of terror in Denmark" and expressed sympathy for the Jews in that country. The Rev. Dr. P.O. Bessel, president of the Augustan Synod, Minneapolis, said that the synod was shocked at the German barbarism in Denmark, but was happy about Sweden's firm stand in offering refuge to the persecuted Jews. The Rev. Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert, general secretary of the Federal Council, said that "the American churches have been thrilled by the news that the Danish Church has refused to be cowed into silence in the face of the Nazi attack upon Jews in Denmark". [572] The following article in "The New York Herald Tribune" shows how strong anti-Semitic influences in the United States were, in 1943: BISHOP OXNAM ASSAILS BEATING OF JEWISH BOYS Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, of the Boston area of the Methodist Church, denounced today the alleged beating of Jewish boys as an apparent expression of incipient Fascism and, in a statement, demanded, "who is flooding the nation with anti-Semitic literature, and why?" <265> Declaring that "the beating of Jewish boys is not the work of hoodlums," Bishop Oxnam expressed hope that Jews, Catholics and Protestants could unite "in demanding that these beatings stop and that steps be taken to discover and destroy the dangerous forces that lie back of them." The Bishop's statement followed the placing of charges before Governor Leveratt Saltonstall that Jews had been made the victims of ruffians over a period of months in the Boston area. The Governor, acting upon a petition of which Bishop Oxnam was one of the signers, has appointed five prominent citizens of various faiths to an advisory committee on anti-Semitism. "The beating of Jewish boys must stop," the statement said. "The beaters must be apprehended and punished. The beating of any boys by gangs is bad enough at any time. The beating of boys of a particular race is worse. But the real menace lies in the apparent fact that these beatings are an expression of incipient Fascism, that they follow a similar pattern, and that, in one case, at least, the beaters wore black shirts. "Who is flooding the nation with anti-Semitic literature, and why? Who finances these movements? Why is it that the anti-Semitic leaders now under Federal indictment have attacked such religious organizations as the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, the Methodist Church and other Protestant religious bodies? Why has Franco, the Fascist dictator of Spain, been extolled? Bishop Oxnam, in an interview with "The Boston Traveller", said that the recent outbreaks of racial violence in the Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan districts of Boston follow a pattern. "I was in Germany when these things began there. It is the same pattern in which organized gangs beat up a scapegoat race whether they be Jews or any one else," he asserted. He asserted that Fascism is prevalent in Brooklyn now, and predicted that it would show itself in Detroit and sections of the Pacific Coast before long. "I think Brooklyn, New York and Boston are currently the most difficult centres, however," he added. [573] In Dec., 1943, a Senate resolution proposed the creation of a special commission "to bring about the rescue of the surviving Jews of Europe". Eight Protestant leaders sent "a Christmas Appeal for speedy adoption of the Resolution" to Vice President Henry A. Wallace, Senate majority and minority leaders and members of the House and Senate committees involved. Asserting that "more than 2,000,000 European Jews have been slaughtered by the Nazis, the message added that "we cannot approach Christmastide without declaring that too many of us have been found wanting in the will to rescue these suffering people." <266> "Let no possible sanctuary be closed, whether in America or elsewhere," the appeal said. "Let each door of refuge be kept open. This is the Christian way." The message was signed by Bishop William T. Manning (Protestant Episcopal); Archbishop Athenagoras (Greek Orthodox); Bishop William J. McConnell (Methodist), and others. [574] On Jan. 15, 1944, fifteen hundred persons attended a rally against anti-Semitism at Carnegie Hall. Dr.Henry Smith Leiper of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, chairman of the meeting, asserted that anti-Semitism was "treason against God, treason against the country". "Anybody spreading such slander," he said, "is helping Hitler just as much as if he were a paid agent of the Reich." Dr. Leiper and several others spoke out against what they said was the desire on the part of many to approach the problem of anti-Semitism with too much caution. Dr. Leiper said that exactly this idea prevailed in Germany in 1932, but did not halt the rise of fascism. [575] The biennial convention of the United Lutheran Church in America adopted, on Oct. 13, 1944, the following Resolution: "Recognizing that the Jewish problem has been made one of the central elements in the present assault on civilization, the United Lutheran Church in America, viewing with concern the manifestations of a rising tide of anti-Semitism in American life, begs its members to consider their Jewish brethren in the spirit of Luther, who spoke kindly things of them as 'blood brothers of our Lord', to use every available means to assure the Jewish people of their communities of the efforts of our church for the preservation of their rights, and to offer prayers on their behalf." [576] We do not record all the statements issued by Protestant Churches in the United States over the years 1943-1944. The Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and the United Presbyterian Church in North America issued a statement in 1943; the American Baptist Convention, the Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and the General Synod of the United Church of Christ issued a statement in 1944. Most of these statements condemned anti-Semitic and anti-Negro prejudices. <267> e. The Churches in the U.S.A. that kept Silent Three important Protestant denominations in the United States did not speak out unequivocally against anti-Semitism and the persecution and extermination of the Jews: the Southern Baptist Convention, the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, and the American Lutheran Church. [577] John G. Mager comments: "... It might have been felt that since a large proportion of the membership of the Synod was of German origin or descent, it would have made for ecclesiastical suicide if the official organ of the Synod made pronouncements against a country to which many were bound by ties of blood, culture and sentiment..." [578] It must be borne in mind that the Lutheran Churches in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Slovakia clearly expressed their horror at German anti-semitism, and they did so under much more difficult circumstances. This should dissuade us from wrong platitudes such as: "Lutherans tend to be anti-Semitic". Recently it has been suggested that "the causal chain that links Christian belief and faith to secular anti-Semitism begins with orthodoxy - commitment to a literal interpretation of traditional Christian dogma". [579] My knowledge of the situation of Churches in America is limited. Therefore I would not venture to suggest that there is a causal chain between the orthodoxy of a Church in America and its failure to denounce anti-Semitism. Moreover, in other countries, like the Netherlands for example, such a connection does not appear to exist. <268> It is noteworthy, however, that the three great Protestant Churches in the United States mentioned above, which failed to issue a clear statement against anti-Semitism, were not members of the Federal Council. Moreover, the Southern Baptist Convention and the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) are not members of the World Council of Churches, to this day. These Churches apparently did not feel challenged by the protest issued by the Assembly of the Church of England, in 1935, as was the Federal Council; [580] they did not receive the information provided by the General Secretariat of the World Council of Churches, Geneva, during the war. [581] Ecclesiastical isolationism is very dangerous indeed, especially in a time of crisis. They were probably afraid of watering down their own principles by co-operating with other Churches and this lack of co-operation and communication probably contributed to the fact that they did not fulfil the word of the Bible: "Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction. Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and the needy". (Prov. 31, 8-9). 35 THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES The war years were the testing time of the World Council. Contacts with Great Britain and the United States were relatively frequent until the end of 1942, when the whole of France was occupied by the Germans. Since it proved impossible to hold fully representative meetings, the Provisional Committee met and continued to meet in three groups - one in Geneva under the leadership of Dr. Boegner (later of Dr. Koechlin), one in Great Britain under Archbishop Temple, and one in New York under Dr. John R. Mott. <269> The fact that the World Council had offices in New York, London, and Geneva, proved a blessing, for each office had its area of contacts with Churches which the other could not reach. [582] When the second world war broke out, the World Council of Churches was still "in process of formation", and it had not as yet an adequate apparatus at its disposal. But the General Secretary, Dr. Visser 't Hooft, and the Director of the Department for Refugees, Dr. Freudenberg, had their contacts with the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, and with Church leaders in Germany and the occupied countries. They could thus pass on valuable information to the Churches in the free world, and stir them to action. a. Letters Sent to the International Red Cross On October 29, 1941, Dr. Visser 't Hooft sent the following Memorandum to the President of the Mixed Relief Committee of the International Red Cross, Prof. Dr. Karl Burckhardt: Memorandum on the Situation in Poland I. "We have received some information about the situation in the General government of Poland from a reliable and objective observer who has been travelling there during recent weeks. According to him, there exists a great difference between city and country. In the large cities, especially in Warsaw, the Polish and, to a greater extent the Jewish population, is suffering famine. Typhus is spreading in and outside the ghetto of Warsaw. Our spokesman heard of 2,000 cases in the ghetto alone. The mortality of infants less than three years old is amounting to 26%... We know of only one modest relief activity: American Poles have, in co-operation with American Mennonites, the German Red Cross, the Polish and the American Relief Committee (Hoover), organized a soup-kitchen, where they weekly distribute to the distressed population of Warsaw, fish purchased in Danzig for DM. 5,000. This feeding, which is merely a drop in the ocean, reaches Poles as well as Jews. Moreover, a despatch of medicine from the United States is expected to arrive in Lisbon one of these days. II. The greatest wave of deportations of German Jews and Christians of Jewish origin to Poland has been going on since the middle of October. Seven thousand Jews were deported from Berlin to Litzmannstadt on the nights of October 18/19 and 19/20. 20,000 Jews of the Rhineland are already there, or are en route. 2,000 are to be transported from Prague. Deportations from Vienna have already been going on for some time. A number of Jews from Breslau is believed to be engaged in labour in the Bohemian Riesengebirge. <270> According to our spokesman, the able-bodied men who have been deported to Poland are constructing roads behind the Eastern front whilst the able-bodied women are employed in ammunition factories. In Litzmannstadt hut camps are said to be provided as temporary lodging, but we have no particulars about this. The deportees were allowed to take only a handbag and 10 RM. with them. Sufficient protection against the cold will be out of the question. One may assume that these measures are the beginning of the complete deportation of the Jews and Christians of Jewish origin from the Reich and the Protectorate. This concerns people the majority of whom, owing to their mental powers having been overcharged for many years, will be unfit to cope with these new hard measures. III. In view of its Christian responsibility the Provisional Ecumenical Council of the Churches cannot heedlessly close its eyes to this misery of the refugees in Poland. As it practically can no longer carry out its own relief work, it feels all the more its duty to intervene with the competent bodies towards quick relief action. The Jewish organizations, generally speaking, are no longer in a position to undertake effective steps on behalf of their co-religionists. The Jewish question touches the centre of the Christian message: neglect of the Church to raise its warning and protective voice here, and do all in its power to help, would be disobeying its God. It is, therefore, the duty of the Christian Churches, and especially of their Ecumenical representative, the Provisional Ecumenical Council, to intervene on behalf of the persecuted. IV. Therefore the Provisional Ecumenical Council of the Churches appeals to the competent bodies of the Red Cross with the request to pay special attention to the situation in Warthegau and the General government of Poland. We urge that the Red Cross speedily send a delegate, if possible a medical man, to the regions in question. This delegate would have to investigate, especially in the large Polish cities, the most urgent needs of the Polish as well as of the Jewish population, thus ascertaining the medical, sanitary and clothing requirements. Such a survey should include not only the Warthegau (especially Litzmannstadt) but also the region of Lublin where the Jews from Germany, Austria and Bohemia who were deported in the winter of 1939/1940 are said to be living. We hardly know anything about their fate but it is most certainly very critical. The Provisional Ecumenical Council is prepared to request urgent support from its member Churches, especially those in the United States, for a relief action organised by the International Red Cross." [583] <271> Dr. Visser 't Hooft stated in the covering letter that he had also sent a copy to the President of the Red Cross, Dr. Huber, and that he would be grateful for a speedy reply. On June 3, 1942, the Secretary of the Ecumenical Commission for Refugees, Dr. A. Freudenberg, sent the following letter to the Mixed Relief Committee of the International Red Cross: "An absolutely reliable correspondent requests us, to communicate to the organizations of the Red Cross the following: 'A serious lack of restoratives, digitalis etc. is prevalent in the Jewish ghettos in the East, especially in the camps of Yzbica and Piaski near Lublin, and also in Riga, Wilna, Kowno, Warsaw and Lodz. Many people who had been admitted to the hospitals because of diminishing strength and under-nourishment or other reasons, must now perish there owing to a lack of these restoratives. They could be saved if one could supply them with strengthening food. I have been implored to inform the International Red Cross about this, so that it may render aid wherever possible.' This information, indicating that the deportees and the Polish Jews are suffering terribly from famine, has been confirmed by others As most of them are destitute, numerous cries of distress have reached us both directly and indirectly. Therefore we join in the request of our correspondent, and implore the organizations of the International Red Cross to continue to relieve the fate of these unfortunate people in every possible way." [584] On December 3, 1942, Dr. Visser 't Hooft again wrote to the President of the Mixed Relief Committee of the International Red Cross, Prof. Dr. Karl Burckhardt. The letter reads as follows: "We refer to our letter of 29th October, 1941, in which we submitted to you a Memorandum concerning the persecution and the misery of the Jews in Poland. Since then the situation has deteriorated in an alarming way. No doubt you have been informed of the mass executions of which the Polish Jews and the Jews in Poland deported from the European countries, are the victims. To the information that has reached other organizations, we can add the contents of a message received from a very distinguished German personality whose reliability we can guarantee. The message informs us that at one place in Poland, 6,000 Jews - men, women and children - are being shot every day. These executions are made in three groups, each of 2,000 persons, and this has already been going on for weeks. <272> In our Memorandum of 29th October, 1941, we remarked that the Jewish question touches the centre of the Christian message. Therefore we feel compelled to raise our voice anew on behalf of these people who are being threatened with extermination. We therefore permit ourselves to renew our suggestions of last year, that the International Committee of the Red Cross take urgent steps to send delegates to the areas in question. There is reason to hope that such steps, even if they do not directly have the desired result, would encourage certain circles in Germany to combat the mass executions more energetically. Though from the letters received from Theresienstadt in Bohemia it is not possible to ascertain the real conditions existing in this reception centre, we would be grateful if the requested action could also include that city." [585] The letter mentions "certain circles in Germany". These were groups of resistance with which the Secretariat of the World Council of Churches was in contact, especially the "Kreisau Circle" and Dietrich Bonhoeffer with his friends. [586] b. Co-operation with the World Jewish Congress A unique aspect of the activities of the World Council of Churches regarding the persecution of the Jews was the close co-operation between Dr. Visser 't Hooft and Dr. Freudenberg on the one hand, and the Director of the World Jewish Congress at Geneva, Dr. G. M. Riegner. Dr. Riegner stated: "... My correspondence with Dr. Freudenberg starts already in November, 1940, and during certain periods we have been in nearly daily contact". [587] In the same letter to Dr. Visser 't Hooft, Dr. Riegner wrote: <273> "I remember that you and the World Council have also played an important part in convincing the Swiss authorities of the deadly danger threatening the Jews in all occupied countries and trying to obtain from them a more liberal attitude in admitting refugees. I remember distinctly, though I do not find any trace in writing, that I have put at your disposal several times very detailed information and reports which you have been good enough to communicate on behalf of the World Council of Churches to the Swiss authorities. If I am not mistaken, at least on one occasion you have personally intervened with Federal Councillor von Steiger in such matter." Dr. Riegner commented on this point as follows: "I am still convinced that these interventions of the World Council have been at certain moments of great value. In the course of the discussions which I had during the last year with either Dr. Visser 't Hooft or Dr. Freudenberg, I became convinced that these representations have most probably been made by Dr. Alfons Koechlin, (Base]), the former head of the Protestant Federation of Switzerland and one of the Presidents of the Provisional World Council at that time. Dr. Koechlin, of course, received the material from Dr. Visser 't Hooft and Dr. Freudenberg." [588] Jews and Christians also co-operated together in breaking the wall of silence. The Secretary of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in the United States, Dr. McCrea Cavert, visited Dr. Visser 't Hooft in Sept., 1942. Dr. Riegner reports about this visit: "With regard to our knowledge of the Nazi plan of total extermination of European Jewry, I wish to state that the first report on this plan reached me in the last days of July I 942 and I communicated it to Rabbi Wise in New York and Mr. Silverman in London during the first days of August 1942 (through diplomatic channels). Dr. Wise received the message during the last days of August 1942 and asked Mr. Cavert to use his visit to Geneva at the beginning of September 1942 to find out from us whether deportation really meant extermination. After having spoken to us - I believe to Prof. Guggenheim - he confirmed this in a cable to the United States." [589] In the same letter to Dr. Visser 't Hooft, Dr. Riegner stated: "Some of the very forceful speeches by Dr. Bell and other dignitaries of the Anglican Church in the House of Lords were based on reports which we have communicated to them." <274> A telegram was sent by Dr. Visser 't Hooft to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to the Federal Council of Churches in the United States. Its contents were as follows: 15.000 Berlin Jews brought to assembling centres Some hundreds shot. Total evacuation Berlin in execution. Similar news other regions prove extermination campaign at climax. Please back Allied rescue efforts suggest rapid proposals exchange against German civilians and guarantees of re-emigration money food supply enabling European Neutrals to grant transitory asylum. [590] On March 23, 1944, Dr. Visser 't Hooft and Dr. Freudenberg sent a telegram to the Bishop of Chichester, Dr. Bell: Most anxious destiny 800,000 Hungarian Jews among whom numerous Christians stop suggest you contact Mr. Silverman World Jewish Congress, I Harley Street W.I. and support suggestions cabled by Riegner to Silverman stop suggest also interest Church of Scotland. [591] We know of another joint approach made by the Secretariats of the World Council of Churches and the World Jewish Congress. The following Aide-memoire was sent to the Governments of the United States and Great Britain, and to the High Commissioner for Refugees of the League of Nations: Aide-memoire <275> The Secretariats of the World Council of Churches and of the World Jewish Congress have taken note with great satisfaction of the aide-memoires exchanged between the Governments of the United States of America and Great Britain on the present situation of refugees in Europe, and of their decision to meet at Ottawa with a view to a preliminary exploration of ways and means for combined action by the representatives of their Governments. [592] Having studied the suggestions and proposals contained in the aide-memoires of the two Governments, the Secretariats of the World Council of Churches and of the World Jewish Congress beg to express their views on the above-mentioned topic. While welcoming most warmly the determination of the Allied Governments to bring help to the persecuted people of all races, nationalities and religions, fleeing from Axis terror, they wish to emphasise that the most urgent and acute problem which requires immediate action, is the situation of the Jewish communities under direct or indirect Nazi control. The Secretariats of the World Council of Churches and of the World Jewish Congress have in their possession most reliable reports indicating that the campaign of deliberate extermination of the Jews organised by the Nazi officials in nearly all countries of Europe under their control, is now at its climax. They therefore beg to call the attention of the Allied Governments to the absolute necessity of organising without delay a rescue action for the persecuted Jewish communities on the following lines: 1. Measures of immediate rescue should have priority over the study of post-war arrangements. 2. The rescue action should enable the neutral States to grant temporary asylum to the Jews who would reach their frontiers. For this purpose a definite guarantee by the Governments of the United States of America and Great Britain, and possibly by other Allied Governments including the British Dominions, should be given to the neutral States, that all refugees entering their territories would be enabled to be repatriated or to re-emigrate as soon as possible after the end of the war. In view of the special characteristics of the Jewish problem, in view of the attitude adopted in the past by many European governments, and furthermore, in view of the present attitude of absolute political neutrality adopted during the hostilities by the neutral countries, it may be stated that the giving of assurance for the prompt repatriation of refugees upon the termination of hostilities, would in the present circumstances not be considered as a sufficient guarantee by the neutral States. Only explicit and comprehensive guarantees of remigration of the refugees, given by the Anglo-Saxon Powers as a reinforcement of any assurances of repatriation which may be given by the Allied Governments in exile, can lead the neutral countries to adopt a more liberal and understanding attitude towards the Jewish refugees. <276> These guarantees should provide for the granting of facilities concerning the supply of food and funds for the maintenance of refugees during their stay in the neutral countries. 3. A scheme for exchange of Jews in Germany and the territories under German control for German civilians in North and South America, Palestine, and other countries, should be pressed forward by all possible means. We should like to stress the fact that the number of nationals of Axis countries living in Allied countries - particularly in North and South America - exceeds by far the number of nationals of Allied countries living in Axis countries. We feel that in spite of the great difficulties which we do not underestimate, a workable scheme of exchanging Jews for Germans would constitute an important method of rescuing a considerable number of persecuted people from the countries under Nazi control. In view of the immediate urgency of the situation, the admission of Jews to the scheme of exchange should be granted en bloc to the greatest possible number, as conditions no longer allow time-wasting and in many cases fruitless individual investigations. This scheme might include war-time security measures. Concrete proposals should be submitted without delay to the Governments representing Allied interests in Germany by the Governments of the United States and Great Britain. The International Red Cross Committee may also be approached by the Allied Governments and asked for support in this matter. [593] Dr. Riegner sent this aide-memoire to the British Ambassador in Switzerland "on behalf of the Secretariats of the World Council of Churches and of the World Jewish Congress". Dr. Visser 't Hooft forwarded it to the Ambassador of the United States, requesting in his covering letter, dated March 19, 1943, that the aide-memoire should be forwarded to the American Government, to the Federation of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and to the American branch of the World Jewish Congress. He also stated that he had sent a copy to Mr. Allan Welsh Dulles with whom he had "quite recently had the pleasure of discussing the matter". Mr.Dulles was the representative of the "Office of Strategic Services" of the American Government, at Bern. The sending of this aide-memoire was, I think, the first time in history that an important organization of Churches officially approached Governments, jointly with an important Jewish organization. <277> c. Aid to Refugees In 1938, the Provisional Committee of the World Council of Churches was formed. Its first ordinary session took place at Saint-Germain (near Paris), in January, 1939. It was at this meeting that the Bishop of Chichester, George Bell, unequivocally proposed that the Council create a special department to deal with refugee problems. He himself had been a pioneer in this work. He felt that "the time had come to aid the entire mass of non-Aryans". He meant not only the non-Aryan members of the Church but also the others, albeit there being a special responsibility towards members of the Christian Church. [594] Soon afterwards Dr. Adolf Freudenberg was appointed the first secretary of this new department for aid to refugees. The Ecumenical Commission for Refugees rendered aid to refugees in the camps of France at the end of 1940. It was also engaged in first aid to the people in the camp of Gurs. Later on, France remained the main field of activities. "The Christian aid included Christians as well as Jews. There was co-operation with Jewish organizations in many respects. Thus, for instance, the Commission for Refugees could act as the intermediary for financial aid to Jewish families and children who were in hiding in Belgium, Holland, Hungary and other countries." [595] The Churches in three countries rendered financial aid: first and foremost Switzerland, but also Sweden and the United States. "Switzerland donated Sw. Fr. 77,000 in 1941; the United States donated only Sw. Fr. 10,000 and Sweden Sw. Fr. 6,000. The United States soon realized the importance of the aid to refugees and in the following year the Churches in the United States donated Sw. Fr. 241,000 and later Sw. Fr. 368,000. Obviously they really did understand the significance of this work. I think that this was also due to the fact that Dr. Cavert (the then General Secretary of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.) visited us. Later on I myself went to the United States and was able to explain to them the importance of the matter." [596] <278> When, in the summer of 1942, Lava1 began to hand over the Jews of the unoccupied area of France to the Germans, members of the French Protestant Youth Organization Cimade brought many refugees to the Swiss frontier. Switzerland, however, was not willing to grant asylum to them. The Ecumenical Commission for Refugees, "closely co-operating with other organizations", succeeded in assuring the admission of "many hundreds" of these refugees. [597] Another endeavour to save lives failed. The Committee had, with the help of American Christians, succeeded in obtaining entrance visas into the United States for 1,000 Jewish children from France, but the occupation of Southern France by the Germans foiled this plan. [598] Dr. Visser 't Hooft was personally active in an "illegal" organization which helped Dutch Jews to pass through France to Switzerland. He helped its leader, Jean Weidner, with money from a collection for this purpose amongst Dutchmen living in Switzerland. [599] The former secretary of the Jewish Committee of Coordination in Switzerland, Mr. H. H. Gans, relates the following incident as regarding to the granting of passports and certificates of citizenship granted by South-American Governments to Jews in French concentration camps: "...We had declared... that the beneficiaries would not try to use their new 'citizenship' after the war. But probably owing to their fear of an invasion of new citizens after the war, some countries dared not postpone the nullification until after the war... The Spanish Ambassador immediately passed on this fatal message (to the Germans) and 300 'South-Americans' were deported from Vitel. The World Congress informed me at night. Consternation was great. <279> I contacted Dr. T. Lewenstein [the then Chief-Rabbi of Zurich and Dr. Visser 't Hooft. Together we sent a telegram to the Queen. There was an immediate reaction: Her Majesty's Ambassador at Buenos Aires was ordered to intervene. Very shortly after this, an entirely favourable result was obtained." [600] Mr. Gans also stated that once he paid a large amount of money on behalf of persons hidden in Holland, through the kind offices of Dr. Visser 't Hooft. From Holland came the confirmation: "The organization thanks you very much for the money transferred from Switzerland." [601] The testimony of Mr. Gans also speaks of the matter of sending gift parcels to the Jews in concentration camps: "No parcels could have been sent and no other help could have been rendered, if we had not been supported continuously by Dr. Visser 't Hooft, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, Geneva... His contribution to the Dutch resistance movement will certainly be described by others. Suffice it here to point out the general importance of the presence of such a man in Switzerland, and the fact that busy though he was, he never refused to see me whenever I asked for an interview, and that happened almost every day. No detail of our relief work was unimportant to him." [602] It appears that neither Dr. Visser 't Hooft nor Dr. Freudenberg were formalistic in their activities. They understood, in contrast to so many in and outside occupied Europe, that "illegal" acts were, in those special circumstances, morally justified. Thus money was "illegally" transmitted to Jews in hiding; and refugees were supported who had entered into Switzerland "illegally." What has been said about Church leaders in Bulgaria, can be applied to Dr. Visser 't Hooft and Dr. Freudenberg: they were gravely concerned, and thus they were available whenever their help was requested. In June, 1944, the Ecumenical Commission for Aid to Refugees published the following statement: <280> The Fate of the Jews in Hungary "The Ecumenical Commission for Refugees exists in order to give material and spiritual aid to refugees of all faiths. Its main task is therefore to relieve the suffering of the refugees rather than to protest against the treatment meted out to them. But there are situations in which the only aid we can give is in the form of a solemn and public protest. To-day this is the case. Trustworthy reports state that so far some four hundred thousand Hungarian Jews are deported in inhuman conditions and, in so far as they have not died on the way, brought to the camp of Auschwitz in Upper Silesia where, during the past two years, many hundreds of thousands of Jews have been systematically put to death. Christians cannot remain silent before this crime. We appeal to our Hungarian Christian brethren to raise their voice with us to do all they can to stop this horrible sin. We appeal to Christians of all countries to unite in prayer that God may have mercy on the people of Israel." [603] 36 TERRITORIES IN WHICH THE CHURCHES REMAINED SILENT The heading of this Chapter must be regarded with some reservation, firstly because I may have failed to find statements which were issued, and secondly because even the admission by a Church that it did not speak out, cannot always be trusted. In fact, I have in my possession a letter from the official representative of an important Church in Europe, stating that his Church had not publicly protested against the persecution of Jews; yet later on much material was found proving that it had done so. It is notable that the Churches which, as far as we know, kept silent, were minority Churches, with the exception of the Lutheran Church of Finland which was, however, not directly confronted with the challenge of the persecution of the Jews. a. Austria <281> On March 12, 1938, German troops entered Austria; it was then absorbed by the German Reich. The Jews in Austria were subjected to all the horrors which the Jews in Germany suffered. The legend that Austria was the first victim of Hitlerian aggression, to which official endorsement was given by the victorious Allies, is slow to die. In fact, the people in Austria were more national-socialist than in Germany proper: the frenzy with which the "aggressor" Hitler was received by the Viennese is proof enough of this. Many of the leaders of the Third Reich were Austrians, as for instance Seyss-Inquart, Kaltenbrunner, Globocnik and Rauter. Hitler himself originally came from Austria. Little is known about the attitude of the Protestants in Austria with respect to anti-Semitism during the war. [604] In 1966, the General Synod of the Lutheran Church adopted a "Message to the Congregations on Jews and Christians". The message stated that: "...Unfortunately, however, the Christian conscience of our people has not been strong enough to withstand a hatred based on racial differences. This is an alarming sign of the demonic powers of darkness to which we have been exposed and which have not been sufficiently resisted by our Church. Because the Church was entrusted with the Word of reconciliation and the message of peace, its guilt is much greater than that of all other groups. We must acknowledge and confess this guilt. The miracle of God's forgiveness makes our repentance possible..." [605] b. Belgium Professor W. Lutjeharms, who teaches Church history at Brussels, communicated to me why, in his view, the Protestant Churches did not publicly protest against the persecution of the Jews during the war. Part of the reasons he advances are, in my opinion, also applicable to minority Churches in other lands. <282> 1. The Protestants comprise less than half percent of the total population. 2. The Protestants nowhere formed a sufficiently concentrated group among the population. 3. The Protestants in those days had very few representatives in cultural and political circles. 4. The Protestant voice was not heard outside its own group before 1940; hardly at all over the radio and certainly not through daily newspapers. 5. The Protestant Churches represented a distinctly foreign flavour: many pastors and members were foreigners. 6. An official public protest would neither have impressed the authorities nor the population. The Protestants could only act effectively on the personal level. In this respect pastors as well as lay members time and again risked their lives, to help Jews as much as they could. There remains the question, why the small Protestant Churches in Belgium undertook official and public steps in 1933, and not, for instance, in the years 1935 and 1938. It is possible that such steps were undertaken, but that they were not sufficiently published, and thus forgotten (Cf. above, point 4). At least 25,000 Jews were deported from Belgium. Individual Protestants have rescued Jews [606] but these activities are outside the scope of our subject. c. The Protectorate Czechoslovakia was deprived of Sudetenland in the Munich pact of September 29, 1938. On March 14, 1939, Slovakia declared its independence. On March 15, 1939, German forces occupied Prague; Czechia as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia became part of the German Reich. <283> An estimated number of 71,000 Jews were deported, and perished. Apparently no Church in Bohemia-Moravia publicly protested. It is true, of course, that there hardly was any address to which they could send a protest, except the Government in Berlin which would probably have paid even less attention than it paid to the protests of the "Confessing Church", the members of which were Germans and not Czechs. However, a public protest, read out from the pulpits, could have stirred up the members of the Czech Churches and would have encouraged them to help the Jews. In a letter to me, dated November 12, 1965, it was stated by Dr. Viktor Hhjek, Chairman of the Synod of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren: "Individual members of our Church have tried to help Jewish families in different ways and have indeed helped them. This has always been dangerous, and the persons involved suffered often from the German occupying force. But the pressure of this force was so heavy that it was out of the question to undertake anything publicly and officially." [607] The Synod of the Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren recognized, in 1945, that "our Church did not have enough courage or power to withstand the fury of the enemies of Christ directed against the Jews." [608] d. Poland <284> The atrocities committed against the Jews in Poland are beyond description. At the end of 1939, 3,300,000 Jews lived in Poland; of these 2,900,000 were murdered. [609] Moreover, most of the Jews arrested by the Germans, in other occupied countries and in the German Reich itself, were deported to Poland and perished there. Thus it was in Poland that the vast majority of the six million was murdered. There is little to relate about the reactions of the non-Catholic Churches in Poland; there hardly exist such Churches at all. I received two replies to my circular letter; the first is from Dr. Andrzej Wantula, Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. I quote the following from his letter: "During the war, our Church was liquidated by the Germans and the majority of the pastors imprisoned, the remainder working in a newly founded German Church. Our Church, therefore, could not carry out any activities. Individual pastors privately have helped the Jews. I myself, in my former parish, have tried to relieve the position of the Jews and partly succeeded in this. These, however, are individual cases, which are outside the scope of your interest." The second reply came from the Executive of the small "Polish-Catholic Church". [610] I quote the following: "Our Polish-Catholic Church was exposed to many persecutions, under the National-Socialist domination during the second World War. However, we protested many times, against the persecution of the Jews, also publicly whenever this was possible. In addition to material help, we provided the persecuted Jews with baptismal certificates, enabling them to obtain ration cards and identity cards. In this way they were protected from further persecution. We cannot, unfortunately, send you any proofs, e.g. documents, letters or photostats concerning our activities, as all the material was destroyed during the war." It is difficult for me to believe that the Polish-Catholic Church has "protested many times and publicly", if one is to understand that these protests were made in writing, and officially sent to the German authorities. But perhaps pastors of this Church expressed their protest in their sermons, and if this is so, it was at least something, especially in Poland. <285> The activities and attitude of the head of the Greek-Catholic Church in Galicia, the Metropolitan Andrew Sheptitsky, whose Church is united with Rome, is outside the scope of our subject and is thus not related here. [611] e. Finland Finland refused to give up her 2,000 Jews. "We are an honest people," declared Witting, the Finnish Foreign Minister. "We would much rather die with the Jews than give them up." [612] I received the following reply to my circular letter: "...Finland was never actually occupied by the German army, with the exception of the Northern region... Finland remained a sovereign country and it was, as far as I know, the only country within the German sphere of influence where Jews were protected against German claims. It seems to be very difficult to ascertain whether the Church had any direct involvement in this. It must remain, therefore, more or less an academic question, since nothing actually happened, in spite of the hesitation of the Government during some critical days." [613] f. Italy There are hardly any non-Roman Catholic Churches in Italy. Best-known is the Waldensian Church. The Waldenses themselves have been severely persecuted throughout the centuries. The right of free worship was granted to them by the Constitution of 1848. This "pre-Reformation Protestant Community" has 25,000 members. Official declarations against anti-Semitism of such a small minority Church could hardly expected, though the majority of the Waldenses had been strongly anti-fascist. [614] <286> g. Russia The Orthodox Church was the established Church in Russia, until 1917. Under the Communist regime many Church leaders were imprisoned or murdered; many church buildings were closed, some turned into museums. The Constitution of 1936 allows the Church freedom of worship, but not of propaganda. Printing of Bibles was not permitted. Anti-religious propaganda, however, was systematically carried out. In the wake of the German invasion (June, 1941), the Patriarch of Moscow declared himself loyal to the Russian cause and to the Soviet government. Anti-religious measures were relaxed to some degree. As far as we know, no public declaration against anti-Semitism was issued by the Orthodox Church, nor by any of the smaller Christian communities in Russia. [615] It is estimated that 1,500,000 Jews perished in the Nazi- occupied part of Russia. 37 IN CONCLUSION I have tried to give the answers to some questions related to our subject, but there remain many unanswered questions. It is beyond the scope of this investigation, to analyse the influence of Luther's attitude towards the Jews upon the German Protestants. Suffice it to say, that many anti-Semites quoted from Luther's brochure "Concerning the Jews and their Lies" (1542), and not from his earlier: "Jesus was born a Jew". (1523) The anti-Jewish sermons of St. Chrysostom, preached at Constantinople at about the turn of the 4th century, are well-known. We have not investigated as to how far these sermons had an influence upon the Eastern Churches in our time. <287> Another question: What exactly was the influence of the Lutheran conception of the "two dominions" through which God rules this world (the spiritual one, or the Church, and the secular one, or the "worldly authorities") on the attitude of the Lutheran Churches towards the persecuted Jews? Why did the Lutheran Churches in Denmark, Norway, Slovakia and Sweden denounce anti- Semitism whilst the record of the Lutheran Churches in America is poor in this respect? The people, according to Luther, have not the right to resist the authorities; only princes have. Was there a notable difference between the Lutheran Churches and the Churches of Calvinist origin regarding their attitude towards the "ungodly government" of Hitler in the 20th century, just as such a difference is said to have existed in the 16th century? What about possible differences between continental and Anglo-Saxon Protestants regarding their theological conception of the Jews, between Protestant Churches in the West and Orthodox Churches in Eastern Europe, between non-Roman Catholic Churches and the Church of Rome? How far did the conception of St. Paul about the people of Israel, as expounded in Romans 9-11, encourage the Churches to stand up for the Jews, or how far did the opinion that the Church has "replaced" Israel as the people of the Covenant, prevent Churches from taking action? We have hardly touched on practical questions such as the dilemma of whether "to speak or to save" ("reden oder retten"). It would be easy to make up a much longer list of unanswered questions, but it is difficult to establish facts even though they happened in our lifetime, and it is even more difficult to interpret them correctly. I can only hope that the documentation provided by this book will stimulate others to further study and investigation. I hope that I have succeeded to some extent in showing how complicated the situation was, and how careful we ought to be if we try to answer the question, how far Christian leaders and Churches fulfilled or failed to fulfil, the commandment which they profess to consider divine: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself". <288> However, I do not suggest that to understand all is to pardon all. To me, Dr. Visser 't Hooft's conclusion seems to be well-balanced: "We may conclude this section by pointing out that while many Christians failed in their duty to resist in word and deed the inhuman racialism of National Socialism, there were a not inconsiderable number of Church leaders and simple Church members who rendered a clear witness to the reality of the Christian faith. The Christians who were involved in the struggle know better than anyone how often the Churches and they themselves failed to do what ought have to be done. Thus the Churches in Germany spoke not only for themselves, but for others who had been in a similar situation when after the war they confessed publicly their sense of guilt in this respect." [616] It is difficult to draw conclusions. Mostly generalizations are dangerous. I myself have the impression that public opinion tends to overrate the practical help rendered by individual Christians. Only a minority of professing Christians willingly risked their lives in order to help and save their Jewish neighbours. The Bible condemns such a lack of self-sacrificing love. When, however, human beings judge, particularly if they are people who themselves did not have to undergo the test, they should remember the Jewish saying: "Judge not thy neighbour until thou art come in his situation." [617] On the other hand, public opinion possibly tends to underestimate the official activities of Churches against anti-Semitism, because they are not generally known. The attitude of the Churches with regard to the persecution of Jews under Hitler's reign of terror was far from uniform. The picture is neither completely black, nor purely white. White and black are mingled. Thus the name chosen for this publication is "The Grey Book". The darkness of the holocaust was so great that one can hardly comprehend it. It is understandable that there are people who tend to ignore the lights that were so small, far too small. But "the greater the darkness, the brighter the light, be it no more than that of a small candle." [618] <289> In cases where Church leaders or individual Christians did risk their lives, they should remember the words of their Lord: "Is the master grateful to the servant for carrying out his orders? So with you: when you have carried out your orders, you should say, 'We are servants and deserve no credit; we have only done our duty'."(Luke 17, 9-10). On March 23, 1943, the Archbishop of Canterbury declared in the House of Lords: "We stand at the bar of history, of humanity and of God". It is appropriate to conclude this book with the words of Ecclesiastes (12, 13-14): "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." <290> APPENDIX I DECLARATIONS AGAINST ANTI-SEMITISM ISSUED AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR Much has been spoken against anti-Semitism by non-Roman Catholic Churches and Church leaders, after the Second World War. We only mention the most important declarations and statements. On April 8, 1948, the NATIONAL BRETHREN COUNCIL (Reichsbruderrat) of the Evangelical Church in Germany, meeting at Darmstadt, issued the following "Message Concerning the Jewish Question". "...It may rightly be said that after what has happened, after all that we allowed to happen in silence, we have no authority to speak now. We are distressed about what happened in the past, and about the fact that we did not make any joint statement about it. We have not forgotten that a number of pastors and churches did speak out, and suffered for doing so; we thank God for it, and we thank them. We thank all who, in our own country and abroad, have helped us with old and new insights into the Word of God, and who have taken action by setting up warning signs. Today when retribution is meted out to us for what we did to the Jews, there is increasing danger that we may take refuge from God's Judgment in a new way of anti-Semitism, thus conjuring up all the old evils once again. In this perilous situation and amid this temptation God's Word speaks to us and helps us to find the right attitude to the Jews. It is under pressure of this Word that we speak, because we are filled with anxiety about the future and burdened by the past, and because we feel obliged to express our gratitude to all those individual people who spoke out, took action and suffered doing so... It was a disastrous mistake when the Churches of our time adopted the secular attitude of mere humanity, emancipation and anti-Semitism towards the Jewish question. There was bound to be a bitter retribution for the fact that anti-Semitism rose and flourished not only among the people (who still seemed to be a Christian nation), not only among the intelligentsia, and in governmental and military circles, but also among Christian leaders. <291> And when finally this radical anti-Semitism, based on racial hatred, destroyed our nation and our Churches from within, and released all its brutal force from without, there existed no power to resist it - because the Churches had forgotten what Israel really is, and no longer loved the Jews. Christian circles washed their hands of all responsibility, justifying themselves by saying that there was a curse on the Jewish people. Christians no longer believed that the promise concerning the Jews still held good; they no longer preached it, nor showed it in their attitude to the Jews. In this way we Christians helped to bring about all the injustice and suffering inflicted upon the Jews in our country. This is what the Word of God teaches us, so that we recognize with shame and grief what a great wrong we have done to Israel, and how deep our guilt is. As a Church we have failed to be the witness of salvation for Israel. Now we have to face the judgments of God which are coming upon us one after the other, so that we may bow beneath the mighty hand of God in sincere repentance, both as a Church and as a nation..." [619] On April 27, 1950, the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany, meeting at Berlin-Weissensee, issued a "Message of Guilt towards Israel", from which we quote the following: "...We declare that by dereliction of duty and in keeping silent we also are guilty of the crimes committed by people of our nation towards the Jews... We pray all Christians to rid themselves of all anti-Semitism whatsoever, to resist it earnestly where it raises its head again, and to meet Jews and Jewish Christians in a brotherly spirit. We pray the Christian congregations, to care for Jewish cemeteries in their territory if nobody is in charge of them." [620] On January 12, 1960, the Executive of the United Evangelical Church of Germany issued the following Declaration: "The Executive of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany most sharply condemns the expressions of anti-Semitism which have stirred the public in the last weeks. Moral condemnation of the crimes committed by Germans against the Jews cannot be evaded, though it is difficult to explain the motives of this wave (of anti-Semitism) which encompasses many lands. The reaction of the public must not be limited to declarations of sympathy towards Jewish fellow citizens but must aim at uncovering their own failures. It is especially important, to break the silence which frequently is maintained here between the older and younger generation, and to help our young people to come to their own clear judgment of the history of the Third Reich and what led up to it." [621] <292> On February 26, 1960, the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany, meeting at Berlin-Spandau, published the following Resolution, after the synagogue of Cologne was daubed with swastikas: "The fact that the honour of our Jewish neighbours has been offended, fills us with horror and shame. We express our solidarity with those who have been offended and insulted... We are guilty towards youth, to whom we have failed to teach and to bear the witness we owe them. It is not surprising, therefore, that the evil spirit increases its influence, again and again, among our youth. However, anew we must realize and attest: the hatred of the Jews which breaks out, again and again, is public godlessness... Therefore, let parents and educators break the widely-spread, painful silence, in our country about co-responsibility for the fate of the Jews. Let them resist everything that seduces the young generation into hatred of the Jews... Therefore, stand up for the payment of reparations. Keep in mind, however, that true repentance is more essential than financial compensation, which only can mean little to people who lost most of their relatives by acts of violence... Therefore, pray for God's peace upon Israel. Pray for the peace of Israel amongst the nations, on the borders of its State and amongst us." [622] During the trial of Eichmann, the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany stated (Berlin-Spandau, Febr. 17, 1961): "...All surviving Germans who at the age of discrimination witnessed the atrocities of the annihilation of the Jews, and even those who helped their Jewish compatriots under oppression, must confess before God, to have become accessories to the deeds by lack of alert and self-denying love..." [623] After several years of discussion on the subject of the relationship of the Church to the Jewish people, the 10th German Evangelical Kirchentag, 1961, set aside one work-group to deal specifically with this subject. Work-group VI of the Kirchentag produced the statement which follows, and it was adopted as the official Report of the Assembly: <293> "Jews and Christians are insolubly linked with each other. The denial of this link brought forth the hostility to Jews within Christendom. It became one of the main causes of the persecution of Jewry. Jesus of Nazareth is betrayed wherever members of the Jewish people among whom he was born are despised as Jews. Every hostility towards Jews is godlessness and leads to self-destruction. The present trial in Jerusalem concerns us all. We Evangelical Christians in Germany recognise that we are involved in it by reason of our guilt. Because of the need for fresh thought and conversion, we call upon the German public to make the following points their own: 1. Parents and educators should break their silence when meeting the young generation. They should confess their own failure and bring to light the origins of the crimes so that we all may learn how to face the present together. In the present world political situation, throwing off our own failure onto others must threaten not only one section of mankind but all life. 2. The inhumanity of compulsory systems of command where men can argue that criminal orders must be obeyed, is calculated to warn us against the inhuman potentialities of the modern organisation of State and society. We must be ready to take upon us political responsibility even in spite of risks. Those who were concerned in the preparation and implementation of persecution should resign from high office. 3. Where Jews live amongst us, it is our duty to promote their well-being as best as we can. Likewise everything must be done by us Germans which serves the reconstruction and peace of the State of Israel and its Arab neighbours. Compensation claims by victims of racial persecution should be settled with special urgency and generosity. The material compensation must be matched by a rebirth of the spirit. In Germany, the so-called Jewish question is today above all a question concerning the future of the Germans. 4. As against the wrong doctrine preached for centuries that God has cast away the Jewish people, we once again affirm the word of the Apostle: 'God hath not cast away His people, which He foreknew' (Romans 11, 2)..." [624] On March 13, 1964, the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany issued the following Declaration on the trials of Nazi criminals: "...Only ignorance can speak of 'soiling one's own nest' when in fact the cleaning of a badly soiled nest is at stake. Nor is it in any way profitable to try to hide behind the wrongs committed by other nations against members of our people during the war. The mass murder of Jews and other ethnic groups, with which the German name is connected, is not thereby erased... <294> Even the citizen who had no direct share in the crimes, nay, even he who did not know of them, has a share in the guilt because he was indifferent towards the perversion of all moral standards and all notions of right and wrong among our people. Nor can we exempt ourselves and our congregations from this guilt. For where all Christians were called upon to uphold the Gospel entrusted to us, to make public affirmation of the everlasting dominion of God in all spheres of our lives, and, thus armed, to protect the victims of the regime, especially the Jews living amongst us, only few had the insight and the courage to resist. Forced into this humiliating position, we cannot pretend to be unconcerned with the trials now pending, nor can we turn our gaze away from the crimes now being revealed. It was the folly of our entire nation, and the omissions of us Christians, that enabled those crimes to be perpetrated. There is nothing here that can be condoned, and we must resist all temptations to indulge in self-justification. Rather is it our duty to follow the defendants now as they stand before God and His judgment." [626] In 1963, the Evangelical Kirchentag of German speaking Switzerland adopted the following Resolution: "Israel and the Church belong together. God has chosen them both and formed a Covenant with them - first with Israel, then with the Church. The Church has been grafted onto the stem of God's People. Hence: if one member suffers, all the other members suffer with it. We confess our guilt with regard to Israel, that we Swiss people did not suffer with the Jews either, thus betraying our fellowship with God's ancient people. Our hope rests in the fact that we know our sins are forgiven. But for us forgiveness must mean active repentance. Let us make atonement through action. As Swiss people and Christians let us recognize the following tasks as our next step, and transform them into action: 1. We urge all Christians, both individually and collectively, to take part in assisting the Jews and promoting mutual contact and mutual respect. 2. We regard it as our Christian duty to oppose all forms of discrimination against Jewish people, and we expect the same attitude from all our fellow-Christians. 3. Short, inexpensive instructive booklets are needed as soon as possible, so that Christians can remedy their ignorance of Jewish history. 4. We recognize a sub-conscious anti-Semitism here in Switzerland too, with devastating and far-reaching effects. We urge the Church to devote more attention to this question. (Parish evenings, evenings for parents, evenings for mothers, instruction to religious teachers, training of religious teachers). 5. The intercession for Israel, which exists in most liturgies, should be made an integral part of the worship-service." [627] <295> On February 6, 1967, the Archbishop of Sweden sent a circular letter to the ministers of the diocese, from which we quote the following: 'On various occasions accusations have been made against the Church of Sweden for anti-Semitism. This is especially directed towards the way in which the passion-history is created. From abroad many appalling examples are known in which 'the Jews' are described as a deicide people, as referring not only to the mob in front of the palace of Pilate which wanted Jesus to be crucified but to the whole people and the generations after them. In the Swedish tradition of preaching and teaching this is completely unaccepted. Any feeling of revenge and hatred against Romans and Jews is repudiated and it is emphasized that it is our own sin which has brought Jesus to the cross... The Gospel is against all racial and group discrimination. Each person shall be judged on his own merits according to what he himself is and does. There is no graduation of the value of man; all are called to be children of God and are therefore our brothers and sisters, and Christ died for all. After all, God alone is the Judge, but never we ourselves." [628] On March 18, 1964, the following Statement was issued by the Archbishop of Canterbury: "It is always wrong when people try to lay blame upon the Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. In the event the Roman Governor was no less responsible for what happened. The important fact, however, is that the crucifixion was the clash between the Love of God and the sinfulness and selfishness of the whole human race. Those who crucified Christ are in the true mind of the Christian Church representatives of the whole human race, and it is for no one to point a finger of resentment at those who brought Jesus to his death, but rather to see the crucifixion as the divine judgment upon all humanity for choosing the ways of sin rather than the love of God. We all must see ourselves judged by the crucifixion of Christ." [629] The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland adopted a statement against anti-Semitism nearly every year. Here follow some examples. <296> 1945 "The General Assembly express their renewed sympathy with the Jews in their present circumstances and assure them of the Church's friendly interest in all that pertains to their future welfare and in particular commend the active steps, which are being taken to restrain Anti-Semitism and promote better understanding between Christian and Jew." [630] 1947 "The General Assembly, aware of the growth of anti-Semitic feeling, condemn anew this attitude as un-Christian and contrary to the mind of our Lord; call upon their faithful people to guard against this grave danger; assure the Jewish people of their deep sympathy in the present uncertainties and remember especially the many Jews in the Displaced Persons Camps in Europe still awaiting some scheme for their settlement in other lands." [631] 1953 "The General Assembly view with concern the renewed outbreaks of anti-Semitism in various countries, renew their condemnation of this evil thing and call upon their faithful people to be on the alert to oppose any signs of it in this country." [632] 1957 "The General Assembly express their concern that the threats of annihilation directed against the State of Israel still continue. They express profound sympathy with the State of Israel in the crisis with which she is confronted and earnestly hope that the United Nations will now direct all possible efforts towards a just and lasting settlement between Israel and the Arab States, so that Israel's future will no longer be in jeopardy." [633] 1962 "The General Assembly, in view of the horrors recalled by the Eichmann trial, remind the Church - especially the youth of the Church - of the deadly danger of Anti-Semitism, which has in the past so cruelly wounded the brotherhood of the human family." [634] Many Protestant Churches in the United States publicly registered their opposition to anti-Semitism. We only quote the following Resolution, adopted by the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America, on June 5, 1964: "The General Board of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., recognizing the ever-present danger of anti-Semitism, renews the call to the Churches and the community to recognize (in the words of the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches) 'anti-Semitism, no matter what its origin, as absolutely irreconcilable with the profession and practice of the Christian faith'. <297> The spiritual heritage of Jews and Christians should draw us to each other in obedience to the one Father and in continuing dialogue; the historic schism in our relations carries with it the need for constant vigilance lest dialogue deteriorate into conflict. We confess that sometimes as Christians we have given away to anti-Semitism. We have even used the events of the Crucifixion to condemn the Jewish people, whereas (in the words of the Third Assembly of the World Council of Churches) 'the historic events which led to the Crucifixion should not be presented as to fasten upon the Jewish people of today responsibilities which belong to our corporate humanity and not to one race or community'. The General Board urges that the members of its constituent communions seek that true dialogue with the religious bodies of the Jewish community through which differences in faith can be explored within the mutual life of the one family of God - separated, but seeking from God the gift of renewed unity - knowing that in the meantime God can help us to find our God-given unity in the common service of human need." [634] In 1948, the World Council of Churches held its first Assembly, at Amsterdam. 147 Churches in forty-four countries were represented by 351 official delegates. A report on "The Christian Approach to the Jews" was heard by Assembly, and its deliberations were commended to all member Churches "for their serious consideration and appropriate action". We quote the following: Introduction ... We cannot forget that we meet in a land from which 110,000 Jews were taken to be murdered. Nor can we forget that we meet only five years after the extermination of 6 million Jews. To the Jews our God has bound us in a special solidarity linking our destinies together in His design. We call upon all our Churches to make this concern their own as we share with them the results of our too brief wrestling with it."... 3. Barriers to be Overcome "...We must acknowledge in all humility that too often we have failed to manifest Christian love towards our Jewish neighbours, or even a resolute will for common social justice. We have failed to fight with all our strength the age-old disorder of man which anti-Semitism represents. <298> The Churches in the past have helped to foster an image of the Jews as the sole enemies of Christ, which has contributed to anti-Semitism in the secular world. In many lands virulent anti-Semitism still threatens and in other lands the Jews are subjected to many indignities. We call upon all the Churches we represent to denounce anti-Semitism, no matter what its origin, as absolutely irreconcilable with the profession and practice of the Christian faith. Anti-Semitism is sin against God and man...". [635] In 1961, the World Council of Churches held its third Assembly, at New Delhi. 200 Churches were represented by more than a thousand official participants. The following Resolution on Anti-Semitism was adopted: "The Third Assembly recalls the following words which were addressed to the Churches by the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1948: 'We call upon all the Churches we represent to denounce anti-Semitism, no matter what its origin, as absolutely irreconcilable with the profession and practice of the Christian faith. Anti-Semitism is sin against God and man. Only as we give convincing evidence to our Jewish neighbours that we seek for them the common rights and dignities which God wills for his children, can we come to such a meeting with them as would make it possible to share with them the best which God has given us in Christ.' The Assembly renews this plea in view of the fact that situations continue to exist in which the Jews are subject to discrimination and even persecution. The Assembly urges its member Churches to do all in their power to resist every form of anti-Semitism. In Christian teaching the historic events which led to the Crucifixion should not be so represented as to fasten upon the Jewish people of today responsibi- lities which belong to our corporate humanity and not to one race or community. Jews were the first to accept Jesus and Jews are not the only ones who do not yet recognize him." [636] In 1964, a Consultation on "The Church and the Jewish People" under the auspices of the Lutheran World Federation was held at Legumkloster, Denmark. The following statement was adopted: III. The Church and Anti-Semitism <299> "Anti-Semitism is an estrangement of man from his fellowmen. As such it stems from human prejudice and is a denial of the dignity and equality of men. But Anti-Semitism is primarily a denial of the image of God in the Jew; it represents a demonic form of rebellion against the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and a rejection of Jesus the Jew, directed upon His people. 'Christian' anti-Semitism is spiritual suicide. This phenomenon presents a unique question to the Christian Church, especially in light of the long terrible history of Christian culpability for anti- Semitism. No Christian can exempt himself from involvement in this guilt. As Lutherans, we confess our own peculiar guilt, and we lament with shame the responsibility which our Church and her people bear for this sin. We can only ask God's pardon and that of the Jewish people. There is no ultimate defeat of anti-Semitism short of a return to the living God in the power of His grace and through the forgiveness of Jesus Christ our Lord. At the same time, we must pledge ourselves to work in concert with others at practical measures for overcoming manifestations of this evil within and without the Church and for reconciling Christians with Jews. Towards this end, we urge the Lutheran World Federation and its member Churches: 1. To examine their publications for possible anti-Semitic references, and to remove and oppose false generalisations about Jews. Especially reprehensible are the notions that Jews, rather than all mankind, are responsible for the death of Jesus Christ, and that God has for this reason rejected His covenant people. Such examination and reformation must also be directed to pastoral practice and preaching references. This is our simple duty under the commandment common to Jews and Christians: 'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour'. 2. To oppose and work to prevent all national and international manifestations of anti-Semitism, and in all our work acknowledge our great debt of gratitude to those Jewish people who have been instruments of the Holy Spirit in giving us the Old and New Testaments and in bringing into the world Jesus Christ our Lord. 3. To call upon our congregations and people to know and to love their Jewish neighbours as themselves; to fight against discrimination or persecution of Jews in their communities; to develop mutual understanding; and to make common cause with the Jewish people in matters of spiritual and social concern, especially in fostering human rights..." [637] An International Conference of Christians and Jews was held at Seelisberg, in 1947, and attended by sixty-five persons from nineteen different countries. They adopted the following "Address to the Churches", which became widely known as "The Ten Points of Seelisberg": <300> 1. Remember that One God speaks to us all through the Old and the New Testaments. 2. Remember that Jesus was born of a Jewish mother of the seed of David and the people of Israel, and that His everlasting love and forgiveness embrace His own people and the whole world. 3. Remember that the first disciples, the apostles, and the first martyrs were Jews. 4. Remember that the fundamental commandment of Christianity, to love God and one's neighbour, proclaimed already in the Old Testament and confirmed by Jesus, is binding upon both Christians and Jews in all human relationships, without any exception. 5. Avoid disparaging biblical or post-biblical Judaism with the object of extolling Christianity. 6. Avoid using the word Jews in the exclusive sense of the enemies of Jesus, and the words the enemies of Jesus to designate the whole Jewish people. 7. Avoid presenting the Passion in such a way as to bring the odium of the killing of Jesus upon Jews alone. In fact, it was not all the Jews who demanded the death of Jesus. It not the Jews alone who were responsible, for the Cross which saves us all reveals that it is for the sins of us all that Christ died. Remind all Christian parents and teachers of the grave responsibility which they assume, particularly when they present the Passion story in a crude manner. By so doing they run the risk of implanting an aversion in the conscious or subconscious minds of their children or hearers, intentionally or unintentionally. Psychologically speaking, in the case of simple minds, moved by a passionate love and compassion for the crucified Saviour, the horror which they feel quite naturally towards the persecutors of Jesus will easily be turned into an undiscriminating hatred of the Jews of all times, including those of our days. 8. Avoid referring to the scriptural curses, or the cry of a raging mob: His blood be upon us and upon our children, without remembering that this cry should not count against the infinitely more weighty words of our Lord: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do. 9. Avoid promoting the superstitious notion that the Jewish people is reprobate, accursed, reserved for a destiny of suffering. 10. Avoid speaking of the Jews as if the first members of the Church had not been Jews. [638] <301> APPENDIX II SOME PARTICULARS ABOUT THE CHURCHES MENTIONED [639] Austria The Protestant Churches in Austria are minority Churches. The (Lutheran) Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession has 406,966 members; the Reformed Church of Austria has 16,078 baptized members. Belgium The Protestant Churches in Belgium are minority Churches, together comprising less than half percent of the population. The total number is less than 50,000. Bulgaria The Orthodox Church in Bulgaria claims a number of six million members, being the vast majority of the population. There is no other Christian community of any numerical importance in Bulgaria. <302> Czechoslovakia The largest non-Roman Catholic Churches in Bohemia and Moravia are: the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren (295,354 baptized members), the Czechoslovak Church, and the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Silesia (48,000 members). There are two Protestant Churches in Slovakia: the Reformed Church of Slovakia (165,000 baptized members) and the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church in Slovakia (520,000 members). Denmark The vast majority of the people of Denmark belong to the Lutheran Church, which has 4,104,000 members. Finland The vast majority of the population of Finland belongs to the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church, which has 4,429,137 members. France The Protestants in France are a small minority, numbering altogether not more than 800,000 souls. Members of the Protestant Federation of France are: The Reformed Church of France (375,000), the Reformed Church of Alsace and Lorraine (50,000), the Lutheran Church of Alsace and Lorraine (240,000) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of France (50,000). Germany The vast majority of the Protestants of Germany belonged to one of the 28 Landeskirchen (Lutheran, Reformed or Uniate), of which the largest was the Church of the Old Prussian Union, with 18 million members. In all, there were forty-five million Germans who were, nominally at least, members of the Protestant Church. Great Britain and Ireland The main non-Roman Catholic Churches in England are: the Church of England, claiming 2,989,704 members and 15 million adherents (1950); the Methodist Church (775,294 members and 2,2250,000 adherents in 1955); the Congregational Union of England and Wales (451,523 members in 1955); the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland (246,400 members in 1955) and the Presbyterian Church of England, having 70,298 communicants. <303> There are four Free Presbyterian Churches in Scotland, as well as Baptist, Episcopal, Congregational and Methodist Churches. The Church of Scotland is by far the largest Church, having 1,281,559 communicants. The political partition of Ireland did not divide any of the Churches. Most of the non-Roman Catholic Churches were represented in the United Council of Christian Churches in Ireland. The (Episcopalian) Church of Ireland has 400,000 members. The Presbyterian Church in Ireland has 140,395 communicants and 397,500 baptized members. The Methodist Church has approximately 30,000 communicants and 100,000 baptized members. Greece The vast majority of the population of Greece belongs to the (Orthodox) Church of Greece, which has an estimated 8,000,000 members. Hungary According to the 1941 census, there were in Hungary 9,775,310 Catholics, 2,785,782 Calvinists (Reformed Church of Hungary), and 729,289 Lutherans (Hungarian Evangelical Church). Italy The Waldensian Church has 25,000 members. Other non-Roman Catholic communities are the Methodist and Baptist Churches. Their total membership amounts to about 0,19 per cent of the population. The Netherlands The DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH has 3,500,000 baptized members. The Reformed Churches in the Netherlands had 640,984 members in 1940. The Evangelical Lutheran Church has 52,587 members. The other Churches mentioned are of about the same size, or smaller. <304> Norway The (Lutheran) Church of Norway has 3,456,687 members, being 96,2 per cent of the population. Poland Out of a population of 32,000,000 there are a 130,000 Protestants. 100,000 of them belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Poland. Smaller communities are the Evangelical-Reformed Church (5,000 members); the Baptist Church (2,500 members) and the United Gospel Church (7,500 members). Rumania The vast majority of the population of Rumania belongs to the Rumanian Orthodox Church, which has an estimated 11,500,000 members. The Reformed Church of Rumania is the Church of the Hungarian national minority; it has 693,511 baptized members. The Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession is mainly the Church of German immigrants; it has 183,399 members. Russia Before 1917, the Orthodox Church of Russia claimed a membership of 100,000,000. Estimates about the present situation - "perhaps 25-50,000,000" - are unreliable. Smaller communities are the Union of Evangelical Christian Baptists of U.S.S.R. and the Lutheran Churches in former Estonia (350,000), Latvia (350,000), and Lithuania (30,000). Sweden The vast majority of the population of Sweden belongs to the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden, which claims 7,000,000 members. Switzerland The Protestant Churches of Switzerland are cantonal Churches, distinct and independent from one another. In most of the cantonal Churches, the legislative body is the Synod and the executive organ the Synodal Council. <305> The Federation of the Protestant Churches of Switzerland at first consisted only of National Churches, but it soon admitted the Free Evangelical Churches, the Methodist Church and the "Evangelische Gemeinschaft". The Federation has 2,888,122 baptized members. The United States The following are some of the greatest Churches affiliated to the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America in the year 1942 with their membership for the years ending in 1941-1942. Northern Baptist Convention 1,538,871 National Baptist Convention 3,911,611 Congregational Christian Churches 1,052,701 Disciples of Christ 1,655,580 Protestant Episcopal Church 1,074,178 United Lutheran Church (consultative) 1,709,290 The Methodist Church 6,640,424 Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. 1,986,257 The total membership was 25,551,560 The Federal Council of Churches united with 11 other national inter- denominational organizations, to form the National Council of Churches, in 1950. Its 34 member Churches have a total membership of about 42 million persons. The most important Protestant denominations which are not members of the National Council of Churches are: Southern Baptist Convention (present membership 10,770,573); the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (present membership 2,692,889); the American Lutheran Church (present membership 2,541,546). Yugoslavia The greatest non-Roman Catholic Church is the Serbian Orthodox Church which has about 8,000,000 members. Other Churches are: the Reformed Christian Church of Yugoslavia (30,000 members) and the Slovak Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Yugoslavia. The World Council of Churches <306> The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of more than 200 Churches of Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox and Old Catholic confessions. It includes in its membership Churches in more than 80 countries. In 1961, the Orthodox Church of Russia also joined the World Council of Churches. A number of large Churches, however, are not World Council members. 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Talmon, The Unique and the Universal - Some Historical Reflections, London 1965, Chap. IV: Mission and Testimony - The Universal Significance of Modem Anti-semitism, p. 119 ff. page III 3 Kirchliches Jahrbuch fur die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 1933- 1944, hrsg. von Joachim Beckmann, Gutersloh 1948, p. 76 f., quoted according to: Der Nationalsozialismus, Dokumente 1933-1945, herausgegeben, eingeleitet und dargestellt von Walther Hofer, Frankfurt a/M, 1957 (henceforth: Hofer), p. 140. 4 Visser 't Hooft, pp. 61, 64-65. This reference to the first of the Ten Commandments by the Church in its struggle against the totalitarian and pseudo-messianic character of the Nazi regime already appeared in: Wort der Bekenntnissynode der evangelischen Kirche der altpreussischen Union an die Gemeinden, 4/5 March 1935 in Berlin-Dahlem; par. 1: The first commandment reads: 'I am the Lord God. Thou shalt have no other gods besides me. 'We obey this commandment alone having faith in Jesus Christ who was crucified and resurrected for us. The new religion is a revolt against the first commandment." Cf. Hofer, p. 144. page V 5 Visser 't Hooft, p. 64. Page VI 6 Heinrich Schmidt, Apokalyptisches Wetterleuchten, Ein Beitrag der Evangelischen Kirche zum Kampf im 'Dritten Reich', Munchen, 1947, p. 305. This source also appears in: Friedrich Zipfel, Kirchenkampf in Deutschland 1933-1945 - Religionsverfolgung und Selbstbehauptung der Kirchen in der national-sozialistischen Zeit, Berlin I 965, p. 31. 7 Hofer, p. 128. 8 On the origin of the term: "metapolitics" cf. Constantin Frantz: "Offener Brief an Richard Wagner", Bayreuther Blaetter, Jahrgang 1, No. 6 (June 1878), op. 169. Cf.: Peter Viereck, Metapolitics - The Roots of the Nazi Mind, N.Y. 1961 (1941), p. 4. 9 Visser 't Hooft, p. 71. page VII 10 See in this volume pp. 131 - 132 . Cf. Visser 't Hooft, p. 57. page VIII 11 These sources of modem anti-semitism have recently been treated in: Shmuel Ettinger, "The Critique of Judaism in the Teachings of the 'Young Hegelians' as one of the Roots of Modem Anti-semitism", Lecture given at the Academia scientiarum Israelitica, Jerusalem, 1969 (in press, Hebrew). Ibid: "The Roots of Modern Anti-semitism", (Hebrew) Molad, Jerusalem, New Series Vol. 11 (xxv), No. (219) Jan.-March, 1969, p. 323 ff. On the theoretical relationship between theological criticism and racial theory, cf. Nathan Rotenstreich, Judaism and Jewish Rights, (Hebrew), Tel-Aviv, 1959, Chaps, 1, 3, 5, 6. Ibid. "For and against Emancipation: The Bruno Bauer Controversy", in Leo Beck Institute, Year Book IV, London, 1959, p. 3 ff. Cf. also: Eleonore Sterling, Er ist wie Du - aus der Fruehgeschichte des Anti-semitismus in Deutschland (1815-1850), Munchen 1956, 235 pp. For sources on modern anti-semitism in the Critique of positivistic religion by the deists and rationalists in France, cf. Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews, N.Y.-Phil. 1968, 420 pp. 12 Ludwig Feuerbach, Das Wesen der Religion, Dreissig Vorlesungen, 1845 (1848), Dritte Vorlesung, Leipzig, 1908, p. 12. page IX 13 Friedrich Nietzsche, Gesammelte Werke, Gesamtausgabe, Kroner, Leipzig, Vol. VII, p. 273: ... Das Christenthum ist ein Aufstand alles Am-Boden-Kriechenden gegen das, was Hoehe hat; das Evangelium der Niedrigen macht niedrig...". 14 Alexander Bein, Der moderne Anti-semitismus und seine Bedeutung fur die Judenfrage, Vierteljahreshefte fur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart, 1958, pp. 345/6. 15 Moritz Freystadt, Der Christenspiegel von Anti-Marr, ein offenes Sendeschreiben an die modernen Judenfeinde, 5e Anlage, Koenigsberg 1863, pp. 3, 8, 20, 21, 39. page X 16 Wilhelm Marr, Streifzuege durch das Koncilium von Trient - Voltaire frei nach erzaehlt, Hamburg, Otto Meissner Verlag, 1868, pp. 95/6. In this work Marr emphasizes the fact that the criticism of Christianity was for the most part directed against the Catholics who were called by the spokesmen of German nationalism in the period of Bismarck 'ultramontanists.' At the same time he claims: "We... reject Christianity as well as Judaism... We reject... all religions...". Cf. p. 102. 17 Marr, like most of the fathers of antisemitic ideology, is not consistent in his antisemitic arguments or in his anti-Christian motives. Different views are held at different times, and contradictory views are expressed at the same time. Thus, Marr sometimes does not oppose Christianity but seems to be a proponent of "practical Christianity" with an eye to the social policy of Bismarck in the 80's of the last century, or as a proponent of "Christian-German realism. Thus, we also note an anti-Christian sentiment directed not so much against Protestantism as against Catholicism. The Anti-Catholic attitude of the fathers of racial anti-semitism was part of the national awakening in the days of the Second Reich, an awakening that was based to a considerable extent on the tradition of Protestant sovereignty. Of the many sources of antiCatholic anti-semitism from the first days of this movement the propaganda of Ottomar Beta is typical, as we find in his book which he dedicated to Bismarck, "Juda-Jesuitismus, where, among other things, he says: "The arrogant assumption of infallibility of the Jewish descendents in Rome is nothing more than an ultramontanist firework to divert the eyes of the Germanic peoples from the more ominous capitalistic infallibility of their racial brethren in wordly garb... The source appears in the anti-semitic collection: Antisemiten-Spiegel - die Antisemiten im Lichte des Christenthums, des Rechtes und der Moral, Danzig, 1892, (A.S. further), p. 136. page XI 18 Walter Holsten, Adolf Stoecker als Symptom seiner Zeit - Anti-semitismus in der evangelischen Kirche des 19e Jahrhunderts? The article appears in: Christen und Juden - Ihr Gegenueber vom Apostel- konzil bis heute, herausgegeben von Wolf-Dieter Marsch und Karl Thieme, Mainz/Goettingen 1961, p. 182 ff. On this ambivalent character of anti-semitism, cf. the words of A. Stoecker to the German Kaiser, 25. 9. 1880: "...Im Ubrigen habe ich in allen meiner Reden gegen das Judentum offen erklaert, dass ich nicht die Juden angreife, sondern nur dies frivole, gottlose, wucherische, betruegerische Judenthum, das in der Tat das Unglueck unseres Volkes ist...". This source is found in: Dietrich von Oertzen, Adolf Stoecker - Lebensbild und Zeitgeschichte, Berlin 1910, Vo1.1, p. 213. Cf. also: Paul W. Massing, Vorgeschichte des politischen Anti-semitismus, Frankfurt a/M, 1959, (P. Massing: further) p. 31. page XII 19 Adolf Stoecker, Christlich-Sozial; Reden und Aufsaetze, 1885, p. 153 f. Cf. also P. Massing, p. 238/9, note 64. According to the second edition of the addresses and works of A. Stoecker of the year 1890, P. Massing quotes the entire document which concludes with the words: "... A return to more of Germanic law and economic life, a return to Christian faith - this will be our slogan." page XIII 20 R. Seeberg, Reden und Aufsaetze von Adolf Stoecker, Leipzig 1913, p. 141/2. Cf. also the above essay of Walther Holsten, p. 119. 21 Above, note 19, p. 211. page XIV 22 Eugen Duhring, Wert des Lebens, 3. Auflage, 1881, p. 5: "... paradoxe Lehre von der Umkehrung oder Kreuzigung aller Fleischregungen...". 23 Eugen Doehring, Die Parteien in der Judenfrage, Separat-Ausgabe von Hefte 7, 8 des ersten Bandes der Schweitznerischen internationalen Monatschrift, Leipzig 1882, Verlag Theodor Fritsch, p. 403 ff. page XV 24 A.S. Danzig, 1892, p. 137 fl. Cf. also: these sources in a pamphlet issued by the "Verein zur Abwehr des Anti-semitismus", which also issued the "AntisemitenSpiegel. The name of this pamphlet is: "Antisemitisches Christenthum und christlicher Anti-semitismus", Flugblatt No 7, p. 1/2 (Year not given). 25 The anti-intellectual meaning of this doctrine that seeks to relegate the image of Jesus to the mythology of racial anti-semitism was pointed out by several writers already during the Second Reich. Cf. the many publications of the "Verein zur Abwehr des Anti-semitismus," beginning in 1892, and in condensed form: Antisemiten-Spiegel, Berlin- Frankfurt a/M, 1911 , p. 161 ff. On the historical background of the anti-intellectual character of racial doctrines and on the influence of anti-intellectualism on this interpreta- tion that would transplant Jesus from his Jewish origin and make him a member of the Aryan race, cf.: Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair - A study in the Rise of the German Ideology, Berkeley and Los Angelos, 1961, pp. 41/2: to divorce Christianity and Judaism even at this late stage would be a recognition of an unambiguous historical truth and of Jesus' own intent...". cf. pp. 139, 143, 144, 145, 163, 199. page XVI + XVII 26 From the journal "Hammer", published in: A.S. Berlin-Frankfurt a/M, 1911, p.201. 27 Ibid. p. 203. The anti-Christian meaning of modem anti-semitism and its historical sources have recently been noted by Salo W. Baron in: Deutsche und Juden, Beitraege, etc., Frankfurt a/M, 1967, p. 84/85: "...It is unmistakable how the resistance against everything that Judaism and Christianity stand for has increased since the 70's of the 19th century, and it is no exaggeration to say that this development prepared the ground for the Nazi assumption of power...". I have dealt with this question at length in the last chapter of my book, cf. UneiTal, Christians and Jews in the Second Reich (1870-1914), Chap. V: "Christian and anti-Christian Anti-Semitism", (Hebrew), in Press, The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem. On the anti-Christian elements in racial anti-Semitism, cf. also: Edward H. Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews, N.Y. London, 1965, p. 180 ff. See also: Hermann Greive, Theologie und Ideologie - Katholizismus und Judentum in Deutschland und Oesterreich (1918-1935), Heidelberg, 1969. In this book the author stresses that a clear-cut distinction between Christian anti-semitism or "kirchlicher Anti-Judaismus" and racial anti- semitism or "Rassenanti-semitismus" is not warranted. His conclusion is: "...dass anti-juedische Vorurteile im Katholizismus der diskutierten Periode auf breitester Basis nachgewiesen werden koennen... Die anfaenglich vielfach nicht unerhebliche Verschiedenheit in der Judenfeindlichen Argumentation zumindest der tonangebenden Kreise in Katholizismus und auf voelkisch-antikirchlicher Seite wich im Laufe der Zeit immer weiter reichenden Vermittlungstheorien zwischen den sozial, kulturell und religioes orientierten und den voelkisch-rassischen Anti-semitismus..."; p. 222/223. A similar conclusion that stresses the direct connection between the theological and historical anti-Jewishness of Christianity and modem anti-semitism is reached by: A. Roy Eckardt, Elder and Younger Brothers -The Encounter of Jews and Christians, N.Y., 1967, Chap. 1, The Enigma, 1, p. 8: "There can be little serious doubt that Christendom's traditional antipathy to the Jews is the major historical root of anti-semitism in the Western world. Historically speaking, anti-semitism derives from 'the conflict of the Church and the Synagogue.' Here is the Crime of Christendom. Such distinguished and authoritative historians as James Parkes and Jules Isaac have chronicled this fact definitely...". This thesis, about the historical continuation between the anti-Jewish attitude in Christianity and modern anti-semitism rests not only on the theological attitude of Christianity but also on the legal history of the persecution of Jews by Christians, beginning in the forth century. This is treated by: James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue - A Study in the Origins of Anti-semitism, Cleveland, N.Y., Phil., 1961, Appendix I, p. 379 ff. A similar historiographical approach is taken by Raul Hilberg who has Drawn up a comparative list of Canonical and Nazi .Anti-Jewish Measures, in his book: The Destruction of the European Jews, Chicago, 1961 , pp. 5-6. The list also appears in the above mentioned book of A. Roy Eckhardt, p. 12 - 13, where he draws the same conclusion, namely, that the Nazis "...did not discard the past; they built upon it...". And he adds to this quotation from Hilberg: "This fact makes ludicrous any unqualified claim that the Nazis were the enemies of Christendom." page XVIII 28 Cf. the works of E. Flannery, James Parkes, A. Roy Eckhardt, Marsch-Thieme; cf. above, and also: Karl Thieme, Der religioese Aspekt der Judenfeindschaft (Judentum und Christentum), in: "Judentum - Schicksal, Wesen und Gegenwart", hrsg. von Franz Boehm und Walter Dirks, unter Mitarbeit von Walter Gottschalk, Wiesbaden 1965, Vol. II, p. 603 IT. See also: "Judenfeindschaft. Darstellungen und Analysen," hrsg. Von Karl Thieme, Frankfurt a/M. Hamburg, 1963, 326 ff. Cf. especially the work of: Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich, "Judenfeindschaft in Deutschland von der Roemerherrschaft, bis zum Zeitalter der Totalitaet," p. 209 ff. Also: W.P. Eckert und E.L. Ehrlich, "Judenhass - Schuld der Christen?", Essen, 1964, 525 pp. page XIX 29 Cf. the study of: Willehad Paul Eckert: "Beatus Simonius - Aus den Akten des Trienter Judenprozesses", in the above collection, note 28, edited by W.P. Eckert and by E.L. Ehrlich, p. 329 ff; also in the same collection the work of: Kurt Hruby, Verhangnisvolle Legenden und ihre Bekaempfung, p. 281 ff. page XXI 30 Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, Jewish-Christian Disputation in the Setting of Humanism and Reformation in the German Empire, H.T.R., 59 (1966), pp. 369-390. Salo W. Baron, Modern Nationalism and Religion, N.Y., Phil. (1947), 1960, Ch. V.: Protestant individualism, p. 117 ff. Cf. especially Salo W. Baron, Medieval Heritage and Modern Realities in Protestant-Jewish lielations, Diogenes Spring 1968, No. 61, p. 32 ff. 31 "Der Ungekuendigte Bund", hrsg. von Dietrich Goldschmidt und Hans Joachim Kraus, Stuttgart, 1962, p. 206. 32 Ibid., p. 218. page XXII 33 Visser 't Hooft, pp. 35/36. 34 Ibid., p. 36. page XXIII 35 Ibid. 36 A striking and instructive example to such a different approach has been given by the Bishops of Denmark, in their protest against the persecution of the Jews, 3 Oct. 1943. See below in this volume, on p. 168. Cf. "The Israel Digest", X1/22, Jerusalem, 1, 1, 1968, p. 3. A German translation in Freiburger Rundbrief, Vol. xx, 1968, No. 73-76, Dec. 1968, pp. 69/70. As to the historical background of this document, cf. Leni Yahil, Test of a Democracy - the Rescue of Danish Jewry in World War II, Jerusalem, 1966, pp. 59, 125, 145, 165. 37 World Council of Churches - Division of Studies, Commission on Faith and Order in cooperation with the Committee on the Church and the Jewish People: "The Relationship of the Church to the Jewish People, Collection of Statements", Geneva, July 1964, p. 19 ff. page XXIV 38 Ibid., p. 22-23 39 Ibid,. P. 22 40 Ibid., p. 23 41 Ibid., p. 26 42 Ibid., p. 27 Footnotes from Preface ---------------------- page 1 43 Much has been published about the subject of "Christian" anti-Semitism. Some literature: Jules Isaac, The Teaching of Contempt (New York, 1965); James Parkes, Anti-semitism (Quadrangle Books, 1961); Malcolm Hay, Europe and the Jews, The Pressure of Christendom on the People of Israel for 1900 years (Second printing, Boston, 1961; this book was first published as "The Foot of Pride", in 1950); Karl Thieme (Ed.), Judenfeindschaft (in German; Fischer Bucherei KG, 1963); E. Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews (New York, 1965). page 2 44 Thus a Protestant minister from Switzerland who now lives in Israel, in The Jerusahlem Post, Sept. 27, 1963. The Speaker of the Israeli Parliament, Mr.Kadish Luz, made a similar statement in the session of the Parliament on April 21, 1963. 45 The Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes Memorial Authority, Jerusalem, was established by Law in 1953, The Yad Vashem Act assigned to "Yad Vashem" the task "to collect, investigate and publish all evidence regarding the Catastrophe and its heroic aspects and to inculcate its lesson upon our people". page 3 46 Cf. Dr. Leny Yahil, Historians of the Holocaust; A Plea for a New Approach (in: The Wiener Library Bulletin, 1967/68, Vol. XXII, pp. 2-5). 47 Dr. Visser 't Hooft and Dr.A.Freudenberg, of the World Council of Churches, are preparing their memoirs. Rev. Armin Boyens is preparing his thesis which will have a chapter on "The Confessing Church and the Jews, 1933-1938". 48 Cf. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Gesammelte Schriften, Munich, 1959; in German), Vol. I, p. 9 (Introduction). page 5 49 Cf. "La Persecution des Juifs en Allemagne: Attitude des Eglises Chretiennes" (Geneva, 1933; in French), p.25. 50 See for the acts of individuals (Christians and non-Christians): Philip Friedman, Their Brothers Keepers (New York, 1957); Kurt R. Grossman, Die unbesungenen Helden (Berlin, 1957; in German); Heinz Leuner, When Compassion was a Crime (London, 1966); Saul Friedlaender, Kurt Gerstein Ou l'ambiguite du bien (Tournai, 1967; in French). Footnotes Part I ---------------- page 9 51 See below, on p. 113. 52 See below on p. 135-136. 53 See below, on p. 160. 54 E.H. Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews (New York,1965), p. 224. page 10 55 See below, p. 265. 56 "Unity in Dispersion", A History of the World Jewish Congress (New York, 1948 pp. 194, 195.Also see: Dr. L. de Jong, Een Sterfgeval in Auschwitz (Amsterdam, 1967; in Dutch); an English translation will be published in Yad Vashem Studies, VII (Jerusalem, 1969), pp. 39-55: "The Netherlands and Auschwitz." 57 Cf. Flannery, op. cit., p. 227: "Criticism of passivity or collaboration under the Nazis must be tempered by an understanding of the confusion wrought by the insiduous methods of Nazi propaganda and the paralysis of wills in the Nazi terror, made all the more effective by its appeal to patriotic and anti-Communist loyalties. Resistance under the circumstances should not be entirely assessed from the comfortable perspective of the postwar era. page 11 58 "Unity in Dispersion", pp. 193-196. 59 See below, p. 255. 60 Cf. H.C. Touw, Het Verzet der Hervormde Kerk ('s Gravenhage, 1946; in Dutch), 11, p. 388-390. page 12 61 In February, 1941, a general strike in Amsterdam and other places in the Netherlands was called as a protest against the deportations of Jews. The Germans proclaimed martial law and suppressed the strike by force. They proceeded to deport a total of 430 Amsterdam Jews to the concentration camp of Mauthausen, where they perished. Cf. B.A. Sijes, De Februari-Staking ('s-Gravenhage, 1954; in Dutch, with an English summary), passim. Also see: H. Knap, Vreemdeling, Bericht de Spartanen (Amsterdam, 1966), p. III: "The technical conditions for massive actions of solidarity with the Jews - if our people as a whole would have wanted them - were lacking." 62 Rolf Hochhuth, The Deputy (New York, 1963; third printing), p. 79. 63 J.J. Buskes, Waar stond de Kerk? (Amsterdam, 1947; in Dutch), p. 93. 64 Francois Mauriac, quoted by Hochhuth, op. cit., p. 6. 65 Knap, op. cit., passim. page 13 66 See below, p 259. page 14 67 See beyond, p. 147. 68 Cf., for instance, Exodus 32, 9; Isaiah 1, 2-15; Jeremiah 7, 24-26; Ezekiel 2, 3; Hosea 4, 7- 8. page 15 69 Werner Warmbrunn, The Dutch under German Occupation 1940-1945 (London, 1963), p. 279. 70 See below, on p. 175. page 17 71 Jeremiah, Amos and others. Also see: I Kings 22, 5-28. 72 See below, p. 79 ff. 73 See below, p. 245 ff. 74 See below, p. 212 ff. page 18 75 See below, on p. 201. 76 See below, on p. 99. page 19 77 Jenoe Levai, Black Book on the Martyrdom of Hungarian Jewry (Zurich, 1948), p. 217. page 20 78 A.J. Koejemans in De Waarheid, Sept. 20, 1945. page 21 79 Touw, op. cit., I , p. 69 80 Cf. Dr. J. Presser, Ondergang ('s-Gravenhage, 1965; in Dutch), 11, p. 177. For the protest, which was read from the pulpits in the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches, see below, pp. 130 -131. page 22 81 Cf. H. Leuner, When Compassion was a Crime (London, 1966), p. 13: "Every possible means of propaganda and subtle psychology was used to separate Germans and Jews, to create an unbridgeable gulf between the members of the Aryan master race and those belonging to the family of 'parasites'. 82 W.A. Visser 't Hooft, The Ecumenical Movement and the Racial Problem (Paris, 1954), p.40. 83 Cf. the chapters 27-30 in this book. 84 Cf. ch. 31 in this book. 85 Cf. ch. 32, p. 233 86 Cf. chapters 33 - 34 in this book. page 23 87 "Unity in Dispersion", pp. 160-161. page 24 88 F. Burgdoerfer, "Die Juden in Deutschland und in der Welt"; in: "Forschungen zur Judenfrage" (Hamburg, 1938; in German), pp. 152-199. 89 Cf. ch. 18, p. 95 90 Cf. ch. 30, p. 204 page 25 91 Leuner, op. cit., p. 100. 92 Touw, op. cit., 1, p. 174. Cf. W. A. Visser 't Hooft, The Struggle of the Dutch Church for the Maintenance of the Commandments of God in the Life of the State (London, 1944), p. 13: "When threats were of no avail the Germans attempted to blackmail the Churches. In this way the Churches were brought into great conflicts of conscience. Should they give up the open protests so that this or that group of church-members might be saved? Or should they go forward, without regard for the consequences that might arise for others? These are difficult questions that no one can decide on the spur of the moment or looking at the situation from the outside." Cf. also the opinion of a group of Christians of Jewish origin (p. 130 in this book). 93 Abel J. Herzberg, Kroniek der Jodenvervolging (Arnhem-Amsterdam, 1950; in Dutch), p. 133. 94 Presser, op. cit., 11, p. 128. page 26 95 Cf. ch. 22, pp. 129. 96 Cf., however, Pinchas E. Lapide, The Last Three Popes and the Jews (London, 1967), p. 138: "At that time Archbishop Roncalli, the Apostolic Delegate to Turkey and Greece, received Mr. Ira Hirschmann, a special emissary for the U.S. War Refugee Board... sent to interview Yoel Brand in connection with Eichmann's 'blood for goods' deal. Mr. Hirschmann told Roncalli of the plight of several thousand Jews, including a number of children slated for deportation and death at Auschwitz. The Archbishop instantly made available thousands of 'baptismal certificates' for use for the doomed Jews, without conditions, and thousands were saved from the Nazi furnace." page 27 97 Quoted from a letter, dated October 14, 1965, of Dr. Jan Chabada, the present Generalbischof of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Slovakia, to me. Cf. Dr. L. Rothkirchen, "Vatican Policy and the 'Jewish Problem' in 'Independent' Slovakia (1939-1945)", in: "Yad Vashem Studies" (Jerusalem, 1967), Vol. VI, p. 46: "...the Protestant clergy... for the most part supporters of the pro-Czechoslovak line, were prominent for their more adaptable approach, mainly in the furnishing of certificates of conversion to Christianity. Some Protestant clergymen have even been charged with profitmaking motives and with granting hundreds of certificates of conversion within a day or two." Also see: R. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago, 1961), p. 466: "From the ethnic German organ, the Grenzbote, criticism was more vociferous. The baptisms were ternied a blasphemy, and the churchmen who engaged in them were accused of having monetary motives. Two Calvinist pastors, Puspas and Sedivy, were subsequently arrested, and Sedivy was accused of having performed not fewer than 717 baptisms." 98 Peter Meyer (Ed.), The Jews in the Soviet Satellites (Syracuse University Press, 1953), p. 571. page 28 99 Yad Vashem Archives, No. 0311 708 (A summary of the evidence by the interviewer; in Hebrew). 100 Michael Molho and Joseph Nehama, The Destruction of Greek Jewry, 1941-1944 (Jerusalem, 1965; in Hebrew), p. 142. 101 Ilias Venezis, Archbishop Damaskinos (Athens, 1952;) in Greek), ch. 34. page 29 102 Buskes, op. cit., p. 89. 103 J.J. Buskes, Hoera voor het Leven (Amsterdam, 1963), p. 193. 104 Romans 13, 8. Footnotes Part II ------------------ page 33 105 Wolfgang Scheffler, Judenverfolgung im Dritten Reich (Berlin-Dahlem, 1960), p. 26. page 34 106 Ibid., p. 26. page 35 107 Ibid., pp. 79-80. page 36 108 Ibid., p.26. 109 Cf. Bruno Blau, The Last Days of German Jewry in the Third Reich (in: Yivo Annual, vol. VIII, 1953, pp. 197-204). page 37 110 An immense number of publications appeared about the Church in Germany during the Third Reich. We mention here: "Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die Judenfrage", Ausgewaehlte Dokumente aus den Jahren des Kirchenkampfes 1933 bis 1943 (Geneva, 1945); G.van Norden, Kirche in der Krise (Dusseldorf, 1963); W.Jannasch, Deutsche Kirchendokumente (Zurich, 1946); Heinrich Hermelink, Kirche im Kampf (Stuttgart, 1950); Guenther Weisenbom, Der lautlose Aufstand (Hamburg, 1953); Wilhelm Niemoeller, Kampf und Zeugnis der Bekennenden Kirche (Bielefeld, 1948); Wilhelm Niemoeller, Die Evangelische Kirche im Dritten Reich (Bielefeld, 1956); Renate Maria Heydenreich, Versuch theologischer Wiedergutmachung; in D. Goldschmidt und H. J. Kraus (Ed.), Der ungekundigte Bund (Stuttgart-Berlin, 2. Auflage, 1963), pp. 183-283; Otto Diehn, Bibliographie zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes, 1933- 1945 (Gottingen, 1958); Anton Koch, Vom Widerstand der Kirche (Freiburg, 1947); Friedrich Zipfel, Kirchenkampf in Deutschland 1933-1945 (Berlin, 1965); Dr. Joseph Tenenbaum, For the Sake of Historical Balance (in: Yad Vashem Bulletin, No. 3, Jerusalem, 1958); Philip Friedman, Was there "another Germany" during the Nazi Period? (in: Yivo Annual of Jewish Social Studies, Vol. x, New York, 1955). page 38 111 Cf. the "Gesetz ueber die Rechtsverhaltnisse der Geistlichen und Kirchen- beamten" (EKD und Judenfrage, pp. 35 ff.; Heydenreich, op. cit., p. 196). 112 The full contents in: Heydenreich, op. cit. ; EKD und Judenfrage, passim. page 39 113 Hermelink, op. cit., pp. 250-251. Cf. the article of Kurt Meier, Kristallnacht und Kirche - die Haltung der Evangelischen Kirche zur Judenpolitik des Faschismus (in: Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Karl-Marx-Universitat Leipzig, 13. Jahrgang, 1964, pp. 91-106), p .99. 114 Heydenreich, op. cit., p. 228. 115 Ibid., p. 230. page 40 116 Hermelink, op. cit., 351. 117 Meier, op. cit., p. 99. Also see: Wilhelm Niemoeller, Die Bekennende Kirche sagt Hitler die Wahrheit (Bielefeld, passim). On August 23, 1936, the Memorandum was published as a "Proclamation from the Pulpit" in an amended form. Cf. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Gesammelte Schriften; Munich, 1958), 11, p. 277 (note). page 41 118 Cf. "Die Evangelische Kirche und die Judenfrage", pp. 180 ff.; H.Grueber, Wemer Sylten (Berlin, 1956; in German); idem: An der Stechbahn (Berlin, 1960; in German); H.D. Leuner, When Compassion was a Crime (London, 1966). pp. 114-119. 119 Hermelink, op. cit., p. 461. Cf. Meier, op. cit., p. 100: "The reason that no joint protest was issued by the Confessing Church after the pogrom of November, 1938. was that the Confessing Church as an organization was under strong pressure at the time. On June 23, 1937, several members of the Reich Brethren Council were arrested; on July 1, 1937, also Martin Niemoeller. After that, the Reich Brethren Council was hardly able to act. page 42 120 Die Evangelische Kirche und die Judenfrage, p. 179. 121 Meier, op. cit., p. 101 page 43 122 Cf. below, p. 244. 123 Cf. H.C. Touw, Het Verzet der Hervormde Kerk (s'Gravenhage, 1946; in Dutch), pp. 13-34. 124 La Persecution des Juifs en Allemagne, p. 21; "De Standaard" (Protestant Daily in the Netherlands before the war), April 7, 1933. 125 Cf. below, p. 93. 126 "De Standaard", April 7, 1933. page 44 127 Ibid., May 5 and 12, 1933. 128 Ibid., May 16 and 20, 1933. 129 Ibid., May 24 , 1933. 130 The addresses were published in the Brochure "Vrede over Israel" (Amsterdam, 1935; in Dutch). Also see: D. Cohen, Zwervend en Dolend (Haarlem, 1955; in Dutch), pp. 27-28. 131 "Dietschen stam". 132 Th.Delleman, Opdat wij niet vergeten (Kampen, 1949; in Dutch), pp. 55-69, 481-489. Action was also taken against members of the "Christian Democratic Union", a party of Christian socialists. Also see: Werner Warmbrunn, The Dutch under German Occupation 1940-1945 (London, 1963), p. 160. page 45 133 Ben van Kaam, Opstand der Gezagsgetrouwen (Wageningen, 1966; in Dutch), p. 16. 134 Cohen, op. cit., p. 56. 135 Cf. for - at least - questionable comments in the Protestant Press on the events in Germany: van Kaam, op. cit., pp. 25-27. Also see the article "Van eigen bodem" (in: "De Standaard", Dec. 3, 1938). 136 "De Standaard", Nov. 17, 1938. page 46 137 Ibid., November 14, 1938. page 47 138 Le IIIe Reich et les Juifs, pp. 191-192. page 48 139 Ibid., p. 193. 140 The nickname of the Protestants in Belgium and the Netherlands, in the 16th century. It became their name of honour. 141 Le IIIe Reich et les Juifs, pp. 178-179. page 49 142 Le IIIe Reich et les Juifs, pp. 200-201. La Persecution des Juifs en Allemagne, p. 6. 143 Le IIIe Reich et les Juifs, p. 201. page 50 144 Ibid., pp. 202 ff. (2 x used) page 53 145 "Pour la dignite humaine" (Brochure), pp. 48-52. page 54 146 Archives of the Protestant Federation of France, Paris. 147.Ibid. page 55 148 "Journal de Geneve", April 9, 1933; quoted in: La Persecution des Juifs en Allemagne, p. 23. 149 La Persecution des Juifs en Allemagne, p. 24. page 56 150 Ibid., p. 24. 151 Cf. pp. 210-212. page 57 152 Schweiz. Evang. Pressedienst (E.P.D.), Zurich, Nov. 30, 1938. 153 E.P.D., ibid., p. 2. 154 E.P.D., Dec. 14, 1938. page 58 155 Professor Aage Bentsen, Docent Flemming Hvidberg, Professor Johannes Pedersen and Professor Frederik Torm. The declaration was published in "Berlingske Tidende". 156 Dr.Leni Yahil, Test of Democracy, The Rescue of Danish Jewry in World War II (Jerusalem, 1966; in Hebrew, with a summary in English), pp. 59-60. page 59 157 Cf. the article of Dr. Fuglsang-Damgaard in: Chr. Refslund - M. Schmidt (Ed.),Fem Aar (Copenhagen, 1946; in Danish), II, pp. 100-108. 158 Church Magazine "Kristen Gemenskap" (in Swedish), 1933, No. 2. page 60 159 Ibid., 1933, No. 2. page 61 160 Ibid., 1934, No. 19. page 63 161 Ibid., 1938, No. 4. page 64 162 Ibid. 163 The Hungarian Upper House had 254 members, including 34 representatives of the Churches. Cf. Albert Bereczky, Hungarian Protestantism and the Persecution of the Jews (Budapest, 1946), p. 8. Also see: Hendrik Fisch (Ed.), Kerestzteny egyhazfok felsohazi beszedi a zsidokerdesben (The Speeches on the Jewish Question by Christian Church Leaders in the Upper House; Budapest, 1947; in Hungarian); and: "Schweiz. evang. Pressedienst" (Zurich), March 27, 1946, pp. 3-6. page 65 164 Jeno Levai, Black Book on the Martyrdom of Hungarian Jewry (Zurich, 1948), p. 12. 165 Rabbi Hershkovits in my interview with him on March 29, 1966. 166 Cf. Bereczky, op. cit., pp. 9-10. 167 R.Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago, 1961), p. 514. Cf. "Schweiz. evang. Pressedienst", March 27, 1946, p. 5: "Special endeavours were made on behalf of the Protestant Jews, not because they belonged to the Church but because it was easier to attain something for them." page 66 168 "Dimineata", Bucharest, April 15, 1933; quoted in: "La Persecution des Juifs en Allemagne", p. 22. 169 Other protests, statements and declarations: Speech by the Bishop of Fulham ("The Times", April 27, 1933). Speech by the Vicar of Leeds (Manchester Guardian, April 10, 1933). Speech by the Bishop of Liverpool (Liverpool Post, April 6, 1933). Speech by the Bishop of Nottingham (Manchester Guardian, May 3, 1933). Resolution of the Council of the World Evangelical Alliance, British Section; May 1, 1933 (Dr.A.Freudenberg, the Church and the Jewish Question; Geneva, 1944; p.18). Resolution of the Baptist Union of Scotland (Glasgow Herald, June 6, 1933). Message from the Bishop of Durham; "J'accuse" (brochure, London), p. 93. Letter from the Bishop of Chichester to "The Times", May 30, 1935. page 67 170 Freudenberg, op. cit., p. 3 171 Ibid., p. 4. page 68 172 Ibid., p. 4 173 Ibid., p. 5 174 Ibid., p. 3. page 69 175 Ibid., p. 5 . Cf. "Le IIIe Reich et les Juifs", pp. 218 - 219. Also see: "La Persecution des Juifs en Allemagne", pp. 12-13. page 70 176 Freudenberg, op. cit., p. 18. 177 Reports to the General Assembly, 1933, p. 709. 178 See p. 79. page 71 179 Acts, Proceedings and Debates of the General Assembly, 1934, p. 79. 180 Reports to the General Assembly, 1935, p. 772. page 72 181 Freudenberg, op. cit., p. 15. 182 From the "Reports and Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of England", 1934. page 73 183 The Church Assembly of the Church of England usually meets for three sessions a year. It consists of the three houses of Bishops, clergy and laity. At present there are 734 members: 34 Bishops, 344 clergymen and 347 laymen. page 75 184 "The Times", November 21, 1935. The full report in the Brochure "The Jews in Germany", Debate in the Church Assembly, Nov. 20th, 1935, London. 185 Cf. R.C.D. Jasper, George Bell Bishop of Chichester (London, 1967), passim. 186 See above, on p. 74. 187 Jasper, op. cit., pp. 137-138. page 76 188 The Diocesan Conferences meet once a year or at most, twice. They are the local counterpart of the Church Assembly and consist of two houses, the Chamber of Clergy and the Chamber of Laity. The Bishop is always the president of the Diocesan Conference. 189 Freudenberg, op. cit., p. 7. 190 Cf. Jasper, op. cit., pp. 135-163. Also cf.: Norman Bentwich, They Found Refuge (London, 1956), pp. 43 and 51. page 77 191 Minutes of the meetings of the Church Assembly (Archives of Church House, Great Smith Street, Westminster). page 78 192 Jasper, op. cit., pp. 142-143. 193 "Reports and Minutes of the General Assembly", 1937. 194 Freudenberg, op. cit., pp. 12-13. page 79 195 Reports to the General Assembly, 1936, p. 709. 196 Acts, Proceedings and Debates of the General Assembly, 1937, p. 71. 197 Reports to the General Assembly, 1938, p. 753. page 80 198 "The Times", November 12, 1938. 199 Minutes of the meetings of the Church Assembly (Archives of Church House, Great Smith Street, Westminster). 200 See p. 101. page 81 201 Norman Bentwich, They Found Refuge (London, 1956), p. 69. Also see pp. 78-85. 202 Freudenberg, op. cit., p. 33. page 82 203 Reports to the General Assembly, 1939, pp. 691-693. See for the full text of Dr.Black's letter: The Jewish Chronicle, Nov. 25, 1938, p. 26. 204 Minutes of the Conference of the Methodist Church in Ireland, held in June, 1939. 205 Keesing's Contempary Archives, March 22, 1933; 725-E. page 83 206 Keesing, March 30, 1933; 735-B. 207 Freudenberg, op. cit., p. 19. Cf. "La Persecution des Juifs en Allemagne", p. 5; and: "Le IIIe Reich et Les Juifs", p. 224. page 84 208 Freudenberg, op. cit., p. 20. page 85 209 I See above, p. 72 . ff. 210 Dr. Charles S. Macfarland, Across the Years (The Macmillan Co., 1936), p.168. 211 Ibid., p. 168. page 86 212 Ibid., p. 169. 213 The New York Times, June 9, 1937; Freudenberg, op. cit., pp. 20 - 21. page 87 214 Freudenberg, op. cit., p. 31. 215 Federal Council Bulletin, October 1938, p. 13. 216 Ibid., December 1938, p. 3. page 88 217 Ibid., October 1938, p. 13. 218 Ibid., December 1938, p. 9 219 Ibid. page 89 220 The New York Times, Jan. 10, 1939. Among the signers were: Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert, Federal Council of Churches; the Rt. Rev. Edwin H.Hughes, Bishop of Washington area, Methodist Episcopal Church; Bishop Charles Mead, Methodist Episcopal Church, Kansas City. 221 Cf. Arthur Morse, While Six Million Died (London, 1968), p. 253. 222 The New York Times, Febr. 19, 1939. Cf. Federal Council Bulletin, Febr., 1939, p. 7. 223 Morse, op. cit., p. 268. Cf. Arieh Tartakower and Kurt R.Grossmann, The Jewish Refugee (New York, 194.4). p. 90: "One of the chief arguments raised against this bill was that the admittance of 20,000 refugee children to the United States from Germany and the refusal to admit their parents would be against the laws of God, and therefore would be an opening wedge for a later request for the admission of about 40,000 adults, the parents of the children in question." page 90 224 The New York Times, March 26, 1939. 225 Ibid., April 27, 1939. page 91 226 National Council of Churches, Department of Information. page 92 227 Freudenberg, op. cit., p. 51; Federal Council Bulletin, Febr, 1939, p.3 ff. 228 The New York Times, May 31, 1939 229 Ibid., June 13, 1939. page 93 230 See above, p. 38. 231 Freudenberg, op. cit., p. 22. Cf. "La Persecution des Juifs en Allemagne", p. 27. The Resolution had been requested by the Dutch Council (see above, p. 43). 232 Freudenberg, op. cit., p. 23. page 94 233 Jasper, op. cit., p. 101. 234 Minutes, Novi Sad, 1939, pp. 37-38. Cf. Jasper, op. cit., p. 104. 235 See above, p. 38. 236 Jasper, op. cit., p. 105. page 95 237 "Le Christianisme Social" (French Protestant Periodical), Nov. - Dec. 1933, p. 606. page 96 238 Freudenberg, op. cit., p. 27. page 97 239 Ibid., pp. 28-29. 240 Cf. for the Oxford Conference: "The Churches Survey Their Task" (The Report of the Conference of Oxford, July 1937, on Church, Community, and State; with and Introduction by J.H.Oldham), London, 1937. Also see: Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neil (Ed.), A History of the Ecumenical Movement 1517-1948 (London, 1954) pp. 587-592. The essential theme of the Oxford Conference, as was stated in the first announcement of it, was: "The life and death struggle between the Christian faith and the secular and pagan tendencies of our time." page 98 241 Jasper, op. cit., pp. 221-223. 242 "The Churches Survey Their Task", pp. 58-59. page 99 243 Ibid., pp. 230-238. Cf. pp. 72-73 (the Report on the Church and Race). 244 See p. 259. 245 See p. 142. page 100 246 Freudenberg, op. cit., p. 24. 247 A conference about the Refugee Problem, called by President Roosevelt, was held at Evian, in July, 1938. It was attended by representatives of 32 countries. page 101 248 Archives of the World Council of Churches, Geneva. 249 See above, on p. 88 . ff. 250 See above, on p. 95. 251 Freudenberg, op. cit., p. 32. 252 "Conversation entre le Dr.Visser 't Hooft, le Dr.Freudenberg et le Dr.Barot, concernant les activites Cimade-wcc pendant la guerre" (Archives of the World Council of Churches, Geneva; in French). Footnotes PART III ------------------- page 107 253 See for Rev. Grueber's activities: pp. 40-41. 254 Max Krakauer, Lichter im Dunkel (Stuttgart, 1947; in German), passim. 255 Krakauer, op. cit., p. 131. page 110 256 Hermelink, op. Cit., 651-652. page 111 257 Ibid., p. 564-565. Cf. Meier, op. cit., p. 104: "Apparently Wurm did not protest publicly, as he wanted to avoid providing amunition to the foreign press and thus provoking the National-Socialist authorities, which would have blocked the way of sending petitions in writing to the Government". 258 Hermelink, op. cit., pp. 654-656. 259 Ibid., pp. 657-658. See for the angry reply of Dr. Lammers: Hermelink, op. cit., pp. 700-702. The letter was dated March 3, 1944. Bishop Wurm wrote another letter, dated Febr. 8, 1945, to Reichsstatthalter Murr, on behalf of the partners in mixed marriages (Hermelink, op. cit., pp. 658-660). page 113 260 "Der ungekundigte Bund", pp. 246-247. The Message was dated Oct. 17, 1943, and published by "The New York Times, on August 4, 1944. In the Lutheran Churches, the fifth Commandment is: "Thou shalt not kill. 261 See below on p. 294. 262 Quoted by Friedman, op. cit., p 100. 263 Heinrich Grueber, Dona Nobis Pacem (Berlin, 1956; in German), p. 104. page 114 264 "Die Evangelische Kirche und die Judenfrage", pp. 6, 10, 13 and 14. 265 See below, pp. 291-295. page 115 266 see above, on pp. 111(note I ) and 113 (note I ) Cf. p. 40 (the fate of Dr. Weissler). 267 Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (London, 1964), pp. 23-294. page 116 268 J.Tenenbaum, Race and Reich (New York, 1956), p. 292. Also see: Jacob Robinson, And the Crooked Shall be Made Straight (New York, 1965), p. 243; Hilberg, op. cit., p. 356. page 118 269 The original test in: H.C. Christie, Den Norske Kirke I Kamp (Oslo, 1945; in Norwegian), pp. 267-268. An English translation in: Bjarne Hoye and Trygve M. Ager, "The Fight of the Norwegian Church against Nazism" (New York, 1943), pp. 146-149. page 119 270 See pp. 227-228. 271 "The Spiritual Issues of the War", No. 167, Jan. 14, 1943. 272 Christie, op. cit., p. 281. page 120 273 Dr. J. Presser, Ondergang ('s-Gravenhage, 1965; two volumes; in Dutch; an English edition is in preparation). Also see: Robinson, op. cit., pp. 240-243; Hilberg, op. cit., pp. 365-381; Abel J. Herzberg, Kroniek der Jodenvervolging (Arnhem-Amsterdam, 1950; in Dutch), passim. 274 We shall write the name of this Church in capitals, in order to prevent confusion with the "Reformed Churches in the Netherlands". page 121 275 "Interkerkelijk Overleg." Cf. H.C. Touw, Het Verzet der Hervormde Kerk ('s Gravenhage, 1946; in Dutch), 1, pp. 42-43, 138-141. 276 Cf. J.J. Buskes, Waar stond de Kerk? (Amsterdam, 1947; in Dutch), pp. 77-87. Also see: Touw, op. cit., I, pp. 47, 85 , 373-375; Delleman, op. cit., pp. 35-39. 277 Touw, op. cit., 11, pp. 259 - 260. 278 Buskes, op. cit., p. 79. pag 122 279 A moving exception was N. H. de Graaf. See for his protest: W. A. Visser 't Hooft, The Struggle of the Dutch Church for the Maintenance of the Commandments of God in the Life of the State (London, 1944), pp. 16- 17. A few days later Mr. de Graaf was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. He did not return. 280 The full text in Touw, op. cit., 11, pp. 209-215. 281 Touw, op. cit., I, p. 392. 282 Ibid., 11, pp. 227-232. An English translation of this and most of the other documents quoted in this chapter, in Visser 't Hooft, op. cit., passim. page 123 283 Visser 't Hooft, op. cit., pp. 23-24. 284 Cf. Touw, op. cit., pp. 132-134; Buskes, op. cit., pp. 62- 63; Delleman, op. cit., pp. 40, 78- 80. page 124 285 Touw, op. cit., 11, p. 32; Visser 't Hooft, op. cit., pp. 26-27. page 125 286 Cf. Buskes, op. cit., pp. 35-36; Touw, op. cit., 1, p. 171; Delleman, op. cit., pp. 81-83. 287 Delleman, op. cit., pp. 42-44, 512-516. page 126 288 Quoted in "Hitler's Ten Year War on the Jews", p. 244. 289 Visser 't Hooft, op. cit., pp. 42-45; Touw, op. cit., 1, pp. 388-392; 11, pp. 66- 67; Delleman, pp. 92-100. 290 Ibid. page 127 291 Touw, op. cit., 11, pp. 78- 83. 292 Visser 't Hooft, op. cit., p. 36; Touw, op. cit., 11, p. 84. 293 Touw, op. cit., I, pp. 395-397. page 128 294 Buskes, p. 69. 295 Touw, op. cit., 11, p. 101. page 129 296 Ibid., I, p. 404. 297 Louis de Jong, Jews and non Jews in Nazi-Occupied Holland (in: On the Track of Tyranny, ed. Max Beloff; London, 1960), pp. 148-149. Presser is of the opinion that the other Protestant Churches would not have read out the telegram from their pulpits, if they had known about the threat, but that they were not warned against doing so (Presser, op. cit., 1, pp. 260-261). Wielek (in: H. Wielek, De Oorlog die Hitler won, Amsterdam, 1947; p. 218) is of the same opinion. The other Churches, however, did know about the threat. Cf. Henberg, p. 134; Delleman, pp. 155-157; Buskes, p. 50. Also see the version of the German General Commissioner Schmidt, quoted in Touw, 1, pp. 405-406. 298 Delta, Spring 1965, Vol. VIII/No. 1 (A Review of Arts, Life and Thought in the Netherlands), pp. 28-29. page 130 299 Touw, op. cit., 1, p. 173. 300 Ibid., 1, p. 423. page 131 301 Visser 't Hooft, op. cit., pp. 52-55. 302 For practical results of this protest, see above, on p. 21. Also see: L. de Jong, De Bezetting (Amsterdam, 1963; in Dutch), 111, pp. 30-31. page 132 303 Visser 't Hooft, op. cit., pp. 56-58; Touw, op. cit., pp. 150-151. 304 Touw, op. cit., 11, pp. 155-156. 305 "Delta", p. 88. page 133 306 Touw, op. cit., pp. 169-170. Also see: pp. 177-179. page 134 307 Visser 't Hooft, op. cit., pp. 66-67; Touw, op. cit., 1, p. 394; 11, pp. 161-169. page 135 308 Visser 't Hooft, op. cit., p. 7. 309 Touw, op. cit., 1, pp. 371, 434. 310 Wielek, op. cit., p. 216. 311 Werner Warmbrunn, The Dutch under German Occupation 1940-1945 (London, 1963), p. 271. 312 Ibid., p. 279. page 136 313 J. J. Buskes in the Protestant Weekly "Hervormd Nederland", May 1, 1966. 314 Touw, op. cit., 1, p. 660. 315 Hilberg, op. cit., p. 364. Cf. for the situation in France during the war: Robert Aron, L'Histoire de Vichy (Paris, 1959; in French). 316 Hilberg, op. cit., p. 392. 317 Robinson, op. cit., p. 237. page 137 318 Tenenbaum, op. cit., p. 280. 319 Chief Rabbi Kaplan in L'Arche, No. 1 10, April 1966, p. 26. page 138 320 L. Poliakov, Harvest of Hatred (Pocket Edition, 1960), p. 251. 321 Cf. p. 145. Cf. Rev. Boegner's letter to Laval: "Authorized to speak on behalf of the Protestant Churches of the entire world, many of which have already asked my intervention..." (p. 146). 322 "Les Eglises Protestantes pendant la guerre et l'occupation; Actes de l'Assemblee Generale du Protestantisme Francais reunie a Nimes, du 22 au 26 octobre 1945." (Paris, 1946; in French), p. 18. 323 Ibid., p. 23. page 139 324 Ibid., p. 24. page 140 325 Ibid., pp. 25-26. page 141 326 Ibid., p. 26. page 142 327 Ibid., pp. 27-28. The letter was submitted to Marshal Petain on June 27, 1942. 328 A copy of the letter is in the Archives of the "Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie", Amsterdam; file: "De Zwitserse weg". For the Oxford Conference, see pp. 97-99. page 143 329 Cf. Henri Cadier in: La Chretiente au Creuset de L'epreuve, Vol. 11, p. 631 (Geneva, 1947; in French). page 144 330 Cf. Robinson, op. cit., p. 236; Hilberg, op. cit., pp. 407-408. 331 "Les Eglises Protestantes...", pp. 28-29. 332 "Cimade" (Comite Inter-Mouvement aupres des Evacues), the organization brought into being during the second world war by the Protestant Churches and the lay youth movements in France. 333 "Les Eglises Protestantes...", pp. 28-29. page 145 334 Ibid., pp. 30-31. page 146 335 Hilberg, op. cit., p. 409. 336 "Les Eglises Protestantes...", p. 31. 337 Ibid., pp. 33-34. Cf. p. 279 in this book: "Another endeavour to save lives failed. The Ecumenical Committee for Refugees had, with the help of American Christians, succeeded in obtaining entrance visas into the United States for 1,000 Jewish children from France, but the occupation of Southern France by the Germans foiled this plan." Also see: Donald A. Lowrie, The Hunted Children (New York, 1963), pp. 218-228. page 147 338 "Les Eglises Protestantes...", pp. 34-35. 339 Luke 10, 30-37. page 148 340 Sami Lattes, L'Attitude de L'Eglise en France a L'Egard des Juifs pendant la persecution (in: Les Juifs en Europe, p. 169). page 149 341 L. Poliakov, L'Hostellerie des Musiciens. Quoted by David Knout in: Contribution a L'histoire de la Resistance Juive en France (Paris, 1947), pp. 107-109. 342 C.I.M.A.D.E.: See above on p. 14 (note 2). 343 Emile C. Fabre (Ed.), Les Clandestins de Dieu (Paris, 1968; in French), p. 31. page 150 344 Ibid., p. 31. 345 Ibid., p. 66. 346 Ibid., p. 33. 347 Ibid., p. 35. 348 Ibid., p. 117. 349 Ibid., p. 120. 350 Cf., p. 212 ff. 351 "Les Clandestins de Dieu," p. 27; cf. p. 279. in this book. page 151 352 Particulars taken from Tenenbaum, op. cit., pp. 301, 339. 353 Cf. Edmond Paris, Genocide in Satellite Croatia, 1941-1945 (Chicago, 1959). 354 Joseph Schechtman in: "Hitler's Ten-Year War on the Jews", pp. 99-100. 355 Ibid., p. 108. page 152 356 See, however, the chapters in this book on Greece, Rumania and Bulgaria. 357 Tenenbaum, op. cit., p. 79. 358 Hilberg, op. cit., p. 42; Tenenbaum, op. cit., pp. 307-308. 359 Philip Friedman, Their Brothers' Keepers (New York, 1957), p. 109. page 153 360 Michael Molho and Joseph Nehama, The Destruction of Greek Jewry, 1941-1944 (Jerusalem, 1965; in Hebrew), p. 101. 361 Mr. Moissis in a letter to me dated November 2, 1966. 362 The following particulars (unless other sources are mentioned) are taken from: Ilias Venezis, Archbishop Damaskinos (Athens, 1952; in Greek); chapter 34. page 156 363 For the text of this memorandum in French, see: Michael Molho, In Memoriam (Salonika, 1948), I, pp. 118-120. The text in Hebrew in: Molho-Nehama, op. cit., pp. 106-107. page 159 364 Molho-Nehama, op. cit., p. 142. 365 Tenenbaum, op. cit., p. 106. page 160 366 Nathan Eck, New Light on the Charges Against the Last Chief Rabbi of Salonica (in: Yad Vashem Bulletin No. 17, Jerusalem; December, 1965), p. 14. Cf. the "Bericht eines aus Athen gefluechteten" (General Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, No. 841/44): "Man muss gestehen, dass die Einwohnerschaft von Athen sich menschlicher betragen haben als diejenige aus Saloniki. 367 Friedman, op. cit., p. 106. page 161 368 Molho-Nehama, op. cit., p. 224. 369 Ibid., pp. 135-136. Cf. Friedman, op. cit., p. 107: "Leaders of the Jewish community insisted that Rabbi Barzilai take refuge, a notion he rejected until Archbishop Damaskinos prevailed upon him to change his mind." 370 "The Situation of the Jews in Greece" (Published by the World Jewish Congress, New York, 1944), p. 7. 371 Asscher Moissis, La situation des Communautes juives en Grece (in: "Les Juifs en Europe"), p. 54. Quoted by Tenenbaum, op. cit., p. 310. page 162 372 Mr Moissis in his letter to me dated November 2, 1966. Another information from the same source: "After the Germans had called the Chief Rabbi of Volos, ordering him to take the necessary steps to facilitate the deportations, the latter went to the Bishop of Volos asking his advice and help. The Bishop advised him to abstain from collaboration whatsoever, and helped him to go into hiding; the majority of the Jewish population of Volos followed suit and thus was saved from deportation to Auschwitz." 373 The pastors were followers of Grundtvig (1783-1872), the teachings of whom in the opinion of Mrs. Yahil had a great influence on the views and attitude of Christians in Denmark during the German occupation. Cf. Dr. Leni Yahil, Test of Democracy, the Rescue of Danish Jewry in World War II (Jerusalem, 1966; in Hebrew, with a summary in English), p. 25. page 163 374 Yahil, op. cit., p. 33. Cf. Bishop Fuglsang-Damgaard in: "Chr. Refslund & M.Schmidt (Ed.), Fern Aar (Copenhagen, 1946; in Danish, p. 101: "Our Jews urgently requested [during the first years of the war] that as far as possible there should be silence about the Jewish question". 375 Yahil, op. cit., p. 33. 376 Ibid. 377 Ibid., pp. 164-165. The full text of the article in: "The Spiritual Issues of the War", No. 144, August 6, 1942. page 164 378 "Christians Protest Persecution" (Religious News Service, "The National Conference of Christians and Jews", New York), p. 14. 379 Boris Shub (Ed.), Hitler's Ten Year War on the Jews (New York, 1943), p. 220. 380 Yahil, op. cit., pp. 164-165. 381 "Christians Protest Persecution", p. 14. 382 Harald Sandbaek and N. J.Rald (Ed.), Den danske Kirche UNDER BESAETTELSEN (Copenhagen, 1945; in Danish), pp. 27-28. Cf. Hugh Martin (Ed.), Christian Counter-Attack (London, 1943), pp. 74-75. page 165 383 Robinson, op. cit., pp. 243-247; Yahil, op. cit., pp. 158-193. 384 Fuglsang-Damgaard, op. cit., p. 102 ff. page 166 385 Ibid. Cf. Yahil, op. cit., p. 148: "Not only Svenningsen, however, was misled by Best and believed in his promises that the Jews were not in danger, but also Bishop Fuglsang-Damgaard came to the congregation, on Sept. 28th, at 3 p.m., in order to reassure its leaders, telling them that he knew from very reliable sources that the rumours were without foundation. 386 The Danish resistance movement consisted of "study circles". In Copenhagen such circles were organized on professional lines - architects, doctors, clergymen etc. The P.U.F. was the "study circle" of pastors. Not less than 90% of all pastors belonged to it. (Cf. Yahil, op. cit., p.160). pag 167 387 Fuglsang-Damgaard, op. cit., p. 103. 388 Ibid., pp. 104-105. 389 Ibid., p. 105. pag 168 390 Ibid., pp. 105-106. 391 Sandbaek and Rald, op. cit., pp. 21-22. Cf. "Fem Aar", 11, pp. 141-142. pag 169 392 Yahil, op. cit., p. 166. pag 170 393 Fuglsang-Damgaard, op. cit., p. 106 394 Ibid., p. 107. page 171 395 "International Christian Press & Information Service, Geneva, No. 43, December, 1943. 396 "Fem Aar", 11, p. 144. page 172 397 Dr. Samuel Stefan Osusky, Sluzba Narodu (Bratislava, 1947; in Slovakian), 11, pp. 133, 136. page 173 398 Cf. for the historical particulars: Hilberg, op. cit., pp. 458-475; Tenenbaum, op. cit., pp. 318-321; the article of Dr. F. Steiner, "La situation des Juifs en Slovaquie" (in: "Les Juifs en Europe", pp. 216-220); and especially the comprehensive book of Dr.Livia Rothkirchen, The Destruction of Slovak Jewry (Jerusalem, 1961), passim. page 174 399 Osusky, op. cit., pp. 230-231. page 175 400 Cf. for the historical data: Robinson, op. cit., pp. 258-265; Hilberg, op. cit., pp. 485-509; Tenebaum, op. cit., pp. 312-317; also see the comprehensive work of Theodore Lavi: "Roumanian Jewry in World War II" (in Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1965), especially pp. 11-13. 401 "Hitler's Ten-Year War on the Jews", p. 84. 402 Dr.Alexandre Safran, L'oeuvre de sauvetage de la population juive accomplie pendant l'oppression nazie en Roumanie (in: "Les Juifs en Europe"; in French), p. 209. Cf. Lavie, op. cit., pp. 108-110. page 176 403 Safran, op. cit., p. 209. 404 Ibid., p. 210. page 177 405 Dr. Safran's secretary, Israel Lebanon, related about this meeting: "Rabbi Safran quoted texts from the Old Testament and dwelt on the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, etc." (Lavie, op. cit., p. 110). 406 Safran, op. cit., pp. 211 - 212. page 178 407 Matatias Carp, Le martyre des Juifs de Roumanie (in: "Les Juifs en Europe"), p. 204. page 179 408 International Press & Information Service, Geneva, May 1942, No. 16. 409 Ibid. 410 For the "German Christians", see above, on p. 36. page 180 411 Bishop Mueller's letter to me, dated Dec. 2, 1965. 412 Dr. Safran's letter to me, dated April 18, 1966. page 181 413 Hilberg, op. cit., pp. 474-475. page 182 414 Yad Vashem Archives, 013/7-1. On the original there is a marginal note in handwriting: "I have read and investigated and shall take into consideration the contents of the above. 15. 11. 1940." 415 B. J. Arditi, Les Juifs de Bulgarie sous le regime Nazi 1940-1944 (Tel-Aviv, 1962; in Hebrew), pp. 201-202. page 183 416 Ibid., p. 92. 417 Robinson, op. cit., p. 258; Hilberg, op. cit., pp. 474-484 . Cf. "Bulgarian Atrocities In Greek Macedonia and Thrace", A Report of Professors of the Universities of Athens and Salonica (Athens, 1945), p. 47: "The whole Jewish population of Eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace, about 9,000 persons, were taken away in the night of the 3rd of March, 1943... Three or four days later ...they were handed over to the Germans." page 184 418 Yad Vashem Archives, 03/963, pp. 40-43 (in Hebrew). 419 Yad Vashem Archives, 03/1707 (in Hebrew). page 188 420 Misho Leviev, Nashata Blagodarnost ("Our Gratitude", in Bulgarian; Sofia, 1945), pp. 81-86. Eleven Metropolitans signed, according to their dioceses. page 189 421 Arditi, op. cit., p. 202. 422 Hilberg, op. cit., p. 483. page 190 423 Yad Vashem Archives, No. 03/1707 (in Hebrew). Mr.Moshonov was a goldsmith who supplied the King's palace with jewelry and had free access to the palace. Also see: Ely Barouch, Iz Istoriata na Bulgarskoto Evrejstvo ("From the History of Bulgarian Jewry", Tel Aviv, 1960; in Bulgarian), p. 146: IUGo, 'the Metropolitan began, 'and tell your people that the King solemnly promised before the Prime Minister and before me, that the Jews of Bulgaria will not be expelled from the country. Go and transmit to them this information; reassure them and let they believe in the good principle that the Lord never forgets his children. Go in peace.'It was with those words that the Metropolitan Stephan received the delegation of Rabbi Daniel Ben Zion, Rabbi Asher Hananel and Menachem Moshonov, on May 24, 1943, when the Jews of Sofia were gathered together in the synagogue Yutch-Bunar in order to beseech mercy and salvation from God, as it had become known to them that Bulgarian Jewry would also be deported to be murdered in Poland. Cf. Arditi, op. cit., pp. 216-217. 424 Cf. p. 186 in this chapter. page 191 425 Literally: "bake your head" page 192 426 Solomon Samuel Mashiach in his article "Who saved us?", published in the newspaper "Narodno Delo (Sofia, No. 467, July 4, 1958; in Bulgarian). Quoted by Barouch, op. cit., pp. 147-149. 427 Arditi, op. cit., p. 374. Cf. Matthew 7, 2. 428 Leviev, op. cit., p. 88. Cf. Arditi, op. cit., p. 289: "When the Metropolitan Kyril was convinced that the local authorities and the representatives of the Government were not inclined to help the Jews, he sent a telegram to the King, in which he declared that he would cease to be the King's loyal subject and that he would act as seemed right to him and according to the dictates of his conscience as a religious man, if the instructions for expulsion were not cancelled." page 193 429 Leviev, op. cit., pp. 88-89. page 194 430 Testimony of Joseph Geron (in Hebrew); Yad Vashem Archives, No. 03/1707. 431 Cf. above, on p. 183 (note 2). page 195 432 For the historical data in this chapter, see: Robinson, op. cit., pp. 265-269; Hilberg, op. cit., pp. 509-554; Tenenbaum, op. cit., pp. 321-332; Livia Rothkirchen, The Attitude of the Vatican and the Churches in Hungary towards "The Solution of the Jewish Question" (in: "Ha Ummah" (The Nation), Quarterly, Jerusalem; in Hebrew), 1967, No. 21, pp. 79-85. 433 For the first and second anti-Jewish law, see above, pp. 64-65. 434 Albert Bereczky, Hungarian Protestantism and the Persecution of the Jews (Budapest, 1946), p. 10. Also see: Jeno Levai, Black Book on the Martyrdom of Hungarian Jewry (Zurich, 1948), p. 25. 435 Dr. Mathe's letter to me, dated Aug. 24, 1967. page 196 436 Bereczky, op. cit., pp. 12 - 13. page 197 437 Levai, op. cit., pp. 92- 93; Bereczky, op. cit., p. 14. 438 Ibid. page 198 439 Bereczky, op. cit., p. 14; cf. Levai, op. cit p 93. 440 Levai, op. cit., p. 117; cf. Bereczky, op. cit., pp. 15-16. 441 Levai, op. cit., p. 117; cf. Bereczky, op. cit., pp. 16-18. page 199 442 Levai, op. cit., p. 217. 443 Bereczky, op. cit., p. 16. page 200 444 ibid., pp. 19-21; Levai, op. cit., 217-218. page 201 445 Bereczky, op. cit., pp. 21 - 24; Levai, op. cit., 218- 220. Bishop Ravasz and the Lutheran Bishop Bela Kapi had together prepared the draft. The Protest was signed by all the Bishops of the Reformed and the Lutheran Churches (Levai, pp. 218, 220). page 202 446 Levai, op. cit., pp. 220-221; Bereczky, op. cit., p. 24. 447 Archives of the World Council of Churches, Geneva. The report was dated: Budapest, June 26, 1944. page 203 448 Levai, op. cit., pp. 221 - 222; Bereczky, op. cit., pp. 24- 26. page 204 449 Levai, op. cit., p. 222; Berezcky, op. cit., pp. 27-28. 450 Levai, op. cit., p. 223; Bereczky, op. cit., p. 28. 451 Dr. Mathe's letter to me, dated Aug. 24, 1967. 452 Cf. p. 256. page 205 453 Levai, op. cit., pp. 360-361; Bereczky, op. cit., pp. 34-35. page 206 454 Levai, op. cit., p. 361; cf. Bereczky, op. cit., pp. 35-37. 455 Bereczky, op. cit., p. 37. 456 Ibid. 457 Rothkirchen, "The Attitude of the Vatican...", p. 85. Quoted from: Erno Munkhcsi, Hogyan tortent' Adatok es okmhyok a magyar zsidesAg Tragediej Ahoz (Budapest, 1947; in Hungarian), p. 146. page 207 458 For the press censorship in Switzerland during the war, see: Dr. Carl Ludwig, Die Fluchtlingspolitik der Schweiz seit 1933 bis zur Gegenwart (Bericht an den Bundesrat zuhanden der eidgenossischen Rate, Zu 7347), pp. 141, 142, 247, 289. page 208 459 "Schweiz. Evang. Pressedienst" (E.P.D.), Nov. 12, 1941. page 209 460 E.P.D. , Nov. 19, 1941. Cf. "International Christian Press & Information Service" (I.C.P.I.S.), Geneva, Nov., 1941. Also see: Alfred A. Hasler, Das Boot ist voll (Zurich, 1968; second impression, in German), pp. 131-133. 461 E.P.D., Nov. 19, 1941; cf. I.C.P.I.S., Nov., 1941. page 210 462 E.P.D., Sept. 2, 1942. Cf. Hasler, op. cit., pp. 147-150. 463 E.P.D., Oct. 29, 1942. page 211 464 Ibid., May 24, 1942. page 212 465 Ibid., July 15, 1942. Cf. "The Spiritual Issues of the War", Aug. 6, 1942. 466 I.C.P.I.S., NO. 34, Oct. 1942. 467 Cf. the Report: "Schweiz. Sammlung fur die Fluchtlingshilfe, Oct.-Nov. 1942" (Erstattet von der Schweiz. Zentralstelle fur Fluchtlingshilfe), p. 15. page 213 468 Cf. above, on p. 56. 469 Ludwig. op. cit., pp. 204-205. 470 Ibid., p. 209. Cf. Arieh Tartakower and Kurt R. Grossmann, The Jewish Refugee (New York, 1944), p. 294: "Thus the Council of the Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches appealed to the Federal authorities in August, 1942, urging that the right of asylum be not denied to non-Aryan refugees who recently arrived in Switzerland, and that liberal methods be applied to those who may yet come. Again, in September of that year, when the wave of deportations of Jews from France, Belgium, and Holland reached its crest, the Swiss National Protestant Church, in a pastoral letter concerning a nation-wide fast which was read from every pulpit, declared: '...We forsake our first love if we forget that our country must remain, as far as possible, a haven of refuge for the persecuted and refugees. To abandon this role is to betray our spiritual heritage, is 'to lose our soul in order to gain the world?. In particular, we cannot remain indifferent to the lot of the people of Israel, in whose midst our Saviour was born and who are today the object of measures whose cruelty and iniquity are the shame of our age...?" 471 Ludwig, op. cit., pp. 208-210; cf. E.P.D., August. 26, 1942; Hasler, op. cit., pp. 138-139. page 214 472 See above, on p. 210. 473 E.P.D., Sept. 2, 1942. Cf. Hasler, op. cit., pp. 122-125. Also see Ludwig, op. cit., p. 373: "In autumn 1942, when we had 10,000-12,000 refugees, it was declared that the lifeboat was fully occupied and the possibility of accepting refugees exhausted. At the end of the war Switzerland harboured 115,000 refugees." Cf. the reply of Federal Councillor von Steiger (Ludwig, op. cit., pp. 393-394). page 215 474 Ludwig, op. cit., pp. 222-224. 475 Cf. Ludwig, op. cit., pp. 214-222. page 216 476 E.P.D., Oct. 29, 1942. 477 Cf. the Report "Schweiz. Sammlung fur die Fluchtlingshilfe, Oct.-Nov. 1942 ", p.8. 478 ibid., p. 40. Cf. Hasler, op. cit., pp. 186-187. Alsosee: Ludwig, op. cit., p. 228: "The result of the collection (about Fr. 1,500,000.-) organized by the Swiss Central Office for Aid to Refugees and vigorously supported by the 'Young Church', showed that a large proportion of the Swiss people was moved by the fate of the refugees. page 217 479 "Schweiz. Sammlung fur die Fluchtlingshilfe...", p. 31. For another statement made by Prof. Karl Bart, see Hasler, op. cit., pp. 129-130. 480 Ludwig, op. cit., pp. 228-229. page 218 481 See above, on pp. 214 - 215. 482 Ludwig, op. cit., pp. 229-231. 483 "Bericht des Schweiz. Kirchl. Hilfskommittee fur Evang. Fluchtlinge uber das Jahr 1943", p. 1. 484 Ludwig, op. cit., pp. 245-246. 485 E.P.D., June 16, 1943. Cf. Ludwig, op. cit., p. 245. page 219 486 Ibid., Oct. 20, 1934. page 220 487 Ibid., Nov. 11, 1943. 488 Ludwig, op. cit., p. 268. 489 Schweizerisches Evangelisches Hilfswerk fur die Bekennende Kirche in Deutschland. page 222 490 E.P.D., June 22, 1943. 491 The following books were published : "Judennot und Christenglaube" (Zurich, 1943); "Soll ich meines Bruders Huter sein?" (Zurich, 1944); "Aus Not und Rettung" (Edited by Paul Vogt, Zurich, 1944). Some of the brochures published were: "Das Heil kommt von den Juden" (Oktober, 1938); "Thesen zu den Nachkriegsfragen der Fluchtlingshilfe"; "Vergesst die evangelische Freiplatzaktion nicht!" (1944); "Nicht furchten ist der Harnisch" (a circular letter sent monthly to regular supporters of the Refugee Aid); "Fluchtlingshilfe als christliche Diakonie" (by Paul Vogt, 1944). Rev. Vogt also pleaded the cause of the refugees in sermons and lectures (Hasler, op. cit., pp. 150-152, 206, 227-229, 301). 492 "Freiplatzaktion". 493 "Bericht des Schweiz. Kirchl. Hilfskomitees fur Evang. Fluchtlinge uber das Jahr 1943", passim. page 223 494 ibid., pp. 6-7. 495 E.P.D. , Oct. 18, 1944. 496 Archives World Council of Churches, Geneva (file CCJP). 497 Also see: E.P.D. , July 5 , 1944: "Service of Intercession and Mourning for the persecuted Jews in Hungary"; E.P.D. , July I2, 1944: "Circular letter of the Church Council of Thurgau"; "The Committee of the Synod of Waadtland, Declaration about the persecution of the Jews"; and E.P.D., July 19, 1944: "A Service of Intercession at Schaffhausen". page 224 498 I.C.P.I.C., July 28, 1944. Cf. E.P.D., July 12, 1944. The Press Department of the German Foreign Office circulated a confidential report ("The Church Council of Zurich condemns the persecutions of the Jews in Hungary") dated July 10, 1944. (Randolph L.Braham, The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry, New York, 1963; 11, p. 770). page 225 499 E.P.D. July 19, 1944. 500 Ibid. page 226 501 Ibid., Aug. 2, 1944. page 227 502 "The Spiritual Issues of the War", December 17, 1942, No. 163. page 228 503 "International Christian Press and Information Service", Dec. 12, 1942, No. 44-45. Cf. "Spiritual Issues", Dec. 12, 1942, No. 162; and "The New York Times., Febr. 2, 1943. 504 "International Christian Press and Information Service" (I.C.P.I.S.)., Dec., 1942, No. 44-45; "Spiritual Issues... ", Dec. 17, 1942. page 229 505 I.C.P.I.S., Dec., 1942, No. 44-45. 506 Ibid. page 230 507 "Spiritual Issues...", Dec. 17, 1942. Also see: "Nordiska Roster mot Jude-forfoljelse och Vald" (in Swedish; Documents and Commentaries, edited by Judisk Tidskrift; Stockholm, 1943), p. 17. 508 "Dagens Nyheter", Dec. 5, 1942. The Free Churches' Co-operation Committee represents the Missionary Society, the Baptist Church and the Methodist Church in Sweden. page 232 509 "Nordiska Roster", pp. 15-16. page 233 510 Dr. Leni Yahil, Test of Democracy (Jerusalem, 1966; in Hebrew, with a summary in English), pp. 228-229. page 234 511 I.C.P.I.S., May 1944, No. 21. 512 Cf. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Muenchen, 1967), p. 415. 513 Livia Rothkirchen, The Destruction of Slovak Jewry (Jerusalem, 1961), p. XLIX. The full text: "Ministerprasident Tiso zeigte mich soeben mit der Bemerkung, 'was seine einzelne Leute denken', ein Schreiben des protestantischen Erzbischofs von Uppsala an den Slovakischen Staatsprasidenten. Der Schreiber interveniert 'fur die armen judischen Bruder' und bittet, da der Slovakischen Staat unter den derzeitigen Verhiltnissen keine humane Behandlung gewahrleisten konne, den in der Slovakei konzentrierten Juden den Uebertritt auf ein neutrales Gebiet zu ermoglichen." (Files of the German Foreign Ministry, YW/AA-K-327, Inland 11, Geheim, 571-K-2 13007). page 235 514 William Simpson, Jews and Christians To-day (A Study in Jewish and Christian Relationships), London, 1940. 515 Reports to the General Assembly, 1940, p. 572. page 236 516 Reports, 1941, p. 555. 517 Reports, 1942, p. 437. 518 Minutes of the Assembly, Thursday, June 11th, 1942. page 237 519 Ernest Hearst, The British and the Slaughter of the Jews-(I); in: The Wiener Library Bulletin, Vol. XXI, No. I , p. 32. 520 Jasper, op. cit., p. 155. page 238 521 "The Spiritual Issues of the War" (Bulletin published by the Religious Division of the Ministry of Information, London), No. 155, Oct. 22, 1942. Cf. Freudenberg, op. cit., p. 10. 522 "The Spiritual Issues...", No. 155. page 239 523 "The Times", Oct. 30, 1942. This and the following articles from "The Times" are taken from the "Podro-collection" (in "The Jewish Historical Archives", Hebrew University, Jerusalem). page 240 524 Hearst, op. cit., pp. 35-36. The two Archbishops of the Church of England and twenty-four Bishops (Durham, London, Winchester and the next twenty-one in order of appointment to a diocese) are members of the House of Lords. 525 Jewish Chronicle, Dec. 11, 1942. 526 "The Life of Faith" (Weekly), Dec. 16, 1942. page 241 527 Keesing's Contempory Archives, Dec. 12-19, 1942 , p. 5506. page 242 528 "Spiritual Issues...", No. 164, Dec. 24, 1924. 529 "Church of England Newspaper LONDON", Jan. 29, 1943. A similar statement was issued by the Executive Council of the World Evangelical Alliance (Ibid., Febr. 5, 1943). Cf. "Jewish Chronicle", Jan. 29, 1943, p 1. page 244 530 "Spiritual Issues...", No. 176, March 18, 1943. Cf. "The Times", March 19, 1943. 531 "The Times", Dec. 31, 1942. page 245 532 "Spiritual Issues...", No. 166, Jan. 7, 1943. 533 "Jewish Chronicle", Jan. 8, 1943. 534 Ibid., Jan. 29, 1943, p. 5. Cf. p. 10: "Derby Demands Sanctuary for Persecuted", and: "Mayor of Huddersfield calls Protest Meeting". 535 "Jewish Chronicle", Febr. I2, 1943, pp. 1, 12. page 248 536 Cf. Luke 10, 30-37 (the Parable of the Good Samaritan). 537 "Parliamentary Debates House of Lords", Vol. 126, No. 41, pp. 811-821. page 249 538 Luke 17, 1. 539 Isaiah 57, 14. 540 "Parliamentary Debates House of Lords", Vol. 126, No. 41, pp. 832-841. page 250 541 A copy of this letter is in the Archives of the World Council of Churches, Geneva. 542 "Unity in Dispersion", pp. 164-165. See for the Bermuda Conference: "The Wiener Library Bulletin", Vol. xv (1961), No. 3, pp. 44-47. Also see: Morse, op. cit., pp. 43-64; Tartakower and Grossmann, op. cit., pp. 420-428. page 251 543 "Spiritual Issues...", No. 181, April 22, 1943. 544 Reports to the General Assembly, 1943, p. 338. page 252 545 "The Assembly", May 1943, p. 170. 546 "Minutes of the Assembly", Thursday, June 10th, 1943. page 253 547 "The Times", May 18, 1943. page 254 548 "The Times", May 22, 1943. 549 Jasper, op. cit., pp. 156-157. page 255 550 "The New York Times", Dec. 9, 1943. 551 Reports to the General Assembly, 1944, p. 384. The italics are mine. 552 "The Times", June 15, 1944. page 256 553 "The Spiritual Issues... ", July 13, 1944. Cf. R.L. Braham, The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry (New York, 1963), 11, p. 343. 554 See p. 257. 555 Ibid. 556 Federal Council Bulletin, January, 1940. page 258 557 Department of Information of the National Council of Churches of Christ in America. The statement was prepared by the Commission on Christian Social Action and adopted by the following action: "General Synod approves Section IV and declares its condemnation of anti-Semitism. It urges upon the members of the Church in the name of Christ to regard our Jewish brethren according to the standards of Christian ethics." 558 The New York Times, Dec. 13, 1940. page 259 559 Federal Council Bulletin, October, 1941, p. 6. page 260 560 Freudenberg, op. cit., p. 53. 561 Federal Council Bulletin, Febr. 1942, p. 7. page 261 562 Dr. Riegner's letter to Dr. Visser 't Hooft, April 14, 1965 (Archives of the World Council of Churches, Geneva). 563 Federal Council Bulletin, January, 1943. The italics are mine. page 262 564 The New York Times, Jan. 1, 1943. 565 Federal Council Bulletin, February, 1943. page 263 566 "Unity in Dispersion", a History of the World Jewish Congress (New York, 1948), pp. 162-163. The Archbishop of Canterbury described, in his message to the meeting, the Nazi extermination of the Jews as "the most appalling horror in recorded history" (Morse, op. cit., p. 47). page 264 567 The New York Times, March I7, 1943. Cf. Federal Council Bulletin, April, 1943, p. 15. 568 See above, on p. 247. 569 See pp. 276-277. 570 See above, on p. 250. page 265 571 The New York Times, May 2, 1943. Also see the article "Day of Compassion Praised by Rabbis" (ibid., May 2 , 1943). 572 The New York Times, Oct. 21, 1943. page 266 573 New York Herald Tribune, Nov. 3, 1943. page 267 574 The New York Times, Dec. 12, 1943. 575 Ibid., Jan. 16, 1944. 576 New York Herald Tribune, Oct. 14, 1944. page 268 577 Cf. Alfred Klausner in the monthly "American Lutheran", Febr. 1965, p. 16: ...In the course of research through almost all Lutheran publications in the thirties and forties I have found no direct condemnation of the persecution of the Jews in Germany. . ." 578 In: "American Lutheran", Nov. 1964, pp. 13. 579 Charles Y. Glock and Rodney Stark, Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism (New York, 1966), passim. page 269 580 See above, p.84. 581 See pp. 274-277 page 270 582 Cf. W.A. Visser 't Hoofd, in: Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neill (Ed.), A History of the Ecumenical Movement 1517- 1948 (London, 1954), p. 710 ff. page 271 583 Archives of the World Council of Churches, Geneva. The original is in German. page 272 584 Ibid.; the original is in French. page 273 585 Ibid.; the original is in French. Dr. Visser 't Hooft believes that no written reply was received from the International Red Cross, but he had several discussions with Dr. Burckhardt in which the latter told him what the Red Cross had tried to do unofficially (Communication to me from Dr. Visser 't Hooft). 586 Communication to me from Dr. Visser 't Hooft. For the contacts with the "Kreisau Circle". see: G.van Roon, Neuordnung im Widerstand (Munich, 1967), pp. 142, 146, 190, 247, 302, 308-309, 312, 330-332. For the contacts with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, see: Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Munich, 1965), pp. 243, 291, 726, 728, 818-819, 824- 835, 848-850, 859, 861, 867, and 1004. 587 Dr. Riegner's letter to Dr. Visser 't Hooft, dated April 14, 1965 (Archives of the World Council of Churches, Geneva). page 274 588 Dr. Riegner's letter to me, dated Nov. 6, 1967. 589 Dr. Riegner to Dr. Visser 't Hooft, April 14, 1965. Cf. Arthur D. Morse, While Six Million Died (London, 1968), pp. 3-22. page 275 590 Archives WCC, Geneva. Marginal note: "Date? Probably March, 1943". 591 Archives WCC, Geneva. The contents of the telegram sent by Dr. Riegner to Mr. Silverman were as follows: "Most anxious about destiny Hungarian Jewry the only important section European Jewry still in existence because of recent political developments stop suggesting world wide appeal of Anglo-Saxon personalities non-Jewish and Jewish including chiefs of Protestant Catholic Churches to Hungarian people warning them not to admit application of policy of extermination of Jews by German butchers or Hungarian quislings and to help Jews by all possible means in order to prevent their falling into hands of Germans stop warning should insist upon fact that attitude Hungarian people towards Jews will be one of the most important tests of behaviour which Allied Nations will remember in peace settlement after war stop similar broadcasts should be made every night in Hungarian language during the next weeks. Geneva, March 21, 1944." (Archives wcc, Geneva). page 276 592 For the results - or rather: the lack of results - of the Bermuda Conference, see above, p. 250. page 277 593 Archives WCC, Geneva. page 278 594 Cf. "Conversation entre le Dr. Visser 't Hooft, le Dr. Freudenberg et le Dr. Barot, concernant les activitCs Cimade-wcc pendant la guerre" (Geneva, December 14, 1965; mimeographed; in French). 595 Dr. Hans Fraenkel, Die Kirche im Krieg (unpublished manuscript; archives WCC, Geneva), p. 186. 596 Dr. Visser 't Hooft in "Conversation..." (see above, note 1). page 279 597 Report on Ecumenical Refugee Work since 1939 (Archives WCC, Geneva), p. 2. Cf. above, on p. 150. 598 OEKUMENISCHER AUSSCHUSS FUR FLUCHTLINGSHILFE, Jahresbericht 1942 (Archives WCC, Geneva), p. 5. 599 Cf. Herbert Ford, Flee the Captor (The Story of the Dutch-Paris Underground and its compassionate leader John Henry Weidner), Nashville, 1966. For the part played by Dr. Visser 't Hooft, see: pp. 79, 85, 95, 97, 199-201, 208, 225 , 227, 277, 279, 340 and 349. page 280 600 "Rapport van de Commissie van Onderzoek inzake het verstrekken van pakketten door het Rode Kruis en andere instanties aan Nederlandse politieke gevangenen in het buitenland gedurende de bezettingstijd alsmede inzake het evacueren van Nederlandse gevangenen kort voor en na het einde van de oorlog" (Den Haag, 1947; in Dutch), p. 111. 601 Ibid., p.112. 602 Ibid., p.114-115. page 281 603 I.C.P.I.S. (Intern. Christian Press and Information Service), Geneva, No. 26, June 1944.. The statement was also published in "Jewish News", London, July 18, 1944, p. 224; and in "Basler Nachrichten", June 29, 1944. page 282 604 Cf. Karl Stadler, Das einsame Gewissen (Vienna, 1966; in german), pp. 262-263. See for the persecutions in Austria: Herbert Rosenkranz, "The Anschluss and the Tragedy of Austrian Jewry 1938-1945"; (in: Josef Fraenkel (Ed.), The Jews of Austria (London, 1967), pp. 479-546. 605 Reformiertes Kirchenblatt fur Osterreich, March, 1966, p. 4. page 283 606 Cf. Betty Garfinkels, Les Belges face a la persecution raciale 1940-1944 (Bruxelles, 1965; in French), pp. 74-75, 100. Also see: Fernand Barth, Presence de l'Eglise (La Belgique sous l'occupation), Geneva, pp. 82, 89. page 284 607 Cf. the "Jewish Telegraphic Agency" (Zurich, July I, 1942): "A systematic campaign against the Christian Churches, attacking them for their attitude towards the Jews, has been launched in the Czech Protectorate by the 'Aryan Society', according to the Prague newspaper 'Ceske Slovo'. It is serious, the paper declares, that the clergy of all churches mostly keeps silent about the Jews. The reason why the greater part of the clergy are not opposed to the Jews is that there exist personal and dogmatic ritual relations between the Church and Jewry. The Christian faith, the paper demands, must be purged of its Jewish ingredients. Baptisms of Jews must be declared invalid and the Old Testament must be purged of everything smuggled into it by Rabbi interpreters." 608 Archives of the World Council of Churches, Geneva. The statement was dated Dec. 7, 1945. page 285 609 Tenenbaum, op. cit., p. 339. 610 The "Polish-Catholic Church" does not accept the authority of Rome; it is a member of the World Council of Churches. page 286 611 Cf. Philips Friedman, Ukranian-Jewish Relations during the Nazi Occupation (in: Yivo Annual of Jewish Social Science, New York, 1958/1959, Vol. XII, pp. 290-294); also see: Philips Friedman, Their Brothers keepers, pp.133-136. 612 Robinson, op. cit., p. 292. 613 The Rev. Esko Rintala, Secretary of the Archbishop of Finland, in his letter to me dated Febr. 21, 1966. 614 Some literature: Giovanni Miegge, L'Eglise sous le joug fasciste (Geneva, 1946; in French). Einaudi (Ed.), Lettere do condanati a morte della Resistenza Italiana (Torino, 1952; in Italian); Prearo, Terra Ribelle (Torino, 1948; in Italian); Borgna, La Resistenza nel Pinerolese (Pinerolo, 1965; in Italian). page 287 615 Friedman mentions that, according to Jewish survivors, Ukrainian priests both rescued and helped Jews. Ukrainian Baptists in Volhynia helped the Jews and in part also concealed them. Cf. Philip Friedman, Ukrainian- Jewish Relations During the Nazi Occupation (in: Yivo Annual of Jewish Social Science, Vol. XII, p. 294). page 289 616 W.A. Visser 't Hooft, The Ecumenical Movement and the Racial Problem, p. 40. 617 Ethics of the Fathers, 11, 5. 618 Leuner, op. cit., p. 16. Footnotes Appendix I -------------------- page 292 619 "The Relationship of the Church to the Jewish People" (Geneva, 1964; mimeographed); pp. 48-52; Cf. Heydenrich, op. cit., pp. 248-254. 620 Heydenreich, op. cit., pp. 256-257. Cf. the comment of Rev. Niemoeller (Ibid., pp. 257-258). page 293 621 Frank-Wilkens, Ordnungen und Kundgebungen der Vereinigten Evangelisch- Lutherischen Kirche Deutschlands (Berlin/Hamburg, 1966; second imprint), p. 203. 622 Heydenreich, op. cit., pp. 261-262. Prof. D. Gollwitzer criticized this statement as being far too weak (ibid., pp. 262-264). 623 Heydenreich, op. cit., pp. 264-265. page 294 624 "The Relationship of the Church to the Jewish People", pp. 73-76. Also see: "Wiener Library Bulletin", xv, 1961, No. 3, p. 45. page 295 625 "Wiener Library Bulletin", XVII, 1963, No. 3, p. 39. 626 "The Relationship of the Church to the Jewish People", pp. 78- 79. page 296 627 Quarterly Newsletter from the World Council of Churches' Committee on the Church and the Jewish People, March 1967, p. 17. 628 The Interpreter (published by the London Diocesan Council for Christian- Jewish Understanding), August, 1964, p. 2. page 297 629 "Reports to the General Assembly", 1945, p. 389. 630 "Reports", 1947, p. 448. 631 "Reports", 1953, p. 463. 632 "Reports", 1957, p. 528. 633 "Reports", 1962, p. 544. page 298 634 "The Relationship of the Church to the Jewish People," p. 87. page 299 635 W.A. Visser 't Hooft (Ed.), The First Assembly of the World Council of Churches (London, 1949), pp. 160-166. 636 W.A. Visser ?t Hooft (Ed.), The Third Assembly of the World Council of Churches (Second Impression; London, 1962), p. 148. Cf. the interesting discussion which preceded the adoption of the resolution (pp. 148-150). page 300 637 "The Relationship of the Church to the Jewish People", pp. 83-84. The total membership of the Churches affiliated to the Lutheran World Federation is 52,762,379. page 301 638 "Reports and Recommendations of the International Conference of Christians and Jews, Seelisberg, 1947" (Published by the Intern. Council of Christians and Jews), pp. 14-16. In February, 1961, the "International Consultative Committee of Organisations for Christian-Jewish Co-operation" was established. For the history of the "International Council of Christians and Jews" see Rev. W.W. Simpson, Co-operation between Christians and Jews, Its Possibilities and Limitations; in: Gote Hedenquist (Ed.), The Church and the Jewish People (London, 1954), pp. 117-142. page 302 639 The following publications were consulted: "The World Alliance of Reformed Churches" (Published by The World Presbyterian Alliance, Geneva, 1964); "Lutheran Directory", Supplement 1966 (Published by the Lutheran World Federation, Geneva); J. Grundler, Lexikon der Christlichen Kirchen und Sekten (Vienna, 1961; in German), Vol. 11; Guy Mayfield, The Church of England (Oxford, 1958); Stephen Neill, Anglicanism (London, 1958); Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (Pelican Books, 1963); J. Meyendorff, The Orthodox Church (London, 1962); Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neill (Ed.), A History of the Ecumenical Movement 1517-1948 (London, 1954); Figures about the Churches in the United States were received from the Department of Information of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. ***** End of footnotes ****** GJS, dec 2004 INFORMATION ABOUT THE AUTHOR: John Martinus Snoek born 1920, studied theology at the Free University in Amsterdam 1949-1953. Worked and lived with his family 11 years in Israel, (1958-1969) where he served for the Church of Scotland as minister in Tiberias. From 1970-1975 he worked as secretary of the Committee of the Church and the Jewish people with the World Council of Churches in Geneva. Publications: 1. In English THE GREY BOOK. (1969) see PG e-book #14764 2. In Dutch: The Dutch Churches en the Jews 1940-1945. (1990) ISBN 90242 0949 8 NUGI 631 3. In Dutch: Sometimes, One has to Show One's Color (1992) Both the Grey Book and the Dutch Churches 1940-1945 are prepared for Gutenberg eText by his nephew Ge J. Snoek, errors and remarks please mail to: g.snoek3@chello.nl. 
4732	----	P R O L E G O M E N A to the HISTORY OF ISRAEL. WITH A REPRINT OF THE ARTICLE "ISRAEL" FROM THE "ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA." by JULIUS WELLHAUSEN, PROFESSOR OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MARBURG. TRANSLATED FR0M THE GERMAN, UNDER THE AUTHOR'S SUPERVISION, by J. SUTHERLAND BLACK, M.A., and ALLAN MENZIES, B.D. with a preface by PROF. W. ROBERTSON SMITH. P R E F A C E. The work which forms the greater part of the present volume first appeared in 1878 under the title "History of Israel. By J. Wellhausen. In two volumes. Volume I." The book produced a great impression throughout Europe, and its main thesis, that "the Mosaic history is not the starting-point for the history of ancient Israel, but for the history of Judaism," was felt to be so powerfully maintained that many of the leading Hebrew teachers of Germany who had till then stood aloof from the so-called "Grafian hypothesis"--the doctrine, that is, that the Levitical Law and connected parts of the Pentateuch were not written till after the fall of the kingdom of Judah, and that the Pentateuch in its present compass was not publicly accepted as authoritative till the reformation of Ezra--declared themselves convinced by Wellhausen's arguments. Before 1878 the Grafian hypothesis was neglected or treated as a paradox in most German universities, although some individual scholars of great name were known to have reached by independent inquiry similar views to those for which Graf was the recognised sponsor, and although in Holland the writings of Professor Kuenen, who has been aptly termed Graf's goel, had shown in an admirable and conclusive manner that the objections usually taken to Graf's arguments did not touch the substance of the thesis for which he contended. Since 1878, partly through the growing influence of Kuenen, but mainly through the impression produced by Wellhausen's book, all this has been changed. Almost every younger scholar of mark is on the side of Vatke and Reuss, Lagarde and Graf, Kuenen and Wellhausen, and the renewed interest in Old Testament study which is making itself felt throughout all the schools of Europe must be traced almost entirely to the stimulus derived from a new view of the history of the Law which sets all Old Testament problems in a new light. Our author, who since 1878 had been largely engaged in the study of other parts of Semitic antiquity, has not yet given to the world his promised second volume. But the first volume was a complete book in itself; the plan was to reserve the whole narrative of the history of Israel for vol.ii., so that vol.i. was entirely occupied in laying the critical foundations on which alone a real history of the Hebrew nation could be built. Accordingly, the second edition of the History, vol.i., appeared in 1883 (Berlin, Reimer), under the new title of "Prolegomena to the History of Israel." In this form it is professedly, as it really was before, a complete and self-contained work; and this is the form of which a translation, carefully revised by the author, is now offered to the public. All English readers interested in the Old Testament will certainly be grateful to the translators and publishers for a volume which in its German garb has already produced so profound an impression on the scholarship of Europe; and even in this country the author's name is too well known to make it necessary to introduce him at length to a new public. But the title of the book has a somewhat unfamiliar sound to English ears, and may be apt to suggest a series of dry and learned dissertations meant only for Hebrew scholars. It is worth while therefore to point out in a few words that this would be quite a false impression; that the matters with which Professor Wellhausen deals are such as no intelligent student of the Old Testament can afford to neglect; and that the present volume gives the English reader, for the first time, an opportunity to form his own judgment on questions which are within the scope of any one who reads the English Bible carefully and is able to think clearly, and without prejudice, about its contents. The history of Israel is part of the history of the faith by which we live, the New Testament cannot be rightly understood without understanding the Old, and the main reason why so many parts of the Old Testament are practically a sealed book even to thoughtful people is simply that they have not the historical key to the interpretation of that wonderful literature. The Old Testament does not furnish a history of Israel, though it supplies the materials from which such a history can be constructed. For example, the narrative of Kings gives but the merest outline of the events that preceded the fall of Samaria; to understand the inner history of thc time we must fill up this outline with the aid of the prophets Amos and Hosea. But the more the Old Testament has been studied, the more plain has it become that for many parts of the history something more is needed than merely to read each part of the narrative books in connection with the other books that illustrate the same period. The Historical Books and the Pentateuch are themselves very composite structures, in which old narratives occur imbedded in later compilations, and groups of old laws are overlaid by ordinances of comparatively recent date. Now, to take one point only, but that the most important, it must plainly make a vast difference to our whole view of the providential course of Israel's history if it appear that instead of the whole Pentateuchal law having been given to Israel before the tribes crossed the Jordan, that law really grew up little by little from its Mosaic germ, and did not attain its present form till the Israelites were the captives or the subjects of a foreign power. This is what the new school of Pentateuch criticism undertakes to prove, and it does so in a way that should interest every one. For in the course of the argument it appears that the plain natural sense of the old history has constantly been distorted by the false presuppositions with which we have been accustomed to approach it--that having a false idea of the legal and religious culture of the Hebrews when they first entered Canaan, we continually miss the point of the most interesting parts of the subsequent story, and above all fail to understand the great work accomplished by the prophets in destroying Old Israel and preparing the way first for Judaism and then for the Gospel. These surely are inquiries which no conscientious student of the Bible can afford to ignore. The process of disentangling the twisted skein of tradition is necessarily a very delicate and complicated one, and involves certain operations for which special scholarship is indispensable. Historical criticism is a comparatively modern science, and in its application to this, as to other histories, it has made many false and uncertain steps. But in this, as in other sciences, when the truth has been reached it can generally be presented in a comparatively simple form, and the main positions can be justified even to the general reader by methods much less complicated, and much more lucid, than those originally followed by the investigators themselves. The modern view as to the age of the Pentateuchal law, which is the key to the right understanding of the History of Israel, has been reached by a mass of investigations and discussions of which no satisfactory general account has ever been laid before the English reader. Indeed, even on the Continent, where the subject has been much more studied than among us, Professor Wellhausen's book was the first complete and sustained argument which took up the question in all its historical bearings. More recently Professor Kuenen of Leyden, whose discussions of the more complicated questions of Pentateuch analysis are perhaps the finest things that modern criticism can show, has brought out the second edition of the first volume of his Onderzoek, and when this appears in English, as it is soon to do, our Hebrew students will have in their hands an admirable manual of what I may call the anatomy of the Pentateuch, in which they can follow from chapter to chapter the process by which the Pentateuch grew to its present form. But for the mass of Bible-readers such detailed analysis will always be too difficult. What every one can understand and ought to try to master, is the broad historical aspect of the matter. And this the present volume sets forth in a way that must be full of interest to every one who has tasted the intense pleasure of following institutions and ideas in their growth, and who has faith enough to see the hand of God as clearly in a long providential development as in a sudden miracle. The reader will find that every part of the "Prolegomena" is instinct with historical interest, and contributes something to a vivid realisation of what Old Israel really was, and why it has so great a part in the history of spiritual faith. In the first essay of the Prolegomena a complete picture is given of the history of the ordinances of worship in Israel, and the sacrifices, the feasts, the priesthood, are all set in a fresh light. The second essay, the history of what the Israelites themselves believed and recorded about their past, will perhaps to some readers seem less inviting, and may perhaps best be read after perusal of the article, reprinted from the "Encyclopaedia Britannica", which stands at the close of the volume and affords a general view of the course of the history of Israel, as our author constructs it on the basis of the researches in his Prolegomena. The essay on Israel and Judaism with which the Prolegomena close, may in like manner be profitably compared with sect. II of the appended sketch--a section which is not taken directly from the "Encyclopaedia", but translated from the German edition of the article "Israel", where the subject is expanded by the author. Here the reader will learn how close are the bonds that connect the critical study of the Old Testament with the deepest and unchanging problems of living faith. W. ROBERTSON SMITH. TRANSLATORS' NOTE. Pages 237 [chapter IV . 3] to 425 [end] of the "Prolegomena" and section II of "Israel" are translated by Mr. Menzies; for the rest of the volume Mr. Black is responsible. Both desire to express their indebtedness to Professor Robertson Smith for many valuable suggestions made as the sheets were passing through the press. TABLE OF CONTENTS. PROLEGOMENA. INTRODUCTION-- 1. Is the Law the starting-point for the history of ancient Israel or for that of Judaism ? The latter possibility is not precluded a priori by the history of the Canon. Reasons for considering it. De Wette, George, Vatke, Reuss, Graf 2. The three strata of the Pentateuch: Deuteronomy, Priestly Code, Jehovist 3. The question is as to the Priestly Code and its historical position. Method of the investigation A. HISTORY OF WORSHIP. CHAPTER I. THE PLACE OF WORSHIP-- I.I.1. The historical and prophetical books show no trace in Hebrew antiquity of a sanctuary of exclusive legitimacy I.I.2. Polemic of the prophets against the sanctuaries. Fall of Samaria. Reformation of Josiah I.I.3. Influence of the Babylonian exile I.II.1. The Jehovist (JE) sanctions a multiplicity of altars I.II.2. Deuteronomy (D) demands local unity of worship I.II.3. The Priestly Code (RQ) presupposes that unity, and transfers it, by means of the Tabernacle, to primitive times I.III.1. The tabernacle, as a central sanctuary and dwelling for the ark, can nowhere be found in the historical tradition I.III.2. Noldeke's view untenable CHAPTER II. SACRIFICE-- II.I.1. The ritual is according to RQ the main subject of the Mosaic legislation, according to JE it is pre-Mosaic usage; in RQ the point is How, according to JE and D To Whom, it is offered II.I.2. The historical books agree with JE; the prophets down to Ezekiel contradict RQ II.II.1. Material innovations in RQ. Preliminary remarks on the notion, contents, mode of offering, and propitiatory effects of sacrifice. II.II.2. Material and ideal refinement of the offerings in RQ II.II.3. The sacrificial meal gives way to holocausts II.II.4. Development of the trespass-offering. II.III.1. The centralisation of worship at Jerusalem destroyed the connection of sacrifice with the natural occasions of life, so that it lost its original character CHAPTER III. THE SACRED FEASTS-- III.I.1. In JE and D there is a rotation of three festivals. Easter and Pentecost mark the beginning and the end of the corn-harvest, and the autumn feast the vintage and the bringing home the corn from the threshing-floor. With the feast of unleavened bread (Massoth) is conjoined, especially in D, the feast of the sacrifice of the male firstborn of cattle (Pesah). III.I.2. The feasts based on the offering of firstlings of the field and of the herd. Significance of the land and of agriculture for religion III.II.1. In the historical and prophetical books, the autumn feast only is distinctly attested, and it is the most important in JE and D also: of the others there are only faint traces . III.II.2. But the nature of the festivals is the same as in JE and D III.III.1. In RQ the feasts have lost their reference to harvest and the first fruits; and this essentially changes their nature III.III.2. The metamorphosis was due to the centralisation of worship, and may he traced down through Deuteronomy and Ezekiel to RQ, III.III.3. To the three festivals RQ adds the great day of atonement, which arose out of the fast-days of the exile III.IV.1. The Sabbath, which is connected with the new moon, was originally a lunar festival Exaggeration of the Sabbath rest in the Priestly Code III.IV.2. Sabbatical year, and year of Jubilee CHAP. IV. THE PRIESTS AND THE LEVITES-- IV.I.1. According to Ezek. xliv., only the Levites of Jerusalem, the sons of Zadok, are to continue priests in the new Jerusalem; the other Levites are to be degraded to their servants and denuded of their priestly rights. According to RQ the Levites never possessed the priestly right, but only the sons of Aaron IV.I.2. These answer to the sons of Zadok IV.II.1. In the earliest period of the history of Israel there is no distinction between clergy and laity. Every one may slaughter and sacrifice; there are professional priests only at the great sanctuaries. Priestly families at Sihiloh and Dan. No setting apart of what is holy IV.II.2. Royal temples of the kings; priests at them as royal officials IV.II.3. Importance of the North-Israelite priesthood in the time of the kings IV.II.4. The family of Zadok at Jerusalem IV.III.1. In the oldest part of JE there are no priests; no Aaron by the side of Moses IV.III.2. In D the Levites are priests. They occur in that character, not to speak of Judges xviii. seq., only in the literature of the exile. Their descent from Moses or Aaron. The spiritual and the secular tribe of Levi. Difficulty of bringing them together IV.III.3. Consolidation of the spiritual tribe in RQ; separation of priests and Levites. Further development of the clergy after the exile. The high priest as head of the theocracy CHAPTER V. THE ENDOWMENT OF THE CLERGY-- V.I.1. The sacrificial dues raised in RQ V.I.2. The firstlings were turned into contributions to the priests, and doubled in amount V.II.1. Levitical towns V.II.2. The historical situation underlying the priestly pretensions in RQ B. HISTORY OF TRADITION. CHAPTER VI. CHRONICLES-- VI.I.1. David becomes Saul's successor without any exertion, all Israel being already on his side, namely, the priests and Levites Distortion of the original story of the bringing of the ark to Jerusalem. Omission of unedifying incidents in David's life VI.I.2. Preparation for the building of the temple. Delight of the narrator in numbers and names. Inconsistency with 1Kings i, ii. Picture of David in Chronicles VI.I.3. Solomon's sacrifice at the tabernacle at Gibeah. Building of the temple. Retouching of the original narrative VI.II.1. Estimate of the relation between Judah and Israel; the Israelites do not belong to the temple, nor, consequently, to the theocracy VI.II.2. Levitical idealising of Judah. View taken of those acts of rulers in the temple-worship which the books of Kings condemn or approve. Inconsistencies with the narrative of the sources; importation of priests and Levites. VI.II.3. Divine pragmatism of the sacred history, and its results VI.II.4. The books of Kings obviously present throughout VI.III.1. The genealogical registers of I Chron.i-ix The ten tribes VI.III.2. Judah and Levi VI.III.3. Chronicles had no other sources for the period before the exile than the historical books preserved to us in the Canon. The diversity of historical view is due to the influence of the law, especially the Priestly Code. The Midrash CHAPTER VII. JUDGES, SAMUEL, AND KINGS-- VII.I.1. The formula on which the book of Judges is constructed in point of chronology and of religion VII.I.2. Its relation to the stem of the tradition. Judg. xix.-xxi. VI.II.3. Occasional additions to the original narratives VII.I.4. Difference of religious attitude in the latter VII.II.1. Chronological and religious formulas in the books of Samuel VII.II.2. The stories of the rise of the monarchy and the elevation of Saul entirely recast VII.II.3. Saul's relation to Samuel VII.II.4. The narrative of David's youth The view taken of Samuel may be regarded as a measure of the growth of the tradition Saul and David VII.III.1. The last religious chronological revision of the books of Kings. Similar in kind to that of Judges and Samuel Its standpoint Judaean and Deuteronomistic VII.III.2. Its relation to the materials received from tradition VII.III.3. Differences of sentiment in the sources VII.III.4. In Chronicles the history of ancient Israel is recast in accordance with the ideas of the Priestly Code; in the older historical books it is judged according to the standard of Deuteronomy CHAPTER VIII. THE NARRATIVE OF THE HEXATEUCH-- VIII.I.1. Genesis i. and Genesis ii. iii. VIII.I.2. Genesis iv.-xi. VIII.I.3. The primitive world-history in JE and in Q VIII.II.1. The history of the patriarchs in JE VIII.II.2. The history of the patriarchs in Q VIII.II.3. Periods, numbers, covenants, sacrifices in the patriarchal age in Q VIII.III.1. The Mosaic history in JE and in Q VII.III.2. Comparison of the various narratives VII.III.3. Conclusion . C. ISRAEL AND JUDAISM. CHAPTER IX. CONCLUSION OF THE CRITICISM OF THE LAW-- IX.I.1. The veto of critical analysis IX.I.2. The historical presuppositions of Deuteronomy IX.I.3. The Deuteronomistic revision does not extend over the Priestly Code IX.II.1. The final revision of the Hexateuch proceeds from the Priestly Code, as we see from Leviticus xvii. seq. IX.II.2. Examination of Leviticus xxvi. IX.II.3. R cannnot be separated from RQ IX.III<.1.> The language of the Priestly Code <IX.III.2. ?> CHAPTER X. THE ORAL AND THE WRITTEN TORAH-- X.I.1. No written law in ancient Israel. The Decalogue X.I.2. The Torah of Jehovah in the mouth of priests and prophets X.I.3. View of revelation in Jeremiah, Zechariah, and the writer of Isa. xl.-lxvi. X.II.1. Deuteronomy was the first law in our sense of the word. It obtains authority during the exile. End of prophecy X.II.2. The reforming legislation supplemented by that of the restoration. The usages of worship codified and systematised by Ezekiel and his successors. The Priestly Code--its introduction by Ezra X.II.3. The Torah the basis of the Canon. Extension of the notion originally attached to the Torah to the other books CHAPTER XI. THE THEOCRACY AS IDEA AND AS INSTITUTION-- XI.I.1. Freshness and naturalness of early Israelite history XI.I.2. Rise of the state. Relation of Religion and of the Deity to the life of state and nation. XI.I.3. The Messianic theocracy of the older prophets is built up on the foundations afforded by the actual community of their time XI.I.4. The idea of the covenant XI.II.1. Foundation of the theocratic constitution under the foreign domination XI.II.2. The law and the prophets. -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* I S R A E L. 1. The beginnings of the nation 2. The settlement in Palestine. 3. The foundation of the kingdom, and the first three kings 4. From Jeroboam I. to Jeroboam II. 5. God, the world, and the life of men in Old Israel 6. The fall of Samaria 7. The deliverance of Judah 8. The prophetic reformation . 9. Jeremiah and the destruction of Jerusalem . 10. The captivity and the restoration 11. Judaism and Christianity 12. The Hellenistic period 13. The Hasmonaeans 14. Herod and the Romans 15. The Rabbins 16. The Jewish Dispersion INTRODUCTION. In the following pages it is proposed to discuss the place in history of the "law of Moses;" more precisely, the question to be considered is whether that law is the starting-point for the history of ancient Israel, or not rather for that of Judaism, ie., of the religious communion which survived the destruction of the nation by the Assyrians and Chaldaeans. I. It is an opinion very extensively held that the great mass of the books of the Old Testament not only relate to the pre-exilic period, but date from it. According to this view, they are remnants of the literature of ancient Israel which the Jews rescued as a heritage from the past, and on which they continued to subsist in the decay of independent intellectual life. In dogmatic theology Judaism is a mere empty chasm over which one springs from the Old Testament to the New; and even where this estimate is modified, the belief still prevails in a general way that the Judaism which received the books of Scripture into the canon had, as a rule, nothing to do with their production. But the exceptions to this principle which are conceded as regards the second and third divisions of the Hebrew canon cannot be called so very slight. Of the Hagiograpba, by far the larger portion is demonstrably post-exilic, and no part demonstrably older than the exile. Daniel comes as far down as the Maccabaean wars, and Esther is perhaps even later. Of the prophetical literature a very appreciable fraction is later than the fall of the Hebrew kingdom; and the associated historical books (the "earlier prophets" of the Hebrew canon) date, in the form in which we now possess them, from a period subsequent to the death of Jeconiah, who must have survived the year 560 B.C. for some time. Making all allowance for the older sources utilised, and to a large extent transcribed word for word, in Judges, Samuel, and Kings, we find that apart from the Pentateuch the preexilic portion of the Old Testament amounts in bulk to little more than the half of the entire volume. All the rest belongs to the later period, and it includes not merely the feeble after-growths of a failing vegetation, but also productions of the vigour and originality of Isa. xl.lxvi. and Ps.Ixxiii. We come then to the Law. Here, as for most parts of the Old Testament, we have no express information as to the author and date of composition, and to get even approximately at the truth we are shut up to the use of such data as can be derived from an analysis of the contents, taken in conjunction with what we may happen to know from other sources as to the course of Israel's history. But the habit has been to assume that the historical period to be considered in this connection ends with the Babylonian exile as certainly as it begins with the exodus from Egypt. At first sight this assumption seems to be justified by the history of the canon; it was the Law that first became canonical through the influence of Ezra and Nehemiah; the Prophets became so considerably later, and the Hagiographa last of all. Now it is not unnatural, from the chronological order in which these writings were received into the canon, to proceed to an inference as to their approximate relative age, and so not only to place the Prophets before the Hagiographa, but also the five books of Moses before the Prophets. If the Prophets are for the most part older than the exile, how much more so the Law! But however trustworthy such a mode of comparison may be when applied to the middle as contrasted with the latest portion of the canon, it is not at all to be relied on when the first part is contrasted with the other two. The very idea of canonicity was originally associated with the Torah, and was only afterwards extended to the other books, which slowly and by a gradual process acquired a certain measure of the validity given to the Torah by a single public and formal act, through which it was introduced at once as the Magna Charta of the Jewish communion (Nehemiah viii.-x.) In their case the canonical-- that is, legal--character was not intrinsic, but was only subsequently acquired; there must therefore have been some interval, and there may have been a very long one, between the date of their origin and that of their receiving public sanction. To the Law, on the other hand, the canonical character is much more essential, and serious difficulties beset the assumption that the Law of Moses came into existence at a period long before the exile, aml did not attain the force of law until many centuries afterwards, and in totally different circumstances from those under which it had arisen. At least the fact that a collection claiming public recognition as an ecclesiastical book should have attained such recognition earlier than other writings which make no such claim is no proof of superior antiquity. We cannot, then, peremptorily refuse to regard it as possible that what was the law of Judaism may also have been its product; and there are urgent reasons for taking the suggestion into very careful consideration. It may not be out of place here to refer to personal experience. In my early student days I was attracted by the stories of Saul and David, Ahab and Elijah; the discourses of Amos and Isaiah laid strong hold on me, and I read myself well into the prophetic and historical books of the Old Testament. Thanks to such aids as were accessible to me, I even considered that I understood them tolerably, but at the same time was troubled with a bad conscience, as if I were beginning with the roof instead of the foundation; for I had no thorough acquaintance with the Law, of which I was accustomed to be told that it was the basis and postulate of the whole literature. At last I took courage and made my way through Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and even through Knobel's Commentary to these books. But it was in vain that I looked for the light which was to be shed from this source on the historical and prophetical books. On the contrary, my enjoyment of the latter was marred by the Law; it did not bring them any nearer me, but intruded itself uneasily, like a ghost that makes a noise indeed, but is not visible and really effects nothing. Even where there were points of contact between it and them, differences also made themselves felt, and I found it impossible to give a candid decision in favour of the priority of the Law. Dimly I began to perceive that throughout there was between them all the difference that separates two wholly distinct worlds. Yet, so far from attaining clear conceptions, I only fell into deeper confusion, which was worse confounded by the explanations of Ewald in the second volume of history of Israel. At last, in the course of a casual visit in Gottingen in the summer of 1867, I learned through Ritschl that Karl Heinrich Graf placed the law later than the Prophets, and, almost without knowing his reasons for the hypothesis, I was prepared to accept it; I readily acknowledged to myself thc possibility of understanding Hebrew antiquity without the book of the Torah. The hypothesis usually associated with Graf's name is really not his, but-that of his teacher, Eduard Reuss. It would be still more correct to call it after Leopold Gcorge and Wiihelm Vatke, who, independent alike of Reuss and of each other, were the first to give it literary currency. All three, again, are disciples of Martin Lebrecht de Wette, the epochmaking pioneer of historical criticism in this field./1/ ******************************* 1. M. W. L. de Wette, Beitraege zur Einleitung in das A. T. (Bd. I. Kritischer Versuch ueber die Glaubwuerdigkeit der Buecher der Chronik; Bd. II. Kritik der Mosaischen Geschichte, Halle, 1806-07); J. F. L. George, Die alterer Juedischen Feste mit einer Kritik der Gesetzgebung des Pentateuch (Berlin, 1835; preface dated 12th October); W. Vatke, Die biblische Theologie wissenschaftlich dargestellt (Berlin, 1835; preface dated 18th October; publication did not get beyond first part of the first volume); K. H. Graf, Die geschichtlicher Buecher des Alten Testaments (Leipsic, 1866). That Graf as well as J. Orth (Nouv. Rev. de Theol., iii. 84 sqq., iv. 350 sqq., Paris, 1859-60) owed the impulse to his critical labours to his Strassburg master was not unknown; but how great must have been the share of Reuss in the hypothesis of Graf has only been revealed in 1879, by the publication of certain theses which he had formulated as early as 1833, but had hesitated to lay in print before the general theological public. These are as follows:-- "1. L'element historique du Pentateuque peut et doit etre examine a part et ne pas etre confondu avec l'element legal. 2. L'un et l'autre ont pu exister sans redaction ecrite. La mention, chez d'anciens ecrivains, de certaines traditions patriarcales ou mosaiques, ne prouve pas l'existence du Pentateuque, et une nation peut avoir un droit coutumier sans code ecrit. Les traditions nationales des Israelites remontent plus haut que les lois du Pentateuque et la redaction des premieres est anterieure a celle des secondes. 4. L'interet principal de l'historien doit porter sur la date des lois, parce que sur ce terrain il a plus de chance d'arriver a des resultats certains. II faut en consequence proceder a l'interrogatoire des temoins. 5. L'histoire racontee, dans les livres des Juges et de Samuel, et meme en partie celle comprise dans les livres des Rois, est en contradiction avec des lois dites mosaiques; donc celles-ci etaient inconnues a l'epoque de la redaction de ces livres, a plus forte raison elles n'ont pas existe dans les temps qui y vent decrits. 6. Les prophetes du 8e et du 7e siecle ne savent rien du code mosaique. 7. Jeremie est le premier prophete qui connaisse une loi ecrite et ses citations rapportent au Deuteronome. 8. Le Deuteronome (iv.45-xxviii.68) est le livre que les pretres pretendaient avoir trouve dans le temple du temps du roi Josias. Ce code est la partie la plus ancienne de la legislation (redigee) comprise dans le Pentateuque. 9. L'histoire des Israelites, en tant qu'il s'agit du developpement national determine par des lois ecrites, se divisera en deux periodes, avant et apres Josias. 10. Ezechiel est anterieur a la redaction du code rituel et des lois qui ont definitivement organise la hierarchie. 11. Le livre du Josue n'est pas, tant s'en faut, la partie la plus recente de l'ouvrage entier. 12. Le redacteur du Pentateuque se distingue clairement de l'ancien prophete Moyse." --L'Histoire Sainte et la Loi, Paris, 1879, pp. 23, 24. ****************************************** He indeed did not himself succeed in reaching a sure position, but he was the first clearly to perceive and point out how disconnected are the alleged starting-point of Israel's history and that history itself. The religious community set up on so broad a basis in the wilderness, with its sacred centre and uniform organisation, disappears and leaves no trace as soon as Israel settles in a land of its own, and becomes, in any proper sense, a nation. The period of the Judges presents itself to us as a confused chaos, out of which order and coherence are gradually evolved under the pressure of external circumstances, but perfectly naturally and without the faintest reminiscence of a sacred unifying constitution that had formerly existed. Hebrew antiquity shows absolutely no tendencies towards a hierocracy; power is wielded solely by the heads of families and of tribes, and by the kings, who exercise control over religious worship also, and appoint and depose its priests. The influence possessed by the latter is purely moral; the Torah of God is not a document in their hands which guarantees their own position, but merely an instruction for others in their mouths; like the word of the prophets, it has divine authority but not political sanction, and has validity only in so far as it is voluntarily accepted. And as for the literature which has come down to us from the period of the Kings, it would puzzle the very best intentions to beat up so many as two or three unambiguous allusions to the Law, and these cannot be held to prove anything when one considers, by way of contrast, what Homer was to the Greeks. To complete the marvel, in post-exile Judaism the Mosaism which until then had been only latent suddenly emerges into prominence everywhere. We now find the Book regarded as the foundation of all higher life, and the Jews, to borrow the phrase of the Koran, are "the people of the Book;" we have the sanctuary with its priests and Levites occupying the central position, and the people as a congregation encamped around it; the cultus, with its burnt-offerings and sin-offerings, its purifications and its abstinences, its feasts and Sabbaths, strictly observed as prescribed by the Law, is now the principal business of life. When we take the community of the second temple and compare it with the ancient people of Israel, we are at once able to realise how far removed was thc latter from so-called Mosaism. The Jews themselves were thoroughly conscious of the distance. The revision of the books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, undertaken towards the end of the Babylonian exile, a revision much more thorough than is commonly assumed, condemns as heretical the whole age of the Kings. At a later date, as the past became more invested with a certain nimbus of sanctity, men preferred to clothe it with the characters of legitimacy rather than sit in judgment upon it. The Book of Chronicles shows in what manner it was necessary to deal with the history of bygone times when it was assumed that the Mosaic hierocracy was their fundamental institution. 2. The foregoing remarks are designed merely to make it plain that the problem we have set before us is not an imaginary one, but actual and urgent. They are intended to introduce it; but to solve it is by no means so easy. The question what is the historical place of the Law does not even admit of being put in these simple terms. For the Law, If by that word we understand the entire Pentateuch, is no literary unity, and no simple historical quantity./1/ ************************* 1. Compare the article "Pentateuch" in the Ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. xviii. ************************* Since the days of Peyrerius and Spinoza, criticism has acknowledged the complex character of that remarkable literary production, and from Jean Astruc onwards has laboured, not without success, at disentangling its original elements. At present there are a number of results that can be regarded as settled. The following are some of them. The five Books of Moses and the Book of Joshua constitute one whole, the conquest of the Promised Land rather than the death of Moses forming the true conclusion of the patriarchal history, the exodus, and the wandering in the wilderness. From a literary point of view, accordingly, it is more accurate to speak of the Hexateuch than of the Pentateuch. Out of this whole, the Book of Deuteronomy, as essentially an independent law-book, admits of being separated most easily. Of what remains, the parts most easily distinguished belong to the so-called "main stock" ("Grundschrift"), formerly also called the Elohistic document, on account of the use it makes of the divine name Elohim up to the time of Moses, and designated by Ewald, with reference to the regularly recurring superscriptions in Genesis, as the Book of Origins. It is distinguished by its liking for number, and measure, and formula generally, by its stiff pedantic style, by its constant use of certain phrases and turns of expression which do not occur elsewhere in the older Hebrew; its characteristics are more strongly marked than those of any of the others, and make it accordingly the easiest to recognise with certainty. Its basis is the Book of Leviticus and thc allied portions of the adjoining books,-- Exodus xxv.-xl., with the exception of chaps. xxxii.-xxxiv., and Num.i.-x., xv.-xix., xxv.-xxxvi., with trifling exceptions. It thus contains legislation chiefly, and, in point of fact, relates substantially to the worship of the tabernacle and cognate matters. It is historical only in form; the history serves merely as a framework on which to arrange thc legislative material, or as a mask to disguise it. For the most part, the thread of the narrative is extremely thin, and often serves merely to carry out the chronology, which is kept up without a hiatus from the Creation to the Exodus; it becomes fuller only on the occasions in which other interests come into play, as, for example, in Genesis, with regard to the three preludes to the Mosaic covenant which are connected with the names of Adam, Noah, and Abraham respectively. When this fundamental document is also separated out as well as Deuteronomy, there remains the Jehovistic history-book, which, in contrast with the two others, is essentially of a narrative character, and sets forth with full sympathy and enjoyment the materials handed down by tradition. The story of the patriarchs, which belongs to this document almost entirely, is what best marks its character; that story is not here dealt with merely as a summary introduction to something of greater importance which is to follow, but as a subject of primary importance, deserving the fullest treatment possible. Legislative elements have been taken into it only at one point, where they fit into the historical connection, namely, when the giving of the Law at Sinai is spoken of (Exodusxx.-xxiii., xxxiv.) Scholars long rested satisfied with this twofold division of the non-Deuteronomic Hexateuch, until Hupfeld demonstrated in certain parts of Genesis, which until then had been assigned partly to the "main stock" and partly to the Jehovist, the existence of a third continuous source, the work of the so-called younger Elohist. The choice of this name was due to the circumstance that in this document also Elohim is the ordinary name of the Deity, as it is in the "main stock" up to Exodus vi.; the epithet "younger," however, is better left out, as it involves an unproved assumption, and besides, is no longer required for distinction's sake, now that the "main stock" is no longer referred to under so unsuitable a name as that of Elohist. Hupfeld further assumed that all the three sources continued to exist separately until some one at a later date brought them together simultaneously into a single whole. But this is a view that cannot be maintained: not merely is the Elohist in his matter and in his manner of looking at things most closely akin to the Jehovist; his document has come down to us as Noldeke was thc first to perceive, only in extracts embodied in the Jehovist narrative./1/ *************************** Hermann Hupfeld, Die Quellen der Genesis u. die Art ihrer Zusammersetzung, Berlin, 1853; Theodor Noldeke, Die s. g. Grundschrift des Pentateuch, in Untersuchungen zur Kritik des Alten Testaments, Kiel, 1869. *************************** Thus, notwithstanding Hupfeld's discovery, the old division into two great sections continues to hold good, and there is every reason for adhering to this primary distinction as the basis of further historical research, in spite of the fact, which is coming to be more and more clearly perceived, that not only the Jehovistic document, but the "main stock" as well, are complex products, and that alongside of them occur hybrid or posthumous elements which do not admit of being simply referred to either the one or the other formation. /2/ ************************ 2. J. Wellhausen, Die Composition des Hexateuchs, in Jahrb. f. Deutsche Theologie, 1876, pp. 392-450, 531-602; 1877, pp. 407-479. I do not insist on all the details, but, as regards the way in which the literary process which resulted in the formation of the Pentateuch is to be looked at in general, I believe I had indicated the proper line of investigation. Hitherto the only important corrections I have received have been those of Kuenen in his Contributions to the Criticism of the Pentateuch and Joshua, published in the Leyden Theologisch Tijdschrift; but these are altogether welcome, inasmuch as they only free my own fundamental view from some relics of the old leaven of a mechanical separation of sources which had continued to adhere to it. For what Kuenen points out is, that certain elements assigned by me to the Elohist are not fragments of a once independent whole, but interpolated and parasitic additions. What effect this demonstration may have on the judgment we form of the Elohist himself is as yet uncertain. In the following pages the Jehovistic history-book is denoted by the symbol JE, its Jehovistic part by J, and the Elohistic by E; the "main stock" pure and simple, which is distinguished by its systematising history and is seen unalloyed in Genesis, is called the Book of the Four Covenants and is symbolised by Q; for the "main stock" as a whole (as modified by an editorial process) the title of Priestly Code and the symbol RQ (Q and Revisers) are employed. ************************* Now the Law, whose historical position we have to determine, is the so-called "main stack," which, both by its contents and by its origin, is entitled to be called the Priestly Code, and will accordingly be so designated. The Priestly Code preponderates over the rest of the legislation in force, as well as in bulk; in all matters of primary importance it is the normal and final authority. It was according to the mode furnished by it that the Jews under Ezra ordered their sacred community, and upon it are formed our conceptions of the Mosaic theocracy, with the tabernacle at its centre, the high priest at its head, the priests and Levites as its organs, the legitimate cultus as its regular function. It is precisely this Law, so called par exceIlence, that creates the difficulties out of which our problem rises, and it is only in connection with it that the great difference of opinion exists as to date. With regard to the Jehovistic document, all are happily agreed that, substantially at all events, in language, horizon, and other features, it dates from the golden age of Hebrew literature, to which the finest parts of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, and the oldest extant prophetical writings also belong,--the period of the kings and prophets which preceded the dissolution of the two Israelite kingdoms by the Assyrians. About the origin of Deuteronomy there is still less dispute; in all circles where appreciation of scientific results can be looked for at all, it is recognised that it was composed in the same age as that in which it was discovered, and that it was made the rule of Josiah's reformation, which took place about a generation before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans. It is only in the case of the Priestly Code that opinions differ widely; for it tries hard to imitate the costume of the Mosaic period, and, with whatever success, to disguise its own. This is not nearly so much the case with Deuteronomy, which, in fact, allows the real situation (that of the period during which, Samaria having been destroyed, only the kingdom of Judah continued to subsist) to reveal itself very plainly through that which is assumed (xii.8, xix.8). And the Jehovist does not even pretend to being a Mosaic law of any kind; it aims at being a simple book of history; the distance between the present and the past spoken of is not concealed in the very least. It is here that all the marks are found which attracted the attention of Abenezra and afterwards of Spinoza, such as Gen. xii. 6 ("And the Canaanite was then in the land"), Gen.xxxvi.31 ("These are the kings who reigned in Edom before the children of Israel had a king"), Num. xii.6, 7, Deut. xxxiv.10 ("There arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses"). The Priestly Code, on the other hand, guards itself against all reference to later times and settled life in Canaan, which both in the Jehovistic Book of the Covenant (Exodus xxi.-xxiii.) and in Deuteronomy are the express basis of the legislation: it keeps itself carefully and strictly within the limits of the situation in the wilderness, for which in all seriousness it seeks to give the law. It has actually been successful, with its movable tabernacle, its wandering camp, and other archaic details, in so concealing the true date of its composition that its many serious inconsistencies with what we know, from other sources, of Hebrew antiquity previous to the exile, are only taken as proving that it lies far beyond all known history, and on account of its enormous antiquity can hardly be brought into any connection with it. It is the Priestly Code, then, that presents us with our problem. 3. The instinct was a sound one which led criticism for the time being to turn aside from the historical problem which had originally presented itself to De Wette, and afterwards had been more distinctly apprehended by George and Vatke, in order, in the first instance, to come to some sort of clear understanding as to the composition of the Pentateuch. But a mistake was committed when it was supposed that by a separation of the sources (in which operation attention was quite properly directed chiefly to Genesis) that great historical question had been incidentally answered. The fact was, that it had been merely put to sleep, and Graf has the credit of having, after a considerable interval, awakened it again. In doing so, indeed, he in turn laboured under the disadvantage of not knowing what success had been achieved in separating the sources, and thereby he became involved in a desperate and utterly untenable assumption. This assumption, however, had no necessary connection with his own hypothesis, and at once fell to the ground when the level to which Hupfeld brought the criticism of the text had been reached. Graf originally followed the older view, espoused by Tuch in particular, that in Genesis the Priestly Code, with its so obtrusively bare skeleton, is the "main stock," and that it is the Jehovist who supplements, and is therefore of course the later. But since, on the other hand, he regarded the ritual legislature of the middle books as much more recent than the work of the Jehovist, he was compelled to tear it asunder as best he could from its introduction in Genesis, and to separate the two halves of the Priestly Code by half a millennium. But Hupfeld had long before made it quite clear that the Jehovist is no mere supplementer, but the author of a perfectly independent work, and that the passages, such as Gen. xx.-xxii., usually cited as examples of the way in which the Jehovist worked over the "main stock," really proceed from quite another source,--the Elohist. Thus the stumbling-block of Graf had already been taken out of the way, and his path had been made clear by an unlooked-for ally. Following Kuenen's suggestion, he did not hesitate to take the helping-hand extended to him; he gave up his violent division of the Priestly Code, and then had no difficulty in deducing from the results which he had obtained with respect to the main legal portion similar consequences with regard to the narrative part in Genesis. /1/ *************************** 1. K. H. Graf, Die s. g. Grundschrift des Pentateucks, in Merx's Archiv (1869), pp. 466-477. As early as 1866 he had already expressed himself in a letter to Kuenen November 12) as follows:-- "Vous me faites pressentir une solution de cette enigme...c'est que les parties elohistiques de la Genese seraient posterieures aux parties jehovistiques." Compare Kuenen, Theol. Tijdschrift (1870), p.412. Graf had also in this respect followed Reuss, who (ut supra, p. 24) says of himself: "Le cote faible de ma critique a ete que, a l'egard de tout ce qui ne rentrait pas dans les points enumeres ci-dessus, je restais dans l'orniere tracee par mes devanciers, admettant sans plus ample examen que le Pentateuque etait l'ouvrage de l'HISTORIEN elohiste, complete par l'HISTORIEN jehoviste, et ne me rendant pas compte de la maniere dont l'element legal, dont je m'etais occupe exclusivement, serait venu se joindre a l'element historique. *************************** The foundations were now laid; it is Kuenen who has since done most for the further development of the hypothesis./2/ ************************** 2. A. Kuenen, Die Godsdienst van Israel, Haarlem, 1869-70 (Eng. transl. Religion of Israel, 1874-5), and De priesterlijke Bestanddeelen van Pentateuch en Josua, in Theol. Tijdschr.(1870), pp. 391-426. ************************** The defenders of the prevailing opinion maintained their ground as well as they could, but from long possession had got somewhat settled on their lees. They raised against the assailants a series of objections, all of which, however, laboured more or less under the disadvantage that they rested upon the foundation which had already been shattered. Passages were quoted from Amos and Hosea as implying an acquaintance with the Priestly Code, but they were not such as could make any impression on those who were already persuaded that the latter was the more recent. Again it was asserted, and almost with violence, that the Priestly Code could not be later than Deuteronomy, and that the Deuteronomist actually had it before him. But the evidences of this proved extremely problematical, while, on the other hand, the dependence of Deuteronomy, as a whole, on the Jehovist came out with the utmost clearness. Appeal was made to the latest redaction of the entire Hexateuch, a redaction which was assumed to be Deuteronomistic; but this yielded the result that the deuteronomistic redaction could nowhere be traced in any of the parts belonging to the Priestly Code. Even the history of the language itself was forced to render service against Graf: it had already been too much the custom to deal with that as if it were soft wax. To say all in a word, the arguments which were brought into play as a rule derived all their force from a moral conviction that the ritual legislation must be old, and could not possibly have been committed to writing for the first time within the period of Judaism; that it was not operative before then, that it did not even admit of being carried into effect in the conditions that prevailed previous to the exile, could not shake the conviction-- all the firmer because it did not rest on argument--that at least it existed previously. The firemen never came near the spot where the conflagration raged; for it is only within the region of religious antiquities and dominant religious ideas,--the region which Vatke in his Biblische Theologie had occupied in its full breadth, and where the real battle first kindled--that the controversy can be brought to a definite issue. In making the following attempt in this direction, I start from the comparison of the three constituents of the Pentateuch,--the Priestly Code, Deuteronomy, and the work of the Jehovist. The contents of the first two are, of course, legislation, as we have seen; those of the third are narrative; but, as the Decalogue (Exodus xx.), the Law of the two Tables (Exodus xxxiv.), and the Book of the Covenant (Exodus xxi.-xxiii.) show, the legislative element is not wholly absent from the Jehovist, and much less is the historical absent from the Priestly Code or Deuteronomy. Further, each writer's legal standpoint is mirrored in his account of the history, and conversely; thus there is no lack either of indirect or of direct points of comparison. Now it is admitted that the three constituent elements are separated from each other by wide intervals; the question then arises, In what order? Deuteronomy stands in a relation of comparative nearness both to the Jehovist and to the Priestly Code; the distance between the last two is by far the greatest,--so great that on this ground alone Ewald as early as the year 183I (Stud. u. Krit., p. 604) declared it impossible that the one could have been written to supplement the other. Combining this observation with the undisputed priority of the Jehovist over Deuteronomy, it will follow that the Priestly Code stands last in the series. But such a consideration, although, so far as I know, proceeding upon admitted data, has no value as long as it confines itself to such mere generalities. It is necessary to trace the succession of the three elements in detail, and at once to test and to fix each by reference to an independent standard, namely, the inner development of the history of Israel so far as that is known to us by trustworthy testimonies, from independent sources. The literary and historical investigation on which we thus enter is both wide and difficult. It falls into three parts. In the first, which lays the foundations, the data relating to sacred archaeology are brought together and arranged in such a way as to show that in the Pentateuch the elements follow upon one another and from one another precisely as the steps of the development demonstrably do in the history. Almost involuntarily this argument has taken the shape of a sort of history of the ordinances of worship. Rude and colourless that history must be confessed to be,--a fault due to the materials, which hardly allow us to do more than mark the contrast between pre-exilic and post-exilic, and, in a secondary measure, that between Deuteronomic and pre-Deuteronomic. At the same time there is this advantage arising out of the breadth of the periods treated: they cannot fail to distinguish themselves from each other in a tangible manner; it must be possible in the case of historical, and even of legal works, to recognise whether they were written before or after the exile. The second part, in many respects dependent on the first, traces the influence of the successively prevailing ideas and tendencies upon the shaping of historical tradition, and follows the various phases in which that was conceived and set forth. It contains, so to speak, a history of tradition. The third part sums up the critical results of the preceding two, with some further determining considerations, and concludes with a more general survey. The assumptions I make will find an ever-recurring justification in the course of the investigation; the two principal are, that the work of the Jehovist, so far as the nucleus of it is concerned, belongs to the course of the Assyrian period, and that Deuteronomy belongs to its close. Moreover, however strongly I am convinced that the latter is to be dated in accordance with 2Kings xxii., I do not, like Graf, so use this position as to make it the fulcrum for my lever. Deuteronomy is the starting-point, not in the sense that without it it would be impossible to accomplish anything, but only because, when its position has been historically ascertained, we cannot decline to go on, but must demand that the position of the Priestly Code should also be fixed by reference to history. My inquiry proceeds on a broader basis than that of Graf, and comes nearer to that of Vatke, from whom indeed I gratefully acknowledge myself to have learnt best and most. A. HISTORY OF THE ORDINANCES OF WORSHIP. " Legem non habentes natura faciunt legis opera."--Romans ii. [ "(When Gentiles) who do not have the law, do instinctively what the law requires...." Romans 2:14 NRSV ] CHAPTER I. THE PLACE OF WORSHIP. As we learn from the New Testament, the Jews and the Samaritans in the days of Jesus were not agreed on the question which was the proper place of worship, but that there could be only one was taken to be as certain as the unity of God Himself. The Jews maintained that place to be the temple at Jerusalem, and when it was destroyed they ceased to sacrifice. But this oneness of the sanctuary in Israel was not originally recognised either in fact or in law; it was a slow growth of time. With the help of the Old Testament we are still quite able to trace the process. In doing so, it is possible to distinguish several stages of development. We shall accordingly proceed to inquire whether the three constituent parts of the Pentateuch give tokens of any relationship to one or other of these; whether and how they fall in with the course of the historical development which we are able to follow by the aid of the historical and prophetic books from the period of the Judges onwards. I.I.1. For the earliest period of the history of Israel, all that precedes the building of the temple, not a trace can be found of any sanctuary of exclusive legitimacy. In the Books of Judges and Samuel hardly a place is mentioned at which we have not at least casual mention of an altar and of sacrifice. In great measure this multiplicity of sanctuaries was part of the heritage taken over from the Canaanites by the Hebrews; as they appropriated the towns and the culture generally of the previous inhabitants, so also did they take possession of their sacred piaces. The system of high places (Bamoth), with all the apparatus thereto belonging, is certainly Canaanite originally (Deut. xii.2, 30; Num. xxxiii.52; Exodus xxxiv.12 seq.), but afterwards is of quite general occurrence among the Hebrews. At Shechem and Gibeon the transition takes place almost in the full light of history; some other old-Israelite places of worship, certain of which are afterwards represented as Levitical towns, betray their origin by their names at least, e.g., Bethshemesh or Ir Heres (Sun-town), and Ashtaroth Karnaim (the two-horned Astarte). In the popular recollection, also, the memory of the fact that many of the most prominent sacrificial seats were already in existence at the date of the immigration continues to survive. Shechem, Bethel, Beersheba, figure in Genesis as instituted by the patriarchs; other equally important holy sites, not so. The reason for the distinction can only lie in a consciousness of the more recent origin of the latter; those of the one class had been found by the people when they came, those of the other category they had themselves established. For of course, if the Hebrews did not hesitate to appropriate to themselves the old holy places of the country, neither did they feel any difficulty in instituting new ones. In Gilgal and Shiloh, in the fixed camps where, in the first instance, they had found a permanent foothold in Palestine proper, there forthwith arose important centres of worship; so likewise in other places of political importance, even in such as only temporarily come into prominence, as Ophrah, Ramah, and Nob near Gibeah. And, apart from the greater cities with their more or less regular religious service, it is perfectly permissible to erect an altar extempore, and offer sacrifice wherever an occasion presents itself. When, after the battle of Michmash, the people, tired and hungry, fell upon the cattle they had taken, and began to devour the flesh with the blood (that is, without pouring out the blood on the altar), Saul caused a great stone to be erected, and ordered that every man should slaughter his ox or his sheep there. This was the first altar which Saul erected to Jehovah, adds the narrator, certainly not as a reproach, nor even to signalise his conduct as anything surprising or exceptional. The instance is all the more instructive, because it shows how the prohibition to eat flesh without rendering the blood back to God at a time when the people did not live crowded together within a quite limited area necessarily presupposed liberty to sacrifice anywhere--or to slaughter anywhere; for originally the two words are absolutely synonymous. It need not be said that the sacrificial seats (even when the improvised ones are left out of account) were not all alike in the regard in which they were held, or in the frequency with which they were resorted to. Besides purely local ones, there were others to which pilgrimages were made from far and near. Towards the close of the period of the judges, Shiloh appears to have acquired an importance that perhaps extended even beyond the limits of the tribe of Joseph. By a later age the temple there was even regarded as the prototype of the temple of Solomon, that is, as the one legitimate place of worship to which Jehovah had made a grant of all the burnt-offerings of the children of Israel (Jer. vii.12; 1Samuel ii. 27-36). But, in point-of fact, if a prosperous man of Ephraim or Benjamin made a pilgrimage to the joyful festival at Shiloh at the turn of the year, the reason for his doing so was not that he could have had no opportunity at his home in Ramah or Gibeah for eating and drinking before the Lord. Any strict centralisation is for that period inconceivable, alike in the religious as in every other sphere. This is seen even in the circumstance that the destruction of the temple of Shiloh, the priesthood of which we find officiating at Nob a little later, did not exercise the smallest modifying influence upon the character and position of the cultus; Shiloh disappears quietly from the scene, and is not mentioned again until we learn from Jeremiah that at least from the time when Solomon's temple was founded its temple lay in ruins. For the period during which the temple of Jerusalem was not yet in existence, even the latest redaction of the historical books (which perhaps does not everywhere proceed from the same hand, but all dates from the same period--that of the Babylonian exile--and has its origin in the same spirit) leaves untouched the multiplicity of altars and of holy places. No king after Solomon is left uncensured for having tolerated the high places, but Samuel is permitted in his proper person to preside over a sacrificial feast at the Bamah of his native town, and Solomon at the beginning of his reign to institute a similar one at the great Bamah of Gibeon, without being blamed. The offensive name is again and again employed in the most innocent manner in 1Samuel ix., x., and the later editors allow it to pass unchallenged. The principle which guides this apparently unequal distribution of censure becomes clear from 1Kings iii. 2: "The people sacrificed upon the high places, for as yet no house to the name of Jehovah had been built." Not until the house had been built to the name of Jehovah--such is the idea--did the law come into force which forbade having other places of worship besides./1/ ********************************** 1. Compare 1Kings viii. 16. According to Deut. xii.10 seq., the local unity of worship becomes law from the time when the Israelites have found rest (menuha). Comparing 2Samuel vii.11 and 1Kings v. 18 (A.V., v.4), we find that "menuha" first came in with David and Solomon. The period of the judges must at that time have been regarded as much shorter than appears in the present chronology. *********************************** From the building of the temple of Solomon, which is also treated as a leading epoch in chronology, a new period in the history of worship is accordingly dated,--and to a certain extent with justice. The monarchy in Israel owed its origin to the need which, under severe external pressure, had come to be felt for bringing together into the oneness of a people and a kingdom the hitherto very loosely connected tribes and families of the Hebrews; it had an avowedly centralising tendency, which very naturally laid hold of the cultus as an appropriate means for the attainment of the political end. Gideon even, the first who came near a regal position, erected a costly sanctuary in his city, Ophrah. David caused the ark of Jehovah to be fetched into his fortress on Mount Sion, and attached value to the circumstance of having for its priest the representative of the old family which had formerly kept it at Shiloh. Solomon's temple also was designed to increase the attractiveness of the city of his residence. It is indubitable that in this way political centralisation gave an impulse to a greater centralisation of worship also, and the tendency towards the latter continued to operate after the separation of the two kingdoms,--in Israel not quite in the same manner as in Judah. Royal priests, great national temples, festal gatherings of the whole people, sacrifices on an enormous scale, these were the traits by which the cultus, previously (as it would seem) very simple, now showed the impress of a new time. One other fact is significant: the domestic feasts and sacrifices of single families, which in David's time must still have been general, gradually declined and lost their importance as social circles widened and life became more public. But this way of regarding the influence of the monarchy upon the history of the worship is not that of the author of the Books of Kings. He views the temple of Solomon as a work undertaken exclusively in the interests of pure worship, and as differing entirely in origin from the sacred buildings of the kings of Israel, with which accordingly it is not compared, but contrasted as the genuine is contrasted with the spurious. It is in its nature unique, and from the outset had the design of setting aside all other holy places,--a religious design independent of and unconnected with politics. The view, however, is unhistorical; it carries back to the original date of the temple, and imports into the purpose of its foundation the significance which it had acquired in Judah shortly before the exile. In reality the temple was not at the outset all that it afterwards became. Its influence was due to its own weight, and not to a monopoly conferred by Solomon. We nowhere learn that that king, like a forerunner of Josiah, in order to favour his new sanctuary sought to abolish all the others; there is not the faintest historical trace of any such sudden and violent interference with the previously existing arrangements of worship. Never once did Solomon's successors, confined though they were to the little territory of Judah, and therefore in a position in which the experiment might perhaps have been practicable, make the attempt (which certainly would have been in their interest) to concentrate all public worship within their own temple, though in other directions we find them exercising a very arbitrary control over affairs of religion. The high places were not removed; this is what is regularly told us in the case of them all. For Israel properly so called, Jerusalem was at no time, properly speaking, the place which Jehovah had chosen; least of all was it so after the division of the kingdom. The Ephraimites flocked in troops through the entire length of the southern kingdom as pilgrims to Beersheba, and, in common with the men of Judah, to Gilgal on the frontier. Jerusalem they left unvisited. In their own land they served Jehovah at Bethel and Dan, at Shechem and Samaria, at Penuel and Mizpah, and at many other places. Every town had its Bamah, in the earlier times generally on an open site at the top of the hill on the slopes of which the houses were. Elijah, that great zealot for purity of worship, was so far from being offended by the high places and the multiplicity of altars to Jehovah that their destruction brought bitterness to his soul as the height of wickedness, and with his own hand he rebuilt the altar that had fallen into ruins on Mount Carmel. And that the improvised offering on extraordinary occasions had also not fallen into disuse is shown by the case of Elisha, who, when his call came as he was following the plough, hewed his oxen to pieces on the spot and sacrificed. In this respect matters after the building of Solomon's temple continued to be just as they had been before. If people and judges or kings alike, priests and prophets, men like Samuel and Elijah, sacrificed without hesitation whenever occasion and opportunity presented themselves, it is manifest that during the whole of that period nobody had the faintest suspicion that such conduct was heretical and forbidden. If a theophany made known to Joshua the sanctity of Gilgal, gave occasion to Gideon and Manoah to rear altars at their homes, drew the attention of David to the threshing-floor of Araunah, Jehovah Himself was regarded as the proper founder of all these sanctuaries,--and this not merely at the period of the Judges, but more indubitably still at that of the narrator of these legends. He rewarded Solomon's first sacrifice on the great Bamah at Gibeon with a gracious revelation, and cannot, therefore, have been displeased by it. After all this, it is absurd to speak of any want of legality in what was then the ordinary practice; throughout the whole of the earlier period of the history of Israel, the restriction of worship to a single selected place was unknown to any one even as a pious desire. Men believed themselves indeed to be nearer God at Bethel or at Jerusalem than at any indifferent place, but of such gates of heaven there were several; and after all, the ruling idea was that which finds its most distinct expression in 2Kings v.17,--that Palestine as a whole was Jehovah's house, His ground and territory. Not outside of Jerusalem, but outside of Canaan had one to sojourn far from His presence, under the dominion and (cujus regio ejus religio) in the service of strange gods. The sanctity of the land did not depend on that of the temple; the reverse was the case. /1/ *********************************** 1. Gen. iv.14, 16: when Cain is driven out of the land (Canaan), he is driven from the presence of Jehovah (Jonah i.3, 10). Gen. xlvi.4: Jacob is not to hesitate about going down into Egypt, for Jehovah will, by a special act of grace, change His dwelling-place along with him. Exodus xv.17: "Thou broughtest thy people to the mountain of thine inheritance, to the place which thou hadst prepared for thyself to dwell in," the explanation which follows, "to the sanctuary which thy hand had established," is out of place, for the mountain of the inheritance can only be the mountainous land of Palestine. 1Samuel xxvi.19: David, driven by Saul into foreign parts, is thereby violently sundered from his family share in the inheritance of Jehovah, and compelled to serve other gods. Hos. viii.1: one like an eagle comes against the house of Jehovah, i.e., the Assyrian comes against Jehovah's land. Hos. ix.15: "I will drive them out of mine house," i.e., the Israelites out of their land. Most distinct is the language of Hos. ix.3-5: "They shall not continue to dwell in Jehovah's land; Ephraim must back to Egypt, and must eat that which is unclean in Assyria. They shall not any more offer wine-offerings to Jehovah, or set forth offerings [read with Kuenen Y(RKW for Y(RBW ] before Him; their bread is as the bread of mourners; whosoever eats of it is polluted, for their bread shall be only for the staying of hunger, and shall not be brought into the house of Jehovah. What indeed will ye do in the time of the solemn assembly and in the day of the feast of Jehovah? "Compare Jer. xvi.13; Ezek. iv.13; Mal. ii.11; 2Kings xvii.25 seq. It is also possible that the "great indignation" of 2Kings iii.27 is regarded less as Jehovah's than as that of Chemosh, in whose land the army of Israel is at the time. ******************************************* I.I.2. A change in this respect first begins to be prepared at that important epoch of the religious history of Israel which is marked by the fall of Samaria and the rise of the prophets connected therewith. Amos and Hosea presuppose a condition of matters just such as has been described: everywhere--in the towns, on the mountains, under green trees--a multitude of sanctuaries and altars, at which Jehovah is served in good faith, not with the purpose of provoking Him, but in order to gain His favour. The language held by these men was one hitherto unheard of when they declared that Gilgal, and Bethel, and Beersheba, Jehovah's favourite seats, were an abomination to Him; that the gifts and offerings with which He was honoured there kindled His wrath instead of appeasing it; that Israel was destined to be buried under the ruins of His temples, where protection and refuge were sought (Amos ix.). What did they mean ? It would be to misunderstand the prophets to suppose that they took offence at the holy places-- which Amos still calls Bamoth (vii.9), and that too not in scorn, but with the deepest pathos--in and by themselves, on account of their being more than one, or not being the right ones. Their zeal is directed, not against the places, but against the cultus there carried on, and, in fact not merely against its false character as containing all manner of abuses, but almost more against itself, against the false value attached to it. The common idea was that just as Moab showed itself to be the people of Chemosh because it brought to Chemosh its offerings and gifts, so Israel proved itself Jehovah's people by dedicating its worship to Him, and was such all the more surely as its worship was zealous and splendid; in times of danger and need, when His help was peculiarly required, the zeal of the worshippers was doubled and trebled. It is against this that the prophets raise their protest while they demand quite other performances as a living manifestation of the relation of Israel to Jehovah. This was the reason of their so great hostility to the cultus, and the source of their antipathy to the great sanctuaries, where superstitious zeal outdid itself; it was this that provoked their wrath against the multiplicity of the altars which flourished so luxuriantly on the soil of a false confidence. That the holy places should be abolished, but the cultus itself remain as before the main concern of religion, only limited to a single locality was by no means their wish; but at the same time, in point of fact, it came about as an incidental result of their teaching that the high place in Jerusalem ultimately abolished all the other Bamoth. External circumstances, it must be added, contributed most essentially towards the result. As long as the northern kingdom stood, it was there that the main current of lsraelite life manifested itself; a glance into the Books of Kings or into that of Amos is enough to make this clear. In Jerusalem, indeed, the days of David and of Solomon remained unforgotten; yearning memories went back to them, and great pretensions were based upon them, but with these the actual state of matters only faintly corresponded. When Samaria fell, Israel shrivelled up to the narrow dimensions of Judah, which alone survived as the people of Jehovah. Thereby the field was left clear for Jerusalem. The royal city had always had a weighty preponderance over the little kingdom, and within it, again, the town had yielded in importance to the temple. From the few narratives we have relating to Judah one almost gathers an impression as if it had no other concern besides those of the temple; the kings in particular appear to have regarded the charge of their palace sanctuary as the chief of all their cares./1/ ****************************************** 1. Nearly all the Judaean narratives in the Books of Kings relate to the temple and the measures taken by the ruling princes with reference to this their sanctuary. ********************************************** In this way the increased importance of Judah after the fall of Samaria accrued in the first instance to the benefit of the capital and its sanctuary, especially as what Judah gained by the fall of her rival was not so much political strength as an increase of religious self-consciousness. If the great house of God upon Mount Zion had always overtopped the other shrines in Judah, it now stood without any equal in all Israel. But it was the prophets who led the way in determining the inferences to be drawn from the change in the face of things. Hitherto they had principally had their eyes upon the northern kingdom, its threatened collapse, and the wickedness of its inhabitants, and thus had poured out their wrath more particularly upon the places of worship there. Judah they judged more favourably, both on personal and on substantial grounds, and they hoped for its preservation, not concealing their sympathies for Jerusalem (Amos i.2). Under the impression produced by their discourses accordingly, the fall of Samaria was interpreted as a judgment of God against the sinful kingdom and in favour of the fallen house of David, and the destruction of the sanctuaries of Israel was accepted as an unmistakable declaration on Jehovah's part against His older seats on behalf of His favourite dwelling on Zion. Finally, the fact that twenty years afterwards Jerusalem made her triumphant escape from the danger which had proved fatal to her haughty rival, that at the critical moment the Assyrians under Sennacherib were suddenly constrained to withdraw from her, raised to the highest pitch the veneration in which the temple was held. In this connection special emphasis is usually laid-- and with justice--upon the prophetical activity of Isaiah, whose confidence in the firm foundation of Zion continued unmoved, even when the rock began to shake in an alarming way. Only it must not be forgotten that the significance of Jerusalem to Isaiah did not arise from the temple of Solomon, but from the fact that it was the city of David and the focus of his kingdom, the central point, not of the cultus, but of the sovereignty of Jehovah over His people. The holy mount was to him the entire city as a political unity, with its citizens, councillors, and judges (xi.9); his faith in the sure foundation on which Zion rested was nothing more than a faith in the living presence of Jehovah in the camp of Israel. But the contemporaries of the prophet interpreted otherwise his words and the events which had occurred. In their view Jehovah dwelt on Zion because His house was there; it was the temple that had been shown by history to be His true seat, and its inviolability was accordingly the pledge of the indestructibility of the nation. This belief was quite general in Jeremiah's time, as is seen in the extremely vivid picture of the seventh chapter of his book; but even as early as the time of Micah, in the first third of the seventh century, the temple must have been reckoned a house of God of an altogether peculiar order, so as to make it a paradox to put it on a level with the Bamoth of Judah, and a thing unheard of to believe in its destruction. At the same time, notwithstanding the high and universal reverence in which the temple was held, the other sanctuaries still continued, in the first instance, to subsist alongside of it. King Hezekiah indeed is said to have even then made an attempt to abolish them, but the attempt, having passed away without leaving any trace, is of a doubtful nature. It is certain that the prophet Isaiah did not labour for the removal of the Bamoth. In one of his latest discourses his anticipation for that time of righteousness and the fear of God which is to dawn after the Assyrian crisis is: "Then shall ye defile the silver covering of your graven images and the golden plating of your molten images--ye shall cast them away as a thing polluted; Begone! shall ye say unto them" (xxx.22). If he thus hopes for a purification from superstitious accretions of the places where Jehovah is worshipped, it is clear that he is not thinking of their total abolition. Not until about a century after the destruction of Samaria did men venture to draw the practical conclusion from the belief in the unique character of the temple at Jerusalem. That this was not done from a mere desire to be logical, but with a view to further reforms, need not be said. With the tone of repudiation in which the earlier prophets, in the zeal of their opposition, had occasionally spoken of practices of worship at large, there was nothing to be achieved; the thing to be aimed at was not abolition, but reformation, and the end it was believed would be helped by concentration of all ritual in the capital. Prophets and priests appear to have made common cause in the prosecution of the work. It was the high priest Hilkiah who in the first instance called attention to the discovered book which was to be made the basis of action; the prophetess Huldah confirmed its divine contents; the priests and prophets were a prominent element in the assembly at which the new law was promulgated and sworn to. Now an intimate fellowship between these two leading classes appears to be characteristic of the whole course of the religious movement in Judah, and to have been necessarily connected with the lines on which that movement advanced; /1/ ****************************** 1. While Hosea, the man of northern Israel, frequently assails the clergy of his home, and lays upon them the chief share of the blame for the depraved and blinded condition of the people, Isaiah even in his fiercest declamation against the superstitious worship of the multitude, has not a word to say against the priests, with whose chief, Uriah, on the contrary, he stands in a relation of great intimacy. But it is from the Book of Jeremiah, the best mirror of the contemporary relations in Judah, that the close connection between priests and prophets can be gathered most particularly. To a certain extent they shared the possession of the sanctuary between them. (Compare Lam. ii.20.) *************************************** we shall be justified therefore in assuming that the display of harmony between them on this occasion was not got up merely for the purposes of scenic effect, but that the change in the national cultus now proposed was really the common suggestion of prophets and priests. In point of fact, such a change was equally in accordance with the interests of the temple and with those of the prophetic party of reform. To the last named the restriction of the sacrificial worship must have in itself seemed an advantage; to it in later times the complete abolition of sacrifice was mainly due, and something of the later effect doubtless lay in the original intention. Then, too, the Jehovah of Hebron was only too easily regarded as distinct from the Jehovah of Bethshemesh or of Bethel, and so a strictly monarchical conception of God naturally led to the conclusion that the place of His dwelling and of His worship could also only be one. All writers of the Chaldaean period associate monotheism in the closest way with unity of worship (Jer. ii.28, xi.13). And the choice of the locality could present no difficulty; the central point of the kingdom had of necessity also to become the central point of the worship. Even Jerusalem and the house of Jehovah there might need some cleansing, but it was clearly entitled to a preference over the obscure local altars. It was the seat of all higher culture, Iying under the prophets' eyes, much more readily accessible to light and air, reform and control. It is also possible, moreover, that the Canaanite origin of most of the Bamoth, which is not unknown, for example, to Deuteronomy, may have helped to discredit them, while, on the other hand, the founding of Jerusalem belonged to the proudest memories of Israelite history, and the Ark, which had been the origin of the temple there, had a certain right to be considered the one genuine Mosaic sanctuary. /1/ ************************************ 1. Luther in his address to the princes of Germany counsels in the twentieth place that the field chapels and churches be destroyed, as devices of the devil used by him to strengthen covetousness, to set up a false and spurious faith, to weaken parochial churches, to increase taverns and fornication, to squander money and labour to no purpose, and merely to lead the poor people about by the nose. (Niemeyer's Reprint, p. 54 ) ************************************* In the eighteenth year of Josiah, 601 B.C., the first heavy blow fell upon the local sacrificial places. How vigorously the king set to work, how new were the measures taken, and how deeply they cut, can be learned from the narrative of 2Kings xxiii. Yet what a vitality did the green trees upon the high mountains still continue to show! Even now they were but polled, not uprooted. After Josiah's death we again see Bamoth appearing on all hands, not merely in the country, but even in the capital itself. Jeremiah has to lament that there are as many altars as towns in Judah. All that had been attained by the reforming party was that they could now appeal to a written law that had been solemnly sworn to by the whole people, standing ever an immovable witness to the rights of God. But to bring it again into force and to carry it out was no easy matter, and would certainly have been impossible to the unaided efforts of the prophets--a Jeremiah or an Ezekiel. I.3 Had the people of Judah remained in peaceful possession of their land, the reformation of Josiah would hardly have penetrated to the masses; the threads uniting the present with the past were too strong. To induce the people to regard as idolatrous and heretical centres of iniquity the Bamoth, with which from ancestral times the holiest memories were associated, and some of which, like Hebron and Beersheba, had been set up by Abraham and Isaac in person, required a complete breaking-off of the natural tradition of life, a total severance of all connection with inherited conditions. This was accomplished by means of the Babylonian exile, which violently tore the nation away from its native soil, and kept it apart for half a century,--a breach of historical continuity than which it is almost impossible to conceive a greater. The new generation had no natural, but only an artificial relation to the times of old; the firmly rooted growths of the old soil, regarded as thorns by the pious, were extirpated, and the freshly ploughed fallows ready for a new sowing. It is, of course, far from being the case that the whole people at that time underwent a general conversion in the sense of the prophets. Perhaps the majority totally gave up the past, but just on that account became lost among the heathen, and never subsequently came into notice. Only the pious ones, who with trembling followed Jehovah's word, were left as a remnant; they alone had the strength to maintain the Jewish individuality amid the medley of nationalities into which they had been thrown. From the exile there returned, not the nation, but a religious sect,--those, namely, who had given themselves up body and soul to the reformation ideas. It is no wonder that to these people, who, besides, on their return, all settled in the immediate neighbourhood of Jerusalem, the thought never once occurred of restoring the local cults. It cost them no struggle to allow the destroyed Bamoth to continue Iying in ruins; the principle had become part of their very being, that the one God had also but one place of worship, and thenceforward for all time coming this was regarded as a thing of course. I.II Such was the actual historical course of the centralisation of the cultus, and such the three stadia which can be distinguished. The question now presents itself, whether it is possible to detect a correspondence between the phases of the actual course of events and those of the legislation relating to this subject. All three portions of the legislation contain ordinances on the subject of sacrificial places and offerings. It may be taken for granted that in some way or other these have their roots in history, and do not merely hang in the air, quite away from or above the solid ground of actuality. I.II.1. The main Jehovistic law, the so-called Book of the Covenant, contains (Exodus xx.24-26) the following ordinance: "An altar of earth shalt thou make unto me, and thereon shalt thou sacrifice thy burnt offerings and thy peace-offerings, thy sheep and thine oxen; in place where I cause my name to be honoured will I come unto and will bless thee. Or if thou wilt make me an altar of stones, thou shalt not build it of hewn stones, for if thou hast lifted up thy tool upon it thou hast polluted it. And thou shalt not go up to mine altar by steps, that thy nakedness be not discovered before it." Unquestionably it is not the altar of the tabernacle, which was made of wood and plated over with brass, nor that of Solomon's temple, which on its eastern side had a flight of steps, /1/ ************************************** 1. The altar of the second temple had no steps, but a sloping ascent to it, as also, according to the belief of the Jews, had that of the tabernacle. The reason, moreover, for which in Exodus xx.26 steps are forbidden, disappears when the priests are provided with breeches (Exodus xxviii.42). **************************************** and had a passage right round it at half its height, that is here described as the only true one. On the other hand, it is obvious that a multiplicity of altars is not merely regarded as permissible, but assumed as a matter of course. For no stress at all is laid upon having always the same sacrificial seat, whether fixed or to be moved about from place to place; earth and unhewn stones /2/ of the field **************************************** 2. The plural "stones" is perhaps worthy of note. There were also sacrificial places consisting of one great stone (1Samuel xiv.33, vi.14, 15; 2Samuel xx.8; Judges vi.20, xiii.19, 20; 1Kings i.9); to the same category also doubtless belongs originally the threshing-floor of Araunah, 2Samuel xxiv.21; compare Ezra iii.3, [ (L MKWNTW ]. But inasmuch as such single sacred stones easily came into a mythological relation to the Deity, offence was taken at them, as appears from Judges vi.22-24, where the rock altar, the stone under the oak which was conceived of as the seat of the theophany, upon which Gideon offers, and out of which the flame issues (vi.19-21), is corrected into an altar upon the rock. The macceboth are distinguished from the altar in Exodus xxiv.4, yet elsewhere clearly put on the same plane with it (Gen. xxxiii.20), and everywhere more or less identified with the Deity (Gen. xxviii.). ******************************************** can be found everywhere, and such an altar falls to pieces just as readily as it is built. A choice of two kinds of material is also given, which surely implies that the lawgiver thought of more than one altar; and not at the place, but at every place where He causes His name to be honoured will Jehovah come to His worshippers and bless them. Thus the law now under consideration is in harmony with the custom and usage of the first historical period, has its root therein, and gives sanction to it. Certainly the liberty to sacrifice everywhere seems to be somewhat restricted by the added clause, "in every place where I cause my name to be honoured." But this means nothing more than that the spots where intercourse between earth and heaven took place were not willingly regarded as arbitrarily chosen, but, on the contrary, were considered as having been somehow or other selected by the Deity Himself for His service. In perfect correspondence with the Jehovistic law is the Jehovistic narrative of the Pentateuch, as, in particular, the story of the patriarchs in J and E very clearly shows. At every place where they take up their abode or make a passing stay, the fathers of the nation, according to this authority, erect altars, set up memorial stones, plant trees, dig wells. This does not take place at indifferent and casual localities, but at Shechem and Bethel in Ephraim, at Hebron and Beersheba in Judah, at Mizpah, Mahanaim, and Penuel in Gilead; nowhere but at famous and immemorially holy places of worship. It is on this that the interest of such notifications depends; they are no mere antiquarian facts, but full of the most living significance for the present of the narrator. The altar built by Abraham at Shechem is the altar on which sacrifice still continues to be made, and bears "even unto this day" the name which the patriarch gave it. On the spot where at Hebron he first entertained Jehovah, there down to the present day the table has continued to be spread; even as Isaac himself did, so do his sons still swear Amosos viii.14; Hos. iv.15) by the sacred well of Beersheba, which he digged, and sacrifice there upon the altar which he built, under the tamarisk which he planted. The stone which Jacob consecrated at Bethel the generation of the living continues to anoint, paying the tithes which of old he vowed to the house of God there. This also is the reason why the sacred localities are so well known to the narrator, and are punctually and accurately recorded notwithstanding the four hundred years of the Egyptian sojourn, which otherwise would have made their identification a matter of some little difficulty. The altar which Abraham built at Bethel stands upon the hill to the east of the town, between Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; others are determined by means of a tree or a well, as that of Shechem or Beersheba. /1/ ******************************* 1. The correct explanation of this is found in Ewald, Gesch. d. V. lsraels, i. 436 seq. (3d edit.). A. Bernstein (Ursprung der Sagen von Abrabam, etc., Berlin, 1871) drags in politics in a repulsive way. "He does not indeed actually enter Shechem and Bethel-- these are places hostile to Judah--but in a genuine spirit of Jewish demonstration he builds altars in their vicinity and calls on the name of Jehovah" (p. 22). Rather, he builds the altars precisely on the places where, as can be shown, they afterwards stood, and that was not inside the towns. In Gen. xviii. also the oak of Mamre is employed to fix not Abraham's residence, but the place of Jehovah's appearing. **************************************************************** But of course it was not intended to throw dishonour upon the cultus of the present when its institution was ascribed to the fathers of the nation. Rather, on the contrary, do these legends glorify the origin of the sanctuaries to which they are attached, and surround them with the nimbus of a venerable consecration. All the more as the altars, as a rule, are not built by the patriarchs according to their own private judgment wheresoever they please; on the contrary, a theophany calls attention to, or at least afterwards confirms, the holiness of the place. Jehovah appears at Shechem to Abraham, who thereupon builds the altar "to Jehovah who had appeared unto him;" he partakes of his hospitality under the oak of Mamre, which is the origin of the sacrificial service there; He shows him the place where he is to make an offering of his son, and here the sanctuary continues to exist. On the first night of Isaac's sleeping on the sacred soil of Beersheba (xxvi.24) he receives a visit from the Numen there residing, and in consequence rears his altar. Surprised by profane glances, Jehovah acts as a destroyer, but Himself spontaneously points out to His favoured ones the places where it is His pleasure to allow Himself to be seen; and where men have seen Him and yet lived, there a sanctuary marks the open way of access to Him. The substance of the revelation is in these cases comparatively indifferent: "I am God." What is of importance is the theophany in and for itself, its occurrence on that particular place. It must not be regarded as an isolated fact, but rather as the striking commencement of an intercourse [ R)H PNY YHWH ] between God and man which is destined to be continued at this spot, and also as the first and strongest expression of the sanctity of the soil. This way of looking at the thing appears most clearly and with incomparable charm in the story of the ladder which Jacob saw at Bethel. "He dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven, and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And he was afraid and said, How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." The ladder stands at the place not at this moment merely, but continually, and, as it were, by nature. Bethel--so Jacob perceives from this--is a place where heaven and earth meet, where the angels ascend and descend, to carry on the communication between earth and heaven ordained by God at this gate. All this is only to be understood as a glorification of the relations and arrangements of the cultus as we find them (say) in the first centuries of the divided kingdom. All that seems offensive and heathenish to a later age is here consecrated and countenanced by Jehovah Himself and His favoured ones,-- the high places, the memorial stones (maccceboth), the trees, the wells. /1/ ****************************** 1. But it is only the public cultus and that of certain leading sanctuaries that is thus glorified; on the other hand, the domestic worship of seraphim, to which the women are specially attached, is already discountenanced (in E) by Jacob. Asherim are not alluded to, molten images are rejected, particularly by E. Here perhaps a correction of the ancient legend has already taken place in JE. ************************************ An essential agreement prevails between the Jehovistic law which sanctions the existing seats of worship and the Jehovistic narrative; the latter is as regards its nucleus perhaps somewhat older. Both obviously belong to the pre-prophetic period; a later revision of the narrative in the prophetic sense has not altered the essential character of its fundamental elements. It is inconceivable that Amos or Hosea, or any like-minded person, could go with such sympathising love and believing reverence into narratives which only served to invest with a still brighter nimbus and higher respect the existing religious worship, carried on by the people on the high places of Isaac as their holiest occupation. I.II.2. The Jehovistic Book of the Covenant lies indeed at the foundation of Deuteronomy, but in one point they differ materially, and that precisely the one which concerns us here. As there, so here also, the legislation properly so called begins (Deut. xii.) with an ordinance relating to the service of the altar; but now we have Moses addressing the Israeites in the following terms: "When ye come into the land of Canaan, ye shall utterly destroy all the places of worship which ye find there, and ye shall not worship Jehovah your God after the manner in which the heathen serve theirs. Nay, but only unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes for His habitation shall ye seek, and thither shall ye bring your offerings and gifts, and there shall ye eat before Him and rejoice. Here at this day we do every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes, but when ye have found fixed abodes, and rest from your enemies round about, then shall the place which Jehovah shall choose for His habitation in one of your tribes be the one place to which ye shall bring your offerings and gifts. Take heed that ye offer not in every place that ye see; ye may not eat your holy gifts in every town, but only in the place which Jehovah shall choose." The Law is never weary of again and again repeating its injunction of local unity of worship. In doing so, it is in conscious opposition to "the things that we do here this day," and throughout has a polemical and reforming attitude towards existing usage. It is rightly therefore assigned by historical criticism to the period of the attacks made on the Bamoth by the reforming party at Jerusalem. As the Book of the Covenant, and the whole Jehovistic writing in genera], reflects the first pre-prophetic period in the history of the cultus, so Deuteronomy is the legal expression of the second period of struggle and transition. The historical order is all the more certain because the literary dependence of Deuteronomy on the Jehovistic laws and narratives can be demonstrated independently, and is an admitted fact. From this the step is easy to the belief that the work whose discovery gave occasion to King Josiah to destroy the local sanctuaries was this very Book of Deuteronomy, which originally must have had an independent existence, and a shorter form than at present. This alone, at least, of all the books of the Pentateuch, gives so imperious an expression to the restriction of the sacrificial worship to the one chosen place; here only does the demand make itself so felt in its aggressive novelty and dominate the whole tendency of the law-maker. The old material which he makes use of is invariably shaped with a view to this, and on all hands he follows the rule out to its logical consequences. To make its fulfilment possible, he changes former arrangements, permitting what had been forbidden, and prohibiting what had been allowed; in almost every case this motive lies at the foundation of all his other innovations. This is seen, for example, when he permits slaying without sacrificing, and that too anywhere; when, in order not to abolish the right of asylum (Exodus xxi.13, 14; 1Kings ii. 28) along with the altars, he appoints special cities of refuge for the innocent who are pursued by the avenger of blood; when he provides for the priests of the suppressed sanctuaries, recommending the provincials to take them along with them on their sacrificial pilgrimages, and giving them the right to officiate in the temple at Jerusalem just like the hereditarily permanent clergy there. In other respects also the dominance of the same point of view is seen: for example, it is chiefly from regard to it that the old ordinances and customs relating to the religious dues and the festivals are set forth in the form which they must henceforth assume. A law so living, which stands at every point in immediate contact with reality, which is at war with traditionary custom, and which proceeds with constant reference to the demands of practical life, is no mere velleity, no mere cobweb of an idle brain, but has as certainly arisen out of historical occasions as it is designed to operate powerfully on the course of the subsequent history. A judgment pronounced in accordance with the facts can therefore assign to it an historical place only within that movement of reformation which was brought to a victorious issue by King Josiah. I.II.3. It is often supposed that the Priestly Code is somewhat indifferent to the question of the one sanctuary, neither permitting multiplicity of sacrificial centres nor laying stress upon the unity, and that on account of this attitude it must be assigned to an earlier date than Deuteronomy. /1/ ************************************** 1. De Wette, in the fifth place of his Habilitationsschrift ueber das Deuteronomium (Jena, 1805): "De hoc unico cultus sacri loco... priores libri nihil omnino habent. De sacrificiis tantum unice ante tabernaculum conventus offerendis lex quaedam extat. Sed in legibus de diebus festis, de primitiis et decimis, tam saepe repetitis, nihil omnino monitum est de loco unico, ubi celebrari et offerri debeant " (Opusc. Theol, p. 163-165). **************************************** Such an idea is, to say the least, in the highest degree superficial. The assumption that worship is restricted to one single centre runs everywhere throughout the entire document. To appeal specially, in proof of the restriction, to Leviticus xvii. or Josh xxii., is to indicate a complete failure to apprehend the whole tenor of Exodus xxv.-Leviticus ix. Before so much as a single regulation having reference to the matter of worship can be given (such is the meaning of the large section referred to), the one rightful place wherein to engage in it must be specified. The tabernacle is not narrative merely, but, like all the narratives in that book, law as well; it expresses the legal unity of the worship as an historical fact, which, from the very beginning, ever since the exodus, has held good in Israel. One God one sanctuary, that is the idea. With the ordinances of the tabernacle, which form the sum of the divine revelation on Sinai, the theocracy was founded; where the one is, there is the other. The description of it, therefore, stands at the head of the Priestly Code, just as that of the temple stands at the head of the legislation in Ezekiel. It is the basis and indispensable foundation, without which all else would merely float in the air: first must the seat of the Divine Presence on earth be given before the sacred community can come into life and the cultus into force. Is it supposes that the tabernacle tolerates other sanctuaries besides itself? Why then the encampment of the twelve tribes around it, which has no military, but a purely religious significance, and derives its whole meaning from its sacred centre? Whence this concentration of all Israel into one great congregation [ QHL, (DH ], without its like anywhere else in the Old Testament? On the contrary, there is no other place besides this at which God dwells and suffers Himself to be seen; no place but this alone where man can draw near to Him and seek His face with offerings and gifts. This view is the axiom that underlies the whole ritual legislation of the middle part of the Pentateuch. It is indicated with special clearness by the LPNY (HL MW(D (before the tabernacle), introduced at every turn in the ordinances for sacrifice. What then are we to infer from this as to the historical place of the Priestly Code, if it be judged necessary to assign it such a place at all? By all the laws of logic it can no more belong to the first period than Deuteronomy does. But is it older or younger than Deuteronomy? In that book the unity of the cultus is COMMANDED, in the Priestly Code it is PRESUPPOSED. Everywhere it is tacitly assumed as a fundamental postulate, but nowhere does it find actual expression; /1/ it is nothing new, but quite a thing ******************************************* 1. Except in Leviticus xvii.; but the small body of legislation contained in Leviticus xvii-xxvi is the transition from Deuteronomy to the Priestly Code. ******************************** of course. What follows from this for the question before us? To my thinking, this:--that the Priestly Code rests upon the result which is only the aim of Deuteronomy. The latter is in the midst of movement and conflict: it clearly speaks out its reforming intention, its opposition to the traditional "what we do here this day;" the former stands outside of and above the struggle,--the end has been reached and made a secure possession. On the basis of the Priestly Code no reformation would ever have taken place, no Josiah would ever have observed from it that the actual condition of affairs was perverse and required to be set right; it proceeds as if everything had been for long in the best of order. It is only in Deuteronomy, moreover, that one sees to the root of the matter, and recognises its connection with the anxiety for a strict monotheism and for the elimination from the worship of the popular heathenish elements, and thus with a deep and really worthy aim; in the Priestly Code the reason of the appointments, in themselves by no means rational, rests upon their own legitimacy, just as everything that is actual ordinarily seems natural and in no need of explanation. Nowhere does it become apparent that the abolition of the Bamoth and Asherim and memorial stones is the real object contemplated; these institutions are now almost unknown, and what is really only intelligible as a negative and polemical ordinance is regarded as full of meaning in itself. The idea as idea is older than the idea as history. In Deuteronomy it appears in its native colours, comes forward with its aggressive challenge to do battle with the actual. One step indeed is taken towards investing it with an historical character, in so far as it is put into the mouth of Moses; but the beginning thus made keeps within modest limits. Moses only lays down the law; for its execution he makes no provision as regards his own time, nor does he demand it for the immediate future. Rather it is represented as not destined to come into force until the people shall have concluded the conquest of the country and secured a settled peace. We have already found reason to surmise that the reference to "menuha" is intended to defer the date when the Law shall come into force to the days of David and Solomon (1Kings viii.16). This is all the more probable inasmuch as there is required for its fulfilment "the place which Jehovah shall choose," by which only the capital of Judah can be meant. Deuteronomy, therefore, knows nothing of the principle that what ought to be must actually have been from the beginning. Until the building of Solomon's temple the unity of worship according to it had, properly speaking, never had any existence; and, moreover, it is easy to read between the lines that even after that date it was more a pious wish than a practical demand. The Priestly Code, on the other hand, is unable to think of religion without the one sanctuary, and cannot for a moment imagine Israel without it, carrying its actual existence back to the very beginning of the theocracy, and, in accordance with this, completely altering the ancient history. The temple, the focus to which the worship was concentrated, and which in reality was not built until Solomon's time, is by this document regarded as so indispensable, even for the troubled days of the wanderings before the settlement, that it is made portable, and in the form of a tabernacle set up in the very beginning of things. For the truth is, that the tabernacle is the copy, not the prototype, of the temple at Jerusalem. The resemblance of the two is indeed unmistakable, /1/ **************************** 1. In Wisdom of Solomon ix. 8 the temple is called MIMHMA SKHNHS HAGIAS. Josephus (Antiquities iii. 6,1) says of the tabernacle, (H D'OUDEN METAFEROMENOU NAOU DIEFERE. ******************************* but it is not said in 1Kings vi. that Solomon made use of the old pattern and ordered his Tyrian workmen to follow it. The posteriority of the Mosaic structure comes into clearer light from the two following considerations brought forward by Graf (p. 60 seq.). In the first place, in the description of the tabernacle mention is repeatedly made of its south, north, and west side, without any preceding rubric as to a definite and constantly uniform orientation; the latter is tacitly taken for granted, being borrowed from that of the temple, which was a fixed building, and did not change its site. In the second place, the brazen altar is, strictly speaking, described as an altar of wood merely plated with brass,--for a fireplace of very large size, upon which a strong fire continually burns, a perfectly absurd construction, which is only to be accounted for by the wish to make the brazen altar which Solomon cast (1Kings xvi. 14) transportable, by changing its interior into wood. The main point, however, is this, that the tabernacle of the Priestly Code in its essential meaning is not a mere provisional shelter for the ark on the march, but the sole legitimate sanctuary for the community of the twelve tribes prior to the days of Solomon, and so in fact a projection of the later temple. How modest, one might almost say how awkwardly bashful, is the Deuteronomic reference to the future place which Jehovah is to choose when compared with this calm matter-of-fact assumption that the necessary centre of unity of worship was given from the first! In the one case we have, so to speak, only the idea as it exists in the mind of the lawgiver, but making no claim to be realised till a much later date; in the other, the Mosaic idea has acquired also a Mosaic embodiment, with which it entered the world at the very first. By the same simple historical method which carries the central sanctuary back into the period before Solomon does the Priestly author abolish the other places of worship. His forty-eight Levitical cities are for the most part demonstrably a metamorphosis of the old Bamoth to meet the exigencies of the time. The altar which the tribes eastward of Jordan build (Josh. xxii.) is erected with no intention that it should be used, but merely in commemoration of something. Even the pre-Mosaic period is rendered orthodox in the same fashion. The patriarchs, having no tabernacle, have no worship at all; according to the Priestly Code they build no altars, bring no offerings, and scrupulously abstain from everything by which they might in any way encroach on the privilege of the one true sanctuary. This manner of shaping the patriarchal history is only the extreme consequence of the effort to carry out with uniformity in history the semper ubique et ab omnibus of the legal unity of worship. Thus in Deuteronomy the institution is only in its birth-throes, and has still to struggle for the victory against the praxis of the present, but in the Priestly Code claims immemorial legitimacy and strives to bring the past into conformity with itself, obviously because it already dominates the present; the carrying back of the new into the olden time always takes place at a later date than the ushering into existence of the new itself. Deuteronomy has its position in the very midst of the historical crisis, and still stands in a close relation with the older period of worship, the conditions of which it can contest, but is unable to ignore, and still less to deny. But, on the other hand, the Priestly Code is hindered by no survival to present times of the older usage from projecting an image of antiquity such as it must have been; unhampered by visible relics or living tradition of an older state, it can idealise the past to its heart's content. Its place, then, is after Deuteronomy, and in the third post-exilian period of the history of the cultus, in which, on the one hand, the unity of the sanctuary was an established fact, contested by no one and impugned by nothing, and in which, on the other hand, the natural connection between the present and the past had been so severed by the exile that there was no obstacle to prevent an artificial and ideal repristination of the latter. I.III. The reverse of this is what is usually held. In Deuteronomy, it is considered, there occur clear references to the period of the kings; but the Priestly Code, with its historical presuppositions, does not fit in with any situation belonging to that time, and is therefore older. When the cultus rests upon the temple of Solomon as its foundation, as in Ezekiel, then every one recognises the later date; but when it is based upon the tabernacle, the case is regarded as quite different. The great antiquity of the priestly legislation is proved by relegating it to an historical sphere, created by itself out of its own legal premisses, but which is nowhere to be found within, and therefore must have preceded actual history. Thus (so to speak) it holds itself up in the air by its own waistband. I.III.1. It may, however, seem as if hitherto it had only been asserted that the tabernacle rests on an historical fiction. In truth it is proved; but yet it may be well to add some things which have indeed been said long before now, but never as yet properly laid to heart. The subject of discussion, be it premised, is the tabernacle of the Priestly Code; for some kind of tent for the ark there may well have been: in fact, tents were in Palestine the earliest dwellings of idols (Hos. ix.6), and only afterwards gave place to fixed houses; and even the Jehovistic tradition (although not J) knows of a sacred tent /1/ ************************************* 1. It is never, however, employed for legislative purposes, but is simply a shelter for the ark; it stands without the camp, as the oldest sanctuaries were wont to do outside the cities. It is kept by Joshua as aedituus, who sleeps in it, as did Samuel the aedituus for Eli. **************************************** in connection with the Mosaic camp, and outside it, just as the older high places generally had open sites without the city. The question before us has reference exclusively to the particular tent which, according to Exodus xxv. seq., was erected at the command of God as the basis of the theocracy, the pre-Solomonic central sanctuary, which also in outward details was the prototype of the temple. At the outset its very possibility is doubtful. Very strange is the contrast between this splendid structure, on which the costliest material is lavished and wrought in the most advanced style of Oriental art, and the soil on which it rises, in the wilderness amongst the native Hebrew nomad tribes, who are represented as having got it ready offhand, and without external help. The incompatibility has long been noticed, and gave rise to doubts as early as the time of Voltaire. These may, however, be left to themselves; suffice it that Hebrew tradition, even from the time of the judges and the first kings, for which the Mosaic tabernacle was strictly speaking intended, knows nothing at all about it. It appears a bold thing to say so when one sees how much many a modern author who knows how to make a skilful use of the Book of Chronicles has to tell about the tabernacle. For in 2 Chron. i.3 seq. we are told that Solomon celebrated his accession to the throne with a great sacrificial feast at Gibeon, because the tabernacle and the brazen altar of Moses were there. In like manner in 1Chron. xxi.29 it is said that David offered sacrifice indeed on the threshing-floor of Araunah, but that Jehovah's dwelling-place and the legitimate altar were at that time at Gibeon; and further (xvi. 39), that Zadok, the legitimate high priest, officiated there. From these data the Rabbins first, and in recent times Keil and Movers especially, have constructed a systematic history of the tabernacle down to the building of the temple. Under David and Solomon, as long as the ark was on Mount Zion, the tabernacle was at Gibeon, as is also shown by the fact that (2Samuel xxi.6, 9) offerings were sacrificed to Jehovah there. Before that it was at Nob, where ephod and shewbread (1Samuel xxi.) are mentioned, and still earlier, from Joshua's time onward, it was at Shiloh. But these were only its permanent sites, apart from which it was temporarily set up now here, now there, saving by its rapidity of movement--one might almost say ubiquity--the unity of the cultus, notwithstanding the variety and great distances of the places at which that cultus was celebrated. In every case in which a manifestation of Jehovah and an offering to Him are spoken of, the tabernacle must be tacitly understood. /1/ ************************************ 1. Josh. xxiv. 24, 33 (LXX): after the death of Joshua and Eleazar, LABONTES (OI )UIOI )ISRAHL THN KIBWTON TOU QEOU PERIFEROSAN )EN )EAUTOIS. After J. Buxtorf and Sal. van Til (Ugol., Thes. viii.), this theory has been, worked out specially by Movers. See, on the other hand, De Wette, Beitraege, p. 108 seq., and Vatke, ut supra, p. 316, note. ************************************ The dogmatic character of this way of making history, and the absurd consequences to which it leads, need not in the meantime be insisted on; what is of greatest importance is that the point from which it starts is in the last degree insecure; for the statement of Chronicles that Solomon offered the offering of his accession upon the altar of the tabernacle at Gibeon is in contradiction with that of the older parallel narrative of 1Kings iii.1-4. The latter not only is silent about the Mosaic tabernacle, which is alleged to have stood at Gibeon, but expressly says that Solomon offered upon a high place (as such), and excuses him for this on the plea that at that time no house to the name of Jehovah had as yet been built. That the Chronicler draws from this narrative is certain on general grounds, and is shown particularly by this, that he designates the tabernacle at Gibeon by the name of Bamah--a contradictio in adjecto which is only to be explained by the desire to give an authentic interpretation of "the great Bamah at Gibeon" in 1Kings iii. Here, as elsewhere, he brings the history into agreement with the Law: the young and pious Solomon can have offered his sacrifice only at the legal place which therefore must be that high place at Gibeon. Along with 2 Chron. i.3 seq. also fall the two other statements (1Chron. xvi.39, xxi.29 both of which are dependent on that leading passage, as is clear revealed by the recurring phrase "the Bamah of Gibeon." The tabernacle does not elsewhere occur in Chronicles; it has not yet brought its consequences with it, and not yet permeated the historical view of the author. He would certainly have experienced some embarrassment at the question whether it had previously stood at Nob, for he lays stress upon the connection between the legitimate sanctuary and the legitimate Zadok-Eleazar priestly family, which it is indeed possible to assume for Shiloh, but not for Nob. /1/ ************************************ 1. Of the priests at Nob, Abiathar alone escaped the massacre (1Samuel. xxii.); Gad therefore was not one of them. ************************************ The fact that Chronicles represents the Israelite history in accordance with the Priestly Code has had the effect of causing its view of the history to be involuntarily taken as fundamental, but ought much rather to have caused it to be left altogether out of account where the object to ascertain what was the real and genuine tradition. The Books of Judges and Samuel make mention indeed of many sanctuaries, but never among them of the tabernacle, the most important of all. For the single passage where the name Ohel Moed occurs (1Samuel ii.22 is badly attested, and from its contents open to suspicion. /2/ ************************************** 2. The passage does not occur in the LXX, and everywhere else in 1Samueli-iii the sanctuary of Shiloh is called hekal, that is to say, certainly not a tent. *************************************** Of the existence of the ark of Jehovah there certainly are distinct traces towards the end of the period of the judges (compare 1Samuel iv.-vi.) But is the ark a guarantee of the existence of the tabernacle? On the contrary its whole history down to the period of its being deposited in the temple of Solomon is a proof that it was regarded as quite independent of any tent specially consecrated for its reception. But this abolishes the notion of the Mosaic tabernacle; for according to the law, the two things belong necessarily to each other; the one cannot exist without the other; both are of equally great importance. The tabernacle must everywhere accompany the symbol of its presence; the darkness of the holy of holies is at the same time the life-element of the ark; only under compulsion of necessity, and even then not except under the covering of the curtains, does it leave its lodging during a march, only to return to it again as soon as the new halting-place is reached. But according to 1Samuel iv. seq., on the other hand, it is only the ark that goes to the campaign; it alone falls into the hands of the Philistines. Even in chap. v., where the symbol of Jehovah is placed in the temple of Dagon at Ashdod, not a word is said of the tabernacle or of the altar which is necessarily connected with it; and chap. vi. is equally silent, although here the enemy plainly gives back the whole of his sacred spoil. It is assumed that the housing of the ark was left behind at Shiloh. Very likely; but that was not the Mosaic tabernacle, the inseparable companion of the ark. In fact, the narrator speaks of a permanent house at Shiloh with doors and doorposts; that possibly may be an anachronism /1/ (yet why ?) ; ***************************************** 1. Compare similar passages in Josh. vi.19, 24, ix.27, where the very anachronism shows that the idea of the tabernacle was unknown to the narrator. That, moreover. a permanent house did actually exist then at Shiloh follows from the circumstance that Jeremiah (vii. 12) speaks of its ruins. For he could not regard any other than a pre-Solomonic sanctuary as preceding that of Jerusalem; and besides, there is not the faintest trace of a more important temple having arisen at Shiloh within the period of the kings. ***************************************** but so much at least may be inferred from it that he had not any idea of the tabernacle, which, however, would have had to go with the ark to the field. If on this one occasion only an illegal exception to the Law was made, why in that case was not the ark, at least after its surrender, again restored to the lodging from which, strictly speaking, it ought never to have been separated at all? Instead of this it is brought to Bethshemesh, where it causes disaster, because the people show curiosity about it. Thence it comes to Kirjathjearim, where it stays for many years in the house of a private person. From here David causes it to be brought to Jerusalem,-- one naturally supposes, if one thinks in the lines of the view given in the Pentateuch and in Chronicles, in order that it may be at last restored to the tabernacle, to be simultaneously brought to Jerusalem. But no thought of this, however obvious it may seem, occurs to the king. In the first instance, his intention is to have the ark beside himself in the citadel; but he is terrified out of this, and, at a loss where else to put it, he at last places it in the house of one of his principal people, Obed-Edom of Gath. Had he known anything about the tabernacle, had he had any suspicion that it was standing empty at Gibeon, in the immediate neighbourhood, he would have been relieved of all difficulty. But inasmuch as the ark brings blessing to the house of Obed-Edom,--the ark, be it remembered, in the house of a soldier and a Philistine, yet bringing down, not wrath, but blessing,--/1/ ********************************************* 1. The Chronicle has good reason for making him a Levite. But Gath without any qualifying epithet, and particularly in connection with David, is the Philistine Gath, and Obed-Edom belongs to the bodyquard, which consisted chiefly of foreigners and Philistines. His name, moreover, is hardly Israelite. ********************************************** the king is thereby encouraged to persevere after all with his original proposal, and establish it upon his citadel. And this he does in a tent he had caused to be made for it (2Samuel vi.17), which tent of David in Zion continued to be its lodging until the temple was built. Some mention of the tabernacle, had it existed, would have been inevitable when the temple took its place. That it did not serve as the model of the temple has already been said; but it might have been expected at least that in the account of the building of the new sanctuary some word might have escaped about the whereabouts of the old. And this expectation seems to be realised in 1Kings viii.4, which says that when the temple was finished there were brought into it, besides the ark, the Ohel Moed and all the sacred vessels that were therein. Interpreters hesitate as to whether they ought to understand by the Ohel Moed the tent of the ark upon Zion, to which alone reference has been made in the preceding narrative (1Kings i.39, ii.28-30), or whether it is the Mosaic tent, which, according to Chronicles, was standing at Gibeon, but of which the Book of Kings tells nothing, and also knows nothing (iii.2-4). It is probable that the author of viii.4 mixed up both together; but we have to face the following alternative. Either the statement belongs to the original context of the narrative in which it occurs, and in that case the Ohel Moed can only be the tent on Mount Zion, or the Ohel Moed of 1Kings viii.4 is the Mosaic tabernacle which was removed from Gibeon into Solomon's temple, and in that case the allegation has no connection with its context, and does not hang together with the premisses which that furnishes; in other words, it is the interpolation of a later hand. The former alternative, though possible, is improbable, for the name Ohel Moed occurs absolutely nowhere in the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings (apart from the interpolation in 1Samuel ii.22b), and particularly it is not used to denote David's tent upon Mount Zion; and, moreover, that tent had received too little of the consecration of antiquity, and according to 2Samuel vii. was too insignificant and provisional to be thought worthy of preservation in the temple. But if the Ohel Moed is here (what it everywhere else is) the tabernacle, as is indicated also by the sacred vessels, then the verse is, as has been said, an interpolation. The motive for such a thing is easily understood; the same difficulty as that with which we set out must have made it natural for any Jew who started from the ideas of the Pentateuch to look for the tabernacle here, and, if he did not find it, to introduce it. Yet even the interpolation does not remove the difficulties. Where is the Mosaic altar of burnt-offering? It was quite as important and holy as the tabernacle itself; even in Chronicles it is invariably mentioned expressly in connection with it, and did not deserve to be permitted to go to ruin at Gibeon, which, from another point of view, would also have been extremely dangerous to the unity of the sacrificial worship. Further, if the sacred vessels were transferred from the tabernacle to the temple, why then was it that Solomon, according to 1Kings vii., cast a completely new set? /1/ ************************************* 1. The brazen altar cast by Solomon (1Kings viii.64; 2Kings xvi.14, 15) is not now found in the inventory of the temple furniture in 1Kings vii.; but originally it cannot have been absent, for it is the most important article. It has therefore been struck out in order to avoid collision with the brazen altar of Moses. The deletion is the negative counterpart to the interpolation of the tabernacle in 1Kings viii.4. *************************************** The old ones were costly enough, in part even costlier than the new, and, moreover, had been consecrated by long use. It is clear that in Solomon's time neither tabernacle, nor holy vessels, nor brazen altar of Moses had any existence. But if there was no tabernacle in the time of the last judges and first kings, as little was it in existence during the whole of the previous period. This is seen from 2Samuel vii., a section with whose historicity we have here nothing to do, but which at all events reflects the view of a pre-exilian author. It is there told that David, after he had obtained rest from all his enemies, contemplated building a worthy home for the ark, and expressed his determination to the prophet Nathan in the words, "I dwell in a house of cedar, and the ark of God within curtains." According to vi.17, he can only mean the tent which he had set up, that is to say, not the Mosaic tabernacle, which, moreover, according to the description of Exodus xxv. seq., could not appropriately be contrasted with a timber erection, still less be regarded as a mean structure or unworthy of the Deity, for in point of magnificence it at least competed with the temple of Solomon. Nathan at first approves of the king's intention, but afterwards discountenances it, saying that at present God does not wish to have anything different from that which He has hitherto had. "I have dwelt in no house since the day that I brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, but have wandered about under tent and covering." Nathan also, of course, has not in his eye the Mosaic tabernacle as the present lodging of the ark, but David's tent upon Zion. Now he does not say that the ark has formerly been always in the tabernacle, and that its present harbourage is therefore in the highest degree unlawful, but, on the contrary, that the present state of matters is the right one,--that until now the ark has invariably been housed under an equally simple and unpretentious roof. As David's tent does not date back to the Exodus, Nathan is necessarily speaking of changing tents and dwellings; the reading of the parallel passage in 1Chron. xvii.5, therefore, correctly interprets the sense. There could be no more fundamental contradiction to the representation contained in the Pentateuch than that embodied in these words: the ark has not as its correlate a single definite sacred tent of state, but is quite indifferent to the shelter it enjoys--has frequently changed its abode, but never had any particularly fine one. Such has been the state of matters since the time of Moses. Such is the position of affairs as regards the tabernacle; if it is determined that the age of the Priestly Code is to hang by these threads, I have no objection. The representation of the tabernacle arose out of the temple of Solomon as its root, in dependence on the sacred ark, for which there is early testimony, and which in the time of David, and also before it, was sheltered by a tent. From the temple it derives at once its inner character and its central importance for the cultus as well as its external form. I.III.2. A peculiar point of view is taken up by Theodor Noldeke. He grants the premisses that the tabernacle is a fiction, of which the object is to give pre-existence to the temple and to the unity of worship, but he denies the conclusion that in that case the Priestly Code presuppose; the unity of worship as already existing in its day, and therefore is late, than Deuteronomy. In his Untersuchungen zur Kritik des Alten Testaments (p. 127 seq.) he says:-- "A strong tendency towards unity of worship MUST have arisen as soon as Solomon's temple was built. Over against the splendid sanctuary with its imageless worship at the centre of the kingdom of Judah, the older holy places MUST ever have shrunk farther into the background, and that not merely in the eyes of the people, but quite specially also in those of the better classes and of those whose spiritual advancement was greatest (compare Amos iv. 4,viii.14). If even Hezekiah carried out the unification in Judah with tolerable thoroughness, the effort after it MUST surely have been of very early date; for the determination violently to suppress old sacred usages would not have been easily made, unless this had been long previously demanded by theory. The priests at Jerusalem MUST very specially at an early date have arrived at the conception that their temple with the sacred ark and the great altar was the one true place of worship, and an author has clothed this very laudable effort on behalf of the purity of religion in the form of a law, which certainly in its strictness was quite impracticable (ILeviticus xvii.4 seq.), and which, therefore, was modified later by the Deuteronomist with a view to practice." What MUST have happened is of less consequence to know than what actually took place. Noldeke relies solely upon the statement of 2Kings xviii.4, 22, that Hezekiah abolished the high places and altars of Jehovah, and said to Judah and Jerusalem, "Before this altar shall ye worship in Jerusalem." With reference to that statement doubts have already been raised above. How startling was the effect produced at a later date by the similar ordinance of Josiah! Is it likely then that the other, although the earlier, should have passed off so quietly and have left so little mark that the reinforcement of it, after an interval of seventy or eighty years, is not in the least brought into connection with it, but in every respect figures as a new first step upon a path until then absolutely untrodden? Note too how casual is the allusion to a matter which is elsewhere the chief and most favoured theme of the Book of Kings! And there is besides all this the serious difficulty, also already referred to above, that the man from whom Hezekiah must, from the nature of the case, have received the impulse to his reformatory movement, the prophet Isaiah, in one of his latest discourses expressly insists on a cleansing merely of the local sanctuaries from molten and graven images, that is to say, does not desire their complete removal. So much at least is certain that, if the alleged fact at present under discussion amounts to anything at all /1/ ********************************** 1. Little importance is to be attached to 2Kings xviii.22. The narrative of the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem is not a contemporary one, as appears generally from the entirely indefinite character of the statements about the sudden withdrawal of the Assyrians and its causes, and particularly from xix.7, 36, 37. For in this passage the meaning certainly is that Sennacherib was assassinated soon after the unsuccessful expedition of 701, but in point of fact he actually reigned until 684 or 681 (Smith, Assyrian Eponym Canon, pp. 90, 170). Thus the narrator writes not twenty years merely after the event, but so long after it as to make possible the elision of those twenty years: probably he is already under the influence of Deuteronomy. 2Kings xviii.4 is certainly of greater weight than 2Kings xviii.22. But although highly authentic statements have been preserved to us in the epitome of the Book of Kings, they have all, nevertheless, been subjected not merely to the selection, but also to the revision of the Deuteronomic redactor, and it may very well be that the author thought himself justified in giving his subject a generalised treatment, according to which the cleansing (of the temple at Jerusalem in the first instance) from idols, urged by Isaiah and carried out by Hezekiah, was changed into an abolition of the Bamoth with their Macceboth and Asherim. It is well known how indifferent later writers are to distinctions of time and degree in the heresy of unlawful worship; they always go at once to the completed product. But in actual experience the reformation was doubtless accomplished step by step. At first we have in Hosea and Isaiah the polemic directed against molten and graven images, then in Jeremiah that against wood and stone, i.e., against Macceboth and Asherim; the movement originated with the prophets, and the chief, or rather the only, weight is to be attached to their authentic testimony. ************************************* Hezekiah only made a feeble and wholly ineffectual attempt in this direction, and by no means "carried out the unification in Judah with tolerable thoroughness." At the same time, one might concede even this last point, and yet not give any ground for the theory at which Noldeke wishes to arrive. For his assumption is that the effort after unity had its old and original seat precisely in the priestly circles of Jerusalem. If the Priestly Code is older than Deuteronomy, then of course the prophetic agitation for reform of worship in which Deuteronomy had its origin must have been only the repetition of an older priestly movement in the same direction. But of the latter we hear not a single word, while we can follow the course of the former fairly well from its beginnings in thought down to its issue in a practical result. It was Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah who introduced the movement against the old popular worship of the high places; in doing so they are not in the least actuated by a deep-rooted preference for the temple of Jerusalem, but by ethical motives, which manifest themselves in them for the first time in history, and which we can see springing up in them before our very eyes: their utterances, though historically occasioned by the sanctuaries of northern Israel, are quite general, and are directed against the cultus as a whole. Of the influence of a point of view even remotely akin to the priestly position that worship in this or that special place is of more value than anywhere else, and on that account alone deserves to be preserved, no trace is to be found in them; their polemic is a purely prophetic one, i.e., individual, "theopneust" in the sense that it is independent of all traditional and preconceived human opinions. But the subsequent development is dependent upon this absolutely original commencement, and has its issue, not in the Priestly Code, but in Deuteronomy, a book that, with all reasonable regard for the priests (though not more for those of Jerusalem than for the others), still does not belie its prophetic origin, and above all things is absolutely free from all and every hierocratic tendency. And finally, it was Deuteronomy that brought about the historical result of Josiah's reformation. Thus the whole historical movement now under our consideration, so far as it was effective and thereby has come to our knowledge, is in its origin and essence prophetic, even if latterly it may have been aided by priestly influences; and it not merely can, but must be understood from itself. Any older or independent contemporary priestly movement in the same direction remained at least entirely without result, and so also has left no witnesses to itself. Perhaps it occurs to us that the priests of Jerusalem must after all have been the first to catch sight of the goal, the attainment of which afterwards brought so great advantage to themselves, but it does not appear that they were so clever beforehand as we are after the event. At least there are no other grounds for the hypothesis of a long previously latent tendency towards centralisation on the part of the Jerusalem priesthood beyond the presumption that the Priestiy Code must chronologically precede, not Deuteronomy merely, but also the prophets. For the sake of this presumption there is constructed a purely abstract (and as such perfectly irrefragable) possibility that furnishes a door of escape from the historical probability, which nevertheless it is impossible to evade. How absolutely unknown the Priestly Code continued to be even down to the middle of the exile can be seen from the Books of Kings, which cannot have received their present shape earlier than the death of Nebuchadnezzar. The redactor, who cites the Deuteronomic law and constantly forms his judgment in accordance with it, considered (as we have learned from 1Kings iii.2) that the Bamoth were permissible prior to the building of Solomon's temple; the tabernacle therefore did not exist for him. Jeremiah, who flourished about a generation earlier, is equally ignorant of it, but--on account of the ark, though not necessarily in agreement with traditional opinion--regards the house of God at Shiloh (whose ruins, it would seem, were at that time still visible) as the forerunner of the temple of Jerusalem, and in this he is followed by the anonymous prophecy of 1Samuel ii.27-36, the comparatively recent date of which appears from the language (ii.33), and from the circumstance that it anticipates the following threatening in iii. In all these writers, and still more in the case of the Deuteronomist himself, who in xii. actually makes the unity of the cultus dependent on the previous choice of Jerusalem, it is an exceedingly remarkable thing that, if the Priestly Code had been then already a long time in existence, they should have been ignorant of a book so important and so profound in its practical bearings. In ancient Hebrew literature such an oversight could not be made so easily as, in similar circumstances, with the literature of the present day. And how comes it to pass that in the Book of Chronicles, dating from the third century, the Priestly Code suddenly ceases to be, to all outward seeming, dead, but asserts its influence everywhere over the narrative in only too active and unmistakable a way? To these difficulties Noldeke is unreasonably indifferent. He seems to be of the opinion that the post-exilian time would not have ventured to take in hand so thoroughgoing an alteration, or rather reconstruction, of tradition as is implied in antedating the temple of Solomon by means of the tabernacle. /1/ ************************************************ 1. Jahrb. fuer prot. Theol., i. p. 352: "And now let me ask whether a document of this kind presenting, as it does, a picture of the history, land distribution, and sacrificial rites of Israel, as a whole, which in so many particulars departs from the actual truth, can belong to a time in which Israel clung to what was traditional with such timid anxiety?" ************************************************* But it is, on the contrary, precisely the mark which distinguished the post-exile writers that they treat in the freest possible manner, in accordance with their own ideas, the institutions of the bygone past, with which their time was no longer connected by any living bond. For what reason does Chronicles stand in the canon at all, if not in order to teach us this? But when Noldeke excuses the ignorance with regard to the tabernacle on the plea that it is a mere creature of the brain, /2/ ************************************* 1. Unters., p. 130: "It must always be remembered that the author in his statements, as in his laws, does not depict actual relations, but in the first instance his own theories and ideals. Hence the glorification of the tabernacle," &c. &c. ************************************* he for the moment forgets that there underlies this creation the very real idea of unity of worship, for the sake of which it would surely have been very welcome, to the Deuteronomist, for example, even as a mere idea. It is only the embodiment of the tabernacle that is fancy; the idea of it springs from the ground of history, and it is by its idea that it is to be apprehended. And when Noldeke finally urges in this connection as a plea for the priority of the Priestly Code that, in spite of the limitation of sacrifice to a single locality, it nevertheless maintains the old provision that every act of killing must be a sacrifice, while Deuteronomy, going a step farther, departs from this, here also his argument breaks down. For we read in Leviticus xvii., "What man soever there be of the house of Israel that killeth an ox or sheep or goat in the camp, or out of the camp, and bringeth it not to the door of the tabernacle, to offer them as an offering unto the Lord before the tabernacle of the Lord, blood shall be imputed unto that man: he hath shed blood, and that man shall be cut off from among his people: to the end that the children of Israel may bring their sacrifices which they offer in the open field, even that they may bring them to the Lord, to the door of the tabernacle, to the priest, and offer them for peace-offerings unto the Lord....And they shall no more offer sacrifices unto devils, after whom they have gone a whoring." The intention of this prescription is simply and solely to secure the exclusive legitimation of the one lawful place of sacrifice; it is only for this, obviously, that the profane slaughtering outside of Jerusalem, which Deuteronomy had permitted, is forbidden. Plainly the common man did not quite understand the newly drawn and previously quite unknown distinction between the religious and the profane act, and when he slaughtered at home (as he was entitled to do), he in doing so still observed, half-unconsciously perhaps, the old sacred sacrificial ritual. From this arose the danger of a multiplicity of altars again furtively creeping in, and such a danger is met, in an utterly impracticable way indeed, in Leviticus xvii. And it is worth noticing how much this law, which, for the rest, is based upon the Book of Deuteronomy, has grown in the narrowness of its legitimistic mode of viewing things. Deuteronomy thoroughly recognises that offerings, even though offered outside of Jerusalem, are still offered to Jehovah; for the author of Leviticus xvii. this is an impossible Idea, and he regards such offerings simply as made to devils. /1/ ************************************* 1. With reference to these rural demons, compare my note in Vakidi's Maghazi (Berlin, 1882), p. 113. It is somewhat similar, though not quite the same thing, when the Moslems say that the old Arabs dedicated their worship to the Jinns; and other instances may be compared in which divinities have been degraded to demons. ************************************ I refuse to believe that any such thing could have been possible for one who lived before the Deuteronomic reformation, or even under the old conditions that were in existence immediately before the exile. Leviticus xvii., moreover, belongs confessedly to a peculiar little collection of laws, which has indeed been taken up into the Priestly Code, but which in many respects disagrees with it, and particularly in respect of this prohibition of profane slaughterings. With reference to the Priestly Code as a whole, Noldeke's assertion is quite off the mark. The code, on the contrary, already allows slaughter without sacrifice in the precepts of Noah, which are valid not merely for all the world, but also for the Jews. Farther on this permission is not expressly repeated indeed, but it is regarded as a thing of course. This alone can account for the fact that the thank-offering is treated so entirely as a subordinate affair and the sacrificial meal almost ignored, while in Leviticus vii.22-27 rules are even given for procedure in the slaughter of such animals as are not sacrificed. /2/ *********************************** 2. That Leviticus vii.22-27 is not a repetition of the old and fuller regulations about the thank-offering, but an appendix containing new ones relating to slaughtering, is clear from "the beast of which men offer an offering unto the Lord" (ver. 25), and "in all your dwellings" (ver. z6), as well as from the praxis of Judaism. ********************************** Here accordingly is another instance of what we have already so often observed: what is brought forward in Deuteronomy as an innovation is assumed in the Priestly Code to be an ancient custom dating as far back as to Noah. And therefore the latter code is a growth of the soil that has been prepared by means of the former. CHAPTER II. SACRIFICE. With the Hebrews, as with the whole ancient world, sacrifice constituted the main part of worship. The question is whether their worship did not also in this most important respect pass through a history the stages of which are reflected in the Pentateuch. From the results already reached this must be regarded at the outset as probable, but the sources of information accessible to us seem hardly sufficient to enable us actually to follow the process, or even so much as definitely to fix its two termini. II.I.1. The Priestly Code alone occupies itself much with the subject; it gives a minute classification of the various kinds of offerings, and a description of the procedure to be followed in the case of each. In this way it furnishes also the normative scheme for modern accounts of the matter, into which all the other casual notices of the Old Testament on the subject must be made to fit as best they can. This point accordingly presents us with an important feature by which the character of the book can be determined. In it the sacrificial ritual is a constituent, and indeed a very essential element, of the Mosaic legislation: that ritual is not represented as ancient use handed down to the Israelites by living practice from ancestral times: it was Moses who gave them the theory of it--a very elaborate one too--and he himself received his instruction from God (Exodus xxv. seq.; Leviticus i. seq.). An altogether disproportionate emphasis is accordingly laid upon the technique of sacrifice corresponding to the theory, alike upon the when, the where, and the by whom, and also in a very special manner upon the how. It is from these that the sacrifice obtains its specific value; one could almost suppose that even if it were offered to another God, it would by means of the legitimate rite alone be at once made essentially Jehovistic. The cultus of Israel is essentially distinguished from all others by its form, the distinctive and constitutive mark of the holy community. With it the theocracy begins and it with the theocracy; the latter is nothing more than the institution for the purpose of carrying on the cultus after the manner ordained by God. For this reason also the ritual, which appears to concern the priests only, finds its place in a law-book intended for the whole community; in order to participate in the life of the theocracy, all must of course, have clear knowledge of its essential nature, and in this the theory of sacrifice holds a first place. The Jehovistic portion of the Pentateuch also knows of no other kind of divine worship besides the sacrificial, and does not attach to it less importance than the Priestly Code. But we do not find many traces of the view that the sacrificial system of Israel is distinguished from all others by a special form revealed to Moses, which makes it the [sic] alone legitimate. Sacrifice is sacrifice: when offered to Baal, it is heathenish; when offered to Jehovah, it is Israelite. In the Book of the Covenant and in both Decalogues it is enjoined before everything to serve no other God besides Jehovah, but also at the proper season to offer firstlings and gifts to Him. Negative determinations, for the most part directed against one heathenish peculiarity or another, occur but there are no positive ordinances relating to the ritual. How one is to set about offering sacrifice is taken for granted as already known, and nowhere figures as an affair for the legislation, which, on the contrary, occupies itself with quite other things. What the Book of the Covenant and the Decalogue leave still perhaps doubtful becomes abundantly clear from the Jehovistic narrative. The narrative has much more to say about sacrifice than the incorporated law books, and this may be regarded as characteristic; in the Priestly Code it is quite the other way. But what is specially important is that, according to the Jehovistic history, the praxis of sacrifice, and that too of the regular and God-pleasing sort, extends far beyond the Mosaic legislation, and, strictly speaking, is as old as the world itself. A sacrificial feast which the Hebrews wish to celebrate in the wilderness is the occasion of the Exodus; Moses already builds an altar at Rephidim (Exodus xvii.), and, still before the ratification of the covenant on Sinai, a solemn meal in the presence of Jehovah is set on foot on occasion of Jethro's visit (Exodus xviii.). But the custom is much older still; it was known and practiced by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Noah, the father of all mankind, built the first altar after the Flood, and long before him Cain and Abel sacrificed in the same way as was usual in Palestine thousands of years afterwards. Balaam the Aramaean understands just as well as any Israelite how to offer sacrifices to Jehovah that do not fail of their effect. All this brings out, with as much clearness as could be desired, that sacrifice is a very ancient and quite universal mode of honouring the Deity, and that Israelite sacrifice is distinguished not by the manner in which, but by the being to whom, it is offered, in being offered to the God of Israel. According to this representation of the matter, Moses left the procedure in sacrifice, as he left the procedure in prayer, to be regulated by the traditional praxis; if there was any definite origination of the cultus of Israel, the patriarchs must be thought of, but even they were not the discoverers of the ritual; they were merely the founders of those holy places at which the Israelites dedicated gifts to Jehovah, a usage which was common to the whole world. The contrast with the Priestly Code is extremely striking, for it is well known that the latter work makes mention of no sacrificial act prior to the time of Moses, neither in Genesis nor in Exodus, although from the time of Noah slaughtering is permitted. The offering of a sacrifice of sheep and oxen as the occasion of the exodus is omitted, and in place of the sacrifice of the firstlings we have the paschal lamb, which is slaughtered and eaten without altar, without priest, and not in the presence of Jehovah. /1/ ******************************************* 1. With regard to sacrifice, Deuteronomy still occupies the same standpoint as JE. ******************************************* The belief that the cultus goes back to pre-Mosaic usage is unquestionably more natural than the belief that it is the main element of the Sinaitic legislation; the thought would be a strange one that God should suddenly have revealed, or Moses discovered and introduced, the proper sacrificial ritual. At the same time this does not necessitate the conclusion that the Priestly Code is later than the Jehovist. Nor does this follow from the very elaborately-developed technique of the agenda, for elaborate ritual may have existed in the great sanctuaries at a very early period,--though that, indeed, would not prove it to be genuinely Mosaic. On the other hand, it is certainly a consideration deserving of great weight that the representation of the exclusive legitimacy of so definite a sacrificial ritual, treated in the Priestly Code as the only possible one in Israel, is one which can have arisen only as a consequence of the centralisation of the cultus at Jerusalem. Yet by urging this the decision of the question at present before us would only be referred back to the result already arrived at in the preceding chapter, and it is much to be desired that it should be solved independently, so as not to throw too much weight upon a single support. II.I.2. In this case also the elements of a decision can only be obtained from the historical documents dating from the pre-exilic time,--the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings on the one hand, and the writings of the prophets on the other. As regards those of the first class, they represent the cultus and sacrifice on all occasions as occupying a large place in the life of the nation and of the individual. But, although it would be wrong to say that absolutely no weight is attached to the RITE, it is certainly not the fact that the main stress is laid upon it; the antithesis is not between RITE and NON-RITE, but between sacrifice TO JEHOVAH and sacrifice TO STRANGE GODS, the reverse of what we find in the Priestly Code. Alongside of splendid sacrifices, such as those of the kings, presumably offered in accordance with all the rules of priestly skill, there occur others also of the simplest and most primitive type, as, for example, those of Saul (1Samuel xiv.35) and Elisha (1Kings xix.2I); both kinds are proper if only they be dedicated to the proper deity. Apart from the exilian redaction of the Book of Kings, which reckons the cultus outside of Jerusalem as heretical, it is nowhere represented that a sacrifice could be dedicated to the God of Israel, and yet be illegitimate. Naaman (2Kings v. 17), it is to be supposed, followed his native Syrian ritual, but this does not in the least impair the acceptability of his offering. For reasons easily explained, it is seldom that an occasion arises to describe the ritual, but when such a description is given it is only with violence that it can be forced into accordance with the formula of the law. Most striking of all is the procedure of Gideon in Judges vi.19-21, in which it is manifest that the procedure still usual at Ophrah in the time of the narrator is also set forth. Gideon boils a he-goat and bakes in the ashes cakes of unleavened bread, places upon the bread the flesh in a basket and the broth in a pot, and then the meal thus prepared is burnt in the altar flame. It is possible that instances may have also occurred in which the rule of the Pentateuch is followed, but the important point is that the distinction between legitimate and heretical is altogether wanting. When the Book of Chronicles is compared the difference is at once perceived. The impression derived from the historical books is confirmed by the prophets. It is true that in their polemic against confounding worship with religion they reveal the fact that in their day the cultus was carried on with the utmost zeal and splendour, and was held in the highest estimation. But this estimation does not rest upon the opinion that the cultus, as regards its matter, goes back to Moses or to Jehovah Himself, gives to the theocracy its distinctive character, and even constitutes the supernatural priesthood of Israel among the nations, but simply upon the belief that Jehovah must be honoured by His dependents, just as other gods are by their subjects, by means of offerings and gifts as being the natural and (like prayer) universally current expressions of religious homage. The larger the quantity, and the finer the quality, so much the better; but that the merit arising from the presentation depends upon strict observance of etiquette regarded as Jehovah's law is not suggested. Thus it is that the prophets are able to ask whether then Jehovah has commanded His people to tax their energies with such exertions? the fact presupposed being that no such command exists, and that no one knows anything at all about a ritual Torah. Amos, the leader of the chorus, says (iv.4 seq.), "Come to Bethel to sin, to Gilgal to sin yet more, and bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days, for so ye like, ye children of Israel." In passing sentence of rejection upon the value of the cultus he is in opposition to the faith of his time; but if the opinion had been a current one that precisely the cultus was what Jehovah had instituted in Israel, he would not have been able to say, "For so ye like." "Ye," not Jehovah; it is an idle and arbitrary worship. He expresses himself still more clearly in v.21 seq. "I hate, I despise your feasts, and I smell not on your holy days; though ye offer me burnt-offerings and your gifts, I will not accept them; neither do I regard your thank-offerings of fatted calves. Away from me with the noise of thy songs, the melody of thy viols I will not hear; but let judgment roll on like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. Did ye offer unto me sacrifices and gifts in the wilderness the forty years, O house of Israel?" In asking this last question Amos has not the slightest fear of raising any controversy; on the contrary, he is following the generally received belief. His polemic is directed against the praxis of his contemporaries, but here he rests it upon a theoretical foundation in which they are at one with him,--on this, namely, that the sacrificial worship is not of Mosaic origin. Lastly, if ii.4 be genuine, it teaches the same lesson. By the Law of Jehovah which the people of Judah have despised it is impossible that Amos can have understood anything in the remotest degree resembling a ritual legislation. Are we to take it then that he formed his own special private notion of the Torah? How in that case would it have been possible for him to make himself understood by the people, or to exercise influence over them? Of all unlikely suppositions, at all events it is the least likely that the herdsman of Tekoah, under the influence of prophetic tradition (which in fact he so earnestly disclaims), should have taken the Torah for something quite different from what it actually was. Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah are in agreement with Amos. The first mentioned complains bitterly (iv.6 seq.) that the priests cultivate the system of sacrifices instead of the Torah. The Torah, committed by Jehovah to their order, lays it on them as their vocation to diffuse the knowledge of God in Israel,--the knowledge that He seeks truthfulness and love, justice and considerateness, and no gifts; but they, on the contrary, in a spirit of base self-seeking, foster the tendency of the nation towards cultus, in their superstitions over-estimate of which lies their sin and their ruin. "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; ye yourselves (ye priests!) reject knowledge, and I too will reject you that ye shall not be priests unto me; seeing ye have forgotten the law of your God, so will I also forget you. The more they are, the more they sin against me; their glory they barter for shame. They eat the sin of my people, and they set their heart on their iniquity." From this we see how idle it is to believe that the prophets opposed "the Law;" they defend the priestly Torah, which, however, has nothing to do with cultus, but only with justice and morality. In another passage (viii.11 seq.) we read, "Ephraim has built for himself many altars, to sin; the altars are there for him, to sin. How many soever my instructions (torothai) may be, they are counted those of a stranger." This text has had the unmerited misfortune of having been forced to do service as a proof that Hosea knew of copious writings similar in contents to our Pentateuch. All that can be drawn from the contrast "instead of following my instructions they offer sacrifice" (for that is the meaning of the passage) is that the prophet had never once dreamed of the possibility of cultus being made the subject of Jehovah's directions. In Isaiah's discourses the well-known passage of the first chapter belongs to this connection: "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord. I am weary with the burnt-offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts, and I delight not in the blood of bullocks and of lambs and of he-goats. When ye come to look upon my face, who hath required this at your hands?--to trample my courts!" This expression has long been a source of trouble, and certainly the prophet could not possibly have uttered it if the sacrificial worship had, according to any tradition whatever, passed for being specifically Mosaic. Isaiah uses the word Torah to denote not the priestly but the prophetical instruction (i.10, ii.3, v.24, viii.16, 20, xxx.9); as both have a common source and Jehovah is the proper instructor (xxx.20), this is easily explicable, and is moreover full of instruction as regards the idea involved; the contents of the Priestly Code fit badly in with the Torah of i.10. Lastly, Micah's answer to the people's question, how a return of the favour of an angry God is to be secured, is of conspicuous significance (vi.6 seq.): "Shall I come before Him with burnt-offerings with calves of a year old? Is the Lord pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body as atonement for my soul?--It hath been told thee, O man, what is good, and what Jehovah requireth of thee. Nay, it is to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly before thy God." Although the blunt statement of the contrast between cultus and religion is peculiarly prophetic, Micah can still take his stand upon this, "It hath been told thee, O man, what Jehovah requires." It is no new matter, but a thing well known, that sacrifices are not what the Torah of the Lord contains. That we have not inferred too much from these utterances of the older prophets is clear from the way in which they are taken up and carried on by Jeremiah, who lived shortly before the Babylonian exile. Just as in vi.19 seq. he opposes the Torah to the cultus, so in vii.11 seq. he thus expresses himself: "Add your burnt-offerings to your sacrifices, and eat flesh! For I said nought unto your fathers, and commanded them nought, in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices. But this thing commanded I them: hearken to my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people, and walk ye in the way that I shall always teach you, that it may be well with you." The view indeed, that the prophets (who, from the connection, are the ever-living voice to which Israel is to hearken) are the proper soul of the theocracy, the organ by which Jehovah influences and rules it, has no claim to immemorial antiquity. But no stress lies upon the positive element here; enough that at all events Jeremiah is unacquainted with the Mosaic legislation as it is contained in the Priestly Code. His ignoring of it is not intentional, for he is far from hating the cultus (xvii.26). But, as priest and prophet, staying continually in the temple at Jerusalem, he must have known it, if it had existed and actually been codified. The fact is one which it is difficult to get over. Thus the historical witnesses, particularly the prophets, decide the matter in favour of the Jehovistic tradition. According to the universal opinion of the pre-exilic period, the cultus is indeed of very old and (to the people) very sacred usage, but not a Mosaic institution; the ritual is not the main thing in it, and is in no sense the subject with which the Torah deals. /1/ ********************************* 1. That the priests were not mere teachers of law and morals, but also gave ritual instruction (e.g, regarding cleanness and uncleanness), is of course not denied by this. All that is asserted is that in pre-exilian antiquity the priests' own praxis (at the altar) never constituted the contents of the Torah, but that their Torah always consisted of instructions to the laity. The distinction is easily intelligible to those who choose to understand it. ******************************** In other words, no trace can be found of acquaintance with the Priestly Code, but, on the other hand, very clear indications of ignorance of its contents. II.I.3. In this matter the transition from the pre-exilic to the post-exilic period is effected, not by Deuteronomy, but by Ezekiel the priest in prophet's mantle, who was one of the first to be carried into exile. He stands in striking contrast with his elder contemporary Jeremiah. In the picture of Israel's future which he drew in B.C. 573 (chaps. xl.-xlviii.), in which fantastic hopes are indeed built upon Jehovah, but no impossible demand made of man, the temple and cultus hold a central place. Whence this sudden change? Perhaps because now the Priestly Code has suddenly awakened to life after its long trance, and become the inspiration of Ezekiel? The explanation is certainly not to be sought in any such occurrence, but simply in the historical circumstances. So long as the sacrificial worship remained in actual use, it was zealously carried on, but people did not concern themselves with it theoretically, and had not the least occasion for reducing it to a code. But once the temple was in ruins, the cultus at an end, its PERSONNEL out of employment, it is easy to understand how the sacred praxis should have become a matter of theory and writing, so that it might not altogether perish, and how an exiled priest should have begun to paint the picture of it as he carried it in his memory, and to publish it as a programme for the future restoration of the theocracy. Nor is there any difficulty if arrangements, which as long as they were actually in force were simply regarded as natural, were seen after their abolition in a transfiguring light, and from the study devoted to them gained artificially a still higher value. These historical conditions supplied by the exile sufffice to make clear the transition from Jeremiah to Ezekiel, and the genesis of Ezekiel xl.-xlviii. The co-operation of the Priestly Code is here not merely unnecessary, it would be absolutely disconcerting. Ezekiel's departure from the ritual of the Pentateuch cannot be explained as intentional alterations of the original; they are too casual and insignificant. The prophet, moreover, has the rights of authorship as regards the end of his book as well as for the rest of it; he has also his right to his picture of the future as the earlier prophets had to theirs. And finally, let its due weight be given to the simple fact that an exiled priest saw occasion to draft such a sketch of the temple worship. What need would there have been for it, if the realised picture, corresponding completely to his views, had actually existed, and, being already written in a book, wholly obviated any danger lest the cultus should become extinct through the mere fact of its temporary cessation? Here again a way of escape is open by assuming a lifeless existence of the law down to Ezra's time. But if this is done it is unallowable to date that existence, not from Moses, but from some other intermediate point in the history of Israel. Moreover, the assumption of a codification either as preceding all praxis, or as alongside and independent of it, is precisely in the case of sacrificial ritual one of enormous difficulty, for it is obvious that such a codification can only be the final result of an old and highly developed use, and not the invention of an idle brain. This consideration also makes retreat into the theory of an illegal praxis impossible, and renders the legitimacy of the actually subsisting indisputable. II.II. At all times, then, the sacrificial worship of Israel existed, and had great importance attached to it, but in the earlier period it rested upon custom, inherited from the fathers, in the post-exilian on the law of Jehovah, given through Moses. At first it was naive, and what was chiefly considered was the quantity and quality of the gifts; afterwards it became legal,--the scrupulous fulfilment of the law, that is, of the prescribed ritual, was what was looked to before everything. Was there then, apart from this, strictly speaking, no material difference? To answer this question our researches must be carried further afield, after some preliminary observations have been made in order to fix our position. II.II.1. In the Pentateuch the sacrificial ritual is indeed copiously described, but nowhere in the Old Testament is its significance formally explained; this is treated as on the whole self-evident and familiar to every one. The general notion of a sacrifice is in the Priestly Code that of _qorban_, in the rest of the Old Testament that of _minha_, /1/ ie., "gift;" *************************************** 1. Genesis iv. 3-5, Numbers xvi. 15; 1Samuel ii. 17, 29, xxvi. 19; Isaiah i. 13; Malachi i. 10-13, ii. 12, 13, iii. 3, 4. In the Priestly Code _minha_ is exclusively a terminus technicus for the meal-offering. The general name in the LXX and in the New Testament is DWRON (Matthew v. 23-24, viii. 4, xv. 5, xxiii. 18, 19). Compare Spencer, "De ratione et origine sacrificiorum" (De Legibus Hebraeorum ritualibus, iii.2), by far the best thing that has ever been written on the subject. *************************************** the corresponding verbs are _haqrib_ and _haggish_, i.e., "to bring near." Both nouns and both verbs are used originally for the offering of a present to the king (or the nobles) to do him homage, to make him gracious, to support a petition (Judges iii. 17 seq.; 1Samuel x. 27; 1Kings v. 1 [A.V. iv.21]), and from this are employed with reference to the highest King (Malachi i.8). DWRA QEOUS PEIQAI, DWR' )AIDOIOUS BASILHAS The gift must not be unseasonably or awkwardly thrust upon the recipient, not when the king's anger is at white heat, and not by one the sight of whom he hates. With respect to the matter of it, the idea of a sacrifice is in itself indifferent, if the thing offered only have value of some sort, and is the property of the offerer. Under _qorban_ and _minha_ is included also that which the Greeks called _anathema_. The sacred dues which at a later date fall to the priest were without doubt originally ordinary offerings, and amongst these are found even wool and flax (Deut. xviii. 4; Hos. ii. 7, 11 [A.V. 5, 9] ). But it is quite in harmony with the naivete of antiquity that as to man so also to God that which is eatable is by preference offered; in this there was the additional advantage, that what God had caused to grow was thus rendered back to Him. In doing this, the regular form observed is that a meal is prepared in honour of the Deity, of which man partakes as God's guest. Offering without any qualifying expression always means a meat or drink offering. On this account the altar is called a table, on this account also salt goes along with flesh, oil with meal and bread, and wine with both; and thus also are we to explain why the flesh, according to rule, is put upon the altar in pieces and (in the earlier period) boiled, the corn ground or baked. Hence also the name "bread of Jehovah" for the offering (Leviticus xxi.22). It is of course true that "in his offering the enlightened Hebrew saw no banquet to Jehovah:" but we hardly think of taking the enlightened Protestant as a standard for the original character of Protestantism. The manner in which the portions pertaining to God are conveyed to Him varies. The most primitive is the simple "setting in order" [ (RK, struere] and "pouring out" [#pk, fundere) in the case of the shewbread and drink offerings; to this a simple eating and drinking would correspond. But the most usual is burning, or, as the Hebrews express it, "making a savour" (HQ+YR), to which corresponds the more delicate form of enjoyment, that of smelling. Originally, however, it is God Himself who consumes what the flame consumes. In any case the burning is a means of conveying the offering, not, as one might perhaps be disposed to infer from the "sweet savour" (RYX HNYXX Genesis viii.21), a means of preparing it. For in ancient times the Hebrews did not roast the flesh, but boiled it; in what is demonstrably the oldest ritual (Judges vi. 19), the sacrifice also is delivered to the altar flame boiled; and, moreover, not the flesh only but also the bread and the meal are burnt. As regards the distinction between bloodless and bloody offerings, the latter, it is well known, are preferred in the Old Testament, but, strictly speaking, the former also have the same value and the same efficacy. The incense-offering is represented as a means of propitiation (Leviticus xvi., Numbers xvii. 12 [A.V. xvi. 47] ), so also are the ten thousands of rivers of oil figuring between the thousands of rams and the human sacrifice in Micah vi. That the cereal offering is never anything but an accompaniment of the animal sacrifice is a rule which does not hold, either in the case of the shewbread or in that of the high priest's daily minxa (Leviticus vi. 13 [A.V. 20]; Nehemiahx.35). Only the drink-offering has no independent position, and was not in any way the importance it had among the Greeks. When a sacrifice is killed, the offering consists not of the blood but of the eatable portions of the flesh. Only these can be designated as the "bread of Jehovah," and, moreover, only the eatable domestic animals can be presented. At the same time, however, it is true that in the case of the bloody offerings a new motive ultimately came to be associated with the original idea of the gift. The life of which the blood was regarded as the substance (2Samuel xxiii.17) had for the ancient Semites something mysterious and divine about it; they felt a certain religious scruple about destroying it. With them flesh was an uncommon luxury, and they ate it with quite different feelings from those with which they partook of fruits or of milk. Thus the act of killing was not so indifferent or merely preparatory a step as for example the cleansing and preparing of corn; on the contrary, the pouring out of blood was ventured upon only in such a way as to give it back to the Deity, the source of life. In this way, not by any means every meal indeed, but every slaughtering, came to be a sacrifice. What was primarily aimed at in it was a mere restoration of His own to the Deity, but there readily resulted a combination with the idea of sacrifice, whereby the latter was itself modified in a peculiar manner. The atoning efficacy of the gift began to be ascribed mainly to the blood and to the vicarious value of the life taken away. The outpouring and sprinkling of blood was in all sacrifices a rite of conspicuous importance, and even the act of slaughtering in the case of some, and these the most valued, a holy act. II.II.2. The features presented by the various literary sources harmonise with the foregoing sketch. But the Priestly Code exhibits some peculiarities by which it is distinguished from the pre-exilian remains in matters sacrificial. In the first place, it is characterised in the case of bloodless offerings by a certain refinement of the material. Thus in the meal-offerings it will have SLT (simila) not QMX (far). In the whole pre-exilian literature the former is mentioned only three times altogether, but never in connection with sacrifice, where, on the contrary, the ordinary meal is used (Judges vi. 19; 1Samuel i. 24). That this is no mere accident appears on the one hand from the fact that in the later literature, from Ezekiel onwards, QMX as sacrificial meal entirely disappears, and SLT invariably take its place; on the other hand, from this that the LXX (or the Hebrew text from which that version was taken) is offended by the illegality of the material in 1Samuel i. 24, and alters the reading so as to bring it to conformity with the Law. /1/ *************************************** 1. Ezekiel xvi. 13, 19, xlvi. 14; I Chronicles ix. 29, xxiii. 22; Ecclus. xxxv.2, xxxviii. 11, xxxix. 32; Isaiah i. 13 (LXX); lxvi. 3 (LXX). In the Priestly Code slt occurs more than forty times. ************************************** So also a striking preference is shown for incense. With every meal-offering incense is offered upon the altar; in the inner sanctuary a special mixture of spices is employed, the accurately given recipe for which is not to be followed for private purposes. The offering of incense is the privilege of the higher priesthood; in the ritual of the great Day of Atonement, the sole one in which Aaron must discharge the duties in person, it occupies a conspicuous place. It has an altogether dangerous sanctity; Aaron's own sons died for not having made use of the proper fire. It is the cause of death and destruction to the Levites of Korah's company who are not entitled to use it, while immediately afterwards, in the hands of the legitimate high priest, it becomes the means of appeasing the anger of Jehovah, and of staying the plague. Now of this offering, thus invested with such a halo of sanctity, the older literature of the Jewish Canon, down to Jeremiah and Zephaniah, knows absolutely nothing. The verb Q++R there used invariably and exclusively of the BURNING of fat or meal, and thereby making to God a sweet-smelling savour; it is never used to denote the OFFERING OF INCENSE, and the substantive Q+RT as a sacrificial term has the quite general signification of that which is burnt on the altar. /2/ ************************************** 2. The verb is used in _piel_ by the older writers, in _hiphil_ by the Priestly Code (Chronicles), and promiscuously in both forms during the transition period by the author of the Books of Kings. This is the case, at least, where the forms can with certainty be distinguished, namely, in the perfect, imperative, and infinitive; the distinction between YQ+R and YQ+YR, MQ+R and MQ+YR rests, as is well known, upon no secure tradition. Compare, for example, _qatter jaqtirun_, 1Samuel ii. 16; the transcribers and punctuators under the influence of the Pentateuch preferred the hiphil. In the Priestly Code (Chronicles) HQ+YR has both meanings alongside of each other, but when used without a qualifying phrase it generally means incensing, and when consuming a sacrifice is intended HMZBXH is usually added, "on the altar," that is, the place on which the incense-offering strictly so called was NOT offered. The substantive Q+RT in the sense of "an offering of incense" in which it occurs exclusively and very frequently in the Priestly Code, is first found in Ezekiel (viii. 11, xvi. 18, xxiii. 41) and often afterwards in Chronicles, but in the rest of the Old Testament only in Proverbs xxvii. 9, but there in a profane sense. Elsewhere never, not even in passages so late as 1Samuel ii.28; Psalms lxvi. 15, cxli. 2. In authors of a certainly pre-exilian date the word occurs only twice, both times in a perfectly general sense. Isaiah i. 13: "Bring me no more oblations; it is an abominable incense to me." Deuteronomy xxxiii. 10: "The Levites shall put incense (i.e.,the fat of thank-offerings) before thee, and whole burnt-offerings upon thine altar." The name LBNT (frankincense) first occurs in Jeremiah (vi. 20, xvii. 26, xli. 5); elsewhere only in the Priestly Code (nine times), in Isaiah xl.-lxvi. (three times), in Chronicles and Nehemiah (three times), and in Canticles (three times). Compare Zephaniah iii. 10; 1Kings ix. 25. ************************************ In enumerations where the prophets exhaust everything pertaining to sacred gifts and liturgic performances, in which, for the sake of lengthening the catalogue, they do not shrink from repetitions even, there is not any mention of incense-offerings, neither in Amos (iv. 4 seq., v. 21 seq.) nor in Isaiah (i. 11 seq.) nor in Micah (vi. 6 seq.). Shall we suppose that they all of them forget this subject by mere accident, or that they conspired to ignore it? If it had really existed, and been of so great consequence, surely one of them at least would not have failed to speak of it. The Jehovistic section of the Hexateuch is equally silent, so also the historical books, except Chronicles, and so the rest of the prophets, down to Jeremiah, who (vi.20) selects incense as the example of a rare and far-fetched offering: "To what purpose cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and the precious cane from a far country?" Thenceforward it is mentioned in Ezekiel, in Isaiah (xl.-lxvi.), in Nehemiah, and in Chronicles; the references are continuous. The introduction of incense is a natural result of increased luxury; one is tempted to conjecture that its use must have first crept into the Jehovah worship as an innovation from a more luxuriously-developed foreign cultus. But the importance which it has attained in the ritual legislation of the Pentateuch is manifest above all from this, that it has led to the invention of a peculiar new and highly sacred piece of furniture, namely, the golden altar in the inner tabernacle, which is unknown to history, and which is foreign even to the kernel of the Priestly Code itself. We expect to find the altar of incense in Exodus xxv.-xxix., but find it instead as an appendix at the beginning of Exodus xxx. Why not until now? why thus separated from the other furnishings of the inner sanctuary? and not only so, but even after the ordinances relating to the adornment of the priests, and the inauguration of the divine service? The reason why the author of chaps. xxv.-xxix. is thus silent about the altar of incense in the passage in which the furniture of the tabernacle, consisting of ark, table, and candlestick, is described, is, that he does not know of it. There is no other possibility; for he cannot have forgotten it. /1/ *************************************** 1. There is a peculiar perversity in meeting the objection by alleging other singularities in the ordinance as for example, that the vessels of the tabernacle are appointed (chap. xxv.) before the tabernacle itself (chap. xxvi.). This last is no eccentricity; the order in commanding is first the end, and then the means; but in obeying, the order is reversed. In like manner, it is not at all surprising if subsidiary implements, such as benches for slaughtering. or basins for washing, which have no importance for the cultus, properly so called, should be either passed over altogether, or merely brought in as an appendix. The case is not at all parallel with the omission of the most important utensil of the sanctuary from the very passage to which it necessarily belongs. ***************************************** And the phenomenon is repeated; the altar of incense occurs only in certain portions of the Priestly Code, and is absent from others where it could not possibly have been omitted, had it been known. The rite of the most solemn atoning sacrifice takes place in Leviticus iv. indeed on the golden altar, but in Exodus xxix., Leviticus viii., ix., without its use. A still more striking circumstance is, that in passages where the holiest incense-offering itself is spoken of, no trace can be discovered of the corresponding altar. This is particularly the case in Leviticus xvi. To burn incense in the sanctuary, Aaron takes a censer, fills it with coals from the altar of burnt-offering (ver. 12, 18-20), and lays the incense upon them in the adytum. Similarly in Leviticus x., Numbers xvi., xvii., incense is offered on censers, of which each priest possesses one. The coals are taken from the altar of burnt-offering (Numbers xvii. 11; [A.V. xvi. 46]), which is plated with the censers of the Korahite Levites (xvii. 3, 4; [A.V. xvi. 38, 39]); whoever takes fire from any other source, incurs the penalty of death (Leviticus x. 1 seq.). The altar of incense is everywhere unknown here; the altar of burnt-offering is the only altar, and, moreover, is always called simply 'the altar', as for example, even in Exodus xxvii., where it would have been specially necessary to add the qualifying expression. Only in certain later portions of the Priestly Code does the name altar of burnt-offering occur, viz, in those passages which do recognise the altar of incense. In this connection the command of Exodus xxvii. as compared with the execution in Exodus xxxviii. is characteristic. The golden altar in the sanctuary is originally simply the golden table; the variation of the expression has led to a doubling of the thing. Ezekiel does not distinguish between the table and the altar in the temple, but uses either expression indifferently. For he says (xii.21 seq. ): "Before the adytum stood what looked like an altar of wood, three cubits in height, two cubits in length and breadth, and it had projecting corners, and its frame and its walls were of wood; this is the table which is before the Lord." In like manner he designates the service of the priests in the inner sanctuary as table-service (xliv.16); table is the name, altar the function. /1/ **************************************** 1. Malachi, on the other hand, designates the so-called altar of burnt-offering as a table. **************************************** In 1Kings vii. 48, it is true that the golden altar and the golden table are mentioned together. It seems strange, however, that in this case the concluding summary mentions one piece of furniture more-- and that piece one of so great importance--than the preceding detailed description; for in the latter only the preparation of the golden altar is spoken of, and nothing is said of the golden table (vi. 20-22). As matters stand, nothing is less improbable than that some later transcriber should have interpolated the golden table in vii. 48, regarding it, in accordance with the Pentateuch, as distinct from the golden altar, and therefore considering its absence as an omission. From other considerations also, it is clear that the text of the whole chapter is in many ways corrupt and interpolated. It is not to be wondered at if in the post-exilian temple there existed both a golden altar and a golden table. We learn from 1Maccabees i. 21 seq., iv. 49, that both were carried off by Antiochus Epiphanes, and renewed at the Feast of the Dedication. But it causes no small surprise to find that at the destruction of Jerusalem the Romans found and carried off table and candlestick only. What can have become, in the meantime, of the golden altar of incense? And it is further worth remarking that in the LXX the passage Exodus xxxvii.25-29 is absent; that is to say, the altar of incense is indeed commanded, but there is no word of its execution. In these circumstances, finally, the vacillating statement as to its position in Exodus xxx. 6, and the supposed mistake of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, are important and intelligible. Compare also 2Maccabees ii.5, where only the table, but not the altar, is hidden by Jeremiah. So much for the offering of incense and its altar. We may in like manner venture to regard it as a kind of refinement, though rather a refinement of idea, that the flesh of the sacrifice in the Priestly Code is no longer boiled, but consigned to the altar flames in its raw condition. Such was not the ancient custom, as is seen, not only from the case of Gideon already cited (Judges vi.), but also from the procedure at Shiloh, described in 1Samuel ii., where the sons of Eli will not wait until the flesh of the sacrifice has been boiled, and the altar pieces burnt, but demand their share raw for roasting. The meal which the Deity shares with men is prepared in the same way as for men. This naive conception gave way before advancing culture, and that at a comparatively early date. It is possible that another cause may also have co-operated towards this result. The old method of preparing flesh in general use among the people, at a later period also, was by boiling. The word B#L (to seethe in water) occurs with extreme frequency; CLH (to roast), on the other hand, only in Exodus xii. 8, and Isaiah xliv. 16, 19. All sacrificial flesh (B#LH) was boiled, and there was no other kind. /1/ *********************************************** 1. Accordingly one must understand (#H also of boiling (Judges vi. 19). Compare the boiling-houses of the temple still found in Ezekiel xlvi. 20-24. In I Sam. i. 9 pronounce _beshela_ instead of _beshilo_, and delete W)XRY #TH. ********************************************** But among persons of the upper class roasting must also have come into use at an early period. "Give flesh to roast for the priest; for he will not take sodden flesh of thee, but raw," says the servant of the sons of Eli in 1Samuel ii. 15. The fact that in the interval the custom of boiling had gone generally somewhat out of fashion may accordingly have also contributed to bring about the abandonment of the old usage of offering the sacrificial portions boiled. In any case this is the explanation of the circumstance that the paschal lamb, which originally was boiled like all other offerings, could, according to the express appointment of the Priestly Code, be eaten roasted only. /2/ ********************************** 2. Compare the polemical ordinance of Exodus xii. 9 with Deuteronomy xvi. 7. ********************************* The phenomenon that in the Law meal is by preference offered raw, while in the earlier period, even as an adjunct of the burnt-offering, it was presented baked, belongs to the same category. The latter is the case in Judges vi. 19 at least, and the statement of 1Samuel i. 24 is also to be understood in the same sense; the sacrificer brings meal along with him in order to bake it into _maccah_ on the spot (Ezekiel xlvi. 20). But he may bring along with him common, that is leavened, cakes also (1Samuel x. 3), which seem originally by no means to have been considered unfit to be offered as in Leviticus ii. 11. For under this law of Leviticus ii. even the presentation of the shewbread would be inexplicable, and moreover it is certain that at first the loaves of the feast of weeks were offerings, properly so called, and not merely dues to the priests. According, to Amos iv. 5, leavened bread was made use of precisely at a particularly solemn sacrifice, and a reminiscence of this usage has been preserved even in Leviticus vii. 13, although of course without any practical weight being attached to it. /1/ *********************************************** 1. The loaves are passed over in silence in Leviticus vii. 29 seq., although it is in this very place that the matter of presenting on the part of the offerer is most fully described. And when it is said (vii. 12), "If he offer it for a thanksgiving (Todah), then he shall offer with it unleavened cakes mingled with oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil and fine flour (LXX), mingled with oil ;" vii. 13, "[With] leavened cakes shall he offer as a gift with the thank-offering of the Todah," the suspicion very readily occurs that verse 12 is an authentic interpretation prefixed, to obviate beforehand the difficulty presented by verse 13, and that similarly the first (l in verse 13 is also a later correction, which does not harmonise well by any means with the second. Verse 13 connects itself better with verse 11 than with verse 12.--Exod xxxiv. 25. ********************************************* Moreover, massah also means, properly speaking, only the bread that is prepared in haste and in the most primitive manner for immediate use, and originally implies no contrast with leaven, but simply with the more artificial and tedious manners of producing ordinary bread /2/ ************************************* 2. Compare Genesis xviii. 6 with xix.3. ************************************* In the Priestly Code the materials are finer, but they are as much as possible left in their raw condition; both are steps in advance. II.II.3. There is another and much more important difference in the case of the animal sacrifice. Of this the older practice knows only two kinds apart from extraordinary varieties, which may be left out of account. These two are the burnt-offering (`Olah) and the thank-offering (Shelem, Zebah, Zebah Shelamim). In the case of the first the whole animal is offered on the altar; in the other God receives, besides the blood, only an honorary portion, while the rest of the flesh is eaten by the sacrificial guests. Now it is worth noticing how seldom the burnt-offering occurs alone. It is necessarily so in the case of human sacrifice (Genesis xxii. 2 seq.; Judges xi. 31; /1/ 2Kings iii. 27; Jeremiah xix.5); ********************************** 3. It is probable that Jephthah expected a human creature and not an animal to meet him from his house. ********************************* otherwise it is not usual (Genesis viii. 20; Numbers xxiii. 1 seq.; Judges vi. 20, 26, xiii. 16, 23; 1Samuel vii. 9 seq.; 1Kings iii. 4, xviii. 34,38); /1/ moreover, all the examples **************************************** 1. In the above list of passages no notice is taken of the _sacrificium juge_ of 2Kings xvi.15. The statement in 1Kings iii. 4 is perhaps to be taken along with iii. 15, but does not become at all more credible on that account. Of course it is understood that only those passages are cited here in which mention is made of offerings actually made, and not merely general statements about one or more kinds of offering. The latter could very well fix attention upon the `Olah alone without thereby throwing any light upon the question as to the actual practice. **************************************** just cited are extraordinary or mythical in their character, a circumstance that may not affect the evidence of the existence of the custom in itself, but is important as regards the statistics of its frequency. As a rule, the `Olah occurs only in conjunction with Zebahim, and when this is the case the latter are in the majority and are always in the plural, while on the other hand the first is frequently in the singular. /2/ ******************************************** 1. Exodus x. 25, xviii. 12, xxiv. 5, xxxii. 6; Joshua viii. 31; Judges xx. 26, xxi. 4; 1Samuel vi. 14 seq., x. 8, xiii. 9-12; 2Samuel vi. 17 seq., xxiv. 23-25, 1Kings iii. 15, viii. 63 seq.; 2Kings v. 17, x. 24, 25. The zeugma in Judges xx. 26, xxi.4 is inconsistent with the older _usus loquendi_. The proper name for the holocaust appears to be KLYL (Deuteronomy xxxiii. 10; 1Samuel vii.9) not (LH. It is impossible to decide whether the sacrificial due in all sorts of Zebah was the same, but most probably it was not. Probably the Shelamim are a more solemn kind of sacrifice than the simple Zebah. The word 'fat' is used in Genesis iv. 4; Exodus xxiii. 18 in a very general sense. It is not quite clear what is meant by the blessing of the Zebah in 1Samuel ix. 13; perhaps a kind of grace before meat. ******************************************** They supplement each other like two corresponding halves; the `Olah is, as the name implies, properly speaking, nothing more than the part of a great offering that reaches the altar. One might therefore designate as `Olah also that part of a single animal which is consecrated to the Deity; this, however, is never done; neither of the blood nor of the fat [Q+R] is the verb H(LH used, but only of the pieces of the flesh, of which in the case of the minor offering nothing was burnt. But the distinction is merely one of degree; there is none in kind; a small Zebah, enlarged and augmented, becomes an `Olah and Zebahim; out of a certain number of slaughtered animals which are eaten by the sacrificial company, one is devoted to God and wholly given to the flames. For the rest, it must be borne in mind that as a rule it is only great sacrificial feasts that the historical books take occasion to mention, and that consequently the burnt-offering, notwithstanding what has been said, comes before us with greater prominence than can have been the average case in ordinary life. Customarily, It is certain, none but thank-offerings were offered; necessarily so if slaughtering could only be done beside the altar. Where mention is made of a simple offering in the Books of Samuel and Kings, that it is a thank-offering is matter of course. 1Samuel ii. 12 seq. is in this connection also particularly instructive. From what has been said it results that according to the praxis of the older period a meal was almost always connected with a sacrifice. It was the rule that only blood and fat were laid upon the altar, but the people ate the flesh; only in the case of very great sacrificial feasts was a large animal (one or more) given to Jehovah. Where a sacrifice took place, there was also eating and drinking (Exodus xxxii. 6; Judges ix. 27; 2Samuel xv. 11 seq.; Amos ii. 7); there was no offering without a meal, and no meal without an offering (1Kings i. 9); at no important Bamah was entertainment wholly wanting, such a LESXH as that in which Samuel feasted Saul, or Jeremiah the Rechabites (1Samuel ix. 22; Jeremiah xxxv. 2). To be merry, to eat and drink before Jehovah, is a usual form of speech down to the period of Deuteronomy; even Ezekiel calls the cultus on the high places an eating upon the mountains (1Samuel ix. 13,19 seq ), and in Zechariah the pots in the temple have a special sanctity (Zech. xiv. 20). By means of the meal in presence of Jehovah is established a covenant fellowship on the one hand between Him and the guests, and on the other hand between the guests themselves reciprocally, which is essential for the idea of sacrifice and gives their name to the Shelamim (compare Exodus xviii. 12, xxiv. 11). In ordinary slaughterings this notion is not strongly present, but in solemn sacrifices it was in full vigour. It is God who invites, for the house is His; His also is the gift, which must be brought to Him entire by the offerer before the altar, and the greater portion of which He gives up to His guests only affer that. Thus in a certain sense they eat at God's table, and must accordingly propare or sanctify themselves for it. /1/ *************************************** 1. In order to appear before Jehovah the guest adorns himself with clothes and ornaments (Exodus iii. 22, xi. 2 seq.; Hosea ii. 15 [A.V. 13]; Ezekiel xvi. 13; compare Koran, Sur. xx. 61), sanctifies himself (Numbers xi. 18) and is sanctified (1Samuel xvi. 5; Exodus xix. 10, 14). The sacrificial meal is regarded as Kodesh (hallowed) for not only the priests, but all the sanctified persons eat Kodesh (1Samuel xxi. 5 seq. On what is meant by sanctification light is thrown by 1Samuel xxi. 5; 2Samuel xi. 2. Compare L) LPNW XNP YB) ( Job xiii. 16; Leviticus vii. 20; Matthew xxii. 11-13). Jehovah invites the armies of the nations to His sacrifice, for which He delivers over to them some other nation, and calls the Medes, to whom He gives Babylon over, His sanctified ones, that is, His guests (Zephaniah i. 7 seq.; Jeremiah xlvi. 10; Ezekiel xxxix 17; Isaiah xiii. 3). **************************************** Even on occasions that, to our way of thinking, seem highly unsuitable, the meal is nevertheless not wanting (Judges xx. 26, xxi. 4; 1Sam xiii. 9-12). That perfect propriety was not always observed might be taken for granted, and is proved by Isaiah xxviii. 8 even with regard to the temple of Jerusalem; "all tables are full of vomit, there is no room." Hence also Eli's suspicion regarding Hannah was a natural one, and by no means so startling as it appears. How different from this picture is that suggested by the Priestly Code! Here one no longer remarks that a meal accompanies every sacrifice; eating before Jehovah, which even in Deuteronomy is just the expression for sacrificing, nowhere occurs, or at all events is no act of divine worship. Slaying and sacrificing are no longer coincident, the thank-offering of which the breast and right shoulder are to be consecrated is something different from the old simple Zebah. But, precisely for this reason, it has lost its former broad significance. The _mizbeah_, that is, the place where the _zebahim_ are to be offered, has been transformed into a _mizbah ha-'olah_. The burnt-offering has become quite independent and comes everywhere into the foreground, the sacrifices which are unconnected with a meal altogether predominate,--so much that, as is well known, Theophrastus could declare there were no others among the Jews, who in this way were differentiated from all other nations. /1/ Where formerly a **************************************** 1. Porphyry, De Abstin. ii.26. Compare Joseph., Contra Apion, ii. 13: )OUTOI )EUXONTAI <?> UEIN (EKATOMBAS TOIS QEOIS KAI XRWNTAI TOIS (IEREIOIS PROS )EUWXIAN. ****************************************** thank-offering which was eaten before Jehovah, and which might with greater clearness be called a sacrificial meal, was prescribed, the Priestly Code, as we shall afterwards see, has made out of it simple dues to the priests, as, for example, in the case of the first-born and of firstlings. Only in this point it still bears involuntary testimony to the old custom by applying the names _Todah, Neder, and Nedabah_, of which the last two in particular must necessarily have a quite general meaning (Leviticus xxii. 18; Ezekiel xlvi. 12), exclusively to the thank-offering, while _Milluim_ and paschal sacrifice are merely subordinate varieties of it. II.II.4. What the thank-offering has lost, the sin and trespass offering have gained; the voluntary private offering which the sacrificer ate in a joyful company at the holy place has given way before the compulsory, of which he obtains no share, and from which the character of the sacred meal has been altogether taken away. The burnt-offering, it is true, still continues to be a meal, if only a one-sided one, of which God alone partakes; but in the case of the sin-offering everything is kept far out of sight which could recall a meal, as, for example, the accompaniments of meal and wine, oil and salt; of the flesh no portion reaches the altar, it all goes as a fine to the priest. Now, of this kind of sacrifice, which has an enormous importance in the Priestly Code, not a single trace occurs in the rest of the Old Testament before Ezekiel, neither in the Jehovist and Deuteronomist, nor in the historical and prophetical books. /1/ ********************************************** 1. How great is the difference in Deuteronomy xxi. 1-9; how very remote the sacrificial idea! ********************************************* `Olah and Zebah comprehend all animal sacrifices, `Olah and Minhah, or Zebah and Minhah, all sacrifices whatsoever; nowhere is a special kind of sacrifice for atonement met with (1Samuel iii. 14). Hos. iv. 8 does indeed say: "They eat the sin of my people, and they are greedy for its guilts," but the interpretation which will have it that the priests are here reproached with in the first instance themselves inducing the people to falsification of the sacred dues, in order to make these up again with the produce of the sin and trespass offerings, is either too subtle or too dull. /2/ **************************************** 2. The sin and guilt are the sacrificial worship generally as carried on by the people (viii. 11; Amos iv. 4); in the entire section the prophet is preparing the way for the here sharply accentuated reproach against the priests that they neglect the Torah and encourage the popular propensity to superstitious and impure religious service. Besides, where is there any reproach at all, according to the Pentateuch, in the first section of iv. 8? And the second speaks of (WNM, not of )#MM. ******************************************* It would be less unreasonable to co-ordinate with the similarly named sin and trespass offering of the Pentateuch the five golden mice, and the five golden emerods with which the Philistines send back the ark, and which in 1Samuel vi. 3, 4, 8 are designated _asham_, or, still better, the sin and trespass monies which, according to 2Kings xii. 17 [A.V. 16], fell to the share of the Jerusalem priests. Only the fact is that even in the second passage the _asham_ and _hattath_ are no sacrifices, but, more exactly to render the original meaning of the words, mere fines, and in fact money fines. On the other hand, the _hattath_ referred to in Micah vi. 7 has nothing to do with a due of the priests, but simply denotes the guilt which eventually another takes upon himself. Even in Isaiah liii. 10, a passage which is certainly late, _asham_ must not be taken in the technical sense of the ritual legislation, but simply (as in Micah) in the sense of guilt, borne by the innocent for the guilty. For the explanation of this prophetic passage Gramberg has rightly had recourse to the narrative of 2Samuel xi. 1-14. "Upon Saul and upon his house lies blood-guiltiness, for having slain the Gibeonites" is announced to David as the cause of a three years' famine. When asked how it can be taken away, the Gibeonites answer, "It is not a matter of silver and gold to us with respect to Saul and his house; let seven men of his family be delivered to us that we may hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah of Saul upon the mountain of the Lord." This was done; all the seven were hanged. _A*sham_ and _hattath_ as offerings occur for the first time in Ezekiel, and appear, not long before his day to have come into the place of the earlier pecuniary fines (2Kings xii. 17 [16]), which perhaps already also admitted of being paid in kind; probably in the seventh century, which seems to have been very open to the mystery of atonement and bloodshedding, and very fertile in the introduction of new religious usages. /1/ ********************************************* 1. Consider for example the prevalence of child sacrifice precisely at this time, the introduction of incense, the new fashions which King Manasseh brought in, and of which certainly much survived that suited the temper of the period, and admitted of being conjoined with the worship of Jehovah, or even seemed to enhance its dignity and solemnity. ********************************************** The sin and trespass offerings of the Pentateuch still bear traces of their origin in fines and penalties; they are not gifts to God, they are not even symbolical, they are simply mulcts payable to the priests, partly of fixed commutation value (Leviticus v. 15). Apart from the mechanical burning of the fat they have in common with the sacrifice only the shedding of blood, originally a secondary matter, which has here become the chief thing. This circumstance is an additional proof of our thesis. The ritual of the simple offering has three acts: (1.) the presentation of the living animal before Jehovah, and the laying on of hands as a token of manumission on the part of the offerer; (2.) the slaughtering and the sprinkling of the blood on the altar; (3.) the real or seeming gift of the sacrificial portions to the Deity, and the meal of the human guests. In the case of the burnt-offering the meal in the third act disappears, and the slaughtering in the second comes into prominence as significant and sacred, inasmuch as (what is always expressly stated) it must take place in the presence of Jehovah, at the north side of the altar. In the case of the sin and trespass offering the third act is dropped entirely, and accordingly the whole significance of the rite attaches to the slaughtering, which of course also takes place before the altar, and to the sprinkling of the blood, which has become peculiarly developed here. It is obvious how the metamorphosis of the gift and the meal into a bloody atonement advances and reaches its acme in this last sacrificial act. This ritual seems to betray its novelty even within the Priestly Code itself by a certain vacillation. In the older corpus of law (Leviticus xvii.-xxvi.) which has been taken into that document, all sacrifices are still embraced under one or other of the two heads ZBX and (LH (xvii. 8, xxii. 18, 21); there are no others. The _asham_ indeed occurs in xix. 21 seq., but, as is recognised, only in a later addition; on the other hand,it is not demanded /1/ in xxii.14, ************************************ 1. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the _asham_ here, in the case of property unlawfully held, is simply the impost of a fifth part of the value, and not the sacrifice of a ram, which in Leviticus v. is required in addition. In Numbers v. also, precisely this fifth part is called _asham_. ************************************* where it must have been according to Leviticus v. and Numbers v. And even apart from Leviticus xvii.-xxvi there is on this point no sort of agreement between the kernel of the Priestly Code and the later additions, or "novels," so to speak. For one thing, there is a difference as to the ritual of the most solemn sin-offering between Exodus xxix., Leviticus ix. on the one hand, and Leviticus iv. on the other; and what is still more serious, the trespass-offering never occurs in the primary but only in the secondary passages, Leviticus iv.-vii., xiv.; Numbers v.7, 8, vi. 1, xviii. 9. In the latter, moreover, the distinction between _asham_ and _hattath_ is not very clear, but only the intention to make it, perhaps because in the old praxis there actually was a distinction between KSP XT)WT and KSP )#M, and in Ezekiel between X+)T and )#M. /2/ *************************************** 2. The three sections, Leviticus iv. 1-35 (hattath), v.1-13 (hattath-asham), and v. 14-26 (asham), are essentially not co-ordinate parts of one whole, but independent pieces proceeding from the same school. For v. 1-13 is no continuation of or appendix to iv. 27-35, but a quite independent treatment of the same material, with important differences of form. The place of the systematic generality of chap. iv. is here taken by the definite individual case, and what is analogous to it; the ritual is given with less minuteness, and the hierarchical subordination of ranks has no influence on the classification of offences. In this section also _asham_ and _hattath_ occur interchangeably as synonymous. In the third section a ram as an _asham_ is prescribed (v. 17-19) for the very case in which in the first a he-goat or a she-goat is required as _hattath_ (iv. 22, 27). The third section has indeed in form greater similarity to the second, but cannot be regarded as its true completion, for this simple reason, that the latter does not distiguish between _hattath_ and _asham_. If Leviticus v. 13-16, 20-26 be followed simply without regard being had to vers. 17-19, the _asham_ comes in only in the case of voluntary restitution of property illegally come by or detained, more particularly of the sacred dues. The goods must be restored to their owner augmented by a fifth part of their value; and as an _asham_ there must be added a ram, which falls to the sanctuary. In Num v. 5-10 the state of the case is indeed the same, but the language employed is different, for in this passage it is the restored property that is called _asham_, and the ram is called )YL HKPRYM. Comp. Leviticus xxii. 14. **************************************** II.III. The turning-point in the history of the sacrificial system was the reformation of Josiah; what we find in the Priestly Code is the matured result of that event. It is precisely in the distinctions that are characteristic of the sacrificial law as compared with the ancient sacrificial praxis that we have evidence of the fact that, if not all exactly occasioned by the centralisation of the worship, they were almost all somehow at least connected with that change. In the early days, worship arose out of the midst of ordinary life, and was in most intimate and manifold connection with it. A sacrifice was a meal, a fact showing how remote was the idea of antithesis between spiritual earnestness and secular joyousness. A meal unites a definite circle of guests, and in this way the sacrifice brought into connection the members of the family, the associates of the corporation, the soldiers of the army, and, generally speaking, the constituents of any permanent or temporary society. It is earthly relationships that receive their consecration thereby, and in correspondence are the natural festal occasions presented by the vicissitudes of life. Year after year the return of vintage, corn-harvest, and sheep-shearing brought together the members of the household to eat and to drink in the presence of Jehovah; and besides these there were less regularly recurring events which were celebrated in one circle after another. There was no warlike expedition which was not inaugurated in this fashion, no agreement that was not thus ratified, no important undertaking of any kind was gone about without a sacrifice! /1/ ****************************************** 1. Sacrifice is used as a pretext in 1Samuel xvi. 1 seq.; 1Kings i. 9 seq. Compare Proverbs vii. 14. ***************************************** When an honoured guest arrives, there is slaughtered for him a calf, not without an offering of the blood and fat to the Deity. The occasion arising out of daily life is thus inseparable from the holy action, and is what gives it meaning and character; an end corresponding to the situation always underlies it. Hence also prayer must not be wanting. The verb H(TYR, to "burn" (fat and _minha_), means simply to "pray," and conversely BQ# )T YHWH, "to seek Jehovah," in point of fact not unfrequently means to "sacrifice." The gift serves to reinforce the question or the request, and to express thankfulness; and the prayer is its interpretation. This of course is rather incidentally indicated than expressly said (Hos. v. 6; Isaiah i. 15; Jeremiah xiv. 12; 1Kings viii. 27 seq.; Proverbs xv. 8); we have a specimen of a grace for the offering of the festival gift only in Deuteronomy xxvi. 3 seq.; a blessing is pronounced when the slaughtering takes place (1Samuel ix. 13). The prayer of course is simply the expression of the feeling of the occasion, with which accordingly it varies in manifold ways. Arising out of the exigencies and directed to the objects of daily life, the sacrifices reflect in themselves a correspondingly rich variety. Our wedding, baptismal, and funeral feasts on the one hand, and our banquets for all sorts of occasions on the other, might still be adduced as the most obvious comparison, were it not that here too the divorce between sacred and secular destroys it. Religious worship was a natural thing in Hebrew antiquity; it was the blossom of life, the heights and depths of which it was its business to transfigure and glorify. The law which abolished all sacrificial seats, with a single exception, severed this connection. Deuteronomy indeed does not contemplate such a result. Here, in marked opposition to what we find in the Priestly Code, to eat and be merry before Jehovah is the standing phrase for sacrificing; the idea is that in concentrating all the worship towards Jerusalem, all that is effected is a mere change of place, the essence of the thing remaining unaltered. This, however, was a mistake. To celebrate the vintage festival among one's native hills, and to celebrate it at Jerusalem, were two very different things; it was not a matter of indifference whether one could seize on the spot any occasion that casually offered itself for a sacrificial meal, or whether it was necessary that one should first enter upon a journey. And it was not the same thing to appear by oneself at home before Jehovah and to lose oneself in a large congregation at the common seat of worship. Human life has its root in local environment, and so also had the ancient cultus; in being transplanted from its natural soil it was deprived of its natural nourishment. A separation between it and the daily life was inevitable, and Deuteronomy itself paved the way for this result by permitting profane slaughtering. A man lived in Hebron, but sacrificed in Jerusalem; life and worship fell apart. The consequences which lie dormant in the Deuteronomic law are fully developed in the Priestly Code. This is the reason why the sacrifice combined with a meal, formerly by far the chief, now falls completely into the background. One could eat flesh at home, but in Jerusalem one's business was to do worship. Accordingly, those sacrifices were preferred in which the religious character came to the front with the utmost possible purity and without any admixture of natural elements, sacrifices of which God received everything and man nothing,--burnt-offerings, sin-offerings, and trespass-offerings. If formerly the sacrifice had taken its complexion from the quality of the occasion which led to it, it now had essentially but one uniform purpose--to be a medium of worship. The warm pulse of life no longer throbbed in it to animate it; it was no longer the blossom and the fruit of every branch of life; it had its own meaning all to itself. It symbolised worship, and that was enough. The soul was fled; the shell remained, upon the shaping out of which every energy was now concentrated. A manifoldness of rites took the place of individualising occasions; technique was the main thing, and strict fidelity to rubric. Once cultus was spontaneous, now it is a thing of statute. The satisfaction which it affords is, properly speaking, something which lies outside of itself and consists in the moral satisfaction arising out of the conscientiousness with which the ritual precepts, once for all enjoined by God on His people, are fulfilled. The freewill offering is not indeed forbidden, but value in the strict sense is attached only to those which have been prescribed, and which accordingly preponderate everywhere. And even in the case of the freewill offering, everything must strictly and accurately comply with the restrictions of the ordinance; if any one in the fulness of his heart had offered in a _zebah shelamim_ more pieces of flesh than the ritual enjoined, it would have been the worse for him. Of old the sacrifice combined with a meal had established a special relation between the Deity and a definite society of guests; the natural sacrificial society was the family or the clan (1Samuel i. 1seq., xvi. 1 seq., xx. 6). Now the smaller sacred fellowships get lost, the varied groups of social life disappear in the neutral shadow of the universal congregation or church [(DH, QHL]. The notion of this last is foreign to Hebrew antiquity, but runs through the Priestly Code from beginning to end. Like the worship itself, its subject also became abstract, a spiritual entity which could be kept together by no other means except worship. As now the participation of the "congregation of the children of Israel" in the sacrifice was of necessity always mainly ideal, the consequence was that the sacred action came to be regarded as essentially perfect by virtue of its own efficacy in being performed by the priest, even though no one was present. Hence later the necessity for a special sacrificial deputation, the _anshe ma'amad_. The connection of all this with the Judaising tendency to remove God to a distance from man, it may be added, is clear. /1/ ************************************* 1. It is not asserted that the cultus before the Iaw (of which the darker sides are known from Amos and Hosea) was better than the legal, but merely that it was more original; the standard of judgment being, not the moral element, but merely the idea, the primary meaning of worship. Nor is it disputed further that the belief in the dependence of sacrifices and other sacred acts upon a laboriously strict compliance with traditional and prescriptive rites occurs in the case of certain peoples, even in the remotest antiquity. But with the Israelites, judging by the testimony of the historical and prophetical books, this was not on the whole the case any more than with the ancient Greeks; there were no Brahmans or Magians in either case. Moreover, it must be carefully noted that not even in the Priestly Code do we yet find the same childish appreciation of the cultus as occurs in such a work as the Rigveda, and that the strict rules are not prescribed and maintained with any such notion in view as that by their observance alone can the taste of the Deity be pleased; the idea of God is here even strikingly remote from the anthropomorphic, and the whole cultus is nothing more than an exercise in piety which has simply been enjoined so once for all without any one being in any way the better for it. ****************************************** Two details still deserve special prominence here. In the Priestly Code the most important sacrifice is the burnt-offering; that is to say, in point of fact, the _tamid_, the _holocaustum juge_, consisting of two yearling lambs which are daily consumed upon the "altar of burnt-offering," one in the morning, another in the evening. The custom of daily offering a fixed sacrifice at a definite time existed indeed, in a simpler form, /2/ **************************************** 2. See Kuenen, Godsdietzst van Israel, ii. 271. According to 2Kings xvi. 15, an (LH in the morning and a MNXH in the evening were daily offered in the temple of Jerusalem, in the time of Ahaz. Ezekiel also (xlvi. 13-15) speaks only of the morning (LH. Compare also Ezra ix. 4; Nehemiah x. 33. In the Priestly Code the evening _minhah_ has risen to the dignity of a second _`olah_; but at the same time survives in the daily _minhah_ of the high priest, and is now offered in the morning also (Leviticus vi. 12-16). The daily _minhah_ appears to be older than the daily _`olah_. For while it was a natural thing to prepare a meal regularly for the Deity, the expense of a daily `olah was too great for an ordinary place of worship, and, besides, it was not in accordance with the custom of men to eat flesh every day. The offering of the daily _minhah_ is already employed in 1Kings xviii. 29, 36, as a mark of time to denote the afternoon, and this use is continued down to the latest period, while the tamid, ie., the `olah, is never so utilised. The oddest custom of all, however, was doubtless not the daily _minhah_, but the offering of the shewbread, which served the same purpose, but was not laid out fresh every day. ***************************************** even in the pre-exilian period, but alongside of it at that time, the freewill private offerings had a much more important place, and bulked much more largely. In the law the _tamid_ is in point of fact the fundamental element of the worship, for even the sacrifices of Sabbaths and feast days consist only of its numerical increase (compare Numbers xxviii., xxix.). Still later, when it is said in the Book of Daniel that the _tamid_ was done away, this is equivalent to saying that the worship was abolished (viii. 11-13, xi. 31, xii. 11). But now the dominant position of the daily, Sabbath day, and festival _tamid_ means that the sacrificial worship had assumed a perfectly firm shape, which was independent of every special motive and of all spontaneity; and further (what is closely connected with this), that it took place for the sake of the congregation,--the "congregation" in the technical sense attached to that word in the Law. Hence the necessity for the general temple-tax, the prototype of which is found in the poll-tax of half a shekel for the service of the tabernacle in Exodus xxx. 11 seq. Prior to the exile, the regular sacrifice was paid for by the Kings of Judah, and in Ezekiel the monarch still continues to defray the expenses not only of the Sabbath day and festival sacrifices (xiv. 17 seq.), but also of the _tamid_ (xlvi. 13-15). /1/ ************************************* 1. Compare LXX*. The Massoretic text has corrected the third person (referring to the princes) into the second, making it an address to the priests, which, however, is quite impossible in Ezekiel. ************************************* It is also a mark of the date that, according to Exodus xxx., the expenses of the temple worship are met directly out of the poll-tax levied from the community, which can only be explained by the fact that at that time there had ceased to be any sovereign. So completely was the sacrifice the affair of the community in Judaism that the voluntary _qorban_ of the individual became metamorphosed into a money payment as a contribution to the cost of the public worship (Mark vii., xii. 42 seq; Matthew xxvii. 6). The second point is this: Just as the special purposes and occasions of sacrifice fall out of sight, there comes into increasing prominence the one uniform and universal occasion--that of sin; and one uniform and universal purpose--that of propitiation. In the Priestly Code the peculiar mystery in the case of all animal sacrifices is atonement by blood; this appears in its purest development in the case of the sin and trespass offerings, which are offered as well for individuals as for the congregation and for its head. In a certain sense the great day of atonement is the culmination of the whole religious and sacrificial service, to which, amid all diversities of ritual, continuously underlying reference to sin is common throughout. Of this feature the ancient sacrifices present few traces. It was indeed sought at a very early period to influence the doubtful or threatening mood of Deity, and make His countenance gracious by means of rich gifts, but the gift had, as was natural then, the character of a tentative effort only (Micah vi. 6). There was no such thought as that a definite guilt must and could be taken away by means of a prescribed offering. When the law discriminates between such sins as are covered by an offering and such sins as relentlessly are visited with wrath, it makes a distinction very remote from the antique; to Hebrew antiquity the wrath of God was something quite incalculable, its causes were never known, much less was it possible to enumerate beforehand those sins which kindled it and those which did not. /1/ ********************************** 1. When the wrath is regulated by the conditions of the "covenant," the original notion (which scorns the thought of adjustment) is completely changed. What gave the thing its mysterious awfulness was precisely this: that in no way was it possible to guard against it, and that nothing could avail to counteract it. Under the pressure of Jehovah's wrath not only was sacrifice abandoned, but even the mention of His name was shunned so as to avoid attracting His attention (Hos iii. 4, ix. 4; Amos vi. 10). *********************************** An underlying reference of sacrifice to sin, speaking generally, was entirely absent. The ancient offerings were wholly of a joyous nature,--a merrymaking before Jehovah with music and song, timbrels, flutes, and stringed instruments (Hos. ix. 1 seq.; Amos v. 23, viii. 3; Isa xxx. 3). No greater contrast could be conceived than the monotonous seriousness of the so-called Mosaic worship. NOMOS <de> PAREISHLQEN (INA PLEONASH| TO PARAPTWMA ["But law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied". Romans 5:20 NRSV)] In this way the spiritualisation of the worship is seen in the Priestly Code as advancing _pari passu_ with its centralisation. It receives, so to speak, an abstract religious character; it separates itself in the first instance from daily life, and then absorbs the latter by becoming, strictly speaking, its proper business. The consequences for the future were momentous. The Mosaic "congregation" is the mother of the Christian church; the Jews were the creators of that idea. We may compare the cultus in the olden time to the green tree which grows up out of the soil as it will and can; later it becomes the regularly shapen timber, ever more artificially shaped with square and compass. Obviously there is a close connection between the qualitative antithesis we have just been expounding and the formal one of law and custom from which we set out. Between "naturaliter ea quae legis sunt facere" ["do instinctively what the law requires" Romans 2:14 NRSV] and "secundum legem agere" there is indeed a more than external difference. If at the end of our first section we found improbable precisely in this region the independent co-existence of ancient praxis and Mosaic law, the improbability becomes still greater from the fact that the latter is filled with a quite different spirit, which can be apprehended only as Spirit of the age (Zeitgeist). It is not from the atmosphere of the old kingdom, but from that of the church of the second temple, that the Priestly Code draws its breath. It is in accordance with this that the sacrificial ordinances as regards their positive contents are no less completely ignored by antiquity than they are scrupulously followed by the post-exilian time. CHAPTER III. THE SACRED FEASTS. The feasts, strictly speaking, belong to the preceding chapter, for originally they were simply regularly recurring occasions for sacrifice. The results of the investigation there made accordingly repeat themselves here, but with such clearness and precision as make it worth while to give the subject a separate consideration. In the first place and chiefly, the history of the solar festivals, that of those festivals which follow the seasons of the year, claims our attention. III.I.1 In the Jehovistic and Deuteronomistic parts of the Pentateuch there predominates a rotation of three great festivals, which alone receive the proper designation of _hag_: "Three times in the year shalt thou keep festival unto me, three times in the year shall all thy men appear before the Lord Jehovah, the God of Israel" (Exodus xxiii. 14, 17, xxxiv. 23; Deuteronomy xvi. 16). "The feast of unleavened bread (maccoth) shalt thou keep; seven days shalt thou eat _maccoth_ as I commanded thee, in the time appointed of the month Abib, for in it thou camest out from Egypt; and none shall appear before me empty; and the feast of harvest (qasir), the first-fruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field; and the feast of ingathering (asiph), in the end of the year, when thou gatherest in thy labours out of the field." So runs the command in the Book of the Covenant (Exodus xxiii. 15, 16). The Law of the Two Tables (Exodus xxxiv. 18 seq.) is similar: "The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out of Egypt. All that openeth the womb is mine; every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male. The firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou redeem. And none shall appear before me empty. Six days shalt thou work; but on the seventh day shalt thou rest: even in ploughing time and in harvest shalt thou rest. And the feast of weeks (shabuoth) shalt thou observe, the feasts of the first-fruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering (asiph) at the change of the year." Minuter, on the other hand, and of a somewhat different character, are the precepts laid down in Deuteronomy xvi.: "Take heed to the month Abib, and keep the passover unto Jehovah thy God, for in the month Abib did Jehovah thy God bring thee forth out of Egypt by night. Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God, of the flock or of the herd, in the place which Jehovah shall choose for the habitation of His name. Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it; seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread (maccoth) therewith, the bread of affliction, for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in anxious haste, that all the days of thy life thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt. There shall no leavened bread be seen with thee in all thy border seven days, and of the flesh which thou didst sacrifice on the first day, in the evening, nothing shall remain all night until the morning. Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee, but at the place which Jehovah thy God shall choose for the habitation of His name, there shalt thou sacrifice the passover, in the evening, at the going down of the sun, at the time of thy coming forth out of Egypt. And thou shalt boil and eat it in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, and in the morning shalt thou return to thy home. Six days shalt thou eat _maccoth_, and on the seventh day shall be the closing feast to Jehovah thy God; thou shalt do no work therein" (ver. 1-8). "Seven weeks thenceforward shalt thou number unto thee; from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn shalt thou begin to number seven weeks, and then thou shalt keep the feast of weeks (shabuoth) to Jehovah thy God, with a tribute of freewill offerings in thy hand, which thou shalt give, according as the Lord thy God hath blessed thee. And thou shalt rejoice before Jehovah thy God, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy man-servant, and thy maid-senant, and the Levite that is within thy gates, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow that are among you in the place which Jehovah thy God shall choose for the habitation of His name. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt, and thou shalt observe and do these statutes" (ver. 9-12). "The feast of tabernacles (sukkoth) thou shalt observe seven days after thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine; and thou shalt rejoice in thy feast,--thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy man-servant, and thy maid-servant, and the Levite, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow that are within thy gates. Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn feast unto Jehovah thy God in the place which Jehovah shall choose, because Jehovah thy God cloth bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thy hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice. Three times in a year shall all thy men appear before Jehovah thy God in the place which He shall choose: in the feast of unleavened bread, of weeks, and of tabernacles (hag ha-maccoth,-- shabuoth,--sukkoth), and they shall not appear before me empty; every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of Jehovah thy God, which He hath given thee" (ver. 13-17). As regards the essential nature of the two last-named feasts, these passages are at one. The _sukkoth_ of Deuteronomy and the _asiph_ of the Jehovistic legislation do not coincide in time merely, but are in fact one and the same feast, the autumnal ingathering of the wine and of the oil from the vat and press, and of the corn from the threshing-floor. The name _asiph_ refers immediately to the vintage and olive-gathering, to which the word _sukkoth_ seems also to relate, being most easily explained from the custom of the whole household, old and young, going out to the vineyard in time of harvest, and there camping out in the open air under the improvised shelter of booths made with branches (Isaiah i. 8). _Qacir_ and _shabuoth_ in like manner are only different names for the same reality, namely, for the feast of the corn-reaping, or, more strictly, the wheat-reaping, which takes place in the beginning of summer. Thus both festivals have a purely natural occasion. On the other hand, the spring festival, which always opens the series, has a historical motive assigned to it, the exodus--most expressly in Deuteronomy--being given as the event on which it rests. The cycle nevertheless seems to presuppose and to require the original homogeneity of all its members. Now the twofold ritual of the _pesah_ and the maccoth points to a twofold character of the feast. The _hag_, properly so named, is called not _hag ha-pesah_, /1/ but hag ha-maccoth, ******************************** 1. The original form of the expression of Exodus xxxiv. 25 has been preserved in Exodus xxiii. 18 (XGGY not XG HPSX). In Deuteronomy, although PSX is more prominent, it is called XG HMCWT in xvi. 16. ******************************** and it is only the latter that is co-ordinated with the other two _haggim_; the name _pesah_ indeed does not occur at all until Deuteronomy, although in the law of the two tables the sacrifice of the first-born seems to be brought into connection with the feast of unleavened bread. It follows that only the _maccoth_ can be taken into account for purposes of comparison with _qasir_ and _asiph_. As to the proper significance of _maccoth_, the Jehovistic legislation does not find it needful to instruct its contemporaries, but it is incidentally disclosed in Deuteronomy. There the festival of harvest is brought into a definite relation in point of time with that of _maccoth_; it is to be celebrated seven weeks later. This is no new ordinance, but one that rests upon old custom, for the name, "feast of weeks," occurs in a passage so early as Exodus xxxiv. (comp Jeremiah v. 24). Now "seven weeks after Easter " (Deuteronomy xvi. 9) is further explained with greater elaborateness as meaning seven weeks after the putting of the sickle to the corn. Thus the festival of _maccoth_ is equivalent to that of the putting of the sickle to the corn, and thereby light is thrown on its fixed relation to Pentecost. Pentecost celebrates the close of the reaping, which commences with barley harvest, and ends with that of wheat; Easter its beginning in the "month of corn ears;" and between the two extends the duration of harvest time, computed at seven weeks. The whole of this _tempus classicum_ is a great festal season rounded off by the two festivals. We gain further light from Leviticus xxiii. 9-22. /1/ ****************************************** 1. Against this there is of course possible the objection that the passage at present forms part of the Priestly Code. But the collection of laws embraced in Leviticus xvii.-xxvi, it is well known, has merely been redacted and incorporated by the author of the Priestly Code, and originally was an independent corpus marking the transition from Deuteronomy to the Priestly Code, sometimes approximating more to the one, and at other times to the other, and the use of Leviticus xxiii. 9-22 in this connection is completely justified by the consideration that only in this way do the rites it describes find meaning and vitality. ******************************************* The Easter point is here, as in Deuteronomy, fixed as being the beginning of harvest, but is still more definitely determined as the day after the first Sabbath falling within harvest time, and Pentecost follows the same reckoning. And the special Easter ritual consists in the offering of a barley sheaf; before this it is not lawful to taste of the new crop; and the corresponding Pentecostal rite is the offering of ordinary wheaten loaves. The corn harvest begins with barley and ends with wheat; at the beginning the first-fruits are presented in their crude state as a sheaf, just as men in like manner partake of the new growth in the form of parched ears (Leviticus xxiii. 14; Josh. v. 11); at the end they are prepared in the form of common bread. Thus the _maccoth_ now begin to be intelligible. As has been already said (see p. 69), they are not, strictly speaking, duly prepared loaves, but the bread that is hurriedly baked to meet a pressing emergency (1Sam. xxviii. 24); thus they are quite correctly associated with the haste of the exodus, and described as bread of affliction. At first people do not take time in a leisurely way to leaven, knead, and bake the year's new bread, but a hasty cake is prepared in the ashes; this is what is meant by maccoth. They are contrasted with the Pentecostal loaves precisely as are the sheaf and the parched ears, which last, according to Josh. v. 11, may be eaten in their stead, and without a doubt they were originally not the Easter food of men merely, but also of the Deity, so that the sheaf comes under the category of the later spiritual refinements of sacrificial material. Easter then is the opening, as Pentecost is the closing festivity, or (what means the same thing) `acereth, /1/ of the seven ******************************************* 1. Haneberg, Alterhuemer, 2d edit., p. 656. In Deuteronomy Pentecost as _`acereth_ lasts for only one day, while Easter and the feast of tabernacles each ]ast a week. ******************************************* weeks' "joy of harvest," and the spring festival no longer puzzles us by the place it holds in the cycle of the three yearly festivities. But what is the state of the case as regards the _pesah_? The meaning of the name is not clear; as we have seen, the word first occurs in Deuteronomy, and there also the time of the celebration is restricted to the evening and night of the first day of _maccoth_, from sunset until the following morning. In point of fact, the _pesah_ points back to the sacrifice of the firstlings (Exodus xxxiv. 18 seq., xiii. 12 seq.; Deuteronomy xv. 19 seq., xvi. 1 seq.), and it is principally upon this that the historical character of the whole festivity hinges. It is because Jehovah smote the first-born of Egypt and spared those of Israel that the latter thenceforward are held sacred to Him. Such is the representation given not merely in the Priestly Code but also in Exodus xiii. 11 seq. But in neither of its sources does the Jehovistic tradition know anything of this. "Let my people go, that they may keep a feast unto me in the wilderness with sacrifices and cattle and sheep: "this from the first is the demand made upon Pharaoh, and it is in order to be suitably adorned for this purpose, contemplated by them from the first, that the departing Israelites borrow festal robes and ornaments from the Egyptians. Because Pharaoh refuses to allow the Hebrews to offer to their God the firstlings of cattle that are His due, Jebovah seizes from him the first-born of men. Thus the exodus is not the occasion of the festival, but the festival the occasion, if only a pretended one, of the exodus. If this relationship is inverted in Exodus xiii, it is because that passage is not one of the sources of the Jehovistic tradition, but is part of the redaction, and in fact (as is plain from other reasons with regard to the entire section xiii. 1-16) of a Deuteronomic redaction. From this it follows that the elaboration of the historical motive of the passover is not earlier than Deuteronomy, although perhaps a certain inclination to that way of explaining it appears before then, just as in the case of the _maccoth_ (Exodus xii. 34). What has led to it is evidently the coincidence of the spring festival with the exodus, already accepted by the older tradition, the relation of cause and effect having become inverted in course of time. The only view sanctioned by the nature of the case is that the Israelite custom of offering the firstlings gave rise to the narrative of the slaying of the first-born of Egypt; unless the custom be pre-supposed the story is inexplicable, and the peculiar selection of its victims by the plague is left without a motive. The sacrifice of the first-born, of the male first-born, that is to say--for the females were reared as with us--does not require an historical explanation, but can be accounted for very simply: it is the expression of thankfulness to the Deity for fruitful flocks and herds. If claim is also laid to the human first-born, this is merely a later generalisation which after all resolves itself merely into a substitution of an animal offering and an extension of the original sacrifice. In Exodus xx. 28, 29 and xxxiv. 19 this consequence does not yet seem to be deduced or even to be suspected as possible; it first appears in xxxiv. 20 and presents itself most distinctly in the latest passage (xiii. 12), for there P+R RXM is contrasted with P+R #GR, and for the first the expression H(BYR, a technical one in the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel for child sacrifice, is used. The view of some scholars (most of them mere casual visitors in the field of Old Testament research) that the slaying of the first-born male children was originally precisely the main feature of the passover, hardly deserves refutation. Like the other festivals, this also, apart from the view taken of it in the Priestly Code, has a thoroughly joyous character (Exodus x. 9); Deuteronomy xvi. 7; comp. Isaiah xxx. 29). There are some historical instances indeed of the surrender of an only child or of the dearest one, but always as a voluntary and quite exceptional act; the contrary is not proved by Hosea xiii. 2. /1/ The offering of ******************************************* 1. "They make them molten images of their silver, idols according to their fancy. To them they speak, men doing sacrifice kiss calves!" The prophet would hardly blame human sacrifices only thus incidentally, more in ridicule than in high moral indignation; he would bring it to prominence the horrible and revolting character of the action much more than its absurdity. Thus ZBXY )DM means most probably, "offerers belonging to the human race." At the same time, even if the expression did mean "sacrificers of men," it would prove nothing regarding regular sacrifices of children. ******************************************** human first-born was certainly no regular or commanded exaction in ancient times; there are no traces of so enormous a blood tax, but, on the contrary, many of a great preference for eldest sons. It was not until shortly before the exile that the burning of children was introduced on a grand scale along with many other innovations, and supported by a strict interpretation of the command regarding firstlings (Jeremiah vii. 31, xix. 5; Ezekiel xx. 26). In harmony with this is the fact that the law of Exodus xiii. 3-16 comes from the hand of the latest redactor of the Jehovistic history. III.I.2. "Abel was a shepherd and Cain was a husbandman. And in process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord; and Abel also brought an offering of the firstlings of his sheep." It is out of the simplest, most natural, and most wide-spread offerings, those of the first-fruits of the flock, herd, and field, the occasions for which recur regularly with the seasons of the year, that the annual festivals took their rise. The passover corresponds with the firstlings of Abel the shepherd, the other three with the fruits presented by Cain the husbandman; apart from this difference, in essence and foundation they are all precisely alike. Their connection with the _aparchai_ of the *[first-fruits; firstlings for sacrifice or offering]* yearly seasons is indeed assumed rather than expressly stated in the Jehovistic and Deuteronomistic legislation. Yet in Exodus xxiii. 17-19, xxxiv. 23-26 we read: "Three times in the year shall all thy men appear before the Lord Jehovah; thou shalt not mingle the blood of my sacrifice with leaven, neither shall the fat of my sacrifice remain until the morning. The best of the first-fruits of thy land shalt thou bring into the house of Jehovah thy God; thou shalt not seethe the kid in the milk of its mother." It is forbidden to appear before Jehovah empty, hence the connection between the first general sentence and the details which follow it. Of these, the first seems to relate to the passover; doubtless indeed it holds good of all animal sacrifices, but in point of fact these are offered in preponderating numbers at the great festival after the herds and flocks have produced their young. The remaining sentences relate to the feasts of harvest and ingathering, whose connection with the fruits of the field is otherwise clear. As for Deuteronomy, there also it is required on the one hand that the dues from the flock and herd and field shall be personally offered at Jerusalem, and made the occasion of joyous sacrificial feasts; on the other hand, that three appearances in the year shall be made at Jerusalem, at Easter, at Pentecost, and at the feast of tabernacles, and not with empty hands. These requirements can only be explained on the assumption that the material of the feasts was that furnished by the dues. Clearly in Deuteronomy all three coincide; sacrifices, dues, feasts; other sacrifices than those occasioned by the dues can hardly be thought of for the purpose of holding a joyous festival before Jehovah; the dues are, properly speaking, simply those sacrifices prescribed by popular custom, and therefore fixed and festal, of which alone the law has occasion to treat. /1/ ***************************************** 1. Deuteronomy xii. 6 seq., 11 seq., xiv. 23-26, xvi. 7, 11, 14. In the section xiv. 22-xvi. 17, dues and feasts are taken together. In the first half (xiv. 22-xv. 18) there is a progression from those acts which are repeated within the course of a year to those which occur every three years, and finally to those which occur every seven; in the second half (xv. 19-xvi. 17) recurrence is again made to the principal, that is, the seasonal dues, first to the firstlings and the passover feast, and afterwards to the two others, in connection with which the tithes of the fruits are offered. **************************************** It results from the very nature of the case that the people come together to offer thanks for Jehovah's blessing, but no special emphasis is laid upon this. In the Jehovistic legislation (Exodus xxiii., xxxiv.) the terms have not yet come to be fixed, so that it is hardly possible to speak of a "dies festus" in the strict sense; festal seasons rather than festal days are what we have. Easter is celebrated in the month Abib, when the corn is in the ear (Exodus ix. 31, 32), Pentecost when the wheat is cut, the autumn festival when the vintage has been completed,--rather vague and shifting determinations. Deuteronomy advances a step towards fixing the terms and intervals more accurately, a circumstance very intimately connected with the centralisation of the worship in Jerusalem. Even here, however, we do not meet with one general festive offering on the part of the community, but only with isolated private offerings by individuals. In correspondence with this the amount of the gifts is left with considerable vagueness to the good-will of the offerers. Only the firstlings are definitely demanded. The redemption allowed in Deuteronomy by means of money which buys a substitute in Jerusalem has no proper meaning for the earlier time; yet even then the offerer may in individual instances have availed himself of liberty of exchange, all the more because even then his gift, as a sacrificial meal, was essentially a benefit to himself (Exodus xxiii. 18; Genesis iv. 4, WMXBL<Y>HN). For the first-fruits of the field Exodus prescribes no measure at all, Deuteromony demands the tithe of corn, wine, and oil, which, however, is not to be understood with mathematical strictness, inasmuch as it is used at sacrificial meals, is not made over to a second party, and thus does not require to be accounted for. The tithe, as appears from Deuteronomy xxvi., is offered in autumn, that is, at the feast of tabernacles; this is the proper autumn festival of thanksgiving, not only for the wine harvest, but also for that of the threshing-floor (xvi. 13); it demands seven days, which must all be spent in Jerusalem, while in the case of maccoth only one need be spent there. It is self-evident that there is no restriction to the use of vegetable gifts merely, but sacrifices of flesh are also assumed--purchased perhaps with the proceeds of the sale of the tithe. In this way the special character of the feasts, and their connection with the first-fruits peculiar to them, could easily disappear, a thing which seems actually to have occurred in Deuteronomy, and perhaps even earlier. It is not to be wondered at that much should seem unclear to us which must have been obvious to contemporaries; in Deuteronomy, moreover, almost everything is left to standing custom, and only the one main point insisted on, that the religious worship, and thus also the festivals, must be celebrated only in Jerusalem. Leaving out of account the passover, which originally had an independent standing, and only afterwards through its connection with maccoth was taken into the regular cycle of the _haggim_, it cannot be doubted, generally speaking and on the whole, that not only in the Jehovistic but also in the Deuteronomic legislation the festivals rest upon agriculture, the basis at once of life and of religion. The soil, the fruitful soil, is the object of religion; it takes the place alike of heaven and of hell. Jehovah gives the land and its produce; He receives the best of what it yields as an expression of thankfulness, the tithes in recognition of His seigniorial right. The relation between Himself and His people first arose from His having given them the land in fee; it continues to be maintained, inasmuch as good weather and fertility come from Him. It is in Deuteronomy that one detects the first very perceptible traces of a historical dress being given to the religion and the worship, but this process is still confined within modest limits. The historical event to which recurrence is always made is the bringing up of Israel out of Egypt, and this is significant in so far as the bringing up out of Egypt coincides with the leading into Canaan, that is, with the giving of the land, so that the historical motive again resolves itself into the natural. In this way it can be said that not merely the Easter festival but all festivals are dependent upon the introduction of Israel into Canaan, and this is what we actually find very clearly in the prayer (Deuteronomy xxvi.) with which at the feast of tabernacles the share of the festal gifts falling to the priest is offered to the Deity. A basket containing fruits is laid upon the altar, and the following words are spoken: "A wandering Aramaean was my father, and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, a few men strong, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians evil-entreated them and oppressed them, and laid upon them hard bondage. Then called we upon ]ehovah the God of our fathers, and He heard our voice and looked on our affliction and our labour and our oppression. And Jehovah brought us forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs and with wonders, _and brought us unto this place, and gave us this land, a land where milk and honey flow!. And now, behold, I have brought the best of the fruits of the land, which thou, O Lord, hast given me._" Observe here how the act of salvation whereby Israel was founded issues in the gift of a fruitful land. III.II. With this account of the Jehovistic-Deuteronomistic legislation harmonises the pre-exilic practice so far as that can be traced or is borne witness to in the historical and prophetical books. Ancient festivals in Israel must have had the pastoral life as their basis; only the passover therefore can be regarded as belonging, to the number of these. /1/ It is ********************************************* 1. The ancient Arabs also observed the sacrifice of the firstlings as a solemnity in the sacred month Rajab, which originally fell in spring (comp. Ewald, Ztschr. f.d. Kunde des Morgenlandes, 1840, p. 419; Robertson Smith, Prophets, p. 383 sq). A festivity mentioned among the earliest, and that for pastoral Judah, is the sheep-shearing (1Samuel xxv. 2 seq.; Genesis xxxviii. 12); but it does not appear to have ever developed into a regular and independent festival. _Aparchai_ of wool and flax are mentioned in Hosea (ii. 7, 11 [A.V. 5, 9]) as of wool alone in Deuteronomy (xviii. 4). ********************************************* with perfect accuracy accordingly that precisely the passover is postulated as having been the occasion of the exodus, as being a sacrificial feast that has to be celebrated in the wilderness and has nothing to do with agriculture or harvest. But it is curious to notice how little prominence is afterwards given to this festival, which from the nature of the case is the oldest of all. It cannot have been known at all to the Book of the Covenant, for there (Exodus xxii. 29, 30) the command is to leave the firstling seven days with its dam and on the eighth day to give it to Jehovah. Probably through the predominance gained by agriculture and the feasts founded on it the passover fell into disuse in many parts of Israel, and kept its ground only in districts where the pastoral and wilderness life still retained its importance. This would also explain why the passover first comes clearly into light when Judah alone survives after the fall of Samaria. In 2Kings xxiii. 21 seq. we are told that in the eighteenth year of King Josiah the passover was held according to the precept of the law (Deut xvi.), and that for the first time,--never until then from the days of the Judges had it been so observed. If in this passage the novelty of the institution is so strongly insisted on, the reference is less to the essence of the thing than to the manner of celebration as enjoined in Deuteronomy. Agriculture was learned by the Hebrews from the Canaanites in whose land they settled, and in commingling with whom they, during the period of the Judges, made the transition to a sedentary life. Before the metamorphosis of shepherds into peasants was effected, they could not possibly have had feasts which related to agriculture. It would have been very strange if they had not taken them also over from the Canaanites. The latter owed the land and its fruits to Baal, and for this they paid him the due tribute; the Israelites stood in the same relation to Jehovah. Materially and in itself, the act was neither heathenish nor Israelite; its character either way was determined by its destination. There was, therefore, nothing against a transference of the feasts from Baal to Jehovah; on the contrary, the transference was a profession of faith that the land and its produce, and thus all that lay at the foundations of the national existence, were due not to the heathen deity but to the God of Israel. The earliest testimony is that which we have to the existence of the vintage festival in autumn,--in the first instance as a custom of the Canaanite population of Shechem. In the old and instructive story of Abimelech the son of Jerubbaal we are told (Judges ix. 27) of the citizens of Shechem that "they went out into the fields, and gathered their vineyards, and trode the grapes, and celebrated _hillulim_, and went into the house of their god, and ate and drank, and cursed Abimelech." But this festival must also have taken root among the Israelites at a tolerably early period. According to Judges xxi. 19 seq. there was observed yearly at Shiloh in the vineyards a feast to Jehovah, at which the maidens went out to dance. Even if the narrative of Judges xix. seq. be as a whole untrustworthy as history, this does not apply to the casual trait just mentioned, especially as it is confirmed by 1Samuel i. In this last-cited passage a feast at Shiloh is also spoken of, as occurring at the end of the year, that is, in autumn at the time of the _asiph_, /1/ and as being an attraction to pilgrims ********************************************* 1. LTQPT HYMYM (i.e., at the new year) 1Samuel i. 20; Exodus xxxiv. 22. In this sense is also to be understood MYMYM YMYMH Judges xxi. 19, 1Samuel i. 3. Comp. Zechariah xiv. 16. ********************************************** from the neighbourhood. Obviously the feast does not occur in all places at once, but at certain definite places (in Ephraim) which then influence the surrounding district. The thing is connected with the origin of larger sanctuaries towards the end of the period of the Judges, or, more properly speaking, with their being taken over from the previous inhabitants; thus, for example, on Shechem becoming an Israelite town the _hillulim_ were no more abolished than was the sanctuary itself. Over and above this the erection of great royal temples must have exerted an important influence. Alike at Jerusalem and at Bethel "the feast" was celebrated from the days of Solomon and Jeroboam just as previously at Shechem and Shiloh, in the former place in September, in the latter perhaps somewhat later. /2/ ******************************************** 2. 1Kings xii. 32 is, it must be owned, far from trustworthy. 1Kings viii. 2 is difficult to harmonise with vi. 38, if the interpretation of Bul and Ethanim is correct. ******************************************** This was at that period the sole actual _panegyris_. [national festivall The feasts at the beginning of summer may indeed also have been observed at this early period (Isa ix. 2), but in smaller local circles. This distinction is still discernible in Deuteronomy, for although in that book the feast of tabernacles is not theoretically higher than the others, in point of fact it alone is observed from beginning to end at the central sanctuary, while Easter, on the other hand, is for the most part kept at home, being only during the first day observed at Jerusalem; moreover, the smaller demand is much more emphatically insisted on than the larger, so that the first seems to have been an innovation, the latter to have had the sanction of older custom. Amos and Hosea, presupposing as they do a splendid cultus and great sanctuaries, doubtless also knew of a variety of festivals, but they have no occasion to mention any one by name. More definite notices occur in Isaiah. The threatening that within a year's time the Assyrians will be in the land is thus (xxix. 1) given: "Add ye year to year, let the feasts come round, yet I will distress Jerusalem," and at the close of the same discourse the prophet expresses himself as follows (xxxii. 9 seq.): "Rise up, ye women that are at ease; hear my voice, ye careless daughters; give ear unto my speech. Days upon a year shall ye be troubled, ye careless women; for the vintage shall fail, the ingathering shall not come. Ye shall smite upon the breasts, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine." When the two passages are taken together we gather that Isaiah, following the universal custom of the prophets in coming forward at great popular gatherings, is here speaking at the time of the autumn festival, in which the women also took an active part (Judges xxi. 19 seq.). But this autumn festival, the joyous and natural character of which is unmistakably revealed, takes place with him at the change of the year, as may be inferred from a comparison between the YNQPW of xxix. I, and the TQPT of Exodus xxxiv. 22, 1Samuel i. 20, and closes a cycle of festivals here for the first time indicated. 2. The preceding survey, it must be admitted, scarcely seems fully to establish the alleged agreement between the Jehovistic law and the older praxis. Names are nowhere to be found, and in point of fact it is only the autumn festival that is well attested, and this, it would appear, as the only festival, as THE feast. And doubtless it was also the oldest and most important of the harvest festivals, as it never ceased to be the concluding solemnity of the year. What has been prosperously brought to close is what people celebrate most rightly; the conclusion of the ingathering, both of the threshing and of the vintage, is the most appropriate of all occasions for a great joint festival,--for this additional reason, that the term is fixed, not, as in the case of the joy of reaping, by nature alone, but is in man's hands and can be regulated by him. Yet even under the older monarchy the previous festivals must also have already existed as well (Isaiah xxix. 1). The peculiarity of the feast of tabernacles would then reduce itself to this, that it was the only general festival at Jerusalem and Bethel; local celebrations "at all threshing floors "--i.e., on all high places--are not thereby excluded (Host ix. 1). But the Jehovistic legislation makes no distinction of local and central, for it ignores the great temples throughout. /1/ Possibly, ************************************** 1. Exodus xx. 24-26 looks almost like a protest against the arrangements of the temple of Solomon,--especially ver. 26. ************************************** also, it to some extent systematises the hitherto somewhat vaguer custom; the transition from the _aparchai_ to a feast was perhaps in practice still somewhat incomplete. In the paucity of positive data one is justified, however, in speaking of a substantial agreement, inasmuch as in the two cases the idea of the festivals is the same. Very instructive in this respect are two sections of Hosea (chaps. ii. and ix.), which on this account deserve to be fully gone into. In the first of these Israel is figured as a woman who receives her maintenance from her husband, that is, from the Deity; this is the basis of the covenant relationship. But she falls into error as to the giver of her meat and drink and clothing, supposing them to come from the idols, and not from Jehovah. "She hath said, I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink. Doth she then not know that it is I (Jehovah) who have given her the corn and the wine and the oil, and silver in abundance, and gold--out of which she maketh false gods? Therefore will I take back again my corn in its time, and my wine in its season, and I will take away my wool and my flax that should cover her nakedness; and now will I discover her shame before the eyes of her lovers, and none shall deliver her out of my hand. And I will bring all her mirth to an end, her festival days, her new moons and her sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts. And I will destroy her vines and her fig-trees whereof she saith, 'They are my hire, that my lovers have given me,' and I will make them a wilderness, and the beasts of the field shall eat them. Thus will I visit upon her the days of the false gods, wherein she burnt fat offerings to them and decked herself with her rings and her jewels, and went after her lovers and forget me, saith the Lord. Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness, and there I will assign her her vineyards: then shall she be docile as in her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt. Thereafter I betroth thee unto me anew for ever, in righteousness and in judgment, in loving kindness and in mercies. In that day, saith the Lord, will I answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth, and the earth shall answer the corn and the wine and the oil, and these shall answer Jezreel" (ii. 7-24 [5-22]). The blessing of the land is here the end of religion, and that quite generally,--alike of the false heathenish and of the true Israelitish. /1/ ********************************************* 1. Comp. Zech. xiv. 16 seq. All that are left of the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship Jehovah of hosts and to keep the feast of tabernacles. And whoso of the families of the earth shall not come up unto Jerusalem to worship Jehovah of hosts, UPON THEM SHALL BE NO RAIN,. But for the Egyptians--who on account of the Nile are independent of rain--another punishment is threatened if they do not come to keep the feast of tabernacles. ********************************************** It has for its basis no historical acts of salvation, but nature simply, which, however, is regarded only as God's domain and as man's field of labour, and is in no manner itself deified. The land is Jehovah's house (viii. 1, ix. 15), wherein He lodges and entertains the nation; in the land and through the land it is that Israel first becomes the people of Jehovah, just as a marriage is constituted by the wife's reception into the house of the husband, and her maintenance there. And as divorce consists in the wife's dismissal from the house, so is Jehovah's relation to His people dissolved by His making the land into a wilderness, or as in the last resort by His actually driving them forth into the wilderness; He restores it again by "sowing the nation into the land" anew, causing the heavens to give rain and the earth to bear, and thereby bringing into honour the name of "God sown" for Israel (ii. 25 [23]). In accordance with this' worship consists simply of the thanksgiving due for the gifts of the soil, the vassalage payable to the superior who has given the land and its fruits. It _ipso facto_ ceases when the corn and wine cease; in the wilderness it cannot be thought of, for if God bestows nothing then man cannot rejoice, and religious worship is simply rejoicing over blessings bestowed. It has, therefore, invariably and throughout the character given in the Jehovistic legislation to the feasts, in which also, according to Hosea's description, it culminates and is brought to a focus. For the days of the false gods, on which people adorned themselves and sacrificed, are just the feasts, and in fact the feasts of Jehovah, whom however the people worshipped by images, which the prophet regards as absolutely heathenish. Equally instructive is the second passage (ix. 1-6). "Rejoice not too loudly, O Israel, like the heathen, that thou hast gone a whoring from thy God, and lovest the harlot's hire upon every threshing-floor. The floor and the wine-press shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail them. They shall not dwell in Jehovah's land; Ephraim must return to Egypt, and eat what is unclean in Assyria. Then shall they no more pour out wine to Jehovah, or set in order sacrifices to Him; like bread of mourners is their bread, /1/ all that eat thereof become unclean, for ************************************** 1. For Y(RBW (ix. 4) read Y(RKW, and LXMM for LXM. See Kuenen, National Religions and Universal Religions (1882), p. 312 seq. ************************************** their bread shall only be for their hunger, it shall not come into the house of the Lord. What will ye do in the day of festival and in the day of the feast of the Lord? For lo, after they have gone away from among the ruins, Egypt shall keep hold of them, Memphis shall bury them; their pleasant things of silver shall nettles possess, the thornbush shall be in their tents." It need not surprise us that here again the prophet places the worship which in intention is obviously meant for Jehovah on the same footing with the heathen worship which actually has little to distinguish it externally therefrom, being constrained to regard the "pleasant things of silver" in the tents in the high places not as symbols of Jehovah, but as idols, and their worship as whoredom. Enough that once more we have a clear view of the character of the popular worship in Israel at that period. Threshing-floor and wine-press, corn and wine, are its motives,--vociferous joy, merry shoutings, its expression. All the pleasure of life is concentrated in the house of Jehovah at the joyous banquets held to celebrate the coming of the gifts of His mild beneficence; no more dreadful thought than that a man must eat his bread like unclean food, like bread of mourners, without having offered the _aparchai_ at the festival. /2/ It is this *********************************************** 2. Times of mourning are, so to speak, times of interdict, during which intercourse between God and man is suspended. Further, nothing at all was ever eaten except that of which God had in the first instance received His share;--not only no flesh but also no vegetable food, for the "first-fruits" of corn and wine represented the produce of the year and sanctified the whole. All else was unclean. Comp. Ezekiel iv. 13. ********************************************** thought which gives its sting to the threatened exile; for sacrifice and feast are dependent upon the land, which is the nursing-mother and the settled home of the nation, the foundation of its existence and of its worship. The complete harmony of this with the essential character of the worship and of the festivals in the Book of the Covenant, in the law of the Two Tables, and in Deuteronomy, is clear in itself, but becomes still more evident by a comparison with the Priestly Code, to which we now proceed. III.III. In the Priestly Code the festal cycle is dealt with in two separate passages (Leviticus xxiii; Numbers xxviii., xxix.), of which the first contains a fragment (xxiii. 9-22, and partly also xxiii. 39-44) not quite homogeneous with the kernel of the document. In both these accounts also the three great feasts occur, but with considerable alteration of their essential character. III.III.1. The festal celebration, properly so called, is exhausted by a prescribed joint offering. There are offered (I.) during Easter week and also on the day of Pentecost, besides the _tamid_, two bullocks, one ram, seven lambs as a burnt-offering, and one he-goat as a sin-offering daily; (2.) at the feast of tabernacles, from the first to the seventh day two rams, fourteen lambs, and, in descending series, from thirteen to seven bullocks; on the eighth day one bullock, one ram, seven lambs as a burnt offering, besides one he-goat daily as a sin-offering. Additional voluntary offerings on the part of individuals are not excluded, but are treated as of secondary importance. Elsewhere, alike in the older practice (1Samuel i. 4 seq.) and in the law (Exodus xxiii. 18) it is precisely the festal offering that is a sacrificial meal, that is to say, a private sacrifice. In Deuteronomy it has been possible to find anything surprising in the joyous meals only because people are wont to know their Old Testament merely through the perspective of the Priestly Code; at most the only peculiar thing in that book is a certain humane application of the festal offering, the offerer being required to invite to it the poor and landless of his acquaintance. But this is a development which harmonises much more with the old idea of an offering as a communion between God and man than does the other self-sufficing general churchly sacrifice. The passover alone continues in the Priestly Code also to be a sacrificial meal, and participation therein to be restricted to the family or a limited society. But this last remnant of the old custom shows itself here as a peculiar exception; the festival in the house instead of "before Jehovah " has also something ambiguous about it, and turns the sacrifice into an entirely profane act of slaughtering almost--until we come to the rite of expiation, which is characteristically retained (Exodus xii. 7; comp. Ezekiel xiv. 19). Of a piece with this is the circumstance that the "first-fruits" of the season have come to be separated from the festivals still more than had been previously the case. While in Deuteronomy they are still offered at the three great sacrificial meals in the presence of Jehovah, in the Priestly Code they have altogether ceased to be offerings at all, and thus also of course have ceased to be festal offerings, being merely dues payable to the priests (by whom they are in part collected) and not in any case brought before the altar. Thus the feasts entirely lose their peculiar characteristics, the occasions by which they are inspired and distinguished; by the monotonous sameness of the unvarying burnt-offering and sin-offering of the community as a whole they are all put on the same even level, deprived of their natural spontaneity, and degraded into mere "exercises of religion." Only some very slight traces continue to bear witness to, we might rather say, to betray, what was the point from which the development started, namely, the rites of the barley sheaf, the loaves of bread, and the booths (Leviticus xxiii.). But these are mere rites, petrified remains of the old custom; the actual first-fruits belonging to the owners of the soil are collected by the priests, the shadow of them is retained at the festival in the form of the sheaf offered by the whole community--a piece of symbolism which has now become quite separated from its connection and is no longer understood. And since the giving of thanks for the fruits of the field has ceased to have any substantial place in the feasts, the very shadow of connection between the two also begins to disappear, for the rites of Leviticus xxiii. are taken over from an older legislation, and for the most part are passed over in silence in Numbers xxviii., xxix. Here, again, the passover has followed a path of its own. Even at an earlier period, substitution of other cattle and sheep was permitted. But now in the Priestly Code the firstlings are strictly demanded indeed, but merely as dues, not as sacrifices; the passover, always a yearling lamb or kid, has neither in fact nor in time anything to do with them, but occupies a separate position alongside. But as it is represented to have been instituted in order that the Hebrew first born may be spared in the destruction of those of the Egyptians, this connection betrays the fact that the yearling lambs are after all only a substitute for the firstlings of all animals fit for sacrifice, but in comparison with the cattle and sheep of the Jehovistic tradition and Deuteronomy a secondary substitute, and one for the uniformity of which there is no motive; and we see further that if the firstlings are now over and above assigned to the priests this is equivalent to a reduplication, which has been made possible first by a complete obscuration, and afterwards by an artificial revival of the original custom. A further symptom also proper to be mentioned here is the fixing of harvest festival terms by the days of the month, which is to be found exclusively in the Priestly Code. Easter falls upon the fifteenth, that is, at full moon, of the first, the feast of tabernacles upon the same day of the seventh month; Pentecost, which, strange to say, is left undetermined in Numbers xxviii., falls, according to Leviticus xxiii., seven weeks after Easter. This definite dating points not merely to a fixed and uniform regulation of the cultus, but also to a change in its contents. For it is not a matter of indifference that according to the Jehovistic-Deuteronomic legislation Easter is observed in "the month of corn ears" when the sickle is put to the corn, Pentecost at the end of the wheat harvest, and the feast of tabernacles after the ingathering; as harvest feasts they are from their very nature regulated by the condition of the fruits of the soil. When they cease to be so, when they are made to depend upon the phases of the moon, this means that their connection with their natural occasion is being lost sight of. Doubtless the accurate determination of dates is correlated with the other circumstance that the festivals are no longer kept in an isolated way by people at any place they may choose, but by the whole united nation at a single spot. It is therefore probable that the fixing of the date w as accomplished at first in the case of the autumn festival, which was the first to divest itself of its local character and most readily suffered a transposition of a week or two. It was hardest to change in the case of the _maccoth_ festival; the putting of the sickle to the corn is very inconvenient to shift. But here the passover seems to have exerted an influence. For the passover is indeed an annual feast, but not by the nature of things connected with any particular season of the year; rather was it dependent originally on the phases of the moon. Its character as a _pannychis_ [vigil] (Exodus xii. 42 [LYL #MWRYM]) points in this direction, as also does the analogy of the Arab feasts. The verification of the alleged denaturalisation of the feasts in the Priestly Code lies in this, that their historical interpretation, for which the way is already paved by the Jehovistic tradition, here attains its full development. For after they have lost their original contents and degenerated into mere prescribed religious forms, there is nothing to prevent the refilling of the empty bottles in any way accordant with the tastes of the period. Now, accordingly, the feast of tabernacles also becomes historical (Leviticus xxiii.), instituted to commemorate the booths under which the people had to shelter themselves during the forty years of wandering in the wilderness. In the case of Easter a new step in advance is made beyond the assignation of its motive to the exodus, which is already found in Deuteronomy and in Exodus xiii. 3 seq. For in the Priestly Code this feast, which precisely on account of its eminently historical character is here regarded as by far the most important of all, is much more than the mere commemoration of a divine act of salvation, it is itself a saving deed. It is not because Jehovah smote the firstborn of Egypt that the passover is afterwards instituted on the contrary, it is instituted beforehand, at the moment of the exodus, in order that the firstborn of Israel may be spared. Thus not merely is a historical motive assigned for the custom; its beginning is itself raised to the dignity of a historical fact upon which the feast rests,--the shadow elsewhere thrown only by another historical event here becomes substantial and casts itself. The state of matters in the case of the unleavened cakes is very similar. Instead of having it as their occasion and object to keep in remembrance the hasty midnight departure in which the travellers were compelled to carry with them their dough unleavened as it was (Exodus xii. 34), in the Priestly Code they also are spoken of as having being enjoined beforehand (xii. 15 seq.), and thus the festival is celebrated in commemoration of itself; in other words, not merely is a historical motive assigned to it, it is itself made a historical fact. For this reason also, the law relating to Easter is removed from all connection with the tabernacle legislation (Exodus xii. 1 seq.), and the difficuity that now in the case of the passover the sanctuary which elsewhere in the Priestly Code is indispensable must be left out of sight is got over by divesting it as much as possible of its sacrificial character. /1/ ******************************************* 1. The ignoring of the sanctuary has a reason only in the case of the first passover, and perhaps ought to be regarded as holding good for that only. The distinction between the PSX MCRYM and the PSX HDWRWT is necessary, if only for the reason that the former is a historical fact, the latter a commemorative observance. When it is argued for the originality of the passover ritual in the Priestly Code that it alone fits in with the conditions of the sojourn in Egypt, the position is not to be disputed. ******************************************* In the case of Pentecost alone is there no tendency to historical explanation; that in this instance has been reserved for later Judaism, which from the chronology of the Book of Exodus discerned in the feast a commemoration of the giving of the law at Sinai. But one detects the drift of the later time. It has been already pointed out, in what has just been said, that as regards this development the centralisation of the cultus was epochmaking. Centralisation is synonymous with generalisation and fixity, and these are the external features by which the festivals of the Priestly Code are distinguished from those which preceded them. In evidence I point to the prescribed sacrifice of the community instead of the spontaneous sacrifice of the individual, to the date fixed for the 15th of the month, to the complete separation between sacrifices and dues, to the reduction of the passover to uniformity; nothing is free or the spontaneous growth of nature, nothing is indefinite and still in process of becoming; all is statutory, sharply defined, distinct. But the centralisation of the cultus had also not a little to do with the inner change which the feasts underwent. At first the gifts of the various seasons of the year are offered by the individual houses as each one finds convenient; afterwards they are combined, and festivals come into existence; last of all, the united offerings of individuals fall into the back ground when compared with the single joint-offering on behalf of the entire community. According as stress is laid upon the common character of the festival and uniformity in its observance, in precisely the same degree does it become separated from the roots from which it sprang, and grow more and more abstract. That it is then very ready to assume a historical meaning may partly also be attributed to the circumstance that history is not, like harvest, a personal experience of individual households, but rather an experience of the nation as a whole. One does not fail to observe, of course, that the festivals--which always to a certain degree have a centralising tendency--have IN THEMSELVES a disposition to become removed from the particular motives of their institution, but in no part of the legislation has this gone so far as in the Priestly Code. While everywhere else they still continue to stand, as we have seen, in a clear relationship to the land and its increase, and are at one and the same time the great days of homage and tribute for the superior and grantor of the soil, here this connection falls entirely out of sight. As in opposition to the Book of the Covenant and Deuteronomy, nay, even to the corpus itself which forms the basis of Leviticus xvii.-xxvi., one can characterise the entire Priestly Code as the wilderness legislation, inasmuch as it abstracts from the natural conditions and motives of the actual life of the people in the land of Canaan and rears the hierocracy on the _tabula rasa_ of the wilderness, the negation of nature, by means of the bald statutes of arbitrary absolutism, so also the festivals, in which the connection of the cultus with agriculture appears most strongly, have as much as possible been turned into wilderness festivals, but most of all the Easter festival, which at the same time has become the most important. III.III.2. The centralisation of the cultus, the revolutionising influence of which is seen in the Priestly Code, is begun by Deuteronomy. The former rests upon the latter, and draws its as yet unsuspected consequences. This general relation is maintained also in details; in the first place, in the names of the feasts, which are the same in both,--_pesah, shabuoth, sukkoth_. This is not without its inner significance, for _asiph_ (ingathering) would have placed much greater hindrances in the way of the introduction of a historical interpretation than does sukkoth (booths). So also with the prominence given to the passover, a festival mentioned nowhere previously--a prominence which is much more striking in the Priestly Code than in Deuteronomy. Next, this relation is observed in the duration of the feasts. While Deuteronomy certainly does not fix their date of commencement with the same definiteness, it nevertheless in this respect makes a great advance upon the Jehovistic legislation, inasmuch as it lays down the rule of a week for Easter and Tabernacles, and of a day for Pentecost. The Priestly Code is on the whole in agreement with this, and also with the time determination of the relation of Pentecost to Easter, but its provisions are more fully developed in details. The passover, in the first month, on the evening of the 14th, here also indeed begins the feast, but does not, as in Deuteronomy xvi. 4, 8, count as the first day of Easter week; on the contrary, the latter does not begin until the 15th and closes with the 21st (comp. Leviticus xxiii. 6; Numbers xxviii. 17; Exodus xii. 18). The beginning of the festival week being thus distinctly indicated, there arises in this way not merely an ordinary but also an extra-ordinary feast day more, the day after the passover, on which already, according to the injunctions of Deuteronomy, the pilgrims were required to set out early in the morning on the return journey to their homes. /1/ ********************************************* 1. It is impossible to explain away this discrepancy by the circumstance that in the Priestly Code the day is reckoned from the evening; for (1.) this fact has no practical bearing, as the dating reckons at any rate from the morning, and the evening preceding the 15th is always called the 14th of the month (Leviticus xiii. 27, 32); (2.) the first day of the feast in Deuteronomy is just the day on the evening of which the passover is held, and upon it there follow not seven but six days more, whereas in the Priestly Code the celebration extends from the 14th to the 21st of the month (Exodus xii. 18). When the MXRT H#BT: is made to refer, not as in Josh. v. 11 to the 14th, but as in Jewish tradition (LXX on Leviticus xxiii. 11) to the day following the 15th of Nisan, thee 16th of Nisan is added to the 14th and 15th as a special feast day. *********************************************** Another advance consists in this, that not only the passover, as in Deuteronomy, or the additional first day of the feast besides, but also the seventh (which, according to Deuteronomy xvi. 8, is marked only by rest), must be observed as _miqra qodesh_ in Jerusalem. In other words, such pilgrims as do not live in the immediate neighbourhood are compelled to pass the whole week there, an exaction which enables us to mark the progress made with centralisation, when the much more moderate demands of Deuteronomy are compared. The feast of tabernacles is in the latter law also observed from beginning to end at Jerusalem, but the Priestly Code has contrived to add to it an eighth day as an _`acereth_ to the principal feast, which indeed still appears to be wanting in the older portion of Leviticus xxiii. From all this it is indisputable that the Priestly Code has its nearest relations with Deuteronomy, but goes beyond it in the same direction as that in which Deuteronomy itself goes beyond the Jehovistic legislation. In any case the intermediate place in the series belongs to Deuteronomy, and if we begin that series with the Priestly Code, we must in consistency close it with the Sinaitic Book of the Covenant (Exodus xx. 23 seq.). After King Josiah had published Deuteronomy and had made it the Book of the Covenant by a solemn engagement of the people (621 B.C.), he commanded them to "keep the passover to Jehovah your God as it is written in this Book;" such a passover had never been observed from the days of the judges, or throughout the entire period of the kings (2Kings xxiii. 21, 22). And when Ezra the scribe introduced the Pentateuch as we now have it as the fundamental law of the church of the second temple (444 B.C.), it was found written in the Torah which Jehovah had commanded by Moses, that the children of Israel were to live in booths during the feast in the seventh month, and further, to use branches of olive and myrtle and palm for this purpose, and that the people went and made to themselves booths accordingly; such a thing had not been done "since the days of Joshua the son of Nun even unto that day " (Nehemiah viii. 14 seq.). That Josiah's passover rests upon Deuteronomy xvi. and not upon Exodus xii. is sufficiently proved by the circumstance that the observance of the festival stands in connection with the new unity of the cultus, and is intended to be an exemplification of it, while the precept of Exodus xii., if literally followed, could only have served to destroy it. We thus find that the two promulgations of the law, so great in their importance and so like one another in their character, both take place at the time of a festival, the one in spring, the other in harvest; and we also discover that the festal observance of the Priestly Code first began to show life and to gain currency about two hundred years later than that of Deuteronomy. This can be proved in yet another way. The author of the Book of Kings knows only of a seven days' duration of the feast of tabernacles (1Kings viii. 66); Solomon dismisses the people on the eighth day. On the other hand, in the parallel passage in Chronicles (2Chronicles vii. 9) the king holds the _`acereth_ on the eighth, and does not dismiss the people until the following day, the twenty-third of the month; that is to say, the Deuteronomic use, which is followed by the older author and by Ezekiel (xiv. 25) who was, roughly speaking, his contemporary, is corrected by the later writer into conformity with that of the Priestly Code in force since the time of Ezra (Nehemiah viii. 18). In later Judaism the inclination to assert most strongly precisely that which is most open to dispute led to the well-known result that the eighth day of the feast was regarded as the most splendid of all (John vii. 37). On this question also the Book of Ezekiel stands nearest the Priestly Code, ordaining as follows (xiv. 21-25):-- "In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, ye shall keep the passover, ye shall eat maccoth seven days; on that day shall the prince offer for himself and for all the people of the land a bullock for a sin-offering, and during the seven days he shall offer a burnt-offering to the Lord, seven bullocks and seven rams daily for the seven days, and a he-goat daily for a sin offering; and he shall offer as a meal-offering an ephah for every bullock and every ram and a hin of oil for the ephah. In the seventh month, on the fifteenth day of the month, in the feast shall he do the like for seven days, according to the sin-offering, according to the burnt-offering, and according to the meal-offering, and according to the oil." Here indeed in details hardly any point is in agreement with the prescriptions of the ritual law of Leviticus xxiii., Numbers xxviii., xxix. Apart from the fact that the day of Pentecost is omitted (it is restored in the Massoretic text by an absurd correction in ver. 11), in the first place there is a discrepancy as to the DURATION of the feasts; both last seven and not eight days, and the passover is taken for the first day of Easter, as in Deuteronomy. Further, the offerings differ, alike by their never-varying number and by their quality; in particular, nothing is said of the passover lamb, but a bullock as a general sin-offering is mentioned instead. From the _minha_ the wine is wanting, but this must be left out of the account, for Ezekiel banishes wine from the service on principle. Lastly, it is not the CONGREGATION that sacrifices, but the prince for himself and for the PEOPLE. But in spite of all differences the general similarity is apparent; one sees that here for the first time we have something which at all points admits of correlation with the Priestly Code, but is quite disparate with the Jehovistic legislation, and half so with that of Deuteronomy. On both hands we find the term fixed according to the day of the month, the strictly prescribed joint burnt-offering and sin-offering, the absence of relation first-fruits and agriculture, the obliteration of natural distinctions so as to make one general churchly festival. But Ezekiel surely could hardly have had any motive for reproducing Leviticus xxiii. and Numbers xxviii. seq., and still less for the introduction of a number of aimless variations as he did so. Let it be observed that in no one detail does he contradict Deuteronomy, while yet he stands so infinitely nearer to the Priestly Code; the relationship is not an arbitrary one, but arises from their place in time. Ezekiel is the forerunner of the priestly legislator in the Pentateuch; his pence and people, to some extent invested with the colouring of the bygone period of the monarchy, are the antecedents of the congregation of the tabernacle and the second temple. Against this supposition there is nothing to be alleged, and it is the rational one, for this reason, that it was not Ezekiel but the Priestly Code that furnished the norm for the praxis of the later period. For, as the festival system of the Priestly Code absolutely refuses to accommodate itself to the manner of the older worship as we are made acquainted with it in Hos. ii., ix. and elsewhere, in the same degree does it furnish in every respect the standard for the praxis of post-exilian Judaism, and, therefore, also for our ideas thence derived. No one in reading the New Testament dreams of any other manner of keeping the passover than that of Exodus xii., or of any other offering than the paschal lamb there prescribed. One might perhaps hazard the conjecture that if in the wilderness legislation of the Code there is no trace of agriculture being regarded as the basis of life, which it still is in Deuteronomy and even in the kernel of Leviticus xvii.-xxvi., this also is a proof that the Code belongs to a very recent rather than to a very early period, when agriculture was no longer rather than not yet. With the Babylonian captivity the Jews lost their fixed seats, and so became a trading people. III.III.3. No notice has as yet been taken of one phenomenon which distinguishes the Priestly Code, namely, that in it the tripartite cycle of the feasts is extended and interrupted. In the chronologically arranged enumeration of Leviticus xxiii. and Numbers xxviii., xxix., two other feast days are interpolated between Pentecost and Tabernacles: new year on the first, and the great day of atonement on the tenth of the seventh month. One perceives to what an extent the three originally connected harvest feasts have lost their distinctive character, when it is observed that these two heterogeneous days make their appearance in the midst of them;--the _yom kippur_ in the same series with the old _haggim_, i.e., dances, which were occasions of pure pleasure and joy, not to be named in the same day with fasts and mournings. The following points demand notice in detail. In the period of the kings the change of the year occurred in autumn. The autumn festival marked the close of the year and of the festal cycle (Exodus xxiii. 16, xxxiv. 22; 1Samuel i. 21, 21; Isaiah xxix. 1, xxxii. 10). Deuteronomy was discovered in the eighteenth year of Josiah, and in the very same year Easter was observed in accordance with the prescriptions of that law--which could not have been unless the year had begun in autumn. Now the ECCLESIASTICAL festival of new year in the Priestly Code is also autumnal. /1/ The _yom teruah_ (Leviticus xxiii 24, 2;; ******************************************** 1. In this way Tabernacles comes not before but after new year; this probably is connected with the more definite dating (on the fifteenth day of the month), but is quite contrary to the old custom and the meaning of the feast. ******************************************* Numbers xxix. 1 seq.) falls on the first new moon of autumn, and it follows from a tradition confirmed by Leviticus xxv. 9, 10, that this day was celebrated as new year [R)# H#NH). But it is always spoken of as the first of the seventh month. That is to say, the civil new year has been separated from the ecclesiastical and been transferred to spring; the ecclesiastical can only be regarded as a relic surviving from an earlier period, and betrays strikingly the priority of the division of the year that prevailed in the time of the older monarchy. It appears to have first begun to give way under the influence of the Babylonians, who observed the spring era. /1/ For the designation of the *************************************************** 1. In Exodus xii. 2 this change of era is formally commanded by Moses: "This month (the passover month) shall be the beginning of months unto you, it shall be to you the first of the months of the year." According to George Smith, the Assyrian year commenced at the vernal equinox; the Assyrian use depends on the Babylonian (Assyrian Eponym Canon, p. 19). *************************************************** months by numbers instead of by the old Hebrew names, Abib, Zif, Bul, Ethanim and the like,--a style which arises together with the use of the spring era,--does not yet occur in Deuteronomy (xvi.1), but apart from the Priestly Code, and the last redactor of the Pentateuch (Deuteronomy i. 3) is found for the first time in writers of the period of the exile. It is first found in Jeremiah, but only in those portions of his book which were not committed to writing by him, or at least have been edited by a later hand; /2/ **************************************************** 2. Kuenen, Hist.-Krit. Onderzoek (1863), ii. pp. 197, 214. **************************************************** then in Ezekiel and the author of the Book of Kings, who explains the names he found in his source by giving the numbers (1Kings vi. 37, 38, viii. 2); next in Haggai and Zechariah; and lastly in Chronicles, though here already the Babylonio-Syrian names of the months, which at first were not used in Hebrew, have begun to find their way in (Nehemiah i. 1, ii. 1; Zech. i. 7). The Syrian names are always given along with the numbers in the Book of Esther, and are used to the exclusion of all others in that of Maccabees. It would be absurd to attempt to explain this demonstrable change which took place in the calendar after the exile as a mere incidental effect of the Priestly Code, hitherto in a state of suspended animation, rather than by reference to general causes arising from the circumstances of the time, under whose influence the Priestly Code itself also stood, and which then had for their result a complete change in the greater accuracy and more general applicability of the methods by which time was reckoned. A similar phenomenon presents itself in connection with the metric system. The "shekel of the sanctuary," often mentioned in the Priestly Code, and there only, cannot possibly have borne this name until the most natural objects of the old Israelite _regime_ had begun to appear surrounded by a legendary nimbus, because themselves no longer in actual existence. Over against it we have the "king's weight" mentioned in a gloss in 2Samuel xiv. 26, the king being none other than the great king of Babylon. It is an interesting circumstance that the "shekel of the sanctuary "spoken of in the Priestly Code is still the ordinary shekel in Ezekiel; compare Exodus xxx. 13 with Ezekiel xliv. 12. During the exile the observance of the ecclesiastical new year seems to have taken place not on the first but on the tenth of the seventh month (Leviticus xxv. 9; Ezekiel xl. 1), and there is nothing to be wondered at in this, after once it had come to be separated from the actual beginning of the year. /1/ This fact alone *********************************************** 1. The tenth of the month is to be taken in Ezekiel as strictly new year's day; for the designation R)# H#NH occurs in no other meaning than this, and moreover it is by no mere accident that the prophet has his vision of the new Jerusalem precisely at the new year. But according to Leviticus xxv. 9 it is the seventh month that is meant, on the tenth day of which the trumpets are blown at the commencement of the year of jubilee. ************************************************ would suffice to bring into a clear light the late origin of the great day of atonement in Leviticus xvi., which at a subsequent period was observed on this date; for although as a ceremonial of general purification that day occurs appropriately enough at the change of the year, the joyful sound of the new year trumpets ill befits its quiet solemnity, the YWM TRW(H in the Priestly Code being in fact fixed for the first of the seventh month. Notwithstanding its conspicuous importance, there is nothing known of the great day of atonement either in the Jehovistic and Deuteronomic portions of the Pentateuch or in the historical and prophetical books. It first begins to show itself in embryo during the exile. Ezekiel (xiv. 18-20) appoints two great expiations at the beginning of the two halves of the year; for in xiv. 20 the LXX must be accepted, which reads B#B(Y BXD#, "in the seventh month at new moon." The second of these, in autumn, is similar to that of the Priestly Code, only that it falls on the first and new year on the tenth, while in the latter, on the contrary, new year is observed on the first and the atonement on the tenth; the ritual is also much simpler. Zechariah towards the end of the sixth century looks back upon two regular fast days, in the fifth and the seventh month, as having been in observance for seventy years, that is, from the beginning of the exile (vii. 5), and to these he adds (viii. 19) two others in the fourth and in the tenth. They refer, according to the very probable explanation of C. B. Michaelis, to the historical days of calamity which preceded the exile. On the ninth day of the fourth month Jerusalem was taken (Jeremiah xxxix. 2); on the seventh of the fifth the city and the temple were burnt (2Kings xxv. 8); in the seventh month Gedaliah was murdered, and all that remained of the Jewish state annihilated (Jeremiah xli.); in the tenth the siege of the city by Nebuchadnezzar was begun (2Kings xxv. 1). Zechariah also still knows nothing of the great day of atonement in Leviticus xvi., but only mentions among others the fast of the seventh month as having subsisted for seventy years. Even in 444 B.C., the year of the publication of the Pentateuch by Ezra, the great day of atonement has not yet come into force. Ezra begins the reading of the law in the beginning of the seventh month, and afterwards the feast of tabernacles is observed on the fifteenth; of an atoning solemnity on the tenth of the month not a word is said in the circumstantial narrative, which, moreover, is one specially interested in the liturgical element, but it is made up for on the twenty-fourth (Nehemiah viii., ix.). This _testimonium e silentio_ is enough; down to that date the great day of the Priestly Code (now introduced for the first time) had not existed. /1/ The term is ************************************************ 1. "If Leviticus xvi. belongs to the original of the Priestly Code, and the entire Pentateuch was published by Ezra in the year 444, and yet the day was not then celebrated, then it has _ipso facto_ been conceded that it is possible that there can be laws which yet are not carried into effect." So writes Dillmann in his introduction to Leviticus xvi. (1880, p. 525); every one will grant him that the law, before it could attain public currency, must have been previously written and promulgated. *********************************************** partly fixed, following Ezekiel, by reference to the old new year's day (Leviticus xxv. 9); partly, following Zechariah, by reference to the fast of Gedaliah, which indeed was still observed later as a separate solemnity. Even before the exile general fast days doubtless occurred, but they were specially appointed, and always arose out of extraordinary occasions, when some sin was brought home to the public conscience, or when the divine anger threatened, especially in connection with calamities affecting the produce of the soil (1Kings xxi. 9, 12; Jeremiah xiv. 12, xxxvi. 6, 9; Joel i. 14, ii. 12, 15). In the exile they began to be a regular custom (Isaiah lviii.), doubtless in the first instance in remembrance of the _dies atri_ that had been experienced, but also in a certain measure as a surrogate, suited to the circumstances, for the joyous popular gatherings of Easter, Pentecost, and Tabernacles which were possible only in the Holy Land. /l/ ************************************** 1. After the second destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the system of fasts received such an impulse that it was necessary to draw up a list of the days on which fasting was forbidden. ************************************* At last they came into a position of co-ordination with the feasts, and became a stated and very important element of the ordinary worship. In the Priestly Code, the great fast in the tenth of the seventh month is the holiest day of all the year. Nothing could illustrate more clearly the contrast between the new cultus and the old; fixing its regard at all points on sin and its atonement, it reaches its culmination in a great atoning solemnity. It is as if the temper of the exile had carried itself into the time of liberation also, at least during the opening centuries; as if men had felt themselves not as in an earlier age only momentarily and in special circumstances, but unceasingly, under the leaden pressure of sin and wrath. It is hardly necessary to add here expressly that also in regard to the day of atonement as a day sacred above all others the Priestly Code became authoritative for the post-exilian period. "Ritual and sacrifice have through the misfortunes of the times disappeared, but this has retained all its old sacredness; unless a man has wholly cut himself adrift from Judaism he keeps this day, however indifferent he may be to all its other usages and feasts." III.IV. [.1?] A word, lastly, on the lunar feasts, that is, new moon and Sabbath. That the two are connected cannot be gathered from the Pentateuch, but something of the sort is implied in Amos viii. 5, and 2Kings iv. 22, 23. In Amos the corn-dealers, impatient of every interruption of their trade, exclaim, "When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn; and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat?" In the other passage the husband of the woman of Shunem, when she begs him for an ass and a servant that she may go to the prophet Elisha, asks why it is that she proposes such a journey now, for "it is neither new moon nor Sabbath;" it is not Sunday, as we might say. Probably the Sabbath was originally regulated by the phases of the moon, and thus occurred on the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first (and twenty-eighth) day of the month, the new moon being reckoned as the first; at least no other explanation can be discovered. /2/ For that the week should ************************************ 2 George Smith, Assyrian Eponymn Canon, pp. 19, 20. "Among the Assyrians the first twenty-eight days of every month were divided into four weeks of seven days each, the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eight days respectively being Sabbaths; and there was a general prohibition of work on these days." See further Hyde, Hist. Rel. Vet. Pers., p. 239. Among the Syrians $bbh means the week, just as among the Arabs _sanba_ and _sanbata_ (Pl. _sanabit_), dim. _suneibita_) mean a period of time (Lagarde, Ps. Hieronymi; p. 158), and in fact, according to the lexicographers, a comparatively long one. But in the sole case cited by the _Tag al 'Arus_, it means rather a short interval. "What is youth? It is the beginning of a _sanbata_," meaning something like the Sunday of a week. According to this it would appear as if the sabbath had been originally the week itself, and only afterwards became the weekly festival day. The identity of the Syriac word (ta sabbata) in the New Testament) with the Hebrew is guaranteed by the twofold Arabic form. *************************************** be conditioned by the seven planets seems very barely credible. It was not until after people had got their seven days that they began to call them after the seven planets; /1/ ********************************************** 1. The peculiar order in which the names of the planets are used to designate the days of the week makes this very clear; see Ideler, Handb. d. Chron. i. 178 seq., ii 77 seq. ****************************************** the number seven is the only bond of connection between them. Doubtless the week is older than the names of its days. Lunar feasts, we may safely say, are in every case older than annual or harvest feasts; and certainly they are so in the case of the Hebrews. In the pre-historic period the new moon must have been observed with such preference that an ancient name for it, which is no longer found in Biblical Hebrew, even furnished the root of the general word for a festive occasion, which is used for the vintage feast in a passage so early as Judges ix. 27. /2/ ***************************************** 2. Sprenger (Leben Moh. iii. 527) and Lagarde have rightly correlated the Hebrew _hallel_ with the Arabic _ahalla_ (to call out, _labbaika_, see, for example Abulf. i. p. 180). But there is no uncertainty as to the derivation of _ahalla_ from _hilal_ (new moon) ***************************************** But it is established by historical testimonies besides that the new moon festival anciently stood, at least, on a level with that of the Sabbath. Compare 1Samuel xx. 5, 6; ~2Kings iv. 23; Annos viii. 5; Isa i. 13; Hos. ii. 13 (A.V. 11). In the Jehovistic and Deuteronomic legislation, however, it is completely ignored, and if it comes into somewhat greater prominence in that of Ezekiel and the Priestly Code (but without being for a moment to be compared with the Sabbath), this perhaps has to do with the circumstance that in the latter the great festivals are regulated by the new moon, and that therefore it is important that this should be observed. It may have been with a deliberate intention that the new moon festival was thrust aside on account of all sorts of heathenish superstition which readily associated themselves with it; but, on the other hand, it is possible that the undersigned preponderance gained by the Sabbath may have ultimately given it independence, and led to the reckoning of time by regular intervals of seven days without regard to new moon, with which now it came into collision, instead of, as formerly, being supported by it. As a lunar festival doubtless the Sabbath also went back to a very remote antiquity. But with the Israelites the day acquired an altogether peculiar significance whereby it was distinguished from all other feast days; it became the day of rest _par excellence_. Originally the rest is only a consequence of the feast, e.g. that of the harvest festival after the period of severe labour; the new moons also were marked in this way (Amos viii. 5; 2Kings iv. 23). In the case of the Sabbath also, rest is, properly speaking, only the consequence of the fact that the day is the festal and sacrificial day of the week (Isaiah i. 13; Ezekiel xlvi. 1 seq.), on which the shewbread was laid out; but here, doubtless on account of the regularity with which it every eighth day interrupted the round of everyday work, this gradually became the essential attribute. In the end even its name came to be interpreted as if derived from the verb "to rest." But as a day of rest it cannot be so very primitive in its origin; in this attribute it presupposes agriculture and a tolerably hard-pressed working-day life. With this it agrees that an intensification of the rest of the Sabbath among the Israelites admits of being traced in the course of the history. The highest development, amounting even to a change of quality, is seen in the Priestly Code. According to 2Kings iv. 22, 23, one has on Sabbath time for occupations that are not of an everyday kind; servant and ass can be taken on a journey which is longer than that "of a Sabbath day." In Hos. ii. 13 (11) we read, "I make an end of all your joy, your feasts, your new moons and your Sabbaths," that is to say, the last-named share with the first the happy joyousness which is impossible in the exile which Jehovah threatens. With the Jehovist and the Deuteronomist the Sabbath, which, it is true, is already extended in Amos viii. 5 to commerce, is an institution specially for agriculture; it is the day of refreshment for the people and the cattle, and is accordingly employed for social ends in the same way as the sacrificial meal is (Exodus xx. 10, xxiii. 12, xxxiv. 21; Deuteronomy v. 13, 14). Although the moral turn given to the observance is genuinely Israelitic and not original, yet the rest even here still continues to be a feast, a satisfaction for the labouring classes; for what is enjoined as a duty--upon the Israelite rulers, that is, to whom the legislation is directed--is less that they should rest than that they should give rest. In the Priestly Code, on the contrary, the rest of the Sabbath has nothing at all of the nature of the joyous breathing-time from the load of life which a festival affords, but is a thing for itself, which separates the Sabbath not only from the week days, but also from the festival days, and approaches an ascetic exercise much more nearly than a restful refreshment. It is taken in a perfectly abstract manner, not as rest from ordinary work, but as rest absolutely. On the holy day it is not lawful to leave the camp to gather sticks or manna (Exod. xvi.; Numbers xv.), not even to kindle a fire or cook a meal (Exodus xxxv. 3); this rest is in fact a sacrifice of abstinence from all occupation, for which preparation must already begin on the preceding day (Exodus xvi.). Of the Sabbath of the Priestly Code in fact it could not be said that it was made for man (Mark ii. 27); rather is it a statute that presents itself with all the rigour of a law of nature, having its reason with itself, and being observed even by the Creator. The original narrative of the Creation, according to which God finished His work on the seventh day, and therefore sanctified it, is amended so as to be made to say that He finished in six days and rested on the seventh. /1/ ************************************** 1 The contradiction is indubitable when in Genesis ii. 2 it is said in the first place that on the seventh day God ended the work which He had made; and then that He rested on the seventh day from His work. Obviously the second clause is an authentic interpretation added from very intelligible motives. *************************************** Tendencies to such an exaggeration of the Sabbath rest as would make it absolute are found from the Chaldaean period. While Isaiah, regarding the Sabbath purely as a sacrificial day, says, "Bring no more vain oblations; it is an abominable incense unto me; new moon and Sabbath, the temple assembly---I cannot endure iniquity and solemn meeting," Jeremiah, on the other hand, is the first of the prophets who stands up for a stricter sanctification of the seventh day, treating it, however, merely as a day of rest: "Bear no burden on the Sabbath day, neither bring in by the gates of Jerusalem nor carry forth a burden out of your houses, neither do ye any work" (xvii. 21, 22). He adds that this precept had indeed been given to the fathers, but hitherto has not been kept; thus, what was traditional appears to have been only the abstinence from field work and perhaps also from professional pursuits. In this respect the attitude of Jeremiah is that which is taken also by his exilian followers, not merely by Ezekiel (xx. 16, xxii. 263 but also by the Great Unknown (Isaiah lvi. 2, lviii. 13), who does not otherwise manifest any express partiality for cultus. While according to Hos. ii. 13, and even Lam. ii. 6, the Sabbath, as well as the rest of the acts of divine worship, must cease outside of the Holy Land, it in fact gained in importance to an extraordinary degree during the exile, having severed itself completely, not merely from agriculture, but in particular also from the sacrificial system, and gained entire independence as a holy solemnity of rest. Accordingly, it became along with circumcision the symbol that bound together the Jewish diaspora; thus already in the Priestly Code the two institutions are the general distinguishing marks of religion [)WT Genesis xvii. 10, 11; Exodus xxxi. 13] which also continue to subsist under circumstances where as in the exile the conditions of the Mosaic worship are not present (Genesis ii. 3, xvii. 12, 13). The trouble which in the meantime the organisers of the church of the second temple had in forcing into effect the new and strict regulations is clear from Nehemiah xiii. 15 seq. But they were ultimately successful. The solemnisation of the Sabbath in Judaism continued to develop logically on the basis of the priestly legislation, but always approximating with increasing nearness to the idea; of absolute rest, so that for the straitest sect of the Pharisees the business of preparing for the sacred day absorbed the whole week, and half man's life, so to speak, existed for it alone. "From Sunday onwards think of the Sabbath," says Shammai. Two details are worthy of special prominence; the distinction between _yom tob_ and _shabbath_, comparable to that drawn by the Puritans between Sundays and feast days, and the discussion as to whether the Sabbath was broken by divine worship; both bring into recognition that tendency of the Priestly Code in which the later custom separates itself from its original roots. III.IV.2. Connected with the Sabbath is the sabbatical year. In the Book of the Covenant it is commanded that a Hebrew who has been bought as a slave must after six years of service be liberated on the seventh unless he himself wishes to remain (Exodus xxi. 2-6). By the same authority it is ordained in another passage that the land and fruit-gardens are to be wrought and their produce gathered for six years, but on the seventh the produce is to be surrendered (#M+), that the poor of the people may eat, and what they leave the beasts of the field may <e>at (xxiii. 10, 11). Here there is no word of a sabbatical year. The liberation of the Hebrew slave takes place six years after his purchase, that is, the term is a relative one. In like manner, in the other ordinance there is nothing to indicate an absolute seventh year; and besides, it is not a Sabbath or fallow time for the _land_ that is contemplated, but a surrender of the _harvest_. The first of these commands is repeated in Deuteronomy without material alteration, and to a certain extent word for word (xv. 12-18). The other has at least an analogue in Deuteronomy xv. 1-6: "At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release (surrender, s*m+h), and this is the manner of it; no creditor that lendeth aught shall exact it of his neighbour or of his brother, because Jehovah's release has been proclaimed; of a foreigner thou mayst exact it again, but that which is of thine with thy brother, thy hand shall release." That this precept is parallel with Exodus xxiii. 10, 11, is shown by the word #m+h~; but this has a different meaning put upon it which plainly is introduced as new. Here it is not landed property that is being dealt with, but money, and what has to be surrendered is not the interest of the debt merely (comparable to the fruit of the soil), but the capital itself; the last clause admits of no other construction, however unsuitable the regulation may be. A step towards the sabbatical year is discernible in it, in so far as the seventh year term is not a different one for each individual debt according to the date when it was incurred (in which case it might have been simply a period of prescription), but is a uniform and common term publicly fixed: it is absolute, not relative. But it does not embrace the whole seventh year, it does not come in at the end of six years as in Exodus, but at the end of seven; the surrender of the harvest demands the whole year, the remission of debts, comparatively speaking, only a moment. The sabbatical year is peculiar to the Priestly Code, or, to speak more correctly, to that collection of laws incorporated and edited by it, which lies at the basis of Leviticus xvii.-xxvi. In Leviticus xxv. 1-7 we read: "When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a Sabbath to Jehovah. Six years shalt thou sow thy field and prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; but in the seventh year shall the land keep a Sabbath of rest unto Jehovah: thy field shalt thou not sow, thy vineyard shalt thou not prune; that which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest shalt thou not reap, neither shalt thou gather the grapes of thy vine undressed; the land shall have a year of rest, and the Sabbath of the land shall be food for you; for thee, and for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy cattle, and for all the beasts that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be food." The expressions make it impossible to doubt that Exodus xxiii. 10, 11 lies at the foundation of this law; but out of this as a basis it is something different that has been framed. The seventh year, which is there a relative one, has here become fixed,--not varying for the various properties, but common for the whole land, a sabbatical year after the manner of the Sabbath day. This amounts to a serious increase in the difficulty of the matter, for it is not one and the same thing to have the abstinence from harvest spread over seven years and to have it concentrated into one out of every seven. In like manner a heightening of the demand is also seen in the circumstance that not merely harvesting but also sowing and dressing are forbidden. In the original commandment this was not the case; all that was provided for was that in the seventh year the harvest should not fall to the lot of the proprietor of the soil, but should be _publici juris_,--a relic perhaps of communistic agriculture. Through a mere misunderstanding of the verbal suffix in Exodus xxiii. 11, as has been conjectured by Hupfeld, a surrender of the _fruit_ of the land has been construed into a surrender of the land itself--a general fallow year (Leviticus xxv. 4). The misunderstanding, however, is not accidental, but highly characteristic. In Exodus xxiii. the arrangement is made for man; it is a limitation, for the common good, of private rights of property in land,--in fact, for the benefit of the landless, who in the seventh year are to have the usufruct of the soil; in Leviticus xxv. the arrangement is for the sake of the land,--that it may rest, if not on the seventh day, at least on the seventh year, and for the sake of the Sabbath-- that it may extend its supremacy over nature also. Of course this presupposes the extreme degree of Sabbath observance by absolute rest, and becomes comprehensible only when viewed as an outgrowth from that. For the rest, a universal fallow season is possible only under circumstances in which a people are to a considerable extent independent of the products of their own agriculture; prior to the exile even the idea of such a thing could hardly have occurred. In the Priestly Code the year of jubilee is further added to supplement in turn the sabbatical year (Leviticus xxv. 8 seq.). As the latter is framed to correspond with the seventh day, so the former corresponds with the fiftieth, i.e., with Pentecost, as is easily perceived from the parallelism of Leviticus xxv. 8 with Leviticus xxiii. 15. Asthe fiftieth day after the seven Sabbath days is celebrated as a closing festival of the forty-nine days' period, so is the fiftieth year after the seven sabbatic years as rounding off the larger interval; the seven Sabbaths falling on harvest time, which are usually reckoned specially (Luke vi. 1 ), have, in the circumstance of their interrupting harvest work, a particular resemblance to the sabbatic years which interrupt agriculture altogether. Jubilee is thus an artificial institution superimposed upon the years of fallow regarded as harvest Sabbaths after the analogy of Pentecost. Both its functions appear originally to have belonged also to the Sabbath year and to be deduced from the two corresponding regulations in Deuteronomy relating to the seventh year, so that thus Exod xxiii. would be the basis of Leviticus xxv. 1-7 and Deuteronomy xv. that of xxv. 8 seq. The emancipation of the Hebrew slave originally had to take place on the seventh year after the purchase, afterwards (it would seem) on the seventh vear absolutely; for practical reasons it was transferred from that to the fiftieth. Analogous also, doubtless, is the growth of the other element in the jubilee--the return of mortgaged property to its hereditary owner--out of the remission of debts enjoined in Deuteronomy xv. for the end of the seventh year; for the two hang very closely together, as Leviticus xxv. 23 seq. shows. As for the evidence for these various arrangements, those of the Book of the Covenant are presupposed alike by Deuteronomy and by the Priestly Code. It seems to have been due to the prompting of Deuteronomy that towards the end of the reign of Zedekiah the emancipation of the Hebrew slaves was seriously gone about; the expressions in Jeremiah xxxiv. 14 point to Deuteronomy xv. 12, and not to Exodus xxi. 2. The injunction not having had practical effect previously, it was in this instance carried through by all parties at the same date: this was of course inevitable when it was introduced as an extraordinary innovation; perhaps it is in connexion with this that a fixed seventh year grew out of a relative one. The sabbatical year, according to the legislator's own declaration, was never observed throughout the whole pre-exilic period; for, according to Leviticus xxvi. 34, 35, the desolation of the land during the exile is to be a compensation made for the previously neglected fallow years: "Then shall the land pay its Sabbaths as long as it lieth desolate; when ye are in your enemies' land then shall the land rest and pay its Sabbaths; all the days that it lieth desolate shall it rest, which it rested not in your Sabbaths when ye dwelt upon it." The verse is quoted in 2Chronicles xxxvi. 21 as the language of Jeremiah,-- a correct and unprejudiced indication of its exilic origin. But as the author of Leviticus xxvi. was also the writer of Leviticus xxv. 1-7, that is to say, the framer of the law of the sabbatic year, the recent date of the latter regulation also follows at once. The year of jubilee, certainly derived from the Sabbath year, is of still later origin. Jeremiah (xxxiv. 14) has not the faintest idea that the emancipation of the slaves must according to "law" take place in the fiftieth year. The name drwr, borne by the jubilee in Leviticus xxv. 10, is applied by him to the seventh year; and this is decisive also for Ezekiel xlvi. 17: the gift of land bestowed by the prince on one of his servants remains in his possession only until the seventh year. CHAPTER IV. THE PRIESTS AND THE LEVITES. IV.I. IV.I.1 The problem now to be dealt with is exhibited with peculiar distinctness in one pregnant case with which it will be well to set out. The Mosaic law, that is to say, the Priestly Code, distinguishes, as is well known, between the twelve secular tribes and Levi, and further within the spiritual tribe itself, between the sons of Aaron and the Levites, simply so called. The one distinction is made visible in the ordering of the camp in Numbers ii., where Levi forms around the sanctuary a cordon of protection against the immediate contact of the remaining tribes; on the whole, however, it is rather treated as a matter of course, and not brought into special prominence (Numbers xviii. 22). The other is accentuated with incomparably greater emphasis. Aaron and his sons alone are priests, qualified for sacrificing and burning incense; the Levites are hieroduli (3 Esdras i. 3), bestowed upon the Aaronidae for the discharge of the inferior services (Numbers iii. 9). They are indeed their tribe fellows, but it is not because he belongs to Levi that Aaron is chosen, and his priesthood cannot be said to be the acme and flower of the general vocation of his tribe. On the contrary, rather was he a priest long before the Levites were set apart; for a considerable time after the cultus has been established and set on foot these do not make any appearance,--not at all in the whole of the third book, which thus far does little honour to its name _Leviticus_. Strictly speaking, the Levites do not even belong to the clergy: they are not called by Jehovah, but consecrated by the children of Israel to the sanctuary,--consecrated in the place of the first-born, not however as priests (neither in Numbers iii., iv., viii., nor anywhere else in the Old Testament, is there a single trace of the priesthood of the first-born), but as a gift due to the priests, as such being even required to undergo the usual "waving" before the altar, to symbolise their being cast into the altar flame (Numbers viii.). The relationship between Aaron and Levi, and the circumstance that precisely this tribe is set apart for the sanctuary in compensation for the first-born, appears almost accidental, but at all events cannot be explained by the theory that Aaron rose on the shoulders of Levi; on the contrary, it rather means that Levi has mounted up by means of Aaron, whose priesthood everywhere is treated as having the priority. Equality between the two is not to be spoken of; their office and their blood relationship separates them more than it binds them together. Now, the prophet Ezekiel, in the plan of the new Jerusalem which he sketched in the year 573, takes up among other things the reform of the relations of the _personnel_ of the temple, and in this connection expresses himself as follows (xliv. 6-16):-- "Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Let it suffice you of all your abominations, O house of Israel! in that ye have brought in strangers, uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh, to be in my sanctuary, to pollute it, even my house, when ye offer my bread, the fat and the blood, and have broken my covenant by all your abominations. And ye have not kept the charge of my holy things, inasmuch as ye have set these /1/ to be keepers of my ******************************************* In ver. 7 for WYPRW read WTPRW, in ver. 8 for WT#YMWN read WT#YMWM, and for LKM read LKN, in each case following the LXX. ****************************************** charge in my sanctuary. Therefore, thus saith the Lord Jehovah, No stranger uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh shall enter into my sanctuary; none, of all that are among the children of Israel. But the Levites who went away far from me when Israel went astray from me after their idols, they shall even bear their iniquity, and they shall be ministers in my sanctuary, officers at the gates of the house and ministers of the house; they shall slay for the people the burnt-offering and the thank-offering, and they shall stand before them to minister unto them. Because they ministered unto them before their idols, and caused the house of Israel to fall into iniquity, therefore have I lifted up my hand against them, saith the Lord Jehovah, and they shall bear their iniquity. They shall not come near unto me to do the office of a priest unto me, nor to come near to any of my holy things, but they shall bear their shame and their abominations which they have committed. And I will make them keepers of the charge of the house, for all its service, and for all that shall be done therein. But the priests, the Levites, sons of Zadok, that kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from me, they shall come near to me to minister unto me, and they shall stand before me to offer unto me the fat and the blood, saith the Lord Jehovah; they shall enter into my sanctuary, and come near to my table to minister unto me, and they shall keep my charge." From this passage two things are to be learned. First, that the systematic separation of that which was holy from profane contact did not exist from the very beginning; that in the temple of Solomon even heathen (Zech. xiv. 21), probably captives, were employed to do hierodulic services which, according to the law, ought to have been rendered by Levites, and which afterwards actually were so rendered. Ezekiel, it is indeed true, holds this custom to be a frightful abuse, and one might therefore maintain it to have been a breach of the temple ordinances suffered by the Jerusalem priests against their better knowledge, and in this way escape accusing them of ignorance of their own law. But the second fact, made manifest by the above-quoted passage, quite excludes the existence of the Priestly Code so far as Ezekiel and his time are concerned. The place of the heathen temple-slaves is in future to be taken by the Levites. Hitherto the latter had held the priesthood, and that too not by arbitrary usurpation, but in virtue of their oun good right. For it is no mere relegation back to within the limits of their lawful position when they are made to be no longer priests but temple ministrants, it is no restoration of the _status quo ante_, the conditions of which they had illegally broken; it is expressly a degradation, a withdrawal of their right, which appears as a punishment and which must be justified as being deserved; "they shall bear their iniquity." They have forfeited their priesthood, by abusing it to preside over the cultus of the high places, which the prophet regards as idolatry and hates in his inmost soul. Naturally those Levites are exempted from the penalty who have discharged their functions at the legal place,--the Levites the sons of Zadok,--namely, at Jerusalem, who now remain sole priests and receive a position of pre-eminence above those who hitherto have been their equals in office, and who are still associated with them by Ezekiel, under the same common name, but now are reduced to being their assistants and hieroduli. It is an extraordinary sort of justice when the priests of the abolished Bamoth are punished simply for having been so, and conversely the priests of the temple at Jerusalem rewarded for this; the fault of the former and the merit of the latter consist simply in their existence. In other words, Ezekiel merely drapes the logic of facts with a mantle of morality. From the abolition of the popular sanctuaries in the provinces in favour of the royal one at Jerusalem, there necessarily followed the setting aside of the provincial priesthoods in favour of the sons of Zadok at the temple of Solomon. The original author of the centralisation, the Deuteronomic lawgiver, seeks indeed to prevent this consequence by giving to the extraneous Levites an equal right of sacrificing in Jerusalem with their brethren hereditarily settled there, but it was not possible to separate the fate of the priests from that of their altars in this manner. The sons of Zadok were well enough pleased that all sacrifices should be concentrated within their temple, but they did not see their way to sharing their inheritance with the priesthood of the high places, and the idea was not carried out (2Kings xxiii. 9). Ezekiel, a thorough Jerusalemite, finds a moral way of putting this departure from the law, a way of putting it which does not explain the fact, but is merely a periphrastic statement of it. With Deuteronomy as a basis it is quite easy to understand Ezekiel's ordinance, but it is absolutely impossible if one starts from the Priestly Code. What he regards as the original right of the Levites, the performance of priestly services, is treated in the latter document as an unfounded and highly wicked pretension which once in the olden times brought destruction upon Korah and his company; what he considers to be a subsequent withdrawal of their right, as a degradation in consequence of a fault, the other holds to have been their hereditary and natural destination. The distinction between priest and Levite which Ezekiel introduces and justifies as an innovation, according to the Priestly Code has always existed; what in the former appears as a beginning, in the latter has been in force ever since Moses,--an original datum, not a thing that has become or been made./1/ That the prophet should know ********************************************** 1. "If by reason of their birth it was impossible for the Levites to become priests, then it would be more than strange to deprive them of the priesthood on account of their faults,--much as if one were to threaten the commons with the punishment of disqualification to sit or vote in a house of lords" (Kuenen, Theol. Tijdschr., iii. 465). ********************************************* nothing about a priestly law with whose tendencies he is in thorough sympathy admits of only one explanation,--that it did not then exist. His own ordinances are only to be understood as preparatory steps towards its own exactment. IV.I.2. Noldeke, however, interprets the parallelism between the sons of Aaron and the sons of Zadok in favour of the priority of the Priestly Code, which, after all, he points out, is not quite so exclusive as Ezekiel. /1/ But, in the first place, this is a ******************************************* 1 Jahrb. f. prot. Theol., 1875, p. 351: "Its doctrine that the Aaronidae alone are true priests has its parallel in Ezekiel, who _still more exclusively_ recognises only the sons of Zadok as priests." ****************************************** point of subordinate importance, the main thing being that Ezekiel has to make the distinction between priests and Levites, which is regarded in the Priestly Code as very ancient. In presence of the fact that the former introduces as a new thing the separation which the latter presupposes, the precise degree of the distinction drawn by the two is of no consequence whatever. In the next place, to bring the sons of Aaron into comparison with the sons of Zadok, as a proof of their higher antiquity, is just as reasonable as to bring the tabernacle into comparison with the temple of Jerusalem for a similar purpose. The former are priests of the tabernacle, the latter of the temple; but as in point of fact the only distinction to be drawn between the Mosaic and the actual central sanctuary is that between shadow and substance, so neither can any other be made between the Mosaic and the actual central priesthood. In the Priestly Code the ancient name is introduced instead of the historical one, simply in order to maintain the semblance of the Mosaic time; if the circumstance is to be taken as betokening the earlier origin of the work, then a similar inference must be drawn also from the fact that in it the origin and character of the Levites is quite obscure, while in Ezekiel it is palpably evident that they are the priests thrown out of employment by the abolition of the Bamoth, whom necessity has compelled to take a position of subordination under their haughty fellow-priests at Jerusalem. In truth it is, quite on the contrary, a proof of the post-exilian date of the Priestly Code that it makes sons of Aaron of the priests of the central sanctuary, who, even in the traditional understanding (2Chronicles xiii. 10), are in one way or other simply the priests of Jerusalem. By this means it carries their origin back to the foundation of the theocracy, and gives them out as from the first having been alone legitimate. But such an idea no one could have ventured to broach before the exile. At that time it was too well known that the priesthood of the Jerusalem sept could not be traced further back than David's time, but dated from Zadok, who in Solomon's reign ousted the hereditary house of Eli from the position it had long previously held, first at Shiloh and Nob, and afterwards at Jerusalem, at what had become the most prominent sanctuary of Israel. In a passage of Deuteronomic complexion, which cannot have been written long before the exile, we read in a prediction made to Eli regarding the overthrow of his house by Zadok: "I said indeed, saith Jehovah the God of Israel, that thy house and the house of thy father shall walk before me for ever; but now I say, Be it far from me, for them that honour me I will honour, but they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Behold, the days come that I will cut off thine arm and the arm of thy father's house, ...and I will raise up for myself a faithful priest who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind; and I will build him a sure house, and he shall walk before mine anointed for ever" (1Samuel ii. 27-36). Here it is the house of Eli, and of Eli's father, that is the priestly family duly chosen in Egypt; _contrary_ to hereditary title, and contrary to a promise of perpetual continuance, is it deposed at the higher claims of justice. The faithful priest who is to fill the vacant place is Zadok. This is expressly said in 1Kings 2:27; and no other than he ever had a "sure house" and walked uninterruptedly as its head and ruler before the kings of Judah. This Zadok, accordingly, belongs neither to Eli's house nor to that of Eli's father; his priesthood does not go back as far as the time of the founding of the theocracy, and is not in any proper sense "legitimate;" rather has he obtained it by the infringement of what might be called a constitutional privilege, to which there were no other heirs besides Eli and his family. Obviously he does not figure as an intermediate link in the line of Aaron, but as the beginner of an entirely new genealogy; the Jerusalem priests, whose ancestor he is, are interlopers dating from the beginning of the monarchical period, in whom the old Mosaic _sacerdotium_ is not continued, but is broken off. If then they are called in the Priestly Code "sons of Aaron," or at least figure there among the sons of Aaron, with whom they can only in point of fact be contrasted, the circumstance is an unmistakable indication that at this point the threads of tradition from the pre-exilic period have been snapped completely, which was not yet the case in Ezekiel's time. /1/ ******************************************** 1. To satisfy the Pentateuch it is shown in the Book of Chronicles, by means of artificial genalogies, how the sons of Zadok derived their origin in an unbroken line from Aaron and Eleazar. Compare my Pharisaer u. Sadducaer, p. 48 seq. This point was first observed by Vatke (p. 344 seq.), then by Kuenen (Theol. Tijdschr., iii. p. 463-509) and lastly by me (Text der BB. Sam., p. 48-51). ******************************************** The relation between the priestly legislation and the Book of Ezekiel, which has now been shown, gives direction and aim to the following sketch, in which it is sought to exhibit the individual phenomenon in its general connection. IV.II. IV.II.1. The setting apart from the rest of the people of an entire tribe as holy, and the strongly accentuated distinction of ranks within that tribe, presuppose a highly systematised separation between sacred and profane, and an elaborate machinery connected with cultus. In fact, according to the representation given in the Priestly Code, the Israelites from the beginning were organised as a hierocracy, the clergy being the skeleton, the high priest the head, and the tabernacle the heart. But the suddenness with which this full-grown hierocracy descended on the wilderness from the skies is only matched by the suddenness with which it afterwards disappeared in Canaan, leaving no trace behind it. In the time of the Judges, priests and Levites, and the congregation of the children of Israel assembled around them, have utterly vanished; there is hardly a _people_ Israel,--only individual tribes which do not combine even under the most pressing necessities, far less support at a common expense a clerical _personnel_ numbering thousands of men, besides their wives and families. Instead of the Ecclesiastical History of the Hexateuch, the Book of Judges forthwith enters upon a secular history completely devoid of all churchly character. The high priest, who according to the Priestly Code is the central authority by the grace of God, is here quite left out in the cold, for the really acting heads of the people are the Judges, people of an entirely different stamp, whose authority, resting on no official position, but on strength of personality and on the force of circumstances, seldom extends beyond the limits of their tribe. And it is plain that in this we behold not the sorry remains of an ecclesiastico-political system once flourishing under Moses and Joshua, now completely fallen into ruins, but the first natural beginnings of a civil authority which after a course of further development finally led to the monarchy. In the kernel of the Book of Judges (chaps. iii.-xvi.) there nowhere occurs a single individual whose profession is to take charge of the cultus. Sacrifice is in two instances offered, by Gideon and Manoah; but in neither case is a priest held to be necessary. In a gloss upon 1Samuel vi. 13 seq. the divergence of later custom reveals itself. When the ark of Jehovah was brought back from exile in Philistia upon the new cart, it halted in the field of Bethshemesh beside the great stone, and the inhabitants of Bethshemesh, who were at the time busy with the wheat harvest, broke up the cart and made on the stone a burnt-offering of the kine by which it had been drawn. After they have finished, the Levites come up (ver. 15) (in the pluperfect tense) and proceed as if nothing had happened, lift the ark from the now no longer existent cart, and set it upon the stone on which the sacrifice is already burning;- of course only in order to fulfil the law, the demands of which have been completely ignored in the original narrative. Until the cultus has become in some measure centralised the priests have no _locus standi_; for when each man sacrifices for himself and his household, upon an altar which he improvises as best he can for the passing need, where is the occasion for people whose professional and essential function is that of sacrificing for others? The circumstance of their being thus inconspicuous in the earliest period of the history of Israel is connected with the fact that as yet there are few great sanctuaries. But as soon as these begin to occur, the priests immediately appear. Thus we find Eli and his sons at the old house of God belonging to the tribe of Ephraim at Shiloh. Eli holds a very exalted position, his sons are depicted as high and mighty men, who deal with the worshippers not directly but through a servant, and show arrogant disregard of their duties to Jehovah. The office is hereditary, and the priesthood already very numerous. At least in the time of Saul, after they had migrated from Shiloh to Nob, on account of the destruction by the Philistines of the temple at the former place, they numbered more than eighty-five men, who, however, are not necessarily proper blood-relations of Eli, although reckoning themselves as belonging to his clan (1Samuel xxii. 11). /1/ *********************************************** 1. In 1Samuel i. seq., indeed, we read only of Eli and his two sons and one servant, and even David and Solomon appear to have had only a priest or two at the chief temple. Are we to suppose that Doeg, single-handed, could have made away with eighty-five men ? ************************************************ One sanctuary more is referred to towards the close of the period of the Judges,--that at Dan beside the source of the Jordan. A rich Ephraimite, Micah, had set up to Jehovah a silver-covered image, and lodged it in an appropriate house. At first he appointed one of his sons to be its priest, afterwards Jonathan ben Gershom ben Moses, a homeless Levite of Bethlehem-Judah, whom he counted himself happy in being able to retain for a yearly salary of ten pieces of silver, besides clothing and maintenance. When, however, the Danites, hard pressed by the Philistines, removed from their ancient settlements in order to establish a new home for themselves on the slopes of Hermon in the north, they in passing carried off both Micah's image and his priest; what led them to do so was the report of their spies who had formerly lodged with Micah and there obtained an oracle. It was in this way that Jonathan came to Dan and became the founder of the family which retained the priesthood at this afterwards so important sanctuary down to the period of the deportation of the Danites at the Assyrian captivity (Judges xvii., xviii.). His position seems very different from that of Eli. The only point of resemblance is that both are hereditary priests, Levites so called, and trace their descent from the family of Moses,-- of which more anon. But while Eli is a man of distinction, perhaps the owner of the sanctuary, at all events in a position of thorough independence and the head of a great house, Jonathan is a solitary wandering Levite who enters the service of the proprietor of a sanctuary for pay and maintenance, and is indeed nourished as a son by his patron, but by no means treated with special respect by the Danites. The latter case, it may well be conjectured, more nearly represents the normal state of matters than the former. An independent and influential priesthood could develop itself only at the larger and more public centres of worship, but that of Shiloh seems to have been the only one of this class. The remaining houses of God, of which we hear some word from the transition period which preceded the monarchy, are not of importance, and are in private hands, thus corresponding to that of Micah on Mount Ephraim. That of Ophra belongs to Gideon, and that of Kirjathjearim to Abinadab. In fact, it appears that Micah, in appointing one to minister at his sanctuary for hire, would seem to have followed a more general practice. For the expression ML( YDW, which still survived as a _terminus technicus_ for the ordination of priests long after they had attained a perfectly independent position, can originally in this connection hardly have meant anything else than a filling of the hand with money or its equivalent; thus the priestly office would appear in the older time to have been a paid one, perhaps the only one that was paid. Whom he shall appoint is at the discretion of the proprietor: if no one else is available, he gives it to one of his sons (Judges xvii. 5; 1Samuel vii. 1),-- of a "character indelibilis" there is of course in such a case no idea, as one can learn from the earliest example, in which Micah's son retires again from the service after a brief interval. David, when he removed the ark, intrusted it in the first instance to the house of Obededom, a captain of his, a Philistine of Gath, whom he made its keeper. A priest of regular calling, a Levite, is, according to Judges xvii. 13, a very unusual person to find at an ordinary sanctuary. Even at Shiloh, where, however, the conditions are extraordinary, the privilege of the sons of Eli is not an exclusive one; Samuel, who is not a member of the family, is nevertheless adopted as a priest. The service for which a stated minister was needed was not that of offering sacrifice; this was not so regular an occurrence as not to admit of being attended to by one's self. For a simple altar no priest was required, but only for a house which contained a sacred image; /1/ ******************************************** 1. BYT (LHYM, "house of God," is never anything but the house of an image. Outside of the Priestly Code, _ephod_ is the image, _ephod bad_ the priestly garment. ******************************************** this demanded watching and attendance (1 Sam. vii. 1)--in fact, an ephod like that of Gideon or that of Micah (Judges viii. 26, 27, XVii. 4) was an article well worth stealing, and the houses of God ordinarily lay in an open place (Exodus xxxiii. 7). The expressions #MR and #RT to denote the sacred service were retained in use from this period to later times; and, while every one knows how to sacrifice, the art of dealing with the ephod and winning its oracle from it continues from time immemorial to be the exclusive secret of the priest. In exceptional cases, the attendant is occasionally not the priest himself, but his disciple. Thus Moses has Joshua with him as his _aedituus_ /2/ ******************************************************* 2 M#RT M#H, more precisely m'' (T YY PNY M#H HKHN, 1Samuel. ii. 11. ******************************************************** (Exodus xxxiii. 11), who does not quit the tent of Jehovah; so also Eli has Samuel, who sleeps at night in the inner portion of the temple beside the ark of the covenant; even if perhaps the narrative of Samuel's early years is not quite in accordance with the actual circumstances as they existed at Shiloh, it is still in any case a perfectly good witness to a custom of the existence of which we are apprised from other sources. Compare now with this simple state of affairs the fact that in the Priestly Code the sons of Aaron have something like the half of a total of 22,000 Levites to assist them as watchers and ministers of the sanctuary. Any one may slaughter and offer sacrifice (1Samuel xiv. 34 seq.); and, even in cases where priests are present, there is not a single trace of a systematic setting apart of what is holy, or of shrinking from touching it. When David "entered into the house of God and did eat the shew-bread, which it is not lawful to eat save for the priests, and gave also to them that were with him" (Mark ii. 26), this is not represented in 1Sam. xxi. as illegitimate when those who eat are sanctified, that is, have abstained on the previous day from women. Hunted fugitives lay hold of the horns of the altar without being held guilty of profanation. A woman, such as Hannah, comes before Jehovah, that is, before the altar, to pray; the words WTTYCB LPNY YY (1Samuel i. 9) supplied by the LXX, are necessary for the connection, and have been omitted from the Massoretic text as offensive. In doing so she is observed by the priest, who sits quietly, as is his wont, on his seat at the temple door. The history of the ark particularly, as Vatke justly remarks (pp. 317, 332), affords more than one proof of the fact that the notion of the unapproachableness of the holy was quite unknown; I shall content myself with the most striking of these. Samuel the Ephraimite sleeps by virtue of his office every night beside the ark of Jehovah, a place whither, according to Leviticus xvi., the high priest may come only once in the year, and even he only after the strictest preparation and with the most elaborate atoning rites. The contrast in the TONE OF FEELING is so great that no one as yet has even ventured to realise it clearly to himself. IV.II.2. With the commencement of the monarchical period the priests forthwith begin to come into greater prominence along with the kings; the advance in centralisation and in publicity of life makes itself noticeable also in the department of worship. At the beginning of Saul's reign we find the distinguished Ephraimitic priesthood, the house of Eli, no longer at Shiloh, but at Nob, in the vicinity of the king, and to a certain degree in league with him; for their head, Ahijah the priest, is in immediate attendance on him when arms are first raised against the Phiiistines, shares the danger with him, and consults the ephod on his behalf. Subsequently the _entente cordiale_ was disturbed, Ahijah and his brethren fell a sacrifice to the king's jealousy, and thus the solitary instance of an independent and considerable priesthood to be met with in the old history of Israel came for ever to an end. Abiathar, who alone escaped the massacre of Nob (1Samuel xxii.), fled with the ephod to David, for which he was rewarded afterwards with high honours, but all that he became he became as servant of David. Under David the regius priesthood began to grow towards the importance which it from that time forward had. This king exercised unfettered control over the sanctuary of the ark which stood in his citadel, as also over the appointment of the priests, who were merely his officials. Alongside of Abiathar he placed Zadok (and subsequently Ira also), as well as some of his own sons. For when it is stated in 2Sam. viii. 18 that the sons of David were priests, the words must not out of regard to the Pentateuch be twisted so as to mean something different from what they say. We also (1Kings iv. 5) find the son of the prophet Nathan figuring as a priest, and on the other hand the son of Zadok holding a high secular office (ver. 2); even at this date the line of demarcation afterwards drawn between holy and non-holy persons has no existence. What under David was still wanting to the institution of the royal worship and the regius priests--a fixed centre--was added by the erection of the temple under his successor. At the beginning of Solomon's reign there was still no ISRAELITE place of sacrifice such as sufficed for the greater contingencies; he was compelled to celebrate his accession at the great Bamah at Gibeon, a town in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, which, although it had been subjugated for a considerable time, was still entirely Canaanite. He now took care to make it possible that his colossal festivals should be celebrated at his own sanctuary. And next he made Zadok its priest after having previously deposed and relegated to his patrimonial property at Anathoth, a village adjoining Jerusalem, the aged Abiathar, a man of pure and honourable priestly descent, on account of the support he had given to the legitimate heir to the crown, thereby bringing to pass the fate with which the once so proud and powerful family of Eli had in 1Samuel ii. been threatened. Doubtless other priests also by degrees attached themselves to the family of Zadok, and ultimately came even to call themselves his sons, just as the Rechabites regarded Jonathan ben Rechab, or the "children of the prophets" one or other of the great prophets, as their father. Regarding their sanctuaries as their own private property, precisely as Micah does in the classical instance recorded in Judges xvii., xviii., and proceeding quite untrammelled in the appointment and removal of the officials employed, neither do these early kings hesitate in the least to exercise personally the rights which had emanated from themselves, and been delegated to others. Of Saul, who indeed was in the habit of delegating but seldom, and of doing with his own hand all that required to be done, it is several times mentioned that he sacrificed in person; and it is clear that this is not brought as a charge against him in 1Samuel xiv. and xv. David sacrificed on the occasion of his having successfully brought the ark to Jerusalem; that it was he himself who officiated appears from the fact that he wore the priestly ephod--_the ephod bad_--and at the close of the offering pronounced the benediction (2Samuel vi. 14, 18). In the same way was the consecration of the temple conducted by Solomon; it was he who went before the altar, and after praying there upon his knees with outstretched arms, rose and blessed the people (1Kings viii. 22, 54, 53),--doubtless also it was he who with his own hands offered the first sacrifice. The priests' technical skill is necessary only for inquiring of the oracle before the ephod (1Samuel xiv. 18). IV.II.3. These beginnings are continued in the history of the priesthood after the division of the kingdom. Jeroboam I., the founder of the kingdom of Israel, is treated by the historian as the founder also of Israel's worship in so far as the latter differed from the Judaean ideal: "he made the two calves of gold, and set them up at Bethel and at Dan; he made the Bamoth-houses and made priests from the mass of the people, who were not of the sons of Levi, and ordained a feast in the eighth month and ascended to the altar to burn incense" (1Kings xii. 28 seq., xiii. 33). Here indeed after the well-known manner of pious pragmatism retrospective validity is given to the Deuteronomic law which did not come into force until three centuries afterwards, and judgment is thus passed in accordance with a historically inadmissable standard; moreover, the facts on which the judgment is based are on the one hand too much generalised, and on the other hand laid too exclusively to the charge of Jeroboam. The first king bears the weight of all the sins in worship of all his successors and of the whole body of the people. But the recognition of the sovereign priesthood of the ruler, of the formative influence which he exercised over the worship, is just. The most important temples were royal ones, and the priests who attended at them were the king's priests (Amos vii. 10 seq.). When therefore Jehu overthrew the house of Ahab, he did not extirpate all its members merely, and its officials and courtiers, but also its priests as well; they too were servants of the crown and in positions of trust (2Kings x. 11I; comp. 1Kings iv. 5). The statement that they were chosen at the pleasure of the king is therefore to be taken as implying that, as in David's and Solomon's time, so also later they could and might be chosen at pleasure; on the other hand, in point of fact the sacred office, in Dan at least, continued from the period of the Judges down to the Assyrian deportation hereditary in the family of Jonathan. One must, moreover, avoid imagining that all the "houses of the high places" and all the priestly posts /1/ belonged to the king; it was impossible that the ******************************************** 1. The parallelism between "Bamoth-houses" and a priestly appointment in 1Kings xii. 31 seems not to be casual merely. Whilst a Bamah may be a simple altar, a "Bamoth-house" presupposes a divine image, and renders an _aedituus_ necessary. ******************************************** government should be so all-pervading in such matters. At this period most of the sanctuaries were public, but not therefore as yet on that account royal, and so also doubtless there were numerous priests who were not servants of the king. The preponderance of official cultus and of an official personnel to carry it on was counteracted in the northern kingdom by the frequent dynastic changes and the unattached particularism of the separate tribes; the conditions may be presumed to have developed themselves with great variety and freedom, hereditary and unhereditary priests, priests with independent benefices and others in complete poverty, subsisting side by side; the variety and the equality of rights enjoyed by all is the distinguishing mark of the time. Speaking generally, however, the priesthood has distinctly consolidated itself as compared with its former condition, and gained not a little alike in number and in influence; it has become an important power in public life, without which the nation cannot be imagined. It would perhaps be somewhat bold to assert this on the strength merely of the brief and inadequate indications in the Book of Kings, which is chiefly interested in the extraordinary interventions of the prophets in the course of Israel's history, but other and more authentic testimonies justify us in doing so. First of these is the Blessing of Moses, an independent document of northern Israel which speaks for itself. Here we read: "Thy Thummim and thy Urim belong to the man of thy friendship, whom thou didst prove at Massah, for whom thou didst strive at the waters of Meribah; who saith of father and mother, I have never seen them, and acknowledgeth not his brethren nor knoweth his own children-- for they observe thy word and keep thy covenant, they teach Jacob thy judgments and Israel thy law; they bring savour of fat before thee and whole burnt sacrifice upon thine altar; bless, O Lord, his strength, and accept the work of his hands; smite through the loins of them that rise up against him, and of them that hate him that they rise not again" (Deuteronomy xxxiii. 8-11). In this passage the priests appear as a strictly close corporation, so close that they are mentioned only exceptionally in the plural number, and for the most part are spoken of collectively in the singular, as an organic unity which embraces not merely the contemporary members, but also their ancestors, and which begins its life with Moses, the friend of Jehovah who as its beginning is identified with the continuation just as the man is identified with the child out of which he has grown. The history of Moses is at the same time the history of the priests, the Urim and Thummim belong--one is not quite sure to which, but it comes to the same thing; every priest to whom the care of an ephod has been intrusted interrogates before it the sacred oracle. The first relative clause relating to Moses passes over without change of subject into one that refers to the priests, so that the singular immediately falls into plural and the plural back to the singular. Yet this so strongly marked solidarity of the priesthood as a profession rests by no means upon the natural basis of family or clan unity; it is not blood, but on the contrary the abnegation of blood that constitutes the priest, as is brought out with great emphasis. He must act for Jehovah's sake as if he had neither father nor mother, neither brethren nor children. Blind prepossession in people's conceptions of Judaism has hitherto prevented the understanding of these words, but they are thoroughly unambiguous. What they say is, that in consecrating himself to the service of Jehovah a man abandons his natural relationships, and severs himself from family ties; thus, with the brotherhood of the priests in northern Israel the case is precisely similar as with that of the religious guilds of the sons of the prophets--the Rechabites, and doubtless too the Nazarites (Amos ii. 11 seq.)--also native there. Whosoever chose (or, whomsoever he chose) was made priest by Jeroboam--such is the expression of the Deuteronomic redactor of the Book of Kings (1Kings xiii. 33). A historical example of what has been said is afforded by the young Samuel, as he figures in the narrative of his early years contained in 1Samuel i.-iii.--a narrative which certainly reflects the condition of things in Ephraim at the period of the monarchy. The child of a well-to-do middle class family at Ramah, in the district of Zuph Ephraim, he is even before his birth vowed to Jehovah by his mother, and as soon as possible afterwards is handed over to the sanctuary at Shiloh,--not to become a Nazarite or one of the Nethinim in the sense of the Pentateuch, but to be a priest,--for in his ministry he wears the linen ephod, the _ephod bad_, and even the pallium (1Samuel ii. 18) /1/ And it is made very plain that *********************************************** 1. Comp. Koran, iii. 31: "I vow to thee that which is in my womb as a devotee of the mosque, to serve it." *[pallium. "1.Antiq. A large rectangular cloak or mantle worn by men' chiefly among the Greeks; esp. by philosophers and by early Christian ascetics...Himation...2.Eccl. A vestment of wool worn by patriarchs and metropolitans... SOED. Heb. m(yl q+n ii.19?]* ********************************************** the mother's act, in thus giving up her son, who is properly hers, or (as she expresses it) lending him to Jehovah for ever (1Samuel i. 28: #MW)L=MW#)L), is regarded as a renunciation of family rights. The circumstance that it is by the parents and not by Samuel himself that the consecration is made makes no material difference; the one thing is on the same plane with the other, and doubtless occurred as well as the other, although seldomer. But, on the other hand, it can hardly have been the rule that any one should abandon not parents and brethren merely, but also wife and children as well in order to enter the priesthood; in Deuteronomy xxxiii. 9 this is adduced only as an extreme instance of the spirit of self-sacrifice. In any case it is not to be inferred that celibacy was demanded, but only that the priestly office was often barely sufficient to support the man, not to speak of a family. So fixed and influential, so independent and exclusive had the priesthood become at the date of the composition of the Blessing of Moses, that it takes a place of its own alongside of the tribes of the nation, is itself a tribe, constituted, however, not by blood, but by community of spiritual interests. Its importance is brought into clearness even by the opposition which it encounters, and which occasions so vigorous a denunciation of its enemies that one might well believe the person who committed it to writing to have been himself a priest. The cause of the hostility is not stated, but it seems to be directed simply against the very existence of a professional and firmly organised clergy, and to proceed from laymen who hold fast by the rights of the old priestless days. Next to the Blessing of Moses the discourses of Hosea contain our most important materials for an estimate of the priesthood of Northern Israel. How important that institution was for public life is clear from his expressions also. The priests are the spiritual leaders of the people; the reproach that they do not fulfil their high vocation proves in the first place that they have it. Degenerate they are, to be sure; in Hosea's representation they are seen in the same light as that in which the sons of Eli appear as described in 1Samuel ii. 22 seq., from which description one conjectures the author to have derived his colours from a state of matters nearer his own day than the period of the judges. The priests of Shechem are even taxed by the prophet with open highway robbery (vi. 9), and in one charge after another he accuses them of taking advantage of their office for base gain, of neglecting its most sacred duties, and in this way having the principal blame for the ruin of the people. "Hear the word of Jehovah, ye children of Israel, for the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. (2.) There is swearing, and Iying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery; they use violence and add murder to murder. (3.) Therefore the land mourneth, and every creature that dwelleth therein languisheth, even to the wild beasts of the field and the fowls of heaven; and even the fishes of the sea are taken away. (4.) Yet let no man strive and no man reprove; for the people do just as their priests. (5.) Therefore shall ye (priests) stumble on that day, and also the prophets with you on that night; and I will destroy your kin. (6.) My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, because ye yourselves reject knowledge; I will therefore reject you that ye shall be no longer priests unto me; ye have forgotten the doctrine of your God, so will I forget your children. (7.) The more they are, the more they sin against me; their glory they turn into shame. (8.) They eat up the sin of my people, and they set their heart on their iniquity. (9.) And it shall be as with the people so with the priest; I will punish them for their ways and requite them for their doings. (10.) They shall eat and not have enough, they shall commit whoredom and shall not increase, because they have ceased to take heed to the Lord" (Hosea iv. 1-10). /1/ ********************************************** 1. In the introductory words the people are invited to hear what it is that Jehovah complains of them for; sin prevails to such an extent that the complete ruin of the country is inevitable (vers. 1-3). With the word "yet" at the beginning of the following verse the prophet changes the course of his thought; from the people he passes to the priests; the root of the general corruption is the want of divine knowledge (the knowledge, namely, that "I will have mercy and not sacrifice; "compare Jeremiah xxii. 16), and for this the priests are to blame, whose task it was to diffuse "knowledge," but who, instead of this for their own selfish interests fostered the tendency of the people to seek Jehovah's grace by sacrifice rather than by righteousness. For if it be conceded that it is the priests who are addressed from ver. 6 onwards, then it is not easy to see why a change in the address should take place between ver. 5 and ver. 6, especially as the co-ordination of priests with prophets seems more reasonable in ver. 5 than that of prophets and people. As ver. 4 in this way occupies an intermediate position between the complaint made against the people in vers. 1-3, and that against the priests in vers. 5-10, the transition from the one to the other, indicated by the "yet," must occur in it. Hosea abruptly breaks off from reproaching the people, "Yet let no man strive and no man reprove"--why not, the words that follow must explain. In verse 4b some circumstance must be mentioned which excuses the people, and at the same time draws down indignation upon the priests who are the subjects of the following. These considerations necessarily determine the thought which we are to expect, namely, this--"for the people do just as their priests." This meaning is obtained by the conjectural reading W(MY KKMRYW instead of W(MKKMRYB. Comp. ver. 9. The remaining YKH must be deleted. The ordinary view of ver. 4 is hardly worth refuting. The )L YWKH, it is said, is spoken from the people's point of view. The people repel the prophet's reproach and rebuke, because (such is the interpretation of ver. 4b) they themselves have no scruples in striving EVEN with the priest. "Even," for want of subjection to the priests is held to be specially wicked. But the prophet Hosea would hardly have considered it a capital offence if the people had withheld from the priests the respect of which, according to his own language, they were so utterly unworthy. Moreover, every exegesis which finds in ver. 4 a reproach brought against the people, leaves in obscurity the point at which the transition is made from reproach of the people to reproach of the priests. *********************************************** In the northern kingdom, according to this, the spiritual ascendancy of the priests over the people seems hardly to have been less than that of the prophets, and if in the history we hear less about it, /1/ the explanation is to be sought in the ******************************************** 1. According to 2Kings xvii. 27, 28, the foreign colonies introduced by the Assyrians into Samaria after it had been depopulated, were at first devoured by lions because they were ignorant of the right way of honouring the deity of the land. Esarhaddon therefore sent one of the exiled Samaritan priests, who fixed his abode at Bethel, the ancient chief sanctuary, and instructed (MWRH) the settlers in the religion of the god of the country. This presupposes a definite priesthood, which maintained itself even in exile for a considerable time. ******************************************* fact that they laboured quietly and regularly in limited circles, taking no part in politics, and fully submissive to the established order, and that for this reason they attracted less notice and were less talked about than the prophets who, like Elijah and Elisha, stirred up Israel by their extraordinary and oppositional action. IV.II.4. In Judah the nucleus of the development was the same as in Israel. The idea that in Judah the genuine Mosaic priesthood had by the grace of God been maintained, while in Israel, on the other hand, a schismatic priesthood had intruded itself by the favour of the king and man's device, is that of the later Judaeans who had the last word, and were therefore of course in the right. The B'ne Zadok of Jerusalem as contrasted with the B'ne Eli whom they superseded were originally illegitimate (if one may venture to apply a conception which at that time was quite unknown), and did not inherit their right from the fathers, but had it from David and Solomon. They always remained in this dependent condition, they at all times walked, as 1Samuel ii. 35 has it, "before Jehovah's anointed," as his servants and officers. To the kings the temple was a part of their palace which, as is shown by 1Kings vii. and 2Kings xi., stood upon the same hill and was contiguous with it; they placed their threshold alongside of that of Jehovah, and made their door-posts adjoin to His, so that only the wall intervened between Jehovah and them (Ezekiel xliii. 8). They shaped the official cultus entirely as they chose, and regarded the management of it, at least so far as one gathers from the epitome of the "Book of the Kings," as the main business of their government. They introduced new usages and abolished old ones; and as they did so the priests always bent to their will and were merely their executive organs. /1/ That they were at ******************************************* 1. Compare for example 2Kings xii. 5 seq. (Joash and Jehoiada), xvi. 10 seq. Ahaz and Urijah), and, finally, chap. xxii. (Josiah and Hilkiah). ****************************************** liberty to offer sacrifice also is a thing of course; they did it, however, only on exceptional occasions, such as, perhaps, at the dedication of a new altar (2Kings xvi. 12, 13). Even with Jeremiah, who as a rule does not consider sacrifice and drawing near to Jehovah (Numbers xvi 5) as every man's business, the king as such is held to be also the supreme priest; for at the beginning of the exile and the foreign domination his hope for the future is: "Their potentate shall be of themselves, and their governor shall proceed from the midst of them, and I will cause him to draw near, and he shall approach unto me; for who else should have the courage to approach unto me? saith the Lord" (xxx. 21). Ezekiel is the first to protest against dealing with the temple as a royal dependency; for him the prerogative of the prince is reduced to this, that it is his duty to support the public cultus at his own expense. The distinction between the Judaean and the Israelite priesthood did not exist at first, but arose out of the course of events. The sheltered and quiet life of the little state in the south presents a marked contrast with the external and internal conflicts, the easily raised turmoil, of the northern kingdom. In the latter, the continual agitation brought extraordinary personalities up to the surface; in the former, institutions based upon the permanent order of things and supported by permanent powers were consolidated./1/ ************************************************* 1. The Rechabites, who arose in the northern kingdom, continued to subsist in Judah, and Jeremiah prophesied to them that there should never fail them a priestly head of the family of their founder (xxxv. 19). ************************************************** Naturally the monarchy itself benefited most by this stability. The king's cultus, which in the kingdom of Samaria was in no position to supersede the popular and independent worship, easily obtained a perceptible preponderance in the smaller Judah; the king's priesthood, which in the former was incidentally involved in disaster by the overthrow of the dynasty, in the latter gained in strength side by side with the house of David--even Aaron and Amminadab were according to the Priestly Code related to the royal family, as Jehoiada and Ahaziah were in actual fact. Thus at an early period was the way paved for the Act of Uniformity by which Josiah made the king's cultus the official and the only one. One effect which accompanied the measures he took was naturally the exclusive legitimation of the king's priesthood at Jerusalem. But the principle of heredity had already pervaded the other priestly families so thoroughly that to enter any secular calling was nowhere expected of them. The Deuteronomic legislator had conferred upon them the right of carrying on their office at Jerusalem, and of executing it there on behalf of any one who requested their services; but this regulation, from the opposition of the B'ne Zadok, was found on the whole impracticable (2Kings xxiii. 9), although doubtless some extraneous elements may at that time have succeeded in making their way into the temple nobility. The bulk of the priests of the high places who had been superseded had to content themselves (since they could not now get rid of their spiritual character) with being degraded among their brethren at Jerusalem, and with admission to a subordinate share in the service of the sanctuary (comp. 1Samuel ii. 36). It was thus, at the close of the pre-exilic history, that the distinction between priests and Levites arose to which Ezekiel is at pains to give the sanction of law. IV.III. IV.III.1. On the whole it is easy here to bring the successive strata of the Pentateuch into co-ordination with the recognisable steps of the historical development. In the Jehovistic legislation there is no word of priests (Exodus xx.-xxiii., xxxiv.), and even such precepts as "Thou shalt not go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon " (Exodus xx. 26) are directed to the general "thou," that is, to the people. With this corresponds the fact that in the solemn ratification of the covenant of Sinai (Exodus xxiv. 3-8), it is young men of the children of Israel who officiate as sacrificers. Elsewhere in the Jehovist Aaron (Exodus iv. 14, xxxii. 1 seq.) and Moses (xxxiii. 7-lI; Deuteronomy xxxiii. 8) figure as the founders of the clerical order. Twice (in Exodus xix. 22 and xxxii 29) mention is made of other priests besides; but Exodus xxxii. 29 rests upon Deuteronomy, and even Exodus xix. 22 can hardly have been an original constituent of one of the Jehovistic sources. IV.III.2. In Deuteronomy the priests, as compared with the judges and the prophets, take a very prominent position (xvi. 18-xviii. 22) and constitute a clerical order, hereditary in numerous families, whose privilege is uncontested and therefore also does not require protection. Here now for the first time begins the regular use of the name of Levites for the priests,--a name of which the consideration has been postponed until now. In the pre-exilic literature apart from the Pentateuch it occurs very seldom. First in the prophets, once in the Book of Jeremiah (xxxiii. 17-22), in a passage which in any case is later than the capture of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans, and certainly was not written by Jeremiah. /1/ The use of the name is an ********************************************** 1. In the LXX, chap. xxxiii. 14-26 is wanting. The parallelism between vers. 17-22 and 23-26 is striking. It looks as if David and Levi arose out of a misunderstanding of the families mentioned in ver. 24, namely, Judah and Ephraim. In any case wdwd in ver. 26 is an interpolation. ************************************************ established thing in Ezekiel (573 B.C.), and henceforward occurs without interruption in the writings of the later prophets, a sign that its earlier absence is not to be explained as accidental, not even in Jeremiah, who speaks so frequently of the priests. /2/ ******************************************** 1. Ezekiel xl. 46, xliii. 19, xliv. 10, 15, xlv. 5, xlviii. 11-13, 22, 31; Isaiah lxvi. 21; Zechariah xii. 13; Malachi ii. 4, 8, iii. 3. ******************************************* In the historical books the Levites (leaving out of account 1Samuel vi. 15, 2Samuel xv. 24, and 1Kings viii. 4, xii. 31) /1/ ********************************************** 1. Upon 1Samuel vi. 15 all that is necessary has been said at IV.II.1; on 1Kings viii. 4 see. I.III.1. That 1Kings xii. 31 proceeds from the Deuteronomic redactor, the date of whose writing is not earlier than the second half of the exile, needs no proof. The hopeless corruptness of 2Samuel xv. 24 I have shown in Text. d. BB. Sam. (Goettingen, 1871). ****************************************** occur only in the two appendices to the Book of Judges (chaps. xvii., xviii., and xix., xx.), of which, however, the second is unhistorical and late, and only the first is certainly pre-exilic. But in this case it is not the Levites who are spoken of, as elsewhere, but A LEVITE, who passes for a great rarity, and who is forcibly carried off by the tribe of Dan, which has none. Now this Jonathan, the ancestor of the priests of Dan, notwithstanding that he belongs to the tribe of Judah, is represented as a descendant of Gershom the son of Moses (Judges xviii. 30). The other ancient priestly family that goes back to the period of the Judges, the Ephraimitic, of Shiloh, appears also to be brought into connection with Moses; at least in 1Samuel ii. 27 (a passage, however, which is certainly post-Deuteronomic), where Jehovah is spoken of as having made himself known to the ancestors of Eli in Egypt, and as thereby having laid the foundation for the bestowal of the priesthood, it is clearly Moses who is thought of as the recipient of the revelation. Historical probability admits of the family being traced back to Phinehas, who during the early period of the judges was priest of the ark, and from whom the inheritance on Mount Ephraim and also the second son of Eli were named; it is not to be supposed that he is the mere shadow of his younger namesake, as the latter predeceased his father and was of quite secondary importance beside him. But Phinehas is both in the Priestly Code and in Josh. xxiv. 33 (E) the son of Eleazar, and Eleazar is, according to normal tradition, indeed a son of Aaron, but according to the sound of his name (Eliezer) a son of Moses along with Gershom. Between Aaron and Moses in the Jehovistic portion of the Pentateuch no great distinction is made; if Aaron, in contradistinction from his brother, is characterised as THE LEVITE (Exodus iv. 14), Moses on the other hand bears the priestly staff, is over the sanctuary, and has Joshua to assist him as Eli had Samuel (Exodus xxxiii. 7-11). Plainly the older claims are his; in the main Jehovistic source, in J, Aaron originally does not occur at all, /2/ neither ************************************** 1. That Aaron was not originally present in J, but owed his introduction to tile redactor who combined J nnd E together into JE, can be shown best from Exod vii. x. For Jehovah's COMMAND to appear before Pharaoh is in J given to Moses alone (vii. 14, 26 [viii. 1], viii. 16 [20], ix. 1, 13, x. 1); it is only in the sequel that Aaron appears along with him four times, always when Pharaoh in distress summons Moses and Aaron in order to ask their intercession. But strangely enough Aaron is afterwards completely ignored again; Moses alone makes answer, speaking solely in his own name and not in Aaron's also (viii. 5, 22, 25 [9, 26, 29]; ix. 29), and although he has not come alone ; he goes so and makes his prayer in the singular (viii. 8, 26 [12, 30], ix. 33, x. 18), the change of the number in x. 17 is under these circumstances suspicious enough. It appears as if the Jehovistic editor had held Aaron's presence to be appropriate precisely at the intercession. *********************************** is he mentioned in Deuteronomy xxxiii. 8. In the genealogies of the Priestly Code one main branch of the tribe of Levi is still called, like the eldest son of Moses, Gershom, and another important member is actually called Mushi, 2:e., the Mosaite. It is not impossible that the holy office may have continued in the family of Moses, and it is very likely that the two oldest houses in which it was hereditary, those at Dan and at Shiloh, may have claimed in all seriousness to have been descended from him. Afterwards, as Deuteronomy xxxiii. 8 seq. informs us, all priests honoured Moses as their father, not as being the head of their clan but as being the founder of their order. The same took place in Judah, but there the clerical guild ultimately acquired a hereditary character, and the order became a sort of clan. _Levite_, previously an official name, now became a patronymic at the same time, and all the Levites together formed a blood-kinship, /1/ ********************************************** 1. The instance of the Rechabites shows how easily the transition could made. ********************************************** a race which had not received any land of its own indeed, but in compensation had obtained the priesthood for its heritage. This hereditary clergy was alleged to have existed from the very beginning of the history of Israel, and even then as a numerous body, consisting of many others besides Moses and Aaron. Such is the representation made by Deuteronomist and subsequent writers, but in Deuteronomy we read chiefly of the _Levites_ in the provincial towns of Judah and of the _priests_, the _Levites_ in Jerusalem, seldom of Levi as a whole (x. 8 seq., xviii. 1) /2/ ************************************************ 2. On Deut xxvii. compare Kuenen, Theol. Tidjdschr., 1878, p. 297. *********************************************** That the hereditary character of the priesthood is here antedated and really first arose in the later period of the Kings, has already been shown in the particular instance of the sons of Zadok of Jerusalem, who were at first parvenus and afterwards became the most legitimate of the legitimate. But it is very remarkable how this artificial construction of a priestly family,--a construction which has absolutely nothing perplexing in itself-- was suggested and favoured by the circumstance that in remote antiquity there once actually did exist a veritable tribe of Levi which had already disappeared before the period of the rise of the monarchy. This tribe belonged to the group of the four oldest sons of Leah,--Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah,--who are always enumerated together in this order, and who settled on both sides of the Dead Sea, towards the wilderness. Singularly no one of them succeeded in holding its own except Judah; all the others became absorbed among the inhabitants of the wilderness or in other branches of their kindred. The earliest to find this destiny were the two tribes of Simeon and Levi (in Genesis xlix. regarded as one), in consequence of a catastrophe which must have befallen them at some time during the period of the judges. "Simeon and Levi are brethren, their shepherds' staves are weapons of slaughter; O my soul, come not thou into their assembly! mine honour, be thou far from their band! for they slew men in their anger, and in their self-will they houghed oxen; cursed be their anger--so fierce! and their wrath--so cruel! I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them over Israel!" (Genesis xlix.5-7). The offence of Simeon and Levi here rebuked cannot have been committed against Israelites, for in such a case the thought could not have occurred, which is here emphatically repelled, that Jacob, that is to say, Israel as a whole, could have made common cause with them. What is here spoken of must be some crime against the Canaanites, very probably the identical crime which is charged upon the two brothers in Genesis xxxiv., and which there also Jacob (ver. 30) repudiates,--the treacherous attack upon Shechem and massacre of its inhabitants, in disregard of the treaty which had been made. In Judges ix. it is related that Shechem, until then a flourishing town of the Canaanites, with whom moreover Israelite elements were already beginning to blend, was conquered and destroyed by Abimelech, but it is quite impossible to bring into any connection with this the violent deed of Simeon and Levi, which must have taken place earlier, although also within the period of the judges. The consequences of their act, the vengeance of the Canaanites, the two tribes had to bear alone; Israel, according to the indication given in Genesis xlix. 6, xxxiv. 30, did not feel any call to interfere on their behalf or make common cause with them. Thus they fell to pieces and passed out of sight,--in the opinion of their own nation a just fate. In the historical books they are never again mentioned. It is quite impossible to regard this Levi of the Book of Genesis as a mere shadow of the caste which towards the end of the monarchy arose out of the separate priestly families of Judah. The utterance given in Genesis xlix. 5-7 puts the brothers on an exact equality, and assigns to them an extremely secular and blood-thirsty character. There is not the faintest idea of Levi's sacred calling or of his dispersion as being conditioned thereby; the dispersion is a curse and no blessing, an annihilation and no establishment of his special character. But it is equally an impossibility to derive the caste from the tribe; there is no real connection between the two, all the intermediate links are wanting; the tribe succumbed at an early date, and the rise of the caste was very late, and demonstrably from unconnected beginnings. But in these circumstances the coincidence of name is also very puzzling: Levi the third son of Jacob, perhaps a mere patronymic derived form his mother Leah, and levi the official priest. If it were practicable to find a convincing derivation of levi in its later use from the appellative meaning of the root, then one might believe the coincidence to be merley fortuitous, but it is impossible to do so. the solution therefore has been suggested that the violent dissolution of the tribe in the period of the judges led the individual Levites, who now were landless, to seek their maintenance by the exercise of sacrificial functions; this lay to their hand and was successful because Moses them an of God had belonged to their number and had transmitted to them by hereditary succession a certain preferential claim to the sacred office. But at that time priestly posts were not numerous, and such an entrance of the levites _en masse_ into the service of Jehovah in that early time is in view of the infrequency of the larger sanctuaries a very difficult assumption. It is perhaps correct to say that Moses actually was descended from Levi, and that the later significance of the name Levite is to be explained by reference to him. In point of fact, the name does appear to have been given in the first instance only to the descendants of Moses, and not to have been transferred until a later period to those priests as a body, who were quite unconnected with him by blood, but who all desired to stand related to him as their head. Here it will never be possible to get beyond conjecture. IV.III.3 While the clerical _tribe of the Levites_ is still brought forward only modestly in Deuteronomy (x. 8 seq. xviii. 1; Joshua xiii. 14, 33), it is dealt with in very real earnest in the Priestly Code. The _tribe of Levi_ (Numbers i. 47, 49, iii. 6, xvii. 3, xviii. 2) is given over by the remaining tribes to the sanctuary, is catalogued according to the genealogical system of its families, reckons 22,000 male members, and even receives a sort of tribal territory, the forty-eight Levitical cities (Josh. xxi.). At the beginning of this chapter we have already spoken of a forward step made in the Priestly Code, connected with this enlargement of the clergy, but of much greater importance; hitherto the distinction has been between clergy and laity, while here there is introduced the great division of the order itself into sons of Aaron and Levites. Not in Deuteronomy only, but everywhere in the Old Testament, apart from Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles, Levite is the priest's title of honour. /1/ Aaron himself is so styled in the ************************************************ 1. Exodus iv. 14; Deuteronomy xxxiii. 8; Judges xvii. seq.; Exodus xxxii. 26-28; Deuteronomy x. 8 seq., xii. 12, 18 seq. xiv. 27, 29, xvi. 11, 14, xvii. 9, 18, xviii. 1-8, xxiv. 8, xxvii. 9, 14, xxxi. 9, 25; Joshua iii. 3,xiii. 14, 33, xiv. 3 seq., xviii. 7; Judges xix. seq., 1Samuel v1. 15; 1Kings xii. 31, Jeremiah xxxiii 17-22; Ezekiel xliv. 8 seq.; Isaiah lxvi. 2, Zechariah xii. 13, Malachi Ii. 4, 8, iii. 3. Only the glosses 2Samuel xv. 24, and 1Kings viii. 4 (compare, however, 2Chronicles v. 5) can rest upon the Priestly Code. ******************************************** often-quoted passage, Exodus iv. 14, and that too to denote his calling, not his family, for the latter he has in common with Moses, from whom, nevertheless, it is intended to distinguish him by the style, "thy brother the Levite." In Deuteronomy we are struck by the deliberate emphasis laid on the equal right of all the Levites to sacrificial service in Jerusalem-- "The priests, the Levites, the whole tribe of Levi, shall have no portion or inheritance with Israel; they shall eat the offerings of Jehovah and his inheritance....And if a Levite come from any of thy cities out of all Israel, where he sojourned, and come to the place which Jehovah shall choose, then he shall minister in the name of Jehovah his God as all his brethren the Levites do who stand there before Jehovah" (Deuteronomy xviii. 1, 6, 7). Here the legislator has in view his main enactment, viz., the abolition of all places of worship except the temple of Solomon; those who had hitherto been the priests of these could not be allowed to starve. Therefore it is that he impresses it so often and so earnestly on the people of the provinces that in their sacrificial pilgrimages to Jerusalem they ought not to forget the Levite of their native place, but should carry him with them. For an understanding of the subsequent development this is very important, in so far as it shows how the position of the Levites outside of Jerusalem was threatened by the centralisation of the worship. In point of fact, the good intention of the Deuteronomist proved impossible of realisation; with the high places fell also the priests of the high places. In so far as they continued to have any part at all in the sacred service, they had to accept a position of subordination under the sons of Zadok (2Kings xxiii. 9). Perhaps Graf was correct in referring to this the prophecy of 1Samuel ii. 36 according to which the descendants of the fallen house of Eli are to come to the firmly established regius priest, to beg for an alms, or to say, "Put me, I pray thee, into one of the priests' offices, that I may eat a piece of bread:" that historically the deposed Levites had no very intimate connection with those ancient companions in misfortune is no serious objection to such an interpretation in the case of a post-Deuteronomic writer. In this way arose as an illegal consequence of Josiah's reformation, the distinction between priests and Levites. With Ezekiel this distinction is still an innovation requiring justification and sanction; with the Priestly Code it is a "statute for ever," although even yet not absolutely undisputed, as appears from the Priestly version of the story of Korah's company. /1/ For all Judaism subsequent to Ezra, and so for *********************************************** 1. Distorted references to the historical truth are round also in Numbers xvii. 25 and xviii. 23, passages which are unintelligible apart from Ezekiel xliv. Compare Kuenen, Theol. Tijdschr., 1878, p. 138 seq. ********************************************* Christian tradition, the Priestly Code in this matter also has been authoritative. Instead of the Deuteronomic formula "the priests the Levites," we henceforward have "the priests and the Levites," particularly in Chronicles, /2/ and in the *********************************************** 2. Except in 2 Chrom v. 5, xxx. 27. ********************************************* ancient versions the old _usus_ loquendi is frequently corrected. /3/ ********************************************* 3. E.g., Josh. iii. 3 and Isaiah lxvi. 21 in the LXX, Deuteronomy xviii. 1 and Judges xvii. 13 in "Jerome; and many passages in the Syriac. On the carrying out of the new organisation of the temple _personnel_ after the exile, see Vatke, p. 568, Graf (in Merx's Archiv, i., p. 225 seq.), and Kuenen (Godsdienst, ii. p. 104 seq ). With Zerubbabel and Joshua, four priestly families, 4289 persons in all, returned from Babylon in 538 (Ezra iv. 36-39); with Ezra in 458 came two families in addition, but the number of persons is not stated (viii. 2). Of Levites there came on the first occasion 74 (ii. 40); on the second, of the 1500 men who met at the rendezvous appointed by Ezra to make the journey through the wilderness, not one was a Levite, and it was only on the urgent representations of the scribe that some thirty were at last induced to join the company (viii. 15-20). How can we explain this preponderance of priests over Levites, which is still surprising even if the individual figures are not to be taken as exact? Certainly it cannot be accounted for if the state of matters for a thousand years had been that represented in the Priestly Code and in Chronicles. On the other hand, all perplexity vanishes if the Levites were the degraded priests of the high places of Judah. These were certainly not on the whole more numerous than the Jerusalem college, and the prospect of thenceforward not being permitted to sacrifice in their native land, but of having slaughtering and washing for sole duties, cannot have been in any way very attractive to them; one can hardly blame them if they were disinclined voluntarily to lower themselves to the position of mere laborers under the sons of Zadok. Besides, it may be taken for granted that many (and more particularly Levitical) elements not originally belonging to it had managed to make way into the ranks of the Solomonic priesthood; that all were not successful (Ezra ii. 61) shows that many made the attempt, and considering the ease with which genealogies hoary with age were then manufactured and accepted, every such attempt cannot have failed. How then came it to pass that afterwards, as one must conclude from the statements in Chronicles, the Levites stood to the priests in a proportion so much more nearly, if even then not quite fully corresponding to the law? Simply by the "Levitising" of alien families. At first in the community of the second temple the Levites continued to be distinguished from the singers, porters, and Nethinim (Ezra ii. 41-58), guilds which from the outset were much more numerous and which rapidly grew (Nehemiah xi. 17, 19, 36, xii. 28 seq.; 1Chronicles ix. 16, 22, 25). But the distinction had in fact no longer any actual basis, once the Levites had been degraded to the rank of temple-servitors and become Nethinim to the priests (Numbers iii. 9). Hence, where the Chronicler, who is at the same time the author of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, is not reproducing old sources but is writing freely, he regards the singers also and the porters as Levites. By artificial genealogies of rather a rough and ready kind the three families of singers, Heman, Asaph, and Ethan are traced up (1Chronicles v1.. 1 seq.) to the old Levitical families of Kohath, Gershon, and Merari (see Graf, as above, p. 231; and Ewald, iii. p. 380 seq.). How far the distinction between the Nethinim and the Levites was afterwards maintained (Josh. ix. 21 seq., I Esdras i. 3; Ezra viii. 20) is not clear. It would not be amiss if Ezekiel's intention of banishing foreigners from the temple found its fulfilment only through these heathen hieroduli, the Mehunim, the Nephisim, the sons of Shalmai, and the others whose foreign-sounding names are given in Ezra ii. 43 seq., obtaining admission into the tribe of Levi by artificial genealogies. A peculiar side light is thrown upon the course of development by the fact that the singers who in Ezra's time were not yet even Levites, afterwards felt shame in being so, and desired at least externally to be placed on all equality with priests. They begged of King Agrippa II. to obtain for them the permission of the synedrium to wear the white priestly dress. *********************************************** The copestone of the sacred structure reared by the legislation of the middle books of the Pentateuch is the high priest. As the Aaronites are above the Levites so is Aaron himself above his sons; in his person culminates thc development of the unity of worship inaugurated by Deuteronomy and the agency of Josiah. No figure of such incomparable importance occurs anywhere else in the Old Testament; a high priest of pre-eminent sanctity is still unknown to Ezekiel even. Even before the exile, it is true, the temple worship at Jerusalem had become so magnificent and its personnel so numerous as to render necessary an orderly division of offices and a gradation of ranks. In Jeremiah's time the priests constituted a guild divided into classes or families with elders at their head; the principal priest had a potent voice in the appointment of his inferior colleagues (1Samuel ii. 36); alongside of him stood the second priest, the keepers of the threshold, the captain of the watch as holders of prominent charges. /1/ But in the Law the position of Aaron is not merely *********************************************** I The Kohen ha-rosh first occurs in 2Samuel xv. 27, but here HR)# (so read, instead of HRW)H) comes from the interpolator of ver. 24. So again 2Kings xii. 11, HKHN HGDWL, but 2Kings xii. is from the same hand as 2Kings xvi. 10 seq. Elsewhere we have simply "the priest," compare besides 2Kings xix. 2; Jeremiah xix. 1; 2Kings xxiii. 4; xxv. 18; Jeremiah xx. 1; xxix. 25, 26; In 1Samuel ii. 36 SPXNY "incorporate me" shows that KHNH must mean "priestly guild" or "order." In connection with the name LWY it is noteworthy that SPX is parallel with LWH in Isaiah xiv. 1. ********************************************** superior but unique, like that of the Pope in relation to the episcopate; his sons act under his oversight (Numbers iii. 4); he alone is the one fully qualified priest, the embodiment of all that is holy in Israel He alone bears the Urim and Thummim and the Ephod; the Priestly Code indeed no longer knows what those articles are for, and it confounds the ephod of gold with the ephod of linen, the plated image with the priestly robe; but the dim recollections of these serve to enhance the magical charm of Aaron's majestic adornment. He alone may enter into the holy of holies and there offer incense; the way at other times inaccessible (Nehemiah vi. 10, 11) is open to him on the great day of atonement. Only in him, at a single point and in a single moment, has Israel immediate contact with Jehovah. The apex of the pyramid touches heaven. The high priest stands forth as absolutely sovereign in his own domain. Down to the exile, as we have seen, the sanctuary was the property of the king, and the priest was his servant; even in Ezekiel who on the whole is labouring towards emancipation, the prince has nevertheless a very great importance in the temple still; to him the dues of the people are paid, and the sacrificial expenses are in return defrayed by him. In the Priestly Code, on the other hand, the dues are paid direct into the sanctuary, the worship is perfectly autonomous, and has its own head, holding not from man but from the grace of God. Nor is it merely the autonomy of religion that is represented by the high priest; he exhibits also its supremacy over Israel. He does not carry sceptre and sword; nowhere, as Vatke (p. 539) well remarks, is any attempt made to claim for him secular power. But just in virtue of his spiritual dignity, as the head of the priesthood, he is head of the theocracy, and so much so that there is no room for any other alongside of him; a theocratic king beside him cannot be thought of (Numbers xxvii. 21). He alone is the responsible representative of the collective nation, the names of the twelve tribes are written on his breast and shoulders; his transgression involves the whole people in guilt, and is atoned for as that of the whole people, while the princes, when their sin-offerings are compared with his, appear as mere private persons (Leviticus iv. 3, 13, 22, ix. 7, xvi. 6). His death makes an epoch; it is when the high priest--not the king--dies that the fugitive slayer obtains his amnesty (Numbers xxxv. 28). At his investiture he receives the chrism like a king, and is called accordingly the anointed priest; he is adorned with the diadem and tiara (Ezekiel xxi. 31, A.V. 26) like a king, and like a king too he wears the purple, that most unpriestly of all raiment, of which he therefore must divest himself when he goes into the holy of holies (Lev. xvi. 4). What now can be the meaning of this fact,--that he who is at the head of the worship, in this quality alone, and without any political attributes besides, or any share in the government, is at the same time at the head of the nation? What but that civil power has been withdrawn from the nation and is in the hands of foreigners; that Israel has now merely a spiritual and ecclesiastical existence? In the eyes of the Priestly Code Israel in point of fact is not a people, but a church; worldly affairs are far removed from it and are never touched by its laws; its life is spent in religious services. Here we are face to face with the church of the second temple, the Jewish hierocracy, in a form possible only under foreign domination. It is customary indeed to designate in the Law by the ideal, or in other words blind, name of theocracy that which in historical reality is usually called hierarchy; but to imagine that with the two names one has gained a real distinction is merely to deceive oneself. But, this self-deception accomplished, it is easy further to carry back the hierocratic churchly constitution to the time of Moses, because it excludes the kingship, and then either to assert that it was kept secret throughout the entire period of the judges and the monarchy, or to use the fiction as a lever by which to dislocate the whole of the traditional history. To any one who knows anything about history it is not necessary to prove that the so-called Mosaic theocracy, which nowhere suits the circumstances of the earlier periods, and of which the prophets, even in their most ideal delineations of the Israelite state as it ought to be, have not the faintest shadow of an idea, is, so to speak, a perfect fit for post-exilian Judaism, and had its actuality only there. Foreign rulers had then relieved the Jews of all concern about secular affairs; they had it in their power, and were indeed compelled to give themselves wholly up to sacred things, in which they were left completely unhampered. Thus the temple became the sole centre of life, and the prince of the temple the head of the spiritual commonwealth, to which also the control of political affairs, so far as these were still left to the nation, naturally fell there being no other head! /1/ *********************************************** 1. Very interesting and instructive is Ewald's proof of the way in which Zech. vi. 9-15 has been tampered with, so as to eliminate Zerubbabel and leave the high priest alone. Just so in dealing with Caliphs and Sultans, the Patriarchs were and are the natural heads of the Greek and Oriental Christians even in secular matters. *********************************************** The Chronicler gave a corresponding number of high priests to the twice twelve generations of forty years each which were usually assumed to have elapsed between the exodus and the building of Solomon's temple, and again between that and the close of the captivity; the official terms of office of these high priests, of whom history knows nothing, have taken the place of the reigns of judges and kings, according to which reckoning was previously made (1Chronicles v. 29, seq.). One sees clearly from Sirach l., and from more than one statement of Josephus (e.g., Ant., xviii. 4, 3, xx. 1, 11), how in the decorations of Aaron (where, however, the Urim and Thummim were wanting; Nehemiah vii. 65) people reverenced a transcendent majesty which had been left to the people of God as in some sense a compensation for the earthly dignity which had been lost. Under the rule of the Greeks the high priest became ethnarch and president of the synedrium; only through the pontificate was it possible for the Hasmonaeans to attain to power, but when they conjoined it with full-blown secular sovereignty, they created a dilemma to the consequences of which they succumbed. CHAPTER V. THE ENDOWMENT OF THE CLERGY. The power and independence of the clergy run parallel with its material endowment, which accordingly passes through the same course of development. Its successive steps are reflected even in the language that is employed, in the gradual loss of point sustained by the phrase "to fill the hand," at all times used to denote ordination. Originally it cannot have had any other meaning than that of filling the hand with money or its equivalent; we have seen that at one time the priest was appointed by the owner of a sanctuary for a salary, and that, without being thus dependent upon a particular employer, he could not then live on the income derived from those who might employ him sacrificially. But when the Levitical hereditary priesthood arose in the later kingdom of Judah the hands of the priests were no longer filled by another who had the right to appoint and to dismiss, but they themselves at God's command "filled their own hand," or rather they had done so in the days of Moses once for all, as is said in Exodus xxxii. 26-29, an insertion corresponding with the position of Deuteronomy. It is obvious that such a statement, when carefully looked at, is absurd, but is to be explained by the desire to protest against outside interference. Even here the etymological sense is still sufficiently felt to create an involuntary jar and leads to a change of the construction; but finally all sense of it is lost, and the expression becomes quite colourless: "to fill the hand " means simply "to consecrate." In Ezekiel not only the priest but also the altar has its "hand filled" (xliii. 26); in the Priestly Code the abstract _milluim_ ["consecrations"] is chiefly used, with subject and object left out, as the name of a mere inaugural ceremony which lasts for several days (Leviticus viii. 33; Exodus xxix. 34), essentially consists in the bringing of an offering on the part of the person to be consecrated, and has no longer even the remotest connection with actual filling of the hand (2Chronicles xiii. 7; comp. xxix. 31). The verb, therefore, now means simply the performance of this ceremony, and the subject is quite indifferent (Leviticus xvi. 32, xxi. 10; Numbers iii. 3); the installation does not depend upon the person who performs the rite, but upon the rite itself, upon the unction, investiture, and other formalities (Exodus xxix. 29). This variation in the _usus Ioquendi_ is the echo of real changes in the outuard condition of the clergy, which we must now proceed to consider more in detail. V.I. V.I.1. Of the offerings, it was the custom in the earlier time to dedicate a portion to the deity but to use the greater part in sacred feasts, at which a priest, if present, was of course allowed also in one way or another to participate. But he does not appear to have had a legal claim to any definite dues of flesh. "Eli's sons were worthless persons, and cared not about Jehovah, or about the priests' right and duty with the people. When any man offered a sacrifice the servant of the priest came (that is all we have here to represent the 22,000 Levites) while the flesh was in seething, with a three-pronged flesh-hook in his hand, and stuck it into the pan, or kettle, or caldron, or pot; and all that the flesh-hook brought up the priest took. So they did in Shiloh unto all the Israelites that came thither. Even before the fat was burnt, the servant of the priest came and said to the man that sacrificed: "Give flesh to roast for the priest; he will not take sodden flesh of thee, but raw. And if the other said to him: Let the fat first be burnt, and then take according to thy soul's desire; then he would answer: Nay, but thou shalt give it now; and if not, I will take it by force" (1Samuel ii. 12-16). The tribute of raw portions of flesh before the burning of the fat is here treated as a shameless demand which is fitted to bring Jehovah's offering into contempt (ver. 17), and which has the ruin of the sons of Eli as its merited reward. More tolerable is it, though even that is an abuse, when the priests cause boiled flesh to be brought them from the pot, though not seeking out the best for themselves, but leaving the selection to chance; they ought to wait and see what is given to them, or be contented with an invitation to the banquet. On the other hand we have it in Deuteronomy as "the priest's due from the people" (xviii. 3 = 1Samuel ii. 12) that he receives the shoulder and the two cheeks and the maw of the slaughtered animal; and yet this is a modest claim compared with what the sons of Aaron have in the Priestly Code (Leviticus vii. 34),--the right leg and the breast. The course of the development is plain; the Priestly Code became law for Judaism. In sacrifice, ITS demands were those which were regarded; but in order to fulfil all righteousness the precept of Deuteronomy was also maintained, this being applied--against the obvious meaning and certainly only as a result of later scrupulosity of the scribes--not to sacrifices but to ordinary secular slaughterings, from which also accordingly the priests received a portion, the cheeks (according to Jerome on Malachi ii. 3), including the tongue, the precept being thus harmonistically doubled. /1/ At an earlier ******************************************** 1. Philo, De praem. sacerd., sec. 3. Josephus, Ant., iii. 9. 2; iv. 4, 4. ******************************************** date the priests at Jerusalem received money from those who employed them (Deuteronomy xviii. 8), but for this had the obligation of maintaining the temple; from this one can discern that the money was properly speaking paid to the sanctuary, and was only conditionally delivered to its servitors. When they failed to observe the condition, King Jehoash took the money also from them (2Kings xii. 7 seq.). The meal-offerings are in the Priestly Code a subordinate matter, and the share that falls to the priests is here trifling compared with what they receive of the other sacrifices. The meal, of which only a handful is sprinkled upon the altar, the baked bread, and the minha altogether are theirs entirely, so also the sin and trespass offerings so frequently demanded, of which God receives only the blood and the fat and the offerer nothing at all (Ezekiel xliv. 29); of the burnt-offering at least the skin falls to their lot, These perquisites, however, none of them in their definite form demonstrably old, and some of them demonstrably the reverse, may be presumed to have had their analogues in the earlier period, so that they cannot be regarded absolutely as augmentation of the priestly income. In Josiah's time the mac,c,oth were among the principal means of support of the priests (2Kings xxiii. 9); doubtless they came for the most part from the minha. Instead of sin and trespass offerings, which are still unknown to Deuteronomy, there were formerly sin and trespass dues in the form of money payments to the priests,--payments which cannot, however, have been so regular (2Kings xii. 17). It is as if money payments were in the eye of the law too profane; for atonement there must be shedding of blood. That the skin of the holocaust, which cannot well be consumed on the altar, should fall to the priest is so natural an arrangement, that one will hardly be disposed to regard it as new, although Ezekiel is silent about a due which was not quite worthless (xliv. 28-31). So far then as departures from earlier custom can be shown in the sacrificial dues enjoined by the Priestly Code, they must not indeed be treated as purely local differences, but neither are they to be regarded as on the whole showing a serious raising of the tariff. But in the Code the sacrificial dues are only a subordinate part of the income of the priests. In Deuteronomy the priests are entirely thrown upon the sacrifices; they live upon them (xviii. 1) and upon invitations to the sacred banquets (xii. I2, 18 seq.); if they are not exercising the priestly function they must starve (1Samuel ii. 36). On the other hand, the Aaronidae of the Priestly Code do not need to sacrifice at all, and yet have means of support, for their chief revenue consists of the rich dues which must be paid them from the products of the soil. V.I.2. The dues falling to the priests according to the law were all originally offerings--the regular offerings which had to be brought on the festivals; and these all originally were for sacred banquets, of which the priests received nothing more than the share which was generally customary. This is true in the first instance of the male firstlings of cattle. As we have seen in the chapter on the sacred feasts, these are sacrifices and sacrificial meals, alike in the Jehovistic legislation and in the Jehovistic narrative of the exodus and of Abel, as were all the offerings brought by private individuals in the olden time. When in Exodus xxii. 29 it is said that they must be given to JEHOVAH, this does not mean that they must be given to THE PRIESTS; no such thing is anywhere said in thc Book of the Covenant. Matters still stand on essentially the same footing in Deuteronomy also: "THOU SHALT SANCTIFY THEM UNTO JEHOVAH; thou shalt not plough with the firstling of the bullock, nor shear the firstling of thy sheep; THOU SHALT EAT IT BEFORE JEHOVAH year by year in the place which He shall choose; and if there be any blemish therein, thou shalt not OFFER IT TO JEHOVAH THY GOD" (Deuteronomy xv. 19, 20). To sanctify to Jehovah, to eat before Jehovah, to offer to Jehovah, are here three equivalent ideas. If now, in Numbers xviii. 15 seq., every first birth is assigned without circumlocution to the priest, and a special paschal offering is appointed in addition, this can only be understood as the last phase in the development, partly because the idea of dues altogether is secondary to that of offerings, and partly because the immense augmentation in the income of the priests points to an increase of the hierocratic power. Ezekiel does not yet reckon the firstlings among the revenues of the clergy (xliv. 28-3I); the praxis of Judaism, on the other hand, since Nehemiah x. 37, is regulated, as usual, in accordance with the norm of the Priestly Code. The tithe also is originally given to God, and treated just as the other offerings are; that is to say, it is not appropriated by the priests, but eaten by those who bring it in sacred banquets. It does not occur in the Jehovistic legislation, but Jacob dedicates it (Genesis xxviii. 22) to the God of Bethel, a place where, although the whole story is a projection out of a later time, it would hardly be in harmony with the conceptions of the narrator to think of the presence of priests. The prophet Amos, who probably represents much the same stage of the cultus as the Jehovist does, says: "Come to Bethel to transgress, to Gilgal to sin still more; and bring every morning your sacrifices, every three days your tithes, and offer with bread pieces of flesh to the flames, and proclaim free offerings aloud, for so ye like, ye children of Israel" (Amos iv. 4 seq.). He ironically recommends them to persevere in the efforts they have hitherto made in honour of God, and to double them; to offer daily, instead of, as was usual (1Samuel i.), yearly at the chief festival; to pay tithes every three days, instead of, as was the custom, every three years. It is clear that the tithe here holds rank with Zebah, Toda, and Nedaba; it is a sacrifice of joy, and a splendid element of the public cultus, no mere due to the priests. Now, in this point also Deuteronomy has left the old custom, on the whole, unchanged. According to xiv. 22 seq. the tithe of the produce of the soil, or its equivalent in money, must be brought year by year to the sanctuary, and there consumed before Jehovah that is, as a sacrificial meal; only every third year it is not to be offered in Jerusalem, but is to be given as alms to the people of the locality who have no land, to which category the Levites in particular belong. This last application is an innovation, connected on the one hand with the abolition of the sanctuaries, and on the other with the tendency of the Deuteronomist to utilise festal mirth for humane ends. /1/ ********************************************* 1. Connection is, however, possible with some older custom, such as must certainly be assumed for Amos iv. 4. Comp. Deuteronomy xxvi. 12, "the year of tithing." ********************************************** But this is a mere trifle compared with what we find in the Priestly Code, where the whole tithe has become a mere due to be collected by the Levites (Nehemiah x. 38 [37]) on behalf of the clergy, whose endowment thereby is again very largely increased. Ezekiel is silent on this point also (xliv. 18-31), but as the tithe is demanded in Numbers (xviii. 21 seq.), so was it paid from the days of Nehemiah (x. 38 [37] seq.) by the church of the second temple. Later there was added over and above, so as to meet the divergent requirement of Deuteronomy, the so-called second tithe, which usually was consumed at Jerusalem, but in every third year was given to the poor (so Deuteronomy xxvi. 12, LXX), and in the end the tithe for the poor was paid separately over and above the first and second (Tobit i. 7, 8; Jos., Ant., iv. 8, 22). It is absolutely astounding that the tithe which in its proper nature should apply only to products of definite measure, such as corn and wine and oil (Deuteronomy xiv. 23), comes to be extended in the Priestly Code to cattle also, so that besides the male firstlings every tenth head of cattle and of sheep must also be paid to the priests. This demand, however, is not yet met with in Numbers xviii., nor even in Nehemiah x. 38, 39, but first occurs as a novel in Lev. xxvii. 32 (1Samuel viii. 17). Whether it ever came into the actual practice of Judaism seems doubtful; in 2Chronicles xxxi. 6 the tithe of cattle is indeed mentioned, but on the other hand the firstlings are not; in the pre-rabbinical literature no traces of it are discoverable,--especially not in Philo, who knows only of the ordinary tithes due to the Levites, and not of the tithes of cattle due to the priests (De praem. sacerd. 6). With the tithe of the fruit of the soil the first fruits are at bottom identical; the latter were reduced to definite measure later and through the influence of the former. This is no doubt the reason why in the Jehovistic legislation tithe and first fruits are not both demanded, but only a gift of the first and best of corn, wine, and oil, left to the free discretion of the offerer, which is conjoined with the firstling of cattle and sheep (Exodus xxii. 28 [29]. xxiii. 19, xxxiv. 26). In a precisely similar way the TITHE of the field stands conjoined with the firstlings of cattle in Deuteronomy (xiv. 22, 23, xv. 19 seq.). But also the _reshith_, usually translated first-fruits, occurs in Deuteronomy,--as a payment of corn, wine, oil, and wool to the priests (xviii. 4); a small portion, a basketful, thereof is brought before the altar and dedicated with a significant liturgy (xxvi. 1 seq.). It appears that it is taken from the tithe, as might be inferred from xxvi. 12 seq. taken as the continuation of vers. 1-11; in one passage, xxvi. 2, the more general _usus loquendi_ reappears, according to which the _reshith_ means the entire consecrated fruit, which as a whole is consumed by the offerers before Jehovah, and of which the priests receive only a portion. But in the Priestly Code not only is the entire tithe demanded as a due of the clergy, the _reshith_ also is demanded in addition (Numbers xviii. 12), and it is further multiplied, inasmuch as it is demanded from the kneading-trough as well as from the threshing-floor: in every leavening the _halla_ belongs to Jehovah (xv. 20). Nor is this all; to the _reshith_ (xviii. 12) are added the _bikkurim_ also (xviii. 13), as something distinct. The distinction does not occur elsewhere (Exodus xxxiv. 26); prepared fruits alone are invariably spoken of, the yield of the threshing-floor and the wine-press, of which first produce--"the fulness and the overflow "--was to be consecrated. The FAT of oil, wine, and corn is the main thing in Numbers xviii. also, and is called _reshith_ (ver 12) or _terumah_ (ver. 27); but the _bikkurim_ (ver. 13) seem to be a separate thing, and, if this be really the case, must mean those raw fruits which have ripened earliest. Judaism, here once more moulding itself essentially in accordance with the tenor of the Priestly Code, actually drew this distinction; from the publication of the Law through Ezra the community pledged itself to bring up yearly the _bikkurim_ to the house of Jehovah, and to deliver the _reshith_ into the temple cells (Nehemiah x. 36 [35]). The former was a religious solemnity, associated with processions, and the use of the ritual in Deuteronomy xxvi.; the latter was rather a simple tax paid from natural products,--a distinction which perhaps is connected with the different expressions _they shall bring_ (Numbers xviii. 13) and _they shall give_ (xviii. 12). The LXX keeps )APARXH and PRWTOGENNHMATA strictly apart, as also do Philo (De praem. sacerd. 1, 2) and Josephus (Ant., iv. 4, 8, 22). V.I.3. The amount which at last is required to be given is enormous. What originally were alternatives are thrown together, what originally was left free and undetermined becomes precisely measured and prescribed. The priests receive all the sin and trespass offerings, the greater share of the vegetable offerings, the hides of the burnt offerings, the shoulder and breast of meat offerings. Over and above are the firstlings, to which are added the tithes and first-fruits in a duplicate form, in short, all _kodashim_, which originally were demanded merely as ordinary meat offerings (Deuteronomy xii. 26 = ver. 6, 7, and so on), and were consumed at holy places and by consecrated guests indeed, but not by the priest. And, notwithstanding all this, the clergy are not even asked (as in Ezekiel is the prince, who there receives the dues, xlv. 13 seq.) to defray the cost of public worship; for this there is a poll-tax, which is not indeed enjoined in the body of the Priestly Code, but which from the time of Nehemiah x. 33 [32] was paid at the rate of a third of a shekel, till a novel of the law (Exodus xxx. 15) raised it to half a shekel. V.II. V.II.1. To the endowment of the clergy in the Priestly Code belong finally the forty-eight cities assigned by Joshua in accordance with the appointment of Moses (Numbers xxxv.; Josh. xxi.). The tribes gave them up freely; the smaller giving few and the larger more (Numbers xxxv. 8). The Aaronidae and the three families of the Levites cast lots about them in four divisions; the sons of Aaron get thirteen cities in Judah, the Levites ten in Ephraim-Manasseh, thirteen in Galilee, and twelve in the territory eastward of Jordan. It is not merely the right to inhabit, but, in spite of all apologetic rationalism, the right of absolute possession that they receive (Josh. xxi. 12), inclusive of a portion of land two thousand ells square (square in the strictly literal sense; Numbers xxxv. 5), which serves as public common. The physical impracticability of such an arrangement has been conclusively shown, after Gramberg, by Graf (Merx, Archiv, i. p. 83). The 4 x 12 or the substituted 13+10+13+12 cities, of which in spite of Numbers xxxv. 8 for the most part four belong to each of the twelve tribes, are already sufficient to suggest a suspicion of artificial construction; but the regulation that a rectangular territory of two thousand ells square should be measured off as pasture for the Levites around each city (which at the same time is itself regarded only as a point; Numbers xxxv. 4) might, to speak with Graf, be very well carried out perhaps in a South Russian steppe or in newly founded townships in the western States of America, but not in a mountainous country like Palestine, where territory that can be thus geometrically portioned off does not exist, and where it is by no means left to arbitrary legal enactments to determine what pieces of ground are adapted for pasturage and what for tillage and gardening; there, too, the cities were already in existence, the land was already under cultivation, as the Israelites slowly conquered it in the course of centuries. Besides, from the time of Joshua there is not a historical trace of the existence of the Levitical cities. Quite a number of them were in the days of the judges and down to the early monarchy still in the hands of the Canaanites,-- Gibeon, Shechem, Gezer, Taanach; some perhaps may even have so continued permanently. Those on the other hand which passed into the possession of the Israelites at no time belonged to the Levites. Shechem, Hebron, Ramoth, were the capital cities of Ephraim, Judah, and Gilead; and Gibeon, Gezer, Heshbon were in like manner important but by no means ecclesiastical towns. In the Deuteronomic period the Levites were scattered throughout Judah in such a manner that each locality had its own Levites or Levite; nowhere did they live separated from the rest of the world in compact masses together, for they made their living by sacrificing for others, and without a community they could not exercise their calling. Some indeed possessed land and heritage; such were at an earlier period the Silonic family at Gibeath-Phineas, Amaziah at Bethel, and Abiathar at Anathoth, and at a later period Jeremiah, also at Anathoth. But Anathoth (for example) was not on that account a priestly city in the sense of Joshua xxi.; Jeremiah had his holding there as a citizen and not as a priest, and he shared not with the priests but with the people (xxxvii. 12). As a tribe Levi was distinguished from the other tribes precisely by holding no land, and its members joined themselves to the settled citizens and peasants, for the most part as dependent inmates (Deuteronomy x. 9, xviii. 1). Even after the exile, indeed, matters were not different in this respect. "Ab excidio templi prioris sublatum est Levitis jus suburbiorum," says R. Nachman (B. Sotah, 48b), and he is borne out by the silence of Nehemiah x. The execution of the law was probably postponed to the days of the Messiah; it was not in truth within the power of man, and cannot be seriously demanded in the Priestiy Code itself, which contemplates a purely ideal Israel, with ideal boundaries, and leaves the sober reality so far out of sight that on archaeological grounds it never once so much as mentions Jerusalem, the historical capital of the priests. The circumstance that these towns lay _in partibus infiidelium_ seems to make them unavailable as a means of fixing the antiquity of the Priestly Code. It is possible with Bleek to explain the transcendence of history as Mosaicity; such a view is not to be argued against. But it is also possible with Noldeke to insist that an invention so bold cannot possibly be imputed to the spirit of the exilic and post-exilic time, which in everything is only anxiously concerned to cleave to what is old and to restore it; and such a contention deserves and admits of refutation. It is not the case that the Jews had any profound respect for their ancient history; rather they condemned the whole earlier development, and allowed only the Mosaic time along with its Davidic reflex to stand; in other words, not history but the ideal. The theocratic ideal was from the exile onwards the centre of all thought and effort, and it annihilated the sense for objective truth, all regard and interest for the actual facts as they had been handed down. It is well known that there never have been more audacious history-makers than the Rabbins. But Chronicles affords evidence sufficient that this evil propensity goes back to a very early time, its root the dominating influence of the Law, being the root of Judaism itself. Judaism is just the right soil for such an artificial growth as the forty-eight priestly and Levitical cities. It would hardly have occurred to an author living in the monarchical period, when the continuity of the older history was still unbroken, to look so completely away from all the conditions of the then existing reality; had he done so, he would have produced upon his contemporaries the impression merely that he had scarcely all his wits about him. But after the exile had annihilated the ancient Israel, and violently and completely broken the old connection with the ancient conditions, there was nothing to hinder from planting and partitioning the _tabula rasa_ in thought at pleasure, just as geographers are wont to do with their map as long as the countries are unknown. But, of course, no fancy is pure fancy; every imagination has underlying it some elements of reality by which it can be laid hold of, even should these only be certain prevailing notions of a particular period. It is clear, if a proper territory is assigned to the clergy, that the notion of the clerical tribe which already had begun to strike root in Deuteronomy has here grown and gathered strength to such a degree that even the last and differentiating distinction is abolished which separates the actual tribes from the Levites, viz. communal independence and the degree of concentration which expresses itself in separate settlements. For when we read, notwithstanding, in the Priestly Code that Aaron and Levi are to have no lot nor inheritance in Israel (Numbers xviii. 20, 23), this is merely a form of speech taken over from Deuteronomy and at the same time an involuntary concession to fact; what would the forty-eight cities have been, had they actually existed, if not a lot, a territorial possession, and that too a comparatively large one? The general basis which serves as starting-point for the historical fiction being thus far recognisable, we are able also to gain a closer view of its concrete material. The priestly and Levitical cities stand in close connection with the so-called cities of refuge. These are also appointed in Deuteronomy (xix.), although not enumerated by name (for Deuteronomy iv. 41-43 cannot be regarded as genuine). Originally the altars were asylums (Exodus xxi. 14; 1Kings ii. 28), some in a higher degree than others (Exodus xxi. 13). In order not to abolish the asylums also along with the altars, the Deuteronomic legislator desired that certain holy places should continue as places of refuge, primarily three for Judah, to which, when the territory of the kingdom extended, three others were to be afterwards added. The Priestly Code adopts the arrangement, and specifies three definite cities on this side and three on the other side of Jordan (Numbers xxxv.; Joshua xx.), four of which are demonstrably famous old seats of worship,--all the three western ones, and Ramoth, that is, Mizpah, of the eastern ones (Genesis xxxi.; Judges xi. 11). But as all these asylums are at the same time priestly and Levitical cities, it is an obvious conjecture that these also in like manner arose out of old sanctuaries. We need not suppose that there is more in this than an echo of the general recollection that there were once in Israel many holy places and residences of priesthoods; it is by no means necessary to assert that each of the towns enumerated in Joshua xxi. had actually been an ancient sanctuary. In many cases, however, this also admits of being shown, /1/ although some of the ********************************************* 1. In the cases of Hebron, Gibeon, Shechem, Ramoth, Mahanaim and Tabor (Host v. 1) by historical data; in those of Bethshemesh, Ashtaroth, Kadesh,, perhaps also Rimmon, by the names. Not even here can one venture to credit the Priestly Code with consistent fidelity to history. As for Hosea v. 1, 2, the original meaning seems to be: "A snare have ye become for Mizpah, and an outspread net upon Tabor, and the pit-fall of Shittim (#XT H#+YM) have they made deep." Shittim as a camping-place under Moses and Joshua must certainly have been a sanctuary, just like Kadesh, Gilgal, and Shiloh; the prophet names these seats at which in his opinion the worship was especially seductive and soul-destroying; his reproach is levelled at the priests most famous (or according to the later view, infamous) high places, such as Bethel, Dan, Gilgal, and Beersheba are omitted, probably of set purpose. The immediate starting-point, however, for this territorial donation to the Levites is perhaps to be sought in Ezekiel, in the picture of the future Israel which he draws at the close of his book. He concerns himself there in a thorough-going manner about the demarcation of the national and tribal boundaries, and in doing so sets quite freely to work, taking, so to speak, the yard measure in his hand. Leaving the land eastward of Jordan wholly to the Saracens, he divides the western portion into thirteen parallel transverse sections; in the middle of the thirteenth (the rest of which is assigned to the prince), lying between Judah and Benjamin, the twelve tribes give up a square with a base line of 25,000 ells as a sacred offering to Jehovah. This square is divided into three parallelograms, 25,000 ells long, running east and west; the southernmost of these, 5000 ells broad, includes the capital with its territory; the middle one, 10,000 ells broad, contains the temple and the priestly territory; the northernmost, also 10,000 ells broad, has the inheritance and the cities of the Levites. /1/ ********************************************** 1. For (S#RYM L#KT (xlv. 5), read, with the LXX, #(RYM L#BT "to dwell within the gates." Compare a similar transposition of letters in xiii. 3, LXX. The expression "gates" for "cities" has its origin in Deuteronomy. ********************************************* Thus we have here also a surrender of land to the clergy on the part of the tribes; the comparison with Josh. xxi. is not to be put aside,--all the less, because nowhere else in the Old Testament is anything similar met with. Now Ezekiel is quite transparent, and requires no interpreter but himself. In order that the temple may be protected in its sanctity in the best possible manner, it is placed in the centre of the priestly territory, which in its turn is covered by the city on the south, and by the Levites on the north. At the same time the _personnel_ connected with the function of worship is to dwell as much as possible apart on its own soil and territory, which _shall serve them for separate houses to sanctify them_, as is expressly remarked for the priests (xiv. 4), and in an inferior degree holds good also, of course, for the Levites beside them. Here everything starts from, and has its explanation in, the temple. Its original is unmistakably the temple of Solomon; its site is beside the capital, in the heart of the sacred centre of the land between Judah and Benjamin; there the sons of Zadok have their abode, and beside them are the Levites whom Josiah had brought up from all the country to Jerusalem. Obviously the motives are not here far to seek. In the Priestly Code, on the other hand, which was not in a position to shape the future freely out of the present, but was compelled to accept archaeological restrictions, the motives are historically concealed and almost paralysed. The result has remained, namely, the holding of separate territory by the clergy, but the cause or the purpose of it can no longer be recognised on account of the sanctuary being now an abstract idea. Jerusalem and the temple, which, properly speaking, occasioned the whole arrangement, are buried in silence with a diligence which is in the highest degree surprising; and on the other hand, in remembrance of the priesthoods scattered everywhere among the high places of Israel in earlier days, forty-eight fresh Levitical cities are created, from which, however, their proper focus, a temple to wit, is withheld only in the circumstance that precisely the thirteen cities of Judah and Benjamin happen to fall to the lot of the sons of Aaron, does the influence of Jerusalem unconsciously betray itself. V.II.2. Apart from this historical fiction, the other claims that are made for the endowment of the clergy are, however exorbitant, nevertheless practicable and seriously meant. So far as the circumstances of their origin are concerned, two possibilities present themselves. Either the priests demanded what they could hope to obtain, in which case they were actually supreme over the nation, or they set up claims which at the time were neither justified nor even possible; in which case they were not indeed quite sober, yet at the same time so sane prophetically, that centuries afterwards the revenues they dreamed of became in actuality theirs. Is it to be supposed that it was (say) Moses, who encouraged his people as they were struggling for bare life in the wilderness to concern themselves about a superabundantly rich endowment of their clergy? Or is it believed that it was in the period of the judges, when the individual tribes and families of Israel, after having forced their way among the Canaanites, had a hard fight to maintain their position, get somehow settled in their new dwelling-places and surroundings, that the thought first arose of exacting such taxes from a people that was only beginning to grow into a national unity, for an end that was altogether remote from its interest? What power could then have been able in those days, when every man did what was right in his own eyes, to compel the individual to pay? But even when actually, under the pressure of circumstances, a political organisation had arisen which embraced all the tribes, it could hardly have occurred to the priests to utilise the secular arm as a means for giving to themselves a place of sovereignty; and still less could they have succeeded WITHOUT the king on whom they were so completely dependent. In short, the claims they make in the Law would in the pre-exilic period have been regarded as utopian in the strict sense of that word; they allow of explanation only by the circumstances which from the beginning of the Chaldaean rule, and still more that of the Persians, lent themselves to the formation of a hierocracy, to which, as to the truly national and moreover divine authority, the people gave voluntary obedience, and to which the Persians also conceded rights they could not have granted to the family of David. At the very beginning of the exile, Ezekiel begins to augment the revenues of the priests (xliv. 28-30), yet he still confines himself on the whole to the lines of Deuteronomy, and makes no mention of tithes and firstlings. Of the demands of the Priestly Code in their full extent we hear historically in Nehemiah x. for the first time; there it is stated that they were carried through by men who had the authority of Artaxerxes behind them. This was the most difficult and at the same time the most important part of the work Ezra and Nehemiah had to do in introducing the Pentateuch as the law of the Jewish Church; and that is the reason why it is so specially and minutely spoken of. Here plainly lies the material basis of the hierocracy from which the royal throne was ultimately reached. For all these dues, apart from sacrificial perquisites, flowed into a common coffer, and benefited those who had the control of this, viz., the priestly aristocracy of Jerusalem, whom it helped to rise to a truly princely position. The ordinary priests, and especially the Levites, did not gain by all this wealth. The latter indeed ought, according to law, to have had the tithes, and to have handed over the tithes of these again to the sons of Aaron, but as the general tendency of the time was to depress the Levites, this legal revenue was also gradually withdrawn from them and appropriated by the priests. Afterwards the chief priests claimed the tithes for themselves alone, while their inferior brethren had to suffer severe privation and even hunger itself (Josephus, Ant., xx. 8, 8; 9, 2). Upon the difference just stated between the later practice and the Law, one argument more has recently been founded against assigning the latter to the Babylonio-Persian period. "Another testimony borne by tradition completely excludes the idea of the Elohistic torah (i.e., the Priestly Code) having been composed by Ezra. As is well known, it is the Elohistic torah that carefully regulates the mutual relations of priests and Levites, while Deuteronomy groups the two together without bringing forward the distinction. It is the former that assigns the tithes to the Levites, while requiring these in their turn to hand over the tithe of their tithes as a due to the priests. Such was also the practice (Nehemiah x. 38 seq.) soon after the exile [i.e., a hundred years later; Nehemiah vii. 5]. But subsequently the payment of the tithes to the Levites fell entirely into disuse; these were rendered immediately and exclusively to the priests, so that Jose ben Hanina actually confesses: "We do not pay the tithes according to the command of God" (Sota, 47b). But everywhere the Talmud refers this practice back to Ezra. Ezra it was who punished the Levites by withdrawal of the tithes, and that because they had not come out from Babylon (Jebam. 386b; Chullin 11b). The point to be noted is that Ezra, according to the testimony of tradition, superseded a precept of the Elohistic torah, supporting himself in this perhaps by reference to the Deuteronomic torah." So Delitzsch in the Zeitschr. fuer luth. Theol., 1877, p. 448 seq. That Ezra is not the author of the Priestly Code may readily be granted--only not on such an argument as this. If the genuine historical tradition expressly names Ezra as the man who introduced the Levites' tithe just as prescribed by law (Nehemiah x. 38 seq.), what conscientious man can attach any weight to the opposite assertion of the Talmud ? But, even assuming that the divergence of practice from the legal statute actually does go back to the time of Ezra, what would follow from that against the post-exilic origin of the Priestly Code? For this is what the question comes to, not to Ezra's authorship, which is made the main point by a mere piece of transparent controversial tactics. The demands of the Priestly Code, which demonstrably were neither laid down, nor in any sense acted on before the exile, attained the force of law one hundred years after the return from Babylon (Nehemiah x.); the whole taxation system of Judaism ever afterwards rested upon it;- - shall this be held to have no meaning as against the trifling circumstance that the tithe also was indeed paid to the clergy, in full accordance with the Priestly Code, and inconsistently with ancient custom, but paid to the higher, and not to the lower order? In point of fact any other difference whatever between Jewish practice and the Law might better have been adduced against the thesis of Graf,--for example, the absence of Urim and Thummim (Nehemiah vii. 65), or of the forty-eight Levitical cities, the church of the returned exiles instead of that of the twelve tribes of Israel, the second temple instead of the tabernacle, Ezra instead of Moses, the sons of Zadok instead of the sons of Aaron, the absence of the other marks of Mosaicity. For the position of the Levites is the Achilles heel of the Priestly Code. If the Levites at a later date were still further lowered beneath the priests, and put into a worse position in favour of these, this nevertheless presupposes the distinction between the two; let it first then be shown that the distinction is known to the genuine Old Testament, and that, in particular, it is introduced by Ezekiel not as a new thing, but as of immemorial antiquity. Or is the primary fact that the separation between priests and Levites was set up only in the Priestly Code and in Judaism, and that its genesis can be traced with confidence from the time of Josiah downwards, a fact of less importance than the secondary one that the distinction extended itself somewhat further still in the subsequent development of Judaism ? B. HISTORY OF TRADITION. _________________ PLEON (HMISU PANTOS-- Hesiod <Op. 40> CHAPTER VI. CHRONICLES Under the influence of the spirit of each successive age, traditions originally derived from one source were very variously apprehended and shaped; one way in the ninth and eighth centuries, another way in the seventh and sixth, and yet another in the fifth and fourth. Now, the strata of the tradition show the same arrangement as do those of the legislation. And here it makes no difference whether the tradition be legendary or historical, whether it relates to pre-historic or to historic times; the change in the prevailing ideas shows itself equally in either case. To show the truth of this in the case of the Hexateuch is of course our primary object, but we make our commencement rather with the properly historical books. For on various grounds we are here able with greater certainty to assert: Such was the aspect of history at this period and such at that; such were the influences that had the ascendancy at one time, and such those which prevailed at another. We begin the inquiry where the matter is clearest--namely, with the Book of Chronicles. Chronicles, which properly speaking forms but a single book along with Ezra and Nehemiah, is a second history running parallel with the Books of Samuel and Kings, and we are here in the favourable position of starting with the objects of comparison distinctly defined, instead of having as usual to begin by a critical separation of sources of various age combined in one document. And, what is more, we can also date the rival histories with tolerable certainty. The Books of Samuel and of Kings were edited in the Babylonian exile; Chronicles, on the other hand, was composed fully three hundred years later, after the downfall of the Persian empire, out of the very midst of fully developed Judaism. We shall now proceed to show that the mere difference of date fully accounts for the varying ways in which the two histories represent the same facts and events, and the difference of spirit arises from the influence of the Priestly Code which came into existence in the interval. De Wette's "Critical Essay on the Credibility of the Books of Chronicles" (Beitraege, i.; 1806), is throughout taken as the basis of the discussion: that essay has not been improved on by Graf (Gesch. Bucher d. A. T. p. 114 seq.), for here the difficulty, better grappled with by the former, is not to collect the details of evidence, but so to shape the superabundant material as to convey a right total impression. VI.I. VI.I.1. After Jehovah had slain Saul (so begins the narrative of Chronicles), He turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse. All Israel gathered themselves unto David to Hebron and anointed him king over Israel, according to the word of Jehovah by Samuel (I Chronicles x. 1.-xi. 3). How simply and smoothly and wholly without human intervention according to this version did the thing come to pass! Quite otherwise is it in the narrative of the Book of Samuel. This also indeed has the statement of Chronicles word for word, but it has something over and above which gives a quite different aspect to the matter. Here David, on the lowest step to the throne, is the guerilla leader in the wilderness of Judah who finally is compelled by Saul's persecutions to pass over to Philistine territory, there under the protection of the enemies of his nation, carrying on his freebooter life. After the battle of Gilboa he avails himself of the dissolution of the kingdom to set up a separate principality in the south as a vassal of the Philistines; he is not chosen, but comes with a following six hundred strong, and offers himself to the elders of Judah, whom he has already at an earlier period laid under obligations to him by various favours and gifts. In the meantime Saul's cousin Abner takes over what of the kingdom there is, not for himself but for the legitimate heir Ishbaal; from Gilead, whither the government had been transferred after the great catastrophe, he gradually reconquers the territory west of Jordan, and is scheming how to recover also the lost Judah. Thus it comes to protracted struggles between Abner and David, in which fortune is most on the side of the latter; yet he does not leave the defensive or gain the sovereignty over Israel. That falls into his hands rather by treachery. Abner himself, indignant at the ingratitude of his royal nephew, offers the crown to his rival, and enters into negotiations with him about it; but as he immediately afterwards falls a victim to blood revenge, nothing comes of the matter until Ishbaal is privily murdered in his sleep by two of his captains; then at last the elders of Israel come to Hebron, and David becomes king in succession to Saul. What a length of time these affairs demand, how natural is their development, how many human elements mingle in their course,--cunning, and treachery, and battle, and murder! Chronicles indeed knows them all well enough, as is clear from incidental expressions in chaps. xi. and xii., but they are passed over in silence. Immediately after his predecessor's death the son of Jesse is freely chosen by all Israel to be king, according to the word of Jehovah by Samuel. The sequence of x. 13, 14, xi. 1 does not admit of being understood in any other way, nor is it in point of fact otherwise understood, for it has actually been successful, at least to this extent, that the kingship of Ishbaal has virtually dropped out of traditional Bible history; after Saul came David is what is said. We have before us a deliberate and in its motives a very transparent mutilation of the original narrative as preserved for us in the Book of Samuel. As all Israel has made David the successor of Saul, and all Israel gone out with him to the conquest of Jerusalem (xi. 4),--in 2Samuel v. 6 we hear only of David's following,--so now immediately afterwards, the noblest representatives of all the tribes of Israel, who even before he had attained the throne were in sympathy and indeed already on his side, are enumerated by name and numbers in three lists (xi. 10-xii. 40), which are introduced between what is said in 2Samuel v. 1-1110 and in 2Samuel v. 11 seq. The first (xi. 10-47: "these are the mighty men who took part with him with all Israel to make him king") is the list of 2Samuel xxiii., which the Chronicler, as he betrays in chaps. xx., xxi., was acquainted with as it stood in that place, and here gives much too early, for it is for the most part warriors of David's later campaigns who are enumerated. /1/ The second list (xii. ************************************** 1. The division into a group of three and another of thirty heroes, obscured in 2Samuel xxiii. by corruption of the text (Text der BB. Sam. p. 213-216), has not been understood by the Chronicler, and thus been made quite unrecognisable. In this way he has been able to bring in at the end (xi. 42-47) a string of additional names exceeding the number of thirty. In ver. 42 his style unmistakably betrays itself, wherever it may be that he met with the elements. **************************************** 1-22: "these are they that came to David to Ziklag, while he yet kept himself close because of Saul") is not taken from the Book of Samuel, but one also observes this difference: along with old and genuine there are extremely common names, and hardly one that occurs here only; the notes of ancestry carefully given in chap. xi. are almost always wanting; and instead of performing before our eyes such deeds as the rescue of a field of barley from the enemy, the purchase of a draught of water with blood, the slaying of a lion in a pit, the heroes receive all sorts of _epitheta ornantia_ (xii. 1-3) and titles of honour (xii. 14, 20), and ordinarily talk a highly spiritual language (xii. 17, 18). And as for the historical situation, how impossible that a great Israelite army should have been gathered around David as the feudatory of the Philistines in Ziklag (xii. 2 2), with a crowd of captains of hundreds and thousands! Plainly the banished fugitive is according to this representation the splendid king and illustrious ancestor of the established dynasty; hence also the naive remark of ver. 29. No better is it with the third list (xii. 23-40: "these are the numbers of the bands, ready armed for the war, who came to David to Hebron"). Observe the regular enumeration of the twelve tribes, which nowhere occurs in the older historical books, and is quite artificial; then the vast numbers, which are not matters of indifference here, but the principal thing and make up the entire contents; finally, the 4600 Levites and 3700 priests, who also take their place in the martial train, and constitute the proper guard of the king; to Chronicles the distinction between secular and spiritual soldiers is not altogether clear. There are but a few details of a special kind; the remark in xii. 32 is perhaps connected with 2Samuel xx. 18; Jehoiada the prince of the house of Aaron, i.e., the high priest, alongside of the historically certain series,--Eli, Phinehas, Ahitub, Ahiah (Ahimelech ), Abiathar,--an utterly impossible person, is a reflection of the Jehoiada of 2Kings xi., xii., and the allegation that Zadok at that time joined David at the head of twenty-two chief priests is a hardly credible substitute for what is stated in Samuel, according to which Abiathar, whose older claims were disagreeable to the B'ne Zadok and those who came later, was the priest who from the beginning held with David; the twenty-two chief priests appear to correspond to the heads of the twenty-two post-exilian priestly families (Nehemiah xii. 1-7, 12-21, x. 3-9; 1Chronicles xxiv. 7-18). Yet it is hardly necessary to go so minutely into the contents of the above lists, for the purpose with which they are given is stated without circumlocution at the close (2Chronicles xii. 38, 39): "All these men of war, in order of battle, came with a perfect heart to Hebron to make David king over all Israel, and all the rest of Israel also were of one heart to make David king. And they were there with David three days, eating and drinking, for there was joy in Israel." After the explication of the idea "all Israel" thus inappropriately interpolated, the narrative proceeds to reproduce the contents of 2 Samuel v.-vii. David's first deed, after the conquest of the stronghold of Jebus, is in Chronicles to make it the holy city by transferring the ark of Jehovah thither (xiii. 1 seq.). It seems as if the building of a palace and the Philistine war (2Samuel v. 11-25) were to be omitted; but after the narrative in 2Samuel vi. 1 seq. has been given down to the place "and the ark of Jehovah abode in the house of Obed-edom three months " (1Chronicles xiii. 14 = 2Samuel vi. 11), the pause of a quarter of a year is utilised for the purpose of overtaking what had been left out (xiv. 1-17 = 2Samuel v. 11-25), and then the history of the ark is completed. This indeed is to separate things mutually connected, but at the same time the secular business which, according to the older narrative, is the nearest and most pressing, is reduced to the level of a mere episode in the midst of the sacred. That there is no room for the building of a house and a Philistine war within the three months which offer themselves so conveniently for the interpolation is a subordinate affair. As regards the sacred business, the transference of the ark to Zion, almost everything that is said in 2Samuel vi. is repeated word for word in Chronicles also (xiii., xv., xvi., xvii. 1). Two traits only are absent in Chronicles, and in neither case is the omission helpful to the connection David's wife Michal, it is said in 2Samuel vi. 16, 20-23, when she saw the king dancing and leaping in the procession, despised him in her heart; afterwards when he came home she told him what she thought of his unworthy conduct. The first of these two statements is found in Chronicles also (xv. 29), but the second is (all but the introductory notice, xvi. 43 = 2Samuel vi. 20, here torn from its connection) omitted, although it contains the principal fact, for the historical event was the expression of her contempt, not its psychological origin; a woman--such is the idea--must not say a thing like that to David. The other case is quite similar. On account of the calamity by which those who were bringing up the ark were overtaken, David does not at first venture to receive it into his citadel, but deposits it in the house of Obed-edom, one of his captains; but when Jehovah blesses the house of Obed-edom, he takes courage to bring the ark to his own home (2Samuel vi. 10-12). Chronicles also tells that Jehovah blessed the house of Obed-edom (xiii. 14), but mentions no consequent result; again the cause is given without the effect. Another explanation is substituted; David perceived that the disaster connected with the removal of the ark was due to the fact of its not having been carried by the Levites in accordance with the Law; the Levites accordingly were made to bear it and no harm ensued (xv. 2, 13-15). This is in complete and manifest contradiction to the older narrative, and as Chronicles (chapter xiii.) copies that narrative, it also contradicts itself (xiii. 10), and that all the more strikingly as by the addition in xiii. 2 it represents the accompanying clergy as tacitly approving the carrying of the ark on the ox-cart. Then due participation in the sacred procession having been thus once secured them, 1Chronicles xv. positively revels in priests and Levites, of whom not a sing]e word is to be found in 2 Samuel vi., and moreover a sort of musical service is instituted by David himself before the ark, and a festal cantata made up by him out of post-exilian psalms is quoted (chapter xvi.). In this way, out of the original narrative, the scattered fragments of which now show themselves very strangely in the new connection, something quite different has grown. "In the former everything is free, simply the affair of king and people, here all is priestly ceremonial; there the people with their king shout and dance with joy before the ark,, here the levites are the musicians and singers in formal order. To seek to combine the two versions is wholly against the laws of historical interpretation. If the first were curt and condensed the unification of the two might perhaps be possible, but no story could be more particular or graphic, and could it have been that the Levites alone should be passed over in silence if they had played so very important a part? The author of Chronicles was able to introduce them only by distorting and mutilating his original and landing himself in contradiction after all. He cannot allow anything to happen without Levites; and was the ark of the covenant to be fetched to Jerusalem without them? was the Law to be even a second time broken under the pious king David? This seemed to him impossible. That Uzzah perished in the first attempt to fetch the ark, and that on the second occasion--when only a quite short journey is spoken of--the ark was carried, ~2Samuel vi. 13, may have been the suggestions by which he was led. Fertile in combinations, he profited by the hint." So, justly, De Wette (Beitraege, i. 88-91). The narrative of 2Samuel vi. having been broken off at the first half of ver. 19 (1Chronicles xvi. 3), the second half of the verse and the beginning of the next are reproduced (xvi. 43) after the interpolation of xvi. 4-42, and then 2Samuel vii. is appended word for word (1Chronicles xvii.),--the resolution of David to build a house for the ark, and what Jehovah said to him about the subject through Nathan. The point of the prophet's address turns on the antithesis (2Samuel vii.). "Thou wilt build a house FOR ME? rather will I build a house FOR THEE;" the house of David is of course the Davidic dynasty. But an interpolation has already crept into the text of Samuel (vii. 13), which apprehends the antithesis thus: "THOU wilt build a house for me? Nay, THY SON shall build a house for me." Now Chronicles, for which David comes into consideration merely as the proper founder of the Solomonic temple, takes up the narrative of 2 Samuel vii. precisely on account of this interpolation, as is clear from xxii. 9, 10-- increases the misunderstanding by going back to it in an addition (xvii. 14)--and at the outset destroys the original antithesis by the innocent alteration, "Thou shalt not build THE HOUSE for me" instead of "Wilt thou build A house for me? "The house can here mean only that imperatively needed one, long kept in view alike by God and men, which must by all means he built, only not by David but by Solomon; it is without any ambiguity the temple, and does not, like a house, contain that possibility of a double meaning on which the original point depends. It is interesting also to compare 2Samuel vii. 14 with 1Chronicles xvii. 13: "I will be to thy seed a father, and he shall be to me a son. _If he commit iniquity, then I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the sons of men; but_ my mercy shall not depart from him." The words in italics are wanting in Chronicles; the meaning, that Jehovah will not withdraw His grace from the dynasty of Judah altogether, even though some of its members should deserve punishment, is thereby destroyed and volatilised into an abstract idealism, which shows that to the writer the Davidic kingly family is known only as a dissolving view, and not by historical experience as it is to the author of 2Samuel vii. In chaps xviii.-xx., Chronicles seems to refresh itself with a little variety, relating as it does the foreign wars of David after the order of 2Samuel, viii., x., xi. 1, xii. 30, 30, xxi. 18-22. But in this it still keeps in view its purpose, which is directed towards David as founder of the Jerusalem worship; those wars brought him the wealth that was required for the building of the temple. On the other hand, everything so fully and beautifully told in the Book of Samuel about the home occurrences of that period is omitted, for after all it does not contribute much to the glorification of the king. So the story of Meribaal and Ziba (chap. ix.), of Bathsheba and Uriah (xi., xii.), of Tamar and Amnon (xiii., xiv.), of Absalom's rebellion (xv.-xx.), and of the delivering-up of the sons of Saul (xxi. 1-14). The rude and mechanical manner in which statements about foreign wars are torn from the connection with domestic events in which they stand in the older narrative is shown in 1Chronicles xx. 1, 2, as compared with 2Samuel xi. 1, xii. 30. In 2Samuel xi. the mention of the fact that David remained in Jerusalem when the army set out against Rabbah, prepares for the story of his adultery with the wife of a captain engaged in active service in the field; but 1Chronicles xx. 1 is meaningless, and involves a contradiction with ver. 2. according to which David appears after all in the camp at Rabbah, although the connection,--namely, that he followed the army--and all the intermediate occurrences relating to Bathsheba and Uriah, are left out (De Wette, pp. 19, 20, 60). To what extent the veil is drawn over the scandalous falls of saints may be judged also from the fact that from the list of David's foreign encounters also, which are otherwise fully given, a single one is omitted which he is supposed not to have come through with absolute honour, that with the giant Ishbi-benob (2Samuel xxi. 15-17). Lastly, the alteration made in 1Chronicles xx. 5 is remarkable. Elhanan the son of Jair of Bethlehem, we read in 2Samuel xxi. 19, was he who slew Goliath of Gath, the shaft of whose spear was as thick as a weaver's beam. But on the other hand, had not David of Bethlehem according to 1Samuel xvii. vanquished Goliath the giant, the shaft of whose spear was as thick as a weaver's beam? In Chronicles accordingly Elhanan smites the brother of the veritable Goliath. 2. The closing chapters of 2Samuel (xxi.-xxiv.) are, admittedly, an appendix of very peculiar structure. The thread of xxi. 1-14 is continued in xxiv. 1-25, but in the interval between the two passages occurs xxi. 15-xxiii. 39, in a very irrational manner, perhaps wholly due to chance. In this interposed passage itself, again, the quite similar lists xxi. 15-22 and xxiii. 8-39 are very closely connected; and the two songs, xxii. 1-51, xxiii. 1-7, are thus an interpolation within an interpolation. This want of order is imitated by the author of Chronicles also, who takes 2Samuel xxiii. 8-39 as separated from xxi. 15-22, and gives 2Samuel xxiv. last, a position which does not belong to it from any material considerations, but merely because it had originally been tagged on as an appendix, and besides had been separated from its connection with xxi. 1-14 by a large interpolation. 1Chronicles xxi. (the pestilence as punishment of David's sin in numbering the people, and the theophany as occasioning the building of an altar on the threshing-floor of Araunah) is on the whole a copy of 2Samuel xxiv., but with omission of the precise and interesting geographical details of ver. 5 seq, and with introduction of a variety of improving touches. Thus (xxi. 1): "And Satan stood up against Israel and moved David;" instead of: "And the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Israel, and he moved David." Similarly (xxi. 6): "Levi and Benjamin Joab counted not among them; for the king's word was abominable to him,"-- an addition which finds its explanation on the one hand in Numbers i. 49, and on the other in the circumstance that the holy city lay within the territory of Benjamin. Again (xxi. 16, 27): "David saw the angel of Jehovah standing between heaven and earth, and his sword drawn in his hand and stretched out towards Jerusalem;" compare this with Sam xxiv. 16 (1Chronicles xxi. t5): "The angel stretched out his hand to Jerusalem to destroy it, and he was by the threshing floor of Araunah;" according to the older view, angels have no wings (Genesis xxviii.). Further (xxi. 25): "David gave to Araunah for his threshing-floor 600 shekels of gold ;" compare with 2Samuel xxiv. 24, 50 shekels of silver; to make the king pay right royally costs the Chronicler nothing. But lastly, his most significant addition is the fire from heaven which consumes the burnt-offering (xxi. 26); by this means the altar on the threshing-floor of Araunah, in other words, that of the sanctuary of Jerusalem, is intended to be put on a level with that of the tabernacle, its predecessor, the fire on which was also kindled from heaven (Leviticus ix. 24). Whoever has understood the narratives of altar-buildings by the Patriarchs, by Joshua, Gideon, and Manoah, will grant that the author of Chronicles has quite correctly understood the intention of 2Samuel xxiv., in accordance with which he here proposes to relate the divine inauguration of the place of worship at Jerusalem; but what in that passage, as in similar older legends about the indication of consecrated places by means of a theophany, is only hinted at for contemporaries who understood the idea conveyed, he requires to retouch strongly in order that a later generation may notice it; and yet he has half spoiled the point by making the angel not stand by the threshing-floor of Araunah on the sacred spot, but hover aloft in the air. 2Samuel xxiv. = 1Chronicles xxi. serves further as a starting point for the free construction of 1Chronicles xxii.-xxix. The circumstance that in the last chapter of the Book of Samuel David builds the altar at Jerusalem is expanded into the statement that in the last year of his reign he prepared beforehand the building of the temple of Solomon in all its parts down to the minutest detail. Unhampered by historical tradition, the author here expatiates with absolute freedom in his proper element. All that has hitherto been said about the king on the basis of the older source is by means of additions and omissions fashioned into what shall serve as a mere prologue to the proper work of his life, which is now described thoroughly _con amore_. He himself unfortunately has not been allowed to build the house, having shed much blood and carried on great wars (xxii. 8, xxviii. 3), but he yet in the last year of his reign forestalls from his successor the whole merit of the business (xxiii. 1, xxviii. 1). My son Solomon, he says, is young and tender, but the house to be built for Jehovah must be great and glorious; I will therefore prepare it for him (xxii. 5). Accordingly he gets ready beforehand the workmen and artificers, in particular bringing into requisition the non-Israelitic population; he provides the material, stone and wood and brass and iron, and gold and silver and jewels without number; he also gives the plan or rather receives it direct from Jehovah, and that in black and white (xxviii. 19), while Moses built the tabernacle only according to his recollection of the heavenly pattern which had been shown to him on Sinai. But before all he appoints the _personnel_ for the temple service,--priests, Levites, porters, singers,-divides their thousands into classes, and assigns to them their functions by lot. In doing so he interests himself, naturally, with special preference, in the music, being the designer of the instruments (xxiii. 5), and himself acting as principal conductor (xxv. 2, 6). And as he is still king after all, he at the close takes an inventory also of his secular state, after having duly ordered the spiritual. All this he does for the future, for his son and successor; not in reality, but only in plan, are the door-keepers, for example, assigned to their posts (xxvi. 12 seq.), but none the less with strictest specification and designation of the localities of the temple,--and that too the second temple! His preparations concluded, David calls a great assembly of prelates and notables (xxiii. 1, xxviii. 1), has Solomon anointed as king, and Zadok as priest (xxix. 22), and in a long discourse hands over to the former along with the kingdom the task of his reign, namely, the execution of what he himself has prepared and appointed; on this occasion yet more precious stones and noble metals--among them gold of Ophir and Persian darics--are presented by David and the princes for the sacred building. The whole section 1Chronicles xxii.-xxix. is a startling instance of that statistical phantasy of the Jews which revels in vast sums of money on paper (xxii. 14), in artificial marshallings of names and numbers (xxiii.-xxvii.), in the enumeration of mere subjects without predicates, which simply stand on parade and neither signify nor do anything. The monotony is occasionally broken only by unctuous phrases, but without refreshing the reader. Let the experiment of reading the chapters through be tried. According to 1Kings i., ii., King David in his closing days was sick and feeble in body and mind, and very far from being in a condition thus to make preparations on behalf of his successor shortly before his own death, or to prepare his bread for him so far that nothing remained but to put it into the oven. His purpose of building a house to Jehovah is indeed spoken of in 2 Samuel vii. in connection with vi. 17, but it is definitively abandoned in consequence of Jehovah's refusal, on the ground that it is not man's part to build a house for God, but God's to build a house for man. In strange contrast with this explanation is that of Chronicles that David is a man of war and has shed much blood, and therefore dare not set up the temple; that he had waged the wars of Jehovah, that Jehovah had given victory by his hand, would in the older warlike time have seemed no reason against but rather an argument establishing his fitness for such a work. But the worst discrepancy is that between the solemn installation of Solomon as king and of Zadok as priest with all the forms of law and publicity as related in 1Chronicles xxviii., xxix. (comp. xxii., xxiii. 1) and the older narrative of 1Kings i., ii. According to the latter it was much more an ordinary palace intrigue, by means of which one party at court succeeded in obtaining from the old king, enfeebled with age, his sanction for Solomon's succession. Until then Adonijah had been regarded as heir-apparent to the throne, by David himself, by all Israel, and the great officers of the kingdom, Joab and Abiathar; what above all things turned the scale in favour of Solomon was the weight of Benaiah's six hundred praetorians, a formidable force in the circumstances of the period. The author of Chronicles naively supposes he has successfully evaded all difficulties by giving out the coronation of Solomon related by himself to be the second (xxix. 22),--an advertence to 1Kings i., ii. which does not remove but only betrays the contradiction. Yet this is as nothing over against the disharmony of the total impression. See what Chronicles has made out of David! The founder of the kingdom has become the founder of the temple and the public worship, the king and hero at the head of his companions in arms has become the singer and master of ceremonies at the head of a swarm of priests and Levites; his clearly cut figure has become a feeble holy picture, seen through a cloud of incense. It is obviously vain to try to combine the fundamentally different portraits into one stereoscopic image; it is only the tradition of the older source that possesses historical value. In Chronicles this is clericalised in the taste of the post-exilian time, which had no feeling longer for anything but cultus and torah, which accordingly treated as alien the old history (which, nevertheless, was bound to be a sacred history), if it did not conform with its ideas and metamorphose itself into church history. Just as the law framed by Ezra as the foundation of Judaism was regarded as having been the work of Moses, so what upon this basis had been developed after Moses--particularly the music of the sanctuary and the ordering of the temple _personnel_---was carried back to King David, the sweet singer of Israel, who had now to place his music at the service of the cultus, and write psalms along with Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, the Levitical singing families. VI.I.3. With regard to Solomon, Chronicles (2Chronicles i.-ix.) nowhere departs very far from the lines of the Book of Kings. As the story of 1Kings i., ii., which is not an edifying one, and mercilessly assails that of 1Chronicles xxii.-xxix., required to be omitted, the narrative accordingly begins with 1Kings iii., with Solomon's accession, sacrifices on the great altar at Gibeon, and the revelation of Jehovah, which was thereupon communicated to him in a dream. This last is transcribed with slight alterations, but at the outset a characteristic divergence is found. "Solomon loved Jehovah, walking in the statutes of David his father, only he sacrificed and burnt incense on the high places (because there was no house built unto the name of Jehovah until those days). And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there; for that was the great high place; a thousand burnt-offerings did Solomon offer upon that altar, and Jehovah appeared unto him in a dream: Ask what I shall give thee." So 1Kings iii. 2 seq. Chronicles, after its manner, first surrounds the king with a great assemblage of captains of hundreds and thousands, of judges and princes and heads of houses, and purely Pentateuchal dignities, and then proceeds: "And Solomon and all the congregation with him went to the high place in Gibeon, for there was God's tent of meeting, which Moses, the servant of God, had made in the wilderness. But the ark of God had David brought up from Kirjath-jearim, where he had prepared for it; for he had pitched a tent for it at Jerusalem. But the brazen altar that Bezaleel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, had made, stood there, before the tabernacle of Jehovah, and Solomon and the congregation sought unto it. And Solomon offered there, upon the brazen altar, before Jehovah, by the tent of meeting, he offered a thousand burnt-offerings, and God appeared to him in a dream, saying, Ask what I shall give thee" (2Chronicles i. 3 seq.). In the older narrative there is nothing about the tabernacle, it being assumed that no apology would be either necessary or possible for Solomon having sacrificed on a high place. Chronicles, dominated in its views of antiquity by the Priestly Code, has missed the presence of the tabernacle and supplied the want in accordance with that norm; the young and pious king could not possibly have made his solemn inaugural sacrifice, for which he had expressly left Jerusalem, anywhere else than at the legally prescribed place; and still less could Jehovah otherwise have bestowed on him His blessing. It betokens the narrowness, and at the same time the boldness of the author, that he retains the expression _high place_ used in 1Kings iii. 3, and co-ordinates it with _tabernacle_, although the one means precisely the opposite of the other. But it is instructive to notice how, on other occasions, he is hampered by his Mosaic central sanctuary, which he has introduced _ad hoc_ into the history. According to 1Chronicles xvi. David is in the best position to institute also a sacrificial service beside the ark of Jehovah, which he has transferred to Zion; but he dare not, for the Mosaic altar stands at Gibeon, and he must content himself with a musical surrogate (vers. 37-42). The narrative of 1Chronicles xxi., that David was led by the theophany at the threshing-floor of Araunah to build an altar there, and present upon it an offering that was accepted by heaven, is at its close maimed and spoiled in a similar way by the remark, with anticipatory reference to 2Chronicles i., that the Mosaic tabernacle and altar of burnt offering were indeed at that time in the high place at Gibeon, but that the king had not the strength to go before it to inquire of Jehovah, being so smitten with fear of the angel with the drawn sword. So also must the sacrifice which Solomon should have offered on his return from Gibeon before the ark at Jerusalem be similarly ignored (2Chronicles i. 13), because it uould destroy the force of the previous explanation of the high place at Gibeon. Thus the shadow takes the air from the body. In other places the tabernacle is significantly confounded with the temple of Jerusalem (Graf, p. 56), but on the whole it remains a tolerably inert conception, only made use of in the passage before us (2Chronicles i.) in an _ex machina_ manner in order to clear Solomon of a heavy reproach. Upon the last solemn act of worship at the Mosaic sanctuary immediately follows the building of the temple (i. 18 [ii.1]-vii. 11), 1Kings iii. 10-v. 14 [AV. 34] being passed over. A few little touches are however brought in to show the wealth of Solomon (i. 14-17); they do not occur in Kings until chap. x. (vers. 26-29), and are also repeated in Chronicles (ix. 25 seq.) in this much more appropriate connection (comp. 1Kings iii., LXX). Strictly speaking indeed, David has taken the preparations for the sacred building out of the hands of his successor, but the latter appears not to be satisfied with these (ii. 16 [17]) and looks after them once more (i. 18-ii. 17 [ii. 1-18]). A comparison with Ezra iii. (preparation of the second temple) shows that the story is an elaboration of the author, although suggested by 1Kings v. 16 [2] seq., and with preservation of many verbal reminiscences. While Hiram and Solomon according to the older record are on a footing of equality and make a contract based on reciprocity of service, the Tyrian king is here the vassal of the Israelite, and renders to him what he requires as tribute; instead of as there explaining himself by word of mouth, he here writes a letter in which he not only openly avows his faith in Jehovah the God of Israel, the maker of heaven and earth, but also betrays an extraordinary acquaintance with the Pentateuchal Priestly Code. The brassfounder whom Solomon brings from Tyre (1Kings vii. 13, 14) is (ii. 13) described as a very Daedalus and prodigy of artistic skill, like Bezaleel (Exodus xxxi. 2 seq.); his being made the son of a woman of Dan and not of a widow of Naphtali supplies interpreters with the materials for the construction of a little family romance, /1/ ****************************************** 1. She was by birth a woman of Dan, married into the tribe of Napthali, lost her husband, and as widow out of the tribe of Naphtali became the wife of the Tyrian. So Bertheau _in loc_. *************************************** but has no more real value than the idea that sandalwood is obtained from Lebanon. The statement of 1Kings v. 27 [13] (xi. 28, xii. 4) that Israel was requisitioned in large numbers to render forced service to the king has substituted for it by the Chronicler that which occurs in another place (1Kings ix. 2I), that only the Canaanite serfs were employed for this purpose; at the same time, he reckons their number from the figures supplied in 1Kings v. 29 [15] seq. Lastly, the manner in which Solomon (ii. 2 [3] ) assures Hiram that he will arrange the divine service in the new house in a thoroughly correct manner according to the ordinance of the Priestly Code, is also characteristic; similar remarks, from which the uninterrupted practice of the Mosaic cultus according to the rules of the Law is made to appear, are afterwards repeated from time to time (viii. 12-16, xiii. 11). In chaps. iii., iv. the author repeats the description of the temple in 1Kings vi., vii., with the omission of what relates to profane buildings. Perhaps in one passage (1Kings vii. 23) he found the now very corrupt text in a better state; otherwise he has excerpted from it in a wretchedly careless style or word for word transcribed it, adding merely a few extravagances or appointments of later date (e.g., the specification of the gold in iii. 4 seq. 8, 9, of the ten golden tables and hundred golden basins in iv. 8, of the brass-covered doors of the outer gateway in iv. 9, of the court of the priests in iv. 9, of the curtain between the holy place and the holy of holies in iii. 14; compare Vatke, pp. 332, 333, 340, 341). To deny that the original (to which reference must in many places be made in order that the meaning may be understood) exists in 1Kings vi., vii., requires an exercise of courage which might be much better employed, all the more because in 2Chronicles iv. 11-v. 1, the summary list follows the description of details precisely as in 1Kings vii. 40 - 51. While the concrete and material details of 1Kings vi., vii. are reproduced only in an imperfect and cursory manner, the act of consecration on the other hand, and the discourse delivered by Solomon on the occasion, is accurately and fully given (v. 2-vii. 10) in accordance with 1Kings viii.; such additions and omissions as occur are all deliberate. In 1Kings viii. the priests and Levites on an occasion which so closely concerned their interests do not play any adequate part, and in particular give none of the music which nevertheless is quite indispensable at any such solemnity. Accordingly, the Chronicler at the word "priests" inserts between the violently separated clauses of 1Kings viii. 10, 11, the following: "For all the priests present had sanctified themselves without distinction of classes, and the Levites, the singers, all stood in white linen with cymbals and psalteries and harps at the east end of the altar, and with them an hundred and twenty priests sounding with trumpets. And it came to pass when the trumpeters and singers were as one to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord, and when the music began with trumpets, and cymbals, and instruments, and the song of praise, Praise ye Jehovah, for He is good; for His mercy endureth for ever, then the house was filled with a cloud" (v. 11-13). Proceeding, the narrative of 1Kings viii. 22 that Solomon came in front of the altar and there prayed is indeed in the first instance copied (vi. 12), but forthwith authoritatively interpreted in the sense that the king did not really and actually stand before the altar (which was lawful for the priests alone), but upon an improvised pulpit in the inner court upon a propped-up caldron of brass (vi. 13), an excellent idea, which has met with the due commendation of expositors. The close of Solomon's prayer (1Kings viii. 49-53) is abridged (vi. 39, 40)--perhaps in order to get rid of viii. 50--and there is substituted for it an original epilogue (vi. 41, 42) recalling post-exilian psalms. Then comes a larger omission, that of 1Kings viii. 54-61, explained by the difficulty involved in the king's here kneeling, not upon the caldron, but before the altar, then standing up and blessing like a priest; in place of this it is told (vii. 1-3) how the altar was consecrated by fire from heaven, which indeed had already descended upon it (1Chronicles xxi.26), but as it appears had unaccountably gone out. In vii. 4 the author again returns to his original at 1Kings viii. 62 seq., but tricks it out, wherever it appears to him too bare, with trumpeting priests and singing Levites (vii. 6), and finally dismisses the people, not on the eighth day of the feast of tabernacles (1Kings viii. 66), but on the ninth (vii. to), in accordance with the enactment in Numbers xxix. 35. The rest of Solomon's history (vii. 11-ix. 28) is taken over from 1Kings ix., x. In doing so what is said in 1Kings ix. 10-IO, to the effect that Solomon handed over to Hiram twenty Galilaean cities, is changed into the opposite--that Hiram ceded the cities to Solomon, who settled them with Israelites (viii. 1, 2); and similarly the already observed statement of 1Kings ix. 24 about the removal of Solomon's Egyptian wife out of the city of David into his new palace /1/ is altered and put in quite a **************************************** 1. Even in the text of Kings this statement has been obscured; Comp. 1Kings iii. 1. In ix. 24 we must at least say _betho asher bana lo_, but this perhaps is not enough. **************************************** false light: "Solomon brought up the daughter of Pharaoh out of the city of David unto the house that he had built for her; for he said, No woman shall dwell in the house of David, for the place is holy whereunto the ark of Jehovah hath come" (viii. 11). There is no further need to speak of viii. 12-16 (1Kings ix. 25); more indifferent in their character are the addition in vii. 12-15, a mere compilation of reminiscences, the embellishment in viii. 3-6, derived from 1Kings ix. 17-19, and the variations in viii. 17 seq., ix. 2I, misunderstood from 1Kings ix. 26 seq., x. 22. The concluding chapter on Solomon's reign (1Kings xi.), in which the king does not appear in his most glorious aspect, is passed over in silence, for the same motives as those which dictated the omission of the two chapters at the beginning. The history of the son is treated after the same plan and by the same means as that of the father, only the subject accommodates itself more readily to the purpose of the change. The old picture is retouched in such wise that all dark and repulsive features are removed, and their place taken by new and brilliant bits of colour not in the style of the original but in the taste of the author's period,--priests and Levites and fire from heaven, and the fulfilment of all righteousness of the law, and much music, and all sorts of harmless legendary anachronisms and exaggerations besides. The material of tradition seems broken up in an extraneous medium, the spirit of post-exilian Judaism. VI.II. VI.II.1. After Solomon's death the history of Israel in Chronicles is traced only through Jehovah's kingdom in the hand of the sons of David, and all that relates to the ten tribes is put aside. For according to the notions of the Judaistic period Israel is the congregation of true worship, and this last is connected with the temple at Jerusalem, in which of course the Samaritans have no part. Abijah of Judah makes this point of view clear to Jeroboam I. and his army in a speech delivered from Mount Zemaraim before the battle. "Think ye to withstand the kingdom of Jehovah in the hand of the sons of David, because ye are a great multitude, and with you are the golden calves which Jeroboam made you for gods ? Have ye not cast out the priests of Jehovah, the sons of Aaron and the Levites, and made for yourselves priests after the manner of the Gentiles? so that whosoever cometh to fill his hands with a young bullock and seven rams, even he may become a priest for the false gods? But as for us, we have not forsaken Jehovah our God, and our priests minister to Jehovah, the sons of Aaron and the Levites in the service; and they burn unto Jehovah every morning and every evening burnt sacrifices and sweet incense; the shewbread also is upon the pure table; for we have maintained the service of Jehovah our God, but ye have forsaken Him. And behold, God Himself is with us at our head, and His priests, and the loud-sounding trumpets to cry an alarm against you. O children of Israel, fight ye not against Jehovah the God of your fathers, for ye shall not prosper" (2Chronicles xiii. 8-12; comp. xi. 13-17). The kingdom which bore the name of Israel was actually in point of fact in the olden time the proper Israel, and Judah was merely a kind of appendage to it. When Amaziah of Judah after the conquest of the Edomites challenged to battle King Jehoash of Samaria, whose territory had at that time suffered to the utmost under the continual wars with the Syrians, the latter bid say to him: "The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife;--then passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon and trode down the thistle. Thou hast indeed smitten Edom, and thy heart hath lifted thee up. Enjoy thy glory, but tarry at home." (2Kings xiv. 9, 10). And as the other would not listen, he punished him as if he had been a naughty boy and then let him go. Religiously the relative importance of the two corresponded pretty nearly to what it was politically and historically. Israel was the cradle of prophecy; Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha exercised their activity there; what contemporary figure from Judah is there to place alongside of these? Assuredly the author of the Book of Kings would not have forgotten them had any such there been, for he is a Judaean with all his heart, yet is compelled purely by the nature of the case to interest himself chiefly about the northern kingdom. And yet again at the very close it was the impending fall of Samaria that called into life a new phase of prophecy; he who inaugurated it, the Judaean Amos of Tekoah, was sent not to Judah but to Israel, the history of which had the first and fullest sympathy of his inmost soul as that of the people of Jehovah. Isaiah was the first who placed Jerusalem in the centre of his field of vision and turned away from Israel; for at the time of his first public appearance war was raging between the sister nations, and when his activity was at its acme all was over with the northern kingdom and all hope had to cling to the remnant,-- the fallen tabernacle of David. As regards the cultus, certainly, matters may have been somewhat less satisfactory in Israel than in Judah, at least in the last century before the Assyrian captivity, but at the outset there was no essential difference. On all hands Jehovah was worshipped as the peculiar divinity of the nation at numerous fanes, in the service at the high places there were wanting neither in the one nor in the other sacred trees, posts, and stones, images of silver and gold (Isaiah ii. 8 seq., xvii. 8, xxxi. 22; Micah v. 12). It is a question whether in the time before Hezekiah the cultus of the kingdom at Jerusalem had so much to distinguish it above that at Bethel or at Dan; against Jeroboam's golden calves must be set the brazen serpent of Moses, and the ark of Jehovah itself--which in ancient times was an idol (1Samuel iv.-vi.) and did not become idealised into an ark of the covenant, ie., of the law, until probably it had actually disappeared. As for the prophetic reaction against the popular cultus, the instance of Hosea shows that it came into activity as early and as powerfully in Israel as in Judah. Even after Josiah's reformation Jeremiah complains that the sister who hitherto had been spared is in no respect better than the other who a hundred years before had fallen a victim to the Assyrians (iii. 6-1O); and though in principle the author of the Book of Kings, taking his stand upon Deuteronomy, prefers Judah and Jerusalem, yet he does not out of deference to this judgment alter the facts which show that old Israel was not further than old Judah from compliance with the Deuteronomic precepts. Chronicles, on the other hand, not only takes the Law--the Penta<teu>chal Law as a whole, but more particularly the Priestly Code therein preponderating--as its rule of judgment on the past; but also idealises the facts in accordance with that norm, and figures to itself the old Hebrew people as in exact conformity with the pattern of the later Jewish community,--as a monarchically graded hierocracy with a strictly centralised cultus of rigidly prescribed form at the holy place of Jerusalem. When, accordingly, the ten tribes fail to exhibit all the marks of the kingdom of God, this is taken to mean their falling away from the true Israel; they have made goats and calves their gods, driven away the priests and Levites, and in a word broken quite away from the institutions which shaped themselves in Judah during the period subsequent to Josiah and received their finishing-touches from Ezra. /1/ *************************************** 1. The Chronicler indeed is unable, even in the case of these schismatics, to divest himself of his legal notions, as appears almost comically in the circumstance that the priests of Jeroboam set about their heretical practices quite in accordance with the prescriptions of the Priestly Code, and procure their consecration by means of a great sacrifice (2 Chron xiii. 9). **************************************** Like other heathen, therefore, they are taken account of by the sacred history only in so far as they stood in relations of friendship or hostility with the people of Jehovah properly so called, the Israel in the land of Judah (2Chronicles xxiii. 2), and in all references to them the most sedulous and undisguised partisanship on behalf of Judah is manifested, even by the inhabitants of the northern kingdom itself. /2/ If one seriously *********************************** 2. Compare xi. 16, xv. 9, xix. 2, xx. 35 seq.. xxv 7, xxviii. 9 seq., xxx. 6. *********************************** takes the Pentateuch as Mosaic law, this exclusion of the ten tribes is, in point of fact, an inevitable consequence, for the mere fact of their belonging to the people of Jehovah destroys the fundamental pre-supposition of that document, the unity and legitimacy of the worship as basis of the theocracy, the priests and Levites as its most important organs, "the sinews and muscles of the body politic, which keep the organism together as a living and moving whole." VI.II.2. The reverse side is, of course, the idealisation of Judah from the point of view of the legitimate worship,--a process which the reader can imagine from the specimens already given with reference to David and Solomon. The priests and Levites who migrated from Israel are represented as having strengthened the southern kingdom (xi. 17), and here constitute the truly dominant element in the history. It is for their sake that kings exist as protectors and guardians of the cultus, with the internal arrangements of which, however, they dare not intermeddle (xxvi. 16 seq.); to deliver discourses and ordain spiritual solemnities (which figure as the culminating points in the narrative) are among the leading duties of their reign. /1/ ************************************** 1. xiii. 7 seq., xv. 10 seq., xx. 6 seq., xxix. 5 seq., xxx. 1 seq., xxxv. 1 seq. ************************************** Those among them who are good apprehend their task and are inseparable from the holy servants of Jehovah,--so, in particular, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah. Of the first mentioned we are told that in the third year of his reign he appointed a royal commission of notables, priests, and Levites, to go about with the Book of the Law, and teach in the cities of Judah (xvii. 7-9); in the larger places, in the strongholds, he further instituted colleges of justice, and over them a supreme tribunal at Jerusalem, also consisting of priests, Levites, and notables, under the presidency of the high priest for spiritual, and of the Prince of the house of Judah for secular affairs (xix. 5-11). There is nothing about this in the Book of Kings, although what is of less importance is noticed (1Kings xxii. 47); the Chronicler makes the statement in his own language, which is unmistakable, especially in the pious speeches. Probably it is the organisation of justice as existing in his own day that he here carries back to Jehoshaphat, so that here most likely we have the oldest testimony to the synedrium of Jerusalem as a court of highest instance over the provincial synedria, as also to its composition and presidency. The impossibility of such a judiciary system in antiquity is clear from its presupposing the Book of the Law as its basis, from its co-ordination of priests and Levites, and also from its actual inconsistency with incidental notices, particularly in Isaiah and the older prophets (down to Jeremiah xxvi.), in which it everywhere is taken for granted as a thing of course that the rulers are also at the same time the natural judges. Moreover, Chronicles already tells us about David something similar to what it says about Jehoshaphat (1Chronicles xxiii. 4, xxvi. 29-32); the reason why the latter is selected by preference for this work lies simply in his name " Jehovah is Judge," as he himself is made to indicate in various ways (xix. 5-11; compare Joel iv. 12). But the king of Judah is strengthened by the priests and Levites, not only in these domestic affairs, but also for war. As the trumpets of the priests give to Abijah courage and the victory against Jeroboam of Israel, so do the Levites also to Jehoshaphat against Moab and Ammon. Having fasted, and received, while praying, the comfortable assurance of the singer Jahaziel ("See God"), he advances next morning, with his army, against the enemy, having in the van the Levites, who march in sacred attire in front of the armed men and sing: "Praise ye the Lord, for His mercy endureth for ever." He then finds that the fighting has already been done by the enemy themselves, who, at the sound of that song of praise, have fallen upon and annihilated one another. Three days are spent in dividing the spoil, and then he returns as he came, the Levitical music leading the van, with psalteries, and harps, and trumpets to the house of Jehovah (2Chronicles xx. 1-28). Hezekiah is glorified in a similar manner. Of the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem and the memorable relief, comparatively little is made (xxxii. 1 seq.; comp. De Wette, i. 75); according to Chronicles, his master-work is that, as soon as he has mounted the throne, in the first month of the year, and of his reign (Exodus xl. 2; Leviticus ix. 1). he institutes by means of the priests and Levites, whom he addresses quite paternally as his children (xxix. 11), a great feast of consecration of the temple, alleged to have been closed and wasted by Ahaz; thereupon in the second month to celebrate the passover in the most sumptuous manner; and finally, from the third to the seventh month to concern himself about the accurate rendering of their dues to the clergy. All is described in the accustomed style, in the course of three long chapters, which tell us nothing indeed about the time of Hezekiah, but are full of information for the period in which the writer lived, particularly with reference to the method then followed in offering the sacred dues (xxix. 1-xxxi. 21). In the case of Josiah also the account of his epoch-making reformation of the worship is, on the whole, reproduced in Chronicles only in a mutilated manner, but the short notice of 2Kings xxiii. 21-23 is amplified into a very minute description of a splendid passover feast, in which, as always, the priests and above all the Levites figure as the leading personalities. In this last connection one little trait worth noticing remains, namely, that the great assembly in which the king causes the Book of the Law to be sworn to, is, in every other respect, made up in 2Chronicles xxxiv. 29 seq. exactly as it is in 2Kings xxiii. 1, , except that instead of "the priests and _prophets_" we find "the priests and _Levites_." The significance of this is best seen from the Targum, where "the priests and prophets" are translated into "the priests and scribes." By this projection of the legitimate cultus prescribed in the Law and realised in Judaism, the Chronicler is brought however into a peculiar conflict with the statements of his authority, which show that the said cultus was not a mature thing which preceded all history, but came gradually into being in the course of history; he makes his escape as well as he can, but yet not without a strange vacillation between the timeless manner of looking at things which is natural to him, and the historical tradition which he uses and appropriates. The verses in 1Kings (xiv. 22, 23): Judah (not Rehoboam merely) did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah and provoked Him to jealousy by their sins which they sinned, above all that their fathers had done; and they set up for themselves high places, macceboth and asherim, &c., which in the passage where they occur are, like the parallel statement regarding Israel (xii. 25 seq.), of primary importance, and cancel by one bold stroke the alleged difference of worship between the Levitical and non-Levitical kingdom, are omitted as quite too impossible, although the whole remaining context is preserved (2Chronicles xii. 1-16). In the same way the unfavourable judgment upon Rehoboam's successor Abijah (1Kings xv. 3-5) is dropped, because the first kings of Judah, inasmuch as they maintain the true religion against those of Israel who have fallen away from it, must of necessity have been good. But though the Chronicler is silent about what is bad, for the sake of Judah's honour, he cannot venture to pass over the improvement which, according to 1Kings xv. 12 seq., was introduced in Asa's day, although one does not in the least know what need there was for it, everything already having been in the best possible state. Nay, he even exaggerates this improvement, and makes of Asa another Josiah (2Chronicles xv. 1-15), represents him also (xiv. 3) as abolishing the high places, and yet after all (xv. 1 7) repeats the statement of 1Kings xv. 14 that the high places were not removed. So also of Jehoshaphat, we are told in the first place that he walked in the first ways of his father Asa and abolished the high places in Judah (2Chronicles xvii. 3, 6, xix. 3), a false generalisation from 1Kings (xxii. 43, 47); and then afterwards we learn (xx. 32, 33) that the high places still remained, word for word according to 1Kings xxii. 43, 44. To thc author it seems on the one hand an impossibility that the worship of the high places, which in spite of xxxiii.17 is to him fundamentally idolatry, should not have been repressed even by pious, i.e., law-observing kings, and yet on the other hand he mechanically transcribes his copy. In the case of the notoriously wicked rulers his resort is to make them simply heathen and persecutors of the covenant religion, for to him they are inconceivable within the limits of Jehovism, which always in his view has had the Law for its norm, and is one and the same with the exclusive Mosaism cf Judaism. So first, in the case of Joram: he makes high places on the hills of Judah and seduces the inhabitants of Jerusalem to commit fornication, and Judah to apostatise (xxi. 11), and moreover slays all his brethren with the sword (ver. 4)--the one follows from the other. His widow Athaliah breaks up the house of Jehovah by the hand of her sons (who had been murdered, but for this purpose are revived), and makes images of Baal out of the dedicated things (xxiv. 7); none the less on that account does the public worship of Jehovah go on uninterrupted under Jehoiada the priest. Most unsparing is the treatment that Ahaz receives. According to 2Kings xvi. 10 seq., be saw at Damascus an altar which took his fancy, and he caused a similar one to be set up at Jerusalem after its pattern, while Solomon's brazen altar was probably sent to the melting-pot; it was Urijah the priest who carried out the orders of the king. One observes no sign of autonomy, or of the inviolable divine right of the sanctuary; the king commands and the priest obeys. To the Chronicler the story so told is quite incomprehensible; what does he make of it? Ahaz introduced the idolatrous worship of Damascus, abolished the worship of Jehovah, and shut up the temple (2Chronicles xxviii. 23 seq.). He regards not the person of a man, the inflexible unity of the Mosaic cultus is everything to the Chronicler, and its historical identity would be destroyed if an orthodox priest, a friend of the prophet Isaiah, had lent a helping hand to set up a foreign altar. To make idolaters pure and simple of Manasseh and Amon any heightening of what is said in 2Kings xxi. was hardly necessary; and besides, there were here special reasons against drawing the picture in too dark colours. It is wonderful also to see how the people, which is always animated with alacrity and zeal for the Law, and rewards its pious rulers for their fidelity to the covenant (xv. 15, xvii. 5, xxiv. 10, xxxi. 10), marks its censure of these wicked kings by withholding from them, or impairing, the honour of royal burial (xxi. 19, 20, xxviii. 27, xxxiii. 10),--in spite of 2Kings ix. 28, xvi. 20, xxi. 1 8. The periodically recurring invasions of heathenism help, at the same time, to an understanding of the consequent reforms, which otherwise surpass the comprehension of the Jewish scribe. According to the Books of Kings, Joash, Hezekiah, and Josiah hit upon praiseworthy innovations in the temple cultus, set aside deeply rooted and immemorial customs, and reformed the public worship of Jehovah. These advances WITHIN Jehovism, which, of course, are quite incompatible with its Mosaic fixity, are made by the Chronicler to be simple restorations of the pure religion following upon its temporary violent suspension. It is in Hezekiah's case that this is done in the most thoroughgoing manner. After his predecessor has shut the doors of the house of Jehovah, put out the lights, and brought the service to an end, he sets all in operation again by means of the resuscitated priests and Levites; the first and most important act of his reign is the consecration of the temple (2Chronicles xxix.), with which is connected (xxx., xxx).) the restoration of the passover and the restitution of the temporalia to the clergy, who, as it seems, have hitherto been deprived of them. That 2Kings xviii. 1-7, although very different, has supplied the basis for all these extravagances, is seen by comparing 2Chronicles xxix. 1, 2, xxxi. 1, 20, 21, xxxii. 22 only, that the king destroyed the brazen serpent Nehushtan (2Kings xviii. 4) is passed over in silence, as if it were incredible that such an image should have been worshipped down to that date in the belief that it had come down from the time of Moses; the not less offensive statement, on the other hand, that he took away _the Asherah_ (by which only that of the temple altar can be understood; comp. Deuteronomy xvi. 21) is got over by charging the singular into the plural; he took away _the Asherahs_ (xxx). 1 ), which occurred here and there throughout Judah, of course at heathen altars. In the cases of Joash and Josiah the free flight of the Chronicler's law-crazed fancy is hampered by the copy to which he is tied, and which gives not the results merely, but the details of the proceedings themselves (2Chronicles xxii., xxiii.; 2Kings xi., xii.). It is precisely such histories as these, almost the only circumstantially told ones relating to Judah in the Book of Kings, which though in their nature most akin to our author's preference for cultus, bring him into the greatest embarrassment, by introducing details which to his notions are wholly against the Law, and yet must not be represented otherwise than in the most favourable light. It cannot be doubted that the sections about Joash in 2Kings (xi. 1-xii. 17 [16]), having their scene end subject laid in the temple, are at bottom identical with 2Chronicles xxii. 10-xxiv. 14. In the case of 2Kings xi., to begin with, the beginning and the close, vers. 1-3, vers. 13-20, recur verbatim in 2Chronicles xxii. 10-12, xxiii. 12-21, if trifling alterations be left out of account. But in the central portion also there occur passages which are taken over into 2Chronicles without any change. Only here they are inappropriate, while in the original connection they are intelligible. For the meaning and colour of the whole is entirely altered in Chronicles, as the following comparison in the main passage will show; to understand it one must bear in mind that the regent Athaliah has put to death all the members of the house of David who had escaped the massacre of Jehu, with the exception of the child Joash, who, with the knowledge of Jehoiada, the priest, has found hiding and protection in the temple. 2 KINGS xi 2CHRONICLES xxiii. 4. In the seventh year Jehoiada 1. _In the seventh year Jehoiada_ sent and took the captains of sent and took the captains of the Carians and runners, strengthened himself and _took the captains_, Azariah the son of Jeroham, and Ishmael the son of Jehohanan, and Azariah the son of Obed, and Maaseiah the son of Adaiah, and Elishaphat the son of Zichri, into covenant with him. 2. And they went about in Judah and gathered the Levites out of all the cities in Judah, and the chiefs of the fathers of Israel, and they came to Jerusalem. and brought them to him into 3. And the whole congregation the house of Jehovah, and made a made _a covenant in the house of covenant with them, and took God_ with the king. And he said an oath of them in the house of unto them, _Behold, the king's Jehovah, and showed them the son_ shall reign, as Jehovah said king's son; concerning the sons of David. 5. And commanded them, saying, 4. _This is the thing that ye shall This is the thing that ye shall do: the third part of you, which do; the third part of you which enter on the Sabbath_, of the enter on the Sabbath and keep the priests and of the Levites, watch of the king's house, shall keep the doors. [6. And the third part in the 5. And the third part of you shall gate of Jesod, and the third be _in the house of the king_, and part in the gate behind the the third part in the gate Jesod; and runners, and ye shall keep all the people shall be in the courts the watch in the house...]: of the house of Jehovah. 7. And the two other third parts of you, those who go 6. And no one shall come into the forth on the Sabbath and house of Jehovah save the priests keep the watch in the house and they of the Levites that minister; of Jehovah about the king. but all the people shall keep the ordinance of Jehovah. 8. Ye shall encompass the king 7. And the Levites shall _compass round about, every man with the king round about, every man his weapons in his hand, with his weapons in his hands, and and whosoever cometh within whosoever cometh_ into the house, the ranks, shall be put to _shall be put to death; and they shall death, and ye shall be with be with the king whithersoever he the king whithersoever he goeth. goeth._ 9. And the captains did according 8. And the Levites and all Judah to all that Jehoiada the priest _did according to all that Jehoiada had commanded, and took each his the priest had commanded, and took men, those that were to come in each his men, those that were to come on the Sabbath with those that in on the Sabbath with those that were to go out on the Sabbath, were to go out on the Sabbath_, for and came to Jehoiada the priest. Jehoiada the priest dismissed not the divisions. 10. And to the captains the 9. And Jehoiada the priest delivered priest gave King David's to the captains of hundreds the spears spears and shields that were and the bucklers and the shields that in the house of Jehovah. King David had, which were in the house of God. 11. And the runners stood, every 10. And he set all the people, _every man with his weapons in his hand, man having his weapon in his hand, from the south side of the house from the south side of the house to to the north side, along by the north side, along by the altar the altar and the house, and the house, round about the king_. round about the king. 12. And he brought forth the 11. _And they brought out the king's king's son and put upon him son and put upon him the crown and the crown and the bracelet, the bracelet and they made him king_, and they made him king and and Jehoiada and his sons _anointed anointed him, and they clapped him and said: their hands and said: Long live the king_. Long live the king. Can the enthronement of Joash, as on a former occasion that of Solomon, possibly have been accomplished by the agency of the bodyguard of the kings of Judah? Is it possible that the high priest should have made a covenant with the captains within the house of Jehovah, and himself have held out the inducement to those half-pagan mercenaries to penetrate into the temple precincts? That were indeed an outrage upon the Law not lightly to be imputed to so holy a man! Why then did not Jehoiada make use of his own guard, the myriads of Levites who were at his command? Such a course was the only right one, and therefore that which was followed. "No one shall come into the house of Jehovah save the priests and they of the Levites that minister:" in accordance with this fundamental principle stated by himself (xxiii. 6; comp ver. 7 INTO THE HOUSE instead of WITHIN THE RANKS), our pious historian substitutes his priests and Levites for the Carians and runners. Hereby also Jehoiada comes into the place that belongs to him as sovereign of the sanctuary and of the congregation. He therefore needs no longer to set on foot in secret a conspiracy with the chiefs of the body-guard, but through his own spiritual officers calls together the Levites and heads of houses from all the cities of Judah into the temple, and causes the whole assemblage there to enter into a covenant with the young king. The glaring inconsistencies inevitably produced by the new colouring thus given to individual parts of the old picture must simply be taken as part of the bargain. If Jehoiada has unrestricted sway over such a force and sets about his revolution with the utmost publicity, then it is he and not Athaliah who has the substance of power; why then all this trouble about the deposition of the tyrant? Out of mere delight in Levitical pomp and high solemnities? What moreover is to be done with the captains who are retained in xxiii. 1, 9, and in ver. 14 are even called officers of the host as in 2Kings xi 15, after their soldiers have been taken from them or metamorphosed? Had the Levites a military organisation, and, divided into three companies, did they change places every week in the temple service? The commentators are inclined to call in to their aid such inventive assumptions, with which, however, they may go on for ever without attaining their end, for the error multiplies itself. As a specially striking instance of the manner in which the procedure of Chronicles avenges itself may be mentioned chapter xxiii. 8: "and they took each his men," &c. The words are taken from 2Kings xi. 9, but there refer to the captains, while here the antecedents are the Levites and all the men of Judah--as if each one of these last had a company of his own which entered upon service, or left it, every Sabbath day. The comparison of 2Chronicles xxiv. 4-14 with 2Kings xii. 5-17 [4-16] is not much less instructive. According to 2Kings xii. Joash enjoined that all the money dues payable to the temple should in future fall to the priests, who in turn were to be under obligation to maintain the building in good repair. But they took the money and neglected the other side of the bargain, and when they and Jehoiada in particular were blamed by the king on that account, they gave up the dues so as not to be liable to the burden. Thereupon the king set up a kind of sacred treasury, a chest with a hole in the lid, near the altar, "on the right hand as one goes into the temple," into which the priests were to cast the money which came in, with the exception of the sin and trespass moneys, which still belonged to them. And as often as the chest became full, the king's scribes and the chief priest removed the money, weighed it, and handed it over to the contractors for payment of the workmen; that none of it was to be employed for sacred vessels is expressly said (ver. 14). This arrangement by King Joash was a lasting one, and still subsisted in Josiah's time (2Kings . . xxii. 3 seq.). The arbitrary proceeding of Joash did not well suit the ideas of an autonomous hierocracy. According to the Law the current money dues fell to the priests; no king had the right to take them away and dispose of them at his pleasure. How was it possible that Jehoiada should waive his divine right and suffer such a sacrilegious invasion of sacred privileges? how was it possible that he should be blamed for his (at first) passive resistance of the illegal invasion; how was it possible at all that the priest in his own proper department should be called to account by the king? Chronicles knows better than that. The wicked Athaliah had wasted and plundered the temple; Joash determined to restore it, and for this purpose to cause money to be collected throughout all Israel by the agency of the Levites. But as these last were in no hurry, he made a chest and set it outside in the doorway of the sanctuary; there the people streamed past, and gentle and simple with joyful heart cast in their gifts until the chest was full. This being announced by the keepers of the door, the king's scribe and the delegate of the high priest came to remove the money; with it the king and the high priest paid the workmen, and what remained over was made into costly vessels (2Chronicles xxiv. 5-14). According to this account Joash makes no arrangement whatever about the sacred dues, but sets on foot an extraordinary collection, as had once been done by Moses for the building of the tabernacle (xxiv. 6, 9); following upon this, everything else also which in 2Kings xii. is a permanent arrangement, here figures as an isolated occurrence; instead of necessary repairs of the temple constantly recurring, only one extraordinary restoration of it is mentioned, and for this occasional purpose only is the treasure chest set up,-- not, however, beside the altar, but only at the doorway (xxiv. 8; comp. 2Kings xii. 10). The clergy, the Levites, are charged only with making the collection, not with maintaining the building out of the sacred revenues; consequently they are not reproached with keeping the money to themselves, but only with not being heartily enough disposed towards the collection. It appears, however, that they were perfectly justified in this backwardness, for the king has only to set up the "treasury of God," when forthwith it overflows with the voluntary offerings of the people who flock to it, so that out of the proceeds something remains over (ver. 14) for certain other purposes--which according to 2Kings xii. 14 [13] were expressly excluded. Joash imposes no demands at all upon the priests, and Jehoiada in particular stands over against him as invested with perfectly equal rights; if the king sends his scribe, the high priest also does not appear personally, but causes himself to be represented by a delegate (xxiv. 11; comp. 2Kings xii. 11 [10]). Here also many a new piece does not come well into the old garment, as De Wette (i. 10O) shows. Chronicles itself tacitly gives the honour to the older narrative by making Joash at last apostatise from Mosaism and refuse the grateful deference which he owed to the high priest; this is the consequence of the unpleasant impression, derived not from its own story, but from that of the Book of Kings, with regard to the undue interference of the otherwise pious king in the affairs of the sanctuary and of the priests. Chronicles reaps the fruits of its perversion of 2Kings xii. in its reproduction of the nearly related and closely connected section 2Kings xxii. 3-IO. It is worth while once more to bring the passages together. 2Kings xxii. 2Chronicles xxxiv. 3. And in the eighteenth year 8. And in the eighteenth year of king Josiah the king sent of his reign, to cleanse the Shaphan the son of Azaliah, land and the house, he sent the son of Meshullam, the scribe, Shaphan the son of Azaliah, to the house of Jehovah, saying, and Maaseiah the governor of the city, and Joah the son of 4. Go up to Hilkiah the high Joahaz the recorder, to repair priest, that he may empty the the house of Jehovah his God. money which hath been brought into the house of Jehovah 9. And they came to Hilkiah which the keepers of the the high priest, and they threshold have gathered of delivered the money that had the people. been brought into the house of God which the Levites that 5. And let them deliver it into kept the threshold had gathered the hand of the doers of the from Ephraim and Manasseh and work that have the oversight all the remnant of Israel and of the house of Jehovah, and from all Judah and Benjamin, let them give it to the doers and had returned therewith of the work who are in the to Jerusalem. house of Jehovah to repair the breaches of the house. 10. And they gave it into the hand of the workmen that had the 6. Unto carpenters, and builders, oversight of the house of Jehovah, and masons, and to buy timber and of the workmen that wrought in and hewn stones to repair the the house of Jehovah to repair house. and amend the house. 7. But let no reckoning be 11. They gave it to the artificers made with them as to the money and to the builders to buy that is delivered into their hewn stone and timber for roofs hand, because they deal faithfully. and beams of the houses which the kings of Judah had destroyed. 12. And the men did the work faithfully. And the overseers of them were Jahath and Obadiah, the Levites, of the sons of Merari; and Zechariah and Meshullam, of the Kohathites, to preside; and all the Levites that had skill in instruments of music 13. Were over the bearers of burdens and overseers of all that wrought the work in any manner of service; and others of the Levites were scribes and officers and porters. 14. And when they brought out the money that had been brought into the house of Jehovah, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of Jehovah by the hand of Moses. 8. And Hilkiah the high priest 15. And Hilkiah answered and said unto Shaphan the scribe: said to Shaphan the scribe: I have found the book of the I have found the book of the law law in the house of Jehovah. in the house of Jehovah. And And Hilkiah gave the book to Hilkiah delivered the book Shaphan, and he read it. to Shaphan. 9. And Shaphan the scribe came 16. And Shaphan carried the book to the king and brought the king to the king, and besides brought word again, and said: Thy word back to the king, saying: servants have emptied out the All that was committed to thy money that was found in the servants they are doing. house and have delivered it into the hand of them that 17. And they have emptied out do the work, that have the the money that was found in the oversight of the house of house of Jehovah, and have Jehovah. delivered it into the hand of the overseers and into 10. And Shaphan the scribe the hand of the workmen. told the king, saying: Hilkiah the priest hath delivered 18. And Shaphan the scribe to me a book. And Shaphan told the king, saying: Hilkiah read it before the king. the priest hath given me a book. And Shaphan read out of it before the king. The occasion on which the priest introduces the Book of the Law to the notice of Shaphan has presuppositions in the arrangement made by Joash which Chronicles has destroyed, substituting others in its place,--that the temple had been destroyed under the predecessors of Josiah, but that under the latter money was raised by the agency of peripatetic Levites throughout all Israel for the restoration, and in the first instance deposited in the treasure-chest. At the emptying of this chest the priest is then alleged to have found the book (ver. 14, after Deuteronomy xxxi. 26), notwithstanding that on this occasion Shaphan also and the two accountants added in ver. 8 were present, and ought therefore to have had a share in the discovery which, however, is excluded by ver. 15 (= 2Kings xxii. 8). There are other misunderstandings besides; in particular, the superintendents of the works (_muphkadim_), to whom, according to the original narrative, the money is handed over for payment, are degraded to the rank of simple workmen, from whom, nevertheless, they are again afterwards distinguished; and while in 2Kings xxii. 7 they are represented as dealing faithfully _in paying out the money_, in 2Chronicles xxxiv. 12 they deal faithfully in their work. Perhaps, however, this is no mere misunderstanding, but is connected with the endeavour to keep profane hands as far off as possible from that which is holy, and, in particular, to give the management of the work to the Levites (vers. 12,13). To what length the anxiety of later ages went in this matter is seen in the statement of Josephus (Ant., xv. 11, 2), that Herod caused one thousand priests to be trained as masons and carpenters for the building of his temple. The two most interesting alterations in Chronicles are easily overlooked. In ver. 1 8 the words: "He read the book to the king," are changed into "He read out of the book to the king;" and after "Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan" (ver. 15) the words "and he read it" are omitted. In 2Kings the book appears as of very moderate size, but the author of Chronicles figures to himself the whole Pentateuch under that name. In the sequel 2Kings xxii. 11-xxiii.3 is indeed repeated verbatim in 2Chronicles xxxiv. 19-32, but the incomparably more important section connected with it (xxiii. 4-10), giving a detailed account of Josiah's vigorous reformation, is omitted, and its place taken by the meagre remark that the king removed all abominations out of Israel (xxxiv. 33); in compensation his passover feast is described all the more fully (chap. xxxv.). In recording also the finding and publication of the Law, Chronicles fails to realise that this document begins now for the first time to be historically operative, and acquires its great importance quite suddenly. On the contrary, it had been from the days of Moses the basis on which the community rested, and had been in force and validity at all normal times; only temporarily could this life-principle of the theocracy be repressed by wicked kings, forthwith to become vigorous and active again as soon as the pressure was removed. As soon as Ahaz has closed his eyes, Hezekiah, in the first month of his first year, again restores the Mosaic cultus; and as soon as Josiah reaches years of discretion he makes good the sins of his fathers. Being at his accession still too young, the eighth year of his reign is, as a tribute to propriety, selected instead of the eighth year of his life, and the great reformation assigned to that period which in point of fact he undertook at a much later date (xxxiv. 3-7 = 2Kings xxiii. 4-20> Thus the movement happily becomes separated from its historical occasion, and in character the innovation appears rather as a simple recovery of the spring after the pressure on it has been removed. The mist disappears before the sun of the Law, which appears in its old strength; its light passes through no phases, but shines from the beginning with uniform brightness. What Josiah did had also been done before him already by Asa, then by Jehoshaphat, then by Hezekiah; the reforms are not steps in a progressive development, but have all the same unchanging contents. Such is the influence upon historical vision of that transcendental Mosaism raised far above all growth and process of becoming, which can be traced even in the Book of Kings, but is so much more palpable in the Book of Chronicles. VI.II.3. Apart from the fact that it represents the abiding tradition of the legitimate cultus at Jerusalem, the history of Judah in the Book of Chronicles has yet another instructive purpose. In the kingdom of Judah it is not a natural and human, but a divine pragmatism that is operative. To give expression to this is what the prophets exist for in unbroken succession side by side with high priests and kings; they connect the deeds of men with the events of the course of the world, and utilise the sacred history as a theme for their preaching, as a collection of examples illustrative of the promptest operation of the righteousness of Jehovah. In doing so they do not preach what is new or free, but have at their command, like Jehovah Himself, only the Law of Moses, setting before their hearers prosperity and adversity in conformity with the stencil pattern, just as the law is faithfully fulfilled or neglected. Of course their prophecies always come exactly true, and in this way is seen an astonishing harmony between inward worth and outward circumstance. Never does sin miss its punishment, and never where misfortune occurs is guilt wanting. In the fifth year of Rehoboam Judah and Jerusalem were ravaged by Pharaoh Shishak (1Kings xiv. 25). The explanation is that three years they walked in the ways of David and Solomon, because for three years they were strengthened and reinforced by the priests and Levites and other pious persons who had immigrated from the northern kingdom (2Chronicles xi. 17); but thereafter in the fourth year, after the kingdom of Rehoboam had been strengthened and confirmed, he forsook the Law and all Israel with him (xii. 1)-- and in the fifth year followed the invasion of Shishak. A prophet announces this, and in consequence the king humbles himself along with his people and escapes with comparatively trifling punishment, being thought worthy to reign yet other twelve years. Asa in his old age was diseased in his feet (1Kings xv. 23). According to 2Chronicles xvi. 12, he died of this illness, which is described as extremely dangerous, in the forty-first year of his reign, after having already been otherwise unfortunate in his later years. And why? He had invoked foreign aid, instead of the divine, against Baasha of Israel. Now, as Baasha survived only to the twenty-sixth year of Asa, the wickedness must have been perpetrated before that date. But in that case its connection with the punishment which overtook the king only towards the close of his life would not be clear. Baasha's expedition against Jerusalem, accordingly, and the Syrian invasion of Israel occasioned by Asa on that account are brought down in Chronicles to the thirty-sixth year of the latter (xvi. 1). It has been properly observed that Baasha was at that date long dead, and the proposal has accordingly been made to change the number thirty-six into sixteen,--without considering that the first half of the reign of Asa is expressly characterised as having been prosperous, that the thirty-fifth year is already reached in chap. xv. 19, and that the correction destroys the connection of the passage with what follows (xvi. 7 seq.). For it is in connection with that flagitious appeal for aid to the Syrians that the usual prophet makes his appearance (xvi. 7), and makes the usual announcement of impending punishment. It is Hanani, a man of Northern Israel (1Kings xvi. 7), but Asa treats him as if he were one of his own subjects, handles him severely, and shuts him in prison. By this he hastens and increases his punishment, under which he falls in the forty-first year of his reign. Jehoshaphat, the pious king, according to 1Kings xxii., took part in the expedition of the godless Ahab of Israel against the Damascenes. Chronicles cannot allow this to pass unrebuked, and accordingly when the king returns in peace, the same Hanani announces his punishment, albeit a gracious one (2Chronicles xix. I-3). And gracious indeed it is; the Moabites and Ammonites invade the land, but Jehoshaphat without any effort on his part wins a glorious victory, and inexhaustible plunder (xx. 1 seq.). One cannot blame him, therefore, for once more entering into an alliance with Ahab's successor for a naval expedition to be undertaken in common, which is to sail from a port of the Red Sea, probably round Africa, to Tarshish (Spain, 2Chronicles ix. 21). But this time he is punished more seriously as Eliezer the son of Dodavah had prophesied, the ships are wrecked. Compare on the other hand 1Kings xxii. 48, 49: "Jehoshaphat made ships of Tarshish to go to Ophir for gold, but they went not, for the ships were wrecked in the harbour on the Red Sea. At that time Ahaziah the son of Ahab had said to Jehoshaphat: Let my servants go with thy servants in the ships; but Jehoshaphat would not." So the original statement. But in Chronicles a moral ground must be found for the misfortune, and Jehoshaphat therefore makes with the king of Samaria a sinful alliance, which in point of fact he had declined, not indeed from religious motives. Joram, the son of Jehoshaphat, conducted himself very ill, it is said in 2Kings viii. 18; Chronicles enhances his offence, and above all adds the merited reward (xxi. 4, seq.). Elijah, although he had quitted this earth long before (2Kings iii. 11 seq.), must write to the offender a letter, the threats of which are duly put into execution by Jehovah. The Philistines and Arabians having previously pressed him hard, he falls into an incurable sickness of the bowels, which afflicts him for years, and finally brings him to his end in a most frightful manner (xxi. 12, seq.). In concurrence with the judgment of God, the people withhold from the dead king the honours of royalty, and he is not buried beside his fathers, notwithstanding 2Kings viii. 24. Joash, according to 2Kings xii., was a pious ruler, but met with misfortune; he was compelled to buy off Hazael, who had laid siege to Jerusalem, at a heavy price, and finally he died by the assassin's hand. Chronicles is able to tell how he deserved this fate. In the sentence: "He did what was right in the sight of the Lord all his days, because Jehoiada the high priest had instructed him " (2Kings xii. 3 [2]), it alters the last expression into "all the days of Jehoiada the priest," (xxiv. 2). After the death of his benefactor he fell away, and showed his family the basest ingratitude; at the end of that very year the Syrians invade him; after their departure his misfortunes are increased by a dreadful illness, under which he is murdered (xxiv. 17 seq.). Amaziah was defeated, made prisoner, and severely punished by Jehoash, king of Samaria, whom he had audaciously challenged (2Kings xiv. 8 seq.). Why? because he had set up in Jerusalem idols which had been carried off from Edom, and served them (2Chronicles xxv. 1 4). He prefers the plundered gods of a vanquished people to Jehovah at the very moment when the latter has proved victorious over them! From the time of this apostasy-- a crime for which no punishment could be too great--his own servants are also stated to have conspired against him and put him to death (xxv. 27), and yet we are assured in ver. 25 (after 2Kings xiv. I;) that Amaziah survived his adversary by fifteen years. Uzziah, one of the best kings of Judah, became a leper, and was compelled to hand over the regency to his son Jotham (2Kings xv. 5); for, adds Chronicles, "when he had become strong, his heart was lifted up, even to ruin, so that he transgressed against Jehovah his God, and went into the temple of Jehovah, to burn incense upon the altar of incense. And Azariah the priest went in after him, and with him fourscore priests of Jehovah, and withstood him and said: It is not for thee to burn incense, but only for the sons of Aaron who are consecrated thereto. Then Uzziah was wroth and laid not the censer aside, and the leprosy rose up in his forehead, and the priests thrust him out from thence" (xxvi. 16-20). The matter is now no longer a mystery. Ahaz was a king of little worth, and yet he got fairly well out of the difficulty into which the invasion of the allied Syrians and Israelites had brought him by making his kingdom tributary to the Assyrian Tiglath-Pileser (2Kings xvi. 1 seq.). But Chronicles could not possibly let him off so cheaply. By it he is delivered into the hand of the enemy: the Israelites alone slaughter 120,000 men of Judah, including the king's son and his most prominent servants, and carry off to Samaria 200,000 women and children, along with a large quantity of other booty. The Edomites and Philistines also fall upon Ahaz, while the Assyrians whom he has summoned to his aid misunderstand him, and come up against Jerusalem with hostile intent; they do not, indeed, carry the city, but yet become possessors, without trouble, of its treasures, which the king himself hands over to them (xxviii. 1-21). The Book of Kings knows no worse ruler than Manasseh was; yet he reigned undisturbed for fifty-five years--a longer period than was enjoyed by any other king (2Kings xxi.1-18). This is a stone of stumbling that Chronicles must remove. It tells that Manasseh was carried in chains by the Assyrians to Babylon, but there prayed to Jehovah, who restored him to his kingdom; he then abolished idolatry in Judah (xxxiii. 11-20). Thus on the one hand he does not escape punishment, while on the other hand the length of his reign is nevertheless explained. Recently indeed it has been sought to support the credibility of these statements by means of an Assyrian inscription, from which it appears that Manasseh did pay tribute to Esarhaddon. That is to say, he had been overpowered by the Assyrians; that is again to say, that he had been thrown into chains and carried off by them. Not so rapid, but perhaps quite as accurate, would be the inference that as a tributary prince he must have kept his seat on the throne of Judah, and not have exchanged it for the prison of Babylon. In truth, Manasseh's temporary deposition is entirely on the same plane with Nebuchadnezzar's temporary grass-eating. The unhistorical character of the intermezzo (the motives of which are perfectly transparent) follows not only from the silence of the Book of Kings (a circumstance of no small importance indeed), but also, for example, from Jeremiah xv. 4; for when it is there said that all Judah and Jerusalem are to be given up to destruction because of Manasseh, it is not presupposed that his guilt has been already borne and atoned for by himself. To justify the fact of Josiah's defeat and death at Megiddo, there is attached to him the blame of not having given heed to the words of Necho from the mouth of God warning him against the struggle (xxxv. 21, 22). Contrariwise, the punishment of the godless Jehoiakim is magnified; he is stated to have been put in irons by the Chaldaeans and carried to Babylon (xxxvi. 6)--an impossibility of course before the capture of Jerusalem, which did not take place until the third month of his successor. The last prince of David's house, Zedekiah, having suffered more severely than all his predecessors, must therefore have been stiff-necked and rebellious (xxxvi.12, 13),--characteristics to which, according to the authentic evidence of the prophet Jeremiah, he had in reality the least possible claim. It is thus apparent how inventions of the most circumstantial kind have arisen out of this plan of writing history, as it is euphemistically called. One is hardly warranted, therefore, in taking the definiteness of statements vouched for by Chronicles alone as proof of their accuracy. The story about Zerah the Ethiopian (2Chronicles xiv. 9 seq.) is just as apocryphal as that of Chushan-Rishathaim (Judges iii 10). Des Vignoles has indeed identified the first-named with the Osorthon of Manetho, who again occurs in the Egyptian monuments as Osorkon, son of Shishak, though not as renewing the war against Palestine; but Osorkon was an Egyptian, Zerah an Ethiopian, and the resemblance of the names is after all not too obvious. But, even if Zerah were really a historical personage, of what avail would this be for the unhistorical connection? With a million of men the king of the Libyans and Moors, stepping over Egypt, comes against Judah. Asa, ruler of a land of about sixty German square miles, goes to meet the enemy with 580,000, and defeats him on the plain to the north of Mareshah so effectually that not a single soul survives. Shall it be said that this story, on account of the accurate statement of locality (although Mareshah instead of Gath is not after all suggestive of an old source), is credible-at all events after deduction of the incredibilities? If the incredibilities are deducted, nothing at all is left. The invasion of Judah by Baasha of Israel, and Asa's deportment towards him (1Kings xv. 17 seq.), are quite enough fully to dispose of the great previous victory over the Ethiopians claimed for Asa. The case is no better with the victory of Jehoshaphat over the Ammonites and Moabites (2Chronicles xx.); here we have probably an echo of 2Kings iii., where we read of Jehoshaphat's taking part in a campaign against Moab, and where also recurs that characteristic feature of the self-destruction of the enemy, so that for the opposing force nothing remains but the work of collecting the booty (iii. 23; compare 2Chronicles xx. 23). The Chronicler has enemies always at his command when needed,--Arabians, Ethiopians (xvii. 11, xxi. 16, xxii. 1, xxvi. 7), Mehunims (xx. 1, xxvi. 1), Philistines (xvii. 11, xxi. 16, xxvi. 6 seq., xxviii. 18), Ammonites (xx. 1, xxvi. 8, xxvii. 5), whose very names in some cases put them out of the question for the older time. Such statements as that the Ammonites became subject to Kings Uzziah and Jotham, are, in the perfect silence of the credible sources, condemned by their inherent impossibility; for at that period the highway to Ammon was Moab, and this country was by no means then in the possession of Judah, nor is it anywhere said that it was. The Philistines as vindictive enemies are rendered necessary by the plan of the history (xxi. 16, xxviii. 18), and this of itself throws suspicion upon the previous statements (xvii. 11, xxvi. 6 seq.) that they were laid under tribute by Jehoshaphat, and subjugated by Uzziah; it is utterly impossible to believe that the latter should have broken down the walls of Ashdod (Amos i. 7), or have established fortresses in Philistia. According to the Book of Kings, he did indeed conquer Edom anew; Edom is according to this authority the one land to which the descendants of David lay claim and against which they wage war, while Moab and Philistia (the most important towns being excepted, however, in the case of the latter) virtually belong to the territory of Ephraim. The triumphs given by the Chronicler to his favourites have none of them any historical effect, but merely serve to add a momentary splendour to their reigns. Merit is always the obverse of success. Joram, Joash, Ahaz, who are all depicted as reprobates, build no fortresses, command no great armies, have no wealth of wives and children; it is only in the case of the pious kings (to the number of whom even Rehoboam and Abijah also belong) that the blessing of God manifests itself by such tokens. Power is the index of piety, with which accordingly It rises and fall. Apart from this it is of no consequence if, for example, Jehoshaphat possesses more than 1,100.000 soldiers (xvii, 14 seq.), for they are not used for purposes of war; the victory comes from God and from the music of the Levites (chap. xx.). In the statements about fortress-building which regularly recur in connection with the names of good rulers, /1/ **************************************** 1 viii. 3-6, xi. 5-12, xiii. 19, xiv. 5, 6 [6, 7], xvii. 12, xix. 5, xxvi. 9, 10, xxvii. 4, xxxii. 5,, xxxiii. 14. *************************************** general statements, such as those of Hosea viii. 14, 2Kings xviii. 13, are illustrated by concrete examples, a few elements of tradition being also employed (Lachish). It is not possible, but, indeed, neither is it necessary, to demonstrate in every case the imaginary character of the statements; according to xix. 5 it would appear as if simply every city of any kind of consequence was regarded as a fortress and in the list given in chap. xi. 6 seq., we chiefly meet with names which were also familiar in the post-exile period. That Abijah deprived Jeroboam of Bethel amongst others, and that Jehoshaphat set governors over the Ephraimite cities which had been taken by Asa his father (xiii. 19, xvii. 2), would excite surprise if it stood anywhere else than in Chronicles. In forming a judgment on its family history of the descendants of David, the statement contained in xiii. 21 is specially helpful both in manner and substance: "And Abijah waxed mighty, and he married fourteen wives, and begat twenty and two sons, and sixteen daughters." This can only be taken as referring to the reign of Abijah, and that too after the alleged victory over Jeroboam; but he reigned altogether for only three years, and is it to be supposed that within this interval one of his sons should even have attained to man's estate? In reality, however, Abijah had no son at all, but was succeeded by his brother, for the definite and doubtless authentic statement that Maachah, the wife of Rehoboam, was the mother both of Abijah and of Asa, and that the latter removed her from her position at court (1Kings xv. 2, 10, 13), must override the allegation of ver. 8, that the successor of Abijah was his son. After Jehoshaphat's death it is said in the first place that Jehoram slew all his brethren (2 Chr. xxi. 4), and afterwards that the Arabians slew all Jehoram's children with the exception of one (xxii. 1); how many of the Davidic house in that case survive for Jehu, who nevertheless slew forty-two of them (2Kings x. 14)? In short, the family history of the house of David is of equal historical value with all the other matters on which the Chronicler is more widely and better informed than all the older canonical books. The remark applies to names and numbers as well; about such trifles, which produce an appearance of accuracy, the author is never in any embarrassment. VI.II.4. The Book of Kings then everywhere crops up as the real foundation of the portion of Chronicles relating to Judah after the period of Solomon. Where the narrative of the former is detailed and minute, our author also has fuller and more interesting material at his command; so, for example, in the history relating to the temple and to the common and mutual relations of Judah and Israel (2 Chr. x., xviii., xxiii., seq., xxv. 17-24, xxxiii. seq.). Elsewhere he is restricted to the epitome that constitutes the framework of the Book of Kings; by it he is guided in his verdicts as to the general character of the successive sovereigns as well as in his chronological statements, although, in accordance with his plan, he as a rule omits the synchronisms (xiii. 1, xxv. 25). The positive data also, given by the epitome with reference to the legislation in matters of worship by the various kings, are for the most part reproduced word for word, and float in a fragmentary and readily distinguishable way in the mixture of festivals, sermons, choruses, law, and prophets. For this is an important verification of all the results already obtained; all in Chronicles that is not derived from Samuel and Kings, has a uniform character not only in its substance, but also in its awkward and frequently unintelligible language--plainly belonging to a time in which Hebrew was approaching extinction--in its artificiality of style, deriving its vitality exclusively from Biblical reminiscences. This is not the place for the proof of these points, but the reader may compare Staehelin's Einleitung (1862), p. 139 seq.; Bertheau, p. xiv. seq., and Graf, p. 116. VI.III. VI.III.1. When the narrative of Chronicles runs parallel with the older historical books of the canon, it makes no real additions, but the tradition is merely differently coloured, under the influence of contemporary motives. In the picture it gives the writer's own present is reflected, not antiquity. But neither is the case very different with the genealogical lists prefixed by way of introduction in 1Chronicles i.-ix.; they also are in the main valid only for the period at which they were drawn up--whether for its actual condition or for its conceptions of the past. The penchant for pedigrees and genealogical registers, made up from a mixture of genealogico-historical and ethnologico-statistical elements, is a characteristic feature of Judaism; along with the thing the word YX# also first came into use during the later times. Compendious histories are written in the form of TLDWT and YWX#YN. The thread is thin and inconspicuous, and yet apparently strong and coherent; one does not commit oneself to much, and yet has opportunity to introduce all kinds of interesting matter. Material comes to one's hand, given a beginning and an end, the bridge is soon completed. Another expression of the same tendency is the inclination to give a genealogical expression to all connections and associations of human society whatsoever, to create artificial families on all hands and bring them into blood relationship, as if the whole of public life resolved itself into a matter of cousinship,--an inclination indicative of the times of political stagnation then prevalent. We hear of the families of the scribes at Jabesh, of the potters and gardeners and byssus-workers, of the sons of the goldsmiths, apothecaries, and fullers, these corporations being placed on the same plane with actual families. The division into classes of the persons engaged in religious service is merely the most logical development of this artificial system which is applied to all other social relations as well. Proceeding now to a fuller examination of the contents of 1 Chron i.-ix. and other texts connected with that, we have here, apart from the first chapter, which does not demand further attention, an ethno-genealogical survey of the twelve tribes of Israel, which is based mostly on the data of the Priestly Code (Genesis xlvi.; um. <?> xxvi.), expanded now more now less. But while the statements of the Priestly Code have to hold good for the Mosaic period only, those of Chronicles have also to apply to the succeeding ages,--those, for example, of Saul and David, of Tiglath-Pileser and Hezekiah. As early as the time of the judges, however, very important changes had taken place in the conditions. While Dan continued to subsist with difficulty, Simeon and Levi had been completely broken up (Genesis xlix. 7); in the Blessing of Moses the latter name denotes something quite different from a tribe, and the former is not even so much as named, although the enumeration is supposed to be complete; in David's time it had already been absorbed by families of mingled Judaic and Edomitic descent in the district where it had once had independent footing. Eastward of Jordan Leah's first-born had a similar fate, although somewhat later. After it has been deposed from its primacy in Genesis xlix. and twitted in Judges v. with its brave words unaccompanied by corresponding deeds, the faint and desponding wish is expressed in Deuteronomy xxxiii. 6 that "Reuben may live and not die," and King Mesha is unaware that any other than the Gadite had ever dwelt in the land which, properly speaking, was the heritage of Reuben. But in Chronicles these extinct tribes again come to life--and not Levi alone, which is a special case, but also Simeon and Reuben, with which alone we are here to deal--and they exist as independent integral twelfths of Israel, precisely like Ephraim and Manasseh, throughout the whole period of the monarchy down to the destruction of the kingdom by the Assyrians. /1/ This is ***************************************** 1. For Reuben see (in addition to 1Chronicles v. 1-10) v. 18, xi. 42, xii. 37. xxvi. 32, xxvii. 16, for Simeon, 1Chronicles iv. 24-43, with xii. 25, and 2Chronicles xv. 9, xxxiv. 6, observing that in the last two passages Simeon is reckoned as belonging to the northern kingdom, so as to complete the number of the ten tribes. **************************************** diametrically opposed to all authentic tradition; for to maintain that nothing else is intended than a continued subsistence of individual Simeonite and Reubenite families within other tribes is merely a desperate resort of the harmonists, and every attempt to tone down the fact that those extinct and half-mythical tribes are in Chronicles placed side by side with the rest without any distinction is equally illegitimate. The historical value thus lost by the narrative as a whole cannot be restored by the seeming truthfulness of certain details. Or is more significance really to be attached to the wars of the Simeonites and Reubenites against the Arabians than to the rest of the extemporised wars of the kings of Judah against these children of the wilderness? If only at least the names had not been "sons of Ham, and Mehunim and Hagarenes " (iv. 40 seq. [Heb.], v. 10)! As for the pedigrees and genealogical lists, are they to be accepted as historical merely because their construction is not apparent to us, and they evade our criticism? The language affords no room for the conjecture that we here possess extracts from documents of high antiquity (iv. 33, 38, 4I, v. 1 seq., 7, 9 seq.), and proper names such as Elioenai and the like (iv. 35 seq.) are not striking for their antique originality. Of the remaining tribes, so far as they belong to Israel and not to Judah, the next in the series after Reuben are the trans-Jordanic (v. 11-26). They are said to have been numbered in the days of Jotham of Judah and Jeroboam of Israel, on which occasion 44,760 warriors were returned; they took the field against the Hagarenes, Ituraeans, Nephishites, and Nabataeans, gaining the victory and carrying off much booty, "for they cried to God in the battle, and He was entreated of them because they put their trust in Him." But afterwards they fell away from the God of their fathers, and as a punishment were carried off by Pul and Tiglath-Pileser to Armenia by the Chaboras and the river of Gozan. Apart from the language, which in its edifying tone is that of late Judaism, and leaving out of account the enumeration "the sons of Reuben and the Gadites and half of the tribe of Manasseh," the astonishing and highly doubtful combinations are eloquent: Pul and Tiglath-Pileser, the Chaboras and the river of Gozan, are hardly distinguished from each other; Jotham and Jeroboam, on the other hand, make so impossible a synchronism that the partisans of Chronicles will have it that none is intended,--forgetful, to be sure, of Hosea i. 2, and omitting to say what in that case Jotham of Judah has to do here at all in this connection. The Hagarenes and Ituraeans too, instead of (say) the Moabites and Ammonites, furnish food for reflection, as also do the geographical statements that Gad had his seat in Bashan and Manasseh in and near Lebanon. As for the proper names of families and their heads, they are certainly beyond our means of judging; the phrases however of the scheme they fill (anshe shemoth rashe l'beth abotham, migrash, jahes) are peculiar to the Priestly Code and Chronicles, and alongside of elements which are old and attested from other quarters, occur others that look very recent, as for example (v. 24) Eliel, Azriel, Jeremiah, Hodaviah, Jahdiel. In the introduction the Galilaean tribes have no prominent place, but in the rest of the book they make a favourable appearance (see especially 1Chronicles xii. 32-34, 40, and 2Chronicles xxx. 10, 11, 18); it readily occurs to one, especially in the last-cited passage, to think of the later Judaising process in Galilee. In Issachar there are stated to have been 87,000 fighting men in David's time (misparam l'toledotham l'beth abotham, vii. 1-5); out of Zebulun and Naphtali, again, exactly 87,000 men came to David at Hebron, to anoint him and be feasted three days,--it is carefully mentioned, however (xii. 40), that they took their provisions up with them. The proper kernel of Israel, Ephraim and Manasseh, is, in comparison with Simeon, Reuben, Gad, Issachar, treated with very scant kindness (vii. 14-29),--a suspicious sign. The list of the families of Manasseh is an artificial _rechauffe_ of elements gleaned anywhere; Maachah passes for the wife as well as the sister of Machir, but being a Gileaditess (Beth-Maachah), ought not to have been mentioned at all in this place where the cis-Jordanic Manasseh is being spoken of; to fill up blanks every contribution is thankfully received. /1/ In the case of Ephraim a long and meagre genealogy ***************************************** 1 Kuenen, Th. Tijdschr., 1877, pp. 484, 488; Godsdienst v. Isr., i. 165. **************************************** only is given, which, begun in vers. 20, 21, and continued in ver. 25, constantly repeats the same names (Tahath, Tahan, 1Samuel i. 1; Eladah, Laadan, Shuthelah, Telah), and finally reaches its end and goal in Joshua, whose father Nun alone is known to the older sources! Into the genealogy a wonderful account of the slaying of the children of Ephraim by the men of Gath (1Samuel iv.?) has found its way, and (like viii. 6, 7) according to the prevailing view must be of venerable antiquity. But in that case the statement of iv. 9 must also be very ancient, which yet obviously is connected with the rise of the schools of the scribes stated in ii. 55 to have existed in Jabez. Everywhere it is presupposed that Israel throughout the entire period of the monarchy was organised on the basis of the twelve tribes (ii.-ix.; xii.; xxvii.), but the assumption is certainly utterly false, as can be seen for example from 1Kings iv. Further, the _penchant_ of later Judaism for statistics is carried back to the earlier time, to which surveys and censuses were repugnant in the extreme. In spite of 2Samuel xxiv., we are told that under David enumerations both of the spiritual and of the secular tribes were made again and again; so also under his successors, as may be inferred partly from express statements and partly from the precise statistics given as to the number of men capable of bearing arms: in these cases the most astounding figures are set down,--always, however, as resting on original documents and accurate enumeration. In the statistical information of Chronicles, then, so far as it relates to pre-exilic antiquity, we have to do with artificial compositions. It is possible, and occasionally demonstrable, that in these some elements derived from tradition have been used. But it is certain that quite as many have been simply invented; and the combination of the elements--the point of chief importance-- dates, as both form and matter show, from the very latest period. One might as well try to hear the grass growing as attempt to derive from such a source as this a historical knowledge of the conditions of ancient Israel. VI.III.2. As regards Judah and Benjamin, and to a certain extent Levi also, the case of course is somewhat different from that of the ten extinct tribes. It is conceivable that here a living ethno-genealogical tradition may have kept the present connected with the past. Nevertheless, on closer examination, it comes out that most of what the Chronicler here relates has reference to the post-exilic time, and that the few fragments which go up to a higher antiquity are wrought into a connection which on the whole is of a very recent date. Most obtrusively striking is it that the list of the heads of the people dwelling in Jerusalem given in ix. 4--17 is simply identical with Nehemiah xi. 3-19. In this passage, introducing as it does the history of the kings (x. seq.), one is by no means prepared to hear statements about the community of the second temple; but our author is under the impression that in going there he is letting us know about the old Jerusalem; from David to Nehemiah is no leap for him, the times are not distinct from one another to his mind. For chap. viii. also, containing a full enumeration of the Benjamite families, with special reference to those which had their seat in the capital, Bertheau has proved the post-exilic reference; it is interesting that in the later Jerusalem there existed a widespread family which wished to deduce its origin from Saul and rested its claims to this descent on a long genealogy (viii. 33-40). /1/ ***************************************** 1. Equivalent to ix. 35-44, which perhaps proves the later interpolation of ix. 1-34. *************************************** It cannot be said that this produces a very favourable impression for the high antiquity of the other list of the Benjamites in vii. 6-11; to see how little value is to be attached to the pretensions of the latter to be derived from original documents of hoary antiquity, it is only necessary to notice the genuinely Jewish phraseology of vers. 7, 9, 11, such proper names as Elioenai, and the numbers given (22,034 + 20,200 + 17,200, making in all 59,434 fighting men). The registers of greatest historical value are those relating to the tribe of Judah (ii. 1-iV. 23). But in this statement the genealogy of the descendants of David must be excepted (chapter iii.), the interest of which begins only with Zerubbabel, the rest being merely an exceedingly poor compilation of materials still accessible to us in the older historical books of the canon, and in Jeremiah. According to iii. 5, the first four of David's sons, born in Jerusalem, were all children of Bathsheba; the remaining seven are increased to nine by a textual error which occurs also in the LXX version of 2Samuel v. 16. Among the sons of Josiah (iii. 15 seq.), Johanan, i.e. Jehoahaz, is distinguished from Shallum (Jeremiah xxii. 11), and because he immediately succeeded his father, is represented as the first-born, though in truth Jehoiakim was older (2Kings xxiii. 3I, 36); Zedekiah, Jehoiakim's brother, is given out to be the son of Jeconiah, the son of Jehoiakim, because he was the successor of Jeconiah, who succeeded Jehoiakim. Similar things occur also in the Book of Daniel, but are usually overlooked, with a mistaken piety. Whoever has eyes to see cannot assign any high value except to the two great Jewish genealogies in chaps. ii. and iv. Yet even here the most heterogeneous elements are tossed together, and chaff is found mingled with wheat. /1/ ************************************** 1. For further details the reader is referred to the author's dissertation De gentibus et familiis Judaeis, Gottingen, 1870. ************************************** Apart from the introduction, vers.1-8, chap. ii. is a genealogy of the children of Hezron, a tribe which in David's time had not yet been wholly amalgamated with Judah, but which even then constituted the real strength of that tribe and afterwards became completely one with it. The following scheme discloses itself amid the accompanying matters: "The sons of Hezron are Jerahmeel and Celubai" (Caleb) (ver. 9). "and the sons of Jerahmeel, the first-born of Hezron, were..." (ver. 25). "These were the sons of Jerahmeel. And the sons of Caleb the brother of Jerahmeel were..." (ver. 42). "These were the sons of Caleb " (ver. 50 a). That which is thus formally defined and kept by itself apart (compare in this connection "Jerahmeel the first-born of Hezron," "Caleb the brother of Jerahmeel") is materially also distinguished from all else. It is the kernel of the whole, and refers to the pre-exilian time. Even the unusual _et fuerunt_ (vers. 25, 33, 50) points to this conclusion, as well as, in the case of Caleb, the positive fact that the towns named in ver. 42-49 are all situated near Hebron and in the Negeb of Judah, where after the exile the Idumaeans were settled, and, in the case of Jerahmeel, the negative circumstance that here no towns at all are mentioned among the families, Molid, ver. 29, being perhaps a single exception, and thus the extreme south is indicated. But this kernel is amplified by a number of post-exilian additions. In the first place, in connection with Jerahmeel, an appendix (vers. 34-41) is given which is not ethnological but purely genealogical, and brings a pedigree of fifteen members manifestly down to near the age of the Chronicler, and which moreover is only in apparent connection with what precedes it (comp. ver. 34 with ver. 31), and invariably uses the hiphil form _holid_, a form which occurs in vers. 25-33 never, and in vers. 42-50 only sporadically in three places open to the suspicion of later redaction (comp. especially ver. 47). Much more important, however, are the additions under Caleb; of these the one is prefixed (vers. 18-24), the other, more appropriately, brought in at the close (vers. 50-55, beginning with "and the sons of Hur, the firstborn of Ephrath," Caleb's second wife, ver. 19). Here Caleb no longer presents himself in the extreme south of Judah and the vicinity of Jerahmeel (1Samuel xxv. 3, xxvii. 10, xxx. 14, 29), where he had his settlement prior to the exile, but his families, which are all of them descended from his son Hur, inhabit Bethlehem, Kirjath-jearim, Zorah, Esthaol, and other towns in the north, frequently mentioned in Ezra and Nehemiah. Thus the Calebites in consequence of the exile have forsaken their old seats and have taken up new ones on their return; this fact is expressed in ver. 18 to the effect that Caleb's first wife Azubah bath Jerioth (Deserta filia Nomadum) had died, and that he had then married a second, Ephrath, by whom he became the father of Hur: Ephrath is the name of the district in which Bethlehem and Kirjath- jearim are situated, and properly speaking is merely another form of Ephraim, as is shown by the word Ephrathite. In addition to these appendices to Jerahmeel and Caleb, we have also the genealogy of David (vers. 10-17). The Book of Samuel knows only of his father Jesse; on the other hand, Saul's genealogy is carried further back, and there was no reason for not doing so in David's case also if the materials had existed. But here, as in Ruth, the pedigree is traced backwards through Jesse, Obed, Boaz, up to Salma. Salma is the father of Bethlehem (ii. 54), and hence the father of David. But Salma is the father of Bethlehem and the neighbouring towns or fractions of towns AFTER THE EXILE; he belongs to Kaleb Abi Hur. /1/ ***************************************** I In the Targum, Caleb's kindred the Kenites are designated as Salmaeans; the name also occurs in Canticles (i. 5, the tents of Kedar, the curtains of Salmah), and also as the name of a Nabataean tribe in Pliny. Among the families of the Nethinim enumerated in Nehemiah vii. 46-60 the B'ne Salmah also occur, along with several other names which enable us distinctly to recognise (Ezekiel xliv.) the non-Israelite and foreign origin of these temple slaves; see, for example, vers. 48, 52, 55, 57. *************************************** But if anything at all is certain, it is this, that in ancient times the Calebites lived in the south and not in the north of Judah, and in particular that David by his nativity belonged not to them but rather to the older portion of Judah which gravitated towards Israel properly so called, and stood in most intimate relations with Benjamin. Of the first three members of the genealogy, Nahshon and Amminadab occur as princes of Judah in the Priestly Code, and are fitly regarded as the ancestors of those who come after them; Ram is the first-born of Hezron's first-born (ver. 25), and by the meaning of his name also (Ram = the high one), is, like Abram, qualified to stand at the head of the princely line. While in chap ii. we thus in point of fact fall in with an old kernel, and one that necessarily goes back to sound tradition (apparently preserved indeed, however, merely for the sake of the later additions), the quite independent and parallel list, on the other hand, contained in iv. 1-23 is shown by many unmistakable indications to be a later composition having its reference only to post-exilian conditions, perhaps incorporating a few older elements, which, however, it is impossible with any certainty to detect. /2/ ***************************************** I Pharez, Hezron, Carmi, Hur, Shobal (iv. 1), is a genealogically descending series; Chelubai must therefore of necessity be read instead of Carmi, all the more because Chelub and not Carmi appears in the third place in the subsequent expansion; for this, ascending from below, begins with Shobal (ver. 2), then goes on to Hur (vers. 5-10), who stands in the same relation to Ash-hur as Tob to Ish-tob, and finally deals with Chelub or Caleb (vers. 11-15). ******************************************** Levi of course receives the fullest treatment (1Chronicles v. 27 [vi. 1]-vi. 66 [81], ix. 10 seq., xv., xvi., xxiii.-xxvii., &c.). We know that this clerical tribe is an artificial production, and that its hierarchical subdivision, as worked out in the Priestly Code, was the result of the centralisation of the cultus in Jerusalem. Further, it has been already shown that in the history as recorded in Chronicles the effort is most conspicuous to represent the sons of Aaron and the Levites, in all cases where they are absent from the older historical books of the canon, as playing the part to which they are entitled according to the Priestly Code. How immediate is the connection with the last-named document, how in a certain sense that code is even carried further by Chronicles, can be seen for example from this circumstance, that in the former Moses in a novel reduces the period of beginning public service in the case of a Levite from thirty years of age to twenty-five (Numbers iv. 3 seq., viii. 23 seq.), while in the latter David (1Chronicles xxiii. 3, 24 seq.) brings it down still further to the age of twenty; matters are still to some extent in a state of flux, and the ordering of the temple worship is a continuation of the beginning made with the tabernacle service by Moses. Now, in so far as the statistics of the clergy have a real basis at all, that basis is post-exilian. It has long ago been remarked how many of the individuals figuring under David and his successors (e.g., Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun) bear names identical with families or guilds of a later time, how the two indeed are constantly becoming confluent, and difficulty is felt in determining whether by the expression "head" a person or a family ought to be understood. But, inasmuch as the Chronicler nevertheless desires to depict the older time and not his own, he by no means adheres closely to contemporary statistics, but gives free play at the same time to his idealising imagination; whence it comes that in spite of the numerous and apparently precise data afforded, the reader still finds himself unable to form any clear picture of the organisation of the clergy,--the ordering of the families and tribes, the distribution of the offices,--nay, rather, is involved in a maze of contradictions. Obededom, Jeduthun, Shelomith, Korah, occur in the most different connections, belong now to one, now to another section of the Levites, and discharge at one time this function, at another, that. Naturally the commentators are prompt with their help by distinguishing names that are alike, and identifying names that are different. Some characteristic details may still be mentioned here. The names of the six Levitical classes according to 1Chronicles xxv. 4, Giddalti, V'romamti-Ezer, Joshbekashah, Mallothi, Hothir, Mahazioth, are simply the fragments of a consecutive sentence which runs: I have magnified | and exalted the help | of him who sat in need: | I have spoken | abundance of | prophecies. The watchman or singer Obededom who is alleged to have discharged his functions in the days of David and Amaziah, is no other than the captain to whom David intrusted for three months the custody of the ark, a Philistine of Gath. The composition of the singers' pedigrees is very transparent, especially in the case of Heman (1Chronicles vi. 7-l2 [22-27] = ver 18-23, [33-37]). Apart from Exodus vi. 16-l9, use is chiefly made of what is said about the family of Samuel (1Samuel i. 1, viii. 2), who must of course have been of Levitical descent, because his mother consecrated him to the service of the sanctuary. Heman is the son of Joel b. Samuel b. Elkanah b. Jeroham b. Eliab b. Tahath b. Zuph, only the line does not terminate with Ephraim as in 1Samuel i. 1 (LXX) because it is Levi who is the goal; Zuph. <sic> however, is an Ephraitic district, and Tahath (Tohu, Toah, Tahan, Nahath) is an Ephraimite family (vii. 20). Further back the same elements are individually repeated more than once, Elkanah four times in all; he occurs once as early as in Exodus vi. 24, where also he is doubtless borrowed from 1Samuel i. The best of it is that, contrary to the scope of the genealogies recorded in1 Chronicles vi., which is to provide a Levitical origin for the guilds of singers, there is found in close contiguity the statement (ii. 6) that Heman and Ethan were descendants of Zerah b. Pharez, b. JUDAH. The commentators are indeed assisted in their efforts to differentiate the homonyms by their ignorance of the fact that even as late as Nehemiah's time the singers did not yet pass for Levites, but their endeavours are wrecked by the circumstance that the names of fathers as well as of sons are identical (Psalm lxxxviii. 1, lxxxix. 1; Ewald, iii. 380 seq.). In point of history these musicians of the second temple are descended of course neither from Levi nor from the sons of Mahol (1Kings v. 11 [iv. 31), but they have at least derived their names from the latter. On all hands we meet with such artificial names in the case of Levites. One is called Issachar; it would not be surprising to meet with a Naphtali Cebi, or Judah b. Jacob. Jeduthun is, properly speaking, the name of a tune or musical mode (Psalm xxxix. 1, lxii. 1, [xxvii. 1), whence also of a choir trained in that. Particularly interesting are a few pagan names, as for example Henadad, Bakbuk, and some others, which, originally borne by the temple servitors (Nehemiah vii. 46 seq.), were doubtless transferred along with these to the Levites. With the priests, of whom so many are named at all periods of the history of Israel, matters are no better than with the inferior Levites, so far as the Books of Samuel and Kings are not drawn upon. In particular, the twenty-four priestly courses or orders are an institution, not of King David, but of the post-exilic period. When Hitzig, annotating Ezekiel viii. 16, remarks that the five-and-twenty men standing between the temple and the altar worshipping the sun toward the east are the heads of the twenty-four priestly courses with the high priest at their head (because no one else had the right to stand in the inner court between temple and altar), he reveals a trait that is characteristic, not only of himself, but also of the entire so-called historico-critical school, who exert their whole subtlety on case after case, but never give themselves time to think matters over in their connection with each other; nay, rather simply retain the traditional view as a whole, only allowing themselves by way of gratification a number of heresies. It is almost impossible to believe that Hitzig, when he annotated Ezekiel viii., could have read those passages Ezekiel xliii. 7 seq., xliv. 6 seq, from which it is most unambiguously clear that the later exclusion of the laity from the sanctuary was quite unknown in the pre-exilic period. The extent of the Chronicler's knowledge about the pre-exilic priesthood is revealed most clearly in the list of the twenty-two high priests in 1Chronicles v. 29-41 (vi. 3-15). From the ninth to the eighteenth the series runs--Amariah, Ahitub, Zadok, Ahimaaz, Azariah, Johanan, Azariah, Amariah, Ahitub, Zadok. As for the first five, Azariah was not the son, but the brother of Ahimaaz, and the latter apparently not a priest (1Kings iv. 2); but Ahitub, the alleged father of Zadok, was, on the contrary, the grandfather of Zadok's rival, Abiathar, of the family of Eli (1Samuel xiv. 3, xxii. 20); the whole of the old and famous line--Eli, Phinehas, Ahitub; Ahimelech, Abiathar--which held the priesthood of the ark from thc time of the judges down into the days of David, is passed over in absolute silence, and the line of Zadok, by which it was not superseded until Solomon (1Kings ii. 35), is represented as having held the leadership of the priesthood since Moses. As for the last four in the above-cited list, they simply repeat the earlier. In the Book of Kings, Azariah II., Amariah, Ahitub, Zadok, do not occur, but, on the contrary, other contemporary high priests, Jehoiada and Urijah, omitted from the enumeration in Chronicles. At the same time this enumeration cannot be asserted to be defective; for, according to Jewish chronology, the ancient history is divided into two periods, each of 480 years, the one extending from the exodus to the building of the temple, the other from that epoch down to the establishment of the second theocracy. Now, 480 years are twelve generations of forty years, and in 1Chronicles v. there are twelve high priests reckoned to the period during which there was no temple (ver. 36b to come after ver. 35a), and thence eleven down to the exile; that is to say, twelve generations, when the exile is included. The historical value of the genealogy in 1Chronicles v. 26-41 is thus inevitably condemned. But if Chronicles knew nothing about the priestly princes of the olden time, its statements about ordinary priests are obviously little to be relied on. VI.III.3. To speak of a tradition handed down from pre-exilic times as being found in Chronicles, either in 1Chronicles i.-ix. or in 1Chronicles x.-2Chronicles xxxvi., is thus manifestly out of the question. As early as 1806 this had been conclusively shown by the youthful De Wette (then twenty-six years of age). But since that date many a theological Sisyphus has toiled to roll the stone again wholly or half-way up the hill--Movers especially, in genius it might seem the superior of the sober Protestant critic--with peculiar results. This scholar mixed up the inquiry into the historical value of those statements in Chronicles which we are able to control, with the other question as to the probable sources of its variations from the older historical books of the canon. In vain had De Wette, at the outset, protested against such a procedure, contending that it was not only possible, but conceded that Chronicles, where at variance or in contradiction, was following older authority, but that the problem still really was, as before, how to explain the complete difference of general conception and the multitude of discrepancies in details; that the hypothesis of "sources," as held before Movers by Eichhorn, was of no service in dealing with this question, and that in the critical comparison of the two narratives, and in testing their historical character, it was after all incumbent to stick to what lay before one (Beitr., i. pp. 24, 29, 38). For so ingenious an age such principles were too obvious; Movers produced a great impression, especially as he was not so simple as to treat the letters of Hiram and Elijah as authentic documents, but was by way of being very critical. At present even Dillmann also unfortunately perceives "that the Chronicler everywhere has worked according to sources, and that in his case deliberate invention or distortion of the history are not for a moment to be spoken of" (Herzog, Realencyk., ii. p. 693, 1st edit.; iii. 223, 2d edit.). And from the lofty heights of science the author of Part V. of the Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament looks compassionately down upon K. H. Graf, "who has loitered so far behind the march of Old Testament research, as to have thought of resuscitating the views of De Wette;" in fact, that Chronicles may be established on an independent footing and placed on a level with the Books of Samuel and Kings, he utterly denies any indebtedness at all, on its part, to these, and in cases where the transcription is word for word, maintains that separate independent sources were made use of,--a needless exaggeration of the scientific spirit, for the author of the Book of Kings himself wrote the prayer of Solomon and the epitome, at least, without borrowing from another source; the Chronicler therefore can have derived it, directly or indirectly, only from him. In reply to all this, one can only repeat what has already been said by De Wette. It may be that the Chronicler has produced this picture of old Israel, so different in outline and colour from the genuine tradition, not of his own suggestion and on his own responsibility, but on the ground of documents that lay before him. But the historical character of the work is not hereby altered in the smallest degree, it is merely shared by the so-called "sources." 2Maccabees and a multitude of other compositions have also made use of "sources," but how does this enhance the value of their statements? That value must in the long run be estimated according to their contents, which, again, must be judged, not by means of the primary sources which have been lost, but by means of the secondary literary products which have survived. The whole question ultimately resolves itself into that of historical credibility; and to what conclusions this ]eads we have already seen. The alterations and additions of Chronicles are all traceable to the same fountain-head--the Judaising of the past, in which otherwise the people of that day would have been unable to recognise their ideal. It was not because tradition gave the Law and the hierocracy and the _Deus ex Machina_ as sole efficient factor in the sacred narrative, but because these elements were felt to be missing, that they were thus introduced. If we are to explain the _omissions_ by reference to the "author's plan," why may we not apply the same principle to the _additions_? The passion displayed by Ewald ( Jahrbb. x. 261) when, in speaking of the view that Manasseh's captivity has its basis in Jewish dogmatic, he calls it "an absurdly infelicitous idea, and a gross injustice besides to the Book of Chronicles," recalls B. Schaefer's suggestive remark about the Preacher of Solomon, that God would not use a liar to write a canonical book. What then does Ewald say to the narratives of Daniel or Jonah? Why must the new turn given to history in the case of Manasseh be judged by a different standard than in the equally gross case of Ahaz, and in the numerous analogous instances enumerated in preceding pages (p. 203 seq.). With what show of justice can the Chronicler, after his statements have over and over again been shown to be incredible, be held at discretion to pass for an unimpeachable narrator? In those cases at least where its connection with his "plan" is obvious, one ought surely to exercise some scepticism in regard to his testimony; but it ought at the same time to be considered that such connections may occur much oftener than is discernible by us, or at least by the less sharp-sighted of us. It is indeed possible that occasionally a grain of good corn may occur among the chaff, but to be conscientious one must neglect this possibility of exceptions, and give due honour to the probability of the rule. For it is only too easy to deceive oneself in thinking that one has come upon some sound particular in a tainted whole. To what is said in 2Samuel v. 9, "So David dwelt in the stronghold (Jebus), and he called it the city of David, and he built round about from the rampart and inward," there is added in 1Chronicles xi. 8, the statement that "Joab restored the rest of the city (Jerusalem)." This looks innocent enough, and is generally accepted as a fact. But the word XYH for BNH shows the comparatively modern date of the statement, and on closer consideration one remembers also that the town of Jebus at the time of its conquest by David consisted only of the citadel, and the new town did not come into existence at all until later, and therefore could not have been repaired by Joab; in what interest the statement was made can be gathered from Nehemiah vii. 11. In many cases it is usual to regard such additions as having had their origin in a better text of Samuel and Kings which lay before the Chronicler; and this certainly is the most likely way in which good additions could have got in. But the textual critics of the _Exegetical Handbook_ are only too like-minded with the Chronicler, and are always eagerly seizing with both hands his paste pearls and the similar gifts of the Septuagint. It must be allowed that Chronicles owes its origin, not to the arbitrary caprice of an individual, but to a general tendency of its period. It is the inevitable product of the conviction that the Mosaic law is the starting-point of Israel's history, and that in it these is operative a play of sacred forces such as finds no other analogy; this conviction could not but lead to a complete transformation of the ancient tradition. Starting from a similar assumption, such an author as C. F. Keil could even at the present day write a book of Chronicles, if this were not already in existence. Now, in this aspect, for the purpose of appraising Chronicles as the type of that conception of history which the scribes cherished, the inquiry into its "sources" is really important and interesting. References to other writings, from which further particulars can be learned, are appended as a rule, to the account of each sovereign's reign, the exceptions being in the cases of Joram, Ahaziah, Athaliah, Amon, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Zedekiah. The titles referred to in this way may be classed under two groups: (1.) The Book of the Kings of Israel and Judah, or of Judah and Israel (in the cases of Asa, Amaziah, Jotham; Ahaz, Josiah, and Jehoiakim), with which the Book of the Kings of Israel (in the cases of Jehoshaphat and Manasseh; comp. 1Chronicles ix. 1) is identical, for the kingdom of the ten tribes is not reckoned by the Chronicler. (2.) The Words of Samuel the Seer, Nathan the Prophet, and Gad the Seer (for David; 1Chronicles xxix. 29; comp. xxvii. 24; Ecclus. xlvi. 13, xlvii. 1); the Words of Nathan the Prophet, the Prophecy of Ahijah of Shiloh and the Vision of Iddo the Seer concerning Jeroboam ben Nebat (for Solomon; 2Chronicles ix. 29); the Words of Shemaiah the Prophet and Iddo the Seer (for Rehoboam; xii. 15); the words of Jehu ben Hanani, which are taken over into the Book of the Kings of Israel (Jehoshaphat; xx. 34); a writing of Isaiah the prophet (Uzziah; xxvi. 22), more precisely cited as the Vision of Isaiah the Prophet, the son of Amoz, in the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel (Hezekiah; xxxii. 32); the Words of the Seer in the Book of the Kings of Israel (Manasseh; xxxiii. 18; comp. also ver. 19). Following in the footsteps of Movers, Bertheau and others have shown that under these different citations it is always one and the same book that is intended, whether by its collective title, or by the conventional sub-titles of its separate sections. /1/ Bertheau calls ******************************************* 1. In Ezra and Nehemiah also the Chronicler has not used so many sources as are usually supposed. There is no reason for refusing to identify the "lamentations" of 2Chronicles xxxv. 25, with our Lamentations of Jeremiah: at least the reference to the death of Josiah (Jos., Ant. x. 5, 1), erroneously attributed to them, ought not in candour to be regarded as such. ******************************************* attention to the fact that ordinarily it is either the one or the other title that is given, and when, as is less usual, there are two, then for the most part the prophetic writing is designated as a portion of the Book of the Kings of Israel (xx. 34, xxxii. 32; and, quite vaguely, xxxiii. 18). The peculiar mode of naming the individual section-/1/-at a time when chapters and verses were ****************************************** 1 Romans xi. 2: )EN (HLLLA| TI LEGEI )H GRAFH i.e., How stands it written in the section relating to Elijah? ******************************************* unknown--has its origin in the idea that each period of the sacred history has its leading prophet [)AXRIBHS TWN PROFHTWN DIADOXH; Jos., c. Ap. i. 8), but also at the same time involves (according to xxvi. 22, in spite of ix. 29, xii. 15, xiii. 22; 1Chronicles xxix. 29) the notion that each prophet has himself written the history of his own period. Obviously, this is the explanation of the title _prophetae priores_ borne by the Books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings in the Jewish canon, and of the view which led to the introduction of 2Kings xviii. 18 seq. into the Book of Isaiah. The claims of history being slight, it was easy to find the needful _propheta eponymus_ for each section. Jehu ben Hanani, a northern Israelite of Baasha's time, has to do duty for Asa, and also for Jehoshaphat as well. Iddo the seer, who prophesied against Jeroboam ben Nebat, is the anonymous prophet of 1Kings xiii. (Jos., Ant. viii. 8, 5; Jer. on Zechariah i. 1); by this time it was possible, also, to give the names of the wives of Cain, and of the patriarchs. As regards a more definite determination of the date of the "Book of Kings" which lies at the foundation of Chronicles, a co-ordination of the two series of the Kings of Israel and Judah can only have been made after both had been brought to a close; in other words, not before the Babylonian exile. And in the Babylonian exile it was that the canonical Book of Kings actually came into existence, and the "Chronicles" of Israel and those of Judah were for the first time worked together by its author; at least he refers only to the separate works and knows of no previous combination of them. It would seem, therefore, very natural to identify the work alluded to in Chronicles with our present canonical book, which is similar in title and has corresponding contents. But this we cannot do, for in the former there were matters of which there are in the latter no trace; for example, according to 1Chronicles ix. 1, it contained family and numerical statistics for the whole of Israel after the manner of 1Chronicles i.-ix. (chapters for the most part borrowed from it) and according to 1Chronicles xxxiii 19, the Prayer of Manasseh. From these two data, as well as from the character of the items of information which may have been conjectured to have been derived from this source, the conclusion is forced upon us that the Book of Kings cited by the Chronicler is a late compilation far removed from actual tradition, and in relation to the canonical Book of Kings it can only be explained as an apocryphal amplification after the manner in which the scribes treated the sacred history. This conclusion, derived from the contents themselves, is supported by an important positive datum, namely, the citation in 2Chronicles xxiv. 27 of the Midrash [A.V. "Story"] of the Book of Kings, and in xiii. 22 of the Midrash of the prophet Iddo. Ewald is undoubtedly right when he recognises here the true title of the writing elsewhere named simply the Book of Kings. Of course the commentators assert that the word Midrash, which occurs in the Bible only in these two passages, there means something quite different from what it means everywhere else; but the natural sense suits admirably well and in Chronicles we find ourselves fully within the period of the scribes. Midrash is the consequence of the conservation of all the relics of antiquity, a wholly peculiar artificial reawakening of dry bones, especially by literary means, as is shown by the preference for lists of names and numbers. Like ivy it overspreads the dead trunk with extraneous life, blending old and new in a strange combination. It is a high estimate of tradition that leads to its being thus modernised; but in the process it is twisted and perverted, and set off with foreign accretions in the most arbitrary way. Jonah as well as Daniel and a multitude of apocryphal writings (2Maccabees ii. 13) are connected with this tendency to cast the reflection of the present back into the past; the Prayer of Manasseh, which now survives only in Greek, appears, as Ewald has conjectured, actually to have been taken direct from the book quoted in 2Chronicles xxxiii. 19. Within this sphere, wherein all Judaism moves, Chronicles also has had its rise. Thus whether one says Chromcles or Midrash of the Book of Kings is on the whole a matter of perfect indifference; they are children of the same mother, and indistinguishable in spirit and language, while on the other hand the portions which have been retained verbatim from the canonical Book of Kings at once betray themselves in both respects. CHAPTER VII. JUDGES, SAMUEL, AND KINGS. In the history of Hebrew literature, so full as it is of unfortunate accidents, one lucky circumstance at least requires to be specially mentioned. Chronicles did not succeed in superseding the historical books upon which it was founded; the older and the newer version have been preserved together. But in Judges, Samuel, and Kings even, we are not presented with tradition purely in its original condition; already it is overgrown with later accretions. Alongside of an older narrative a new one has sprung up, formerly independent, and intelligible in itself, though in many instances of course adapting itself to the former. More frequently the new forces have not caused the old root to send forth a new stock, or even so much as a complete branch; they have only nourished parasitic growths; the earlier narrative has become clothed with minor and dependent additions. To vary the metaphor, the whole area of tradition has finally been uniformly covered with an alluvial deposit by which the configuration of the surface has been determined. It is with this last that we have to deal in the first instance; to ascertain its character, to find out what the active forces were by which it was produced. Only afterwards are we in a position to attempt to discern in the earlier underlying formation the changing spirit of each successive period. VII.I. VII.I.1. The following prologue supplies us with the point of view from which the period of the judges is estimated. "After the death of Joshua, the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and forsook the Lord God of their fathers, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, the Baals and Astartes. And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and He delivered them into the hands of spoilers, that spoiled them and sold them into the hand of their enemies round about; whithersoever they went out the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had said, and as the Lord had sworn unto them; and they were greatly distressed. Nevertheless the Lord raised up unto them judges, and was with the judge, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge, for it repented the Lord because of their groanings, by reason of them that oppressed them and vexed them. And it came to pass when the judge was dead that they returned and corrupted themselves more than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them; they ceased not from their own doings, nor from their stubborn way. And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel," &c. &c. (Judges ii.). Such is the text, afterwards come the examples. "And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and forget the Lord their God, and served the Baals and Astartes. Therefore the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and He sold them into the hand of Chushan-Rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia, and they served him eight years. And when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised up to them a helper, Othniel b. Kenaz, and delivered the king of Mesopotamia into his hand, and the land had rest forty years. And Othniel b. Kenaz died." The same points of view and also for the most part the same expressions as those which in the case of Othniel fill up the entire cadre, recur in the cases of Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson, but there form only at the beginning and at the end of the narratives a frame which encloses more copious and richer contents, occasionally they expand into more exhaustive disquisitions, as in vi. 7, x. 6. It is in this way that Judges ii.-xvi. has been constructed with the workman-like regularity it displays. Only the six great judges, however are included within the scheme; the six small ones stand in an external relation to it, and have a special scheme to themselves, doubtless having been first added by way of appendix to complete the number twelve. The features which characterise this method of historical work are few and strongly distinctive. A continuous chronology connects the times of rest and their separating intervals, and thereby the continuity of the periods is secured. In order justly to estimate this chronology, it is necessary to travel somewhat beyond the limits of Judges. The key to it is to be found in 1Kings vi. 1. "In the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of the reign of Solomon, he began to build the house of the Lord." As observed by Bertheau, and afterwards by Noldeke, who has still farther pursued the subject, these 480 years correspond to 12 generations of 40 years each. Analogously in 1Chronicles v. 29-34 [vi. 2-8], 12 high priests from Aaron to Ahimaaz are assumed for the same period of time, and the attempt was made to make their successions determine those of the generations (Numbers xxxv. 28). Now it is certainly by no means at once clear how this total is to be brought into accord with the individual entries. Yet even these make it abundantly plain that 40 is the fundamental number of the reckoning. The wandering in the wilderness, during which the generation born in Egypt dies out, lasts for 40 years; the land has 40 years of rest under Othniel, Deborah, and again under Gideon; it has 80 under Ehud; the domination of the Philistines lasts for 40 years, the duration also of David's reign. On the necessary assumption that the period of the Philistines (Judges xiii. 1), which far exceeds the ordinary duration of the foreign dominations, coincides with that of Eli (1Samuel iv. 18), and at the same time includes the 20 years of Samson (Judges xvi. 31), and the 20 of the interregnum before Samuel (1Samuel vii. 2), we have already 8 x 40 accounted for, while 4 x 40 still remain. For these we must take into account first the years of the two generations for which no numbers are given, namely, the generation of Joshua and his surviving contemporaries (Judges ii. 7), and that of Samuel to Saul, each, it may be conjectured, having the normal 40, and the two together certainly reckoning 80 years. For the remaining 80 the most disputable elements are the 71 years of interregna or of foreign dominations, and the 70 of the minor judges. One perceives that these two figures cannot both be counted in,--they are mutually exclusive equivalents. For my own part, I prefer to retain the interregna; they alone, so far as we can see at present, being appropriate to the peculiar scheme of the Book of Judges. The balance of 9 or IO years still remaining to be applied are distributed between Jephthah (6 years), and Solomon (down to the building of the temple), who claims 3 or 4 years, or, if these are left out of account, 3 years may be given to Abimelech. The main thing, however, is not the chronology, but the religious connection of the events. The two are intimately associated, not only formally, as can be gathered from the scheme, but also by a real inner connection. For what is aimed at in both alike is a connected view of large periods of time, a continuous survey of the connection and succession of race after race, the detailed particulars of the occurrences being disregarded; the historical factors with which the religious pragmatism here has to do are so uniform that the individual periods in reality need only to be filled up with the numbers of the years. One is reminded of the "Satz," `"Gegensatz," and "Vermittelung" of the Hegelian philosophy when one's ear has once been caught by the monotonous beat with which the history here advances, or rather moves in a circle. Rebellion, affliction, conversion, peace; rebellion, affliction, conversion, peace. The sole subjects of all that is said are Jehovah and Israel; their mutual relation alone it is that keeps the course of things in motion, and that too in opposite directions, so that in the end matters always return to their original position. "They did what was evil in the sight of Jehovah, they went a-whoring after strange gods,"-such is the uninterrupted key-note. Although Jehovistic monolatry is so potently recommended from without, it yet takes no firm root, never becomes natural to the people, always remains a precept above and beyond their powers. For decennia on end indeed they hold fast to it, but soon their idolatrous tendency, which has only been repressed by fear of the judge during his lifetime, again finds expression; they must have a change. Now this rebellion is indeed quite indispensable for the pragmatism, because otherwise there would be nothing at all to tell; it is on the unrest in the clock that the whole movement depends. But at the same time this is of course no extenuation; the conduct of the people is manifestly totally inexcusable, the main actions, the deeds of the judges, are for this manner of historical treatment always only proofs of Israel's sin and of the unmerited grace of Jehovah that puts them to shame. That all this is no part of the original contents of the tradition, but merely a uniform in which it is clothed, is admitted. _Numero Deus impare gaudet_. It is usual to call this later revision Deuteronomistic. The law which Jehovah has enjoined upon the fathers, and the breach of which He has threatened severely to punish (ii. 15, 21), is not indeed more definitely characterised, but it is impossible to doubt that its quintessence is the injunction to worship Jehovah alone and no other God. Now in this connection it is impossible to think of the Priestly Code, for in that document such a command is nowhere expressly enjoined, but, on the contrary, is assumed as a matter of course. Deuteronomy, on the other hand, has in fact no precept on which it lays greater emphasis than the "Hear, O Israel-"-that Jehovah is the only God, and the worship of strange gods the sin of sins. This precept was apprehended much more clearly by contemporaries than the moral demands in the interest of humanity and kindness which are also insisted on in Deuteronomy, but are not new, being derived from older collections; on this side alone, in so far as it follows up the monotheism of the prophets into its practical consequences within the sphere of worship, has Josiah's law-book had historical importance, on this side alone has it continued to act upon Ezekiel and those who came after him. If, then, the norm of the theocratic relationship assumed in the redaction of the Book of Judges is to be sought in a written Torah, this can indubitably only be that of Deuteronomy. The decisive settlement of the question depends in a comparison with the Book of Kings, and must accordingly be postponed until then. VII.I.2. As for the relation between this superstructure and that on which it rests, there is a striking difference between the two styles. The revised form in which the Book of Judges found its way into the canon is unquestionably of Judaean origin, but the histories themselves are not such,--nay, in the song of Deborah, Judah is not reckoned at all as belonging to Israel. The one judge who belongs to the tribe of Judah is Othniel, who however is not a person, but only a clan. What is said of him is quite void of contents, and is made up merely of the schematic devices of the redactor, who has set himself to work here, so as to make the series open with a man of Judah; the selection of Othniel was readily suggested by Judges i. 12-15. Here again we have an exception which proves the rule. More important are the inner differences which reveal themselves. To begin with the most general,--the historical continuity on which so much stress is laid by the scheme, is in no way shown in the individual narratives of the Book of Judges. These stand beside one another unconnectedly and without any regard to order or sequence, like isolated points of light which emerge here and there out of the darkness of forgetfulness. They make no presence of actually filling up any considerable space of time; they afford no points of attachment whereon to fasten a chronology. In truth, it is hardly the dim semblance of a continuity that is imparted to the tradition by the empty framework of the scheme. The conception of a period of the judges between Joshua and Saul, during which judges ruled over Israel and succeeded one another almost as regularly as did the kings at a later period, is quite foreign to that tradition. It is impossible to doubt that Judges i., xvii., xviii. have the best right to be reckoned as belonging to the original stock; but these portions are excluded from reception within the scheme, because they have nothing to say about any judges, and give a picture of the general state of affairs which accords but ill with that plan. /1/ ********************************************** 1. The redaction, as is well knows, extends only from ii. 6 xvi. 31, thus excluding both i. 1-ii. 5, and xvii. 1-xxi. 24. But it is easy to perceive how excellently the first portion fits into its place as a general introduction to the period between Moses and the monarchy, and how much more informing and instructive it is in this respect than the section which follows. There exists besides a formal connection between i. 16 and iv. 11. As regards chaps. xvii., xviii., this story relating to the migration of Dan northwards is plainly connected with that immediately preceding where the tribe still finds itself "in the camp of Dan," but is hard pressed and obtains no relief even with the aid of Samson. In the case of chaps. xix.-xxi., indeed, it admits of doubt whether they were excluded from the redaction, or whether they were not extant as yet; but it is worth noticing that here also chaps. xvii., xviii. are assumed as having gone before. The Levite of Bethlehem-Judah testifies to this, and especially the reminiscence contained in xix. 1, which, as we shall see, has nothing to rest on in chaps. xix.-xxi. Compare further xx. 19 with i. 1 seq. ******************************************** At the bottom of the spurious continuity lies an erroneous widening of the areas in which the judges exerted their influence. Out of local contiguity has arisen succession in time, what was true of the part having been transferred to the whole; it is always the children of Israel in a body who come upon the scene, are oppressed by the enemy, and ruled by the judges. In reality it is only the individual tribes that come into the action; the judges are tribal heroes,--Ehud of Benjamin, Barak and Deborah of Issachar, Gideon of Joseph, Jephthah of Gilead, Samson of Dan. It was only for the struggle against Sisera that a number of tribes were united, receiving on that account extraordinary praise in the song of Deborah. It is nowhere said "at the time when the judges ruled," but "at the time when there was yet no king over Israel, and every man did what was right in his own eyes; " the regular constitution of the period is the patriarchal anarchy of the system of families and septs. And in chap. i, division and isolation are made to appear not unclearly as the reason why the Canaanites were so long of being driven out from the greater cities; matters did not change until Israel became strong, that is to say, until his forces were welded into one by means of the monarchy. But the unity of Israel is the presupposition upon which rests the theocratic relation, the reciprocal attitude between Israel and Jehovah, whereby according to the scheme the course of the history is solely conditioned. In the genuine tradition the presupposition disappears, and in connection with this the whole historical process assumes an essentially different, not to say a more natural aspect. The people are no longer as a body driven hither and thither by the same internal and external impulses, and everything that happens is no longer made to depend on the attraction and repulsion exercised by Jehovah. Instead of the alternating see-saw of absolute peace and absolute affliction, there prevails throughout the whole period a relative unrest; here peace, there struggle and conflict. Failure and success alternate, but not as the uniform consequences of loyalty or disobedience to the covenant. When the anonymous prophet who, in the insertion in the last redaction (chap. vi. 7-10), makes his appearance as suddenly as his withdrawal is abrupt, improves the visitation of the Midianites as the text for a penitential discourse, the matter is nevertheless looked at immediately thereafter with quite different eyes. For to the greeting of the angel, "Jehovah is with thee, thou mighty man of velour," Gideon answers, "If Jehovah be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all His miracles, of which our fathers told us ? "He knows nothing about any guilt on the part of Israel. Similarly the heroic figures of the judges refuse to fit in with the story of sin and rebellion: they are the pride of their countrymen, and not humiliating reminders that Jehovah had undeservedly again and again made good that which men had destroyed. Finally, with what artificiality the sins which appear to be called for are produced, is incidentally made very clear. After the death of Gideon we read in chap. viii. 33, "the children of Israel went a-whoring after the Baals, and made Baal Berith their god." But from the following chapter it appears that Baal or El Berith was only the patron god of Shechem and some other cities belonging to the Canaanites; the redactor transforms the local worship of the Canaanites into an idolatrous worship on the part of all Israel. In other cases his procedure is still more simple,--for example, in x. 6 seq., where the number seven in the case of the deities corresponds with the number seven of the nations mentioned in that connection. Ordinarily he is content with "Baals " or "Astartes " or "Asheras," where the plural number is enough to show how little of what is individual or positive underlies the idea, not to mention that Asheras are no divinities at all, but only sacred trees or poles. In short, what is usually given out as the peculiar theocratic element in the history of Israel is the element which has been introduced by the redaction. There sin and grace are introduced as forces into the order of events in the most mechanical way, the course of events is systematically withdrawn from all analogy, miracles are nothing extraordinary, but are the regular form in which things occur, are matters of course, and produce absolutely no impression. This pedantic supra-naturalism, "sacred history" according to the approved recipe, is not to be found in the original accounts. In these Israel is a people just like other people, nor is even his relationship to Jehovah otherwise conceived of than is for example that of Moab to Chemosh (chap. xi. 24). Of theophanies and manifestations of the Godhead there is no lack, but the wonders are such as to make one really wonder. Once and again they interrupt the earthly nexus, but at the same time they form no connected system; they are poetry, not prose and dogma. But on the whole the process of history, although to appearance rougher and more perplexed, is nevertheless in reality much more intelligible, and though seemingly more broken up, actually advances more continuously. There is an ascent upward to the monarchy, not a descent from the splendid times of Moses and Joshua (Judges i. 28-35, xiii. 5, xviii. 1). One narrative, it is true, apart from that relating to Othniel, which is not to be reckoned here, is exactly what sacred history ought to be in order to fit into the theoretical scheme,--I mean Judges xix.-xxi. To appreciate it rightly it will be well first of all to cast a glance upon the preceding narrative relating to the migration of the tribe of Dan to the north. The Danites, 600 strong, fall upon the Canaanite town of Laish not because it lies within the limits assigned to the people of God, and because its conquest is a duty--though they inquire of the oracle, they are nevertheless far from relying on the divine right so plainly made known in the Book of Joshua--but because it is inhabited by a peaceable and unsuspecting people, which is quite defenceless against such a band of desperadoes; and they have as little scruple in practicing the same treachery to Israelites such as Micah. They take it that might is right, and recognise no restraining consideration; their conduct is natural to the verge of absolute shamelessness. And yet they are pious in their way; how highly they value Jehovah they show by this, that they steal His image out of the house of God, and the priest who keeps it into the bargain. As for the religious usages mentioned in the two chapters, hardly an abomination forbidden by the Law is wanting: the private sanctuary in the possession of the Ephraimite Micah, the grandson of Moses as priest in his service and pay, ephod and teraphim as the requisite necessaries in the worship of Jehovah; and yet all this is so recounted by the narrator as if it were all quite regular and void of offence, although his purpose in doing so is not to narrate temporary departures from rule, but the origin of permanent institutions at a chief sanctuary of ancient Israel. One is translated into another world on passing from this to the narrative immediately following, about the shameful deed of the Benjamites and their exemplary punishment; a greater or more instructive contrast as regards religious history is hardly to be found in all the Old Testament. In Judges xx.-xxi. it is not as invariably elsewhere the individual tribes which act, not even the people Israel, but the congregation of the covenant, which has its basis in the unity of worship. The occasion of their action is a sin committed in their midst which must be done away; it is the sanctity of the theocracy which brings these 400,000 men to arms and fills them at once with unction and with sanguinary zeal. The clerical instincts have entirely taken possession of this uniform mass, have passed into their flesh and blood, and moulded them into a single automaton, so that all that takes place is invariably done by all at once. No individuals come to the front, not even by name, still less by deeds of velour; the moral tone is anything but heroic. When the godless reprobates of Gibeah seek to assail the person of the Levite who is passing the night there, he hands over to them his wife in order to save himself, and all Israel finds nothing objectionable in this revolting act of cowardice, the opinion probably being that by his conduct the holy man had kept the sinners from still graver guilt. "Of the Mosaic law not a word is said in these chapters, but who could fail to perceive that the spirit which finds its expression in the law pervaded the community which acted thus? Had we more narratives of similar contents we should be able to solve many a riddle of the Pentateuch. Where under the monarchy could we find an Israel so united, vigorous, earnest, so willing to enter upon the severest conflict for the sake of the highest ends? "Thus Bertheau, rightly feeling that this story has a quite exceptional position, and contradicts all that we learn from other quarters of the period of the judges or even the kings. Only we cannot reckon it a proof of the historic value of the story, that it gives the lie to the rest of the tradition in the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, and is homogeneous not with these books but with the Law. On the other hand, the writer betrays himself with a self-contradiction, when, unconsciously remembering the preceding chapters, he laments the disorganisation of the time he is dealing with (xix. 1, xxi. 25), and yet describes Israel to us as existing in a religious centralisation, such as demonstrably was never attained in the earlier life of the nation, but only came about as a consequence of the exile, and is the distinctive mark of Judaism. As this narrative is not one of those included in the Deuteronomistic scheme of the Book of Judges, there may be a question whether it presupposes the Deuteronomic law only, or the priestly law as well. Its language has most points of contact with Deuteronomy; but one extremely important expression and notion, that of "the congregation of the children of Israel," points rather to the Priestly Code. The same may be said of Phinehas ben Eleazar ben Aaron (xx. 28). The latter, however, occurs but once, and that in a gloss which forms a very awkward interruption between "and the children of Israel inquired of Jehovah," and the word "saying" which belongs to that phrase. We have also to remark that there is no mention of the tabernacle, for which there is no room in addition to Mizpeh (p. 256), so that the principal mark of the Priestly Code is wanting. It is only in preparation, it has not yet appeared: we are still standing on the ground of Deuteronomy, but the way is being prepared for the transition. VII.I.3. Going a step further back from the last revision we meet with an earlier effort in the same direction, which, however, is less systematically worked out, in certain supplements and emendations, which have here and there been patched on to the original narratives. These may be due in part to the mere love of amplification or of talking for talking's sake, and in so far we have no further business with them here. But they originated partly in the difficulty felt by a later age in sympathising with the religious usages and ideas of older times. Two instances of this kind occur in the history of Gideon. We read (vi. 25-32), that in the night after his call Gideon destroyed, at the commandment of Jehovah, the altar of Baal in Ophra, his native town, as well as the Ashera which stood beside it; and that in place of it he built an altar to Jehovah, and burned on it a yearling bullock, with the wood of the Ashera for fuel. The next morning the people of Ophra were full of indignation, and demanded that the author of the outrage should be given up to them to be put to death; his father, however, withstood them, saying, "Will ye contend for Baal? Will ye save him? If he be a god, let Baal contend (Heb. Jareb Baal) for himself." In consequence of this speech Gideon received his second name of Jerubbaal. This conflicts with what is said in an earlier part of the chapter. There Gideon has already made an altar of the great stone under the oak of Ophra, where he saw Jehovah sitting, and has offered upon it the first sacrifice, which was devoured by flames breaking out of themselves, the Deity Himself ascending in the flames to heaven. Why the two altars and the two stories of their inauguration, both tracing their origin to the patron of Ophra? They do not agree together, and the reason is plain why the second was added. The altar of a single stone, the flames bursting out of it, the evergreen tree, the very name of which, Ela, seems to indicate a natural connection with El, /1/--all this was in the eyes of a later *************************************** 1. )LH, )LWN, in Aramaic simply tree, in Hebrew the evergreen, and in general the holy tree (Isaiah i. 29 seq.) mostly without distinguishing the species. Not only are oaks and terebinths included, but also palms. For the )LWN DBWRH at Bethel is elsewhere called TMR; Elim derives its names from the 70 palms, and the same may be the case with Elath on the Red sea. *************************************** generation far from correct, indeed it was Baal-work. A desire that the piety of Gideon should be above suspicion gave rise to the second story, in which he erects an altar of Jehovah in place of the former altar of Baal. How far this desire attained its end we may best judge from the kindred effort to remove another ground of offence, which lies in the name Jerubbaal. In accordance with the occasion out of which the name is said to have arisen it is said to mean, "Let Baal contend." Etymologically this derivation is extremely far-fetched, and from every point of view impossible: the name of a god is only assumed by those who are his worshippers. In Hebrew antiquity Baal and El are interchangeable and used indifferently; Jehovah Himself is spoken of up to the times of the prophet Hosea as the Baal, i.e., the lord. This is distinctly proved by a series of proper names in the families of Saul and David, Ishbaal, Meribaal, Baaljada, to which we may now add the name Jerubbaal given to the conqueror of Midian. If then even in the time of the kings Baal was by no means simply the antipode of Jehovah, whence the hostile relation of the two deities, which Jerubbaal displays by the acts he does, although he praises the great Baal by wearing his name? The view, also, that the Ashera was incompatible with the worship of Jehovah, does not agree with the belief of the earlier age; according to Deuteronomy xvi. 21, these artificial trees must have stood often enough beside the altars of Jehovah. The inserted passage itself betrays in a remarkable manner that its writer felt this sort of zeal for the legitimate worship to be above the level of the age in question. We receive the impression that the inhabitants of Ophra do not know their worship of Baal to be illegitimate, that Gideon also had taken part in it in good faith, and that there had never been an altar of Jehovah in the place before. Of a somewhat different form is a correction which is to be found at the close of the history of Gideon (viii. 22 seq.). After the victory over the Midianites the Israelites are said to have asked Gideon to be king over them. This he declined out of regard to Jehovah the sole ruler of Israel, but he asked for the gold nose-rings which had been taken from the enemy, and made of them an image of Jehovah, an ephod, which he set up in Ophra to be worshipped. "And all Israel went thither a-whoring after it, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his house." Now the way in which such a man acts in such a moment is good authority for the state of the worship of Israel at the time, and not only so, but we cannot impute it to the original narrator that he chose to represent his hero as showing his thankfulness to the Deity by the most gratuitous declension from His worship, as in fact crowning His victory with an act of idolatry. This is seen to be the more impossible when we consider that according to the testimony of Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah, such images were even in the Assyrian period a regular part of the belongings of the "houses of God" not only in Samaria but in Judah as well. We have also to remember that the contradiction between a human kingship and the kingship of Jehovah, such as is spoken of in these verses, rests upon theories which arose later, and of which we shall have more to say. /1/ Studer will thus be correct in his assertion that the ****************************************** 1. "The words of Gideon are only intelligible on the presupposition that the rule of Jehovah had a visible representative prophet or priest. But this was not the case in the period of the judges, as Gideon's own history shows us." Vatke, p. 263. We see besides from ix. 1 seq. that Gideon really was the ruler of Ephraim and Manasseh. ***************************************** old tradition could not see anything in Gideon's refusing the gold for himself and dedicating it to God but a fine proof of his unselfishness and piety, and that in viii. 22-27 we have a secondary product, in which the original features of the story are distorted so as to make them suit later tastes. The second hand has unfortunately supplanted in this instance the work of the first. The older narrative breaks off (viii. 21) with the words: "Gideon took away the ornaments that were on the necks of the camels of the kings." What he did with them we do not learn, but naturally we must suppose that it was of them that he made the ephod. According to the secondary passage, which begins immediately after viii. 21, he used for this purpose the nose-rings which the whole of Israel had taken from all the Midianites, amounting in weight to 1700 shekels, besides the ornaments of the kings and of their camels. The proportion is similar to that between the 600 Danites in chap. xviii. and the 25,700 Benjamites in chap. xx., or between the 40,000 men of Israel in v. 8, and the 400,000 in xx. 2. VII.I.4. In the last place it is possible to trace even in the original narratives themselves certain differences of religious attitude which indicate to us unobtrusively and yet clearly that tendency in the development of the tradition which reached its end in the revision and ornamentation of which we have hitherto been speaking. This is especially the case with regard to those narratives which are preserved to us in a double form. These are not frequent in Judges, but they do occur. A very simple case of the kind is seen on comparing chap. iv. with chap. v. The Canaanites again lift their heads under their great king Sisera, and from their towns in the plains harass the hill villages of the new settlers. Deborah unites the Hebrew tribes for the contest. From the North and from the South the hosts of Jehovah descend before our eyes towards Jezreel, the prophetess Deborah at their head, the warrior Barak at her side. The conflict takes place at the brook Kishon, and ends with the defeat of the kings of Canaan. Sisera himself is killed in the flight by Jael, the wife of a nomad Kenite. Such are the contents of the song in chap. v. In the preceding narrative (chap. iv.) we should expect to find a historical commentary on the song, but we find a mere reproduction in which the special features of the story are blurred and falsified. Instead of the kings of Canaan we have the king of Canaan, as if Canaan had been a kingdom. Sisera, the head of the Canaanite kings, is transformed into a mere general; the oppression of the Hebrews is made general and indefinite. Jael murders Sisera when he is Iying in a deep sleep by driving a tent-peg into the ground through his temples. There is nothing of this in the song: there he is drinking when she strikes the blow, and is conceived as standing at the time, else he could not bow down at her feet and fall, and lie struck dead where he fell (ver. 27). In the song the campaign is prepared with human means. Negotiations are carried on among the tribes, and in the course of these differences crop up. The lukewarmness or the swelling words of some tribes are reproved, the energetic public spirit and warlike courage of others praised. In the narrative, on the contrary, the deliverance is the work of Jehovah alone; the men of Israel are mere dummies, who show no merit and deserve no praise. To make up for this, interest is concentrated on the act of Jael, which instead of being an episode becomes the central point of the whole narrative. Indeed it is announced as being so, for Deborah prophesies to Barak that the glory of the conflict will not be his but a woman's, into whose hand the enemy is to be sold; it is not the hero, not human strength, that accomplishes what is done: Jehovah shows His strength in man's weakness. And Barak's part in the work is depreciated in yet another way. Deborah summons him to go not to the battle, but to the holy hill of Tabor, where Jehovah will bring about what is further to happen; he, however, objects to this, and insists that the prophetess herself shall go with him. This is regarded as a caprice of unbelief, because the prophetess is thought to have exhausted her mission when she transmitted the command of the Deity to His instrument: she has appeared for no end but to make it known through her prophecy that Jehovah alone brings everything to pass. In the song this is different. There Barak is not summoned against his will; on the contrary, he has a personal motive for taking up arms: "Arise, Barak; take captive thy captors, thou son of Ahinoam." And the prophetess has not only to prophesy; she works in a more psychological manner; she is part of the battle, and inflames with her song the courage of the fighting battalions: "Awake, Deborah, awake, sing the song!" /1/ Throughout these variations of ********************************************** 1. Ver. 12 is a summons to begin the battle, and Deborah cannot here be singing the song of triumph which celebrates its happy issue. For a similar reason the translation given above, "take captive thy captors," is the more natural and correct. ************************************************ the prose reproduction we feel that the rich colour of the events as they occurred is bleached out of them by the one universal first cause, Jehovah. The presence and energy of Jehovah are not wanting in the song; they are felt in the enthusiasm which fills the Hebrew warriors, and in the terror and panic which confound the prancing vigour of the foe. But in the prose narrative, the Divine action is stripped of all mystery, and mechanic prophecy finds no difficulty in showing distinctly and with sober accuracy what the part of the Deity in the history has been. But the more special the intervention of Deity, the further is it from us; the more precise the statements about it, the less do we feel it to be there. There is another instance in the Book of Judges of the occurrence of the same historical material in two different forms; it is the story of Gideon of the Manassite house of Abiezer. Studer saw that there is a break between viii. 3 and viii. 4, and that the two stories, from the one of which we pass to the other at that point, have to be understood separately; viii. 1-3 is the conclusion of the first story. We have been told how, after the success of the first attack on the Midianites, Gideon raised the levy of all Israel for the pursuit, and how then the Ephraimites seized the fords of the Jordan before the arrival of the flying nomads and got the two leaders of the Midianites into their hands. Now we hear in conclusion that the Ephraimites, elated by their success began to find fault with Gideon, but that he pacified their wrath by saying, "What have I done now in comparison of you? Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abiezer? God hath delivered into your hand the princes of Midian, and what was I able to do in comparison of you?" A domestic contention like this about the respective shares in the victory could only arise when the victory had been gained, when the strife with the enemy was fought out; the metaphor of harvest and gleaning shows that the victory was complete and all the fruits of it gathered in. Chapter viii. 1-3 concludes the business, and the following narrative is not a continuation of what has gone before, but a second version of the story in which many of the circumstances are quite different. According to vii. 23 seq. there was a great army on foot, but in viii. 4 seq. Gideon has only his own three hundred men with him. In viii. 1-3 the vintage and the gleaning are over and the object of the fighting is attained; but in viii. 4 seq. Gideon pursues the enemy without any interruption, and when he asks the men of Succoth and Penuel for bread for his wearied and hungry troops, they inquire sarcastically whether he is already certain of success, so that it should be necessary for them to espouse his cause. The two chiefs who in the former account are called the princes Oreb and Zeeb, and are already taken, are here called the kings Zebah and Zalmunna, and are not taken yet. Unfortunately the beginning of viii. 4 seq. is not preserved, and we cannot make out whether the pursuit in which we find Gideon here engaged was preceded by an action. Such a supposition is not exactly impossible, yet the distance to which the nomads had carried their booty, and their carelessness in camp, make it more likely that the occurrence was like that in 1Samuel xxx. This, however, makes no difference as to the particulars with regard to which the two narratives conflict with each other. But how did the difference arise? This we shall best learn by comparing the beginnings of the two stories. We remarked that the second, as it stands, wanted a beginning, but what is wanting may be to some extent supplied from what follows. According to viii. 4 seq., Gideon's aim is to get hold of the two kings of the Midianites: these appear all through as the particular enemies whom he is pursuing: as to the rest of the Midianites he is more or less indifferent. And the reason, as we learn from viii. 18 seq., is that the two kings had slain his brothers at Tabor; it is to take vengeance for them that he sets out to pursue the slayers, and does not rest till they are in his hand. It is the duty of blood-revenge which causes him to take the war-path with his household, unconcerned by the disproportion in numbers between his followers and theirs: it is the powerful sentiment of family which sets him in motion and causes him to become, as it were incidentally, the liberator of Israel from the spoilers. In the first account (vi. 11-viii. 3) these natural motives have completely disappeared, and others have taken their place which are almost of an opposite character. Before anything has happened, before the Midianites have made their yearly incursion, Gideon, who expects nothing of the kind, is summoned by a theophany to battle against them. When they arrive he is seized by the Spirit and sets out against them. What is human in him has no part in the act he is called to do; flesh and blood set themselves against it. He is impelled by the direct impulse of Jehovah, and here, of course, he goes forth in behalf of the public interests of Israel, against the Midianites, not against their princes personally. And accordingly everything possible is done to cast the man into the shade behind the Deity. Gideon, according to the second account a distinguished and royal man, is in the first of a poor house and family; in the second story he is remarkable for irrepressible energy, but here he is timid and shrinking up to the last moment, and new miracles have constantly to be wrought to encourage and strengthen him. The 32,000 men with whom he takes the field he is ordered by Jehovah to send away all but l,000 and again all but 300, "lest Israel vaunt themselves against Me, and say, Mine own hand hath saved me." The weapons with which the nocturnal attack of the 300 is made are torches, pitchers, and trumpets; the men have not a hand left to hold swords (vii. 20); and the hostile army has accordingly to do itself the work of its own destruction (vii. 22). Few of the deviations of the religious version from the natural one are not transparent; one of these few is the removal of the scene to this side of the Jordan. Most of them are at once recognisable as due to the process of glorification, illumination, and religious inflation, by which the body of the tradition is etherealised and the story lifted up into the region of the air. For example, the company of Gideon at the main action, the attack on the hostile camp, consists of 300 men in chap. vii. as well as in chap viii.; but in chap. vii., to draw out the significance of the small number, they are treated as the last residuum of what was at first quite a considerable army; and this gives rise to a long story. We may also remark that chap. vi. begins with the relation in which the judge stood to the sanctuary of his native town, while chap. viii. closes with this. In the one case he discovers by a theophany, like the patriarchs in Genesis, the sacredness of the altar-stone under the oak; in the other he sets up, in far more realistic fashion, the plated image (ephod) he has made of the golden ornaments of the Midianite kings. History has to take account principally, if not exclusively, of the natural version, which is dry in tone and lets things speak for themselves, not overlaying the simple story with the significance of its consequences. The relation, however, is somewhat different from that which we found existing between Judges iv. and v. Chapter vi. seq. is not based directly on chap. viii., but was probably formed from independent oral material Though the local colour is lively, the historical reminiscences are extremely vague, and there has been a much freer growth of legend than in Jud. iv., producing pictures of greater art and more naivete. But in the field of miracle poetry is manifestly earlier than prose. In the case of those narratives which have come down to us in double form, the difference of standpoint is unmistakable; but it may also be perceived in cases where we have no direct parallels to compare. How noticeably does the story of Abimelech differ, say from that of Jephthah which follows it, in the rich detail of its facts, and in the spontaneous interest it shows in the secondary and subordinate links in the chain of events! There is no gilding with a supernatural nimbus; facts are simply and plainly set down such as they are; the moral is left to speak for itself as the story goes on. In the Samson legends again we find two souls united, as it were, in one body. Traits belonging to the rough life and spirit of the people are wrought, especially at the beginning and end of the narrative, into a religious national form; yet the two stand in an inner contrast to each other, and it is scarcely probable that the exploits of this grotesque religious hero were at first conceived in the Spirit of Jehovah, of which, in the story as we have it, they are the product. More probably the religious way of telling the story was preceded by a way considerably more profane; but we cannot now separate the older stage from that which is more recent. We may also remark that the contrast of historical and unhistorical is obviously inapplicable to this case, and, moreover, is unessential for the end we have in view. Only it may stand as a general principle, that the nearer history is to its origin the more profane it is. In the pre-Deuteronomic narratives, the difference is to be recognised less in the _kind_ of piety than in the _degree_ of it. VII.II. VII.II.1. The comprehensive revision which we noticed in the Book of Judges has left its mark on the Books of Samuel too. As, however, in this case the period is short, and extremely rich in incident, and really forms a connected whole, the artificial frame- and net-work does not make itself so much felt. Yet it is by no means wanting, as the dates of themselves indicate, whose place in the chronological system was shown above. It is worthy of notice how very loosely these are fitted into their context. In 1Samuel iv. 18 seq. we read: "And when the messenger made mention of the ark of God, Eli fell backwards off his seat, and his neck brake, and he died, for he was an old man and heavy, and _he judged Israel forty years_; and when his daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, who was with child, heard the tidings," etc. The statement of the date is not altogether inappropriately dragged in, indeed, yet it is easy to see that it is dragged in. In 2Samuel ii. 8-13 we read: "Abner, the captain of Saul's host, took Ishbaal the son of Saul, and brought him over the Jordan to Mahanaim, and made him king over Gilead and Geshur, and Jezreel, and Ephraim, and Benjamin, and all Israel. _Ishbaal was forty years old when he began to reign over lsrael, and he reigned two years_. But the house of Judah followed David. And the time that David was king in Hebron was seven years and six months. And Abner and the servants of Ishbaal went out from Mahanaim to Gibeon, and Joab with the servants of David went out to meet him." The words in italics <_..._> manifestly interrupt the connection; and with regard to Ishbaal's dates we have also to remark that from what we learn of him elsewhere he was, in the first place, still in the years of pupilage, and in the next must have reigned as long in Mahanaim as Oavid in Hebron. The number two connected with his reign is to be explained as in the case of Saul (1Samuel xiii. 1): _Saul was...years old when he began to reign, and he reigned two years over Israel_. In this verse, which is not found in the LXX, the number for the years of his life is wanting; and originally the number for the years of his reign was left out too: the _two_ is quite absurd, and has grown out of the following word for year, which in Hebrew has a somewhat similar appearance. In company with the chronological formulas, we find also the religious (1Samuel vii. 2-4). "While the ark abode in Kirjath-jearim, it was twenty years; and all the house of Israel came together after Jehovah. And Samuel spake unto the whole house of Israel, saying: 'If ye do return to Jehovah with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and the Astartes from among you, and prepare your hearts unto Jehovah, and serve Him only; and He will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.' And the children of Israel did put away the Baals and Astartes, and served Jehovah only." We are not told, in what precedes this passage, of any act of declension from Jehovah, and according to chap. iv. the Israelites showed no want of faith in Jehovah in the unfortunate battle with the Philistines. This taking for granted that the yoke of a foreign rule was laid on them as a punishment for their sins is characteristic. A further example occurs in the speech of Samuel (1Samuel. xii.), which, as the introduction to the time of the kings, may be compared with Judges ii., the introduction to the time of the judges. "Stand still that I may reason with you before Jehovah of all the righteous acts of Jehovah with which He did right to you and to your fathers! When Jacob was come into Egypt, your fathers cried to Jehovah, and He sent Moses and Aaron and brought your fathers out of Egypt and made them dwell in this land. And when they forget Jehovah their God, He sold them into the hand of Sisera, captain of the host of Hazor, and into the hand of the Philistines, and the Moabites, and they fought against them. And they cried unto Jehovah, and said, We have sinned, because we have forsaken Jehovah and have served Baal and Astarte, but now deliver us out of the hand of our enemies and we will serve Thee. And Jehovah sent Jerubbaal, and Barak, and Jephthah, and Samuel, and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side, and ye dwelled safe. And when ye saw that Nahash the king of the children of Ammon came against you, ye said unto me, Nay, but a king shall reign over us, when Jehovah your God is your king. Now therefore behold the king whom ye have desired; behold, Jehovah has set a king over you. If ye will hear Jehovah and serve Him and obey His voice, and not rebel against the commandment of Jehovah, good: but if ye rebel against the commandment of Jehovah, then shall the hand of Jehovah be against you as it was against your fathers." It is the familiar strain: rebellion, affliction, conversion, peace, Jehovah the keynote, and the first word and the last. The eye does not dwell on the details of the story; the gaps in the tradition are turned to account as well as its contents, which are concentrated at so few points. Details are regarded only as they bear on the whole; the periods are passed in review in a broad and general style, and the law enunciated which connects them with one another. In doing this Samuel seems to presuppose in his hearers a knowledge of the biblical history in a distinct form; and he even speaks without hesitation of his own historical significance. The hearers are bidden to look back upon a period in the living movement of which they themselves are standing, as if it were a dead past. As they are thus lifted up to the height of an objective contemplation of themselves and their fathers, in the end the result which was to be expected takes place: they become conscious of their grievous sin. Confronted with the Deity they have always an uneasy feeling that they deserve to be punished. VII.II.2. The Deuteronomist revision asserts itself, it is true, only in these two places, or rather this one place; but this is the principal epoch in the book--the transition to the monarchy which is associated with the name of Samuel. And on this account the revision here acts the more trenchantly; it is not only an addition to give a new flavour to the older tradition; it changes the nature of the tradition entirely. For the passages we have just quoted from it are merely fragments of a considerable connected historical scheme. The first piece of this scheme, vii. 2-17, first claims our attention. After summoning the children of Israel to repentance (vii. 2-4), Samuel convokes an assembly of them at Mizpeh, near Jerusalem, in order to entreat for them that the Philistine affliction may be turned away. This measure is of course closely connected with the previously-mentioned abolition of idolatry: for, after the guilt has ceased, the punishment also must be removed. They assemble, draw water to pour it out before Jehovah, fast, and confess their sins, at Mizpeh. When the Philistines hear this, they are on the spot the very same day and fall upon the assembly at its prayers. Samuel, however, sacrifices a sucking lamb and cries for help to Jehovah, and the engagement takes place while he is so occupied. Jehovah thunders terribly against the Philistines and throws them into disorder, so that they are forced to yield, and are pursued to a great distance. And the Philistines, this is the end of the narrative, were humbled and came no more into the coasts of Israel; and the hand of Jehovah was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel, and the cities which the Philistines had taken from Israel were recovered; Ekron and Gath and their coasts did Israel take from the Philistines, and there was peace between Israel and the Amorites. The mere recapitulation of the contents of this narrative makes us feel at once what a pious make-up it is and how full of inherent impossibilities: to think of all that is compressed into the space of this one day! But we have also to remark the utter contradiction of the whole of the rest of the tradition. In the history which follows we find the domination of the Philistines by no means at an end; not only do they invade the Israelite territory several times in Samuel's lifetime, they are in possession of the land of lsrael, and one of their governors lives at Gibeah in the midst of Benjamin. The struggle with them is the true and real origin and task of the monarchy. The writer had no idea that Samuel had discharged this labour and won this victory already, and had even "restored " Ekron and Gath. On the contrary, the yoke of the Philistines lay most heavily on Israel just in his days. There cannot be a word of truth in the whole narrative. Its motives, however, are easily seen. Samuel is a saint of the first degree (Jeremiah xv. 1), and in the theocracy, i.e., in the religious community such as ancient Israel is represented to have been, cut to the pattern of Judaism, such a man must take his place at the head of the whole. His influence must have prevailed to exclude idolatry and unfaithfulness to Jehovah on the part of the people; and the general character of the time must on the whole have answered to the type he set before it. But here a very unpleasant difficulty suggests itself. If the fact of Samuel being at the head is sufficient guarantee that all was as it should be within the state, how can there have been such great pressure externally, so as to endanger the very existence of the people? If men do their part, how can Jehovah fail to do His? On the contrary, it must be believed that the righteousness which prevailed within had its counterpart in the external vindication of His people by Jehovah. Even under Samuel the Philistines were with God's help driven across the border, and as long as he lived they were not seen within it again. The piety of a praying assembly was suitably acknowledged by Jehovah, who dropped into its lap a success such as in after times the sword of warlike kings sought long and in vain to achieve. But this example of history corrected does not stand alone, and becomes completely intelligible only when taken in connection with the similar pieces which belong to it. 1Samuel vii. is continued in chap. viii., and chap. viii. again in x. 17-xii. 25. Samuel, after setting the land free from foreign tyranny, conducts a quiet and successful reign till old age comes upon him. His sons, however, whom he has made his assessors, do not walk in his steps; and the elders of Israel make this the occasion to ask him to give them a king. But this is a mere pretext for their sinful desire to shake off the divine rule and to be like the heathen round about them. Samuel is extremely indignant at their ingratitude, but is directed by Jehovah to comply with their request. "They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them; according to all the works that they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt, wherewith they have forsaken Me and served other gods. so do they also unto thee." It is in vain that Samuel exhibits to them an alarming catalogue of the rights of the king: they are not to be moved from their determination, and he accordingly summons a general convention of the people at Mizpeh (viii. 22, x. 17). There, after the opening lecture, lots are drawn for the king, and Saul is chosen, whereupon Samuel has still to write down the law of the kingdom and lay it up before Jehovah. The people are then dismissed; "and Saul also went home to Gibeah, and with him the warriors whose heart God had touched, but the children of Belial despised him, and said 'How shall this man save us!'" But Saul is at this point only king _de jure_; he does not become king _de facto_ until after he has proved himself, chap. xi. After an interval of a month (x. 27 LXX) the men of Jabesh, besieged by the Ammonites and in great straits, send messengers throughout Israel to implore speedy assistance, since in seven days they have to surrender to their enemies and each of them to lose his right eye. The messengers come to the town of Saul, Gibeah in Benjamin, and tell their message before the people; the people lift up their voices and weep. Saul meanwhile comes from the field with a yoke of oxen, and, observing the general weeping, asks what has happened. The story is told him, and at once the Spirit of God comes upon him and his anger is kindled greatly; he hews in pieces his oxen and sends the pieces throughout Israel with the summons: Whoever does not come forth to the battle, so shall it be done to his oxen! And the fear of Jehovah falls on the people, and they go out as one man and relieve the besieged town. Hereupon "the kingdom is renewed" for Saul at Gilgal, and only now does Samuel abdicate his government, in the long speech (chap. xii.) a considerable portion of which was given above. That chap. xi. is now an integral part of this version of the history is clear from xii. 12, and also from xi. 12-14. But it was not originally designed for this connection. For we hear nothing of the warriors who according to x. 26 were in company with Saul; it is not on his account that the messengers of Jabesh came to Gibeah. When the supposed king comes home from ploughing, nothing is done to indicate that the news concerns him specially: no one tells him what has happened, he has to ask the reason of the general weeping. He summons the levy of Israel not in virtue of his office as king, but in the authority of the Spirit, and it is owing to the Spirit acting on the people that he is obeyed. Only after he has showed his power and defeated the Ammonites do the people make him king (xi. 15); the "renewal" of the kingdom (xi. 14), after a month's interval, is a transparent artifice of the author of viii. 10, 1) seq. to incorporate in his own narrative the piece which he had borrowed from some other quarter: the verses xi. 12-14 are due to him. Chapter xi. stood originally in connection with the other narrative of the elevation of Saul (ix. 1-X. 16). Hero Saul first appears engaged in searching for strayed she-asses. After a vain search of several days he arrives in the neighbourhood of Ramah, and at the suggestion of his servant applies for information as to the asses to a seer there, to Samuel. His approach has been announced to the seer by Jehovah the day before: "To-morrow I will send to thee a man out of the land of Benjamin, and thou shalt anoint him to be ruler over My people Israel; he shall save them from the Philistines." He was accordingly expecting him, and had instituted a sacrificial feast on the bamah for him even before he arrived. At this moment Samuel has gone down to the town between the sacrificial act and the meal which followed it, and just as he is going back to his guests he meets in the gate Saul, who is asking for him, and at a whisper from Jehovah he recognises in him his man. He takes him up with him to the bamah, reassures him about the asses, and then at once tells him to what high things he is called, and gives him convincing proofs that he had reckoned on his presence at the feast as the guest of the occasion. He then gives him lodgings for the night, and accompanies him on his way next morning. The servant is sent on a little way before, Samuel stands still and anoints Saul, for a sign that he is chosen by Jehovah to be the king and deliverer of Israel, and in conclusion instructs him that, when the opportunity for action comes, he is to use it, in the consciousness that God is with him. On his way home three signs come to pass which the seer had announced to him. He is thus assured that all that was said to him was true; his heart is changed by degrees till he cannot contain himself; on his arrival at Gibeah his acquaintances are struck with his strange demeanour, but he does not disclose even to his most intimate friend at home what Samuel had said to him, but waits for the things that shall come to pass. This is the point arrived at in x. 16. It is clear that thus far no conclusion has yet been reached: the seed that is sown must spring up, the changed spirit must produce its effects. And this requirement is abundantly satisfied if chap. xi. is regarded as immediately continuing the story from x. 16. After about a month, the opportunity presents itself for Saul to act, which Samuel had bidden him to look for. While others are weeping at the disgrace which threatens an Israelite town at the hands of the Ammonites, he is filled with the Spirit and with rage, the arrow is still in his heart from that conversation, and he now does "what his hand finds to do." The result is a great success; the word of the seer finds its fulfilment in the most natural way in the world. If chap. xi. belongs originally to the narrative of ix. 1.-x. 16, it follows at once that the other sections are dependent and later. But what is the inner relation of the one version to the other? They coincide in their ideas here and there. In the one story Saul seeks the asses and finds the crown, in the other he hides himself among the stuff and is drawn forth king. In the one he is called by the seer, in the other he is chosen by lot--the divine causality operative in both cases. But how the idea is exaggerated at the later stage, and how nakedly it is put forward! And if there is this similarity of view, yet the deviation of the secondary version from the original is much more striking than the resemblance. For its tendency we are prepared by chapter vii. Samuel has set his countrymen free from their enemies, and ruled over them afterwards in righteousness and prosperity; why then should they desire a change in the form of government? They have just as much and as little reason for desiring this as for the falling away from Jehovah, which also is a periodical craving on their part, whenever they have had some years' rest: it is the expression of the deep-seated heathenism of their nature. That is the account of chapter viii. with what belongs to it. Chapter ix. seq., however, gives quite a different account. Here, at the end of the period of the judges, Israel is not at the summit of power and prosperity, but in a state of the deepest humiliation and the means of saving the people from this state is seen in the monarchy alone. And this difference is closely connected with another as to the view taken of the authority of Samuel. In chap. viii. as in chap. vii. he is the vicegerent of Jehovah, with unlimited authority. He feels the institution of the monarchy to be his own deposition, yet the children of Israel by no means rebel against him; they come to him to ask him for a king. He might have refused the request; he might also have given them a ruler according to his own good pleasure, but as a correct theocrat he leaves the decision to Jehovah. At the end he solemnly lays down the government he has hitherto carried on, and hands it over to his successor. The latter is superior to him in point of title, but not in point of power: indeed in the latter respect he is rather inferior to Samuel, being a mere earthly prince (xii. 23 seq.). But how do matters stand in chap. ix. seq.? Here Samuel is quite a stranger to Saul, who knows neither his name nor his residence. Only his servant has heard of Samuel, who enjoys a high reputation as a seer in his own neighbourhood. What we are to think of when we read of a seer of that period, we are clearly and circumstantially informed: for Samuel is consulted as to the whereabouts of strayed she-asses, and a fee of a quarter of a silver shekel is tendered to him for his advice. This seer stands, it is clear, above the average of those who practiced the same calling; yet his action on the history is quite within the limits of what was possible, say to Calchas: it exhibits not a trace of the legislative and executive power of a regent of the theocracy. He does not bring help; he only descries help and the helper. The very event which, according to chap. viii. seq., involved the removal of Samuel from his place and his withdrawal to the background of the history, is here the sole basis of his reputation: the monarchy of Saul, if not his work, is his idea. He announces to the Benjamite his high calling, interpreting in this the thoughts of the man's own heart (ix. 19). With this his work is done; he has no commission and no power to nominate his successor in the government. Everything else he leaves to the course of events and to the Spirit of Jehovah which will place Saul on his own feet. In the great difference which separates these two narratives we recognise the mental interval between two different ages. In the eyes of Israel before the exile the monarchy is the culminating point of the history, and the greatest blessing of Jehovah. It was preceded by a period of unrest and affliction, when every man did what was right in his own eyes, and the enemies of Israel accordingly got everything their own way. Under it the people dwell securely and respected by those round about; guarded by the shelter of civil order, the citizen can sit under his own vine and his own fig-tree. That is the work of the first two kings, who saved Israel from his spoilers, and gave him power and rest. No difference is made between them in this respect: the one commenced the work which the other completed (1Samuel ix. 16, xiv. 48; 2Samuel iii. 18, xix. 9). Before them there was no breathing space left in the hard work of fighting, but now there is time to think of other things. Even Deuteronomy, which was written not long before the exile, regards the period before the monarchy as a time of preparation and transition, not to be counted complete in itself: Israel must first acquire fixed seats and a settled way of living, and then Jehovah also will choose a seat for Himself and make known His desires with regard to the cultus. David brought things so far that the people had room and struck firm roots into the ground, and ceased to tremble before their enemies, who had kept them on the strain from the beginning, and all the days of the judges; and under his successor the time came when the temple could be built and higher interests receive attention. That Hebrew antiquity knew nothing of any hostility or incompatibility between the heavenly and the earthly ruler is plain from the title Anointed of Jehovah, and from the hope of the prophets, whose ideal future would be incomplete without a human king. The ancient Israelites were as fully conscious as any other people of the gratitude they owed to the men and to the institutions by whose aid they had been lifted out of anarchy and oppression, and formed into an orderly community, capable of self-defence. Of this the Books of Samuel afford the most eloquent testimony. /1/ ***************************************** l In Balaam's view of the happy future of Israel (Numbers xxiii. seq.), the monarchy is spoken of as one of Israel's chief blessings. Generally (xxiii. 21): "Jehovah his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them." With reference to Saul (xxiv. 7): "And his king triumphs over Agag. and his kingdom shall be exalted." To David (xxiv. 17): "I see him, though not now; I behold him, though not nigh: there rises (ZRX) a star out of Jacob and a rod out of Israel, and smites in pieces the temples of Moab and the skull of all the sons of Seth: and Edom also becomes a conquest." According to Deuteronomy xxxiii. 4, 5, the monarchy and the Torah are the two great gifts of God's grace to Israel. ****************************************** The position taken up in the version of 1 Samuel vii. viii. x. 17 seq. xii., presents the greatest possible contrast to this way of thinking. There, the erection of the monarchy only forms a worse stage of backsliding from Jehovah. There can be no progress beyond the Mosaic ideal; the greater the departure from it the greater the declension. The capital sin of placing a human ruler on the throne of Jehovah makes even the period of the judges appear not quite black. Dark as the colours are with which that period is generally painted, it held fast to the original form of the theocracy, and so appears somewhat brighter: at last indeed, to heighten the contrast, it is represented as a splendid age. Under the rule of Samuel, everything was as it should be. Should we ask, _how_ were things then? what was exactly the nature of the theocratic constitution? we receive, it is true, no satisfactory answer to the question. We might draw conclusions with regard to the body from the head: but what sort of an idea can we form of the position of Samuel? As he appears in these chapters, we entirely fail to dispose of him in any of the categories applicable to the subject; he is not a judge, not a priest, not a prophet,--if at least we use these words with their true historical meaning. He is a second Moses? Yes, but that does not tell us much. So much only is clear, that the theocracy is arranged on quite a different footing from the kingdoms of this world, and that it amounts to a falling away into heathenism when the Israelites place a king at their head like other nations, and he keeps courtiers and ministers, officers and soldiers, horses and chariots. It is accordingly a spiritual community: the spiritual character of the regent places this beyond doubt. Samuel admonishes the people to give up idolatry; he presides at the great day of repentance at Mizpeh, which forms an epoch in the sacred history; and Jehovah can refuse nothing to his prayers and cries (xii. 1 7). "God forbid," he says in taking leave of them (xii. 23), "that I should cease to pray for you and teach you the good way." Such is his position: and the citizens of the theocracy have the corresponding duty of cultivating the worship of Jehovah, and not withdrawing themselves from the guidance of the representative of Deity. They do not need to trouble themselves about means for warding off the attacks of their enemies; if they fast and pray, and give up their sins, Jehovah hurls back the foe with His thunder and lightning, and so long as they are pious He will not allow their land to be invaded. All the expenses are then naturally superfluous by which a people usually safeguards it own existence. That this view is unhistorical is self-evident; and that it contradicts the genuine tradition we have seen. The ancient Israelites did not build a church first of all: what they built first was a house to live in, and they rejoiced not a little when they got it happily roofed over (xi. 15). But we have still to add, in conclusion, that the idea here before us can only have arisen in an age which had no knowledge of Israel as a people and a state, and which had no experience of the real conditions of existence in these forms; in other words. It is the offspring of exilic or post-exilic Judaism. At that time the nation was transformed into a religious community, whose members were at liberty to concentrate themselves on what they held to be the great business of life, worship and religiousness, because the Chaldeans or the Persians had relieved them of all care for worldly concerns. At that time, accordingly, the theocracy _existed_, and it is from that time that it is transported in an idealised form to early times. The material basis on which the theocracy rested in fact, namely, the foreign domination, is put out of sight, and it is counted heathenism in the old Israelites that they cared for the external conditions of their national existence, that they are a people in the full sense of the word, and seek to maintain themselves as such with the weapons which are found necessary in the work-a-day world. It naturally never came into the heads of these epigoni to conceive that the political organisation and centralisation which the monarchy called into being provided the basis for the organisation and centralisation of the worship, and that their church was merely a spiritualised survival of the nation. What is added to Moses is taken away from the monarchy. One more point has to be noticed. The chapters vii. viii. x. 17 seq. xii. betray a close relationship with Judges xix.-xxi., not only by their general tendency, but by a geographical detail in which the two passages agree. It is only here that Mizpeh, near Jerusalem, occurs as the place of meeting of all Israel; we find no further mention of the place in the whole period of the judges and the kings. Only after the destruction of Jerusalem is it mentioned, and there as the centre of the new Jewish community instituted by the Chaldeans (Jeremiah xl. seq.) as the substitute of the old capital. It appears once more, and in a similar character, in I Maccabees iii. 46 seq. at a time when the temple of Jerusalem was in the hands of the Syrians, and the Jews could not get to it. The Mizpeh of Judges xx., 1Samuel vii. 10, is probably the same as that of Jeremiah xl. seq., and intended to be, like these, in place of Jerusalem, the only legitimate sanctuary, which, however, did not exist at that early time. This is a further proof of the post-Deuteronomic and Jewish origin of these narratives, but at the same time an indication that, with every inclination to the views of the Priestly Code, the writer yet had not that code before him. For in that work the projection of Jerusalem into the period before Solomon is carried out in quite a different way: the tabernacle renders Mizpeh superfluous. It has also to be remarked that the rite of pouring out water (1Samuel vii.) is foreign to the Priestly Code. VII.II.3. The relation of Saul to Samuel is a subject which lends itself readily to general views, and the development of the tradition is visible in it in other particulars besides those we have mentioned. Taking the view of 1Samuel vii. viii. xii. as the lower limit, the narrative nearest in character is the story about Samuel contained in an insertion in chap. xiii. After Saul is made king at Gilgal by the levy with which he relieved Jabesh, he selects from it a body of men who camp with him and Jonathan at Gibeah and the neighbouring Michmash: and Jonathan, by killing the officer at Gibeah, gives the signal for battle with the old enemy of his race. The Philistines advance, and take up a position to the north of Gibeah, with only a deep valley between them and the Israelites. But Saul, we hear all at once, xiii. 7 (cf. ver. 4) was yet in Gilgal, and waited seven days for Samuel, according to the set time the latter had appointed; but Samuel did not come, and the warriors began to scatter. As he was himself offering the sacrifice without which no campaign could be commenced, Samuel arrived, and at once opened upon him. Saul defended his act with great force: the people were scattering, and Samuel had not come at the appointed time, and as the Philistines had advanced close up to Gibeah, he had found it impossible to delay longer, and had offered the sacrifice in order to advance against them. To all this Samuel's only answer was: "Thou hast done foolishly; if thou hadst kept the commandment of Jehovah, He would have established thy kingdom for ever, but now thy kingdom shall not continue; Jehovah has sought Him a man after His own heart, and appointed him to be ruler over His people, because thou hast not kept that which Jehovah commanded thee." So he said, and walked off; but Saul went with the army from Gilgal to Gibeah. At Gibeah, the following verse (xiii. 16) goes on, abode Saul and Jonathan, and their men, when the Philistines encamped in Michmash. The change of place distinctly shows the whole passage about the meeting of the king with the prophet at Gilgal (xiii. 7-15) to be an insertion by a later hand. At the beginning of the narrative Saul is at Gibeah (ver. 2, 3), and the Philistines seek him there, and halt before the place because they meet with resistance. All at once, at ver. 7, it is assumed without being stated, that Saul had stayed at Gilgal since he was chosen king till now, and had only now advanced from there against the Philistines who were waiting for him before Gibeah. Verse 16, however, gives us the impression that Saul had been posted at Gibeah with his men for some time, when the Philistines took up their camp over against them. Only in this way is justice done to the contrasted participle of state (_sedentes_) and inchoative perfect (_castrametati sunt_). And in the sequel the triumphant continuation of the story, especially in chap. xiv., shows no indication that the ominous scene in Gilgal weighed on the mind of Saul, or of the people, or of the historian. According to xiii. 7-15, Saul is to wait seven days for Samuel at Gilgal. Here there is a reference to x. 8, where the seer says to the future king, "Thou shalt go down before me to Gilgal, and I will come after thee there to offer sacrifices; seven days shalt thou tarry till I come and show thee what thou shalt do." This verse is condemned by other arguments than its connection with xii. 7-15. Samuel's object at this point, according to x. I-7, is to overcome the reluctance of the Benjamite who had gone forth to seek his asses, to undertake the high calling announced to him, and to inspire him with faith and confidence,--not to give him unintelligible directions as to what he is to do first when he has actually become king, and how long he has to wait for the seer at Gilgal. The schoolmaster tone of x. 8 is particularly out of place after the preceding words of ver. 7, that, when the three signs have come to pass, Saul is to do what his hand finds, because God is with him. This is surely giving him perfect freedom of action, and for the reason that God's Spirit is working in him, which "bloweth where it listeth," and suffers no interference from any authority. /1/ ************************************* 1. It is also clear that the writer of x. 8, xiii. 7-15 cannot possibly have found Samuel in Gilgal in chap. xi. before making him go there in chap. xiii. We have already seen xi. 12-14 to be a later addition; the name of Samuel must be interpolated in xi.7, too. In fact in xi. 15 the people, i.e., the army, acts quite of itself even in our present text. Hence it follows also, that x. 8, xiii. 7-15 are older than vii. viii. x. 17 seq. xii. *************************************** This insertion is based on an older account of the breach between Samuel and Saul in 1Samuel xv. Here also the matter of dispute is a sacrifice, and Gilgal is the scene; and this alone serves to explain how Gilgal is adhered to in xiii. 7-15 in spite of all impossibility, as being the right and necessary place for the occurrence. Jehovah, by the mouth of Samuel, commands the king to devote the Amalekites to destruction because of an act of treachery they had committed against Israel in ancient times, and to spare no living thing. Saul accordingly makes war on the Amalekites and defeats them; but he does not carry out the proscription entirely, as he spares the best of their cattle and their king Agag, whom he takes prisoner. At Gilgal, where the victory is celebrated before Jehovah, he is called to account for this by Samuel, and states that he intended the booty for a sacrifice to Jehovah. His statement, however, makes no impression. "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams: behold, rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim. Because thou hast rejected the word of Jehovah, He also hath rejected thee." The king acknowledges his guilt, and tries to pacify Samuel; but the latter turns from him in anger, and when Saul lays hold of him, his mantle tears. "Jehovah hath torn the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and given it to one better than thee; and the Truthful One of Israel will not lie nor repent; for He is not a man, that He should repent." Yet at Saul's entreaty that he would at least not refuse to honour him before the people, Samuel takes part in the sacrifice, and even begins it by hewing Agag in pieces before Jehovah. Then they part, never to see each other again; but Samuel mourns for Saul, that Jehovah had repented of having made him king over Israel. There is another narrative intimately connected with this one in subject and treatment, thought and expression, namely, that of the witch of Endor. When Saul, shortly before the battle in which he fell, surveyed the hostile army, he was seized with anxiety and terror. He inquired of Jehovah, but received no answer, neither by dreams, nor by the ephod, nor by prophets. In his extremity he was driven into the arms of a black art which he had formerly persecuted and sought to extirpate. By night and in disguise, with two companions, he sought out a woman at Endor who practiced the raising of the dead, and after reassuring her with regard to the mortal danger connected with the practice of her art, he bade her call up Samuel. She, on seeing the spirit ascending, at once perceives that the man he had come up to converse with is the king himself; she cries out loud, but allows herself to be reassured, and describes the appearance of the dead person. Saul does not see him, only hears him speak. "Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? Jehovah doeth to thee as He spake by me: He rends the kingdom out of thy hand, and gives it to another, because thou obeyedst not the voice of Jehovah, nor executedst His fierce wrath upon Amalek; to-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me, and Jehovah also shall deliver the host of Israel into the hands of the Philistines." At these words Saul falls all his length on the ground. He had eaten nothing all the day before and all night; he is with difficulty induced to take some food: then he rises up with his men to go and meet his fate (1 Samuel xxviii. 3-25). Comparing with this original the copy in xiii. 7-15, we are struck, in the first place, with the placing of the rupture so much earlier. Scarcely is Saul made king when he is deposed, on the spot, at Gilgal. And for what reason? Samuel has fixed, in a purely arbitrary fashion, the time he is to wait, and Saul waits, and makes arrangements for departure only when the time has run out, although the need is pressing; and for this he is rejected! It is clear that Samuel has from the first felt towards him as a legitimate prince feels to a usurper; he has arranged so as to find an occasion to show unmistakably where they both stand. Strictly speaking he did not find the occasion, Saul having observed the appointed time; but the opinion is present, though unexpressed, that the king was not entitled to sacrifice, either before the expiry of the seven days or at any time: his sacrificing is regarded as sacrilege. And thus the autonomous theocracy stands all at once before our eyes, which no one thought of before Ezekiel. We are reminded of the stories of Joash and Uzziah in the Chronicles. The incidents in 1Samuel xv. xxviii. are similar, but the spirit of the narrative is different and more antique. The rejection does not come here with such mad haste, and we do not get the impression that Samuel is glad of the opportunity to wash his hands of the king. On the contrary, he honours him before the people, he mourns that Jehovah has rejected him; and Saul, who never again sees him alive, turns to him dead in the hour of his extremity, and does not regard him as his implacable enemy. Again, in the former case the king's offence is that he has too low an estimate of the sacredness of sacrifice, and fails to regard the altar as unapproachable to the laity: while in the latter case he is reproached with attaching. to sacrifice far too high a value. In the former case, in fine, the Deity and the representative of the Deity act with absolute caprice, confront men stiffly with commands of incredible smallness, and challenge them to opposition; in the latter, the conduct of Samuel is not (supposing it to have been the custom to devote enemies to destruction) unintelligible, nor his demeanour devoid of natural spirit; he appeals not to an irresponsible position, but to the manifest truth that obedience is better than the fat of rams. Not that chapters xv. and xxviii. belong to the original growth of the tradition. In the case of xxviii. 3-25 it is easy to show the insertion: the thread of xxviii. 1, 2, coming from chapter xxvii. is continued at xxix. 1. According to xxviii. 4 the Philistines have advanced as far as Shunem in Jezreel; in xxix. 1 they are only at Aphek in Sharon, and they do not go on to Jezreel till xxix. 11. To prove an insertion in the case of chap. xv. we might point to the fact that there is a direct connection between xiv. 52 and xvi. 14; but this must be proved somewhat circumstantially. Let it suffice, then, to say that in the preceding narrative of Saul's history, the war with the Amalekites appears in quite a different light (ix. 1-X. 16, xi. xiii. xiv.; cf. also Numbers xxiv. 7). The occasion of it, according to xiv. 48, lay in the needs of the time, and the object was the very practical one of "saving Israel out of the hands of them that spoiled them." There is nothing here to suggest that the campaign was undertaken in consequence of a religious command, to punish the Amalekites for an offence over which long ages had passed, and information about which could only be gathered from historical books dealing with the age of Moses. Both the narratives, chap. xv. as well as chap. xxviii, are preludes of events afterwards to happen. At chap. xvi. David appears upon the scene; he is thenceforth the principal person of the story, and thrusts Saul on one side. Chapter xv. is the prophetic introduction to this change. The fact had been handed down that Saul was chosen by Jehovah to be king. How was it possible that in spite of this his rule had no continuance? Jehovah, who as a rule does not change His mind, was mistaken in him; and Samuel, who called the king, had now to his great sorrow to pronounce the sentence of rejection against him. The occasion on which he does this is evidently historical, namely, the festival of victory at Gilgal, at which the captured leader of the Amalekites was offered up as the principal victim. The sacrifice of Agag being quite repugnant to later custom, it was sought to account for it by saying that Saul spared the king, but Jehovah required his death, and caused him to be hewn in pieces at the altar by Samuel. The rest could easily be spun out of this; it is superfluous to discuss how. Chapter xxviii., again, is related to chap. xv. as the second step to the first. No proof is wanted to show that this is the prophetic shadow cast before the fall of Saul in his last fight with the Philistines. His turning to the witch to call up to him the departed Samuel suggests in the most powerful way his condition of God-forsakenness since Samuel turned away from him. And, to conclude-the general colouring of the hostile relation between Saul and Samuel is borrowed from the actual relations which must have come to subsist between the prophets and the kings, particularly in the kingdom of Samaria (I Kings xiv. 7). In their treatment of this relation our narratives manifestly take up the prophetic position; and the doctrinal ideas of which they are made the vehicles clearly show them to be prophetic conceptions. VII.II.4. David is the first hero of Judah whom we meet with; and he at once throws all others into the shade. His acts are narrated to us in two detailed and connected works which are mutually complementary. The first of these is contained in 1Samuel xiv. 52-2 Sam viii 18, and in it we are circumstantially informed how David rose to the throne. There follows his principal achievement as king, the humiliation of the Philistines and the foundation of Jerusalem, the work concluding with a short notice of other remarkable circumstances. This narrative is preserved to us complete, only not in the earliest form, but with many interruptions and alterations. The second work, 2Samuel ix.-2Kings ii. is mutilated at its commencement, but otherwise almost completely intact, if 2Samuel xxi.-xxiv. be removed. It tells chiefly of the occurrences at the court of Jerusalem in the later years of the king, and carefully traces the steps by which Solomon, whose birth, with its attendant circumstances, is narrated at the outset, reached the throne over the heads of his brothers Amnon, Absalom, and Adonijah, who stood before him. Both works are marked by an essentially historical character. The treatment is much more detailed, while not nearly so poetical as in the history of Saul (1Samuel ix. seq.). There are no exaggerations, such as xiv. 46 seq. The second is the better work of the two, and frequently affords us a glance into the very heart of events, showing us the natural occasions and human motives which gave rise to the different actions. The point of view is, however, the narrow one of Jerusalem; for example, the real reasons of the revolt of the men of Judah under Absalom are scarcely even hinted at. The leading sentiment of the writer, there can be no doubt, is enthusiasm for David, but his weaknesses are not concealed; the relations prevailing at his court, far from edifying as they are, are faithfully reported, and the palace intrigue which placed Solomon upon the throne is narrated with a naivete which is almost malicious. The first work (1Samuel xvi.- 2Samuel viii.) gives a less circumstantial narrative, but follows the thread of events not less conscientiously, and is based on information little inferior to that of the second. The author's partisanship is more noticeable, as he follows the style of a biographer, and makes David the hero of the history from his very first appearance, although king Saul is the ruling and motive power in it. But Judaistic leanings were unavoidable, and they have not gone so far as to transform the facts, nor indeed operated in a different way or to a greater degree here than local interest in the tribal hero, which is always the earliest motive for narration, has done in other cases. This praise applies to 1Samuel xvi. seq., however, only so far as its original form goes. It is different with the insertions, here very numerous, which have crept into the older connection, or replaced a genuine piece of the old story with a newer edition of it. In these the tendency to idealise the founder of the dynasty of Judah has worked creatively, and here we find rich materials for the history of the tradition, in the rude style in which alone it is possible as yet to construct that history. The beginning of the first work especially is overgrown with later legendary formations. David, known as a man of courage and prudence, and of a skilful tongue, and recommended, moreover, by his skill on the harp, came to the king's court and became his armour-bearer (xvi. 14-23). He so approved himself in the war with the Philistines that Saul advanced him step after step, and gave him his daughter in marriage (xviii. 6 seq.). But the success and fame of the man of Judah filled Saul with jealousy, and in one of his fits of frenzy (to which x. 10 also shows him to have been subject) he threw his javelin at David, who was seeking to drive away the evil spirit by his playing (xix. 8-10). David agreed with Jonathan that it was advisable for him to absent himself, but this only confirmed the king's suspicions, which prompted him to destroy the priests of Nob, because their head had provided David with food and consulted the oracle for him (xxi 2-7, xxii. 6-23). The fugitive himself Saul failed to lay hands on; he gathered round him his own family and other desperate men, and became their leader in the wilderness of Judah (xxii. 1-5, xxiii. 1-13, xxv. 2 seq.). To escape the repeated persecutions of Saul, he at length passed over to the country of the Philistines, and received the town of Ziklag in Judah as a fief from the hands of the prince Achish (xxvii. 1 seq.). Such is the beginning of the history of David according to the simple thread of the old narrative. The first accretion we notice is the legend of the encounter of the shepherd boy with Goliath (xvii. 1-xviii. 5), which is involved in contradiction both with what goes before and with what follows it. According to xvi. 14-23, David, when he first came in contact with Saul, was no raw lad, ignorant of the arts of war, but "a mighty valiant man, skilful in speech, and of a goodly presence;" and according to xviii. 6 the women sang at the victorious return of the army, "Saul has slain his thousands of the Philistines, and David his tens of thousands," so that the latter was the leader of Israel beside the king, and a proved and well-known man. Evidently something of a different nature must originally have stood between xvi. 23 and xviii. 6. Now the fate of the story of Goliath (xvii. 1-xviii. 5) involves that of the story of the anointing of David (xvi. 1-13), which is dependent on it (xvi. 12, xvii. 42); and, as we have already decided that chapter xv. is a secondary production, xiv. 52 joins on at once to xvi. 14. In xviii. 6 seq., where we are told of the origin of Saul's jealousy, several of the worst additions and interruptions are wanting in the LXX, especially the first throwing of the javelin (xviii. 9-11) and the betrothal to Merab (xviii. 17-19). The insertions are most varied and confusing in the account of the outbreak of the hostility of Saul and of David's flight (chapters xix. xx). Chapter xix. 1-7, a pointless and artificial passage, betrays its later origin by its acquaintance with chapter xvii.; xviii. 29a (LXX) is continued at xix. 8. After Saul's spear-cast David takes flight for the first time, but at verse 11 he is still at home, and makes his escape the second time with the aid of feminine artifice, going to Samuel at Ramah, but to appear in chap. xx. at Gibeah as before. The king remarks his absence from table; Jonathan assures him of his father's favour, which, however, David doubts, though he has no distinct evidence to the contrary. When quite certain of the deadly hatred of the king, David takes flight in earnest; in chapter xxi. seq. we find him at Nob on his way to Judah, but at xxi. 10 he goes away afresh from the face of Saul. It is evident that in reality and in the original narrative the flight took place only once, and that it must from the first have been directed to the place of refuge, i.e., to Judah. This is enough to dispose of xix. 11-24: the twentieth chapter is impossible in the connection, at least in its present form, and in chapter xxi. verses 8-10 and 11-16 must be left out. In the section which deals with the freebooter life of David, chaps. xxiii-xxvii., considerable pieces have been added; xxvii. 7-12 of course is one; but also the encounters of David with his pursuers. There are two versions: the one, xxvi. 1-25, is placed before chapter xxvii. on account of verse 19; the other, xxiii. 14-xxiv. 22, is placed before chapter xxv. to avoid too near a contact. There is a good deal of verbal coincidence between the two, and we are entitled to regard the shorter and more pointed version (chapter xxvi.) as the basis. But the sequence (xxvi. 25, xxvii. 1) shows beyond a doubt that chapter xxvi. does not belong to the original tradition. The process of inserting the additions naturally was not completed without all sorts of editorial changes in the older materials, e.g., xvi. 14. Though proceeding from the same root, these offshoots are by no means of the same nature, nor do they all belong to the same stage of the process. Some of them are popular legends and unconscious fictions. Of this nature is the story of Michal, who takes the part of her husband against her father, lets him down in the evening with a rope through the window, detains the spies for a time by saying that David is sick, and then shows them the household god which she has arranged on the bed and covered with the counterpane (xix. 11-17). The scenes in which Saul and David meet are of a somewhat different colour, yet we notice that the conviction that the latter is the king of the future does not interfere with the recognition of the former as the king _de facto_ and the anointed of Jehovah; Saul too appears not wicked, but blinded. The secondary version (xxiii. 14 seq.) contains (not to speak of the distinctly later insertion between verse 15 and 19), in addition to the touching features of the story, a good-natured jest, telling how the two played hide-and-seek round a hill, which took its name from the circumstance. These stories present certain marks which serve to fix their date in the history of the religion: one is, that the image in David's house is spoken of quite simply; another, the expression in xxvi. 19, "If Jehovah have stirred thee up against me, let Him accept an offering, but if it be men, cursed be they before Jehovah, because they have driven me out this day from the fellowship in the land of Jehovah, and obliged me to serve other gods." It is perhaps not by mere chance that this speech is wanting in the parallel version, and that there is added in place of it a formal act of recognition which Saul pays at the end to his destined successor. As for the story of Goliath, it is also quite artless, but its religious colouring is much more marked. The speech with which David goes to meet the giant is characteristic on this side (xvii. 4 seq.): "Thou comest to me with a sword and with a spear, but I come unto thee in the name of Jehovah of hosts, whom thou hast defied. This day will He deliver thee into mine hand, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that this assembly (hqhl = Israel) may know that Jehovah saveth not with sword and spear, for the battle is His." This approaches to the religious language of the post-Deuteronomic time. According to 2Samuel xxi. 19, Goliath of Gath, whose spear-shaft was as thick as a weaver's beam, /1/ fought in the ******************************************** 1. This expression occurs in I Samuel xvii., and shows this legend to be dependent on 2Samuel xxi. xxiii., a collection of anecdotes about heroes from the Philistine wars of David in the genuine short popular style. Cf., on 1Chronicles xii., supra, p. 173. ******************************************** wars, not in Saul's time, but in that of his successor, and was killed, not by a shepherd boy but by a warrior of Bethlehem named Elhanan. The theme of David and Jonathan has no doubt a historical basis, but for us it is found only in second-hand versions. The story of the farewell (chapter xx.) must be placed in this category. Yet it appears to point back to an earlier basis, and the earlier story may very possibly have belonged to the connection of the original work. For the shooting of the arrow could only have a meaning if it was impossible for the two friends to have an interview. But as the story goes, they come together and speak out freely what they have in their hearts, and so the dumb signal is not only superfluous, but unintelligible and meaningless. But if the most characteristic trait of the whole story does not fit into it as it now stands, that is just saying that the story has not come down to us in its true form. Originally Jonathan only discharged the arrow, and called to his boy where it lay; and David, hid in the neighbourhood of the shooting range, heard in the call to the boy the preconcerted signal. In calling that the arrow was nearer him or beyond him, Jonathan was apparently telling the boy, but in reality telling his friend, to come towards him or go farther away from him. The latter was the case, and if so, the friends could not enter into conversation; the tearful farewell then disappears, and the sentimental speeches spoken before it in the same style, in which Jonathan virtually admits that his father is right, and yet decidedly espouses David's cause, disregarding the fact that David will deprive him of his inheritance. /2/ ********************************************* 2. Only in one direction does he set limits to his self-denial: he makes the future king solemnly promise to spare his family. Here manifests itself an interest belonging to the time of the narrator. The oriental custom according to which the new ruler extirpates the preceding dynasty, was not systematically carried out by David, and a special exception was made in favour of a son left by Jonathan. "All my father's house," says Meribaal (2Samuel xix. 28), "were dead men before my lord the king yet thou didst set me at thy table: what right have I therefore yet to complain unto the king (even about injustice)?" Now this son of Jonathan was the ancestor of a Jerusalem family which flourished till after the exile. Older traits in 1Samuel xx. are the importance attached to the new moon, the family sacrifice at Bethlehem, perhaps the stone )BN )CL which appears to have implied something inconsistent with later orthodoxy, the name being in two passages so singularly corrupted. ************************************************* Chapter xviii. 6 seq. manifests tendency in a bad sense, even apart from the additions of the Masoretic text. Here Saul's enmity against David is carried back to the very beginning of their relations together, and even his friendship is represented as dissembled hatred. All the honours with which the king covers his armour-bearer are interpreted as practices to get rid of him. He makes him his son-in-law in order to expose him to deadly danger in his efforts to procure the hundred foreskins of the Philistines which were the price of the daughter. The connection cannot dispense with xviii. 6 seq, but at the same time it is beyond doubt that the venomous way of interpreting the facts is a mark of later revision. For Saul here practices his perfidies with the cognisance of his servants, who must therefore have been well aware of his disposition towards David; but the old narrator proceeds on the opposite assumption, that his hatred appeared all at once, and that David had been held by all up to that time to be one of the king's favourite servants: cf. xxi. 2-xxii. 14 seq., not to speak of chapter xx. And this alone agrees with the nature of Saul as it is everywhere described to us. It is a characteristic circumstance that the corruption of the tradition is greatest in those narratives in which Samuel enters into the history of David. There are two insertions of this kind. According to xix. 18-24 David flees to the old man at Ramah, where the school of the prophets is; Saul sends messengers to take him, but these, when they come near Samuel and see him in command of a troop of ecstatic enthusiasts, are seized by the frenzy like the rest. The second set of messengers whom Saul sends, and the third, fare no better; and Saul has at last to come himself. But he also is drawn into the vortex, tears off his clothes and dances before Samuel and David, the only self-possessed spectators of the bacchantic company, till he falls down; and he lies naked as he is a whole day and a whole night upon the ground--whence the proverb, "Is Saul also among the prophets?" But that David when he fled, fled in earnest and went in the direction of Judah, instead of amusing himself by going first towards the north, is perfectly evident, as much so as that it is a serious abuse of the spirit of prophecy to make it serve ends which are foreign to its nature, and turn it into a mere instrument for the personal safety of David, who had no need whatever to wait for Saul at Ramah to play him a trick there. The narrative, which is unknown to the author of xv. 35, arose out of the proverb which is quoted in it, but this receives elsewhere (x. 12) a much more worthy interpretation. We can scarcely avoid the suspicion that what we have before us here is a pious caricature; the point can be nothing but Samuel's and David's enjoyment of the disgrace of the naked king. For the general history of the tradition the most interesting circumstance is that Samuel has here become the head of a school of prophets and the leader of their exercises. In the original view of the matter (chaps. ix. x.) he appears alone and independent, and has nothing to do with the companies of the ecstatics, the Nebiim. He is a _Roeh_ or seer, not a _Nabi_ or prophet. True, it is asserted in the gloss, ix. 9, that the two words mean the same thing, that what is now called _Nabi_ was formerly called _Roeh_. But that is scarcely quite correct. The author of ix. x. knows the name _Nabi_ very well too, but he never applies it to Samuel; he only uses it, in the plural, of the troops of Jehovah--intoxicated dervishes. He gives it quite a different meaning from _Roeh_, and also quite a different meaning from that in which Isaiah and Jeremiah use the word _Nabi_. /1/ ***************************************** 1 As the words are used in 1Samuel i.Y., Isaiah and Jeremiah would rather be called Roeh; and this is the justification of the gloss, ix. 9. *************************************** We cannot doubt that these distinctions rest on a historical basis, and only gradually melted away in later times: so that Samuel the seer need not be degraded into one of the flagellants. David's flight to Samuel presupposes some previous relation to him, and xix. 18 seq. seems to point back to xvi. 1-13. In this piece David's career begins with his being anointed king in Saul's place at Jehovah's command, when a mere shepherd boy, who was not even counted in the family he belonged to. But in the sequel no one knows anything about this. Even in the story of Goliath (which in other respects harmonizes better with xvi. 1-13 than any other piece) the older brothers, here three, not seven, know nothing of the anointing of the youngest, although they were present and heard their own claims discussed (xvii. 28). In the stories of David's persecution also, chapter xxiv. xxvi., Saul alone is the sacred person, the anointed of Jehovah, not David. A belief that David is chosen for high things by God is quite a different matter from an anointing which has already taken place in fact. And if consequent and antecedent be inseparable, we must remember how, according to xv. 35, Samuel not only withdraws himself from Saul till his death, but also feels grieved for him till his death. It is a harsh transition from xv. 35: "Samuel came no more to see Saul till the day of his death, because he mourned over him," to xvi. 1: "and Jehovah spake to him, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him?" But it appears clearly that the appointment of the successor was connected with, and a consequence of, the deposition of the predecessor. The anointing of David by Samuel is at the same time the set-off to the anointing of Saul by Samuel. This is clearly seen on comparing x. 6, xi. 6, "and the Spirit of God leapt upon Saul," with xvi. 13, 14, "and the Spirit of Jehovah leapt upon David, and it departed from Saul." In the former case the inspiration is a momentary foaming over, in the latter (the leaping notwithstanding) it is a permanent property; and this difference alone leaves no doubt as to where the original is to be looked for, and where the imitation. Saul alone, according to the old tradition, was made king in a divine, i.e. an overpowering and ideal manner: David was made king in a tedious human way, and after many intermediate stages. Of Saul alone was it originally told that the sudden outbreak of the spirit with which he, unelected as he was, summoned the levy of Israel, placed himself at its head, defeated the Ammonites, and became king, was quietly prepared by an old seer, who pointed out to him his great calling, and filled him with confidence in himself by secretly anointing him in the name of Jehovah. All that was known of David was how by his own energy he raised himself from a soldier to be the leader of a band, from that to be the vassal prince, under the Philistines, of Ziklag and Judah, and from a vassal prince to be the independent and powerful king of Israel. He also was anointed, not, however, beforehand by God, but after his elevation, by the elders of Judah and Israel. But this human origin and this inferiority in point of divine consecration to a predecessor whose kingdom, as it turned out, Jehovah had not made to stand, was found by a later age to be unworthy of him: he must at least have received his anointing from Samuel as well as Saul. And this was accordingly made good by the legend (xvi. 1-13). It is a step further on this downward path that in the Judaistic version (x. 17 seq.) all mention is omitted of the anointing of Saul. We return to Samuel. The Books of Samuel take their name from him, and he is a figure of great importance, if not for the history itself, yet for the history of the tradition, the progress of which may be measured by the change of view about his person. In the views taken about him we may distinguish four stages. Originally (ix. 1-x. 16) he is simply a seer, but at the same time a patriotic Israelite, who feels deeply the need of his country, and uses his authority as seer to suggest to the ear and to the mind of one whom he recognises as fit for the purpose, his destination to be Israel's deliverer and leader. This relation between seer and warrior must be held fast and regarded as historical if Samuel is to mean anything at all. Similar instances are those of Deborah and Barak in earlier times, and later, that of Elisha and Hazael, and still more, that of Elisha and Jehu. Samuel's greatness consists in this, that he rouses to activity the man who comes after him, and is greater than he: after kindling the light which now burns in its full brightness, he himself disappears. But his meteoric appearance and disappearance excited wonder, and this in early times produced a story of his youth, in which, while still a boy, he predicts the ruin of pre-monarchical Israel (1Samuel i.-iii.). After he has done this, darkness closes completely around him. Even in chapter iv. he has completely disappeared, and when we meet him again he is an old man. On the other side the circumstance that we hear nothing more of the seer after his meeting with Saul, caused it to be believed that a rupture very soon took place between the two. This belief we meet with at the second stage of the tradition which is represented by the prophetical narratives recorded in chaps. xvi. and xxviii. It arose out of the inconsistency involved in the fact that Jehovah did not afterwards confirm in his reign the man whom He had chosen to be king, but overthrew his dynasty. Thus it becomes necessary that Samuel, who anointed Saul, should afterwards sorrowfully reject him. Even here he appears no longer as the simple seer, but as a prophet in the style of Elijah and Elisha who regards the Lord's anointed as his own handiwork, and lays on him despotic commands (xv. 1), though according to x. 7 he had expressly left him to be guided by his own inspiration. The transition from the second to the third stage is easy. Here Samuel, after withdrawing the unction from Saul, at once transfers it to David, and sets him up against his rejected predecessor as being now de jure king by the grace of God. The respect with v.hich he is regarded has meanwhile increased still further; when he comes to Bethlehem the elders tremble at his approach (xvi. 4 seq.); and in xix. 18 seq. he has a magical power over men. Up to this stage, however, he has always been regarded as intellectually the author of the monarchy. It is reserved for the last (exilian or post-exilian) stage of the development of the tradition to place him in the opposite position of one who resists to the uttermost the desire of the people to have a king. Here pre-monarchical Israel is advanced to a theocracy, and Samuel is the head of the theocracy, which accounts for the feelings aroused in him by their demand. The modern judgment has been prejudiced in Saul's favour by Samuel's curse, and to David's disadvantage by Samuel's blessing; the picture of the one has not suffered from the blackening so much as that of the other from the glorification. /1/ ************************************* 1. The efforts of later writers to glorify David are at their worst in their account of his last testament (1Kings ii. 1-12). Even the language betrays this piece as a post-Deuteronomic insertion (v. 2-4); the contents are borrowed from the succeeding narrative. But in the narrative Solomon's conduct towards Adonijah, Abiathar, Joab, and Shimei is not dictated by any means by the testament, but by other considerations; and it is the declared object of the narrator to show how Solomon's throne was established by the removal of the elements of danger. Nor do the acute calculations of the weak old king agree very well with the general impression given of him at this time by 1Kings i. ii. **************************************** Some critics, who are unencumbered either by prejudice or by knowledge of the subject, regard Saul as the antagonist and David as the creature of the clerical lust of rule, of which they see the embodiment in Samuel. But this view gives Samuel a powerful position over against the king such as he cannot have possessed unless he had broad ground under his feet and an influence well and extensively organised. Did he find support in the Nebiim? These were only then rising into view out of an irregular enthusiasm which was not yet confined to any definite circle or school; and besides, the old tradition speaks of a close connection between them and the king, but not between them and the seer. The belief that the latter was the founder and president of their guild is based on the worthless anachronistic anecdote, 1Samuel xix. 18 seq. Or was Samuel in conspiracy with the priests against Saul? This is inferred from 1Samuel xxi.-xxii. where Abimelech of Nob provides David with bread on his wanderings, and expiates this offence with his own death and that of the whole race of Eli. But in the first place these priests have no connection with Samuel. In the second place there is nothing to make it probable that they had an understanding with David, or were acquainted with his ambitious plans if he had then begun to cherish them. In the third place, it is positively certain that they represented no distinct power in the state as against the king, but on the contrary were entirely the creatures of his smile or frown; on the occurrence of a faint suspicion they were put to death to a man without a dog barking to remonstrate. The liberal view we are discussing of Samuel's relation to Saul and David is based on the erroneous assumption that Samuel had the hierocracy to rest on in his acts of opposition to the monarchy. But the student who carries back the hierocracy to these early times has still to learn the very elements of what is necessary to a true historical appreciation of Hebrew antiquity. VI.III. It is in the Book of Kings that the last revision works most unrestrictedly. Here also chronological and religious elements combine to the building up of the framework, and we begin with examining the chronological system. From the exodus from Egypt to the beginning of the building of the temple was a period of 430 years; and from the latter to the destruction of Jerusalem, a period, according to the numbers of the kings of Judah, of 430 years, or reckoning the exile, of 480 years, as before. In Chronicles, the succession from Azariah ben Ahimaaz, who was, according to the correct reading, the first to officiate in the temple of Solomon, to Jozadak, who was carried away in the captivity, consists of eleven high priests; thus, reckoning the exile, we have again twelve generations of 40 years each. The detailed figures which compose the total are here more complicated, which is no doubt partly due to the fact that some of them are dates which the reviser found given. Yet in this instance also the number 40 is the basis of calculation, as we see in the reigns of the kings of Judah. From the division of the kingdom to the destruction of Samaria in the 6th year of Hezekiah, the numbers are as follows: Rehoboam and Abijam, 20; Asa, 41; Jehoshaphat, Joram, Ahaziah, Athaliah, 40; Joash, 40; Amaziah and Uzziah, 81; Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, 38. From the destruction of Samaria to the last date in Kings (2Kings xxv. 27), Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon, have 80; Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, 79 1/4. Let him believe who can that it is a mere chance that the figures 41 + 81 + 38 make up exactly 40 + 80 + 40. The series of the kings of Israel is in point of chronology dependent on the series of Judah. According to the numbers of the latter, 393 years elapsed from the division of the kingdom to the Babylonian captivity; and if we assume with Ezekiel (iv. 4) that Samaria fell 150 years earlier than Judah, 243 years remain for the duration of the northern kingdom. The figures given amount in fact to 242 years. These 150 Israelite years, from the destruction of Samaria to the destruction of Jerusalem, exceed, it is true, by 17 the sum of the parallel years of Judah; and the Israelite years from 1 Jeroboam to 9 Hosea fall short of the years in Judah from 1 Rehoboam to 6 Hezekiah by about the same number. This shows that no effort was made at first to synchronise the individual reigns in the two series. The 242 years of the northern kingdom are divided, by the epoch of 1 Jehu, into 98 and 144. If we take them at 240, the half of 480, the 98 must be changed into 96, which then agree with the contemporary 96 Jewish years. The deduction must be made at the reign of Baasha. Then we get the following play of figures: Jeroboam 22, Nadab 2, Baasha 22, Elah 2, Omri 12, Ahab 22, Ahaziah 2, Joram 12. That is to say, the eight kings have together 96 years, the first four and the last four 48 each. Two have the average number 12; the other 6 consists of three pairs of father and son; and the twice 12 years belonging to each pair are divided so that the father gets 12 + 10, and the son 12 - 10, obviously because the father was considered much more important than the son. /1/ *************************************** 1. Numbers of the kings of Judah from Solomon : 37+ 17+ 3 + 41 + 25 + 8 + 1 + 6 + 40 + 29 + 52 + 16 + 29 + 55 + 2 + 31 + 11 + 11=430 years. Jehoahaz and Jechoiachin are not counted; if they are included and a year allowed for them, we must say 36 for Solomon. Numbers of the kings of Israel from 1 Jeroboam: 22 + 2 + 24 +2+ 12 + 22 + 2+ 12 + 28 + 17 + 16 + 41 + 1 + 10 + 2 + 20 + 9. The artificial relations of the numbers, as explained above, were communicated to me by Ernst Krey. On the point that the synchronisms do not belong to the original arrangement, see Jahrb. fur Deutsche Theol., 1875, p. 607 seq. The correct view of Ezekiel iv. was first published by Bernhard Duhm (Theol. dir Proph., p. 253). The number 390, given in the Massoretic text in verse 5 for the duration of the captivity of the northern Israelites, is impossible. For Ezekiel cannot mean that they have been 350 years in exile already, and on the other hand he cannot reckon the remaining period of their punishment at more than 40 years, because 40 years is his calculation of the period of exile of Judah, and the restitution of Israel and that of Judah are in his view to take place at the same time; and indeed that of Egypt as well, obviously because brought about by the same cause (xxix. 1 1-16), the fall of the Chaldeans, which may be expected to take place in 40 years. The number 390 has got into verse 5 by mistake from verse 9, where it is used of a quite different subject, not the years of the exile, but the days of the last siege of Jerusalem. The gloss verse 13 rests on a similar confusion. The Septuagint correctly gives for the Israelite exile the number of 150 years, or 190, according as the last 40 years in which their punishment continued, along with that of Judah, were included or omitted. It may be remarked that 390 = 240 + 150. Compare further Robertson Smith, in the Journal of Philologie, vol x., p. 209-213. ********************************************** The great period thus marked off and artificially divided into subperiods, is surveyed and appraised at every important epoch in sermon-like discourses. These are much more frequent in Kings than in Judges and Samuel. It makes no difference whether the writer speaks in his own person, or by the mouth of another; in reviews of the past he speaks himself, 2Kings xvii.; in anticipations of the future he makes another speak (1Kings viii. ix.). A few examples must be cited to show what we mean. The great epoch of the work is the building of the temple. On this occasion Solomon makes a great dedicatory oration, in which he entreats Jehovah to hear from heaven the prayer of those who shall seek Him in this place. He concludes as follows: "If they sin against Thee (for there is no man that sinneth not) and Thou be angry with them and deliver them to be carried away captive into the land of the enemy, far or near, if they then bethink themselves and make supplication to Thee, saying, We have sinned and have done perversely and are guilty, and so return unto Thee with all their heart and all their soul in the land of the enemies which led them away captive, and pray unto Thee toward their land which Thou gavest unto their fathers, the city which Thou hast chosen, and the house which Thou hast built for Thy name, then hear Thou in heaven their prayer and their supplication, and maintain their cause, and forgive thy people their unfaithfulness, and give them compassion before them that carried them away captive, that they may have compassion upon them. For they be Thy people and Thine inheritance, which Thou broughtest forth out of Egypt from the midst of the furnace of iron, and didst separate them to Thyself from among all the people of the earth, as Thou spakest by Moses thy servant." What Jehovah answered to this we learn in chapter ix. "I have heard thy prayer and thy supplication which thou hast made before me; I have hallowed this house, to put my name there for ever, and mine eyes and my heart shall be there perpetually. If thou wilt walk before me, as did David thy father, in integrity of heart and in uprightness, to do all that I have commanded thee, and wilt keep my statutes and my judgments, I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel for ever, as I promised to David thy father, saying, There shall not fail thee a man upon the throne of Israel. But if YE or YOUR CHILDREN turn away from me, and will not keep my statutes and my judgments which I have set before you, but worship other gods, then will I cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them, and this house which I have hallowed for my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all people, and this house a ruin. And when they ask: Why hath Jehovah done thus to this land and to this house? the answer shall be: Because they forsook Jehovah their God, who brought forth their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and have taken hold upon other gods, and have worshipped them and served them." The division of the kingdom is also a very marked era in the history. It is introduced by a prophecy of Abijah to the first Jeroboam. "Behold, I rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee; but he shall have one tribe for my servant David's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake, the city which I have chosen; because he has forsaken me, and worshipped Astarte of Sidon, and Chemosh of Moab, and Milcom of Ammon, and has not walked in my ways to do that which is right in my eyes, my statutes, and my judgments, like David his father. And it shall be, if thou wilt hearken unto all that I command thee, and wilt walk in my ways, and do what is right in my sight, to keep my statutes and my commandments as David my servant did, that I will be with thee and build thee a sure house as I built for David, and will give Israel unto thee. And I will for this afflict the seed of David, but not for ever." We pass over a series of prophecies in a similar strain which occur regularly at the changes of dynasty in the northern kingdom, and cite only the concluding words which accompany the fall of the kingdom of the ten tribes (2Kings xvii.). This fall came about "because the children of Israel sinned against Jehovah their God, which brought them up out of the land of Egypt, and feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the heathen whom they had driven out, and in the innovations of the kings of Israel; and because the children of Israel imputed to Jehovah their God things which are not so, and built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchman to the fenced city; and they set up pillars and Asheras on every high hill and under every green tree, and there they sacrificed in all the high places, as did the people whom Jehovah had driven out before them: and wrought wicked things to provoke Jehovah to anger, and served the abominations which Jehovah had forbidden. Yet Jehovah testified to them by all the prophets and seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes according to all the torah which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent unto you by my servants the prophets; but they would not hear, but hardened their necks like their fathers, that they did not believe in Jehovah their God; and they rejected His statutes and His covenant that He made with their fathers, and His testimonies with which He warned them, and they followed vanity and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom Jehovah had charged them that they should not do like them. And they left all the commandments of Jehovah their God, and made them molten images and an Asherah, and worshipped the whole host of heaven, and served Baal; and they caused their children to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of Jehovah, to provoke Him to anger. And Jehovah was very wroth with Israel, and removed them out of His sight; there was none left but the men of Judah only. But they of Judah also kept not the commandment of their God, but walked in the manner of Israel: and Jehovah rejected the whole race of Israel, and humbled them, and delivered them unto the hand of spoilers, until He had cast them out of His sight." No special concluding discourse is given for Judah, but that for Israel applies to Judah as well. This we see both directly from the last words of the passage cited, and from the circumstance that two very characteristic abominations in the foregoing catalogue, the worship of the host of heaven and the sacrifice of children, were introduced, according to the testimony of the prophets, which alone can determine the point, not in the eighth but only in the seventh century, under Manasseh, and accordingly are not chargeable on Israel, but only on Judah. The water accumulates, so to speak, at these gathering places of the more important historical epochs: but from these reservoirs it finds its way in smaller channels on all sides. /1/ The first ************************************ 1. Such additions as MCWT YHWH, 1Kings xviii. 18 [LXX has correctly YHWH, without MCWT] (ZBW BRYTK [LXX correctly (ZBW without BRYTK] and more extensive ones, as 1Kings xviii. 31, 32a; 2Samuel vii. 2b [)#R NQR) WGW''] <error! read vi. 2b> ) I do not reckon because they proceed from various periods, and are mostly younger than the Deuteronomic revision, and belong rather to textual than to literary criticism. It is certainly in itself very important to detect and remove these re-touchings. The whole old tradition is covered with them. ***************************************** question asked with regard to each ruler is, what position he took up to the pure religion--whether he did what was right or what was evil in the sight of Jehovah. Even in the case of those who only reigned a week, this question receives an answer. In general it has to be stated that they did evil. All except David and Hezekiah and Josiah, were defective, says Jesus Sirach (xlix. 4),--not quite accurately perhaps, but yet truly in so far as there is always some objection even to the good kings. But the sin here reproved is no longer, at least not principally, the worship of strange gods; it is the perverted worship of Jehovah. A more special standard, and therefore a stricter one, is now employed, and we know the reason of this: the temple having once been built in the place which Jehovah has chosen for Himself, the kindly naturalness hitherto belonging to His worship comes to an end (Deuteronomy xii. 8): and in particular the prohibition of the bamoth comes into force (1Kings iii. 2). That these continued to exist is the special sin of the period, a sin widespread and persistent. It is aggravated by the fact, that with the bamoth all kinds of unlawful abuses crept into the worship of Jehovah, Maccebas and Asheras, evergreen trees, and prostitutes of both sexes. Israel, continually compared with Judah in the matter, is further charged with a second great sin, the sin of Jeroboam, i.e., the golden calves at Bethel and at Dan. The religious estimate combines with the chronological facts to form that scheme in which every single reign of the kings of Israel and Judah is uniformly framed. Sometimes the frame is well filled in with interesting matter, but in not a few cases historical matter is almost entirely absent. The scheme appears most nakedly in such chapters as 1Kings xv. xvi., 2Kings xiii. xiv. xv. That this redaction of our book is essentially uniform with that of the two historical books which precede it, requires no proof. Only it has here a warmer and more lively tone, and a much closer relation to the facts. In consequence of this we find it much easier to determine the point of view from which it proceeds. The mere fact that the narrative extends to the destruction of Jerusalem, nay, to the death of the captive king Jehoiachin, shows that we must place the date of the work not earlier than the Babylonian exile, and, indeed, the second part of the exile. The chronology reckons the exile in the period of 480 years, giving 50 years to it; and this would bring us still lower down; but it is open to us to assume that this is a later modification, which has not further affected the general character of the work. /1/ ************************************** 1. Krey surmises that the last date mentioned, the liberation from prison of, Jehoiachin in the 37th year after his accession to the throne, was originally intended to form the lower limit of the chronology, especially as the periods of 40 years under which, as we have seen, the Jewish figures naturally fall, come exactly to this date. But if this be the case, we cannot regard the 4th or 5th year of Solomon as the era started from, for then there is no room for the 36 or 37 remaining years of Solomon's reign. But such a starting-point is entirely unnatural; Solomon's 40 years cannot be torn up in this way: if we are to make a division at all in that period, it must be at the disruption of the monarchy, the natural point of departure for the series of kings of Israel and of Judah. It deserves remark, that the 37 years of Jehoiachin, at the close of the older mode of calculation, which perhaps only tried to bring out generations of 40 years, but also perhaps a period of 500 years from David (40+40+20+ 41+40+40+81 + 38+ 80 + 79 1/4), answer to the 37 years of Solomon at the beginning of the method now carried through. That a process of alteration and improvement of the chronology was busily carried on in later times, we see from the added svnchronisms of the kings of Israel and Judah, from the uncertain statements in the Book of Judges, some of them parallel with each other (e.g., the interregna and minor judges, and the threefold counting of the time of the Philistines) and even from the variants of the LXX. *************************************************** The writer looks back on the time of the kings as a period past and closed, on which judgment has already been declared. Even at the consecration of the temple the thought of its destruction is not to be restrained; and throughout the book the ruin of the nation and its two kingdoms is present to the writer's mind. This is the light in which the work is to be read; it shows why the catastrophe was unavoidable. It was so because of unfaithfulness to Jehovah, because of the utterly perverted tendency obstinately followed by the people in spite of the Torah of Jehovah and His prophets. The narrative becomes, as it were, a great confession--of sins of the exiled nation looking back on its history. Not only the existing generation, but the whole previous historical development is condemned--a fashion which we meet with first in Jeremiah (ii. 1 seq., iv. 3), who was actually confronted with the question as to the cause of the calamity. /2/ ************************************** 1. The fall of Samaria suggested similar reflections to the earlier prophets with reference to the northern kingdom, but their views are, as a rule (Amos v., Isaiah ix.), not nearly so radical nor so far-fetched. Hosea does certainly trace the guilt of the present up to the commencement, but he exemplifies the principle (like Micah, chapter vi.) chiefly from the early history of Jacob and Moses: as for the really historical period he belongs to it too much himself to survey it from so high a point of view. In this also he is a precursor of later writers, that he regards the human monarchy as one of the great evils of Israel: he certainly had very great occasion for this in the circumstances of the time he lived in. ******************************************* Ezekiel carried out this negative criticism of the past to greater lengths, with particular reference to the abominations of the older worship (chapter xvi., xx., xxiii.); and it is also to be found in Isaiah xl.-xlvi. (xlii. 24, xliii. 27), though here it is supplemented by a positive and greatly more suggestive view; we find it also in Deuteronomy xxviii.-xxx., and in Leviticus xxvi. The whole of the past is regarded as one enormous sin, which is to be expiated in the exile (Jeremiah xxxii. 30; Ezekiel xviii. 2, xxxiii. 10; Isaiah xl. 1); the duration of the punishment is even calculated from that of the sin (Leviticus xxvi. 34). The same attitude towards old times is continued after the return (Zechariah viii. 13 seq., ix. 7 seq.; Nehemiah ix. 7 seq.). The treatment is naturally from a Judaean point of view. Outside of Jerusalem the worship of Jehovah is heretical, so that the political revolt of the Northern Israelites was at the same time an ecclesiastical schism. Yet they are not excluded in consequence from community with the people of God, as in the Chronicles: the old traditions are not thrown so completely overboard as yet: only after the destruction of Samaria by the Assyrians does Judah continue the history alone. Almost the same reverence is paid to David and his house as to the city and the temple. His house has the promise of eternal continuance, with regard to which the writer likes to make use of the words of Jeremiah xxxiii. 17. The book closes, doubtless not by chance, with the liberation from prison of the Davidide Jehoiachin; this is the earnest of greater things yet in store. In the words of Abijah to Jeroboam, also, when he says that the humiliation of the house of David and the revolt from it of the ten tribes will not last for ever, we see the Messianic hope appear, which, as we learn from Haggai and Zechariah, largely occupied the minds of the Jews at the time of the exile and after it. In the case of the books of Judges and Samuel it is not perhaps possible to decide with perfect certainty what was the norm applied by the last reviser in forming his estimates of the past. In the Books of Kings there can be no doubt on this point. The writer deals not only in indefinite references to the will of Jehovah, which Israel ought to obey, but resists; he speaks now and again (1Kings ii. 3, 2Kings xiv. 6, xvii. 37) of the written Torah in which the judgments and statutes of Jehovah are contained, a difference which indicates, one must allow, a historical feeling. Now the code which is implicitly regarded as the standard is that the discovery of which under Josiah is circumstantially narrated in 2Kings xxii. xxiii., viz., Deuteronomy. We are led to this conclusion, it is allowed on all hands, both by the phraseology of the reviser and by the spirit of his judgments. He condemns those sins specially against which Deuteronomy and the reformation of King Josiah were directed. And the one verbal quotation made from the book of the Torah is from Deuteronomy (2Kings xiv. 6; Deuteronomy xxiv. 16). On the other hand, there are clear signs that the author of the revision was not acquainted with the Priestly Code. Nowhere is any distinction drawn between priests and Levites; the sons of Aaron are never mentioned. The idea of a central sanctuary before Solomon is contradicted by 1Kings iii. 2. In one section only, a section which has been greatly exposed to corrections and interpolations of all kinds, namely, the description of the temple and its consecration, 1Kings vi.-viii., do we meet with signs of the influence of the Priestly Code, especially in the Massoretic text; in the Septuagint this is not so much the case. The most important example of this has already been investigated, p. 43, 44. If, accordingly, we are fully justified in calling the revision Deuteronomistic, this means no more than that it came into existence under the influence of Deuteronomy, which pervaded the whole century of the exile. The difference between Deuteronomistic and Deuteronomic is one not of time only but of matter as well: /1/ Deuteronomy itself has not yet come to regard ****************************************** 1. Post-deuteronomic, but still from the time of the kings, are 1Samuel ii. 27 seq.; 2Samuel vii, 1 seq.; 2Kings xviii. 13, 17 seq., xix. 1 seq.; chaps. xi. xii. xxi. xxiii. ******************************************* the cultus in this way as the chief end of Israel, and is much closer to the realism of the actual life of the people. A difference in detail which allows of easy demonstration is connected with the mode of dating. The last reviser distinguishes the months not by their old Hebrew names, Zif, Bul, Ethanim, but by numbers, commencing with spring as the beginning of the year. In this he differs not only from his older sources (1Kings vi. 37, 38, viii. 2), but also from Deuteronomy. VII.III.2. This revision is, as we expect to find, alien to the materials it found to work on, so that it does violence to them. They have been altered in particular by a very one-sided selection, which is determined by certain religious views. In these views an interest in the prophets mingles with the interest in worship. It is not meant that the selection is due entirely to the last reviser, though it is thoroughly according to his taste; others had probably worked before him in this direction. But for us it is neither possible nor important to distinguish the different steps in the process of sifting through which the traditions of the time of the kings had to pass. The culminating point of the whole book is the building of the temple; almost all that is told about Solomon has reference to it. This at once indicates to us the point of view; it is one which dominates all Judaistic history: the history is that of the temple rather than of the kingdom. The fortunes of the sanctuary and its treasures, the institution and arrangements of the kings with reference to worship--we are kept _au courant_ about these, but about hardly anything else. The few detailed narratives given (2Kings xi seq. xvi. xxii. seq.) have the temple for their scene, and turn on the temple. Only in <2Kings?> xviii. seq. does the prophetical interest predominate. As for the kingdom of Israel, the statements about the cultus of that state are very scanty and for the most part rather vague. Here the prophetical narratives come to the front, generally such as are told from the prophetic point of view, or at least tell of the public appearances and acts of the prophets. Here and there we are told of occasions on which the Northern kingdom came in contact with Judah; here the Jewish feeling appears which dictated the selection. What is merely historical, purely secular, is communicated only in the scantiest measure: often there is nothing but the names and succession of the kings. We learn hardly anything about King Omri, the founder of the town of Samaria and re-founder of the kingdom, who seems to have reduced Judah also to the position of a dependent ally, nor do we learn more about Jeroboam II., the last great ruler of Israel; while the conflict with the Assyrians and the fall of Samaria are despatched in a couple of verses which tell us scarcely anything at all. Sometimes a brilliant breaks in on the surrounding night (2Kings ix. x.), but after it we grope in the dark again. Only so much of the old tradition has been preserved as those of a later age held to be of religious value: it has lost its original centre of gravity, and assumed an attitude which it certainly had not at first. It may have been the case in Judah that the temple was of more importance than the kingdom, but there can be no doubt that the history of Israel was not entirely, not even principally, the history of prophecy. The losses we have to deplore must have affected the Israelitish tradition most seriously. The damage done by the revision by its _positive_ meddling with the materials as found in the sources, is not so irreparable; yet it is considerable enough. The change of colour which was effected may be best seen and characterised in the far-reaching observations which introduce the Israelite series of kings; "Jeroboam said in his heart, Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David; if this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of Jehovah at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again to their rightful lord, and they will kill me, and become subject again to Rehoboam king of Judah. Whereupon the king took counsel and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, Cease to go up to Jerusalem; behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And he set the one in Bethel and the other in Dan. And this thing became a sin; for the people went as one man, even unto Dan. And he made temples of high places, and took priests from the midst of the people which were not of the house of Levi; whomsoever he would he installed as priest of the high places " (1Kings xii. 26-30, xiii. 33). The perversion is scarcely so great as in Chronicles, but the anachronism is sufficiently glaring in the mode of view discernible in these reflections of Jeroboam, who appears to feel that the Ephraimite kingdom was illegitimate in its origin and could only be kept separate from the south by artificial means. The blessing of Jacob and the blessing of Moses show us what the sentiment of Northern Israel actually was. In the former Joseph is called the crowned of his brethren, in the second we read "His first-born bullock, full of majesty (the king), has the horns of a buffalo, with which he thrusts down the peoples; these are the ten thousands of Ephraim and the thousands of Manasseh." Whence came the charm of the name of Ephraim but from its being the royal tribe, and the most distinguished representative of the proud name of Israel? Of Judah we read in the same chapter, "Hear, Jehovah, the voice of Judah, and bring him back to his people." There can be no doubt what the people is to which Judah belongs: we cannot but agree with Graf, that this tribe is here regarded as the alienated member, and its reunion with the greater kingdom spoken of as the desire of Judah itself, and this is not so remarkable when we reflect that the part belongs to the whole and not the whole to the part. Only by long experience did Judah learn the blessing of a settled dynasty, and Ephraim the curse of perpetual changes on the throne. Judah's power of attraction for the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom is thought to lie in the cultus of the Solomonic temple; and Jeroboam is said to have tried to meet this by creating new sanctuaries, a new form of the worship of Jehovah, and a new order of priesthood. The features in which the Samaritan worship differed from the Jewish pattern are represented as intentional innovations of the first king, in whose sin posterity persisted. But in making Bethel and Dan temples of the kingdom--that he set up high places, is a statement which need not be considered--Jeroboam did nothing more than Solomon had done before him; only he had firmer ground under his feet than Solomon, Bethel and Dan being old sanctuaries, which Jerusalem was not. The golden calves, again, which he set up, differed in their gold but not in their object from the ephods and idols of other kinds which were everywhere to be found in the older "houses of God"; e.g. from the brazen serpent at Jerusalem. /l/ ***************************************** 1. "Although Jeroboam had lived in Egypt, it would he wrong to say that he brought animal worship with him from that country, as wrong as to regard Aaron's golden calf as a copy of Apis. The peculiarity of the animal-worship of Egypt, and of its bull-worship in particular, was that sanctity was attributed to _living_ animals." Vatke, p. 398. Egyptian gods cannot help against Egypt, Exodus xxxii. 4; 1Kings xii. 28. **************************************** Even Eichhorn remarked with force and point, that though Elijah and Elisha protested against the imported worship of Baal of Tyre, they were the actual champions of the Jehovah of Bethel and Dan, and did not think of protesting against His pictorial representation; even Amos makes no such protest, Hosea is the first who does so. As for the non-Levitical priests whom the king is said to have installed, all that is necessary has been said on this subject above (p. 138 seq.). A remarkable criticism on this estimate of the Samaritan worship follows immediately afterwards in the avowal that that of Judah was not different at the time, at any rate not better. In the report of Rehoboam's reign we read (1Kings xiv. 22 seq.): "They of Judah also set up high places and pillars on every high hill, and under every green tree, and whoredom at sacred places was practiced in the land." This state of things continued to exist, with some fluctuations, till near the time of the exile. If then the standard according to which Samaria is judged never attained to reality in Judah either, it never existed in ancient Israel at all. We know the standard is the book of the law of Josiah: but we see how the facts were not merely judged, but also framed, in accordance with it. One more instance is worthy of mention in this connection. King Solomon, we are told, had, besides the daughter of Pharaoh, many foreign wives, from Moab, Ammon, and other peoples, intermarriage with whom Jehovah had forbidden (Deuteronomy xvii 17). And when he was old, they seduced him to the worship of their gods, and he erected on the Mount of Olives at Jerusalem high places for Chemosh of Moab, and for Milcom of Ammon, and for the gods of his other wives. As a punishment for this Jehovah announced to him that his kingdom should be torn from him after his death and given to his servant, and also raised up adversaries to him, in Hadad the Edomite, who freed Edom, and in the Syrian Rezon teen Eliadah, who made Damascus independent. And by the prophet Abijah of Shiloh, he caused the Ephraimite Jeroboam, who then had the supervision of the forced labour of the house of Joseph in the fortification of the city of David, to be nominated as the future king of the ten tribes. So we read in 1Kings xi. But Edom, and, as it appears, Damascus as well, broke away from the kingdom of David immediately after his death (xi. 2I seq., 25); and the fortification of the citadel, in which Jeroboam was employed when incited to revolt by Abijah, though it falls somewhat later, yet belongs to the first half of Solomon's reign, since it is connected with the rest of his buildings (ix. 15, 24). Now Solomon cannot have been punished by anticipation, in his youth, for an offence which he only committed in his old age, and the moral connected with these events is contradicted by chronology and cannot possibly be ascribed to the original narrator. The Deuteronomistic revision betrays itself, in fact, in every word of xi. 1-13. To the original tradition belongs only the mention of the many wives--without the reprobation attached to it,--and the statement about the building of the altars of Chemosh and Milcom and perhaps Astarte, on the Mount of Olives, where they stood till the time of Josiah (2Kings xxiii. 13). The connection of the two events, in the relation of cause and effect, belongs to the last editor, as well as the general statement that the king erected altars of the gods of all the nationalities represented by his wives. In the Books of Kings, it is true, the tradition is not systematically translated into the mode of view of the Law, as is the case in Chronicles. What reminds us most strongly of Chronicles is the introduction from time to time of a prophet who expresses himself in the spirit of Deuteronomy and in the language of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and then disappears. /l/ ****************************************** 1. Cf. Kuenen, Profeten onder Israel (1875), ii. p. 143; English translation (1877), p 398. One of these Deuteronomistic prophecies is cited above, p. 275. They are in part anonymous, e.g, 2Kings x. 30, xxi. 10 seq, in part connected with old names, e.g 1Kings xvi. 1 seq. In many instances no doubt the reviser found flints in his sources and worked them out in his own style; thus, 1Kings xiv. 7 seq., xxi 21 seq. 2Kings ix. 7 seq. In these passages the Deuteronomistic ideas and the phraseology of Jeremiah and Ezekiel are distinctly present [ HNNY MBY) R(h ], but detached expressions of an original type also occur,--which, it is true, are then constantly repeated, e.g. (CWN W(ZWB. Names, too, like Jehu ben Hanani, are certainly not fictitious: we are not so far advanced as in Chronicles. Cf. 1Samuel ii. 27 seq.; 2Samuel vii. 1 seq. **************************************** In this way the Law is introduced into the history in a living way; the prophets keep it effective and see it applied, according to the principle stated, 2Kings xvii. 13, which is founded on Jeremiah vii. 25; Deuteronomy xviii. 18: "Jehovah testified to them by all the prophets and seers saying, Turn ye from your evil ways and keep my commandments and statutes, according to all the Torah which I commanded your fathers and which I sent unto you by my servants the prophets." The most unblushing example of this kind, a piece which, for historical worthlessness may compare with Judges xix.-xxi. or 1Samuel vii. seq., or even stands a step lower, is 1Kings xiii. A man of God from Judah here denounces the altar of Bethel, at which King Jeroboam is in the act of offering sacrifice, in these terms: "O altar, altar, behold a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places, that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burned upon thee." And to guarantee the truth of this prophecy, to be fulfilled three hundred years afterwards, he gives the sign that the altar shall burst asunder, and the ashes of the sacrifice upon it be poured out--which at once takes place. This legend, however, does not really belong to the Deuteronomist, but is a still later addition, as is easily to be seen from the fact that the sentence xii. 31 is only completed at xiii. 34. It deserves remark that in the two verses which introduce the thirteenth chapter, xii. 32 seq., the feast of tabernacles is fixed, in accordance with the Priestly Code, as the 15th of the 7th month. VII.III.3. In this case also we are able to discern considerable shades and gradations in the sources the reviser had at command. In the Books of Kings for the first time we meet with a series of short notices which arrest attention, in the surroundings they are in, by their brevity and directness of statement and the terseness of their form, and have the semblance of contemporary records. In spite of their looseness of arrangement these form the real basis of our connected knowledge of the period; and the religious chronological framework is regularly filled in with them (e.g. 1Kings xiv.-xvi.); their loose connection and neutral tone made it specially easy for later editors to interweave with them additions of their own, as has actually been done to no small extent. /1/ ***************************************** 1. The passage discussed above, 1Kings xi. 1 seq., gives a good example of this; we at once pick out the terse )z ybnh wgw'' from the barren diffuseness surrounding it. **************************************** These valuable notes commence even with Solomon, though here they are largely mixed with anecdotic chaff. They are afterwards found principally, almost exclusively, in the series of Judah. Several precise dates point to something of the nature of annals, /2/ **************************************** 2. 5th of Rehoboam (1Kings xiv. 25); 23rd of Jehoash (2Kings xii, 6); 14th of Hezekiah (2Kings xviii. 13); 18th of Josiah (2Kings xxii. 3); 4th and 5th of Solomon (1Kings vi. 37, 38). These dates occur, it is true, partly in circumstantial Jewish narratives, but these are intimately related to the brief notices spoken of above, and appear to be based on them. It may be surmised that such definite numbers, existing at one time in much greater abundance, afforded the data for an approximate calculation of the figures on which the systematic chronology is built up. These single dates at any rate are not themselves parts of the system. The same is true of the statements of the age of the Jewish kings when they ascended the throne. These also perhaps go back to the "Annals." The )Z is found 1Kings iii. 16, viii. 1, 12, ix. 11, xi. 7, xvi. 21, xxii. 50; 2Kings viii. 22, xii. 18, xiv. 8, xv. 16, xvi. 5. ***************************************** and with these the characteristic then might be thought to be connected, which frequently introduces the short sentences, and as it now stands is generally meaningless. In what circles these records were made, we can scarcely even surmise. Could we be certain that the reference to the royal temple of Judah, which is a prevailing feature of them, is due not to selection at a later time but to the interest of the first hands, we should be led to think of the priesthood at Jerusalem. The loyalist, perfectly official tone would agree very well with this theory, for the sons of Zadok were, down to Josiah's time, nothing else than the obedient servants of the successors of David, and regarded the unconditional authority claimed by these kings over their sanctuary as a matter of course (2Kings xvi. TO seq., xii. 18). These notices, however, as we have them, are not drawn from the documents themselves, but from a secondary compilation, perhaps from the two sets of chronicles cited at the end of each reign of the kings of Israel and those of Judah, from which at all events the succession of the rulers appears to the drawn. These chronicles are not to be identified, it is clear, with the original annals. The _book_ of the annals must be distinguished from the Dibre-hajamim themselves. Whether the chronicle of Israel_-hardly anything out of which is communicated to us--was composed much earlier than the chronicle of Judah (which seems to close with Jehoiachim), and whether it and the chronicle of Solomon (1Kings xi. 41) are a quite independent work, I am inclined to consider doubtful. The excerpts from the annals are interrupted by more extensive episodes which are interwoven with them, and are also embraced in the Deuteronomistic scheme. Of these the Jewish ones are the minority, the greater part are Samaritan, but they all belong to a very limited period of time. I select the miraculous history of Elijah as an example of these, to show the sentiment and the change of sentiment in this instance also. The prophet Elijah, from Tishbeh in Gilead, appears before King Ahab of Samaria, and says, "By the life of Jehovah the God of Israel, whom I serve, there shall not be dew nor rain these years but according to my word." The story begins abruptly; we require to know that Ahab, stirred up by Jezebel, has been propagating in Israel the worship of the Tyrian Baal, and has killed the prophets of Jehovah by hundreds: this is the reason of the punishment which comes on him and his land (xviii. 13, 22). Elijah vanishes as suddenly as he appeared. We find him again at the brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan; then in the land of Baal with a widow at Zarepta; while following his fortunes we are made to feel in a simple and beautiful way the severity of the famine. Ahab in the meantime had sent out messengers to take him, and had required of every state to which the vain search had extended, an oath that he was not to be found there. Now, however, necessity obliged him to think of other things; he had to go out himself with his minister Obadiah to seek fodder for the still remaining war-horses (Amos vii. 1). In this humiliating situation he all at once met the banished man. He did not believe his eyes. "Is it thou, O troubler of Israel?" "I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father's house!" After this greeting Elijah challenged the king to institute a contest between the 450 prophets of Baal, and him, the only prophet of Jehovah left remaining. A trial by sacrifice took place on Mount Carmel before the whole people. Each party was to prepare a bullock and lay it on the altar without setting fire to the wood; and the divinity who should answer by fire was the true God. The prophets of Baal came first and sought after their own manner to influence their deity. They shouted and leapt wildly, wounded themselves with swords and lances till they were covered with blood, and kept up their raving ecstasy from morning till mid-day, and from mid-day till evening. During this time Elijah looked at them and mocked them, saying, "Cry louder, for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is somehow engaged, or he is asleep and must be awaked." At last his turn came; he repaired the altar of Jehovah, which was broken down, spread the pieces of the sacrifice upon it, and, to make the miracle still more miraculous, caused them to be flooded two or three times with water. Then he prayed to Jehovah, and fire fell from heaven, and consumed the sacrifice. The people, up to this point divided in their mind, now took the side of the zealot for Jehovah, laid hold of the prophets of Baal, and slaughtered them down below at the brook. A great storm of rain at once came to refresh the land. This triumph of Elijah was only a prelude. When Jezebel heard what had happened she swore vengeance against him, and he fled for his life to Beersheba in Judah, the sanctuary of Isaac. Wearied to death he lay down under a juniper-bush in the wilderness, and with the prayer, It is enough: now, O Jehovah, take away my life, he fell asleep. Then he was strengthened with miraculous food by a heavenly messenger, and bidden to go to Horeb, the mount of God. He arrived there after a long journey, and withdrew into a cave; a rushing wind sweeps past; the wind and the earthquake and the lightning are the forerunners of Jehovah; and after them He comes Himself in the low whispering that follows the storm. His head covered, Elijah steps out of the cave and hears a voice ask what ails him. Having poured out his heart, he receives the divine consolation that his cause is by no means lost; that the direst vengeance, the instruments of which he is himself to summon to their task, is to go forth on all the worshippers of Baal, and that those 7000 who have not bowed their knee to Baal shall gain the day--"Thou shalt anoint Hazael to be King over Damascus, and Jehu ben Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be iiing over Israel, and Elisha ben Shaphat to be prophet in thy room; and him that escapeth the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay, and him that escapeth the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay." The account of the execution of these commands by Elijah is at present wanting; we shall soon see why it was omitted. The conclusion of chapter xix. only tells us that he called Elisha from the plough to follow him. Of the account of the judgment which overtook the worshippers of Baal, this group of narratives contains only the beginning, in chapter xxi. Ahab wanted to have a vineyard which was situated beside his palace in Jezreel, his favourite residence: but Naboth, the owner, was unwilling to enter on a sale or an exchange. The king was angry, yet thought he could do no more in the matter; but Jezebel of Tyre had other notions of might and right and said to him, "Dost thou now govern the kingdom of Israel? be of good courage; I will get thee the vineyard." She wrote a letter to the authorities of the town, and got Naboth put out of the way by means of corrupt judges. As Ahab was just going to take possession of the vineyard which had fallen into his hands, his enemy came upon him. The prophet Elijah, always on the spot at the right moment, hurled the word at him, "Hast thou killed and also taken possession? Behold, in the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick thy blood also." Here this story breaks off. What follows is not the true continuation. The thread of the narrative xvii.-xix. xxi. is also broken off here, without reaching its proper conclusion. The victory of Jehovah over Baal, of the prophet over the king, is wanting; the story of Naboth is, as we said, only the introduction to it. We are sufficiently informed about the facts, but in form the narratives do not answer to the announcement in chapter xix. and xxi.; they are drawn from other sources. According to xix. 1 7 the Syrian wars ought to result in vengeance on the worshippers of Baal, and specially on the idolatrous royal house; but in the narrative of the wars (1Kings xx. xxii. 2Kings vii. ix. ) this point of view does not prevail. On the contrary, Ahab and Joram there maintain themselves in a manly and honourable way against the superior power of Damascus it is ONLY AFTER the extirpation of Baal worship under Jehu that affairs took an unfortunate turn, and Hazael, who brought about this change, was not anointed by Elijah but by Elisha (2Kings viii. 7 seq.) /.l/ ************************************* 1. The same applies to Jehu (2Kings ix. 1 seq.). This is the reason of the above remarked omission after 1Kings xix. 21: cf. Thenius's commentary. ************************************* The massacre at Jezreel, too, which is predicted in the threat of 1Kings xxi. 19, would need to be told otherwise than in 2Kings ix. x., to form a proper literary sequel to the story of Naboth. According to 1Kings xxi. 19 the blood of Ahab is to be shed at Jezreel; according to 2Kings ix. 25 his son's blood was shed there, to avenge Naboth. It is true, the explanation is appended in xxi. 27-29, that, as the king took to heart the threats of Elijah, Jehovah made a supplementary communication to the prophet that the threat against Ahab's house would only be fulfilled in the days of his son; but who does not see in this an attempt to harmonise conflicting narratives? /2/ A whole series of *************************************** 2 In spite of xxi. 27-29, an attempt is made at xxii. 38 to show that the threat was fulfilled in Ahab himself. We are told that Ahab was shot in his chariot and that his servants brought his body from Ramoth-Gilead to bury it there. Then we read xxii. 38 "and they washed the chariot in the pool of Samaria, and the dogs licked up his blood, and the harlots bathed in it, according to the word of Jehovah." Thus it is explained how the dogs were able to lick his blood in Samaria, though it had had plenty of time to dry up after the battle! The fact was unfortunately over-looked that according to xxi. 19 the dogs were to lick the blood of Ahab not at Samaria but at Jezreel, the place of Naboth. The verse xxii. 38 is an interpolation which does credit to Jewish acuteness. *************************************** subordinate discrepancies might be mentioned, which prove that 2Kings ix. x. does not look back to the story of the murder of Naboth as told in 1Kings xxi. According to ix. 25, 26, the dispute was not about the vineyard, but about the field of Naboth, which lay some distance from the town. His family was put to death along with him, and on the following day, when Ahab rode out IN COMPANY WITH JEHU and Ben Deker to take possession of the field, the word of the prophet (not framed so specially against him personally) met him: "Surely I have seen yesterday the blood of Naboth and of his sons, and I will requite it in this plat." With the help of these other accounts, among which there is a considerable group of uniform character (1Kings xx. xxii. 2Kings iii. vi. 24-xii. 20. ix. 1-x. 27) favourably distinguished from the rest, we are placed in a position to criticise the history of Elijah, and to reach a result which is very instructive for the history of the tradition, namely that the influence of the mighty prophet on his age has after all been appraised much too highly. His reputation could not be what it is but for the wide diffusion of Baal worship in Israel: and this is not a little exaggerated. Anything like a suppression of the national religion at the time of Elijah is quite out of the question, and there is no truth in the statement that the prophets of Jehovah were entirely extirpated at the time and Elijah alone left surviving. The prophetic guilds at Bethel, Jericho, and Gilgal continued without any interruption. In the Syrian wars prophets of Jehovah stand by the side of Ahab; before his last campaign there are four hundred of them collected in his capital, one of them at least long known to the king as a prophet of evil, but left alive before and left alive now, though he persisted in his disagreeable practices. Of the sons whom Jezebel bore him, Ahab called one Ahaziah, i.e. Jehovah holds, and another Jehoram, i.e. Jehovah is exalted: he adhered to Jehovah as the god of Israel, though to please his wife he founded at Samaria a temple and a cultus of the Syrian goddess. This being so, Elijah's contest with Baal cannot have possessed the importance attributed to it from the point of view of a later time. In the group of popular narratives above referred to, there is no trace of a religious commotion that tore Israel asunder: the whole strength of the people is absorbed in the Syrian wars. The kings are the prominent figures, and do well and according to their office in battle: Elijah stands in the background. From several indications, though from no direct statements, we learn of the high esteem which Ahab enjoyed from friend and foe alike (xx. 3I, xxii. 32-34 seq.). Joram also, and even Jezebel, are drawn not without sympathy (2Kings vi. 30, ix. 31). We can scarcely say the same of Jehu, the murderer, instigated by the prophets, of the house of Ahab (2Kings ix. 10). It is the fact, certainly, that the prophets' hatred of Baal succeeded at last in overturning the dynasty of Omri. But in what manner was this done? At a time when King Joram was prevented by a wound he had received from being with his army in the field, a messenger of Elisha went to the camp, called the captain apart from a banquet at which he found him, to a secret interview, and anointed him king. When Jehu returned to his comrades at their wine, they asked him what that mad fellow had wanted, and, his evasive answers failing to satisfy them, he told them the truth. They at once raised him on an improvised throne, and caused the trumpets to proclaim him king: they were quite ready for such an exploit, not that they cared in the least for "that mad fellow." Jehu justified their confidence by his astounding mastery in treachery and bloodshed, but he placed his reliance entirely on the resources of his own talent for murder. He was not borne along by any general movement against the dynasty; the people, which he despised (x. 9), stood motionless and horrified at the sight of the crimes which came so quickly one after another; even a hundred years afterwards the horror at the massacre of Jezreel still lived (Hosea i. 4). The crown once gained, the reckless player showed his gratitude to the fanatics, and sent the priests and worshippers of Baal after the priests of Jehovah whom he had slaughtered along with all belonging to the royal house (x. 11). The manner in which he led them into the snare (x. 18 seq.) shows that no one had thought before this of regarding him as the champion of Jehovah; and even at this time his zeal was manifestly only ostensible: he was not fighting for an idea (x. 15. seq.). Thus we see that Baal did not bring about the fall of the house of Ahab, but common treason; the zealots employed for their purposes a most unholy instrument, which employed them in turn as a holy instrument for its purposes; they did not succeed in rousing the people to a storm against Baal, far from it. The execution of Naboth seems to have excited greater indignation: it was a crime against morals, not against religion. Even in the history of Elijah the admission is made that this struggle against Baal, in spite of his sacrificial victory on Carmel, was in the end without result, and that only the judicial murder of Naboth brought about a change in the popular sentiment. But according to 2Kings ix. 25, this murder proved a momentous event, not because it led, as we should expect, to a popular agitation, but from the fortuitous circumstance that Jehu was a witness of the never-to-be-forgotten scene between Ahab and Elijah, and seemed therefore to the prophets to be a fit person to carry out his threatenings. It is certainly the case that the grand figure of Elijah could not have been drawn as we have it except from the impression produced by a real character. /1/ But it is too much torn away from the ************************************* 1. The distance of the narrator is not so very great in point of time from the events he deals with. He is a North-Israelite, as the )#R LYHWDH of xix. 3 shows: this may also be gathered from xix. 8 compared with Deuteronomy i. 2. A man of Judah could not easily make so considerable a mistake about the distance, though we have to remember that with this narrator the situation of Horeb can scarcely have been that which we have long been accustomed to assume. Another sign of antiquity is the way in which Elijah is represented as combating Baal in Israel, and in the land of Sidon associating with the worshippers of Baal on the most friendly terms (Luke iv. 25 seq.). ********************************************* historical position it belongs to, and is thereby magnified to colossal proportions. It may be said of this class of narratives generally, that the prophets are brought too much into the foreground in them, as if they had been even in their lifetime the principal force of Israelite history, and as if the influence which moved them had ruled and pervaded their age as well. That was not the case; in the eyes of their contemporaries they were completely overshadowed by the kings; only to later generations did they become the principal personages. They were important ideally, and influenced the future rather than the present; but this was not enough, a real tangible importance is attributed to them. In the time of Ahab and Jehu the Nebiim were a widespread body, and organised in orders of their own, but were not highly respected; the average of them were miserable fellows, who ate out of the king's hand and were treated with disdain by members of the leading classes. Amos of Tekoa, who, it is true, belonged to a younger generation, felt it an insult to be counted one of them. Elijah and Elisha rose certainly above the level of their order; but the first, whose hands remained pure, while he no doubt produced a great impression at the time by his fearless words, effected nothing against the king, and quite failed to draw the people over to his side: while Elisha, who did effect something, made use of means which could not bear the light, and which attest rather the weakness than the strength of prophecy in Israel. VII.III.4. Let us conclude by summing up the results to which we have been led by our eclectic pilgrimage through the historical books. What in the common view appears to be the specific character of Israelite history, and has chiefly led to its being called sacred history, rests for the most part on a later re-painting of the original picture. The discolouring influences begin early. I do not reckon among these the entrance of mythical elements, such as are not wanting even in the first beginnings to which we can trace the course of the tradition, nor the inevitable local colour, which is quite a different thing from tendency. I think only of that uniform stamp impressed on the tradition by men who regarded history exclusively from the point of view of their own principles. Here we observe first a religious influence, which in the Books of Samuel and Kings turns out to be the prophetical one. The view appears to me erroneous that it is to the prophets that the Hebrew people owe their history as a whole. The song, Judges v., though perhaps the oldest historical monument in the Old Testament, cannot be cited in support of that view, for even if it were actually composed by Deborah, the seer stands in no connection with the prophets. Least of all can the colleges of the B'ne Nebiim at Gilgal and other places be regarded as nurseries of historic tradition: the products which are to be traced to these circles betray a somewhat narrow field of vision (2Kings ii., iv. 1-6, 23). The prophets did not form the tradition at first, but came after, shedding upon it their peculiar light. Their interest in history was not so great that they felt it necessary to write it down; they only infused their own spirit into it subsequently. But the systematic recoining of the tradition was only effected when a firmer stamp had become available than the free ideas of the prophets, the will of God having been formulated in writing. When this point was reached, no one could fail to see the discrepancy between the ideal commencement, which was now sought to be restored as it stood in the book, and the succeeding development. The old books of the people, which spoke in the most innocent way of the most objectionable practices and institutions, had to be thoroughly remodelled according to the Mosaic form, in order to make them valuable, digestible, and edifying, for the new generation. A continuous revision of them was made, not only in the Chronicles, at the beginning of the Greek domination, but, as we have seen in this chapter, even in the Babylonian exile. The style of the latter revision differed from that of the former. In Chronicles the past is remodelled on the basis of the law: transgressions take place now and then, but as exceptions from the rule. In the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, the fact of the radical difference of the old practice from the law is not disputed. In these works also the past is in some cases remodelled on the basis of the ideal, but as a rule it is simply condemned. That is one difference; another has to be added which is of far greater importance. In the Chronicles the pattern according to which the history of ancient Israel is represented is the Pentateuch, i.e. the Priestly Code. In the source of Chronicles, in the older historical books, the revision does not proceed upon the basis of the Priestly Code, which indeed is completely unknown to them, but on the basis of Deuteronomy. Thus in the question of the order of sequence of the two great bodies of laws, the history of the tradition leads us to the same conclusion as the history of the cultus. CHAPTER VIII. THE NARRATIVE OF THE HEXATEUCH. In the historical books the tradition is developed by means of supplement and revision; double narratives occur here and there, but not great parallel pieces of connected matter side by side. In the Hexateuch additions and supplements have certainly taken place on the most extensive scale, but the significant feature is here that continuous narratives which can and must be understood each by itself are woven together in a double or threefold cord. Critics have shown a disposition, if not in principle yet in fact, to take the independence of these so-called sources of the Hexateuch as if it implied that in point of matter also each is a distinct and independent source. But this is, even _a priori_, very improbable. Even in the case of the prophets who received their word from the Lord the later writer knows and founds upon the earlier one. How much more must this be the case with narrators whose express business is with the tradition? Criticism has not done its work when it has completed the mechanical distribution; it must aim further at bringing the different writings when thus arranged into relation with each other, must seek to render them intelligible as phases of a living process, and thus to make it possible to trace a graduated development of the tradition. The striking agreement of the different works, not only in matter, but in their arrangement of the narratives, makes the office of criticism as now described not less but more necessary. There is no primitive legend, it is well known, so well knit as the biblical one, and thus it is no wonder that it became the frame for many others and infused into them some of its own colour. This connection is common in its main features to all the sources alike. The Priestly Code runs, as to its historical thread, quite parallel to the Jehovist history. This alone made it possible to interfuse the two writings as we now have them in the Pentateuch. That this was not done altogether without violence is less to be wondered at than that the violence which was done is so small, and particularly that the structure of each writing is left almost unimpaired. This can only be explained from the intimate agreement of the two works in point of plan. When the subject treated is not history but legends about pre-historic times, the arrangement of the materials does not come with the materials themselves, but must arise out of the plan of a narrator: even the architecture of the generations, which forms the scaffolding of Genesis, is not inseparably bound up with the matters to be disposed of in it. From the mouth of the people there comes nothing but the detached narratives, which may or may not happen to have some bearing on each other: to weave them together in a connected whole is the work of the poetical or literary artist. Thus the agreement of the sources in the plan of the narrative is not a matter of course, but a matter requiring explanation, and only to be explained on the ground of the literary dependence of one source on the other. The question how this relation of dependence is to be defined is thus a much more pressing one than is commonly assumed. /1/ ***************************************** 1. The agreement extends not only to the thread of the narrative, but also to particulars, and even to expressions. I do not speak of _mabbul_ (flood), or _tebah_ (ark), but the following examples have struck me:-In Q Genesis vi. 9, Noah is said to be _righteous in his generations_, in J E vii. 1 he is _righteous in his generation_-- an unusual form of speech, which gave a vast amount of trouble to the Rabbins and to Jerome. Similarly Q Genesis xvii. 21, _the son whom Sarah shall bear at this set time next year_, and JE xviii. 14: _at the same time I will come to thee again next year, and then Sarah shall have a son_. In the same way Q Exodus vi. 12 vii. 1. (Moses) _I am of uncircumcised lips_. (Jehovah) _See, I make thee a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet_; compared with JE iv. 10, 16. (Moses) _I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue_; (Jehovah) _Aaron shall be to thee instead of a mouth, and thou shalt be to him instead of God_. Comp. Genesis xxvii. 46, with xxv: 22. ************************************* This, however, is not the place to attempt a history of the development of the Israelite legend. We are only to lay the foundation for such a work, by comparing the narrative of the Priestly Code with the Jehovistic one. In doing so we shall see that Buttmann (Mythologus, i. p. 122 seq.) is right in asserting against de Wette (Beitraege, ii.), that, the Jehovistic form of the legend is the earlier of the two . /2/ **************************************** 2. The line indicated by Buttmann was first taken up again by Th. Noldeke in his Essay on the main-stock of the Pentateuch, which opened the way to a proper estimate of the narrative part of the work. **************************************** VIII.I. VIII.I.1 The Bible begins with the account of the Priestly Code of the creation of the world. In the beginning is chaos; darkness, water, brooding spirit, which engenders life, and fertilises the dead mass. The primal stuff contains in itself all beings, as yet undistinguished: from it proceeds step by step the ordered world; by a process of unmixing, first of all by separating out the great elements. The chaotic primal gloom yields to the contrast of light and darkness; the primal water is separated by the vault of heaven into the heavenly water, out of which there grows the world above the firmament which is withdrawn from our gaze, and the water of the earth: the latter, a slimy mixture, is divided into land and sea, whereupon the land at once puts on its green attire. The elements thus brought into existence, light, heaven, water, land, are then enlivened, pretty much in the order in which they were created, with individual beings; to the light correspond the lamps of the stars, fishes to the water, to the heaven the birds of heaven, and the other creatures to the land. The last act of creation is markedly emphasised. "And God said: Let us make man after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the living creatures of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man after His own image, in the image of God created He him, and He created them male and female. And God blessed them, and said: Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the face of the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given unto you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed-fruits: to you it shall be for food: and to every beast of the earth and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given the green herb for meat. Thus the heavens and the earth were made and all the host of them, and on the seventh day God ended His work, and blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it." (Genesis i. 1-ii. 4a). It is commonly said that the aim of this narrative is a purely religious one. The Israelite certainly does not deny himself in it: the religious spirit with which it is penetrated even comes at some points into conflict with the nature of its materials. The notion of chaos is that of uncreated matter; here we find the remarkable idea that it is created in the beginning by God. Brooded over by the Spirit, it is further of a nature for development to take place out of it, and the trait that the creation is represented throughout as a separation of elements which in chaos were mixed together, betrays even now the original design: but in the Hebrew narrative the immanent Spirit has yielded to the transcendent God, and the principle of evolution is put aside in favour of the fiat of creation. Yet for all this the aim of the narrator is not mainly a religious one. Had he only meant to say that God made the world out of nothing, and made it good, he could have said so in simpler words, and at the same time more distinctly. There is no doubt that he means to describe the actual course of the genesis of the world, and to be true to nature in doing so; he means to give a cosmogonic theory. Whoever denies this confounds two different things--the value of history for us, and the aim of the writer. While our religious views are or seem to be in conformity with his, we have other ideas about the beginning of the world, because we have other ideas about the world itself, and see in the heavens no vault, in the stars no lamps, nor in the earth the foundation of the universe. But this must not prevent us from recognising what the theoretical aim of the writer of Genesis i. really was. He seeks to deduce things as they are from each other: he asks how they are likely to have issued at first from the primal matter, and the world he has before his eyes in doing this is not a mythical world but the present and ordinary one. The pale colour which generally marks the productions of the earliest reflection about nature, when they are not mythical theories, is characteristic of Genesis i. also. We are indeed accustomed to regard this first leaf of the Bible as surrounded with all the charm that can be derived from the combination of high antiquity and childlike form. lt would be vain to deny the exalted ease and the uniform greatness that give the narrative its character. The beginning especially is incomparable: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness lay upon the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the water. Then God said: Let there be light, and there was light." But chaos being given, all the rest is spun out of it: all that follows is reflection, systematic construction; we can easily follow the calculation from point to point. The considerations are very simple which lead the writer to make first what is great appear, and then what is small; first the foundation and then that which exists upon it, the water before the fishes, heaven before the birds of heaven, land and plants before the animals. The arrangement of the things to be explained stands here for the explanation; there is nothing more than a succession which proceeds from the simple to the complicated; there is no effort of fancy to describe the process more closely; everywhere cautious consideration which shrinks from going beyond generalities. Only the framework of creation, in fact, is given; it is not filled up. Hence also the form of the whole, the effect of which cannot be reproduced in an epitome; the formula gets the better of the contents, and instead of descriptions our ears are filled with logical definitions. The graduated arrangement in separating particular things out of chaos indicates the awakening of a "natural" way of looking at nature, and of a reasoned reflection about natural objects, just as this is manifest in the attempts of Thales and his successors, which are also remarkable as beginnings of the theory of nature and of an objective interest in the things of the outer world, but further than this do not exactly rouse us to enthusiasm. /1/ *********************************************** 1. "There is nothing whatever in the piece that merits the name of invention but the chronological order of the various creations." Buttmann, p. 133. ********************************************** The first sentence of the Jehovistic account of the beginning of the world's history has been cut off by the reviser. [It was all a dry waste] when Jehovah formed the earth, and nowhere did the green herb spring up, for Jehovah had not yet caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But a mist (?) went up out of the earth, and watered the face of the ground. And Jehovah formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Then he planted a garden far to the eastward in Eden, in the place where the four chief rivers of the earth part asunder from their common source; there grow among other fine trees the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. In this garden Jehovah placed the man, to dress it and keep it and to eat of all the trees, forbidding him to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge only. But the man is utterly alone in his garden: he must have company that is suitable for him. So Jehovah first forms the beasts, if perchance the man will associate with them and make friends with them. He brings them to him one after another to see what impression they make on him, and what the man will call them. He calls them by their right names, ox, ass, bear, thus expressing his feeling that he finds in them nothing relate to himself, and Jehovah has to seek other counsel. Then he forms the woman out of a rib of the sleeping man, and causes him to awake. Wearied as it were by all the fruitless experiments with the beasts, the man cries out delighted when he looks at the woman: This surely is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone; she may be called wo-man. Thus the scene is drawn, the persons introduced, and an action secretly prepared: now the tragedy begins, which ends with the expulsion of man from the garden. Seduced by the serpent, man stretches out his hand after the food which is forbidden him, in order to become like God, and eats of the tree of knowledge. The first consequence of this is the beginning of dress, the first step in civilisation; other and sadder consequences soon follow. In the evening the man and his wife hear Jehovah walking in the garden; they hide before Him, and by doing so betray themselves. It is useless to think of denying what has taken place, and as each of them puts the blame on the other, they show themselves one after the other to be guilty. The sentence of the judge concludes the investigation. The serpent is to creep on its belly, to eat dust, and to perish in the unequal contest with man. The woman is to bear many children with sorrow, and to long for the man, who yet will be her tyrant. The principal curse is directed against the man. "Cursed be the ground for thy sake: in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to, thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Sentence being thus spoken, Jehovah prepares the man and woman for their future life by making coats of skins to dress them with. Then turning to His celestial company, "Behold," He says, "the man is become like one of us to know good and evil; and now lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever." With these words he drives man out of Paradise, and places before it the cherubs, and the flaming sword, which turns every way, to keep the way of the tree of Life (Genesis i. 4b-iii. 24). The gloomiest view of life as it now is, lies at the root of this story. Man's days are mere hardship and labour and task-work, a task-work with no prospect of relief, for the only reward of it is that he returns to the earth from which he was taken. No thought appears of any life AFTER death, and life WITHOUT death might have been, but has been forfeited, now the cherub guards the approach to the tree of life, of which man might have eaten when in Paradise but did not. This actual, cheerless lot of man upon the earth is the real problem of the story. It is felt to be the very opposite of our true destiny; at first, things must have been otherwise. Man's lot now is a perversion of what it was at first, it is the punishment of primeval guilt now resting on us all. At first man lived in Paradise; he had a happy existence, and one worthy of his nature, and held familiar intercourse with Jehovah; it was his forbidden striving after the knowledge of good and evil that drove him out of Paradise and brought all his miseries upon him. What is the knowledge of good and evil? The commentators say it is the faculty of moral distinction,--conscience, in fact. They assume accordingly that man was in Paradise morally indifferent, in a state which allowed of no self-conscious action and could not be called either good or evil. A state like this not being an ideal one, some of them consider that man gained more than he lost by the fall, while others admit that it could not be the divine intention to keep him always at this stage of childish irresponsibility, and that this cannot be the view of the narrator either. But it is plain that the narrator is not speaking of a relative prohibition of knowledge, but an absolute one: he means that it is only for God, and that when man stretches out his hand towards it he is transcending his limits and seeking to be as God. On the other side he cannot of course mean to say that conscience is a doubtful blessing, and its possession to be deplored, or that it is a thing that God in fact refuses to men and reserves to Himself alone. The knowledge spoken of cannot be moral knowledge. What could the assertion mean that God would have no one but Himself know the difference between good and evil, and would deny to man this knowledge? One would think that conscience is a thing belonging specifically to man and not to God. And what could be the sense of representing Adam and Eve as so intent to know what was sin and what was virtue? No one is curious about that, and sin never came into existence in the way of ethical experiment, by men's desiring to know what it is. And it is manifestly assumed that men knew in paradise that obedience to Jehovah was good and disobedience evil. And finally, it conflicts with the common tradition of all peoples to represent the first man as a sort of beast; he is regarded as undeveloped only in point of outward culture. The knowledge which is here forbidden is rather knowledge as such, general knowledge, or getting the eyes opened, as it is afterwards called. This is what transcends, in the writer's view, the limits of our nature; prying out the secret of things, the secret of the world, and overlooking, as it were, God's hand to see how He goes to work in His living activity, so as, perhaps, to learn His secret and imitate Him. For knowledge is to the ancient world also power, and no mere metaphysic. This knowing in the highest sense is the attribute of God alone, who stands in the creative centre of things and penetrates and surveys the whole; it is sealed to man, who has to labour and weary himself at little things. And yet the forbidden good has the most powerful attraction for him; he burns to possess it, and instead of resigning himself in trust and reverence he seeks to steal the jewel which is jealously guarded from him, and so to become like God--to his own sorrow. This explanation is not new; it is the old and popular one, for which reason also Goethe adopted it in Faust. One objection certainly may be taken to it; the words are not merely _knowledge_, but _knowledge of good and evil_. But good and evil in Hebrew mean primarily nothing more than salutary and hurtful; the application of the words to virtue and sin is a secondary one, these being regarded as serviceable or hurtful in their effects. Good and evil as spoken of in Genesis ii. iii. point to no contrast of some actions with others according to their moral distinctions: the phrase is only a comprehensive one for things generally, according to the contradictory attributes which constitute their interest to man, as they help or injure him: for, as said, he desires to know not what things are metaphysically, but what is the use of them. /1/ Besides the *************************************** I Sur. 20, 91. Hudh. 22, 10 (Agh. xv. 105, 12). Hamasa, 292, 8 seq. Tabari i. 847, 18 *************************************** lengthier expression we have the shorter one, knowledge, simply (iii. 6); and it must also be remarked that the phrase is not: know the good and the evil, but know good and evil. But more, we must regard this knowledge not as it affects the individual, but in the light of history; what is meant is what we call civilisation. As the human race goes forward in civilisation, it goes backward in the fear of God. The first step in civilisation is clothing; and here this is the first result of the fall. The story is continued in chapter iv. Adam's sons begin to found cities, Jubal is the first musician, Cain discovers the oldest and the most important of the arts, that of the smith-- hence the sword and bloody vengeance. Of the same tendency is the connected story of the city and the tower of Babel, in which is represented the foundation of the great empires and cities of the world, which concentrate human strength and seek to use it to press into heaven itself. In all this we have the steps of man's emancipation; with his growing civilisation grows also his alienation from the highest good; and--this is evidently the idea, though it is not stated--the restless advance never reaches its goal after all; it is a Sisyphus-labour; the tower of Babel, which is incomplete to all eternity, is the proper symbol for it. The strain is that strain of unsatisfied longing which is to be heard among all peoples. On attaining to civilisation they become aware of the value of those blessings which they have sacrificed for it. /1/ *************************************** 1. Dillmann thinks this idea insipid: Genesis (1882), p. 44 ************************************** It was necessary to discuss the notion of knowledge at some length, because the misunderstanding of this point on the part of philosophers and theologians has cast over our story an appearance of modernness, which has, in its turn, done something to influence general opinion as to the age of this story compared with the other. Having got rid of this impression we turn to those features of Genesis ii. iii. which help to determine positively its relation to chapter i. What has been untruly asserted of Genesis i. is true of Genesis ii. iii. The Jehovist narrative does shine by the absence of all efforts after rationalistic explanation, by its contempt for every kind of cosmological speculation. The earth is regarded as being at first not moist and plastic but (as in Job xxxviii. 38) hard and dry: it must rain first in order that the desert may be turned into a green meadow, as is the case still every year when the showers of spring come. The ground further requires cultivation by man that the seed may spring forth. No regard is paid to any natural sequence of the acts of creation: man, the most helpless of all beings, appears first, and finds himself placed on a world entirely bare, without tree or bush, without the animals, without woman. Man is confessedly the exclusive object of interest, the other creatures are accounted for by their importance to him, as if this only conferred on them a right to exist. The idea explains matter: mechanical possibility is never consulted, and we do not think of asking about it. Want of taste could find no lower deeps than when this or that scholar goes from Genesis ii. 21 to count his ribs, or comes to the conclusion that the first man was hermaphrodite. In the first account we stand before the first beginnings of sober reflection about nature, in the second we are on the ground of marvel and myth. Where reflection found its materials we do not think of asking; ordinary contemplation of things could furnish it. But the materials for myth could not be derived from contemplation, at least so far as regards the view of nature which is chiefly before us here; they came from the many-coloured traditions of the old world of Western Asia. Here we are in the enchanted garden of the ideas of genuine antiquity; the fresh early smell of earth meets us on the breeze. The Hebrews breathed the air which surrounded them; the stories they told on the Jordan, of the land of Eden and the fall, were told in the same way on the Euphrates and the Tigris, on the Oxus and the Arius. The true land of the world, where dwells the Deity, is Eden. It was not removed from the earth after the fall; it is there still, else whence the need of cherubs to guard the access to it? The rivers that proceed from it are real rivers, all well known to the narrator, they and the countries they flow through and the products that come from these countries. Three of them, the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Tigris, are well known to us also; and if we only knew how the narrator conceived their courses to lie, it would be easy to determine the position of their common source and the situation of Paradise. Other peoples of antiquity define the situation of their holy land in a similar manner; the streams have different names, but the thing is the same. The wonderful trees also in the garden of Eden have many analogies even in the Germanic mythology. The belief in the cherubs which guard Paradise is also widely diffused. _Krub_ is perhaps the same name, and certainly represents the same idea, as _Gryp_ in Greek, and _Grei_f in German. We find everywhere these beings wonderfully compounded out of lion, eagle, and man. They are everywhere guardians of the divine and sacred, and then also of gold and of treasures. The ingredients of the story seem certainly to have parted with some of their original colour under the influence of monotheism. The Hebrew people no doubt had something more to tell about the tree of life than now appears. It is said to have been in the midst of the garden, and so it seems to have stood at the point whence the four streams issued, at the fountain of life, which was so important to the faith of the East, and which Alexander marched out to discover. Paradise, moreover, was certainly not planted originally for man, it was the dwelling of the Deity Himself. Traces of this may still be recognised. Jehovah does not descend to it from heaven, but goes out walking in the garden in the evening as if He were at home. The garden of Deity is, however, on the whole somewhat naturalised. A similar weakening down of the mythic element is apparent in the matter of the serpent; it is not seen at once that the serpent is a demon. Yet parting with these foreign elements has made the story no poorer, and it has gained in noble simplicity. The mythic background gives it a tremulous brightness: we feel that we are in the golden age when heaven was still on earth; and yet unintelligible enchantment is avoided, and the limit of a sober chiaroscuro is not transgressed. The story of the creation in six days played, we know, a great part in the earlier stages of cosmological and geological science. It is not by chance that natural science has kept off Genesis ii. iii. There is scarcely any nature there. But poetry has at all times inclined to the story of Paradise. Now we do not require to ask at this time of day, nor to argue the question, whether mythic poetry or sober prose is the earlier stage in the contemplation of the world. Intimately connected with the advanced views of nature, which we find in Genesis i., is the "purified" notion of God found there. The most important point is that a special word is employed, which stands for nothing else than the creative agency of God, and so dissociates it from all analogy with human making and shaping-- a word of such exclusive significance that it cannot be reproduced either in Latin, or in Greek, or in German. In a youthful people such a theological abstraction is unheard of; and so with the Hebrews we find both the word and the notion only coming into use after the Babylonian exile; they appear along with the emphatic statement of the creative omnipotence of Jehovah with reference to nature, which makes its appearance, we may say suddenly, in the literature of the exile, plays a great part in the Book of Job, and frequently presents itself in Isaiah xl.-lxvi. In Genesis ii. iii., not nature but man is the beginning of the world and of history; whether a creation out of nothing is assumed there at all, is a question which only the mutilation of the commencement (before ii. 4b) makes it not quite impossible to answer in the affirmative. At any rate it is not the case here that the command of the Creator sets things in motion at the first so that they develop themselves to separate species out of the universal chaos; Jehovah Himself puts His hand to the work, and this supposes that the world in its main features was already in existence. He plants and waters the garden, He forms man and breathes life into his nostrils, He builds the woman out of the man's rib, having made a previous attempt, which was unsuccessful, to provide him with company; the beasts are living witnesses of the failure of His experiments. In other respects, too, He proceeds like a man. In the evening when it grows cool He goes to walk in the garden, and when there discovers by chance the transgression which has taken place, and holds an investigation in which He makes not the least use of His omniscience. And when He says: "Behold, the man is become like one of us to know good and evil: and now lest he stretch forth his hand, and take of the tree of life, and eat and live for ever," that is not said in irony, any more than when He expresses Himself on the occasion of the building of Babel; "Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of their doings, and now nothing will be too difficult for them that they have imagined to do; go to, let us go down and confound their language." That at the same time the majesty of Jehovah is in no way compromised is the mystery of poetic genius. How would the colourless God of abstraction fare in such a situation ? The treatment, finally, of the microcosm in the two accounts, reflects the difference between them. In chapter i. man is directed at the very outset to the ground on which he moves to this day: "Replenish the earth, and subdue it," he is told; a perfectly natural task. In chaps. ii. iii. he is placed in Paradise, and his sphere of activity there, nestled, as he may be said still to be, in the lap of the Deity, is very limited. The circumstances of his life as it now is, the man's toil in the fields, the woman's toil in bearing children, do not answer to his original destiny; they are not a blessing, but a curse. In the Jehovistic narrative man is as wonderful to himself as the external world; in the other he is as much a matter of course as it is. In the one he sees astonishing mysteries in the difference of the sexes, in marriage, in child-birth (iv. 1); in the other these are physiological facts which raise no questions or reflections: "He made them male and female, and said, Be fruitful and multiply." There his attitude towards the beasts is one of mixed familiarity and bewilderment; he does not know exactly what to make of them; they are allied to him and yet not quite suitable society for him; here they are beings not related to him, over which he rules. The chief point in which the difference between the two accounts comes to a head is this. In Genesis ii. iii., man is virtually forbidden to lift the veil of things, and to know the world, represented in the tree of knowledge. In Genesis i. this is the task set him from the beginning; he is to rule over the whole earth, and rule and knowledge come to the same thing--they mean civilisation. There nature is to him a sacred mystery: here it is a mere fact, an object; he is no longer bewildered over against nature, but free and superior. There it is a robbery for man to seek to be equal with God: here God makes him at first in His own image and after His own likeness, and appoints him His representative in the realm of nature. We cannot regard it as fortuitous that in this point Genesis i. asserts the opposite of Genesis ii. iii.; the words spoken with such emphasis, and repeated i. 27, v. 1, ix. 6, sound exactly like a protest against the view underlying Genesis ii. iii., a protest to be explained partly by the growth of moral and religious cultivation, but partly also no doubt due to the convulsive efforts of later Judaism to deny that most firmly established of all the lessons of history, that the sons suffer for the sins of the fathers. /1/ ***************************************** 1. A coarser counterpart to Genesis ii. iii, is Genesis vi. 1-4. Here also there is a kind of fall of man in an attempt to overpass the boundary between the human race and the divine. In the priestly narrative (Q) the gulf between spirit, which is divine substance, and flesh, which is human substance, is bridged over by the doctrine of man's creation in the image of God. ***************************************** What are generally cited as points of superiority in Genesis i. over Genesis ii. iii. are beyond doubt signs of progress in outward culture. The mental individuality of the two writers, the systematiser and the genius, cannot be compared, and the difference in this respect tells nothing of their respective dates; but in its general views of God, nature, and man, Genesis i. stands on a higher, certainly on a later, level. To our way of thinking its views are more intelligible, simpler, more natural, and on this account they have been held to be also older. But this is on the one hand to identify naturalness with originality, two things which every one knows not to be the same, and on the other hand it is applying a standard to prehistoric tradition which applies to historical tradition only: freedom from miracle and myth count in favour of the latter, but not of the former. But the secret root of the manifest preference long shown by historic-critical theology for Genesis i. appears to lie in this, that scholars felt themselves responsible for what the Bible says, and therefore liked it to come as little as possible in conflict with general culture. /1/ ******************************************** 1. I merely assert that Genesis ii. iii. is prior to Genesis i.; I do not believe the story of Paradise and of the Fall to be very old with the Israelites. We are led to think so by the fact that the man and the woman stand at the head of the genealogy of the human race; a place we should rather expect to be assigned to the serpent (according to primitive Semitic belief the serpent was by no means opposed to God). This is the case in the Chronicon Edessenum and in Abyssinian legend, and a trace of this is perhaps preserved in the name of Eve, as Noldeke thinks. The name certainly receives this interpretation in Philo (de agric. Noe, # 21) and in the Midrash Rabba on Genesis iii. 20 (D. M. Z. 1877, p. 239, 326). Moreover, the true seat of God to the Hebrews was Mount Sinai, and the original Hebrew life was the nomadic life of the patriarchs, not gardening or agriculture. And finally we cannot believe barbarians to have indulged in reflections on the advantages and disadvantages of civilisation. The materials of Genesis ii. iii. can hardly have been imported before the time of Solomon. Where they came from we can scarcely guess; it would be most natural to think of the Phoenicians or the Canaanites generally, and this theory is favoured by Genesis iv. But in JE Babel is regarded as the last home of the primitive human race, Eden and Nod having preceded it; and the Hebrews probably derived the legend in the last instance from Babylon. But this does not prove that this or that parallel brought forward by Assyriologists is necessarily of value. ********************************************** VIII.I.2. After the beginning of the world we have in Genesis i.-xi., both in the Priestly Code and in the Jehovist, the transition from Adam to Noah (chapters iv. v.), then the flood (vi.-ix.), then the transition from Noah to Abraham (chapters x. xi.). In the dry names, which are enumerated in Genesis v. and Genesis iv. Buttmann recognised the remains of an historical connection once woven together out of primitive stories. These narratives were evidently mythological: their original contents are destroyed both in Genesis v. (Q) and in Genesis iv. (JE), but only the list of the Jehovist now bears the appearance of a ruin. In the other the fragments have been used for a careful new building in which they no longer look like fragments. Here they are made to serve as the pillars of a chronology which descends from Adam to Moses, computing the period from the one to the other as 2666 years. These 2666 years represent 26 2/3 generations of a hundred years each: namely, 1-20 Adam to Abraham, 21 Isaac, 22 Jacob, 23 Levi, 24 Kohath, 25 Amram, 26 Aaron; the last 2/3 of a generation is Eleazar, who was a man of mature years at the time of the Exodus. /2/ ************************************** 2. So Noldeke in the Jahrbb. fuer protest. Theol., 1875, p. 344. Genesis xv. 13-16 expressly states that the generation is reckoned as 100 years in this period. ************************************** Such a chronology is totally at variance with the simplicity of the legend. /1/ It is also evident, that if even in the case of the ************************************* 1. "Exact chronological dates are a sure sign of later working up of old poetical legends." Buttmann, I. p. 181. ************************************* historical books the systematic chronology is no older than the period of the exile, that of the Pentateuch must be of still later origin. For the historical period there were certain fixed points for chronology to lay hold of; it cannot have begun with the patriarchs and gone on to the kings, it must have begun with the kings and then gone higher up to the patriarchs; it must have begun at the lower end, where alone it had any firm ground to stand on. The belief that the men of the early world lived to a great age is no doubt old, but the settled chronology, based on the years in which each patriarch begat his son, is an artifice in which we manifestly see the doctrinaire treatment of history which was coming into vogue for later periods, attempting to lay hold of the earliest legends as well. Only when the living contents of the legend had completely disappeared could its skeleton be used as a framework of chronology. Buttmann has also shown that the elements of the ten-membered genealogy of Q (Genesis v.) and of the seven-membered of JE (Genesis iv.) are identical. In Q, Noah comes after Lamech at the end, and at the beginning Adam Cain is doubled and becomes Adam Seth Enos Cainan. Adam and Enos being synonymous, this amounts to Adam Seth Adam Cainan: that is to say Adam Seth are prefixed, and the series begins anew with Enos Cainan, just as in JE. The Priestly Code itself offers a remarkable testimony to the superior originality of the Jehovist genealogy, by ascribing to Lamech, here the ninth in order, the age of 777 years. This can only be explained from JE, where Lamech is seventh in order, and moreover specially connects himself with the number seven by his speech. Cain is avenged seven times, and Lamech seventy times seven. Another circumstance shows Q to be posterior to E. The first man is called here not Ha Adam as in JE, but always Adam, without the article (v. 1-5), a difference which Kuenen pertinently compares with that between ho Xristos and Xristos. But in Q itself (Genesis i.) the first man is only the generic man; if in spite of this he is called simply Adam (Genesis v.), as if that were his proper name, the only way to account for this is to suppose a reminiscence of Genesis ii. iii., though here the personification does not as yet extend to the name. We come to the story of the flood, Genesis vi.-ix. In JE the flood is well led up to: in Q we should be inclined to ask in surprise how the earth has come all at once to be so corrupted, after being so far in the best of order, did we not know from JE. In omitting the fall, the fratricide of Cain, the sword-song of Lamech, the intercourse of the sons of God with the daughters of men, and parting with the distinctive gloomy colouring which is unmistakably spread over the whole early history of man in JE, the Priestly Code has entirely lost the preparation for the flood, which now appears in the most abrupt and unaccountable way. As to the contents of the story, the priestly version here agrees to an unusual extent with the Jehovistic one; differing from it chiefly in the artificial, mathematical marking out of the framework. The flood lasts twelve months and ten days, i.e., exactly a solar year. It begins in the six hundredth year of Noah, on the seventeenth of the second month, rises for one hundred and fifty days, and begins to fall on the seventeenth of the seventh month. On the first month the tops of the mountains become visible; in the six hundred and first year, on the first of the first month, the water has abated; on the twenty-seventh of the second month the earth is dry. God Himself gives instructions and measurements for the building of the ark, as for the tabernacle: it is to be three stories high, and divided throughout into small compartments; three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits broad, thirty cubits high; and Noah is to make it accurately according to the cubit. When the water is at its height, on the seventeenth of the second month, the flood is fifteen cubits above the highest mountains--Noah having apparently not forgotten, in spite of his anxiety, to heave the lead and to mark the date in his log-book. This prematurely modern measuring and counting cannot be thought by any one to make the narrative more lifelike; it simply destroys the illusion. All that is idyllic and naive is consistently stripped off the legend as far as possible. As the duration of the flood is advanced from forty days (JE) to a whole year, its area also is immeasurably increased. The Priestly Code states with particular emphasis that it was quite universal, and went over the tops of the highest mountains; indeed it is compelled to take this view by its assumption that the human race was diffused from the first over the whole earth. Such traits as the missions of the birds and the broken-off olive-leaf are passed over: poetic legend is smoothed down into historic prose. But the value and the charm of the story depend on such little traits as these; they are not mere incidents, to poetry they are the most important thing of all. These are the features which are found just in the same way in the Babylonian story of the flood; and if the Jehovist has a much greater affinity with the Babylonian story than the Priestly Code, that shows it to have preserved more faithfully the international character of those early legends. This appears most plainly in his accounting for the flood by the confounding of the boundaries between spirit and flesh, and the intercourse of the sons of God and the daughters of men: the Jehovist here gives us a piece, but little adulterated, of mythical heathenism--a thing quite inconceivable in Q. The Priestly Code has the rainbow, which the Jehovist, as we now have him, wants. But we have to remember that in Genesis vi.-ix. the Jehovist account is mutilated, but the priestly one preserved entire. If the rainbow occurred both in JE and in Q, one of the accounts of it had to be omitted, and according to the editor's usual procedure the omission had to be from JE. It is accordingly very possible that it was not at first wanting in JE; it agrees better, indeed, with the simple rain, which here brings about the flood, than with the opening of the sluices of heaven and the fountains of the deep, which produce it in Q, and it would stand much better after viii. 21, 22 than after ix. 1-7. In the Priestly Code, moreover, the meaning of the rainbow is half obliterated. On the one hand, the story is clumsily turned into history, and we receive the impression either that the rainbow only appeared in the heavens at this one time after the flood, or that it had been there ever since; on the other hand, it is made the token of the covenant between Elohim and Noah, and the use of language in other passages, with the analogy of Genesis xvii., would point to the covenant described in ix. 1-7: the rainbow would then be the counterpart of circumcision. /1/ The covenant, ************************************* 1. The celestial bow is originally the instrument of the arrow-darting God, and therefore a symbol of His hostility; but He lays it out of His hand to signify that He has laid aside His wrath, and it is a token of His reconciliation and favour. When there has been such a storm that one might dread a repetition of the flood, the rainbow appears in heaven, the sun, and grace, breaking forth again. In the 0. T. Q#T has not the meaning of a mere arc, it always means the war-bow. And what is most important of all, the Arabs also always take the iris to be the war-bow of God; Kuzah shoots arrows from his bow, and then hangs it up in the clouds (D. M. Z. 1849, p. 200 seq.). With the Jews and their kin, the rainbow has retained far into Christian times a remarkably near relation to the Deity. It is singular that the Edomites have a God named Kaus, as well as Kuzah. ************************************* i.e., the law of ch. ix. 1-7, a modification of the first ordinance given to Adam (i.229, 30) for the world after the flood which still subsists, is for the Priestly Code the crown, the end, the substance, of the whole narrative. Its interest in the law always completely absorbs the simple interest of its story. We have also to remark that in this source vengeance for the spilling of blood is not the affair of the relatives but the affair of God; and that it is demanded for man as man, whether master or slave, and no money compensation allowed. The words sound simple and solemn: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made He man." Yet the religious notion of HUMANITY underlying this sentence is not ancient with the Hebrews any more than with other nations; cf. Genesis iv. 15, 24, and Exodus xxi. 20 seq. /1/ ******************************************* 1. De Wette, Beitrage, p. 57. The religious notion of the people is old. ******************************************** The ark lands, according to Q, on Mount Ararat. In JE, as we have it, no landing-place is named. But this is not original, as mythic geography belongs to the Jehovist in all other passages where it occurs. In Q the primitive history is never localised, the whole earth is given to man for a dwelling from the first. In JE, on the contrary, they live first in the land of Eden far to the East, and presumably high up in the North; expelled from Eden they come to the land of Nod, where Cain builds the town of Enoch, and departing from this district, which is still far to the East, they settle in the land of Shinar, at the mouths of the Euphrates and Tigris, where they build the town of Babel. Shinar is the point of departure of that history of the world which is no longer merely mythical, it is the home of the present human race. In this point the contrast is very noticeable between the local definiteness of the Jehovist legend, which lends it the character of the idyllic, and the vague generalness of the other. In Shinar, according to JE, Genesis xi. 1-9, men are still all together, and they desire to remain together there. Not to be scattered, they build a great city, which is to hold them all; and to make themselves a name, they add to it a high tower which is to reach heaven. Jehovah, perceiving in these attempts the danger of further progress in the same direction, comes down to confound their language, and by such violent means brings about the dispersion of the human race by the unity of which He feels himself threatened. In Q it is understood that men are scattered over the whole earth; they are never represented as all living at one point, and pains are accordingly taken to describe the flood as quite universal. The division of the people comes about quite simply in the way of genealogy, and the division of the languages is not the cause but the result of it. Accompanying this we find once more a notable difference in point of mental attitude; what JE regards as unnatural, and only to be understood as a violent perversion of the original order, is in Q the most natural thing in the world. The period between the flood and Abraham is filled up in Q by another ten-membered genealogy, which, to judge from the analogy of Genesis iv., had probably only seven members in JE. It cannot have been wanting there, and may have passed straight from Shem to Heber, and left out the grandfather Nahor (x. 21, 24, xxiv. 15, xxix. 5), who is even less to be distinguished from his grandson of the same name than Adam from Enos. The original dwelling-place of the Terahites is, according to Q, not the Mesopotamian Haran (Carrhae), as in JE (xii. 1, xxiv. 4), but Ur Casdim, which can only mean Ur of the Chaldees. From there Terah, the father of Abraham, Nahor, and Haran, is said to have emigrated with Abraham and Lot, the son of Haran, who was already dead. If this was so, Nahor must have stayed at Ur Casdim, and Haran must have died there. But neither of these assumptions is consistent with the indications of the narrative. The different aspirates notwithstanding, it is scarcely allowable to separate the man Haran from the town Haran and to make him die elsewhere. It is equally impossible to regard Ur in Chaldaea as the residence of Nahor, whether the grandfather or the grandson of the same name matters nothing; for it is obviously not without relation to real facts that the place, which in any case must be in Syria, where the Nahorides Laban and Rebecca dwell, is called in J the town of Nahor, and in E Haran. Even in Q though Nahor stays in Ur, Laban and Rebecca do not live in Chaldaea, but in Padan Aram, ie., in Mesopotamian Syria. What helps to show that Ur Casdim does not belong to the original form of the tradition, is that even in Serug the father of Nahor, we are far away from Babylon towards the West. Serug is the name of a district which borders Haran on the North; how can the son of Serug all at once leap back to Ur Casdim? What the reasons were for making Babylon Abraham's point of departure, we need not now consider; but after having left Ur Casdim with Terah, it is curious how he only gets as far as Haran, and stays there till his father's death. In Q also it is from Haran that he enters Palestine. Here, if anywhere, we have in the doubling of the point of departure an attempt to harmonise and to gain a connection with JE. VII.I.3. The view is happily gaining ground that, in the mythical universal history of mankind in Genesis i.-xi., the Jehovist version is more primitive than the priestly one. And we are, in fact, compelled to adopt this view when we observe that the materials of the narratives in question have not an Israelite, but a universal ethnic origin. The traces of this origin are much more distinctly preserved in the Jehovist, whence it comes that comparative mythology occupies itself chiefly with his narratives, though without knowing that it is doing so. The primitive legend has certainly undergone alterations in his hands too; its mythic character is much obliterated, and all sorts of Israelite elements have crept in. Even the fratricide of Cain, with the contrast in the background between the peaceful life of the Hebrews in the land of Canaan and the restless wanderings of the Cainites (Kenites) in the neighbouring desert, quite falls out of the universal historical and geographical framework. Still more does the curse of Canaan do so; here the trait is evidently old, that Noah was the first to make wine, but this has been made a merely subordinate feature of a pronouncedly national Israelite narrative. But in the Jehovist the process of emptying the primitive legend of its true meaning and contents has not gone nearly so far as in the Priestly Code, where it actually creates surprise when some mythic element shines through, as in the cases of Enoch, and of the rainbow. The mythic materials of the primitive world-history are suffused in the Jehovist with a peculiar sombre earnestness, a kind of antique philosophy of history, almost bordering on pessimism: as if mankind were groaning under some dreadful weight, the pressure not so much of sin as of creaturehood (vi. 1-4). We notice a shy, timid spirit, which belongs more to heathenism. The rattling of the chains at intervals only aggravates the feeling of confinement that belongs to human nature; the gulf of alienation between man and God is not to be bridged over. Jehovah does not stand high enough, does not feel Himself secure enough, to allow the earth-dwellers to come very near Him; there is almost a suggestion of the notion of the jealousy of the gods. This mood, though in many ways softened, is yet recognisable enough in Genesis ii. iii., in vi. 1-4, and xi. 1-9. In the Priestly Code it has entirely disappeared; here man no longer feels himself under a secret curse, but allied to God and free, as lord of nature. True, the Priestly Code also recognises in its own fashion the power of sin--this we saw in the chapter on sacrifice; but sin as the root of ruin, explaining it and capable of being got rid of, is the very opposite of blind, not-to-be-averted fate. The slavery of sin and the freedom of the children of God are in the Gospel correlated. The mythical mode of view is destroyed by the autonomy of morality; and closely connected with this is the rational way of looking at nature, of which we find the beginnings in the Priestly Code. This view of nature presupposes that man places himself as a person over and outside of nature, which he regards as simply a thing. We may perhaps assert that were it not for this dualism of Judaism, mechanical natural science would not exist. The removal of colour from the myths is the same thing as the process of Hebraising them. The Priestly Code appears to Hebraise less than the Jehovist; it refrains on principle from confounding different times and customs. But in fact it Hebraises much more: it cuts and shapes the whole of the materials so that they may serve as an introduction to the Mosaic legislation. It is true that the Jehovist also placed these ethnic legends at the entrance to his sacred legend, and perhaps selected them with a view to their forming an introduction to it; for they are all ethical and historical in their nature, and bear on the problems of the world of man, and not the world of nature. /1/ ************************************* 1 Yet it is possible the selection presented him with no difficulty, since cosmological myths were not popular tales, but priestly speculations, with which he was quite unacquainted. *************************************** But with the Jehovist justice was yet done to some extent to the individuality of the different narratives: in the Priestly Code their individuality is not only modified to suit the purpose of the whole, but completely destroyed. The connection leading up to the Torah of Moses is everything, the individual pieces have no significance but this. It follows of course from this mode of treatment that the connection itself loses all living reality; it consists, apart from the successive covenants, in mere genealogy and chronology. De Wette thinks all this beautiful because it is symmetrical and intelligible, and leads well up to a conclusion. But this will not be every one's taste; there is such a thing as poetical material without manufacture. How loosely the narratives of the primitive history are connected with each other in the Jehovist we see very clearly in the section dealing with the flood. It disagrees both with what goes before and with what follows it. The genealogy Genesis iv. 16-24 issues not in Noah but in Lamech; instead of Shem, Ham, and Japhet, the sons of Noah, we have Jabal, Jubal, Tubal, the sons of Lamech, as the inaugurators of the second period. We have also the characteristic difference, that Shem, Ham, and Japhet give us a division of mankind according to nations, while Jabal, Jubal, Tubal give a division according to guilds, which are necessarily those of the same people, as no people consists entirely of musicians or entirely of smiths. And it is undoubtedly the aim of chapter iv. 16 seq. to describe the origin of the present civilisation, not of that which is extinct, having been destroyed by the flood. Tubal-Cain is the father of the smiths of the present, not of those before the flood; Jubal the father of the musicians, Jabal of the shepherds of the narrator's own period; hence they stand at the end of the genealogy and open the second period. But as Genesis iv. 16-24 does not look forward to the flood, so neither does Genesis xi. 1-9 (the building of the tower of Babel) look back to it. This piece is obviously not the continuation of chapter x. That chapter brought us to a point at which the earth was occupied by different peoples and different tongues; and here (xi. 1) we are suddenly carried back to a time when the whole earth was of one language and one speech. Can this have been the time when Noah's family made up the whole population of the earth? or in other words, does xi. 1-9 go back before chap x. and join on to vi.-ix.? Manifestly not: "the whole earth" (xi. 1) is not merely Shem and Ham and Japhet; the multitude of men who seek by artificial means to concentrate themselves, and are then split up into different peoples, cannot consist of only one family. The point of view is quite different from what it would be if chaps. vi.-ix. were taken into account; the narrator knows nothing of the flood, which left Noah's family alone surviving out of the whole world. Nor would it avail to place xi. 1 at a period so long subsequent to the flood that the family might have increased again to a great people; even this would not give the requisite connection with the idea of Noah and his three sons. If the latter united themselves afterwards in one family, and one coherent people thus grew out of them, which was then split up by a higher power into different languages, then Shem, Ham, and Japhet entirely lose their significance as the great heads of the nations. The fact is simply this, that the whole section of the flood (Genesis vi.-ix.) is an isolated piece without any connection with the rest of the narrative of the Jehovist. Another strange erratic boulder is the intercourse of the sons of God with the daughters of men (Genesis vi. 1-4). /l/ The connection between ************************************* 1 See p. 307, note. ************************************* this piece and the story of the flood which follows it, is of the loosest; and it is in entire disagreement with the preceding part of the Jehovist narrative, as it tells of a second fall of man, with a point of view morally and mentally so different from that of the first, that this story can in no wise be regarded as supplementing or continuing that one. In Genesis vi. 1-4 morality has nothing to do with the guilt that is incurred. We have further examples which illustrate the fragmentary character of the Jehovist primitive history as we have it, in the story of the fratricide of Cain, and the curse of Canaan, which indeed ought not to be here at all, but belong by rights to the history of the patriarchs. We may close this section by reproducing the words in which Buttmann (i. 208 seq.) indicates his disagreement with De Wette in regard to the treatment of the early legends of the Bible: they are well worth noting. "Thoroughly familiar with the antiquities of the race in whose sacred writings these monuments have been preserved to us, De Wette recognises and follows the national spirit of that race in their most ancient records. In this way he discovers amidst these ruins the thread of an old connection, a kind of epos, the theme of which was the glorification of the people of Israel, a theme which finds a prelude even in the primitive history of the human race. This view is of the first importance for the object he has before him, which is the true criticism of these books; and for the moment other considerations must necessarily yield to it. My object in this whole investigation is only to find the universal element in the legends of different nations, and especially to discover what is common property in the myths of the different branches of the great family of nations to which the Hebrews and the Greeks and we ourselves alike belong. Thus each myth reveals itself to me as existing for itself, having a basis and completeness of its own, and even when I find it in other nations I at once assert for it its character as already known to me. Thus De Wette and I come to differ in the view we take of individual myths. To him they commonly appear as spontaneous free inventions of individual men for their own purposes; not in the ignoble sense in which the vulgar view speaks of the religious narratives of ancient peoples, but free inventions in which there is no intention to deceive. I, on the contrary, can allow no invention in these oldest portions of mythology. A true myth is never invented; it is handed down. It is not true, but it is honest. From small elements which fancy offered as true, these myths arose and grew, without any contributor to their growth feeling that he had of himself added to them. Those only had any conscious intention in the matter, who touched up the oldest pure myths, and drew them into the great circle of their national history; and their intention, though conscious, was quite innocent and harmless, as De Wette describes it. Now De Wette sees the chief traces of that unity, or of that national epos which winds its way through the Mosaic history, in the Elohim document. For his critical purpose, therefore, this document is the most important, and it he for the most part follows. My aim forbids me to attend to anything but the inner completeness of the stories taken one by one, and this I see most clearly in the Jehovah fragments; whence I have had to yield the preference to them in the foregoing discussions. Should each of us attain his end, our views will excellently supplement each other." We may add that just that linked unity of its narrative, which has procured for the Priestly Code the title of the "mainstock," shows that it presents us with a more developed form of the myths; while the Jehovist, just because of the defective connection (in form) of his "fragments," which long caused him to be regarded as a mere filler-up of the fundamental work, must be judged to stand nearer to the fountain. VIII.II. VIII.II.1. In the history of the patriarchs also, the outlines of the narrative are the same in Q and in JE. We find in both Abraham's immigration into Canaan with Sarah and Lot, his separation from Lot, the birth of Ishmael by Hagar, the appearance of God for the promise of Isaac, Isaac's birth, the death of Sarah and Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac's marriage with Rebecca, Jacob and Esau, Jacob's journey to Mesopotamia and the foundation of his family there, his return, Esau, Joseph in Egypt, Jacob in Egypt, Jacob's blessing on Joseph and his other sons, his death and burial. The materials here are not mythical but national, and therefore more transparent, and in a certain sense more historical. It is true, we attain to no historical knowledge of the patriarchs, but only of the time when the stories about them arose in the Israelite people; this later age is here unconsciously projected, in its inner and its outward features, into hoar antiquity, and is reflected there like a glorified mirage. The skeleton of the patriarchal history consists, it is well known, of ethnographic genealogy. The Leah-tribes are connected with the Rachel-tribes under the common father Jacob-Israel: then entire Israel is connected with the people of Edom under the old name of Isaac (Amos vii 9, 16). Isaac again is connected under Abraham with Lot, the father of Moab and Ammon. All these nearly related and once closely allied Hebrew tribes are shown to be intimately connected with the inhabitants of the Mesopotamian desert, and sharply marked off from the Canaanites, in whose land they dwelt. The narrative speaks of its characters as succeeding each other in time or contemporary; in this form it indicates logical or statistical subordination and co-ordination. As a fact the elements are generally older than the groups and the smaller groups than the greater. The migrations which are mentioned of peoples and tribes are necessary consequences of the assumed relationship. It would be quite possible to present the composition and relative position of any given people at a given time in a similar way in the form of a genealogical early history. True genealogy can scarcely represent precisely the existing relations. It cannot always be determined as a matter of fact whether a tribe is the cousin or the brother or the twin-brother of another tribe, or whether there is any affinity at all between the two; the affinity can be understood and interpreted in different ways, the grouping always depends to some extent on the point of view of the genealogist, or even on his likings and antipathies. The reason why the Arameans are made so nearly related to the Israelites is probably that the patriarchal legend arose in Middle and North Israel; as indeed the pronounced preference shown for Rachel and Joseph clearly proves to have been the case. Did the legend belong originally to Judah, it is likely that more prominence would be given to the Cainite (Kenite) tribes of the peninsula of Sinai, which, as it is, are too much thrust into the background; for there can be no doubt that in the earliest history of Israel these tribes were of no small importance. Nor are apparent contradictions wanting in the ethnographic genealogy. Ishmael, Edom, and the Cainite tribes first mentioned, come into mutual contact in different ways, which may be quite naturally explained from different views and arrangements of their mutual relationships. And lastly we may add that the genealogical form lends itself to the reception of every sort of materials. In the patriarchal legend, however, the ethnographic element is always predominant. Abraham alone is certainly not the name of a people like Isaac and Lot: he is somewhat difficult to interpret. That is not to say that in such a connection as this we may regard him as a historical person; he might with more likelihood be regarded as a free creation of unconscious art. He is perhaps the youngest figure in the company, and it was probably at a comparatively late period that he was put before his son Isaac. /1/ ****************************************** 1. The stories about Abraham and those about Isaac are so similar, that they cannot possibly be held to be independent of each other. The stories about Isaac, however, are more original, as may be seen in a striking way on comparing Genesis xx. 2-16 with xxvi 6-12. The short nnd profane version, of which Isaac is the hero, is more lively and pointed; the long and edifying version in which Abraham replaces Isaac, makes the danger not possible but actual, thus necessitating the intervention of the Deity and so bringing about a glorification of the patriarch, which he little deserved. All the commentators on Genesis indeed, regard chapter xx. as the original of xxvi.; they do not base their judgment, however, on a comparison of the parallel passages, but merely consider that as the father is older than the son, the story about the father is older than the corresponding story about the son; and they regard Isaac generally as a mere echo of Abraham. The obviousness of this principle is too great, and against it we have to consider that the later development of the legend shows a manifest tendency to make Abraham the patriarch par excellence and cast the others into the shade. In the earlier literature, on the other hand, Isaac is mentioned even by Amos, Abraham first appears in Isaiah xl.-lxvii. Micah vii 20 belongs to the exile, and the words "who redeemed Abraham" in Isaiah xxix. 22 are not genuine; they have no possible position in the sentence, and the idea of the salvation of Abraham (from the fire of the Chaldaeans) is of late occurrence. I certainly do not mean to maintain that Abraham was not yet known when Amos wrote; but he scarcely stood by this time at the same stage as Isaac and Jacob. As a saint of Hebron he might he of Calibite ordain, and have something to do with Ram (1Chronicles ii.). Abram may stand for Abiram, as Abner for Abiner and Ahab for Ahiab. The name Abu Ruham occurs in the Hadith as _nomen proprium viri_. ************************************* In the Jehovist this skeleton of ethnographic genealogy is found covered throughout with flesh and blood. The patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are not mere names, but living forms, ideal prototypes of the true Israelite. They are all peace-loving shepherds, inclined to live quietly beside their tents, anxious to steer clear of strife and clamour, in no circumstances prepared to meet force with force and oppose injustice with the sword. Brave and manly they are not, but they are good fathers of families, a little under the dominion of their wives, who are endowed with more temper. They serve Jehovah in essentially the same way as their descendants in historical times; religion with them does not consist of sacrifice alone, but also of an upright conversation and trustful resignation to God's providence. Jacob is sketched with a more realistic touch than the other two; he has a strong dash of artifice and desire of gain, qualities which do not fail to secure the ends he aims at. He escapes from every difficulty and danger, not only safely but with profit: Jehovah helps him, but above all he helps himself, without showing, as we should judge, any great scruple in his choice of means. The stories about him do not pretend to be moral, the feeling they betray is in fact that of undissembled joy in all the successful artifices and tricks of the patriarchal rogue. Of the subordinate figures Esau is drawn with some liking for him, then Laban, and the weak-kneed saint, Lot. Ishmael is drawn as the prototype of the Bedouin, as a wild ass of a man, whose hand is against every man, and every man's hand against him. It is remarkable that the heroes of Israelite legend show so little taste for war, and in this point they seem to be scarcely a true reflection of the character of the Israelites as known from their history. Yet it is not difficult to understand that a people which found itself incessantly driven into war, not only dreamed of an eternal peace in the future, but also embodied the wishes of its heart in these peaceful forms of the golden age in the past. We have also to consider that the peaceful shepherd life of the patriarchs is necessary to the idyllic form in which the early history of the people is cast; only peoples or tribes can make war, not single men. /1/ This also must serve to explain why ******************************************* 1. This consideration is certainly less decisive than the foregoing one. Jacob is a peaceful shepherd, not only because of the idyllic form of the narrative, but in his own being and character. He forms the strongest contrast to his brother Esau, who in spite of the idyllic form is a man of war. Such exceptions as Genesis xiv. and xlviii.'22 (chapter xxxiv.) only prove the rule. ******************************************* the historical self-consciousness of the nation finds so little expression in the personal character of the patriarchs. It makes vent for itself only in the inserted prophecies of the future; in these we trace that national pride which was the fruit of the exploits of David, yet always in a glorified form, rising to religious exaltation. In the traits of personal character ascribed to the patriarchs they represent substantially the nature and the aspirations of the individual Israelite. The historic-political relations of Israel are reflected with more life in the relations borne by the patriarchs to their brothers; cousins, and other relatives. The background is never long concealed here, the temper of the period of the kings is everywhere discernible. This is the case most clearly perhaps in the story about Jacob and Esau. The twins are at variance, even in the womb; even in the matter of his birth the younger refuses precedence to the elder, and tries to hold him back by the heel. This is interpreted to the anxious mother by the oracle at Beersheba as follows: "Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples are separated from thy bowels, and the one people shall be stronger than the other, and the elder shall serve the younger." The boys grow up very different. Esau is a rough and sunburnt hunter, ranges about in the desert, and lives from day to day without care: Jacob, a pious, smooth man, stays at home beside the tents, and understands the value of things which his unsophisticated brother disregards. The former is the favourite of his father, the autochthonous Isaac, the latter is preferred by the mother, the Aramaean Rebecca; the former stays in his own land and takes his wives from the original population of south Canaan and the Sinaitic peninsula, the latter emigrates, and brings his wives from Mesopotamia. Thus the contrast is distinctly prefigured, which at a later time appeared, between the rough Edom, sprung from the soil and having his roots in it, and smoother, more civilised Israel, which had more affinity with the great powers of the world. By means of deceit and trickery the younger brother succeeds in depriving the elder of the paternal blessing and of the right of the first-born; the elder, in consequence of this, determines to kill him, and the situation becomes strained. Edom was a people and a kingdom before Israel, but was then overshadowed by Israel, and even subjugated at last by David: hence the fierce hatred between the brother nations, of which Amos speaks. The words of the blessing of Jacob show this quite distinctly to be the historical basis of the legend, a basis of which the Jews were perfectly conscious: we hear in the blessing of repeated attempts of the Edomites to cast off the yoke of Israel, and it is predicted that these efforts will be at last successful. Thus the stories about Jacob and Esau cannot have taken form even in outline, before the time of David; in their present form (Genesis xxvii. 40) their outlook extends to times still later. The roots of the legend being thus traceable in later history, a circumstance which the Jehovist does not attempt to conceal, it is no more than an apparent anachronism when he takes occasion to give a complete list of the Edomite kings down to David, interspersing it with historical notes, as, for example, that Hadad ben Bedad (possibly a contemporary of Gideon) defeated the Midianites on the plains of Moab. In the story of Jacob and Laban, again, the contemporary background shines through the patriarchal history very distinctly. The Hebrew, on his half-migration, half-flight from Mesopotamia to the land of Jordan, is hotly pursued by his Aramean father-in-law, who overtakes him at Gilead. There they treat with each other and pile up a heap of stones, which is to be the boundary between them, and which they mutually pledge themselves not to overstep with hostile intentions. This answers to the actual state of the facts. The Hebrew migration into Canaan was followed by the Aramaean, which threatened to overwhelm it. Gilead was the boundary between the two peoples, and the arena, during a long period, of fierce conflicts which they waged with each other. The blessing of Jacob, in the oracle on Joseph, also mentions the Syrian wars: the archers who press Joseph hard, but are not able to overcome him, can be no other than the Arameans of Damascus, to whose attacks he was exposed for a whole century. Joseph here appears always as the pillar of the North-Israelite monarchy, the wearer of the crown among his brethren, a position for which he was marked out by his early dreams. The story of Joseph, however, in so far as historical elements can be traced in it at all, and not merely the free work of poetry, is based on much earlier events, from a time when the union was just being accomplished of the two sections which together became the people of Israel. The trait of his brother's jealousy of him points perhaps to later events. /1/ ****************************************** 1. It deserves to be considered that at first Joseph is in Egypt alone, and that his brothers came after, at his request. When the notion of united Israel was transferred to the distant past, one consequence was that the fortunes of the part could not be separated from those of the whole. In the same way, Rachel being an Aramaean, Leah must be one too. Perhaps the combination of Rachel and Leah in a national unity was only accomplished by Moses. Moses came from the peninsula of Sinai (Leah) to lead the Israelites there from Goshen (Joseph). The designation of Levite he could not receive in Joseph, only in Leah. ******************************************* The historical associations which form the groundwork of the stories of the other sons of Jacob are also comparatively old. They afford us almost the only information we possess about the great change which must have taken place in the league of the tribes soon after Moses. This change principally affected the group of the four old Leah tribes which were closely connected with each other. Reuben assumes the rights of his father prematurely and loses the leadership. Simeon and Levi make, apart from the others, a faithless attack on the Canaanites, and collective Israel lets them suffer the consequences alone, so that they succumb to the vengeance of their enemies and cease to be tribes. Hence the primogeniture is transferred to Judah. Judah also suffers great losses, no doubt in the conflict which accompanied the settlement in the land of Canaan, and is reduced to a fraction of his former importance. But this breach is made good by fresh accessions from the mother-stock of the Leah tribes, by the union of Pharez and Zarah, i.e. of Caleb, Kenaz, Cain (Ken), Jerahmeel, with the remnant of ancient Judah. The Jehovist narratives about Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, are undoubtedly based on occurrences connected with the period of the conquest of the holy land; but this is not the place to trace the historical interpretation of the stories further. /1/ **************************************** 1. See "Israel," sec. 2, infra. Genesis iv. 1-15 is a similar tribal history. The old tribe of Cain, the name of which is indicative of settlement and culture, appears to have been broken up and scattered to the four winds in very early times (Judges v. 24) in the same way as Levi, with which it appears to have divided the priesthood. We have already said that Genesis iv. 1-l5 can only have found its way into the primitive legend by interpolation. **************************************** It may, however, be remarked, and it is important to do so, that even where true historic motives are indisputably present in the patriarchal legend, it is not exactly a reproduction of the facts as they occurred. In reality Edom always kept up his hatred against Israel and suppressed his feeling of relationship (Amos i. 11); in Genesis he meets his brother returning from Mesopotamia, and trembling with anxiety at the encounter, in a conciliatory temper which is quite affecting. The touch is one to reflect no small honour on the ancient Israelite. To set against this we have the touch, manifestly inspired by hatred, of Genesis xix. 30-38. No one can fail to wonder why the daughters of Lot are nameless, but this shows that they are inserted between Lot and his sons Moab and Ammon purely for the sake of the incest. Sympathies and antipathies are everywhere at work, and the standpoint is throughout that of Northern Israel, as appears most evidently from the circumstance that Rachel is the fair and the beloved wife of Jacob, whom alone in fact he wished to marry, and Leah the ugly and despised one who was imposed on him by a trick. /2. On the whole, the rivalries *************************************** 2 This, however, only warrants us to conclude that these legends first arose in Ephraim, not that they were written down there in the form in which we have them. *************************************** which really existed are rather softened than exaggerated in this poetical illustration of them; what tends to unity is more prominent and is more carefully treated than what tends to separation. There is no trace of any side glances at persons and events of the day, as, e.g., at the unseemly occurrences at the court of David, and as little of any twisting or otherwise doctoring the materials to make them advance this or that tendency. But these stories would be without point were it not for other elements which enter into them and attach them to this and that particular locality. In this aspect we have first of all to consider that the patriarchs are regarded as the founders of the popular worship at Shechem, Bethel, Beersheba, and Hebron, as we saw above, <I.II.1. "In perfect correspondence...">. A whole series of stories about them are cultus-myths; in these they discover by means of a theophany that a certain spot of earth is holy ground; there they erect an altar, and give it the name of the place. They dwell exclusively at places which were afterwards regarded as primeval sanctuaries and inaugurate the sacrifices which are offered there. The significance of these stories is entirely bound up with the locality; they possess an interest only for those who still sacrifice to Jehovah on the same altar as Abraham once did, under the same sacred oak of Moreh or Mamre. In the same way the patriarchs discover or excavate the caves, or springs, or wells, and plant the trees, which their posterity still count sacred or at least honourable, after the lapse of thousands of years. In some cases also striking or significant formations of the earth's surface receive a legendary explanation from the patriarchal age. Were the Dead Sea not there, Sodom and Gomorrha would not have perished; were there not a small flat tongue of land projecting into the marsh from the south-east, Lot would have directed his flight straight to the mountains of his sons Moab and Ammon, and would not have made the detour by Zoar, which only serves to explain why this corner was not included in the ruin to the area of which it properly belongs. The pillar of salt into which Lot's wife was turned was still pointed out in the days of Josephus; perhaps the smoke of the furnace which Abraham saw from the Jewish shore the morning after the catastrophe has some connection with the town of the same name which was situated there. /1/ ****************************************** 1 Joshua HNB#N xv. 62 is no doubt more correctly HKB#N: the name, having the article prefixed to it, must be susceptible of a clear meaning. ***************************************** The origin of Mount Gilead is explained from its historical significance: it is an immense mound which was once heaped up by Laban and Jacob in order to serve as a boundary between Aram and Israel. In many instances the names of places gave rise to a legend which does not always hit upon the true reason of the name. The spring of Lahai Roi, for example, is an instance of this. The discovery of this spring saved Hagar and Ishmael from dying of thirst. Hagar called the name of Jehovah who spoke with her, El Roi (God of Seeing), for she said, "Have I seen God, and am I kept in life after my seeing?" Wherefore the well is called Beer Lahai Roi (he lives who sees me); it is between Kadesh and Berdan. According to Judges xv. 18-20, 2Samuel xxiii. 11, a more correct interpretation of Lahai Roi would be " jawbone of the antelope "--this being the appearance presented by a series of rocky teeth standing close together there. /1/ ************************************ 1 Compare Onugnathos and the camel's jawbone in Vakidi, op. cit. p. 298, note 2: Jakut iv. 353, 9 seq. R)Y is an obsolete name of an animal. For HLM, Genesis xvi. 15, we should read )LHYM (cf. 1Samuel iii. 13), and before )XRY we should probably insert W)XY. ************************************ The original motive of the legend, however, as we have now indicated it, appears in the Jehovist always and everywhere covered over with the many-coloured robe of fancy. The longer a story was spread by oral tradition among the people, the more was its root concealed by the shoots springing from it. For example, we may assume with regard to the story of Joseph that, just because it has almost grown into a romance, its origin stretches back to a remote antiquity. The popular fancy plays as it will; yet it does not make such leaps as to make it impossible to trace its course. Miracles, angels, theophanies, dreams, are never absent from the palette. When Rachel eats the mandrakes which Reuben had found, and which Leah had given up to her, and they remove her barrenness so that she becomes the mother of Joseph, we have a story based on a vulgar superstition. Purely mythical elements are found isolated in the story of Jacob's wrestling with the Deity at the ford of the Jabbok. Etymology and proverbs are a favourite motive, and often give rise to lively and diversified tales. Even in pieces which we should be inclined to attribute to the art of individuals, old and characteristic themes may be involved. The story of Jacob and Laban, for example, is entirely composed of such materials. The courtship at the well is twice repeated with no great variation. The trait of the father-in-law's wish to get his oldest daughter first off his hands and craftily bringing her to the son-in-law after the wedding-feast, is scarcely due to the invention of an individual. The shepherd's tricks, by which Jacob colours the sheep as he likes, have quite the flavour of a popular jest. The observance of hospitality or transgressions against it, occupy a prominent place in the Genesis of the Jehovist; Lot's entertainment, and the Sodomites' insulting maltreatment, of the Deity who comes among them in disguise, is an incident that appears in the legends of many races. There is little psychological embellishment, little actual making-up; for the most part we have the product of a countless number of narrators, unconsciously modifying each other's work. How plastic and living the materials must have been even in the ninth and eighth century, we see from the manifold variants and repetitions of the same stories, which, however, scarcely change the essential character of the themes. One more trait must be added to the character of the Jehovist. Each of his narratives may be understood by itself apart from the rest; the genealogy serves merely to string them together; their interest and significance is not derived from the connection in which they stand. Many of them have a local colour which bespeaks a local origin; and how many of them are in substance inconsistent with each other, and stand side by side only by compulsion! The whole literary character and loose connection of the Jehovist story of the patriarchs reveals how gradually its different elements were brought together, and how little they have coalesced to a unity. In this point the patriarchal history of the Jehovist, stands quite on the same footing with his legend of the origins of the human race, the nature of which we have already demonstrated. VIII.II.2. It is from the Jehovistic form of the legends that we derive our picture of the patriarchs, that picture which children learn at school and which they find it easy to retain. To compare the parallel of the Priestly Code it is necessary to restore it as a whole, for few are aware of the impression it produces. "And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed out of Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran, and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came (xii. 4b, 5). And the land was not able to bear them that they might dwell together, for their substance was great so that they could not dwell together. And they separated themselves the one from the other; Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the Kikkar. /1/ ******************************************* 1. Where the Dead Sea was afterwards. ****************************************** And it came to pass when God destroyed the cities of the Kikkar, that God remembered Abram, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow-, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot dwelt... (xiii. 6, 11b, 12ab, xix. 29). And Sarai was barren: she had no child. And Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her maid, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. And Hagar bare Abram a son; and Abram called his son's name which Hagar bare, Ishmael. And Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram" (xi. 30, xvi. 3, 15, 16) Then follows the covenant of God with Abram, whose name he now changes to Abraham, and the institution of circumcision as the mark of those who belong to the covenant; then the announcement of the birth of Isaac by Sarai, now ninety years old, who is henceforth to be called Sarah, and Isaac's nomination as heir of the covenant in place of Ishmael (chapter xvii.). "And Sarah bore Abraham a son at the set time of which God had spoken to him. And Abraham called the name of his son that was born unto him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac, after eight days, as God had commanded him. And Abraham was an hundred years old when Isaac his son was born unto him (xxi. 2-5). And the life of Sarah was an hundred and twenty seven years; these were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kirjath-Arba, the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan" (xxiii. 1, 2). Then comes the treaty of Abraham, reported with all due legal accuracy, with Ephron the Hittite, from whom he purchases the cave of Machpelah, which is over against Mamre, for a family burying-place (xxiii.). "And these are the days of the years of Abraham's life which he lived, a hundred and seventy five years. And Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years; and was gathered to his fellow tribesmen. And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron ben Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre; the field which Abraham purchased of the sons of Heth; there was Abraham buried and Sarah his wife. And after Abraham was dead, God blessed his son Isaac" (xxv. 7-11a). Next come the Toledoth (generations) of Ishmael according to the regular practice of first exhausting the collaterals (xxv. 12-17). "These are the Toledoth of Isaac the son of Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac...and Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebecca to wife, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padan Aram, the sister to Laban the Syrian....And Isaac was 60 years old when Esau and Jacob were born (xxv. 19, 20, 26c). And Esau was 40 years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath, the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and they were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah. And Rebekah said to Isaac, I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth; if Jacob also take such wives of the daughters of Heth, of the daughters of the land, what good shall my life do to me? Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and charged him, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan; arise, go to Padan-Aram to the house of Bethuel thy mother's father, and take thee a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother's brother. And El Shaddai will bless thee, and make thee fruitful and multiply thee, and give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee and to thy seed with thee, that thou mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a stranger, which God gave unto Abraham. And Isaac sent away Jacob, and he went to Padan-Aram unto Laban ben Bethuel, the Syrian, the brother of Rebecca, Jacob and Esau's mother. And Esau saw that Isaac blessed Jacob, and sent him to Padan-Aram to take him a wife from thence, and that as he blessed him, he gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. Now Jacob hearkened to his father, and went to Padan-Aram. But Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father; then went Esau unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had Mahalath the sister of Nebaioth to be his wife (xxvi. 34 seq., xxvii. 46, xxviii. 1-9). And Laban gave unto his daughter Leah Zilpah his maid for her handmaid. And he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife. And Laban gave to Rachel his daughter Bilhah his handmaid to be her maid (xxix.24, 28b, 29). And the sons of Jacob were twelve. The sons of Leah: Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, Simeon, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun. The sons of Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin. The sons of Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid: Dan and Naphtali. The sons of Zilpah, Leah's handmaid: Gad and Asher; these are the sons of Jacob, which were born to him in Padan-Aram (xxxv. 23-26)....[and Jacob took] all his goods which he had gotten, the gear of his property which he had gotten in Padan-Aram, to go home to Isaac his father in the land of Canaan (xxx). 18). And God appeared unto Jacob when he was coming home from Padan-Aram, and blessed him; and God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob; thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name. And God said unto him; I am El Shaddai; be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins; and the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land. And God went up from him in the place where He talked with him. And Jacob called the name of the place where God spake with him Bethel (xxxv. 9-13, 15). And they departed from Bethel; and when there was but a little way to come unto Ephrath, Rachel died, and was buried there in the way to Ephrath; the same is Bethlehem (xxxv. 16a, 19, cf. xlviii. 7, xlix. 3I). And Jacob came unto Isaac his father unto Mamre, unto Kirjath-Arba, which is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac dwelt as strangers. And the days of Isaac were a hundred and eighty years. And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died, and was gathered unto his people, being old and full of days; and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him" (xxxv. 27-29.) Then follow the generations of Esau in chapter xxxvi. /1/ *********************************** 1. Only part of this chapter, however, belongs to the Priestly Code. *********************************** "And Esau took his wives, and his sons, and his daughters, and all the souls of his house, and his cattle, and all his beasts, and all his substance, which he had got in the land of Canaan, and went into the land of Seir from the face of his brother Jacob. For their riches were more than that they might dwell together, and the land of their sojourn could not bear them because of their cattle. And Esau dwelt in Mount Seir; Esau is Edom. And Jacob dwelt in the land of the sojourn of his father, in the land of Canaan (xxxvi. 6-8, xxxvii. 1). These are the Toledoth of Jacob...(xxxxvii. 2). And they took their cattle, and their goods, which they had gotten in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Jacob and all his seed with him, his sons, and his sons' sons, and all his seed, brought he with him into Egypt" (xlvi. 6, 7). Then follows the enumeration of the seventy souls of which his seed was then composed. "And Jacob and his sons came to Egypt to Joseph; and Pharaoh the king of Egypt heard it. And Pharaoh said to Jacob, How many are the days of the years of thy life? And Jacob said to Pharaoh, The days of the years of my sojourning are a hundred and thirty years; few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers, in the days of their sojourning. And Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best part of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded (xlvii. 5b, 6, LXX, xlvii. 7-11). And they settled there, and grew and multiplied exceedingly. And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years, and the whole age of Jacob was 7 years and 140 years (xlvii. 27b, 28)....And Jacob said unto Joseph, El Shaddai appeared unto me at Luz, in the land of Canaan, and blessed me, and said unto me, Behold, I will make thee fruitful and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a multitude of peoples; and will give this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession. And now thy two sons which were born unto thee in Egypt, before I came unto thee in Egypt, are mine; Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, as Reuben and Simeon. And the issue which thou begettest after them shall be thine, and shall be called after the name of their brethren in their inheritance. And when I came from Padan, Rachel died to me in the land of Canaan, in the way, when there was but a little way to come into Ephrath, and I buried her there, in the way to Ephrath; the same is Bethlehem (xlviii. 3-7, and v. 7, cf. xlix. 31)...[and his other sons also] he blessed; and he charged them, and said unto them, I am to be gathered unto my people, bury me with my fathers in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which field Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite, for a hereditary burying-place-there they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife, there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah--the possession of the field and of the cave that is therein from the children of Heth. And Jacob made an end of commanding his sons, and he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his fellow-tribesmen (xlix. 28b-33). And his sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham had bought for a hereditary burying-place from Ephron the Hittite, over against Mamre (l. 12, 13). And these are the names of the children of Israel which came into Egypt, with Jacob they came, every one with his house; Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulon, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher. And all the souls that came out of Jacob's loins were seventy souls; and Joseph was in Egypt. And the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, and the land was filled with them, and the Egyptians made the children of Israel their servants with rigour, in all their work which they wrought by them with rigour, and they made their lives bitter with hard bondage (Exodus i. 1-7, 13, 14). And the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage; and they cried, and their cry because of the bondage came up unto God, and God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, and God took notice (ii. 23-25). And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am Jehovah. I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of El Shaddai; but by my name Jehovah was I not known unto them; and I made a covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers. And I have heard the groaning of the children of Israel, that the Egyptians keep them in bondage, and I have remembered my covenant" (vi. 2 seq.). That is the whole of it. As a rule nothing more is aimed at than to give the mere links and articulations of the narrative. It is as if Q were the scarlet thread on which the pearls of JE are hung. In place of the somewhat loose connections of the Jehovist, the narrative of the Priestly Code shows a firmly jointed literary form; one remarkable feature of which is to be seen in the regular titles which stand at the head of the various sections. Each section begins with the words )LH TWLDWT (_hae sunt generationes_), from which Genesis derives its name. /l/ **************************************** 1 *)AUTH (H BIBLOS GENESEWS ii. 4 LXX. Hence Ewald's name for the Priestly Code, which is very appropriate for Genesis, or perhaps generally for the book of the four covenants--the Book of Origins. ***************************************** In the rest of the historical literature of the Old Testament nothing like this as yet appears. It is also characteristic that whenever the title occurs, introducing a new, section, the contents of the preceding section are first of all briefly recapitulated so as to show the place of the link upon the chain. The Priestly Code enters as little as possible on the contents of the various narratives. The predicates are stripped off, so far as they admit of such treatment, and the subjects duly entered in a catalogue with connecting text. In this way the history almost shrinks to the compass of a genealogy with explanations-- the genealogy at least forms the principal contents of the history, and here appears in such proportions and such systematic fashion as nowhere else. This has been regarded as a proof that Q belongs to an older stage of development of Hebrew historiography than JE. There can be no doubt, it is said, /1/ that the oldest Hebrew, *************************************** I Riehm, "die s.g. Grundschrift des Pentateuchs" in Studien und Kritiken, 1872, p. 296. *************************************** or indeed Oriental, history began with the historical notices and traditions inserted in the tribal or family catalogues. Yet we know positively that in the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, there are no genealogical statistics at all, while Chronicles, and what belongs to Chronicles, is full of them. We know also that songs such as those in Josh. x. 12, 13; Jud. v.; 2Samuel i. 19 seq., iii. 33 seq. are the oldest historical monuments, and that a number of them are found in JE and not a single one in Q. Herder's theory of the development of history out of genealogy will not apply here, /2/ but indeed what we have *********************************** 2 Nor in the case of the Arabs, as has been well shown by Sprenger against Caussin de Perceval (Essai, preface, p. ix.). *********************************** to do with here is not history proper at all, but folklore. It is true that with the Jehovist also the genealogy underlies the narrative as its skeleton. It is the natural chain to link the different stories together, and even at a time when the latter were still separate and only circulated orally, the genealogy was not unknown to the people. When stories were told of Isaac and Ishmael, and Lot and Esau, every one knew at once who these personages were, and how they were related to Israel and to one another. But this was merely the presupposition of the narratives, known as a matter of course to the hearers; the interesting element in them consisted in those traits which the Priestly Code omits. Stories of this kind compel attention because they set forth the peculiarities of different peoples as historically and really related to each other, not according to an empty embryological relation. It is the temper displayed by different races, not the stem of their relationship, that makes the point of the stories; their charm and their very life depend on their being transparent and reflecting the historic attitude of the time which gave them birth. The clearer the traces they display of love and hatred, jealousy of rivals and joy in their fall, the nearer are we to the forces which originated the tradition about early times. In the Priestly Code all those stories are absent in which there is anything morally objectionable,-- those for example in which the cowardice of the patriarchs endangers the honour of their wives, those of Sarah's cruel jealousy of Hagar, and of the unlovely contention of Leah and Rachel for husband and children, of the incest of Lot's daughters, of the violation of Dinah. All hatred, and strife, and deceit in the patriarchal family disappear: Lot and Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, agree to separate: of the tricks of Laban and Jacob to each other, of the treachery of Simeon and Levi to Shechem, of the enmity Joseph's brethren bore to him, there is not a word in the Priestly Code. It is not merely that "psychological decorations," as they have been called, are left out; the very heart of the business has been cut out. That Moab and Ammon, Ishmael and Edom, were Hebrew peoples, all more nearly or more distantly related to the Israelites, that the Aramaeans too were closely connected with the Hebrews by blood and by marriage, that this tribe lives in one district contiguous to Palestine, that in another--this is what the Priestly Code has to tell. Dry ethnographical and geographical facts like these are presented in a genealogical form; all we learn of the patriarchs is their marriages and births and how they separated to the various dwelling-places of their descendants. And folklore could not possibly be directed to such facts as these at a period when these relations were all matters of fact and familiar to every child. The Priestly Code, moreover, strips the legends of the patriarchs of their local as well as their historical colour; they are kept at a distance from all the places of the sacredness of which the Jehovist makes them the founders. /1/ ********************************************** 1. Hupteld gives a curious turn to this, saying that in the Priestly Code Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have much more permanent settlements. But it is this work that insists so often on the fact that the patriarchs were pilgrims and had nowhere a fixed residence: it only says that Abraham dwelt in the land of Canaan, and names no particular place even as the scene of the theophany in chapter xvii. It is only when the question of burying Sarah and Abraham arises that there is a change. Something must be done, and the field of Machpelah near Hebron is acquired (no doubt JE reported this, but the account of it in that source is lost) as a possession of the patriarchal family, where it now settles more permanently. That Isaac and Jacob continue to dwell at the grave of Abraham is a statement of which the significance is negative rather than positive, and on the other hand the patriarchal journeys up and down in JE are not designed to represent them as wandering nomads, but serve to bring them in contact with all the sacred places with which they had special associations, *********************************************** No historical geography is needed in order to understand the narrative of the Priestly Code in Genesis: but that is only to say that it stands quite away from the soil out of which oral tradition arises. It deals in no etymology, no proverbs nor songs, no miracles, theophanies nor dreams, and is destitute of all that many-coloured poetic charm which adorns the Jehovistic narratives. But this proves not its original simplicity but its neglect of the springs from which legend arises, and of its most essential elements. /1/ What remains is anything but historical objectivity: it is the formula and nothing more. ******************************************** 1. Riehm (op. cit. p. 302 seq.) thinks it is made out that the religious tradition of remote antiquity is distinguished by its "modest simplicity", and by a "style suited to its exalted subject." Only in the course of time was it adorned with all sorts of miraculous and mysterious elements, and that by the "fancy of the people," which, however, does not so easily gain entrance into serious literature(!) He appeals to the fact that the conception of angels, though certainly long developed with the people, occurs in the earlier prophets only in isolated instances, and in the later prophets, as Ezekiel, Zechariah, Daniel, more frequently. It is difficult to sift out what is true and what is false in this confused argument. In the Priestly Code there are, it is true, no angels, but on the other hand we have Azazel and Seirim (2Chronicles xi. 15; Isaiah xiii. 21, xxxiv. 14, comp. supra), for where the gods are not, the ghosts have sway. In one of the two main sources of the Jehovist (J), we find chiefly the Mal'ak Jahve (message of Jehovah); that is Jehovah Himself in so far as He appears and manifests Himself, whether in a natural phenomenon or in human form. Different are the B'ne Elohim, beings of divine substance: they perhaps are indicated in the 1st plural in the mouth of Jehovah (Genesis iii. 22, xi. 7). Both of these are doubtless very old. In the other principal source (E) a mixture appears to have taken place: the heavenly hosts are not only the children and companions of Deity, but also its messengers, conductors of the communication between heaven and earth (:xviii. 12); here we have the Mal'akim beside God and in the plural. This view also is not exactly a late one, as we see from the vision of Micaiah (t Kings xxii. 19). What does Riehm mean by high antiquity? A period from which no monuments are preserved to us? Why does he limit his attention to the prophetic literature? He concedes that the idea of angels was early present "in the fancy of the people," and he should have been equal to the further concession that those who wrote down the FOLKLORE occupied a somewhat different position to POPULAR BELIEF from that of the prophetic preachers of repentance. Not even the historical books admit of being measured by the same standard in this matter as the pre-historic tradition. And which is the more original--that the angels use a ladder as in Genesis, or that they have wings as in Isaiah? And finally as for the reference to Ezekiel (?), Zechariah, and Daniel, the difference appears to me to be tolerably plain between a systematic angelology which operates always with numbers and names and the childlike belief in angels. The former removes God to a distance, the latter brings Him near. ************************************************* As with the legend of the beginnings of things, so with the legend of the patriarchs: what is essential and original is the individual element in the several stories; the connection is a secondary matter, and only introduced on the stories being collected and reduced to writing. But in the Priestly Code the individuality of the several stories is simply destroyed: to such an extent is the connection dwelt on. What meaning is there in the statement that Jacob was all at once called Israel, i.e., Fight-God (xxxv. 10), if no mention is made of his wrestling with El, which was the occasion of his change of name? Have we anything like the true history of Joseph in the Priestly Code? Can we regard it as the original history, when the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is dismissed in a subordinate clause, as is done in xix. 29 ? The remarkable admission has been made, /1/ that it is plain from the summary ***************************************** 1. Riehm, op.. cit. p. 292. **************************************** manner of reporting of the Priestly Code, that the author could have told his story at much greater length, had it been consistent with the plan of his work to do so, and that this certainly points to sources where greater detail was used. The more detailed source, however, which is thus taken for granted, need by no means, it is said, have been a written one, and least of all the Jehovistic narrative before us; on the contrary, we are told, the state of the case is best satisfied by the assumption that the author held a more detailed narrative to be unnecessary, because the oral tradition, living in the mouth of the people, was quite able to fill in the colours in his outlines and to convert his chronistic notices into living pictures. But this is merely an attempt to elude the necessity for exactly comparing the Priestly Code and the Jehovist. The question is, which of the two writings stands nearest to the starting-point? Is it the one which attaches most importance to elements which are foreign to the nature of oral tradition altogether and only added in literary composition? It would be a curious thing if the writing down of the tradition began with writing down what the legend did not contain. What is set before us in the Priestly Code is the quintessence not of the oral tradition, but of the tradition when already written down. And the written account of the primitive history which it employs is the Jehovistic narrative. The order in which the popular legends are there placed here becomes the very kernel of the narrative. There the plan was hidden behind the execution, but here it comes forward not indeed essentially changed, but sharp and accentuated, as the principal feature of the whole. VIII.II.3. The Jehovist still lives in the spirit of the legend, but the Priestly Code is strange to that spirit, and does violence to the legend, by treating it from its own point of view, which is quite different from the old one. Moral and religious culture is further advanced; and hence the removal of real or apparent offences against morality and of notions which are too childish, or superstitious, or even mythical. If the Godhead appears, it must not be patent to the senses, at least it must not be seen in visible form. Jehovah speaks with Jacob, but not in a dream from the heavenly ladder; He reveals Himself to Moses, but not in the burning bush; the notion of revelation is retained, but the subsidiary incidents which must be added to make a concrete of the abstract, are stripped off. It is a matter of indifference under what forms or through what media a man receives revelation, if only the fact stands sure; in other words, revelation is no longer a living reality of the present, but a dead dogma for the past. The progress of culture in the Priestly Code is most of all evident in the learned historical treatment with which the legend is overlaid. First of all there is the chronology, which we encountered even in the legend of the origins of mankind, and which is naturally continued in the patriarchal legend. Here indeed we see with special plainness how foreign learned calculation is to the poetical materials; in some instances the facts lead to quite a different view from that of the numbers. Following the numbers of the Priestly Code we may, with the Rabbis, regard Shem and Eber as the venerable heads of the Jewish school in which the child Jacob learned his letters and the Torah. Then Jacob's sojourn in Mesopotamia lasts about eighty years, and all this time Isaac is Iying on his death-bed; after being long dead for us, he suddenly appears again, but only to die. And hand in hand with the chronology there goes the general predilection of the Priestly Code for numbers and names, which displays itself even in Genesis, though not nearly so marked there as in the later books of the Pentateuch. Oral folklore can very well contain round numbers, such as the twelve sons and the seventy souls of the family of Jacob, the twelve wells and the seventy palm trees at Elim, the seventy elders and the twelve spies; but a chronological system, whole lists of exact and considerable numbers, bare catalogues of personal names, none of them having any significance, dates and measurements such as those in the account of the flood in the Priestly Code, require writing even to originate, not to speak of transmitting them. These art-products of pedantry toke the place of the living poetic detail of the Jehovist narrative; the element of episode has to give way to the seriousness of dry history. It is also a mark of historical pedantry that the mixing up of the period of the patriarchs with a later period is avoided as anachronistic. In the Jehovist the present everywhere shines through, he in no way conceals his own age; we are told that Babylon is the great world-city, that the Assyrian Empire is in existence, with the cities of Niniveh and Calah and Resen; that the Canaanites had once dwelt in Palestine, but had long been absorbed in the Israelites. The writer of the Priestly Code is very careful not to do anything like this. /1/ He brushes up the **************************************** 1. Hence also archaisms such as Kirjath-Arba, Luz, Ephrath. Compare the antiquarian lore in Deuteronomy i.-iv. and in Genesis xiv. ****************************************** legend and makes history of it according to the rules of art; he kills it as legend, and deprives it of all real value, such as it possesses, not indeed for the history of primitive times, but for that of the age of the kings. The history of the first men and of the patriarchs is divided by the Priestly Code into three periods, each of them opened by a covenant. The covenant with Adam (Genesis i. 28-ii. 4) is the simplest; it is not called a covenant, but it is the basis of the second covenant with Noah (ix. 1-17), which modifies it in important particulars, and brings it nearer to the present age. The covenant with Abraham (Genesis xvii.), which alone is ratified with the succeeding patriarchs, does not apply to the whole of mankind, but only to Abraham's seed, and especially to Israel. The first sign of the covenant is the Sabbath (Genesis ii. 3; comp. Exodus xxxi. 12 seq.; Ezekiel xx. 12, 20), the second the rainbow (Genesis ix. 12), the third circumcision (xvii. 10). The first parent of mankind is enjoined to use a purely vegetable diet, the father of mankind after the, flood receives permission to slaughter animals; but he is expressly ordered not to eat flesh in the blood, and besides, to shed the blood of no man. What is said to Noah remains good for Abraham; but to the latter God promises that his posterity by Sarah shall possess the land of Canaan, and this is further assured by the purchase of the cave of Machpelah for a family burying-place, the purchase being executed according to all the forms of law, with prolonged negotiations. Further, God reveals Himself to Abraham as El Shaddai, and under this name He also manifests Himself to Isaac (xxviii. 3) and Jacob (xxxv. 11), repeating to them the promise of the possession of the land. It is pointed out with emphasis that God was not known to the pre-Mosaic time under His Israelite name, that He revealed Himself to the patriarchs only as El Shaddai, and as Jehovah first to Moses (Exod. vi. 2, 3). With a similar intention, which is not far to seek, the time of the patriarchs is kept free of the other Mosaic forms of worship; hence we have here no sacrifices nor altars, no distinction of clean and unclean beasts, nor anything of the kind. Now till within a short time ago, there was a great inclination (no one will be found at this date to acknowledge that he felt it) to admire the sobriety and faithfulness of the Priestly Code, as shown in this observance of the different religious stages. But in fact we can only admire these advantages in it, if we believe that the religion was at first naturalistic, that then all at once it became a good deal more positive, and then quite positive in the year 1500 B.C. How can we regard it as showing historical faithfulness, that the patriarchs were allowed to slaughter, but not to sacrifice, and that first the Sabbath was introduced, then the rainbow, then circumcision, and at last sacrifice, under Moses? It is natural that Jacob at Bethel should give tithes of all that he possesses, unnatural that the eponymous hero should not in worship above all things have left a good example to his posterity. What is it but a theory, that the name Jehovah was first revealed to Moses, and through him to the Israelites, and that it was quite unknown before?--a theory which certainly cannot be upheld, for Moses could have done nothing more irrational than to introduce a new name for the God of their fathers, to whom he directed his people,--and yet a theory which, from the correlation between Jehovah the God of Israel and Israel the people of Jehovah, readily suggests itself, and is not altogether peculiar to the author of the Priestly Code. /1/. He had a pattern which suggested **************************************** 1. Exodus vi. 2, 3 (Q) = iii. 13, 14 (JE). The burning bush shows the theophany in the Jehovist to be the earlier. In the Priestly Code it almost loses the character of a theophany entirely. But this is also quite clear on a comparison of Exodus vii. 1 (Q) and iv. 16 (JE). The phrase vii. 1, " Behold, I make thee a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet," is a degradation of the corresponding passage, iv. 16 "Aaron shall be to thee for a mouth, and thou shalt be to him for a god." For if Aaron is the prophet or the mouth of Moses, then in the original and only appropriate way of thinking of the matter, Moses is a god for Aaron, not for Pharaoh. By the way is there anything in the similarity between Sene and Sinai? ****************************************** certain lines, and these he traces strongly and with a system; and he even goes so far as to avoid the name of Jehovah even in his own narrative of the pre-Mosaic period. Even when speaking in his own person, he says Elohim, not Jehovah, down to Exodus vi. The three periods and the three corresponding covenants of the early age are preliminaries to the fourth period and the fourth covenant. The narrator everywhere has an eye to the Mosaic law, and the thought of it determined the plan which comes so prominently into view in his representation of the origins of human history. The great features of this plan are the great official transactions of Jehovah with the patriarchs. In these we have not a narrative but only speeches and negotiations; the preliminary laws are given in them, which, as they advance step by step, prepare the way for the great Law, namely, the Mosaic. The law of worship has taken the place of the legend of worship. In the legend the sacred usages and customs arise, as it were, spontaneously, in connection with any occasion, placed in the early sacred time, which may serve to account for them. Jehovah does not make it statutory that the sinew of the thigh may not be eaten; but He wrestles with Israel, and injures the sinew of his thigh during the wrestling, and for this reason the children of Israel do not eat thereof. In the following story it is explained how it came about that the Israelites circumcise young boys (Exodus iv. 25 seq.). As Moses was returning from Midian to Goshen, he spent a night on the road, and Jehovah fell upon him with the intention of killing him. His wife, Zipporah, however, took a flint and cut off the foreskin of her son, and touched Moses L:RAGLFYW with it, saying, Thou art a blood-bridegroom to me. Then Jehovah let him go. Thus Zipporah circumcises her son instead of her husband, makes the latter symbolically a blood-bridegroom, and thereby delivers him from the wrath of Jehovah to which he is exposed, because he is not a blood-bridegroom, ie., because he has not submitted to circumcision before his marriage. In other words, the circumcision of male infants is here explained as a milder substitute for the original circumcision of young men before marriage. /1/ Compare with this the style in which in Genesis xvii ************************************************ 1. That this is in fact the original custom is clear from the word XTN, which signifies both circumcision and bridegroom (or in Arabic, son-in-law). This explains the meaning of XTN DMYM in Exodus iv. 25. The original usage is still in force with some Arab tribes. In Genesis xxxiv. Shechem has to submit to circumcision before marriage. *************************************************** the Priestly Code institutes the circumcision of male children on the eighth day after birth. This institution completely throws into the shade and spoils the story out of which it arose, namely, the promise of the birth of Isaac as a reward to Abraham of the hospitality he showed Jehovah at Hebron. But there is more than a difference in form, there is a material contradiction between the Jehovistic legend and the priestly law. The law purifies the legend, that is to say, denies all its main features and motives. As we saw in the first chapter there is a conscious polemic at work in the representation in the Priestly Code that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob erect no altars, and practice no religious rites, and that they have no connection with the sacred places with which in JE they are inseparably associated. The popular religious book preserved to us in the Jehovistic Genesis, not corrected to any great extent, though certainly to some extent, tells how the ancestors and representatives of Israel founded the old popular worship at the principal sites at which it was kept up. The law of the legitimate cultus of Jerusalem, as it lies before us in the Priestly Code, reforms and destroys the old popular worship on the basis of Mosaic, i.e., prophetical ideas. The tabernacle does not harmonize with the sanctuaries of Hebron, Beersheba, Shechem, Kadesh, Mahanaim, Lahai-Roi, Bethel; the patriarchs live at Hebron only because they are to be buried there, not to entertain the Deity under the oak of Mamre and to build an altar there. The heretical mac,c,ebas, trees and wells, disappear, and with them the objectionable customs: that God should have summoned Abraham to offer up to Him his only son is an idea the Priestly Code could not possibly entertain. The whole material of the legend is subordinated to legislative designs: the modifying influence of the law on the narrative is everywhere apparent. The attitude of Judaism to the old legend is on the whole negative, but it added some new elements. While the patriarchs are not allowed to sacrifice, only to slaughter, they have, on the other hand, the Sabbath /1/ and circumcision. In this they are like **************************************** I The Sabbath is not a Mosaic institution according to the Priestly Code. But it is presupposed in Exodus xvi., and according to Genesis ii. 3, it was in force from the beginning of the world. With the old Israelites the Sabbath was much less important in relation to worship than the festivals: in Judaism the opposite was the case. ***************************************** the Jews in Babylon, who were deprived of the national cultus, and replaced it with these two symbols of religious membership and union, which were independent of the temple of Jerusalem. In the exile, after the cessation of the service of the altar, the Sabbath and circumcision attained that significance as symbols--in the genuine old meaning of the Greek word--as practical symbols of Judaism, which they retain to the present day. The emphasis is noteworthy with which the Priestly Code always insists on the fact that the patriarchs sojourned in a strange land, that they were _Gerim_. If we also consider that Abraham is said to have migrated into Palestine from Ur, from Chaldaea, it is hardly possible to reject the idea that the circumstances of the exile had some influence in moulding the priestly form of the patriarchal legend. In spite of all the efforts of the historian, and all the archaic appearance of his work, it may in that case still be the fact that the surroundings of the narrator found positive expression in his description of the patriarchal times. VIII.III. <VIII.III.1.> In the Jehovistic history-book Genesis is a most important part, and occupies at least a half of the whole work: in the Priestly Code, Genesis quite disappears in comparison with the later books. Only with the Mosaic legislation does this work arrive at its own ground, and it at once stifles the narrative under a mass of legislative matter. Here also there is a thin historical thread running parallel to the Jehovist, but we constantly lose sight of it from the repeated interruptions made by extensive ritual laws and statistical statements. "These last four books of Moses have been made quite unreadable by a most melancholy, most incomprehensible, revision. The course of the history is everywhere interrupted by the insertion of innumerable laws, with regard to the greater part of which it is impossible to see any reason for their being inserted where they are." The dislocation of the narrative by these monstrous growths of legislative matter is not, as Goethe thinks, to be imputed to the editor; it is the work of the unedited Priestly Code itself, and is certainly intolerable; nor can it be original; the literary form of the work at once shows this. It is still possible to trace how the legal matter forces its way into the narrative, and once there spreads itself and takes up more and more room. In the Jehovist, one form of the tradition may still be discerned, according to which the Israelites on crossing the Red Sea at once proceeded towards Kadesh, without making the detour to Sinai. We only get to Sinai in Exodus xix., but in Exodus xvii. we are already at Massah and Meribah, ie., on the ground of Kadesh. That is the scene of the story of Moses striking water out of the rock with his staff: there the fight with the Amalekites took place--they lived there and not at Sinai--there also the visit of Jethro, which requires a locality at some distance from his home (at Sinai), a place where the people had not merely a temporary encampment, but their permanent seat of justice. /1/ ******************************************* 1. Kadesh is also called Meribah, the seat of justice, or Meribath Kadesh, the seat of justice at the holy spring. Meribah is in its meaning the same as Midian. ********************************************* Hence the narratives which are told before the arrival at Sinai are repeated after the departure from it, because the locality is the same before and after, namely, the wilderness of Kadesh, the true scene of the Mosaic history. The institution of judges and elders concludes the narrative before the great Sinai section, and begins the narrative after it (Ex. xviii., Numbers xi ). The story of the manna and the quails occurs not only in Exodus xvi., but also in Numbers xi; and the rocky spring called forth by Moses at Massah and Meribah is both in Exodus xvii. and Numbers xx. In other words, the Israelites arrived at Kadesh, the original object of their wanderings, not after the digression to Sinai but immediately after the Exodus, and they spent there the forty years of their residence in the wilderness. Kadesh is also the original scene of the legislation. "There He made them statute and judgment, and there He proved them," we read in a poetical fragment, before the Sinai section (Exodus xv. 25), which is now placed in the narrative of the healing of the waters at Marah, but stands there quite isolated and without bearing on its context. The curious conjunction of judgment and trial points unmistakably to Massah and Meribah (ie., judgment and trial-place), that is, to Kadesh, as the place spoken of. But the legislation at the seat of judgment at Kadesh is not represented as a single act in which Moses promulgates to the Israelites once for all a complete and comprehensive body of laws; it goes on for forty years, and consists in the dispensation of justice at the sanctuary, which he begins and the priests and judges carry on after him according to the pattern he set. This is the idea in the extremely instructive narrative in Exodus xviii., of which Kadesh is the scene. And in this way the Torah has its place in the historical narrative, not in virtue of its matter as the contents of a code, but from its form as constituting the professional activity of Moses. It is in the history not as a result, as the sum of the laws and usages binding on Israel, but as a process; it is shown how it originated, how the foundation was laid for the living institution of that Torah which still exists and is in force in Israel. The true and original significance of Sinai is quite independent of the legislation. It was the seat of the Deity, the sacred mountain, doubtless not only for the Israelites, but generally for all the Hebrew and Cainite (Kenite) tribes of the surrounding region. The priesthood of Moses and his successors was derived from the priesthood there: there Jehovah appeared to him in the burning bush when he was keeping the sheep of the priest of Midian, from there He sent him to Egypt. There, to the Israelites, Jehovah still dwelt long after they had settled in Palestine; in the song of Deborah He is summoned to come from Sinai to succour His oppressed people and to place Himself at the head of His warriors. According to the view of the poet of Deuteronomy xxxiii. the Israelites did not go to Jehovah to Sinai, but the converse; He came to them from Sinai to Kadesh: "Jehovah came from Sinai and shone from Seir unto them; He lightened from Mount Paran and came to Meribath Kadesh." /1/ ************************************** 1. We do not know where Sinai was situated, and the Bible is scarcely at one on the subject. Only dilettanti care much for controversy on the matter. The Midian of Exodus ii. tells us most: it is probably Madian on the Arabic shore of the Ked sea. In our passage Sinai seems to be S.E. of Edom; the way from Sinai to Kadesh is by Seir and Paran. ****************************************** But it is not difficult to see how it came to be thought more seemly that the Israelites should undertake the journey to Jehovah. This was at first put in the form that they appeared there before the face of Jehovah to worship Him and offer Him a sacrifice (Exodus iii. 12), and at their departure they received the ark instead of Jehovah Himself, who continued to dwell on Sinai (Exodus xxxiii.); for the ark represents Jehovah, that constitutes its significance, and not the tables of the law, which were not in it at first. It was a further step to make Sinai the scene of the solemn inauguration of the historical relation between Jehovah and Israel. This was done under the poetic impulse to represent the constituting of the people of Jehovah as a dramatic act on an exalted stage. What in the older tradition was a process which went on quietly and slowly, occupied completely the whole period of Moses, and was at the beginning just such as it still continued to be, was now, for the sake of solemnity and vividness, compressed into a striking scene of inauguration. If this were done, the covenant between Jehovah and Israel must receive a positive (as well as a negative) character, that is to say, Jehovah Himself must announce to the people the basis and the conditions of it. Thus the necessity arose to communicate in this place the contents of the fundamental laws, and so the matter of the legislation made its way into the historical narrative. But that it did not belong originally to this place we see from the confusion which obtains even in the Jehovistic Sinai section (Exodus xix.-xxiv., xxxii.-xxxiv.). The small bodies of laws which are here communicated may in themselves be old enough, but they are forced into the narrative. It is only of what is relatively the most recent corpus, the Decalogue (in E), that this cannot be asserted. As the Jehovistic work was originally a pure history-book, so Deuteronomy, when it was first discovered, was a pure law-book. /1/ **************************************************** 1. Chapters xii.-xxvii. The two historical introductions, chapter i.-iv. and chapter v.-xi. were added later, as well as the appendices, chapter xxviii. seq. **************************************************** These two works, the historical and legal, were at first quite independent of each other; only afterwards were they conjoined, perhaps that the new law might share in the popularity of the old people's book, and at the same time infuse into it its own spirit. It made it the easier to do this, that, as we have just seen, a piece of law had already been taken up into the Jehovistic history-book. To the Decalogue, at the beginning of the period of the forty years, was now added Deuteronomy at the close of that period. The situation--of which the law itself knows nothing--is very well chosen, not only because Moses is entitled when making his testament to anticipate the future and make a law for the time to come, but also because, the law being placed at the close of his life, the thread of the narrative is not further interrupted, the law being simply inserted between the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua. This combination of Deuteronomy with the Jehovist was the beginning of the combination of narrative and law; and the fact that this precedent was before the author of the Priestly Code explains how, though his concern was with the Torah alone, he yet went to work from the very outset and comprised in his work the history of the creation, as if it also belonged to the Torah. This manner of setting forth the Torah in the form of a history book is not in the least involved in the nature of the case; on the contrary, it introduces the greatest amount of awkwardness. How it came about can only be explained in the way above described; an antecedent process of the same nature in literary history led the way and made the suggestion. /2/ ******************************************* 2. That the author of the Priestly Code had before him the combination of the Sinai legislation of the Jehovist and Deuteronomy is shown further by the circumstance that he has both a legislation at Mount Sinai and a legislation in the Arboth Moah, and in addition to these one in the wilderness of Sinai. ******************************************** As from the literary point of view, so also from the historical, the Moses of the Jehovist appears more original than the Moses of the Priestly Code. To prove this is, it is true, the aim of the entire present work: yet it will not on that account be thought out of place if we take advantage of this convenient opportunity for a brief sketch and criticism of the conflicting historical views of Moses and his work in the two main sources of the Pentateuch. According to the Priestly Code Moses is a religious founder and legislator, as we are accustomed to think of him. He receives and promulgates the Torah, /1/ perhaps not as a book--though, when we ************************************** 1. The law might accordingly be called Moses, as with the Ethiopians the Psalter is called David, ************************************** come to think of it, we can hardly represent the transaction to ourselves in any other way--but certainly fixed and finished as an elaborate and minutely organised system, which comprises the sacred constitution of the congregation for all time to come. The whole significance of Moses consists in the office of messenger which he holds as mediator of the law; what else he does is of no importance. That the law is given once for all is the great event of the time, not that the people of Israel begins to appear on the stage of the world. The people is there for the sake of the law, not the law for the sake of the people. With the Jehovist, on the contrary, Moses' work consists in this, that he delivers his people from the Egyptians and cares for it in every way in the wilderness. In the prelude scene from his youth, when he smites the Egyptian and seeks to adjust the dispute of his brethren (Exodus ii. 11 seq.), his whole history is prefigured. His care for the Israelites embraces both catering for their sustenance, and making and preserving peace and order among them (Numbers xi.). The Torah is but a part of his activity, and proceeds from his more general office as the guardian of the young people, who has, as it were, to teach the fledgling to fly (Numbers xi. xii.). According to Exodus xviii. his Torah is nothing but a giving of counsel, a finding the way out of complications and difficulties which had actually arisen. Individuals bring their different cases before him; he pronounces judgment or gives advice, and in so doing teaches the people the way they should go. Thus he is the beginner of the teaching of Jehovah which lives on after him in priest and prophet. Here all is life and movement: as Jehovah Himself, so the man of God, is working in a medium which is alive; is working practically, by no means theoretically, in history, not in literature. His work and activity may be told in a narrative, but the contents of it are more than a system, and are not to be reduced to a compendium; it is not done and finished off, it is the beginning of a series of infinite activities. In the Priestly Code the work of Moses lies before us clearly defined and rounded off; one living a thousand years after knows it as well as one who saw it with his eyes. It is detached from its originator and from his age: lifeless itself, it has driven the life out of Moses and out of the people, nay, out of the very Deity. This precipitate of history, appearing as law at the beginning of the history, stifles and kills the history itself. Which of the two views is the more historical, we can accordingly be at no loss to decide. It may be added that in the older Hebrew literature the founding of the nation and not the giving of the law is regarded as the theocratic creative act of Jehovah. The very notion of the law is absent: only covenants are spoken of, in which the representatives of the people undertake solemn obligations to do or leave undone something which is described in general terms. Another point of difference must be mentioned here, though indeed it is a matter which has been before us more than once already. That which is in the Priestly Code the subject-matter of the Torah of Moses, namely, the institution of the cultus, the Jehovist traces to the practice of the patriarchs--one more result of the difference between law and legend. The Moses of the Priestly Code conflicts not only with the future, but with the past; he comes into collision with history on every side. That view is manifestly the only natural one according to which the worship is not specifically Israelite, not a thing instituted by Moses in obedience to a sudden command of the Deity, but an ancestral tradition. But at the time when the Priestly Code was drawn up the worship was certainly the one thing that made Israel Israel. In it the church, the one congregation of worship, takes the place of the people even in the Mosaic age--sorely against history, but characteristically for the author's point of view. Now even such authorities as Bleek, Hupfeld, and Knobel have been misled by the appearance of historical reality which the Priestly Code creates by its learned art here as well as in the history of the patriarchs. They have regarded the multiplicity of numbers and names, the minute technical descriptions, the strict keeping up of the scenery of camp-life, as so many signs of authentic objectivity. Noldeke made an end of this critical position once for all, but Colenso is properly entitled to the credit of having first torn the web asunder. /1/ ***************************************** 1. See Kuenen in the Theol. Tijdschrift, 1870, p. 393-401. ****************************************** The boldness with which numbers and names are stated, and the preciseness of the details about indifferent matters of furniture, do not prove them to be reliable: they are not drawn from contemporary records, but are the fruit solely of late Jewish fancy, a fancy which, it is well known, does not design nor sketch, but counts and constructs, and produces nothing more than barren plans. Without repeating the description of the tabernacle in Exodus xxv. word for word, it is difficult to give an idea how circumstantial it is; we must go to the source to satisfy ourselves what the narrator can do in this line. One would imagine that he was giving specifications to measurers for estimates, or that he was writing for carpet-makers and upholsterers; but they could not proceed upon his information, for the incredibly matter- of-fact statements are fancy all the same, as was shown in chapter i. The description of the tabernacle is supplemented in the Book of Numbers by that of the camp; the former being the centre, this is the circle drawn about it, and consists of an outer ring, the twelve secular tribes, a middle ring, the Levites, and an innermost one, the sons of Aaron: a mathematical demonstration of the theocracy in the wilderness. The two first chapters contain the census of the twelve tribes, and their allocation in four quarters, nothing but names and numbers. To this first census chapter xxxiv. adds another at the close of the forty years, in which the various detailed figures are different, but the total is about the same. This total, 600,000 warriors, comes from the older tradition, but is proved to be quite worthless by the fact that in a really authentic document the levy of Israel in the time of Deborah is stated to be 40,000 strong. Still, the Priestly Code is entitled to the credit of having made the total a little less round, and of having broken it up into artificial component parts. The muster of the people is followed in Numbers iii. iv. by the dedication of the tribe of Levi to the sanctuary, in compensation for the firstborn males of the Israelites who up to that time had not been sacrificed nor yet redeemed. There are 22,273 firstborn males to be provided for, and there are 22,000 male Levites above a month old. The 273 extra firstborn males are specially redeemed at five shekels a head. What accuracy! But what of the fact that a people of at least two millions has only 22,273 firstborn males, or say 50,000 firstborn of both sexes? This gives an average of forty children to every woman, for the firstborn in the sense of the law is that which first opens the womb. The continuation of Numbers iii. iv. is in chapter viii. As the Levites are an offering of firstlings to the sanctuary on the part of the people, which, however, is not to be sacrificed but made over to the priests, the characteristic rite of this sort of sacred due has to be gone through with them, namely, an act imitating that of throwing into the flame of the altar (Aristeas 31,1. 5). To think of Moses and Aaron heaving the 22,000 men! Not less striking as an example of this kind of fiction is the story of Numbers xxxi. Twelve thousand Israelites, a thousand from each tribe, take the field against Midian, extirpate without any fighting--at least nothing is anywhere said of this important point--the whole people, slay all the men and a part of the women, take captive the unmarried girls, and suffer themselves no loss whatever. The latter point is asserted very definitely. "The captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds came to Moses, and said to him, Thy servants have taken the sum of the men of war which are under our charge, and there lacketh not one of us." Of the immeasurable booty of men and cattle Jehovah assigns half to those who took the field and took part in the battle, the other half to the congregation; and the former are to give the 500th part to the priests, the latter the 50th part to the Levites. The execution of this order is especially reported as follows: "The booty which the men of war had taken was 675,000 sheep, 72,000 beeves, 61,000 asses, and 32,000 women that had not lain by man. And the half which was the portion of them that went out to war was 337,500 sheep, and Jehovah's tribute of the sheep was 675; 36,000 beeves, tribute to Jehovah 72; 30,500 asses, tribute to Jehovah 61; 16,000 persons, tribute to Jehovah 32. And Moses gave the tribute to Jehovah to Eleazar the priest. But the other half, which Moses divided to the children of Israel, the half due to the congregation, was 337,500 sheep, 36,000 beeves, 30,500 asses, 16,000 persons, and of the children of Israel's half Moses took one of fifty and gave them to the Levites." The calculation of the contribution to Jehovah was quite easy for Moses, as the 500th part of the half is equivalent to the 1000th part of the whole; he had only to leave off the thousands from the first totals. In conclusion, the captains brought offerings to Jehovah of golden dishes, chains, bracelets, rings, and earrings, altogether 16,750 shekels weight, as atonement for their souls "But that was only the gold which the captains had taken as booty, for the men of war had taken spoil, every man for himself." We may perhaps be allowed to speculate as to the relation between these 16,750 shekels which in this passage the captains alone offer to the tabernacle OF THE GOLD ORNAMENTS OF THE MIDIANITES, and the 1700 shekels which in Judges viii. the whole people dedicate OF THE GOLD ORNAMENTS OF THE MIDIANITES to set up an image in Ophra. It is less easy to account on the theory of pure fiction for the numerous names sometimes arranged together like a catalogue than for reported circumstances and numbers. There can certainly be no doubt that the forty places which are mentioned in the list of encampments in the wanderings, really existed in the region the Israelites are reported to have traversed. But he who is satisfied with this as evidence that we have before us here a historical document of primitive antiquity, will never be disturbed by criticism. Was it such a difficult matter to find out forty definite stations in the wilderness for the forty years of the wanderings? Even if the elements of the composition are not fictitious, that is far from proving the composition itself to be authentic. And in the case of lists of the names of persons, the elements are often of an extremely doubtful nature; and here it is well to keep in view the principle of Vatke (op. cit. p. 675) that no confidence is to be placed in subjects devoid of predicates, and that persons are not to be taken for real who have nothing to do. The dozens of names in Numbers i. vii. x. are almost all made to the same pattern, and have no similarity whatever to the names genuinely old. The fact that the name of Jehovah does not enter into their composition only shows that the composer was not forgetful of his religio-historical theory. By its taste for barren names and numbers and technical descriptions, the Priestly Code comes to stand on the same line with the Chronicles and the other literature of Judaism which labours at an artificial revival of the old tradition [VI.I.2 VI.III.2., VI.III.3. ad fin.]. Of a piece with this tendency is an indescribable pedantry, belonging to the very being of the author of the Priestly Code. He has a very passion for classifying and drawing plans; if he has once dissected a genus into different species, we get all the species named to us one by one every time he has occasion to mention the genus. The subsuming use of the prepositions Lamed and Beth is characteristic of him. He selects a long-drawn expression wherever he can; he does not weary of repeating for the hundredth time what is a matter of course (Numbers viii.), he hates pronouns and all abbreviating substitutes. What is interesting is passed over, what is of no importance is described with minuteness, his exhaustive clearness is such as with its numerous details to confuse our apprehension of what is in itself perfectly clear. This is what used to be described in the phraseology of historical criticism as epic breadth. /1/ ************************************** 1. Riehm, p. 292. "The style is quiet, simple, free from all rhetorical and poetical ornament, and the expression in speaking of similar objects has an epic uniformity. Impressive as many pieces are, just from their unassuming simplicity and objectivity, there is nowhere any apparent effort to produce effect or to raise the interest of the reader by the resources of literary art." For an opposite opinion compare Lichtenberg, Werke, ii. 162. *************************************** VIII.III.2. Having thus attempted to describe the general contrast of the Priestly Code and the Jehovist in the Mosaic period, it remains for us to compare the several stories in the two works. The Exodus from Egypt is everywhere regarded as the commencement of Israelite history. In the Priestly Code it is made the epoch of an era (Exodus xii. 2), which is afterwards dated from, not only in years but even in months and days. It is unquestionable that this precise style of dating only came into use among the Hebrews at a very late period. *We find in the historical books only one statement of the month in which an event took place (1Kings vi. 38), and in that case the day is not given. To the prophetic writers dates were of some importance, and the growth of the practice may to some extent be traced with them. Amos first came forward "two years before the earthquake." /2/ ***************************************** 2. Agh. xv. 11, 17: when al-Walid b. al-Mughira was dead, the Arabs dated after his death to the year of the elephant, which thereafter was made an epoch. According to others they reckoned nine years after the death of Hisham b. al-Mughira, to the time when they built the Caaba, and then they dated from the building of the Caaba. Comp. the 'Am al Ramada and the 'Am al Ru'af. ****************************************** The most precise date in Isaiah is "the year in which king Uzziah died." Numbers of years are first found in Jeremiah, "the thirteenth year of king Josiah," and a few more instances. All at once there was a change: Haggai and Zechariah, prophets who grew up in the Babylonian exile, always give dates, not only the year and month, but the day of the month as well. In the Priestly Code this precise reckoning, which the Jews obviously learned from the Chaldeans, is in use from the age of Moses onwards. In the Jehovist the ostensible occasion of the Exodus is a festival which the children of Israel desire to hold in honour of their God in the wilderness. In the Priestly Code this occasion disappears; there can be no pre-Mosaic festivals. But with this the reason falls away for which Jehovah kills the firstborn of the Egyptians, He does it because the king of Egypt is keeping from Him the firstborn of the Israelites, which ought to be offered to Him at the festival; for the celebration in question is the sacrificial festival of the first-fruits of cattle in spring. In the older tradition the festival is the first thing; it explains the circumstances of the Exodus and the time of year at which it took place: in the later one the relation is reversed--the killing of the firstborn of the Egyptians leads to the sacrifice of the firstborn of Israel, the Exodus in spring is followed by the festival in spring as its consequence. The Priestly Code follows this younger tradition, and deviates from the original account still more widely in the view it gives of the passover. It obliterates completely the connection between the passover and the sacrifice of the firstborn, and represents it not as a giving of thanks to Jehovah for having slain the firstborn of Egypt, but as instituted at the moment of the Exodus to induce Jehovah to spare the firstborn of Israel. How all this is to be understood and judged of we have discussed more at large in the chapter on the festivals (III.I.1., III.III.1.). As to the accounts given in the two sources of the crossing of the Red Sea, all we can say is that that of the Jehovist (J) is the more complicated. According to him the sea is dried up by a strong wind, and the Egyptians succeed at first in crossing it, and encounter the Hebrews on the eastern shore during he night. "But in the morning watch Jehovah turned, in the pillar of fire and of the cloud, against the host of the Egyptian, and overthrew the host of the Egyptian, and hindered the wheels of his chariot and caused him to drive heavily. Then the Egyptian said: I will flee before Israel, for Jehovah fighteth for them against Egypt. But the sea turned back towards morning to its ordinary level, and the Egyptians fled against it, and Jehovah shook them into the midst of the sea" (Exodus xiv. 24, 25, 27). According to the Priestly Code /1/ the waves meet over the pursuers, ************************************** 1. And the younger tradition generally: also according to the song Exodus xv., which apart from the beginning, which is old, is a psalm in the manner of the Psalms and has no similarity with the historical songs, Judges v., 2Samuel i., Numbers xxi. ************************************* before they reach the further shore; the idea is much simpler, but poorer in incidental features. The miracle of the manna (Exodus xvi.) is taken advantage of in the Priestly Code as a very suitable occasion for urging on the people a strict sanctification of the Sabbath: none falls on the seventh day, but what is gathered on the sixth keeps two days, while at other times it requires to be eaten quite fresh. This pursuit of a legal object destroys the story and obscures its original meaning, as no one can help seeing. Nor is it any sign of originality, rather of senility, that in the Priestly Code the manna is not eaten raw, but boiled and baked. At Mount Sinai Moses receives, according to the Priestly Code, the revelation of--the model of the tabernacle, and he follows the pattern thus presented to him in the construction, down below, of the real tabernacle. All further revelation takes place, even in Moses' time, as far as possible in the tabernacle (Exodus xxv. 22). Even Sinai must not stand any longer than necessary by the side of the one legitimate seat of Deity. /1/ ****************************************** 1. Compare, however, Jahrbb.fur Deutsche Theologie, 1877, p. 453, note 1. ******************************************* The tables of the law, it appears, are silently presupposed without being mentioned beforehand, it being of course assumed that the readers would know all about them from the old tradition. The outside of the ark, however, is furnished in the most extravagant style, and with a splendour which other descriptions of the chest of acacia-wood are far from suggesting. The ark in the Priestly Code differs indeed in every way from the appearance of it in 1Kings vii. 23 seq. We are reminded of the Haggada by the covering which Moses has to put before his face, which is shining with the reflection of the glory of Jehovah (Exodus xxxiv. 29-35), and by the making of the brazen laver of the looking-glasses of the women who serve the temple (Exodus xxxviii. 8, cf. Numbers xvii. 1, 9); these traits do not, it is true, belong to the original contents of the Priestly Code, but they belong to its circle. From Sinai the old tradition takes us by this and that station, mentioned by name, without delay to Kadesh. Here the chief part of the forty years' sojourn in the wilderness is spent; this, as we said before, is the true scene of all the stories that are told about Moses. The Priestly Code takes us in this period, as in the legend of the patriarchs, not to definite places, but up and down in the wilderness of Sinai, in the wilderness of Paran, in the wilderness of Sin. Kadesh is with evident intention thrust as far as possible into the background--no doubt on account of the high sanctity the place originally had as the encampment for many years of the Israelites under Moses. The spies are sent out according to the Jehovist from Kadesh, according to the Priestly Code from the wilderness of Paran. In the former authority they penetrate to Hebron, whence they bring back with them fine grapes, but they find that the land where these grow is not to be conquered. In the latter they proceed without any difficulty throughout the whole of Palestine to Lebanon, but have nothing to bring back with them, and advise against attacking the land because they have not found it particularly desirable, as if its advantages had been accessible to faith alone and not to be discovered by unbelieving eyes, as was actually the case in the time of Haggai and Zechariah, and at the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. To the genuine Israelite of old, however, the goodness of his beloved land was not a mere point of faith which he could ever have doubted. In the former source, as we judge from Deuteronomy i. 23, only the number of the spies was given; in the latter all the twelve are named. In the former Caleb is the only good spy, in the latter Caleb and Joshua. At first probably neither the one nor the other belonged to this story; but Caleb easily came to be named as an exception, because he actually conquered the district from Kadesh to Hebron, which the spies had declared it impossible to take, and which the Israelites, alarmed by their account, had not ventured to attack. Joshua, again, was added from the consideration that, according to the principle enunciated by the Jehovist in Numbers xiv. 23, 24, he must have shared the merit of Caleb, because he partook of the same exceptional reward with him. In the Jehovist Moses alone instructs the spies and receives their report on their return; in the Priestly Code Moses and Aaron do so. In the oldest source of the Jehovist (J) Aaron has not yet made his appearance; in the Priestly Code Moses must not do any public act without him. /1/ ******************************************* 1. In the same way, in the former source Joshua always acts alone; in the latter, he always has the priest Eleazar at his side. Compare notes [in IV.III.2.] ******************************************* Moses is still the moving spirit here as well as there, but Aaron is the representative of the theocracy, and pains are taken to secure that he shall never be absent where the representatives of the theocracy are brought face to face with the community. The desire to introduce the leader of the hierocracy, and with its leader the hierocracy itself, into the Mosaic history, has borne the most remarkable fruits in the so-called story of the rebellion of the company of Korah. According to the Jehovistic tradition the rebellion proceeds from the Reubenites, Dathan, and Abiram, prominent members of the firstborn tribe of Israel, and is directed against MOSES AS LEADER AND JUDGE OF THE PEOPLE. According to the version of the main-stock of the Priestly Code (Q), the author of the agitation is Korah, a prince of the tribe of Judah, and he rebels not only against Moses, but against MOSES AND AARON AS REPRESENTING THE PRIESTHOOD. In a later addition, which, to judge from its style, belongs likewise to the Priestly Code, but not to its original contents, the Levite Korah appears at the head of a revolt of the Levites against AARON AS HIGH PRIEST, and demands the equalisation of the lower with the higher clergy. Starting from the Jehovistic version, the historical basis of which is dimly discerned to be the fall of Reuben from its old place at the head of the brother-tribes, we have no difficulty in seeing how the second version arose out of it. The people of the congregation, i.e., of the church, having once come on the scene, the spiritual heads, Moses and Aaron, take the place of the popular leader Moses, and the jealousy of the secular grandees is now directed against the class of hereditary priests, instead of against the extraordinary influence on the community of a heaven-sent hero. All these changes are the natural outcome of the importation of the hierocracy into Mosaic times. From the second version we can go further and understand the origin of the third. In the earlier version the princes of the tribe of Reuben were forced to give way to a prince of the tribe of Judah. In the progress of time Korah the prince of the tribe of Judah is replaced by the eponymous head of a post-exilic Levitical family, of the same name. The contest between clergy and aristocracy is here transformed into a domestic strife between the higher and the inferior clergy, which was no doubt raging in the time of the narrator. Thus the three versions are developed, the origin and collocation of which appears from every other point of view to be an insoluble enigma. The one arises out of the other in the direct line of descent: the metamorphoses took place under the influence of great historical changes which are well known to us; and in the light of Jewish history from Josiah downwards they are by no means unintelligible. /1/ ******************************************** 1 The details of the demonstration will be found in the Jahrbb. fuer Deutsche Theologie, 1776, p. 572 seq., 1877, p. 454, note, and in the Leyden Theol. Tijdschrift, 1878, p. 139 seq. ******************************************** We come to the migration of the Israelites to the land east of the Jordan. According to the Jehovist the neighbouring tribes place obstacles in their way, and the land in which they desire to settle has to be conquered with the sword. The Priestly Code tells us as little of all this as in an earlier instance of the war with Amalek; from all it says we should imagine that the Israelites went straight to their mark and met with no difficulty in the region in question; the land is ownerless, and the possession of it is granted by Moses and Eleazar to the two tribes Reuben and Gad (Numbers xxxii.). But that war may not be completely wanting under Moses, we have afterwards the war with the Midianites, on which we have already commented (Numbers xxxi.). There is not much story about it, only numbers and directions; and in verse 27 there is a suspicion of 1Samuel xxx. 24, as if that passage were the groundwork of the whole. The passage is extremely interesting as showing us the views taken of war by the Jews of the later time who had grown quite unaccustomed to it. The occasion of the war also is noticeable; it is undertaken not for the acquisition of territory, nor with any other practical object, but only to take vengeance on the Midianites for having seduced some of the Israelites to uncleanness. The elders of Midian, so the story goes, went to the soothsayer Balaam to ask his advice as to what should be done against the Israelite invaders. He suggested a means by which the edge of the invasion might be broken; the Midianites should give their daughters to the Israelites for wives, and so deprive the holy people of their strength, the secret of which lay in their isolation from other peoples. The Midianites took Balaam's advice and succeeded in entangling many of the Israelites with the charms of their women; in consequence of which Jehovah visited the faithless people with a severe plague. The narrative of the Priestly Code up to this point has to be pieced together from Numbers xxxi. 8, 16 and Joshua xiii. 22, and from what is implied in the sequel of it; at this point the portion of it begins which is preserved to us (Numbers xxv. 6 seq.), and we are told how the plague was ultimately stayed. A certain man coolly brings a Midianitish woman into the camp before the very eyes of Moses and the weeping children of Israel: then the young hereditary priest Phinehas takes a spear, transfixes the godless pair, and by this zeal averts the anger of Jehovah. This narrative is based on the Jehovistic one, which is also preserved to us only in part (Numbers xxv. 1-5), about the backsliding of Israel in the camp of Shittim to the service of Baal-Peor, to which they were seduced by the daughters of Moab. In the Priestly Code the idolatry has quite disappeared, all but some unconscious reminiscences, and no sin is alleged but that of whoredom, which in the original story merely led up to the main offence. This is done manifestly with the idea that marriage with foreign women is in itself a falling away from Jehovah, a breach of the covenant. This change was extremely suitable to the circumstances of exilic and post-exilic Judaism, for in these later days there was no immediate danger of gross idolatry, but it took a good deal of trouble to prevent heathenism from making its way into the midst of the people under the friendly form of mixed marriages. The version of the Priestly Code, however, mixes up with the Baal-Peor story of the Jehovist the figure of Balaam, which is also borrowed from the Jehovist but entirely transformed in the process. In the form under which he appears in the early history he transgresses all the ideas of the Priestly Code. An Aramaean seer, who is hired for money and makes all sorts of heathen preparations to prophesy, but who yet is not an impostor, but a true prophet as much as any in Israel, who even stands in the most intimate relations with Jehovah, though cherishing the intention of cursing Jehovah's people--that is too much for exclusive Judaism. The correction is effected by the simple device of connecting Balaam with the following section, and making him the intellectual instigator of the devilry of the Midianitish women; and in this new form which he assumes in the Priestly Code he lives on in the Haggada. The reason for changing the Moabites into Midianites is not made clear; but the fact is undoubted that the Midianites never lived in that part of the world. In the Book of Numbers the narrative sections, which are in the style and colour of the Priestly Code, have more and more the character of mere additions and editorial supplements to a connection which was already there and had a different origin. The independent main stock of the Priestly Code, the Book of the Four Covenants, or the Book of Origins (Q), more and more gives way to later additions, and ceases altogether, it appears, at the death of Moses. It is at least nowhere to be traced in the first half of the Book of Joshua, and so we cannot reckon as part of it those extensive sections of the second half, belonging to the Priestly Code, which treat of the division of the land. Without a preceding history of the conquest these sections are quite in the air; they cannot be taken as telling a continuous story of their own, but presuppose the Jehovistic-Deuteronomic work. In spite of distaste to war and to records of war (1Chronicles xxii. 8, xxviii. 3), an independent work like the Book of the Four Covenants could not possibly have passed over the wars of Joshua in silence. A comparison of the different accounts of the entry of the Israelite tribes into the occupation of the conquered land may close this discussion. The Priestly Code, agreeing in this with the Deuteronomistic revision, represents the whole of Canaan as having been made a _tabula rasa_, and then, masterless and denuded of population, submitted to the lot. First the tribe of Judah receives its lot, then Manasseh and Ephraim, then the two tribes which attached themselves to Ephraim and Judah, Benjamin and Simeon, and lastly the five northern tribes, Zebulon, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali, Dan. "These are the inheritances which Eleazar the priest, and Joshua ben Nun, and the heads of the tribes of the children of Israel divided for an inheritance by lot in Shiloh before Jehovah at the door of the tabernacle." According to the Jehovist, Judah and Joseph appear to have had their territory allocated to them at Gilgal (xiv. 6), and not by lot, and to have entered into occupation of it from there. A good while afterwards the land remaining over is divided by lot among the seven small tribes still unprovided for, from Shiloh, or perhaps originally from Shechem (xviii. 2-10). Joshua alone casts the lot and gives instructions; Eleazar the priest does not act with him. Even here the general principle of the Priestly Code, which knows no differences among the tribes, is somewhat limited; but it is much more decidedly contradicted by the important chapter, Judges i. The chapter is, in fact, not a continuation of the Book of Joshua at all, but a parallel to it, which, while it presupposes the conquest of the east-Jordan lands, does not speak of the west-Jordan lands as conquered, but tells the story of the conquest, and that in a manner somewhat differing from the other source. From Gilgal, where the "Angel of Jehovah" first set up his tent, the tribes march out one by one to conquer their "lot" by fighting; first Judah, then Joseph. We hear only of these two, and with regard to Joseph we only hear of the very beginning of the conquest of his land. There is no mention of Joshua; nor would his figure as commander-general of Israel suit the view here given of the situation; though it would very well admit of him as leader of his tribe. The incompleteness of the conquest is acknowledged unreservedly; the Canaanites lived on quietly in the cities of the plain, and not till the period of the monarchy, when Israel had grown strong, were they subdued and made tributary. This chapter, as well as the main stem of the Book of Judges, corresponds to the Jehovistic stratum of the tradition, to which also passages in Joshua, of an identical or similar import, may be added without hesitation. The Angel of Jehovah is enough to tell us this. The difference which exists between it and the Jehovistic main version in the Book of Joshua is to be explained for the most part by the fact that the latter is of Ephraimite origin, and in consequence ascribes the conquest of the whole land to the hero of Ephraim or of Joseph, while Judges i. leans more to the tribe of Judah. Moreover, we find in the Book of Joshua itself the remnant of a version (ix. 4-7, 12-14) in which, just as in Judges i., the actors are the "men of Israel," who "ask counsel of the mouth of Jehovah," while elsewhere Joshua alone has anything to say, being the successor of Moses, and drawing his decisions from no source but the authority of his own spirit. And finally, we have to consider Exodus xxiii., 20 seq., where also there is a correspondence with Judges i., in the fact that not Joshua but the Angel of Jehovah (Judges v. 23) is the leader of Israel, and that the promised land is not conquered all at once but gradually, in the process of time. Judges i. presents certain anachronisms, and is partly made up of anecdotes, but these should not prevent us from acknowledging that the general view given in this chapter of the process of the conquest, is, when judged by what we know of the subsequent period of Israel, incomparably more historical than that in the Book of Joshua, where the whole thing is done at once with systematic thoroughness, the whole land being first denuded of its inhabitants, and then divided by lot among the different tribes. The latter view may have come about partly from a literal interpretation of "lot" (Judges xviii. 1), an expression which properly applies to the farm of a family but is here used for the territory of a tribe. It was also favoured no doubt by the tendency to compress a long development into its first great act; and as this tendency is carried out with the greatest thoroughness in the Priestly Code, that document stands furthest from the origin of the tradition. /1/ The same conclusion is led up ****************************************** 1. In the Deuteronomistic revision (Joshua xxi, 43-45) there is still a trace of hesitation, a certain difficulty in parting with the old view altogether (Deuteronomy vii. 22; Judg. iii. 1, 2); and besides the motives for the change are much plainer here: the Canaanites are extirpated to guard against the infection of the new settlers with their idolatary. ***************************************** to by the circumstance that the tribe of Joseph is never mentioned, one of the two tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh, being always spoken of instead, and that these two tribes are almost put out of sight by Judah. And yet Joshua, the leader of Ephraim, is leader here also of all Israel, having been preserved from the old original tradition, which was Ephraimitic. It involves no contradiction that, in comparing the versions of the tradition, we should decline the historical standard in the case of the legend of the origins of mankind and of the legend of the patriarchs, while we employ it to a certain extent for the epic period of Moses and Joshua. The epic tradition certainly contains elements which cannot be explained on any other hypothesis than that there are historical facts underlying them; its source is in the period it deals with, while the patriarchal legend has no connection whatever with the times of the patriarchs. /1/ This justifies the difference of treatment. ********************************************* 1. Some isolated statements there are here also to which the historical standard may be applied. We may call it a more accurate representation that Hebron was inhabited in the time of Abraham by the, Canaanites and Perizzites, than that the Hittites dwelt there at that time. The latter, according to 2Samuel xxiv. 6 (Bleek, Einleitung, 4th edition, pp. 228, 597), dwelt in Coele-Syria, and according to 2Kings vii. 6, in the neihbourhood of the Aramaeans of Damascus. The statement that the Israelites received from Pharaoh because they were shepherds the pasture-land of Goshen on the north-east frontier of Egypt and there dwelt by themselves, is to be preferred to the statement that they were settled among the Egyptians in the best part of the land, ********************************************** Our last result is still the same: whether tried by the standard of poetry or by that of history, the Priestly Code stands both in value and in time far below the Jehovist. VIII.III.3. In rough strokes I have sought to place before the reader's view the contrast between the beginning and the end of the tradition of the Hexateuch. It would not be impossible to trace the inner development of the tradition in the intermediate stages between the two extremities. To do this we should have to make use of the more delicate results of the process of source-sifting, and to call to our aid the hints, not numerous indeed, but important, which are to be found in Deuteronomy and in the historical and prophetical books, especially Hosea. It would appear that legend from its very nature causes those who deal with it to strike out variations, that it cannot be represented objectively at all. Even at the first act of reducing it to writing the discolouring influences are at work, without any violence being done to the meaning which dwells in the matter. We can trace first of all the influence on the tradition of that specific prophetism which we are able to follow from Amos onwards. This is least traceable in the old main source of the Jehovist, in J; and yet it is remarkable that the Asheras never occur in the worship of the patriarchs. The second Jehovistic source, E, breathes the air of the prophets much more markedly, and shows a more advanced and thorough-going religiosity. Significant in this view are the introduction of Abraham as a Nabi, Jacob's burying the teraphim, the view taken of the macceba at Shechem (Jos. xxiv. 27), and above all the story of the golden calf. The Deity appears less primitive than in J, and does not approach men in bodily form, but calls to them from heaven, or appears to them in dreams. The religious element has become more refined, but at the same time more energetic, and has laid hold even of elements heterogeneous to itself, producing on occasion such strange mixtures as that in Genesis xxxi. 10-13. Then the law comes in and leavens the Jehovistic narrative, first the Deuteronomic (in Genesis even, and then quite strongly in Exodus and Joshua), while last of all, in the Priestly Code, under the influence of the legislation of the post-exile restoration, there is brought about a complete metamorphosis of the old tradition. The law is the key to the understanding even of the narrative of the Priestly Code. All the distinctive peculiarities of the work are connected with the influence of the law: everywhere we hear the voice of theory, rule, judgment. What was said above of the cultus may be repeated word for word of the legend: in the early time it may be likened to the green tree which grows out of the ground as it will and can; at a later time it is dry wood that is cut and made to a pattern with compass and square. It is an extraordinary objection to this when it is said that the post-exile period had no genius for productions such as the tabernacle or the chronology. It certainly was not an original age, but the matter was all there in writing, and did not require to be invented. What great genius was needed to transform the temple into a portable tent? What sort of creative power is that which brings forth nothing but numbers and names? In connection with such an age there can be no question at least of youthful freshness. With infinitely greater justice may it be maintained that such theoretical modelling and adaptation of the legend as is practiced in the Priestly Code, could only gain an entrance when the legend had died away from the memory and the heart of the people, and was dead at the root. The history of the pre-historic and the epic tradition thus passed through the same stages as that of the historic; and in this parallel the Priestly Code answers both as a whole, and in every detail, to the Chronicles. The connecting link between old and new, between Israel and Judaism, is everywhere Deuteronomy. The Antar-romance says of itself, that it had attained an age of 670 years, 400 years of which it had spent in the age of ignorance (i.e. old Arabic heathenism), and the other 270 in Islam. The historical books of the Bible might say something similar, if they were personified, and their life considered to begin with the reduction to writing of the oldest kernel of the tradition and to close with the last great revision. The time of ignorance would extend to the appearance of "the book," which, it is true, did not in the Old Testament come down from heaven all at once like the Koran, but came into existence during a longer period, and passed through various phases. C. ISRAEL AND JUDAISM. "The Law came in between."--VATKE, p. 183. CHAPTER IX. CONCLUSION OF THE CRITICISM OF THE LAW. Objections have been made to the general style of the proof on which Graf's hypothesis is based. It is said to be an illicit argument _ex silentio_ to conclude from the fact that the priestly legislation is latent in Ezekiel, where it should be in operation, unknown where it should be known, that in his time it had not yet come into existence. But what would the objectors have? Do they expect to find positive statements of the non-existence of what had not yet come into being? Is it more rational, to deduce _ex silentio_, as they do, a positive proof that it did exist?-_to say, that as there are no traces of the hierocracy in the times of the judges and the kings it must have originated in the most remote antiquity, with Moses? The problem would in this case still be the same, namely, to explain how it is that with and after the exile the hierocracy begins to come into practical activity. What the opponents of Graf's hypothesis call its argument _ex silentio_, is nothing more or less than the universally valid method of historical investigation. The protest against the argument _ex silentio_ takes another form. It is pointed out that laws are in many cases theories, and that it is no disproof of the existence of a theory that it has not got itself carried out into practice. Deuteronomy was really nothing more than a theory during the pre-exile period, but who would argue from this that it was not there at all? Though laws are not kept, this does not prove they are not there,--provided, that is to say, that there is sufficient proof of their existence on other grounds. But these other proofs of the existence of the Priestly Code are not to be found--not a trace of them. It is, moreover, rarely the case with laws that they are theory and nothing more: the possibility that a thing may be mere theory is not to be asserted generally, but only in particular cases. And even where law is undoubtedly theory, the fact does not prevent us from fixing its position in history. Even legislative fancy always proceeds upon some definite presupposition or other; and these presuppositions, rather than the laws themselves, must guide the steps of historical criticism. /1/ ******************************************* 1. Cf. <I.III.2. ad fin., IV.III.3., V.II.1., VII.II.2.>. This is the reason why the strata of the tradition require to be compared as carefully as those of the law. ****************************************** An argument which is the very opposite of this is also urged. The fact is insisted on that the laws of the Priestly Code are actually attested everywhere in the practice of the historical period; that there were always sacrifices and festivals, priests and purifications, and everything of the kind in early Israel. These statements must, though this seems scarcely possible, proceed on the assumption that on Graf's hypothesis the whole cultus was invented all at once by the Priestly Code, and only introduced after the exile. But the defenders of Graf's hypothesis do not go so far as to believe that the Israelite cultus entered the world of a sudden,--as little by Ezekiel or by Ezra as by Moses,--else why should they be accused of Darwinism by Zoeckler and Delitzsch? They merely consider that the works of the law were done before the law, that there is a difference between traditional usage and formulated law, and that even where this difference appears to be only in form it yet has a material basis, being connected with the centralisation of the worship and the hierocracy which that centralisation called into existence. Here also the important point is not the matter, but the spirit which is behind it, and may everywhere be recognised as the spirit of the age at one period or another. /2/ ****************************************** 2. Comp. <II.III., III.III.1.> ****************************************** All these objections, meanwhile, labour under the same defect, namely, that they leave out of view that which is the real point at issue. The point is not to prove that the Mosaic law was not in force in the period before the exile. There are in the Pentateuch three strata of law and three strata of tradition, and the problem is to place them in their true historical order. So far as the Jehovist and Deuteronomy are concerned, the problem has found a solution which may be said to be accepted universally, and all that remains is to apply to the Priestly Code also the procedure by which the succession and the date of these two works has been determined--that procedure consisting in the comparison of them with the ascertained facts of Israelite history. /3/ ************************************** 3. The method is stated in the introduction: and special pains are taken to bring it out distinctly in the first chapter, that about the place of worship. ***************************************** One would imagine that this could not be objected to. But objections have been raised; the procedure which, when applied to Deuteronomy, is called historico-critical method, is called, when applied to the Priestly Code, construction of history. But history, it is well known, has always to be constructed: the order, Priestly Code, Jehovist, Deuteronomy, is not a thing handed down by tradition or prescribed by the nature of the case, but a hypothesis as yet only a score of years old or thereby, the reasons for which were somewhat incomprehensible, so that people have forgotten them and begun to regard the hypothesis as something objective, partaking of the character of dogma. The question is whether one constructs well or ill. Count Baudissin thinks a grave warning necessary of a certain danger, that, namely, of an exaggerated application of logic: that the laws follow each other in a certain order logically, he says, does not prove that they appeared in the same order in history. But it is not for the sake of logical sequence that we consider the development which began with the prophets to have issued finally in the laws of cultus; and those who set out from "sound human reason" have generally forced the reverse process of this on the history, in spite of the traces which have come down to us, and which point the other way. /1/ ************************************** 1. And it would not be surprising when we consider the whole character of the polemic against Graf's hypothesis, if the next objection should be the very opposite of the above, viz. that it is not able to construct the history. ************************************* After laboriously collecting the data offered by the historical and prophetical books, we constructed a sketch of the Israelite history of worship; we then compared the Pentateuch with this sketch, and recognised that one element of the Pentateuch bore a definite relation to this phase of the history of worship, and another element of the Pentateuch to that phase of it. This is not putting logic in the place of historical investigation. The new doctrine of the irrationality of what exists is surely not to be pushed so far, as that we should regard the correspondence between an element of the law and a particular phase of the history as a reason for placing the two as far as possible asunder. At least this principle would have to be applied to the Jehovist and Deuteronomy too, and not to the Priestly Code only. What is right in the one case is fair in the other too; a little logic unfortunately is almost unavoidable. Not everything that I have brought forward in the history of the cultus and the tradition, is a proof of the hypothesis; there is much that serves merely to explain phenomena at the basis of the hypothesis, and cannot be used as proving it. This is a matter of course. My procedure has intentionally differed from that of Graf in this respect. He brought forward his arguments somewhat unconnectedly, not seeking to change the general view which prevailed of the history of Israel. For this reason he made no impression on the majority of those who study these subjects; they did not see into the root of the matter, they could still regard the system as unshaken, and the numerous attacks on details of it as unimportant. I differ from Graf chiefly in this, that I always go back to the centralisation of the cultus, and deduce from it the particular divergences. My whole position is contained in my first chapter: there I have placed in a clear light that which is of such importance for Israelite history, namely, the part taken by the prophetical party in the great metamorphosis of the worship, which by no means came about of itself. Again I attach much more weight than Graf did to the change of ruling ideas which runs parallel with the change in the institutions and usages of worship; this has been shown mostly in the second part of the present work. Almost more important to me than the phenomena themselves, are the presuppositions which lie behind them. Not everything that we have hitherto discussed proves, or is meant to prove, Graf's hypothesis. On the other hand, however, there is abundance of evidence, which has not yet been noticed. To discuss it all in detail, would take another book: in this work only a selection can be with all brevity indicated, if the limits are not to be transgressed which are imposed by the essentially historical character of these prolegomena. In these discussions the Pro will as a rule naturally suggest itself in the refutation of the Contra. IX.I. IX.I.1. Eberhard Schrader mentions, in his Introduction to the Old Testament, that Graf assigns the legislation of the middle books of the Pentateuch to the period after the exile; but he does not give the least idea of the arguments on which that position is built up, simply dismissing it with the remark, that "even critical analysis enters its veto" against it. Even critical analysis? How does it manage that? How can it prove that the one and sole cultus, worked out on every side to a great system, the denaturalising of the sacrifices and festivals, the distinction between the priests and Levites, and the autonomous hierarchy, are older than the Deuteronomic reform? Schrader's meaning is perhaps, that while the signs collected by a comparison of the sources as bearing on the history of worship show the order of succession to be Jehovist, Deuteronomy, Priestly Code, other signs of a more formal and literary nature would show the Priestly Code to be entitled to the first place, or at any rate not the last, and that the latter kind of evidence is of as much force as the former. Were this so, the scales would be equally balanced, and the question would not admit of a decision. But this awkward situation would only occur if the arguments of a literary nature to be urged on that side really balanced those belonging to the substance of the case which plead for Graf's hypothesis. In discussing the composition of the Hexateuch, /1/ ******************************************** 1. Jahrb. Deutsche Theol., 1876, p. 392 seq, 531 seq; 1877, p. 407 seq. ********************************************* I have shown, following in the steps of other scholars, that this is by no means the case; and for the sake of completeness I will here repeat the principal points of that discussion. IX.I.2. It is asserted that the historical situation of Deuteronomy is based not only on the Jehovistic, but also on the Priestly narrative. Deuteronomy proper (chaps. xii.-xxvi.) contains scarcely any historical matter, but before Moses comes to the business in hand, we have two introductions, chapter v.-xi. and chapter i.-iv., to explain the situation in which he promulgates "this Torah" shortly before his death. We are in the Amorite kingdom, east of the Jordan, which has already been conquered. The forty years' wanderings are about to close: the passage to the land of Canaan, for which this legislation is intended, is just approaching. Till this time, we hear in chapter v. 9, 10, the only law was that which is binding in all circumstances, and was therefore promulgated by God Himself from Horeb, the Law of the Ten Words on that occasion. The people deprecated any further direct revelation by Jehovah, and commissioned Moses to be their representative; and he accordingly betook himself to the sacred mount, stayed there forty days and forty nights, and received the two tables of the decalogue, and besides them the statutes and laws which now, forty years after, he is on the point of publishing, as they will come into force at the settlement. In the meantime the golden calf had been made down below; and when Moses descended from the mount, in his anger he broke the tables and destroyed the idol. Then he betook himself for a second period of forty days and nights to the mount, pleaded for mercy for the people and for Aaron; and after he had made, according to divine command, two new tables and a wooden chest for them, Jehovah once more wrote down exactly what stood on the tables which were broken. On this occasion, it is remarked in x. 8 seq., the Levites received their appointment as priests. This is evidently a reproduction of the Jehovistic narrative, Exodus xix. xx. xxiv. xxxii-xxxiv. The Priestly Code, on the contrary, is entirely ignored. Deuteronomy knows only two laws, the decalogue, which the people received, and the statutes and judgments which Moses received, at Mount Horeb. They were both given at the same time, one directly after the other: but only the decalogue had till now been made public. Where is the whole wilderness-legislation as given from the tabernacle? Is it not denying the very notion of its existence, that Moses only publishes the Torah at the passage into the Holy Land, because it has application and force for that land, and not for the wilderness? Apart from the fact that the Deuteronomist, according to chapter xii., knew nothing of a Mosaic central sanctuary, can he have read what we now read between Exodus xxiv. and xxxii.? He passes over all that is there inserted from the Priestly Code. Noldeke finds, it is true, /1 / ********************************************* 1. Jahrbb. fuer prot. Theologie, 1875, p. 350. ********************************************** a reminiscence of that code in the ark of acacia wood, Deuteronomy x. 1. But the ark is here spoken of in a connection which answers exactly to that of the Jehovist (Exod xxxii. xxxiii.), and is quite inconsistent with that, of the Priestly Code (Exodus xxv. seq.). It is only instituted after the erection of the golden calf, not at the very beginning of the divine revelation, as the foundation-stone of the theocracy. True, the ark is not mentioned in JE, Exodus xxxiii., as we now have it, but in the next Jehovistic piece (Numbers x. 33) it suddenly appears, and there must have been some statement in the work as to how it came there. The tabernacle also appears ready set up in xxxiii. 7, without any foregoing account of its erection. The institution of the ark as well as the erection of the tabernacle must have been narrated between xxxiii. 6 and 7, and then omitted by the present editor of the Pentateuch from the necessity of paying some regard to Q, Exodus xxv.; that this is the case many other considerations also tend to prove. /2/ ***************************************************** 2. Without the ark there is no use of the tabernacle, and the distinction in Exodus xxxiii. which is treated as one of importance, between the representation (Mal'ak) of Jehovah and Jehovah Himself, has no meaning. By making an image the Israelites showed that they could not do without a sensible representation of the Deity, and Jehovah therefore gave them the ark instead of the calf. ***************************************************** That the Deuteronomist found JE in a more complete form, before it was worked up with Q, than that in which we have it after the working up, is not such a difficult assumption that one should be driven into utter impossibilities in order to avoid it. For according to Noldeke either the author of Deuteronomy v.-xi. had before him the Pentateuch as it now is, and was enabled, very curiously, to sift out JE from it, or he used JE as an independent work, but read Q as well, only in such a way that his general view was in no way influenced by that of the priestly work, but on the contrary contradicts it entirely and yet unconsciously--since his work leaves no opening for a ritual legislation given side by side with the Decalogue, and that ritual legislation is the whole sum and substance of the Priestly Code. To such a dilemma are we to make up our minds, because one trait or another of the Deuteronomic narrative cannot be traced in JE as we now have it, and is preserved in Q? Does this amount, in the circumstances, to a proof that such traits were derived from that source? Must not some regard in fairness be paid to the ensemble of the question ? We may, further, remember in this connection Vatke's remark, that the wooden ark in Deuteronomy x. 1, is by no means very similar to that of Exodus xxv., which, to judge by the analogy of the golden table and altar, must rather have been called a golden ark. It takes even more good will to regard the statement about Aaron's death and burial in Mosera and the induction of Eleazar in his place (Deuteronomy x. 6, 7) as a reminiscence of Q (Numbers xx. 22 seq.), where Aaron dies and is buried on Mount Hor. In JE also the priests Aaron and Eleazar stand by the side of Moses and Joshua (cf. Joshua xxiv. 33). The death and burial of Aaron are certainly no longer preserved in JE; but we cannot require of the editor of the Pentateuch that he should make a man die twice, once according to Q and once according to JE. And it must further be said that Deuteronomy x. 6, 7 is an interpolation; for the following verses x. 8 seq., in which not only Aaron and Eleazar, but all the Levites are in possession of the priesthood, are the continuation of x. 5, and rest on Exodus xxxii. Here we are still in Horeb, not in Mosera. The historical thread which runs through Deuteronomy v. ix. x. may be traced further in chaps. i.-iv. After their departure from Horeb the Israelites come straight to Kadesh Barnea, and from this point, being commanded to invade the hill-land of Judaea, they first send twelve spies to reconnoitre the country, guided thereto by their own prudence, but also with the approval of Moses. Caleb is one of the spies, but not Joshua. After penetrating as far as the brook Eshcol they return; and though they praise the goodness of the land, yet the people are so discouraged by their report, that they murmur and do not venture to advance. Jehovah is angry at this, and orders them to turn back to the wilderness, where they are to wander up and down till the old generation is extinct and a new one grown up. Seized with shame they advance after all, but are beaten and driven back. Now they retreat to the wilderness, where for many years they march up and down in the neighbourhood of Mount Seir, till at length, 38 years after the departure from Kadesh, they are commanded to advance towards the north, but to spare the brother-peoples of Moab and Ammon. They conquer the territory of the Amorite kings, Sihon of Heshbon and Og of Bashan. Moses assigns it to the tribes of Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh, on condition that their army is to yield assistance in the remaining war. The continuous report comes to an end with the nomination of Joshua as future leader of the people. This same narrative, with the addition of some scattered particulars in the Book of Deuteronomy, /1/ will serve perfectly ************************************** 1. Appointment of judges and wardens (#W+RYM = peace-officials, who, according to xx. 9, are in war replaced by the captains), i. 9-18, Taberah, Massah, Kibroth Taavah (ix. 22), Dathan and Abiram (xi. 6), Balaam (xxiii. 5), Baal-peor (iv. 3). Only the Jehovist narrative of Numbers xii. seems to be nowhere referred to. In Deuteronomy i. 9-18 the scene is still at Horeb, but this passage shows acquaintance with Numbers xi. and uses both versions for a new and somewhat different one. *************************************** well as a thread to understand JE. What, on the contrary, is peculiar to the Priestly Code is passed over in deep silence, and from Exodus xxxiv. Deuteronomy takes us at once to Numbers x. While not a few of the narratives which Deuteronomy repeats or alludes to, occur only in JE and not in Q, the converse does not occur at all. And in those narratives which are found both in JE and in Q, Deuteronomy follows, in every case in which there is a distinct divergence, the version of JE. The spies are sent out from Kadesh, not from the wilderness of Paran; they only reach Hebron, not the neighbourhood of Hamath; Caleb is one of them, and not Joshua. The rebels of Numbers xvi. are the Reubenites Dathan and Abiram, not Korah and the Levites. After the settlement in the land east of Jordan the people have to do with Moab and Ammon, not with Midian: Balaam is connected with the former, not with the latter. The same of Baal-peor: Deuteronomy iv. 3 agrees with JE (Numbers xxv. 1-5), not with Q (Numbers xxv. 6 seq.). Things being so, we cannot, with Noldeke, see in the number of the spies (Deuteronomy i. 23) an unmistakable sign of the influence of Q (Numbers xiii. 2). Had the author read the narrative as it is now before us in Numbers xiii. xiv., it would be impossible to understand how, as we have seen, the Jehovist version alone made any impression on him. He must, accordingly, have known Q as a separate work, but it is a bold step to argue from such a small particular to the use of a source which everywhere else is entirely without influence and unknown, especially as the priority of this source is by no means established on independent grounds, but is to be proved by this alleged use of it. lf there were a palpable difference between JE and Q in this point, if we could say that in Q there were twelve spies sent out, and in JE; three, the case would be different; but in Numbers xiii. the beginning of the narrative of JE has been removed and that of Q put in place of it, so that we do not know how the narrative of JE began, and what number, if any, was given in it. In such a state of matters the only reasonable course is to supply what is lacking in JE from Deuteronomy, which generally follows the Jehovist alone, and to conclude that the spies were twelve in number in this source also. The instance in which the proof would be strongest that Deuteronomy was acquainted with the narrative of the Priestly Code, is x. 22. For the seventy souls which make up the whole of Israel at the immigration into Egypt, are not mentioned in JE, and there is no gap that we are aware of in the Jehovist tradition at this point. But they are by no means in conflict with that tradition, and even should we not take Deuteronomy x. 22 for a proof that the seventy souls found a place in it also, yet it must at least be acknowledged, that that passage is by no means sufficient to break down the evidence that the priestly legislation has the legislation of Deuteronomy for its starting-point. /1/ ******************************************** 1. Noldeke frequently argues from such numbers as 12 and 70, as if they only occurred in Q. But that is not the case. As Q in the beginning of Genesis has groups of 10, JE has groups of 7; 12 and 40 occur in JE as frequently as in Q, and 70 not less frequently. It is therefore surprising to find the story of the 12 springs of water and the 70 palm-trees of Elim ascribed to Q for no other reason than because of the 12 and the 70. Not even the statements of the age of the patriarchs--except so far as they serve the chronological system--are a certain mark of Q: compare Genesis xxxi. 18, xxxvii. 2, xli. 26, l. 26; Deuteronomy xxxiv. 7; Joshua xxiv. 29. Only the names of the 12 spies and the 70 souls are incontestably the property of the Priestly Code, but it is by no means diflicult to show (especially in Genesis xlvi. 8-27) that they are far less original than the figures. The numbers are round numbers, and in fact do not admit of such a recital of the items of which they are made up. *********************************************** VIII.I.3. As a further objection to Graf's hypothesis, the Deuteronomistic revision of the Hexateuch is brought into the field. That revision appears most clearly, it is said, in those parts which follow the Deuteronomic Torah and point back to it. It used to be taken for granted that it extends over the Priestly portions as well as the Jehovistic; but since the occasion arose to look into this point, it is found that it is not so. The traces which Noldeke brings together on the point are trifling, and besides this do not stand the test. He says that the Deuteronomistic account of the death of Moses (Deuteronomy xxxii. 48 seq., xxxiv. 1 seq.) cannot be regarded as anything else than an amplification of the account of the main stem (Q), which is preserved almost in the same words. But Deuteronomy xxxiv. 1b-7 contains nothing of Q and xxxii. 48-52 has not undergone Deuteronomistic revision. He also refers to Josh. ix. 27: "Joshua made the Gibeonites at that day hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation and for the altar of Jehovah even unto this day, in the place which He should choose." The second part of this sentence, he says, is a Deuteronomistic addition to the first, which belongs to the Priestly narrative. But Noldeke himself acknowledges that the Deuteronomistically-revised verses ix. 22 seq. are not the continuation of the priestly version 15c, 17-21, but of the Jehovistic version 15ab, 16; and between verse 16 and verse 22 there is nothing wanting but the circumstance referred to in verse 26. The phrase _hewer of wood and drawer of water_ is not enough to warrant us to separate verse 27 from 22-26; the phrase occurs not only in verse 21 but also in JE verse 23. The words FOR THE CONGREGATION do certainly point to the Priestly Code, but are balanced by the words which follow, FOR THE ALTAR OF JEHOVAH, which is according to the Jehovistic view. The original statement is undoubtedly that the Gibeonites are assigned to the altar or the house of Jehovah. But according to Ezekiel xliv. the hierodulic services in the temple were not to be undertaken by foreigners, but by Levites; hence in the Priestly Code the servants of the altar appear as servants of the congregation. From this it results that LMZBX is to be preferred in verse 27 to L(DH W, the latter being a later correction. As such it affords a proof that the last revision of the Hexateuch proceeded from the Priestly Code, and not from Deuteronomy. As for Joshua xviii. 3-10, where Noldeke sees in the account of the division of the land another instance of Deuteronomistic addition, I have already indicated my opinion, <VIII.III.2.>. The piece is Jehovistic, and if the view were to be found in the Priestly Code at all, that Joshua first allotted their territory to Judah and Ephraim, and then, a good while after, to the other seven tribes, that source must have derived such a view from JE, where alone it has its roots. /1/ ******************************************** 1. Jahrbb. fur Deutsche Theol., 1876, p. 596 seq. ******************************************** And lastly, Noldeke considers Josh. xxii. to speak quite decidedly for his view; but in the narrative of the Priestly Code, xxii. 9-34, to which the verses l-8 do not belong, there is no sign of Deuteronomistic revision to be found. /2/ ********************************************** 2. Joh. Hollenberg in Stud. und Krit., 1874, p. 462 seq. ********************************************** There is a more serious difficulty only in the case of the short chapter, Josh. xx., of which the kernel belongs to the Priestly Code, though it contains all sorts of additions which savour strongly of the Deuteronomistic revision. Kayser declares these awkward accretions to be glosses of quite a late period. This may seem to be pure tendency-criticism; but it is reinforced by the confirmation of the Septuagint, which did not find any of those alleged Deuteronomistic additions where they now are. /3/ ************************************************ 3. Aug. Kayser, Das vorexilische Buch der Urgeschichtc Israels (Strassburg, 1874), p. 147, seq.; Joh. Hollenberg, der Charactcr der Alex. Uebersetzung des B. Josua (Programm des Gymn. zu Moers, 1876), p. 15. ************************************************** But were it the case that some probable traces of Deuteronomistic revision were actually to be found in the Priestly Code, we must still ask for an explanation of the disproportionately greater frequency of such traces in JE. Why, for example, are there none of them in the mass of laws of the middle books of the Hexateuch? This is undoubtedly and everywhere the fact, and this must dispose us a priori to attach less weight to isolated instances to the contrary: the more so, as Joshua xx. shows that the later retouchings of the canonical text often imitate the tone of the Deuteronomist. IX.II. IX.II.1. I have said that in the L)DH W of Josh. ix. 27, we have the addition of a final priestly revision. Such a revision must be assumed to have taken place, if the Priestly Code is younger than Deuteronomy. But the assumption of its existence does not depend on deduction merely: Kuenen argued for it inductively, even before he became a supporter of Graf's hypothesis. /1/ ********************************************** 1. Historisch-Kritisch Onderzoek I. (Leyden, 1861), p. 165; the reviser of the Pentateuch must be sought in the same circles in which the Book of Origins (Q) arose and was gradually extended and modified, i.e., among the priests of Jerusalem, p. 194; it is generally thought that the Deuteronomist is the reviser of the whole Book of Joshua, but his hand is not to be traced everywhere,--not, for example, in the priestly sections; the last reviser is to be distinguished from the Deuteronomist. In certain narratives of Numbers and Joshua, Kuenen detected very considerable additions by the last reviser, and the results of his investigation have now been published in the first part of the second edition of his great isagogic work (Leyden, 1885). *********************************************** This may be best demonstrated by examining the chapters Leviticus xvii.-xxvi. At present they are incorporated in the Priestly Code, having undergone a revision with that view, which in some places adds little, in others a good deal. Viewed, however, as they originally were, they form a work of a peculiar character by themselves, a work pervaded by a somewhat affected religious hortatory tone, which harmonises but little with the Priestly Code. The author worked largely from earlier authorities, which explains, for example, how chapter xviii. and chapter xx. both find a place in his production. Leviticus xvii.-xxvi is incomparably instructive for the knowledge it affords of literary relationships: it is a perfect compendium of the literary history of the Pentateuch. /2/ ********************************************* 2. Compare Jahrbb. fur Deutsche Theol., 1877, p. 422-444, especially on the elimination of the additions of the reviser. In the present discussion I shall not take these into account. In chapter xxiii., for example, I only take account of verses 9-22, 39-44, in chapter xxiv. only of vers. 15-22 *********************************************** As with Deuteronomy, so with this legislation; it is clear that it goes back to the Jehovistic legislation of Sinai (Exodus xx.-xxiii.) as its source. It also bears to have been given on Mount Sinai (xxv. 1, xxvi. 46). It is addressed to the people, and is popular in its contents, which are chiefly of a civic and moral character. It is meant only for the promised land and for settled life, not for the wilderness as well. The festivals are three in number, and have not quite parted with their character as feasts of harvest. Among the sacrifices the sin-offering and the trespass-offering are wanting. The legislation does deal with the cultus to a disproportionate extent, but the directions about it do not go into technical details, and are always addressed to the people. Even in those directions which concern the priests the people are addressed, and the priests are spoken of in the third person. Nor are palpable points of contact wanting. Leviticus xix. 2-8, 9-18, may be regarded as counterparts of the first and second tables of the decalogue. The precept, "Thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty," xix. 15, is a development of that in Exodus xxiii. 3, and a number of other precepts in Leviticus xix. could stand with equal appropriateness in Exodus xxii. 17 seq. The directions in Leviticus xxii. 27-29 are similar to those of Exodus xxii. 29, xxiii. 18, 19. In the same way those of Leviticus xxiv. 15-22 are based both in contents and form on Exodus xxi. 12. /1/ ******************************************** 1. Compare xxiv. 15 seq. with Exodus xxii. 27 (xxi. 17); xxiv. 18 with Exodus xxi. 28 seq.; xxiv. 19, 20 with Exodus xxi. 33, 34; xxiv. 21 with Exodus xxi. 28 seq. ********************************************* In xxiv. 22 we notice a polemical reference to Exodus xxi. 20 seq., 26 seq. In xxv. 1-7 the whole of the expressions of Exodus xxiii. 10, 11 are repeated. In xx. 24, we have the Jehovistic phrase, "a land flowing with milk and honey." Yet Leviticus xvii.-xxvi. only takes its starting-point from the Jehovistic legislation, and modifies it very considerably, somewhat in the manner of Deuteronomy. There is a demonstrable affinity with Deuteronomy both in the ideas and in the expressions. Common to both is the care for the poor and the undefended: to both humanity is a main object of legislation. "If a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him; he shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt" (xix. 34). Leviticus xvii. seq. attaches great importance to unity of worship. It is still a demand, not a presupposition (xvii. 8 seq., xix. 30, xxvi. 2); the motive of it is to guard against heathen influences and to secure the establishment of a monotheism without images. /2/ ****************************************** 2. xvii. 7 (cf. 2Chronicles xi. 15), xviii. 21, xix. 4, 19, 26, 29, 31, xx. 2 seq. 6, xxvi. 1, 30. With regard to the date we have to note the stern prohibition of the service of Moloch. On Lev, xvii. see above, p. 376. ****************************************** This is quite recognisable, and forms an important point of contact with Deuteronomy. The same contact may be observed in the prohibition of certain observances of mourning (xix. 27 seq.), the calculation of Pentecost from the beginning of barley harvest (xxiii. 15), the seven days' duration of the feast of tabernacles, and the cheerful sacrificial feasts which are to accompany its observance. Add to this a similarity by no means slight in the colour of the language, e.g., in xviii. 1-5, 24-30, xix. 33-37, xx. 22 seq., xxv. 35 seq. Some of the phrases may be mentioned. "When ye are come into the land that I shall give you." "Ye shall rejoice before Jehovah." "I am Jehovah that brought you up out of the land of Egypt." "Ye shall keep my commandments and statutes and laws, to do them." But the legislation we have here is further advanced than Deuteronomy. In the festivals the joint sacrifice of the congregation is already prominent (xxiii. 9-22). The priests are not the Levites, but the sons and brothers of Aaron, their income has grown materially, their separate holiness has reached a higher point. Stricter demands are also made on the laity for personal holiness, especially as regards continence from the sins of the flesh, and the marriage of relatives (Leviticus xviii. xx.). Marriage with an uncle's wife is forbidden (xviii. 14, xx. 20), whereas in Deuteronomy it is still legal. The work dates from a time when exile was a familiar idea: xviii. 26 seq.: "Ye shall keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of those abominations; for the men that were in the land before you did these things, and the land vomited them out. Take care that the land spue not you out also as it spued out the nations that were before you." Similarly xx. 23 seq.: and in a legislative work such utterances prove more than they would in a prophecy. Now as our section departs from Deuteronomy, it approaches to Ezekiel. This is its closest relationship, and that to which attention has been most drawn. It appears in the peculiar fusion of cultus and morality, in the notion of holiness, in a somewhat materialistic sense, as the great requirement of religion, and in the fact that the demand of holiness is made to rest on the residence of the people near the sanctuary and in the holy land. /1/ ****************************************** 1. On Leviticus xxii. 24, 25, compare Kuenen's Hibbert Lectures. ****************************************** But the affinity is still more striking in the language: many unusual phrases, and even whole sentences, from Ezekiel, are repeated in Leviticus xvii. seq. /2/ ******************************************* 2. Compare Colenso, Pentateuch and Joshua, vi. p. 3-23. Kayser, op. cit. p. 177- 179. Smend on Ezekiel, p. xxv. ******************************************** The 10th of the 7th month is in Leviticus xxv. 9 as in Ezekiel, new-year's day, not, as in the Priestly Code, the great day of atonement. This led Graf to regard Ezekiel himself as the author of this collection of laws in Leviticus; and Colenso and Kayser followed him. But this is out of the question; notwithstanding the numerous points of contact both in linguistic and material respects, the agreement is by no means complete. Ezekiel knows no seed of Aaron, and no wine at the sacrifices (Leviticus xxiii. 13); his festival legislation shows considerable differences, and in spirit is more akin to the Priestly Code. And if he were the author he would have said something about the proper place in the cultus of the Levites and of the prince. The corpus in question, which Klostermann called, not inappropriately, the Law of Holiness, inclines from Ezekiel towards the Priestly Code: in such pieces as xvii. xxi. xxii. it takes some closeness of attention to see the differences from the latter, though in fact they are not inconsiderable. It stands between the two, somewhat nearer, no doubt, to Ezekiel. How are we to regard this fact? Jehovist, Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, are a historical series; Ezekiel, Law of Holiness, Priestly Code, must also be taken as historical steps, and this in such a way as to explain at the same time the dependence of the Law of Holiness on the Jehovist and on Deuteronomy. To assume that Ezekiel, having the Pentateuch in all other respects as we have it, had a great liking for this piece of it, and made it his model in the foundation of his style of thought and expression--such an assumption does not free us from the necessity of seeking the historical order, and of assigning his natural place in that order to Ezekiel; we cannot argue on such a mere chance. Now the question is not a complicated one, whether in the Law of Holiness we are passing from the Priestly Code to Ezekiel or from Ezekiel to the Priestly Code. The Law of Holiness underwent a last revision, which represents, not the views of Ezekiel, but those of the Priestly Code, and by means of which it is incorporated in that code. This revision has not been equally incisive in all parts. Some of its corrections and supplements are very considerable, e.g., xxiii. 1-8, 23-38; xxiv. 1-14, 23. Some of them are quite unimportant, e.g., the importation of the Ohel Moed (instead of the Mikdash or the Mishkan), xvii. 4, 6, 9, xix. 21 seq.; the trespass-offering, xix. 21 seq.; the Kodesh Kodashim, xxi. 22. Only in xxv. 8 seq. is the elimination of the additions difficult. But the fact that the last edition of the Law of Holiness proceeds from the Priestly Code, is universally acknowledged. Its importance for the literary history of Israel cannot be over-estimated. /1/ ************************************************* 1. L. Horst, in his discussion on Leviticus XVii,-XXYi, and Ezekiel (Colmar, 1881), has strikingly shown that the mechanical style of criticism in which Dillmann even surpasses his predecessor Knobel, is not equal to the problem presented by the Law of Holiness. He goes on, however, to an attempt to save, by modifying it, the old Strassburg view of Ezekiel's authorship; and as Kuenen justly remarks, he makes ship-wreck on Leviticus xxvi. (Theol. Tijdschr. 1882, p. 646). Cf. <next note, beginning "Horst...">. ************************************************** IX.II.2. The concluding oration, Leviticus xxvi. 3-46, calls for special consideration. Earlier scholars silently assumed that this piece belonged to Leviticus xvii. 1-XXVI. 2; but many critics, Noldeke for example, now regard it as an interpolation in Leviticus of a piece which from its character should be elsewhere. At any rate the oration is composed with special reference to what precedes it. If it is not taken as a peroration, such as Exodus xxiii. 30-33, Deuteronomy xxviii., its position in such a part of the Priestly Code is quite incomprehensible. It has, moreover, a palpable connection with the laws in xvii.-xxv. The _land_, and _agriculture_, have here the same significance for religion as in chaps. xix. xxiii. xxv.; the threat of vomiting out (xviii. 25 seq., xx. 22) is repeated here more circumstantially; the only statute actually named is that of the fallow of the seventh year (xxvi. 34, xxv. 1-7). The piece begins with the expression, which is so characteristic of the author of chapter xvii. seq. "If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them," and the same phrase recurs, with slight alteration, in vers. 15 and 43. The conclusion, verse 46, is, "These are the statutes and judgments and laws which Jehovah gave, to regulate the relation between Him and Israel on Mount Sinai, by Moses." This is obviously the subscription of a preceding corpus of statutes and judgments, such as we have in, xvii. 1-xxvi. 2. Mount Sinai is mentioned also in xxv. 1 as the place of revelation. If Leviticus xxvi. is incontestably intended to form the conclusion of chaps. xvii.-xxv., it would be natural to suppose that the author of that collection was also the author of the oration. Noldeke thinks, however, that the language differs too much from that of xvii.-xxv. Yet he is obliged to acknowledge several resemblances, and these not unimportant; while some of the differences which he adduces (Bamoth, Gillulim, Hammanim, xxvi. 30) are really examples of similarity. Rare and original words may be found in the preceding chapters also. It may be that in chapter xxvi they are more frequent in proportion: yet this does not entitle us to say that the language generally is very original. On the contrary, it is everywhere characterised by borrowed expressions. So much of linguistic difference as actually remains is sufficiently accounted for by the difference of subject: first come laws in a dry matter-of-fact style, then prophecy in a poetical pathetic style. The idiosyncrasy of the writer has no scope in the former case, from the nature of the materials, some of which had already assumed their form before he made use of them. In the latter case he can express himself freely; and it is fair that this should not be overlooked. The arguments brought forward by Noldeke against the probability that Leviticus xxvi. belongs to chaps. xvii.-xxv. and is not merely tacked on to them, disappear completely on a closer comparison of the literary character of the two pieces. Chapter xxvi. reminds us most strongly of Ezekiel's style, both in thought and language. The most significant passage is Leviticus xxvi. 39. The threat has been uttered that Israel is to be destroyed as a people, and that the remnant which escapes the destroying sword of the enemy is to be carried into exile, to sink under the weight of past calamity and present affliction. Then the speech goes on: "And they that are left of you shall _pine away_ in their iniquity in your enemies' land; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they _pine away_. Then they will confess their own sin and the sin of their fathers." In Ezekiel, this confession actually occurs in the mouth of one of his fellow-exiles: they say (xxxiii. 10), "Our transgressions and our sins are heavy upon us, and we _pine away_ in them, and cannot live." In the same strain the prophet says (xxiv. 23) that in his dull sorrow for the death of his wife he will be an emblem of the people: "ye shall not mourn nor weep, but ye shall _pine away_ in your iniquities." Nor are the other traits wanting in the oration which, as we say, accompanied the Ezekielic colouring of the preceding chapters. We do not expect to find traces of the influence of the Jehovist legislation (further than that Exodus xxiii. 20 seq. formed the model both for Deuteronomy xxviii. and Leviticus xxvi.); but to make up for this we find very distinct marks of the influence of the prophets, the older prophets too, as Amos (verse 31). We can as little conceive the existence of the Book of Ezekiel as of this chapter without the prophetic literature having preceded it and laid the foundation for it. As for the relation to Deuteronomy, the resemblance of Leviticus xxvi. to Deuteronomy xxviii. is very great, in the arrangement as well as in the ideas. True, there are not many verbal coincidences, but the few which do occur are important. The expressions of xxvi. 16 occur nowhere in the Old Testament but in Deuteronomy xxviii. 22, 65: similarly R)#YM with the meaning it has in verse 45 only occurs in Deuteronomy xix. 14 and in the later literature (Isaiah lxi. 6). The metaphor of the uncircumcised heart (verse 41) only occurs in one other passage in the law, in Deuteronomy; the other instances of it are in prophecy, of contemporary or later date (Jeremiah iv. 4, ix. 24, 25, Ezekiel xliv. 7, 9). There are several more reminiscences of Jeremiah, most of them, however, not very distinct. We may remark on the relation between Jeremiah xvi. 18 in one respect to verse 30, and in another to verse 18 of our chapter. Here the sin is punished sevenfold, in Jeremiah double. The same is said in Isaiah xl. 2, lx. 7; and our chapter has also in common with this prophet the remarkable use of rtc,h (with sin or trespass as object). Did not the chapter stand in Leviticus, it would, doubtless, be held to be a reproduction, some small part of it of the older prophecies, the most of it of those of Jeremiah and Ezekiel: Leviticus xxvi. 34 is actually quoted in 2Chronicles xxxvi 22 as a word of the prophet Jeremiah. Leviticus xxvi. has points of contact, finally, with the Priestly Code, in PRH WRBH, HQYM BRYT, HTWDH, )NY, (never )NKY), in the excessive use of the accusative participle and avoidance of verbal suffixes, and in its preferring the colourless NTN to verbs of more special meaning. The only reason for the attempt to separate Leviticus xxvi. from xvii.-xxv. lies in the fact, that the exilic or post-exilic origin of this hortatory and denunciatory oration is too plain to be mistaken. To us, this circumstance can only prove that it belongs to xvii.-xxv., providing a weighty confirmation of the opinion we have already formed on other grounds as to the period which produced these laws. "If ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary to me, then I will also walk contrary to you in fury; and I will chastise you seven times for your sins. Ye shall eat the flesh of your sons and daughters, and I will destroy your high places, and cast down your sun-pillars' and cast your carcasses upon the carcasses of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you. And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries into desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours. And I will bring the land into desolation, and your enemies who settle therein shall be astonished at it; and I will scatter you among the peoples, and will draw out the sword after you, and your land shall be desolate and your cities ruins. Then shall the land pay her sabbaths all the years of the desolation when you are in your enemies' land: even then shall the land rest and pay her sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate it shall make up the celebration of the sabbaths which it did not celebrate as long as you dwelt in it. And upon them that are left alive of you I will send a faintness into their hearts in the land of their enemies, and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them, and they shall flee as fleeing from a sword, and they shall fall when none pursueth. And they shall fall one upon another as it were before a sword when none pursueth, and there shall be no stopping in the flight before your enemies. And ye shall lose yourselves among the peoples, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies' lands, and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away. And they shall confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in regard to their unfaithfulness which they committed against me, and that because they have walked contrary to me, I also walk contrary to them, and bring them into the land of their enemies. Then their uncircumcised heart is humbled, and then they pay their penalty, and I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham, and I remember the land. The land also, left by them, pays its sabbaths, while she lieth without inhabitant and waste, and they themselves pay the penalty of their iniquity because, even because, they despised my judgments, and their soul abhorred my statutes. And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I have not rejected them, neither have I abhorred them to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I am Jehovah their God. And I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the peoples, that I might be their God: I am Jehovah" (xxvi. 27-45). These words undoubtedly cannot have been written before the Babylonian exile. It is said that the Assyrian exile will explain the passage: but where is there any similarity between the oration before us and the old genuine Isaiah? In Ezekiel's day such thoughts, feelings, and expressions as we have here can be shown to have prevailed: but it would be difficult to show that the fall of Samaria gave rise to such depression at Jerusalem: and Leviticus xxvi. was not written outside Jerusalem, for it presupposes unity of worship. The _Jews_ are addressed here, as in Deuteronomy xxix., xxx., and they had no such lively feeling of solidarity with the deported Israelites as to think of them in connection with such threats. I even think it certain that the writer lived either towards the end of the Babylonian exile or after it, since at the close of the oration he turns his eyes to the restoration. In such prophets as Jeremiah and Ezekiel there is a meaning in such forecasting of the joyful future but here it contradicts both the historical position and the object of the threats, and appears to be explained most naturally as the result of an accident, i.e., of actuality. That in a comparison of Leviticus xxvi. with Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the former cannot claim priority, appears distinctly from the comparative use of the phrase _uncircumised heart_. That phrase originates in Jeremiah (iv. 4, ix. 24 seq.), but in Leviticus xxvi. it is used as a well-known set term. In the same way the phrase _pine away in their iniquity_ is repeated by Ezekiel as he heard it in the mouth of the people. He is its originator in literature; in Leviticus xxvi. it is borrowed. /1/ *********************************************** 1. Horst tries to find a place for Leviticus xxvi. in the last years of king Zedekiah (op. cit. p. 65, 66), but in this he is merely working out his theory that the author was the youthful Ezekiel; and the theory is sufficiently condemned if it leads to this consequence. Delitzsch (Zeitschr. fur Kirchl. Wissench. 1880, p. 619) thinks it a piece of impertinence in me to read out of Ezekiel xxxiii. what that passage says. On Deuteronomy x. 16, xxx. 6, and generally on the color Hieremianus in Deuteronomy, see Jahrb. fur D. Thhcol., 1877, p. 464. ********************************************** The criticism of Leviticus xvii. seq. Ieads us to the result, that a collection of laws which took form during the period of the exile was received into the Priestly Code, and there clothed with fresh life. We need not then tremble at Schrader's threatening us with "critical analysis," and Graf's hypothesis will not be thereby overturned. IX.II.3. Two or three further important traces of the final priestly revision of the Hexateuch may here find mention. In the story of the flood the verses vii. 6-9 are an editorial addition, with the object of removing a contradiction between JE and Q; it shares the ideas and speaks the language of the Priestly Code. In the title of Deuteronomy the verse, "It came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh [(#TY] month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spake unto the children of Israel according to all that Jehovah had given him in commandment unto them" (i. 3) is shown by the most undoubted signs to belong to the Priestly Code, and is intended to incorporate Deuteronomy in that work. We have already shown that the Priestly Code in the Book of Joshua is simply a filling-up of the Jehovistic-Deuteronomistic narrative. That the Priestly Code consists of elements of two kinds, first of an independent stem, the Book of the Four Covenants (Q), and second, of innumerable additions and supplements which attach themselves principally to the Book of the Four Covenants, but not to it alone, and indeed to the whole of the Hexateuch--this assertion has not, strange to say, met with the opposition which might have been expected. Ryssel has even seen in the twofold nature of the Priestly Code a means to maintain the position of the Book of the Four Covenants before the exile: he sacrifices the additions, and places the necessary interval between them and the main body of the work. He thinks the close affinity between the two parts is sufficiently explained by the supposition that they both issued from the same circle, that of the priesthood of Jerusalem. Were it the case that the temple of Jerusalem was as autonomous and as solely legitimate in the days of Solomon as in those of the foreign domination, that the priests had as much to say under Ahaz, Hezekiah, and Josiah as after the exile, if it were allowable to represent them according as it suits one's views, and not according to the historical evidence, if, in short, there were no Israelite history at all, such an explanation might be allowed to stand. The secondary part of the Priestly Code of necessity draws the primary part with it. The similarity in matter and in form, the perfect agreement in tendencies and ideas, in expressions and ways of putting things, all compel us to think that the whole, if not a literary, is yet a historical, unity. IX.III. <IX.III.1.> It has lately been the fashion to regard the language of the Priestly Code as an insuperable barrier to the destructive efforts of tendency criticism. But it is unfortunate that this veto of language is left as destitute of detailed proof, by Delitzsch, Riehm, and Dillmann, as the veto of critical analysis by Schrader; and we cannot be called upon to show proof against a contention which is unsupported by evidence. But I take advantage of the opportunity to communicate some detached observations, which I may perhaps remark did not occur to me in connection with the investigation of the Pentateuch, but on a quite different occasion. In the passage 2Samuel vi. 12 I was exceedingly struck with L(MT, and not less with BR) in the two passages Isaiah iv. 5, Amos iv. 13, and while following out the distribution of these two words I came on the traces of similar phenomena. The language of the pre-exilic historical books is in general much akin to that of the Jehovistic work; that of the Priestly Code, on the contrary, is quite different. It is common enough to interpret this fact, as if the latter belonged to an earlier period. But not to mention that in that case the Code must have been entirely without influence on the history of the language, it agrees ill with this view, that on going back to the oldest documents preserved to us of the historical literature of the Hebrews we find the difference increasing rather than diminishing. Take Judges v. and 2Samuel i.; the poetical pieces in JE may be compared with them, but in Q there is nothing like them. And on the other hand, it is in the narratives which were introduced very late into the history, such as Judges xix.-xxi.; 1Samuel vii. viii. x. 17 seq. xii.; 1Kings xiii., and the apocryphal additions in 1Kings vi.-viii. that we recognise most readily some linguistic approximation to the Priestly Code. And as in the historical so also in the prophetical literature. The speech of Amos, Isaiah, Micah, answers on the whole to that of the Jehovist, not to that of the priestly author. Deuteronomy and the Book of Jeremiah first agree with the Priestly Code in certain important expressions. In Ezekiel such expressions are much more numerous, and the agreement is by no means with Leviticus xvii.-xxvi. alone. /1/ ****************************************** I Especially noticeable is P)T NGB TYMNH in Ezekiel and the Priestly Code. In the latter Negeb, even when it refers to the actual Negeb, yet is used as denoting south (Numbers xxxiv. 3, xxv. 2-4), i.e., it has completely lost its original meaning. ****************************************** In the subsequent post-exilic prophets down to Malachi the points of contact are limited to details, but do not cease to occur; they occur also in the Psalms and in Ecclesiastes. Reminiscences of the Priestly Code are found nowhere but in the Chronicles and some of the Psalms. For that Amos iv. 11 is borrowed from Genesis xix. 29 is not a whit more clear than that the original of Amos i. 2 must be sought in Joel iv. 19 [iii. 16]. The Priestly Code maintains its isolated literary character as against the later literature also. This is the result partly of the use of a number of technical terms, partly of the incessant repetition of the same formulae, and of its great poverty of language. But if we neglect what is due to the stiff and hard idiosyncrasy of the author, it is undoubtedly the case that he makes use of a whole series of characteristic expressions which are not found before the exile, but gradually emerge and come into use after it. The fact is not even denied, it is merely put aside. To show what weight is due to it we may find room here for a short statement of the interesting points for the history of language to be found in Genesis i. Genesis i. 1, R)#YT means in the older Hebrew, not the COMMENCEMENT of a process which goes forward in time, but the FIRST (and generally the BEST) part of a thing. In the sense of a beginning in time, as the contrary to )XRYT, it is first found in a passage of Deuteronomy, xi. 12; then in the titles in the Book of Jeremiah, xxvi. 1, xxvii. 1, xxviii. 1, xlix. 34, and in Isaiah xlvi. 10, and lastly in the Hagiographa, Job viii. 7, xili. 12; Proverbs xvii. 14; Ecclesiastes vii. 8. In Genesis x. 10 R)#YT MMLKTW has a different meaning from that in Jeremiah xxvi. 1 in the one it is the principal part of the kingdom; in the other it is the beginning of the reign. _In the beginning_ was in the early time, if absolute, BFR)#NH, BATTXLH; if relative, BTXLT TXLT. /1/ ******************************************* 1 The vocalisation B:R#YT is very curious: we should expect BFRA$YT. It has been attempted to do justice to it by translating: "In the beginning, when God created heaven and earth--but the earth was without form and void, and darkness lay upon the deep, and the spirit of God brooded over the water--then God spake: Let there be light." But this translation is desperate, and certainly not that followed by the punctuators, for the Jewish tradition (Septuagint, Aquila, Onkelos) is unanimous in translating: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth." In Aramaic, on the contrary, such adverbs take, as is well known, the form of the _status constructus_. Cf. RBT Psalm lxvv. 10, cxx. 6. ******************************************** We have already spoken <VIII.I.1. "a special word"> of the word BR), a word remarkable for its specific theological import. Apart from Amos iv. 13 and Isaiah iv. 5 it is first found outside the Priestly Code in the Deuteronomist in Exodus xxxiv. 10, Numbers xvi. 30 (?), Deuteronomy iv. 32, and in the Book of Jeremiah, xxxi. 22: then in Ezekiel xxi. 35, xxviii. 13, 15; Malachi ii. 10; in Psalms li. 12, lxxxix. 13, 48, cii. 19, civ. 30, cxlviii. 5; Ecclesiastes xii. 1. It occurs, however, most frequently, 20 times in fact, in Isaiah xl.-lxvi.; and curiously enough, never in Job, where we should expect to find it. It has nothing to do with B"R") (cut down wood) and BRY) (fat). /2/ ********************************************* 2. I do not speak of the use of _Elohim_ and the application of the names of God in the Priestly Code: the matter is not yet clear to me. Very curious is H#M, Leviticus xxiv. 11. ******************************************** Genesis i. 2, THW WBHW occurs also in Jeremiah iv. 23; Isaiah xxxiv. 11. THW alone is not so rare, but it also occurs, Isaiah xxix. 21 excepted, only in the later literature Deuteronomy xxxii. 10; 1Samuel xii. 21; Isaiah xxiv. 10, xl. 17, 23, xli. 29, xliv. 9, xlv. 18 seq., xlix. 4, lix. 4; Job vi. 18, xii.24, xxvi. 7; Psalm cvii. 40. The verb RXP (brood), which is common in Aramaic, only recurs in a single passage in the Old Testament, and that a late one, Deuteronomy xxxii. 11. Yet the possibility must be conceded that there was no occasion for its more frequent employment. Genesis i. 4, HBDYL and NBDL (divide and divide one's self), common in the Priestly Code, is first used by Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomist (Deuteronomy iv. 41, x.8, xix. 7, xxix. 10; 1Kings viii. 53), then by Ezekiel (xxii. 26, xxxix. 14, xlii. 10) and the author of Isaiah xl. seq. (lvi. 3, lix. 2). It is most used by the writer of Chronicles, (1Chronicles xii. 8, xxiii. 13, xxv. 1; 2Chronicles xxv. 10; Ezra vi. 21, viii.24, ix. 1, x. 8, 11, 16 ; Nehemiah x. 2, 29, xiii. 3). On YWM )XD Genesis i. 5 compare Josephus, Antiquities I. i. 1: "That now would be the FIRST day, but Moses says ONE day; I could give the reason of this here, but as I have promised (in the Introduction) to give such reasons for everything in a separate work, I shall defer the exposition till then." The Rabbis also, in Genesis Rabba, feel the difficulty of the expression, which, however, has its parallel in the )XD LXD#, which belongs to the later way of speaking. In Syriac the ordinary expression is XD B#B); hence in the New Testament MIA SABBATWN for the first day of the week. Genesis i. 6, RQY( (firmament) is found, outside the Priestly Code, only in Ezekiel (i. 22-26, x. 1), and in still later writers ; Psalms xix. 2, cl. 1 ; Daniel xii. 3; cf. Job xxxviii. 18. /1/ ********************************************* 1. It does not mean, as is generally assumed, that which is beaten out thin, is stretched out. For, firstly, the heaven is never considered to be made of sheet-metal; secondly, the meaning in question only belongs to the Piel, and the substantive derived from it is RIQQUA(. The Kal, with which RQY( must be connected, is found in Isaiah xiii. 5, xliv. 24; Psalms cxxxvi. 6. It is generally translated _spread out_, but quite unwarrantably. Parallel with it are YSD and KWNN (compare Psalms xxiv. 2 with cxxxvi. 6); the Septuagint translates in all three passages with stereoun, and accordingly renders RQY( with STEREWMA (firmamentum). This rendering, which alone is supported by tradition, and which is very satisfactory, is confirmed by the Syriac, where the verb RQ( is frequent in the sense of _fortify_. ********************************************* Genesis i. 10 YMYM (the sea, singular, see i. 22; Leviticus xi. 9, 10), is rare in older times, and belongs to lofty poetical language; it is, on the contrary, frequent in Ezekiel (ten times), and in the Psalms (seven times); and occurs besides in Job vi. 3; Nehemiah ix. 6 ; Jonah ii. 4 ; Daniel xi. 45. Genesis i. 11 MYN (kind), a very peculiar word, especially in the form _Jeminehu_, is found outside of this chapter and Leviticus xiv., Genesis vi. 20, vii. 14, only in Deuteronomy xiv. and Ezekiel xlvii. 10. Genesis i. 26, DMWT (likeness, verses 1, 3) does not occur in the earlier literature. It first appears in 2Kings xvi. 10, in a post-Deuteronomic passage, for the writer is that of chapter xi. seq., xxi. seq. Then in Ezekiel (15 times), Isaiah xiii. 4, xl. 18; 2Chronicles iv. 3; Psalms lxviii. 5. It is a borrowed word from Aramaic; and the corresponding verb only came into use in the period when Aramaic began to find its way in. Genesis i. 27 ZFKFR (male) is in earlier times ZFKW.R; for this is the vocalization in Exodus xxiii. 17, xxxiv. 23; Deuteronomy xvi. 16, xx. 13; and if it is right in these passages, as we cannot doubt it is, it must be introduced in Exodus xxxiv. 19; Deuteronomy xv. 19; 1Kings xi. 15 seq. as well. In the Priestly Code ZFKFR occurs with great frequency, and elsewhere only in the later literature, Deuteronomy iv. 16; Jeremiah xx. 15, xxx. 6; Ezekiel xvi. 17; Isaiah lxvi. 7; Malachi i. 14; Judges xxi. 11, 12; 2Chronicles xxxi. 16; Ezra viii. As for NQBH (female), matters are even worse. Outside the Priestly Code it is only found in Jeremiah (xxxi. 22) and the Deuteronomist (iv. 16). The Jehovist, it is well known, always says )Y#, W)Y#H even of the lower animals: the editor of the Hexateuch, on the contrary, always follows the usage of the Priestly Code. Genesis i. 28 XYH HRM#T attracts attention by the omission of the article with the substantive and its being merely prefixed to the following adjective; as if one should say in Greek, )ANHR (O )AGATHOS instead of (O )ANER (O )AGATHOS. In the same way i. 21 YWM H##Y, and ii. 3 YWM H#BY(Y. In Arabic there are some analogies for this, but on seeking one in Hebrew we have to come down to the period when it was usual to say KNST HGDWLH. KB# and RDH are Aramaisms. In KBSHWH we find the only verbal suffix in Genesis i. Instead we have always the forms )TM )TW; this is so in the Priestly Code generally. In the Jehovistic main work, in J, these substitutes with )T are only used sometimes and for special reasons: it may be generally asserted that they are more used the later we come down. Parallel with this is the use of )nky in J and )ny in the Priestly Code; the latter form grows always more frequent in later times. These remarks carry us beyond Genesis i.; for the Priestly Code generally I am now able to refer to F. Giesebrecht's essay on the criticism of the Hexateuch. Such words as QRBN, (CM, L(MT, (#TY are each, by itself, strong arguments for assuming a late date for the production of the Priestly Code. We cannot believe that such everyday words should never have come into use in the other literature before the exile, if they were in existence. They cannot be counted technical terms: QRBN used in Hebrew for sacrifice and offering is simply as if an English writer should say priere instead of worship. In such comparisons of the vocabulary we have, however, to consider first the working up and revision which has been at work in every part of the books of the Bible, and secondly the caprice of the writers in apparent trifles, such as )NKY and )NY, especially outside the Pentateuch. These two agencies have so dislocated the original facts in this matter, that in general we can only deal in proportions, and must be content with showing that a word occurs say 3 times in the other literature and 27 times in an equal extent of the later. /1/ *************************************** 1. Too much importance must not be attached to Aramaisms: even when they admit of clear demonstration they prove little while occurring merely in single instances. We early find remarkable phenomena, such as NDR for NZR (hence NZYR = vovens), N+R for NCR (Amos i. 11 , Y+R for Y+RP?), comp. Arabic _lata_ for _laisa_, Sur. 38, 2. Hudh. 84, 1. And yet such an Aramaism as BT #NTH in Numbers xv. 27, or even QRBN, is very remarkable. *************************************** IX.III.2. The study of the history of language is still at a very elementary stage in Hebrew. In that which pertains to the lexicographer it would do well to include in its scope the proper names of the Old Testament; when it would probably appear that not only Parnach (Numbers xxxiv. 25) but also composite names such as Peda-zur, Peda-el, Nathana-el, Pazi-el, Eli-asaph, point less to the Mosaic than to the Persian period, and have their analogies in the Chronicles. On the other hand, the prepositions and particles would have to be examined the use of the prepositions Beth and Lamed in the Priestly Code is very peculiar. That would lead further, to syntax; or better still, to rhetoric and style--a diffcult and little cultivated field of study, but one of great importance and lending itself readily to comparative treatment. This treatment yields the most far-reaching results in the case of those parallels which have an undoubted and direct relation to each other. The dependence of the Priestly Code on the Jehovist cannot be more strikingly demonstrated than by comparing its CDYQ, Genesis vi. 9, with the CDYQ BDWR HZH, of Genesis vii. 1 (JE.). The plural DRWT is quite on a line with the MYNYM, and the (MY H)RC, of the Rabbis, and the SPERMATA of Galatians iii. 15; it does not denote the successive generations, but contemporaries, the contemporaneous individuals of one and the same generation. From words we are brought back to things again by noting that the age of the word depends in many cases on the introduction of the thing. The name BTR in the Song of Songs, for example, presupposes the cultivation of the malobathron in Syria and Palestine. The Priestly Code enumerates colours, stuffs, goldsmiths' work and jewels, which nowhere occur in the older literature: along with the Book of Ezekiel it is the principal quarry in the Old Testament for the history of art; and this is the less likely to be due to chance, as the geographical horizon of the two works is also the same. There is also some contact in this respect, though to a less degree, between the Priestly Code and Isaiah xl.-lxvi., and this must doubtless receive a historical explanation in the circumstances of the Babylonian age. /l/ ********************************************* 1. On Canticles cf. Schuerer's Theol. Lit. Z., 1879, p. 31. It also, by the names of plants and similar details mentioned in it, is an important source for the history of external civilisation. In Isaiah liv. 11, read with the Septuagint NPK: instead of the meaningless PWK:, and )DNYK instead of )BNYK. ******************************************** CHAPTER X. THE ORAL AND THE WRITTEN TORAH. What importance the written letter, the book of the law, possessed for the Jews, we all know from the New Testament. Of ancient Israel, again, it is said in the introductory poem of Goethe's West-Oestlicher Divan, that the word was so important there, because it was a spoken word. The contrast which Goethe evidently perceived is really characteristic, and deserves some further attention. X.I. X.I.1. Even if it be the case that Deuteronomy and the Priestly Code were only reduced to writing at a late period, still there remains the Jehovistic legislation (Exodus xx.-xxiii. xxxiv.) which might be regarded as the document which formed the starting-point of the religious history of Israel. And this position is in fact generally claimed for it; yet not for the whole of it, since it is commonly recognised that the Sinaitic Book of the Covenant (Exodus xx.-xxiii. 19) was given to a people who were settled and thoroughly accustomed to agriculture, and who, moreover, had passed somewhat beyond the earliest stage in the use of money. /1/ **************************************** 1. Exodus xxi. 35: compare xxi. 33 with Judges ix. 4 **************************************** The Decalogue alone is commonly maintained to be in the strictest sense Mosaic. This is principally on account of the statement that it was written down on the two stone tables of the sacred ark. Yet of Deuteronomy also we read, both that it was written on twelve stones and that it was deposited in the sacred ark (Deuteronomy xxxi. 26). We cannot therefore place implicit reliance on such statements. What is attested in this way of the Decalogue seems to find confirmation in 1Kings viii. 9. But the authority of this statement is greatly weakened by the fact that it occurs in a passage which has undergone the Deuteronomistic revision, and has been, in addition to this, subjected to interpolation. The more weight must we therefore allow to the circumstance, which makes for a different conclusion, that the name "The Ark of the Covenant" (i.e., the box of the law) /1/ is peculiar to the later writers, ***************************************** 1. Compare 1Kings viii. 21, "the ark wherein is the covenant of Jehovah," and viii 9, "there was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb, the tables of the covenant which Jehovah had made with the children of Israel." The Deuteronomistic expression "tables of the covenant", alternates in the Priestly Code with that of "tables of testimony"; i e., likewise of the law. For H(DWT, "the testimony," 2Kings xi. 12, read HC(DWT, "the bracelets," according to 2Samuel i. 10. ******************************************* and, when it occurs in older narratives, is proved by its sporadic appearance, as well as by a comparison of the Septuagint with the Massoretic text, to be a correction. In early times the ark was not a mere casket for the law; the "the ark of Jehovah" was of itself important, as we see clearly enough from 1Samuel iv.-vi. Like the twelve maccebas which surrounded the altar on the holy hill of Shechem, and which only later assumed the character of monuments of the law, so the ark of the covenant no doubt arose by a change of meaning out of the old idol. If there were stones in it at all, they probably served some other purpose than that of writing materials, otherwise they would not have been hidden as a mystery in the darkness of the sanctuary; they must have been exposed to public view. Add to this that the tradition is not agreed as to the tenor of the ten words said to have been inserted on the two tables; two decalogues being preserved to us, Exodus xx. and Exodus xxxiv., which are quite different from each other. It results from this that there was no real or certain knowledge as to what stood on the tables, and further that if there were such stones in the ark--and probably there were--there was nothing written on them. This is not the place to decide which of the two versions is prior to the other; the negative result we have obtained is sufficient for our present purpose. X.I.2. Ancient Israel was certainly not without God-given bases for the ordering of human life; only they were not fixed in writing. Usage and tradition were looked on to a large extent as the institution of the Deity. Thus, for example, the ways and rules of agriculture. Jehovah had instructed the husbandman and taught him the right way. He it was whose authority gave to the unwritten laws of custom their binding power. "It is never so done in Israel," "that is folly in Israel," and similar expressions of insulted public conscience are of frequent occurrence, and show the power of custom: the fear of God acts as a motive for respecting it. "Surely there is no fear of God in this place, and they will slay me for my wife's sake," so Abraham says to himself in Gerar. "How shall I do such great wrong and sin against God?" says Joseph to the woman in Egypt. "The people of Sodom were wicked and sinned grievously against Jehovah," we read in Genesis xiii. 13. Similarly Deuteronomy xxv. 18: "The Amalekites attacked Israel on the march, and killed the stragglers, all that were feeble and fell behind, and feared not God." We see that the requirements of the Deity are known and of force, not to the Israelites only, but to all the world; and accordingly they are not to be identified with any positive commands. The patriarchs observed them long before Moses. "I know Abraham," Jehovah says, xviii. 19, "that he will command his children to keep the way of Jehovah, to do justice and judgment." Much greater importance is attached to the special Torah of Jehovah, which not only sets up laws of action of universal validity, but shows man the way in special cases of difficulty, where he is at a loss. This Torah is one of the special gifts with which Israel is endowed (Deuteronomy xxxiii. 4); and it is intrusted to the priests, whose influence, during the period of the Hebrew kings, of which we are now speaking, rested much more on this possession than on the privilege of sacrifice. The verb from which Torah is derived signifies in its earliest usage to give direction, decision. The participle signifies _giver of oracles_ in the two, examples _gibeath moreh_ and _allon moreh_. The latter expression is explained by another which alternates with it, "oak of the soothsayers." Now we know that the priests in the days of Saul and David gave divine oracles by the ephod and the lots connected with it, which answered one way or the other to a question put in an alternative form. Their Torah grew no doubt out of this practice. /1/ The Urim and Thummim are regarded, ************************************* 1. 1Sam xiv. xxiii. xxx. In connection with 1Samuel xxxi. 3 I have conjectured that the verb of which Torah is the abstract means originally to throw the lot-arrows. The Thummim have been compared in the most felicitous way by Freytag, and by Lagarde independently of him (Proph. Chald. p. xlvii.) with the Arabian Tamaim, which not only signifies children's amulets but any means of "averruncatio". Urim is probably connected with )RR "to curse" (cf. Iliad i. 11 and Numbers xxiii. 23): the two words of the formula seem mutually to supplement each other. ************************************ according to Deuteronomy xxxiii. 8, as the true and universal insignia of the priesthood; the ephod is last mentioned in the historical books in 1Kings ii. 26, /1/ ************************************** 1 Bleek, Einleiung in das A. T., 1878, p. 642. ************************************** but appears to have remained in use down to the time of Isaiah (Hosea iii. 4; Isaiah xxx. 22). The Torah freed itself in the process of time, following the general mental movement, from such heathenish media and vehicles (Hab. ii. 19). But it continued to be an oral decision and direction. As a whole it is only a power and activity of God, or of the priests. Of this subject there can be no abstract; the TEACHING; is only thought of as the action of the TEACHER. There is no torah as a ready-made product, as a system existing independently of its originator and accessible to every one: it becomes actual only in the various utterances, which naturally form by degrees the basis of a fixed tradition. "They preserve Thy word, and keep Thy law; they teach Jacob Thy judgments and Israel Thy statutes " (Deuteronomy xxxiii. 9, 10). The Torah of the priests appears to have had primarily a legal character. In cases which there was no regular authority to decide, or which were too difficult for human decision, the latter was brought in the last instance before God, i.e., before the sanctuary or the priests (Exodus xviii. 25 seq.). The priests thus formed a kind of supreme court, which, however, rested on a voluntary recognition of its moral authority, and could not support its decisions by force. "If a man sin against another, God shall judge him," 1Samuel ii. 25 says, very indefinitely. Certain legal transactions of special solemnity are executed before God (Exodus xxi. 6). Now in proportion as the executive gained strength under the monarchy, _jus_--civil justice--necessarily grew up into a separate existence from the older sacred _fas_. The knowledge of God, which Hosea (chapter iv.) regards as the contents of the torah, has as yet a closer connection with jurisprudence than with theology; but as its practical issue is that God requires of man righteousness, and faithfulness, and good-will, it is fundamentally and essentially morality, though morality at that time addressed its demands less to the conscience than to society. A ritual tradition naturally developed itself even before the exile (2Kings xvii. 27, 28). But only those rites were included in the Torah which the priests had to teach others, not those which they discharged themselves; even in Leviticus this distinction may be traced; the instructions characterised as toroth being chiefly those as to animals which might or might not be eaten, as to clean and unclean states, as to leprosy and its marks (cf. Deuteronomy xxiv. 8). So it was in Israel, to which the testimony applies which we have cited: and so it was in Judah also. There was a common proverb in the days of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, "The Torah shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the ancient, nor the word from the prophet:" but no doubt the saying was not new in their time, and at any rate it will apply to the earlier time as well. Not because they sacrifice but because they teach, do the priests here appear as pillars of the religious order of things; and their Torah is a living power, equal to the occasion and never-failing. Micah reproaches them with judging for reward (iii. 11), and this shows their wisdom to have been based on a tradition accessible to them alone; this is also shown by some expressions of Deuteronomy (xvii. 10 seq., xxiv. 8). We have the counterpart to the proverb above cited (Jeremiah xviii. 18; Ezekiel vii. 26) in the complaint in Lamentations (ii. 9): "Jerusalem is destroyed; her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the Torah is no more; the prophets obtain no vision from Jehovah;" after the ruin of the sanctuary and the priests there is no longer any Torah; and if that be so, the axe is laid to the root of the life of the people. In the post-exile prophets the torah, which even in Deuteronomy (xvii. 11) was mainly legal in its nature, acquires a strong savour of ritual which one did not notice before; yet even here it is still an oral teaching of the priests (Haggai ii. 11). The priests derived their Torah from Moses: they claimed only to preserve and guard what Moses had left (Deuteronomy xxxiii 4, 9 seq.). He counted as their ancestor (xxxiii. 8; Judges xviii. 30); his father in-law is the PRIEST of Midian at Mount Sinai, as Jehovah also is derived in a certain sense from the older deity of Sinai. But at the same time Moses was reputed to be the incomparable originator and practicer of PROPHECY (Numbers xii. 6 seq.; Deuteronomy xxxiv. 10; Hos. xii. 14), as his brother Aaron also is not only a Levite (Exodus iv. 14), but also a prophet (iv. 15; Numbers xii. 2). There is thus a close relation between priests and prophets, i.e., seers; as with other peoples (1Samuel vi.,; 1Kings xviii. 19, compare with 2Kings x. 19), so also with the Hebrews. In the earliest time it was not knowing the technique of worship, which was still very simple and undeveloped, but being a man of God, standing on an intimate footing with God, that made a man a priest, that is one who keeps up the communication with heaven for others; and the seer is better qualified than others for the office (1Kings xviii. 30 seq.). There is no fixed distinction in early times between the two offices; Samuel is in 1Samuel i.-iii. an aspirant to the priesthood; in ix. x. he is regarded as a seer. In later times also, when priests and prophets drew off and separated from each other, they yet remained connected, both in the kingdom of Israel (Host iv. 5) and in Judah. In the latter this was very markedly the case (2Kings xxiii. 2; Jeremiah xxvi. 7 seq., v. 31; Deuteronomy xviii. 1-8, 9-22; Zechariah vii. 3). What connected them with each other was the revelation of Jehovah which went on and was kept alive in both of them. It is Jehovah from whom the torah of the priest and the word of the prophet proceeds: He is the true DIRECTOR, as Isaiah calls Him in the passage xxx. 20 seq., where, speaking of the Messianic time, he says to the people, "Then thy director (MWRYK) is no more concealed, but thine eyes see thy director, and thine ears hear the words of One calling behind thee; this is the way, walk ye in it; when ye are turning to the right hand or to the left." TORAH and WORD are cognate notions, and capable of being interchanged (Deuteronomy xxxiii. 9; Isaiah i. 10, ii. 3, v. 24, viii. 16, 20). This explains how both priests and prophets claimed Moses for their order: he was not regarded as the founder of the cultus. The difference, in the period when it had fully developed itself, may be said to be this: the Torah of the priests was like a spring which runs always, that of the prophets like a spring which is intermittent, but when it does break forth, flows with all the greater force. The priests take precedence of the prophets when both are named together; they obviously consolidated themselves earlier and more strongly. The order, and the tradition which propagates itself within the order, are essential to them: they observe and keep the torah (Deuteronomy xxxiii. 9). For this reason, that they take their stand so entirely on the tradition, and depend on it, their claim to have Moses for their father, the beginner and founder of their tradition, is in itself the better founded of the two. /l/ *********************************** 1 It is also more firmly rooted in history; for if Moses did anything at all, he certainly founded the sanctuary at Kadesh and the torah there, which the priests of the ark carried on after him, thus continuing the thread of the history of Israel, which was taken up again in power by the monarchy. The prophets only appeared among the Hebrews from the time of Samuel onwards, but the seers were older than Moses, and can scarcely have had such a close connection with his tradition as the priests at the sanctuary of the ark of Jehovah. ********************************** In the ordinary parlance of the Hebrews torah always meant first, and chiefly the Priestly Torah. The prophets have notoriously no father (1Samuel x. 12), their importance rests on the individuals; it is characteristic that only names and sketches of their lives have reached us. They do indeed, following the tendency of the times, draw together in corporations; but in doing so they really renounce their own distinctive characteristics: the representative men are always single, resting on nothing outside themselves. We have thus on the one side the tradition of a class, which suffices for the occasions of ordinary life, and on the other the inspiration of awakened individuals, stirred up by occasions which are more than ordinary. After the spirit of the oldest men of God, Moses at the head of them, had been in a fashion laid to sleep in institutions, it sought and found in the prophets a new opening; the old fire burst out like a volcano through the strata which once, too, rose fluid from the deep, but now were fixed and dead. The element in which the prophets live is the storm of the world's history, which sweeps away human institutions; in which the rubbish of past generations with the houses built on it begins to shake, and that foundation alone remains firm, which needs no support but itself. When the earth trembles and seems to be passing away, then they triumph because Jehovah alone is exalted. They do not preach on set texts; they speak out of the spirit which judges all things and itself is judged of no man. Where do they ever lean on any other authority than the truth of what they say; where do they rest on any other foundation than their own certainty? It belongs to the notion of prophecy of true revelation, that Jehovah, overlooking all the media of ordinances and institutions, communicates Himself to the INDIVIDUAL, the called one, in whom that mysterious and irreducible rapport in which the deity stands with man clothes itself with energy. Apart from the prophet, _in abstracto_, there is no revelation; it lives in his divine-human ego. This gives rise to a synthesis of apparent contradictions: the subjective in the highest sense, which is exalted above all ordinances, is the truly objective, the divine. This it proves itself to be by the consent of the conscience of all, on which the prophets count, just as Jesus does in the Gospel of John, in spite of all their polemic against the traditional religion. They are not saying anything new: they are only proclaiming old truth. While acting in the most creative way they feel entirely passive: the _homo tantum et audacia_ which may with perfect justice be applied to such men as Elijah, Amos, and Isaiah, is with them equivalent to _deus tantum et servitus_. But their creed is not to be found in any book. It is barbarism, in dealing with such a phenomenon, to distort its physiognomy by introducing the law. X.I.3. It is a vain imagination to suppose that the prophets expounded and applied the law. Malachi (circa 450 B.C.) says, it is true, iv. 4, "Remember ye the torah of Moses my servant;" but where shall we look for any second expression of this nature? Much more correctly than modern scholars did these men judge, who at the close of the preexilic history looked back on the forces which had moulded it, both the divine and those opposed to God. In their eyes the prophets are not the expounders of Moses, but his continuators and equals; the word of God in their mouth is not less weighty than in the mouth of Moses; they, as well as he, are organs of the spirit of Jehovah by which He is present in Israel. The immediate revelation to the people, we read in Deuteronomy xviii., ceased with the ten commandments: from that point onwards Jehovah uses the prophets as His mouth: "A prophet like unto thee," He says to Moses, "will I raise up to them from among their brethren, and will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him; and whosoever shall not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him." We find it the same in Jeremiah; the voice of the prophets, always sounding when there is need for it, occupies the place which, according to the prevailing view, should have been filled by the law: this living command of Jehovah is all he knows of, and not any testament given once for all. "This only I commanded your fathers when I brought them up out of Egypt: Obey my voice, and walk ye in all the ways that I will command you. Since the day that your fathers came forth out of Egypt, I have sent unto you all my servants the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them; but ye would not hear." And even after the exile we meet in Zechariah (520 B.C.) the following view of the significance of the prophets: "Thus spake Jehovah of hosts [to the fathers before the exile], Speak true judgment, and show mercy and compassions every man to his brother, and oppress not the widow nor the fatherless, the stranger nor the poor: and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in his heart. But they refused to hearken, and shrugged the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear. Yea, they made their hearts as a flint, lest they should hear the Torah and the words which Jehovah Sebaoth hath sent by His Spirit through the old prophets: therefore came a great wrath from Jehovah Sebaoth. And as He cried and they would not hear, so now shall they cry and I will not hear, and I will blow them away among the peoples.... Thus saith Jehovah Sebaoth [after the exile to the present generation], As I thought to punish you without pity because your fathers provoked me to anger, so again have I thought in these days to do well to the house of Judah: fear ye not. These are the things that ye shall do: Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates; and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbour, and love no false oath, for all these are things which I hate, saith Jehovah" (Zechariah vii. 9-11, viii. 14-16). The contents of the Torah, on obedience to which the theocracy is here based, are very suggestive, as also its derivation from the "old" prophets. Even Ezra can say (ix. 10, 11): "We have forsaken Thy commandments which Thou hast commanded by the servants the prophets, saying, The land unto which ye go to possess it is an unclean land with the filthiness of the people of the land, which have filled it from one end to another with their uncleanness." He is thinking of Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, and Leviticus xvii.-xxvi. Of those who at the end reflected on the meaning of the development which had run its course, the writer of Isaiah xl.-lxvi. occupies the first place. The Torah, which he also calls _mishpat_, right (i.e., truth), appears to him to be the divine and imperishable element in Israel. With him, however, it is inseparable from its mouthpiece, the servant of Jehovah, xlii. 1-4, xlix. 1-6, l. 4-9, lii. 13-liii. 12. The name would denote the prophet, but here it stands for the people, a prophet on a large scale. Israel's calling is not that of the world-monarchies, to make sensation and noise in the streets (xiii. 1-4), but the greater one of promulgating the Torah and getting it received. This is to be done both in Israel and among the heathen. What makes Israel a prophet is not his own inner qualities, but his relation to Jehovah, his calling as the depository of divine truth: hence it involves no contradiction that the servant should begin his work in Israel itself. /1/ ************************************* 1. This is as if one were to say that there is much to be done before we Evangelicals are truly evangelical. Yet the distinction as worked out in Isaiah xl. seq. is certainly very remarkable, and speaks for a surprising degree of profound meditation. ************************************ Till now he has spent his strength only in the bosom of his own people, which is always inclined to fall away from Jehovah and from itself: heedless of reproach and suffering he has laboured unweariedly in carrying out the behests of his Master and has declared His word. All in vain. He has not been able to avert the victory of heathenism in Israel, now followed by its victory over Israel. Now in the exile Jehovah has severed His relation with His people; the individual Hebrews survive, but the servant, the people of Jehovah, is dead. Then is the Torah to die with him, and truth itself to succumb to falsehood, to heathenism? That cannot be; truth must prevail, must come to the light. As to the Apostle Paul the Spirit is the earnest of the resurrection of those who are born again, so to our author the Torah is the pledge of the resurrection of Israel, the justification of the servant of Jehovah. The final triumph of the cause, which is God's, will surpass all expectations. Not only in Israel itself will the Torah, will the servant of Jehovah prevail and bring about a regeneration of the people: the truth will in the future shine forth from Israel into the whole world, and obtain the victory among all the Gentiles (xlix. 6). Then it will appear that the work of the servant, resultless as it seemed to be up to the exile, has yet not been in vain. It is surely unnecessary for me to demonstrate how uncommonly vivid, I might say how uncommonly historical, the notion of the Torah is as here set forth, and how entirely incompatible that notion is with "the Torah of Moses." It might most fitly be compared with the Logos of the prologue of John, if the latter is understood in accordance with John x. 35, an utterance certainly authentic, and not according to Philo. As Jesus is the revelation of God made man, so the servant of Jehovah is the revelation of God made a people. The similarity of their nature and their significance involves the similarity of their work and of their sufferings, so that the Messianic interpretation of Isaiah lii. 13-liii. 12 is in fact one which could not fail to suggest itself. /1/ ****************************************** 1. The personification is carried further in this passage than anywhere else, and it is possible that the colours of the sketch are borrowed from some actual instance of a prophet-martyr: yet the Ebed Jahve cannot have a different meaning here from that which it has everywhere else. It is to be noted that the sufferings and death of the servant are in the past, and his glorification in the future, a long pause lying between them in the present. A resurrection of the individual could not be in the mind of the writer of Isaiah xl seq., nor do the details of the description, lii. 12 seq., at all agree with such an idea. Moreover, it is clear that liv. 1-lvi. 8 is a kind of sermon on the text lii. 13-liii. 12; and there the prophecy of the glorification of the servant has reference to Zion. See Vatke, p. 528 seq. ******************************************* X.II. X.II.1. In the 18th year of King Josiah (621 B.C) Deuteronomy was found and published. In the account of the discovery, 2Kings xxii. xxiii., it is always called simply _the book of the Torah_; it was accordingly the first, and in its time the only book of the kind. It is certainly the case that the prophets had written down some of their speeches before this, and the priests also may before this time have written down many of their precepts: it appears in fact, as Vatke surmises, that we have a monument of their spirit, e.g., in the Sinaitic Book of the Covenant. Deuteronomy presupposes earlier attempts of this kind, and borrows its materials largely from them; but on the other hand it is distinguished from them not only by its greater compass but also by its much higher claims. It is written with the distinct intention not to remain a private memorandum, but to obtain public authority as a book. The idea of making a definite formulated written Torah the law of the land, is the important point /1/ ************************************** 1. Duhm, ap. Cil. p. 201. ************************************** it was a first attempt and succeeded at the outset beyond expectation. A reaction set in afterwards, it is true; but the Babylonian exile completed the triumph of the law. Extraordinary excitement was at that time followed by the deepest depression (Amos viii. 11 seq.). At such a time those who did not despair of the future clung anxiously to the religious acquisitions of the past. These had been put in a book just in time in Deuteronomy, with a view to practical use in the civil and religious life of the people . The book of the Torah did not perish in the general ruin, but remained in existence, and was the compass of those who were shaping their course for a new Israel. How thoroughly determined they were to use it as their rule we see from the revision of the Hexateuch and of the historical books which was taken in hand during the exile. With the appearance of the law came to an end the old freedom, not only in the sphere of worship, now restricted to Jerusalem, but in the sphere of the religious spirit as well. There was now in existence an authority as objective as could be; and this was the death of prophecy. For it was a necessary condition of prophecy that the tares should be at liberty to grow up beside the wheat. The signs given in Deuteronomy to distinguish the true from the false prophet, are no doubt vague and unpractical: still they show the tendency towards control and the introduction of uniformity; that is the great step which is new. /1/ **************************************** 1. The difference between Deuteronomy xviii. 22 and 1Kings xxii. 19-23 may be thought to throw light on the two positions. In the former passage we read that if a prophet says something in the name of Jehovah which does not come to pass, it is a word which Jehovah has not spoken. Here, on the contrary, Micaiah ben Imlah, when the prophets of Jehovah promise the king of Israel a happy issue of the campaign against the Syrians, regards the prediction as contrary to the truth, but as none the less on that account inspired by the spirit of prophecy; Jehovah, he said, had made his spirit a Iying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. It may be that this difference reflects to us the interval between two different ages: but on the whole Micaiah's view appears to be rather a piece of ingenuity which might have been resorted to in later times as well. In the seventh century the command, "every firstborn is mine," was held to apply to the human firstborn as well, the sacrifice of which Jehovah was thought to require: this appears from Jeremiah's protest, "I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind," vii. 31, xix. 5. With reference to this Ezekiel says that because the Israelites despised the wholesome commandments of Jehovah, He gave them laws which were not good and statutes by which they could not live. That is a similar ingenious escape from a difficulty, without deeper meaning. See the converse, Koran, Sura ii. 174. ********************************************* It certainly was not the intention of the legislator to encroach upon the spoken Torah or the free word. But the consequence, favoured by outward circumstances, was not to be avoided: the feeling that the prophets had come to an end did not arise in the Maccabean wars only. In the exile we hear the complaint that the instruction of the priests and the word of the prophets are silent (Lamentations ii. 9); it is asked, where he is who in former times put his spirit in Israel (Isa lxiii. 11); in Nehemiah's time a doubtful question is left unsettled, at least theoretically, till the priest with Urim and Thummim, i.e., with a trustworthy prophecy, shall appear (Nehemiah vii. 69). We may call Jeremiah the last of the prophets: /2/ ********************************* 2. In his early years Jeremiah had a share in the introduction of the law: but in later times he shows himself little edified by the effects it produced: the Iying pen of the scribes, he says, has written for a lie. People despised the prophetic word because they had the Torah in black and white (viii. 7-9). ********************************** those who came after him were prophets only in name. Ezekiel had swallowed a book (iii. 1-3), and gave it out again. He also, like Zechariah, calls the pre-exilic prophets the old prophets, conscious that he himself belongs to the epigoni: he meditates on their words like Daniel and comments on them in his own prophecy (xxxviii. 17, xxxix. 8). The writer of Isaiah xl. seq. might with much more reason be called a prophet, but he does not claim to be one; his anonymity, which is evidently intentional, leaves no doubt as to this. He is, in fact, more of a theologian: he is principally occupied in reflecting on the results of the foregoing development, of which prophecy had been the leaven; these are fixed possessions now secured; he is gathering in the harvest. As for the prophets after the exile, we have already seen how Zechariah speaks of the old prophets as a series which is closed, in which he and those like him are not to be reckoned. In the writing of an anonymous contemporary which is appended to his book we find the following notable expression: "In that (hoped-for) day, saith Jehovah, I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, that they be no more remembered, and also I will cause to cease the prophets and the unclean spirit; and if a man will yet prophesy, his parents shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live, for thou speakest lies in the name of Jehovah, and his parents shall thrust him through when he prophesieth" (xiii. 2-3). X.II.2. Deuteronomy was the programme of a reform, not of a restoration. It took for granted the existence of the cultus, and only corrected it in certain general respects. But the temple was now destroyed and the worship interrupted, and the practice of past times had to be written down if it was not to be lost. Thus it came about that in the exile the conduct of worship became the subject of the Torah, and in this process reformation was naturally aimed at as well as restoration. We have seen <II.II.1.>) that Ezekiel was the first to take this step which the circumstances of the time indicated. In the last part of his work he made the first attempt to record the ritual which had been customary in the temple of Jerusalem. Other priests attached themselves to him (Leviticus xvii.-xxvi.), and thus there grew up in the exile from among the members of this profession a kind of school of people who reduced to writing and to a system what they had formerly practiced in the way of their calling. After the temple was restored this theoretical zeal still continued to work, and the ritual when renewed was still further developed by the action and reaction on each other of theory and practice: the priests who had stayed in Babylon took as great a part, from a distance, in the sacred services, as their brothers at Jerusalem who had actually to conduct them. The latter indeed lived in adverse circumstances and do not appear to have conformed with great strictness or accuracy to the observances which had been agreed upon. The last result of this labour of many years is the Priestly Code. It has indeed been said that we cannot ascribe the creation of such a work to an age which was bent on nothing but repristination. Granted that this is a correct description of it, such an age is peculiarly fitted for an artificial systematising of given materials, and this is what the originality of the Priestly Code in substance amounts to. /1/ ******************************************** 1. Dillmann arrives at the conclusion that the assumption is the most natural one in the world, and still capable of proof from ACD (!) that the priesthood of the central sanctuary wrote down their toroth even in early times; and that it is absurd to suppose that the priestly and ceremonial laws were first written down, or even made, in the exile and in Babylon, where there was no worship. We will let it be absurd, if it is true. It is not progress, though it is a fact, that the kings were succeeded by the high-priests, and the prophets by the Rabbis. Yet it is a thing which is likely to occur, that a body of traditional practice should only be written down when it is threatening to die out, and that a book should be, as it were, the ghost of a life which is closed. ******************************************** The Priestly Code, worked into the Pentateuch as the standard legislative element in it, became the definite "Mosaic law." As such it was published and introduced in the year 444 B.C., a century after the exile . In the interval, the duration of which is frequently under-estimated, Deuteronomy alone had been known and recognised as the written Torah, though as a fact the essays of Ezekiel and his successors may have had no inconsiderable influence in leading circles. The man who made the Pentateuch the constitution of Judaism was the Babylonian priest and scribe, Ezra. He had come from Babylon to Jerusalem as early as the year 458 B.C., the seventh of Artaxerxes Longimanus, at the head of a considerable company of zealous Jews, provided it is said with a mandate from the Persian king, empowering him to reform according to the law the congregation of the temple, which had not yet been able to consolidate itself inwardly nor to shut itself off sufficiently from those without. "Thou art sent of the king and of his seven counsellors to hold an inquiry concerning Judah and Jerusalem _according to the law of thy God which is in thine hand_....And thou Ezra, according to _the wisdom of thy God which is in thine hand_, set magistrates and judges which may judge all the people that are beyond the river, all such as acknowledge the laws of thy God, and teach ye them that know them not. And whosoever will not do the law of thy God and the law of the king, let him be prosecuted." So we read in the commission of the Persian king to Ezra, vii. 12-26; which, even should it be spurious, must yet reflect the views of his contemporaries. The expression taken from Ezra's own memoirs, vii. 27, leaves no doubt that he was assisted by Artaxerxes in the objects he had in view. /1/ *************************************** 1. With regard to his relation to the law, we have to consider the following points: he was a scribe (SWPR = literatus), at home in the Torah of Moses, vii. 6. He had directed his mind to study the Torah of Jehovah, and to do and to teach in Israel judgment and statute, vii. 10. "The priest Ezra, the master of the law of the God of heaven," vii. 21. The most important expression, however, is that which states that the law (the wisdom) of his God was in his hand: thus it was his private property, though it claimed authority for all Israel. With this agree the statements as to the object of the learned priest's mission. ************************************** But Ezra did not, as we should expect, at once introduce the law on his arrival in Judah. In concert with the heads of the people, and proceeding on the existing Torah, that, namely, of Deuteronony, he ordained and relentlessly carried out a strict separation of the returned exiles from the heathen and half-heathen inhabitants of the land. This was done a few months after his arrival in Jerusalem. But a long time, at least fourteen years, elapsed before he produced the law which he had brought with him. Why he delayed so long we can at the best only surmise, as no accounts have reached us of what he did in the interval; there is a great gap in the narrative of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah between the 7th and the 20th year of Artaxerxes. Perhaps the outward circumstances of the young community, which, probably in consequence of the repellent attitude taken up to the surrounding peoples, were not of the happiest, made it unadvisable at once to introduce a legislative innovation; perhaps, too, Ezra desired to wait to see the correcting influence of the practice of Jerusalem on the product of Babylonian scholarship, and moreover to train up assistants for the work. The principal reason, however, appears to have been, that in spite of the good-will of the king he did not enjoy the energetic support of the Persian authorities on the spot, and could not without it get the authority of the new law recognised. But in the year 445 it came about that a Jew and a sympathiser of Ezra, Nehemiah ben Hakkelejah, cup-bearer and favourite of Artaxerxes, appeared in Judea as Persian governor. With straightforward earnestness he first addressed himself to the task of liberating the Jewish community from outward pressure and lifting them up from their depressed condition; and, this being accomplished, the time had come to go forward with the introduction of the Pentateuch. Ezra and Nehemiah were manifestly in concert as to this. On the 1st day of the 7th month--we do not know the year, but it cannot have been earlier than 444 B.C.--the whole people came together as one man before the water-gate, and Ezra was called on to produce the book of the law of Moses, which Jehovah had commanded Israel. The scribe mounted a wooden pulpit; seven priests stood beside him on the right hand, and seven on the left. When he opened the book all present stood up, both men and women; with loud Amen they joined in the opening blessing, lifted up their heads, and cast themselves on the ground. Then he read the book, from early morning till mid-day, in small sections, which were repeated and expounded by a number of Levites dispersed throughout the crowd. The effect was that a general weeping arose, the people being aware that they had not till then followed the commandments of God. Nehemiah and Ezra and the Levites had to allay the excitement, and said: "This day is holy unto Jehovah your God; mourn not nor weep. Go your way, eat the fat and drink the sweet, and give unto them that have brought nothing with them." The assembled people then dispersed and set on foot a "great mirth," because they had understood the words which had been communicated to them. The reading was continued the next day, but before the heads of families only, and a very appropriate section was read, viz., the ordinances as to festivals, and particularly that about the feast of tabernacles, which was to be kept under branches of trees on the 15th day of the 7th month, the month then just beginning. The matter was taken up with the greatest zeal, and the festival, which had not been kept RITE <sic!> since the days of Joshua ben Nun, was now instituted in accordance with the precepts of Leviticus xxiii. and celebrated with general enthusiasm from the 15th to the 22nd of the month. /1/ *************************************** 1. For eight days, according to Leviticus xxiii. 39: as against Deuteronomy xvi. 13-15. *************************************** On the 24th, however, a great day of humiliation was held, with sackcloth and ashes. On this occasion also the proceedings began with reading the law, and then followed a confession of sins spoken by the Levites in the name of the people, and concluding with a prayer for mercy and compassion. This was preparatory to the principal and concluding act, in which the secular and spiritual officials and elders, 85 in number, bound themselves in writing to the Book of the Law, published by Ezra, and all the rest undertook an obligation, with oath and curse, to walk in the Torah of God, given by His servant Moses, and to keep all the commandments of Jehovah and His statutes and laws. Special attention was directed to such provisions of the Pentateuch as were of immediate importance for the people in the circumstances of the day--the greater part of the whole work is about the ritual of the priests--and those were in particular insisted on which refer to the contributions of the laity to the priesthood, on which the very existence of the hierocracy depended. /1/ *************************************** 1. Nehemiah viii. 1-x. 40. The credibility of the narrative appears on the face of it. The writer of Chronicles did not write it himself, but took it from his main source, from which also he drew the fragments he gives us of the memoirs of Ezra and Nehemiah. This we see from the fact that while copying Nehemiah vii. in Ezra ii. he unconsciously goes on with the beginning of Nehemiah viii. (= Ezra iii. 1). That shows that he found Nehemiah vii. and viii. in their present connection, and did not write viii. seq. himself, as we might suppose. ************************************** Lagarde expresses great surprise--and the surprise is reasonable-- that so little importance is attributed to this narrative by Old Testament critics; only Kuenen had rightly appreciated its significance. /2/ ****************************************** 2 Goettinger Gel. Anzeigen, 1870, p. 1557 seq. Kuenen, Religion of Israel, vol. ii. chapter viii. ****************************************** It is obvious that Nehemiah viii.-x. is a close parallel to 2Kings xxii. xxiii., especially to xxiii. 1-3. There we read that Josiah caused all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem to come together, and went up with the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, with the priests and the prophets and all the people, high and low, to the house of Jehovah; where he read to the assemblage all the words of the Book of the Law, and bound himself with all the people before Jehovah to keep all the words of the book. Just as it is in evidence that Deuteronomy became known in the year 621, and that it was unknown up to that date, so it is in evidence that the remaining Torah of the Pentateuch--for there is no doubt that the law of Ezra was the whole Pentateuch--became known in the year 444 and was unknown till then. This shows in the first place, and puts it beyond question, that Deuteronomy is the first, and the priestly Torah the second, stage of the legislation. But in the second place, as we are accustomed to infer the date of the composition of Deuteronomy from its publication and introduction by Josiah, so we must infer the date of the composition of the Priestly Code from its publication and introduction by Ezra and Nehemiah. It would require very strong internal evidence to destroy the probability, thus based on a most positive statement of facts, that the codification of the ritual only took place in the post-exile period. We have already seen of what nature the internal evidence is which is brought forward with this view. /1/ ******************************************** 1. It is not, however, necessary, and it can scarcely be correct, to make Ezra more than the editor, the real and principal editor, of the Hexateuch: and in particular he is not likely to have been the author of Q. Nor on the other hand is it meant to deny that many new features may have been added and alterations made after Ezra. A body of customs is a subject which can scarcely be treated quite exhaustively. There are no directions about the _nervus ischiadicus_ <**sciatic nerve??**>, about the priests having their feet bare, about shutting up before Jehovah (1Samuel xxi cf. Jeremiah xxxvi. 5), or about the stoning of adulterers. ******************************************* X.II.3. Ezra and Nehemiah, and the eighty-five men of the great assembly (Nehemiah viii. seq.), who are named as signatories of the covenant, are regarded by later tradition as the founders of the canon. And not without reason: only King Josiah has a still stronger claim to this place of honour. The introduction of the law, first Deuteronomy, and then the whole Pentateuch, was in fact the decisive step, by which the written took the place of the spoken word, and the people of the word became a "people of the book." To THE BOOK were added in course of time THE BOOKS; the former was formally and solemnly introduced in two successive acts, the latter acquired imperceptibly a similar public authority for the Jewish church. The notion of the canon proceeds entirely from that of the written Torah; the prophets and the hagiographa are also called Torah by the Jews, though not Torah of Moses. The origin of the canon thus lies, thanks to the two narratives 2Kings xxii. xxiii., Nehemiah viii.-x. in the full light of history; but the traditional science of Biblical introduction has no clear or satisfactory account to give of it. Josiah, the ordinary notion is, introduced the law, but not the canon; Ezra, on the other hand, the canon and not the law. An analogy drawn from the secondary part of the canon, the prophets and hagiographa, is applied without consideration to the primary part, the Torah of Moses. The historical and prophetical books were, in part at least, a long time in existence before they became canonical, and the same, it is thought, might be the case with the law. But the case of the law is essentially different. The law claims to have public authority, to be a book of the community; the difference between law and canon, does not exist. Hence it is easy to understand that the Torah, though as a literary product later than the historical and prophetical books, is yet as law older than these writings, which have originally and in their nature no legal character, but only acquired such a character in a sort of metaphorical way, through their association with the law itself. When it is recognised that THE CANON is what distinguishes Judaism from ancient Israel, it is recognised at the same time that what distinguishes Judaism from ancient Israel is THE WRITTEN TORAH. The water which in old times rose from a spring, the Epigoni stored up in cisterns. CHAPTER XI. THE THEOCRACY AS IDEA AND AS INSTITUTION. Writers of the present day play with the expressions "theocracy," and "theocratic" without making it clear to themselves what these words mean and how far they are entitled to use them. But we know that the word theokratia was only coined by Josephus; /1/ *************************************** 1. )OUKOUN )APEIROI MEN (AI KATA MEROS TWN )ETHWN KAI TWN NOMWN PARA TOIS )APASIN )ANTHRWPOS DIAFORAI. )OI MEN GAR MONARXIAIS, (OI DE TAIS )OLIGWN DUNASTEIAIS, )ALLOI DE TOIS PLHTHESIN )EPETREPYAN THN 'ECOUSIAN TWN POLITEUMATWN. (O D' (HMETEROS NOMOQETHS )EIS MEN TOUTWN OUD' (OTIOUN )APEIDEN, (WS D' )AN TIS )EIPOI BIASAMENOS TON LOGON QEOKRATIAN )APEDEICE TO POLITEUMA, QEW| THN )ARXHN KAI TO KRATOS )ANAQEIS (contra Apion ii. 17). (" There are innumerable differences in the particular customs and laws that are among mankind; some have intrusted the power of their states to monarchies, some to oligarchies, and some to democracies: but our legislator had no regard to any of these forms, _but he ordered our governmernt to be what I may call by a strained expression a theocracy_, attributing the power and the authority to God." Compare also, on this whole chapter, Die Pharisaer und die Sadducaer, Greifswald, 1874. ***************************************** and when this writer speaks of the Mosaic constitution, he has before his eyes, it is well known, the sacred community of his own day as it existed down to the year 70 A.D. In ancient Israel the theocracy never existed in fact as a form of constitution. The rule of Jehovah is here an ideal representation; only after the exile was it attempted to realise it in the shape of a Rule of the Holy with outward means. It is perhaps the principal merit of Vatke's Biblical Theology to have traced through the centuries the rise of the theocracy and the metamorphosis of the idea to an institution. XI.I. XI.I.1. The upholders of the prevailing view do not assert that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, but they maintain all the more firmly that he organised the congregation of the tabernacle in the wilderness after the fashion described in the Priestly Code. They seem to think that Moses had no importance further than this; as if it were an act of no moment to cast into the field of time a seed which the action and reaction thence arising bring an immeasurable time after to maturity (Mark iv. 26 seq.). In fact Moses is the originator of the Mosaic constitution in about the same way as Peter is the founder of the Roman hierarchy. Of the sacred organisation supposed to have existed from the earliest times, there is no trace in the time of the judges and the kings. It is thought to have been a sort of pedagogic strait-waistcoat, to subdue the ungovernable obstinacy of the Hebrews and to guard them from evil influences from without. But even should it be conceded that a constitution could come into existence in ancient times which was so utterly out of relation to the peculiar life and temper of the people, the history of the ancient Israelites shows us nothing so distinctly as the uncommon freshness and naturalness of their impulses. The persons who appear always act from the constraining impulse of their nature, the men of God not less than the murderers and adulterers: they are such figures as could only grow up in the open air. Judaism, which realised the Mosaic constitution and carried it out logically, left no free scope for the individual; but in ancient Israel the divine right did not attach to the institution but was in the Creator Spirit, in individuals. Not only did they speak like the prophets, they also acted like the judges and kings, from their own free impulse, not in accordance with an outward norm, and yet, or just because of this, in the Spirit of Jehovah. The different view of different times is seen very characteristically in the views taken of Saul by the two versions above sifted and compared <VII.II.2 >. XI.I.2. It is a simple and yet a very important remark of Vatke, that the sacred constitution of the congregation, so circumstantially described to us in the Priestly Code, is after all very defective, and presupposes the existence of that which it was the chief task of the age of Moses to bring about, namely the state, in the absence of which the church cannot have any subsistence either. To maintain an elaborate and expensive worship, and an immense swarm of clergy, must have required considerable rates and taxes: and to raise these, as well as to uphold the authority of the sacred persons and institutions, and most of all to enforce the strict centralization and uniformity of the legitimate worship, all this among a people not yet very civilised, must have required an executive power which embraced and was able to control, the whole people. But where is this central authority in the period of the judges? Judicial competence resided at that time chiefly in the smallest circles, the families and houses. These were but little controlled, as it appears, by the superior power of the tribe, and the very notion of the state or of the kingdom did not as yet exist. Houses related to each other sometimes united for common undertakings, as no doubt also did neighbouring tribes; but this was not on the basis of any constitutional order, but from necessity, when it happened that a well-known man came forward to take the command and his summons to the levy was obeyed. These transient combinations under generals were the forerunners of a permanent union under a king: and even at the time of the Midianite war an attempt seems to have been made in this direction, which, however, was not quite successful. In the severe and protracted struggle with the Philistines the necessity for a solid union of the tribes was cryingly manifest, and the man came forward to meet the hour. Saul, a distinguished Benjamite of Gibeah, was overcome by anger at the scornful challenge which even the Ammonites ventured at such a time to cast in the teeth of his people: he called his fellow-countrymen to battle, not in virtue of any office he held, but on the strength of his own impulses; his enthusiasm proved contagious, none dared to say him nay. He began his career just like one of the earlier judges, but after he had led his people to victory they did not let him retire again. The person sought for, the king, was found. Out of such natural beginnings did the state at that time arise: it owed nothing to the pattern of the "Mosaic theocracy," but bears all the marks of a new creation. Saul and David first made out of the Hebrew tribes a real people in the political sense (Deuteronomy xxxiii. 5). David was in the eyes of later generations inseparable from the idea of Israel: he was the king par excellence: Saul was thrown into the shade, but both together are the founders of the kingdom, and have thus a much wider importance than any of their successors. It was they who drew the life of the people together at a centre, and gave it an aim; to them the nation is indebted for its historical self-consciousness. All the order of aftertimes is built up on the monarchy; it is the soil out of which all the other institutions of Israel grow up. In the time of the judges, we read, every man did that which was right in his own eyes, not because the Mosaic constitution was not in force, but because there was no king in those days. The consequences were very important in the sphere of religion as well: since the political advance of the people brought the historic and national character of Jehovah to the front again. During the time of the judges the Canaanite festival cultus had gradually been coming to be embodied in the worship of Jehovah, a process which was certainly necessary; but in this process there was for some time a danger that Jehovah would become a God of husbandry and of cattle, like Baal-Dionysus. The festivals long continued to be a source of heathenism, but now they were gradually divested of their character as nature-festivals, and forced at length to have reference to the nation and to its history, if they were not to disappear completely. The relation of Jehovah to people and kingdom remained firm as a rock: even to the worst idolaters He was the God of Israel; in war no one thought of looking for victory and success to any other God. This was the result of Israel's becoming a kingdom: the kingship of Jehovah, in that precise sense which we associate with it, is the religious expression of the fact of the foundation of the kingdom by Saul and David. The theocracy was the state of itself; the ancient Israelites regarded the civil state as a miracle, or, in their own words, a help of God. When the later Jews thought or spoke of the theocracy, they took the state for granted as already there, and so they could build the theocracy on the top of it as a specially spiritual feature: just as we moderns sometimes see the divine element in settled ordinances, such as marriage, not in their own nature, but in the consecration added to them by the church. XI.I.3. The kingdom of Saul and David did not long remain at its height. Decay set in even at the separation, and when once the Assyrians were heard at the door, it advanced with steps not to be arrested. But the memory of the period of glory and power was all the greener, and the hope arose of its return. From the contrast between the sorrowful present and the brilliant past there arose the picture of the state as it should be; when ruin was seen without and anarchy within, the prophets set against this the pattern of the theocracy. The theocracy as the prophets represent it to themselves is not a thing essentially different from the political community, as a spiritual differs from a secular power; rather, it rests on the same foundations and is in fact the ideal of the state. Isaiah gave this ideal its classical form in those pictures of the future which we are accustomed to call Messianic prophecies. These passages are not predictions of this or that occurrence, but announcements of the aims which, it is true, the prophet only expects the future to realise, but which are of force or ought to be of force in the present, and towards which the community, if true to its own nature, must strive. The first feature of these Messianic descriptions is the expulsion of the Assyrians; but most emphasis is laid on the restoration of the inner bases of the state, the rottenness of which has brought about and rendered inevitable the present crisis. The collapse of the government, the paralysis fallen on the law, the spoliation of the weak by the strong, these are the evils that call for redress. "How is the honourable city become a harlot; it was full of judgment, righteousness lodged in it--but now murderers! Thy princes are rascals and companions of thieves, every one loveth gifts and followeth after bribes; they judge not the fatherless, neither cloth the cause of the widow come unto them. Therefore saith the Lord: Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies! And I will turn my hand against thee, Zion, and as with Iye I will purge away thy dross, and I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning; afterwards thou shalt be called a righteous and honourable city. Zion shall be redeemed by judgment and her inhabitants by righteousness" (Isaiah i. 21-27). The state the prophet has before his eye is always the natural state as it exists, never a community distinguished by a peculiar holiness in its organisation. The kingdom of Jehovah is with him entirely identical with the kingdom of David; the tasks he sets before it are political in their nature, similar, we might say, to the demands one would address to the Turkish Empire in our own days. He is unconscious of any difference between human and divine law: law in itself, jurist's law in the proper juristic sense of the word, is divine, and has behind it the authority of the Holy One of Israel. In that day shall Jehovah of hosts be for a crown of glory and a diadem of beauty unto the residue of His people, and for a spirit of judgment to him that sitteth in judgment, and a spirit of strength to them that drive back the battle from the borders " (xxviii. 5, 6). Jehovah is a true and perfect King, hence justice is His principal attribute and His chief demand. And this justice is a purely forensic or social notion: the righteousness of the Sermon on the Mount can only come into consideration when civil justice and order have come to be a matter of course--which at that time they had not yet done. The representative of Jehovah is the human king. The earthly ruler is not in the way of the heavenly: even the glorious kingdom of the future cannot dispense with him. "Then a king shall reign in righteousness and princes shall rule in judgment; each of them shall be as an hiding-place from the wind and as a covert from the tempest; as rivers of waters in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land" (xxxii. 1, 2). As the reigning king is in general unsatisfactory, Isaiah hopes for a new one who will answer the pattern of David of old, the Messiah. "There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots: and the spirit of Jehovah shall rest upon Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and of warlike might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; and His breath shall be drawn in the fear of Jehovah. And He shall not judge after the sight of His eyes, nor decide by hearsay: but with righteousness shall He judge the poor, and give sentence with equity for the meek of the earth; but He shall smite the scorners with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked, so that righteousness shall be the girdle of His loins, and faithfulness the girdle of His reins. Then the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid: and the calf and the young lion together, and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed, their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox: and the sucking child shall stroke the head of the adder, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the eye-ball of the basilisk. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain" (xi. 1-9) This is generally considered to be a prediction of a universal golden age on earth; but Isaiah only speaks of the holy mountain as the scene, meaning by this the whole city of David as the centre of his kingdom. The just and strict government of the descendant of David is to bring it about that righteousness and truth kiss each other, and that the strong do not dare to injure the weak. Fear of the severity of the law engenders general confidence; the lamb is no longer afraid of the wolf. The opposite of this ideal is lawlessness and anarchy within, not war without; the hope is not that of international peace, as we see both from verse 1-5 and from verse 9. The Messiah is adorned just with the virtues which befit a ruler; and this shows sufficiently what is the nature of the kingdom of which he is to be the head, i.e., what is the notion of the theocracy. The other prophets of this period agree with Isaiah (Lamentations iv. 20), only Hosea is peculiar in this as in other points. He appears to have regarded the kingdom as such as an evil; in more than one expression he makes it the antithesis of the rule of Jehovah. But we have to remember that this judgment of his is based entirely on his historical experience. In the kingdom of the ten tribes the supreme power was constantly being seized by usurpers, so that instead of being the pillar of order and law it was the plaything of parties and the occasion of incessant disturbances. It is this North-Israelite kingdom that Hosea has in view; and he reprobates it for no other reason than that, in the three hundred years of its existence, it has not approved itself, and does not approve itself in the present time of need. He does not proceed as on _a priori_ theory, he does not apply as his rule a pattern of the theocratic constitution given antecedently to any historical development. There can be no doubt that it never entered his head that the form God desired the community to take was not a thing to be determined by circumstances, but had been revealed at Mount Sinai. /1/ ***************************************** 1. He even speaks with favour of David and the kingdom of Judah, but I consider all such references in Hosea (as well as in Amos) to, be interpolations. In i. 7 there is a reference to the deliverance of Jerusalem under Hezekiah. ***************************************** XI.I.4. Nor did the theocracy exist from the time of Moses in the form of the covenant, though that was afterwards a favourite mode of regarding it. The relation of Jehovah to Israel was in its nature and origin a natural one; there was no interval between Him and His people to call for thought or question. Only when the existence of Israel had come to be threatened by the Syrians and Assyrians, did such prophets as Elijah and Amos raise the Deity high above the people, sever the natural bond between them, and put in its place a relation depending on conditions, conditions of a moral character. To them Jehovah was the God of righteousness in the first place, and the God of Israel in the second place, and even that only so far as Israel came up to the righteous demands which in His grace He had revealed to him. They inverted the order of these two fundamental articles of faith. "If your sins are as scarlet, how should they be reckoned white as snow? If they are red like crimson, how should they be as wool? If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land, but if ye refuse and rebel, ye must eat the sword, for the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it." Thus the nature of the conditions which Jehovah required of His people came to the very front in considering His relations with them: the Torah of Jehovah, which originally, like all His dealings, fell under the category of divine aid, especially in the doing of justice, of divine guidance in the solution of difficult questions, was now conceived of as incorporating the demands on the fulfilment of which His attitude towards Israel entirely depended. In this way arose, from ideas which easily suggested it, but yet as an entirely new thing, the substance of the notion of covenant or treaty. The name Berith, however, does not occur in the old prophets, not even in Hosea, who certainly presents us as clearly as possible with the thing, in his figure of the marriage of Jehovah and Israel (Isaiah i. 21). That he was unacquainted with the technical usage of Berith is strikingly proved by ii. 20 and vi. 7; and these passages must decide the view we take of viii. 1, a passage which is probably interpolated. The NAME Berith comes, it is likely, from quite a different quarter. The ancient Hebrews had no other conception of law nor any other designation for it than that of a treaty. A law only obtained force by the fact of those to whom it was given binding themselves to keep it. So it is in Exodus xxiv. 3-8, and in 2Kings xxiii. 1-3; so also in Jeremiah xxxiv. 8 seq.--curiously enough just as with the people of Mecca at the time of Mohammed (lbn Hisham, p. 230 seq.). Hence also the term Sepher Berith for the Deuteronomic as well as the Jehovistic Book of the Law. This use of the phrase Berith (ie., treaty) for law, fitted very well with the great idea of the prophets, and received from it in turn an interpretation, according to which the relation of Jehovah to Israel was conditioned by the demands of His righteousness, as set forth in His word and instruction. In this view of the matter Jehovah and Israel came to be regarded as the contracting parties of the covenant by which the various representatives of the people had originally pledged each other to keep, say, the Deuteronomic law. /1/ ***************************************** I This variation gained entrance the more easily as Berith is used in various applications, e.g:, of the capitulation, the terms of which are imposed by the stronger on the weaker party: that the contracting parties had equal rights was by no means involved in the notion of the Berith. See the wavering of the notion in Jeremiah xxxiv. 13-18. ******************************************* After the solemn and far-reaching act by which Josiah introduced this law, the notion of covenant-making between Jehovah and Israel appears to have occupied the central position in religious thought: it prevails in Deuteronomy, in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, in Isaiah xl.-lxvi., Leviticus xvii.-xxvi., and most of all in the Book of the Four Covenants. The Babylonian exile no doubt helped, as the Assyrian exile had previously done, to familiarise the Jewish mind with the idea that the covenant depended on conditions, and might possibly be dissolved. XI.II. XI.II.1. The tabernacle of David fell at last, and no king was born to set it up again. The state suffered not a crisis, but destruction. And the result was that such of the religious hopes of the people as they still held fast, were no longer limited to existing political conditions, but now took a freer flight, became tinged with enthusiasm, and cast off all restrictions. In former times there was always an enemy threatening in the background, a danger really approaching, to give rise to the expectation of a great conflagration, the materials for which had long been collected in the nation itself: but after the exile fancy dealt in general coalitions of God knows what peoples against the New Jerusalem, vaticinations for which there was no ground whatever in reality. /1/ ****************************************** 1 Ezekiel xxxviii. xxxix.; Isaiah lxvi. 18-24; Joel iv.; Zechariah xii. xiv. In Isaiah v. 26, on the other hand, we must, of course, read GWY, for GWYM, the singular instead of the plural. ***************************************** In earlier times the national state as it had existed under David was the goal of all wishes. Now a universal world empire was erected in imagination, which was to lift up its head at Jerusalem over the ruins of the heathen powers. Prophecy was no longer tied to history, nor supported by it. But the extravagant hopes now built on Jehovah were balanced on the other side by sober and realisable aims which the course of history presented. Those who waited for the consolation of Israel were then confronted from the nature of their situation with practical tasks. The old prophets were satisfied with expressing their ideas, with criticising existing evils; as to practical points they had nothing to say, the leadership of the people was in other hands. But the old community being now gone and its heads having fallen with it, the godly both had the power and felt the obligation to place themselves at the head of the Israel now to be anew created, after which they had long been striving, and their faith in which was still unshaken. In former times the nation had not been so seriously threatened as that its continued existence, notwithstanding the dangerous crises it might have to pass through, should ever cease to be regarded as natural, as a thing of course. But now this was by no means a thing of course, the danger was a pressing one that the Jewish exiles, like the Samaritan exiles before them, would be absorbed by the heathens among whom they dwelt. In that case the Messianic hopes also would have lost their point of application, for, however true it was that the realising of them was Jehovah's concern, the men must still be there to whom they were to be fulfilled. Thus everything depended on getting the sacred remnant safe across this danger, and giving it so solid an organisation that it might survive the storms and keep alive the expectation of the promise. But in the eyes of those whose words had weight in the restoration the old community, as it had existed formerly, was not in good repute. They could not but allow Jehovah's sentence of condemnation to be just which He had spoken by the mouth of His servants and through the voice of history. The utterances of the prophets, that fortresses and horses and men of war, that kings and princes, cannot help, were called to mind and turned into practical principles: the sole rule of Jehovah was to be carried out in earnest. Circumstances favoured the design, and this was the great point. As matters then were, the reconstitution of an actual state was not to be thought of, the foreign rule would not admit of it (Ezra iv. 19 seq.). What plan was to be taken, what materials to be used for such a building as the times allowed? The prophetic ideas would not serve as building stones; they were not sufficiently practical. Then appeared the importance of institutions, of traditional forms, for the conservation even of the spiritual side of the religion. The Jewish royal temple had early overshadowed the other sanctuaries, and in the course of the seventh century they were extinct or verging on extinction. Under the shelter of the monarchy the priests of Jerusalem had grown great and had at last attained, as against their professional brethren elsewhere, a position of exclusive legitimacy. The weaker the state grew, the deeper it sank from the fall of Josiah onwards, the higher became the prestige of the temple in the eyes of the people, and the greater and the more independent grew the power of its numerous priesthood; how much more do we feel it in Jeremiah's time than in that of Isaiah! This advance of the priesthood indicates unmistakably the rise into prominence of the cultus in the seventh century, a rise rather helped than hindered by the long reign of Manasseh, evil as is the reputation of that reign. It shows itself not only in the introduction of more luxurious materials, incense, for example, but even more in the importance given to great and striking services, e.g., the sacrifice of children, and the expiatory offering. Even after the abolition of the horrid atrocities of Manasseh's time, the bloody earnestness remained behind with which the performance of divine service was gone about. So closely was the cultus of Jerusalem interwoven with the consciousness of the Jewish people, and so strongly had the priesthood established their order, that after the collapse of the kingdom the elements still survived here for the new formation of a "congregation" answering to the circumstances and needs of the time. Around the ruined sanctuary the community once more lifted up its head (1Kings viii.; Haggai i. seq.; Zechariah i. seq.). The usages and ordinances were, though everywhere changes in detail, yet not created afresh. Whatever creating there was lay in this, that these usages were bound together in a system and made the instruments of restoring an organisation of "the remnant." Ezekiel first pointed out the way which was suited for the time. He is the connecting link between the prophets and the law. He claims to be a prophet, and starts from prophetic ideas: but they are not his own ideas, they are those of his predecessors which he turns into dogmas. He is by nature a priest, and his peculiar merit is that he enclosed the soul of prophecy in the body of a community which was not political, but founded on the temple and the cultus. The chapters xl.-xlviii. are the most important in his book, and have been called by J. Orth, not incorrectly, the key of the Old Testament. Thus arose that artificial product, the sacred constitution of Judaism. In the Priestly Code we have the picture of it in detail. /1/ ****************************************** 1. It is not the case that the hierocracy is based on the Priestly Code: that code was only introduced after the hierocracy was already in existence, but helped, no doubt, to consolidate and legalise it. The written law afterwards undermined the rule of the priests; and the scriptures played into the hands of the scribes and Pharisees. (Compare the case of the Parsees and Sabians, and <the reference given here,.. namely "p.157, note" is in error. There is no note on p. 157 and I do not know what is being referred to ..>.) ****************************************** The distinction, drawn with such pains between the Mosaic theocracy and the post-exilic hierocracy, is too fine. Theocracy as a constitution is hierocracy. If Moses founded such a constitution, he did it prophetically, with a view to circumstances which only arose a thousand years after his day, <V.II.1.; VII.II.4.>. Old Israel had not shrunk to a religious congregation, public life was not quite absorbed in the service of the sanctuary; the high priest and the dwelling of Jehovah were not the centre round which all revolved <p.170 is not correct; >. These great changes were wrought by the destruction of the political existence first of Samaria, then of Judah. In this way the people became "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation," as we read in a Deuteronomistic passage, Exodus xix. 6. If the divine rule was formerly a belief supporting the natural ordinances of human society, it was now set forth in visible form as a divine state, in an artificial sphere peculiar to itself and transcending the ordinary life of the people. The idea had formerly informed and possessed the natural body, but now, in order that it might be thoroughly realised, it was to have spiritual body of its own. There arose a material, external antithesis of a sacred and profane; men's minds came to be full of this, and it was their great endeavour to draw the line as sharply as possible and to repress the natural sphere more and more. Holiness is the ruling idea in Ezekiel, in Leviticus xvii.-xxvi., and in the Priestly Code. The notion is a somewhat empty one, expressing rather what a thing is not than what it is; at first it meant the same as divine, but now it is used mainly in the sense of spiritual, priestly, as if the divine could be distinguished from the worldly, the natural, by outward visible marks of that kind. The Mosaic theocracy, the residuum of a ruined state, is itself not a state at all, but an unpolitical artificial product created in spite of unfavourable circumstances by the impulse of an ever-memorable energy: and foreign rule is its necessary counterpart. In its nature it is intimately allied to the old Catholic church, which was in fact its child. As a matter of taste it may be objectionable to speak of the Jewish church, but as a matter of history it is not inaccurate, and the name is perhaps preferable to that of theocracy, which shelters such confusion of ideas. XI.II.2. The Mosaic theocracy appears to show an immense retrogression. The law of Jehovah should denote what is characteristic of His people over against the heathen. But this certainly did not consist in the cultus of Israel: it would be vain labour to seek in this and that slight variation between the Hebrew and the Greek ritual a difference of principle between them. The cultus is the heathen element in the Israelite religion-- the word heathen not being understood, of course, in an ignoble or unworthy sense. If the Priestly Code makes the cultus the principal thing, that appears to amount to a systematic decline into the heathenism which the prophets incessantly combated and yet were unable to eradicate. It will be readily acknowledged that at the constitution of the new Jerusalem the prophetic impulses were deflected by a previously existing natural tendency of the mass on which they had to operate. Yet in every part of the legal worship we see the most decided traces of their influence. We have seen to what a large extent that worship is everywhere marked by a centralising tendency. This tendency is not connected in the Priestly Code with opposition to improper or foreign worship; yet it must be interpreted as a polemical measure; and if it be regarded as an axiom necessary in the Priestly Code from the nature of the case, that is only saving that the demands of the prophets had prevailed most completely in a field where they had the greatest obstacles to contend with. Exclusive monolatry is by no means innate in the cultus; it can only be deduced from considerations which are foreign to the nature of the cultus: it is the antitype of strict monotheism. The prohibition of images, too, in the worship of the Deity, is not expressly insisted on, as in Deuteronomy, but is a provision which is taken for granted; so little is this position in danger of question that even doubtful and repugnant elements are embodied in the worship and assimilated by it without hesitation. The golden ephod, denounced by Isaiah, has become an insignificant decoration of the high-priest: talismans, forbidden even by Ezekiel, are allowed (Numbers xv. 37-41), but the object of them is "that ye may look upon them and remember all the commandments of Jehovah, and do them, and that ye follow not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye used to go a whoring." The gross idolatry, with which the expression znh is always connected in other passages, is by this time out of the question: the heart itself with its lawless motions is the strange God, whose service is forbidden. We may go further and say that by the cultus-legislation the cultus is estranged from its own nature, and overthrown in its own sphere. That is most unmistakably the case with regard to the festivals. They have lost their reference to harvest and cattle, and have become historical commemorations: they deny their birth from nature, and celebrate the institution of supernatural religion and the gracious acts of Jehovah therewith connected. The broadly human, the indigenous element falls away, they receive a statutory character and a significance limited to Israel. They no longer draw down the Deity into human life on all important occasions, to take part in its joys and its necessities: they are not HUMAN ATTEMPTS with such naive means as are at command to please the Deity and render Him favourable. They are removed from the natural sphere, and made DIVINE MEANS OF GRACE, which Jehovah has instituted in Israel as sacraments of the theocracy. The worshipper no longer thinks that in his gift he is doing God a pleasure, providing Him with an enjoyment: what pleases Him and is effectual is only the strict observance of the rite. The sacrifices must be offered exactly according to prescription: at the right place, at the right time, by the right individuals, in the right way. They are not based on the inner value of what is done, on the impulse arising out of fresh occasions, but on the positive command of a will outside the worshipper, which is not explained, and which prescribes every particular. The bond between cultus and sensuality is severed: no danger can arise of an admixture of impure immoral elements, a danger which was always present in Hebrew antiquity. Worship no longer springs from an inner impulse, it has come to be an exercise of religiosity. It has no natural significance; its significance is transcendental, incomparable, not to be defined; the chief effect of it, which is always produced with certainty, is atonement. For after the exile the consciousness of sin, called forth by the rejection of the people from the face of Jehovah, was to a certain extent permanent: even when the hard service of Israel was accomplished and the wrath really blown over, it would not disappear. If then the value of the sacred offerings lay not in themselves but in obedience to the commandments of God, the centre of gravity of the cultus was removed from that exercise itself and transferred to another field, that of morality. The consequence was that sacrifices and gifts gave way to ascetic exerctses, which were more strictly and more simply connected with morality. Precepts given originally in reference to the consecration of the priests for their religious functions were extended to the laity: the observance of these laws of physical cleanliness was of much more radical importance in Judaism than the great public cultus, and led by the straightest road towards the theocratic ideal of holiness and of universal priesthood. The whole of life was compressed into a certain holy path; there was always a divine command to be fulfilled, and by thinking of it a man kept himself from following after the desires and lusts of his own heart. On the other hand this private cultus, which constantly required attention, kept alive and active the individual sense of sin. The great pathologist of Judaism is quite right: in the Mosaic theocracy the cultus became a pedagogic instrument of discipline. It is estranged from the heart; its revival was due to old custom, it would never have blossomed again of itself. It no longer has its roots in childlike impulse, it is a dead work, in spite of all the importance attached to it, nay, just because of the anxious conscientiousness with which it was gone about. At the restoration of Judaism the old usages were patched together in a new system, which, however, only served as the form to preserve something that was nobler in its nature, but could not have been saved otherwise than in a narrow shell that stoutly resisted all foreign influences. That heathenism in Israel against which the prophets vainly protested was inwardly overcome by the law on its own ground; and the cultus, after nature had been killed in it, became the shield of supernaturalistic monotheism. The end of the Prolegomena ISRAEL Reprinted from the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" I S R A E L. 1. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE NATION. According to the Book of Genesis, Israel was the brother of Edom, and the cousin of Moab and Ammon. These four petty peoples, which may be classed together as the Hebrew group, must at one time have formed some sort of a unity and have passed through a common history which resulted in their settlement in south-eastern Palestine. The Israelites, or rather that section of the Hebrew group which afterwards developed into Israel, appear at first to have been the immediate neighbours of Edom, and to have extended westwards towards the border of Egypt. As regards the ethnological position of the Hebrews as a whole, tradition has it that they had connexions not only with the Aramaeans of Osrhoene (Nahor), but also with certain of the old half-Arab inhabitants of the Sinaitic peninsula (Kenites, Amalek, Midian). To the Canaanites, whose language they had adopted, their relation was that of foreign conquerors and lords to a subject race (Gen. ix, 26). Some fifteen centuries before our era a section of the Hebrew group left its ancient seat in the extreme south of Palestine to occupy the not distant pasture lands of Egypt (Goshen), where they carried on their old calling, that of shepherds and goatherds. Although settled within the territory of the Pharaohs, and recognising their authority, they continued to retain all their old characteristics,--their language, their patriarchal institutions, their nomad habits of life. But in course of time these foreign guests were subjected to changed treatment. Forced labour was exacted of them for the construction of new public works in Goshen, an exaction which was felt to be an assault upon their freedom and honour, and which in point of fact was fitted to take away all that was distinctive of their nationality. But they had no remedy at hand, and had submitted in despair, until Moses at last saw a favourable opportunity of deliverance. Reminding his oppressed brethren of the God of their fathers, and urging that their cause was His, he taught them to regard self-assertion against the Egyptians as an article of religion; and they became once more a united people in a determination to seek refuge from oppression in the wilderness which was the dwelling-place of their kindred and the seat of their God. At a time when Egypt was scourged by a grievous plague, the Hebrews broke up their settlement in Goshen one night in spring, and directed their steps towards their old home again. According to the accounts, the king had consented to the exodus, and latterly had even forced it on, but it was none the less a secret flight. To a not very numerous pastoral people such an undertaking presented no great difficulty. Nevertheless its execution was not to be carried out unimpeded. The Hebrews, compelled to abandon the direct eastward road (Exod. xiii. 17, 18), turned towards the south-west and encamped at last on the Egyptian shore of the northern arm of the Red Sea, where they were overtaken by Pharaoh's army. The situation was a critical one; but a high wind during the night left the shallow sea so low that it became possible to ford it. Moses eagerly accepted the suggestion, and made the venture with success. The Egyptians, rushing after, came up with them on the further shore, and a struggle ensued. But the assailants fought at a disadvantage, the ground being ill suited for their chariots and horsemen; they fell into confusion and attempted a retreat. Meanwhile the wind had changed; the waters returned, apd the pursuers were annihilated./1/ ************************************ 1. Exod. xvi. 21, 24, 25, 27, 30, 31. According to the Old Testament the exodus took place 480 years before the building of Solomon's temple, and 960 years before the end of the Babylonian captivity. These figures are "systematic" or at least systematised, but even so they are certainly more trustworthy than the combinations of the Egyptologists. ************************************ After turning aside to visit Sinai as related in Exodus, the emigrants settled at Kadesh, eastwards from Goshen, on the southern borders of Palestine, /2/ *********************************** 2. The site of Sinai (= Horeb?) hardly admits of ascertainment. The best datum would be the sanctuary of Jethro, if we could identify it with Midian (Jakut, iv. 451), which lies on the Arabian coast of the Red Sea obliquely facing the traditional Sinai. With regard to Qadesh, see Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund (1871), pp. 20, 21. ************************************* where they remained for many years, having at the well of Kadesh their sanctuary and judgment-seat only, while with their flocks they ranged over an extensive tract. In all probability their stay at Kadesh was no involuntary detention; rather was it this locality they had more immediately had in view in setting out. For a civilised community of from two to three millions such a settlement would, of course, have been impossible; but it was quite sufficient for the immediate requirements of the Goshen shepherds, few in number as they were and inured to the life of the desert. That attempts may have been made by them to obtain possession of the more fertile country to the north is very likely; but that from the outset they contemplated the conquest of the whole of Palestine proper, and that it was only in expiation of a fault that they were held back at the gate of the promised land until the whole generation of the disobedient had died out, is not historically probable. We can assign a definite reason for their final departure from Kadesh. In the district to the east of Jordan the (Canaanite) Amorites had, sometime previously, driven the Ammonites from the lower Jabbok and deprived the Moabites of all their territory to the north of the Arnon; on the plateau opposite Jericho Heshbon had become the capital of Sihon, the Amorite king. This sovereign now set himself to subdue southern Moab also, and not without success. "Fire went out from Heshbon, flame from the stronghold of Sihon, devoured the cities of Moab upon the heights of Arnon. Woe to thee, O Moab! thou art undone, O people of Chemosh!" From these straits the Moabites were rescued by their cousins, the nomads of the wilderness of Kadesh. The Israelites came forward on behalf of what was at once the common Hebrew cause and their own particular interest; they took the field against the Amorites, vanquished them in battle, and broke up the kingdom of Sihon. The consequence was that the land to the south of the Arnon remained in the undisputed possession of Moab, while the victors themselves became masters of the territory immediately to the north. Settled thus between Moab and Ammon their kinsmen, the Israelites supplied the link that was wanting in the chain of petty Hebrew nationalities established in the south of eastern Palestine. The army that went out against the Amorites from Kadesh was certainly not exclusively composed of men who, or whose fathers, had accomplished the passage of the Red Sea Israel was not a formed nation when it left Egypt; and throughout the whole period of its sojourn in the wilderness it continued to be in process of growth. Instead of excluding the kindred elements which offered themselves to it on its new soil, it received and assimilated them. The life they had lived together under Moses had been the first thing to awaken a feeling of solidarity among the tribes which afterwards constituted the nation; whether they had previously been a unity in any sense of the word is doubtful. On the other hand, the basis of the unification of the tribes must certainly have been laid before the conquest of Palestine proper; for with that it broke up, though the memory of it continued. At the same time it must not be supposed that all the twelve tribes already existed side be side in Kadesh. The sons of the concubines of Jacob--Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher--manifestly do not pertain to Israel in the same sense as do those of Leah and Rachel; probably they were late arrivals and of very mixed origin. We know, besides, that Benjamin was not born until afterwards, in Palestine. If this view be correct, Israel at first consisted of seven tribes, of which one only, that of Joseph, traced its descent to Rachel, though in point of numbers and physical strength it was the equal of all the others together, while in intellectual force it surpassed them. The remaining six were the sons of Leah:--Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah; Issachar, Zebulon. They are always enumerated in this order; the fact that the last two are also invariably mentioned apart from the rest and after Joseph has its explanation in geographical considerations. The time of Moses is invariably regarded as the properly creative period in Israel's history, and on that account also as giving the pattern and norm for the ages which followed. In point of fact the history of Israel must be held to have begun then, and the foundations of a new epoch to have been laid. The prophets who came after gave, it is true, greater distinctness to the peculiar character of the nation, but they did not make it; on the contrary, it made them. Again, it is true that the movement which resulted in the establishment of the monarchy brought together for the first time into organic unity the elements which previously had existed only in an isolated condition; but Israel's sense of national personality was a thing of much earlier origin, which even in the time of the judges bound the various tribes and families together, and must have had a great hold on the mind of the nation, although there was no formal and binding constitution to give it support. When the Israelites settled in Palestine they found it inhabited by a population superior to themselves both in numbers and in civilisation, which they did not extirpate, but on the contrary gradually subdued and absorbed. The process was favoured by affinity of race and similarity of speech; but, however far it went, it never had the effect of making Israelites Canaanites; on the contrary, it made Canaanites Israelites. Notwithstanding their inferiority, numerical and otherwise, they maintained their individuality, and that without the support of any external organisation. Thus a certain inner unity actually subsisted long before it had found any outward political expression; it goes back to the time of Moses, who is to be regarded as its author. The foundation upon which, at all periods, Israel's sense of its national unity rested was religious in its character. It was the faith which may be summed up in the formula, Jehovah is the God of Israel, and Israel is the people of Jehovah. Moses was not the first discoverer of this faith, but it was through him that it came to be the fundamental basis of the national existence and history. /1/ ***************************************** 1. Jehovah is to be regarded as having originally been a family or tribal god, either of the family to which Moses belonged or of the tribe of Joseph, in the possession of which we find the ark of Jehovah, and within which occurs the earliest certain instance of a composite proper name with the word Jehovah for one of its elements (Jeho-shua, Joshua). No essential distinction was felt to exist between Jehovah and El, any more than between Asshur and El; Jehovah was only a special name of El which had become current within a powerful circle, and which on that account was all the more fitted to become the designation of a national god. **************************************** The exigencies of their position severe a number of kindred clans from their customary surroundings, and drove them into his arms. He undertook the responsibilities of their leader, and the confidence of success which he manifested was justified by the result. But it was not through any merit of his that the undertaking (of which he was the soul) prospered as it did; his design was aided in a wholly unlooked-for way, by a marvellous occurrence quite beyond his control, and which no sagacity could possibly have foreseen. One whom the wind and sea obeyed had given him His aid. Behind him stood One higher than he, whose spirit wrought in him and whose arm wrought for him,--not for his personal aggrandisement indeed, but for the weal of the nation. It was Jehovah. Alike what was done by the deliberate purpose of Moses and what was done without any human contrivance by nature and by accident came to be regarded in one great totality as the doing of Jehovah for Israel. Jehovah it was who had directed each step in that process through which these so diverse elements, brought together by the pressure of necessity, had been caused to pass, and in the course of which the first beginnings of a feeling of national unity had been made to grow. This feeling Moses was the first to elicit; he it was also who maintained it in life and cherished its growth. The extraordinary set of circumstances which had first occasioned the new national movement continued to subsist, though in a less degree, throughout the sojourn of the people in the wilderness, and it was under their pressure that Israel continued to be moulded. To Moses, who had been the means of so brilliantly helping out of their first straits the Hebrews who had accompanied him out of Egypt, they naturally turned in all subsequent difficulties; before him they brought all affairs with which they were not themselves able to cope. The authority which his antecedents had secured for him made him as matter of course the great national "Kadhi" in the wilderness. Equally as matter of course did he exercise his judicial functions, neither in his own interest nor in his own name, but in the interest of the whole community and in the name of Jehovah. By connecting them with the sanctuary of Jehovah, which stood at the well of Kadesh, he made these functions independent of his person, and thus he laid a firm basis for a consuetudinary law and became the originator of the Torah in Israel. In doing this he succeeded in inspiring the national being with that which was the very life of his own soul; through the Torah he gave a definite positive expression to their sense of nationality and their idea of God. Jehovah was not merely the God of Israel; as such he was the God at once of law and of justice, the basis, the informing principle, and the implied postulate of their national consciousness. The relationship was carried on in precisely the same manner as that in which it had been begun. It was most especially in the graver moments of its history that Israel awoke to full consciousness of itself and of Jehovah. Now, at that time and for centuries afterwards, the highwater marks of history were indicated by the wars it recorded. The name "Israel" means "El does battle," and Jehovah was the warrior El, after whom the nation styled itself. The camp was, so to speak, at once the cradle in which the nation was nursed and the smithy in which it was welded into unity; it was also the primitive sanctuary. There Israel was, and there was Jehovah. If in times of peace the relations between the two had become dormant, they were at once called forth into fullest activity when the alarm of danger was raised; Israel's awakening was always preceded by the awakening of Jehovah. Jehovah awakened men who under the guidance of His spirit placed themselves at the nation's head; in them His proper leadership was visibly expressed. Jehovah went forth with the host to battle, and in its enthusiasm His presence was seen (Judges. v. 13, 23). With signs and wonders from heaven Jehovah decided the struggle carried on upon earth. In it He was always upon Israel's side; on Israel was His whole interest concentrated, although His power (for He was God) reached far beyond their local limits. Thus Jehovah was in a very real sense a living God; but the manifestations of His life in the great crises of His people's history were of necessity separated by considerable intervals of time. His activity had something abrupt and tumultuary about it, better suited for extraordinary occasions than for ordinary daily life. Traces of this feeling appear very prominently in the later stages of the development. But although the relations between Israel and Israel's God came most strongly into prominence in times of excitement, yet it did not altogether die out in the periods of comparative repose. It was in the case of Jehovah just as in the case of the human leaders of the people, who did not in times of peace wholly lose the influence they had gained in war. Jehovah had His permanent court at the places of worship where in times of quietude men clung to Him that they might not lose Him in times of trouble. His chief, perhaps in the time of Moses His only, sanctuary was with the so-called ark of the covenant. It was a standard, adapted primarily to the requirements of a wandering and warlike life; brought back from the field, it became, as symbol of Jehovah's presence, the central seat of His worship. The cultus itself was more than a mere paying of court to Jehovah, more than a mere expedient for retaining His sympathies against times of necessity; the Torah of Jehovah, the holy administration of law, was conjoined with it. This had first of all been exercised, at the instance of the priest of Midian, by Moses at the well of Kadesh; it was continued after him, at the sanctuary, within the circle of those who had attached themselves to him and were spiritually his heirs. In cases where the wisdom or the competency of the ordinary judges failed, men turned direct to the Godhead, i.e., to the sanctuary and those who served it. Their decisions, whether given according to their own lights or by lot (according to the character of the question), were not derived from any law, but were received direct from Jehovah. /1/ ***************************************** 1 They were consulted chiefly on points of law, but also on all sorts of difficulties as to what was right and to be done, or wrong and to be avoided. **************************************** The execution of their decisions did not lie with them; they could only advise and teach. Their authority was divine, or, as we should say, moral, in its character; it rested upon that spontaneous recognition of the idea of right which, though unexpressed, was alive and working among the tribes--upon Jehovah Himself, who was the author of this generally diffused sense of right, but revealed the proper determinations on points of detail only to certain individuals. The priestly Torah was an entirely unpolitical or rather prepolitical institution; it had an existence before the state had, and it was one of the invisible foundation pillars on which the state rested. War and the administration of justice were regarded as matters of religion before they became matters of obligation and civil order; this is all that is really meant when a theocracy is spoken of. Moses certainly organised no formal state, endowed with specific holiness, upon the basis of the proposition "Jehovah is the God of Israel;" or, at all events, if he did so, the fact had not in the slightest degree any practical consequence or historical significance. The old patriarchal system of families and clans continued as before to be the ordinary constitution, if one can apply such a word as constitution at all to an unorganised conglomeration of homogeneous elements. What there was of permanent official authority lay in the hands of the elders and heads of houses; in time of war they commanded each his own household force, and in peace they dispensed justice each within his own circle. But this obviously imperfect and inefficient form of government showed a growing tendency to break down just in proportion to the magnitude of the tasks which the nation in the course of its history was called upon to undertake. Appeal to Jehovah was always in these circumstances resorted to; His court was properly that of last resort, but the ordinary authorities were so inadequate that it had often enough to be applied to. Theocracy, if one may so say, arose as the complement of anarchy. Actual and legal existence (in the modern sense) was predicable only of each of the many clans; the unity of the nation was realised in the first instance only through its religion. It was out of the religion of Israel that the commonwealth of Israel unfolded itself,--not a HOLY state, but THE state. And the state continued to be, consciously, rooted in religion, which prevented it from quitting or losing its rapport with the soil from which it had originally sprung. With the intermediate and higher stages of political organisation, with the building of the upper structure, however, religion had no concern; they were too far removed from the foundation. The derivative, which did not carry immediately in itself its own title to exist, was a matter of indifference to it; what had come into being it suffered to go its own way as soon as it was capable of asserting its independence. For this reason it always turned by preference to the future, not in a utopian but in a thoroughly practical way; by a single step only did it keep ahead of the present. It prepared the way for such developments as are not derived from existing institutions, but spring immediately from the depths in which human society has its secret and mysterious roots. The expression "Jehovah is the God of Israel," accordingly, meant that every tosk of the nation, internal as well as external, was conceived as holy. It certainly did not mean that the almighty Creator of heaven and earth was conceived of as having first made a covenant with this one people that by them He might be truly known and worshipped. It was not as if Jehovah had originally been regarded as the God of the universe who subsequently became the God of Israel; on the contrary, He was primarily Israel's God, and only afterwards (very long afterwards) did He come to be regarded as the God of the universe. For Moses to have given to the Israelites an "enlightened conception of God" would have been to have given them a stone instead of bread; it is in the highest degree probable that, with regard to the essential nature of Jehovah, as distinct from His relation to men, he allowed them to continue in the same way of thinking with their fathers. With theoretical truths, which were not at all in demand, He did not occupy himself, but purely with practical questions which were put and urged by the pressure of the times. The religious starting-point of the history of Israel was remarkable, not for its novelty, but for its normal character. In all ancient primitive peoples the relation in which God is conceived to stand to the circumstances of the nation--in other words, religion--furnishes a motive for law and morals; in the case of none did it become so with such purity and power as in that of the Israelites. Whatever Jehovah may have been conceived to be in His essential nature-God of the thunderstorm or the like--this fell more and more into the background as mysterious and transcendental; the subject was not one for inquiry. All stress was laid upon His activity within the world of mankind, whose ends He made one with His own. Religion thus did not make men partakers in a divine life, but contrariwise it made God a partaker in the life of men; life in this way was not straitened by it, but enlarged. The so-called "particularism" of Israel's idea of God was in fact the real strength of Israel's religion; it thus escaped from barren mythologisings, and became free to apply itself to the moral tasks which are always given, and admit of being discharged, only in definite spheres. As God of the nation, Jehovah became the God of justice and of right; as God of justice and right, He came to be thought of as the highest, and at last as the only, power in heaven and earth. ***** In the preceding sketch the attempt has been made to exhibit Mosaism as it must be supposed to have existed on the assumption that the history of Israel commenced with it, and that for centuries it continued to be the ideal root out of which that history continued to grow. This being assumed, we cannot treat the legislative portion of the Pentateuch as a source from which our knowledge of what Mosaism really was can be derived; for it cannot in any sense be regarded as the starting-point of the subsequent development. If it was the work of Moses, then we must suppose it to have remained a dead letter for centuries, and only through King Josiah and Ezra the scribe to have become operative in the national history (compare sections 8 and 10). The historical tradition which has reached us relating to the period of the judges and of the kings of Israel is the main source, though only of course in an indirect way, of our knowledge of Mosaism. But within the Pentateuch itself also the historical tradition about Moses (which admits of being distinguished, and must carefully be separated, from the legislative, although the latter often clothes itself in narrative form) is in its main features manifestly trustworthy, and can only be explained as resting on actual facts. From the historical tradition, then, it is certain that Moses was the founder of the Torah. But the legislative tradition cannot tell us what were the positive contents of his Torah. In fact it can be shown that throughout the whole of the older period the Torah was no finished legislative code, but consisted entirely of the oral decisions and instructions of the priests, as a whole it was potential only; what actually existed were the individual sentences given by the priesthood as they were asked for. Thus Moses was not regarded as the promulgator once for all of a national constitution, but rather as the first to call into activity the actual sense for law and justice, and to begin the series of oral decisions which were continued after him by the priests. He was the founder of the nation out of which the Torah and prophecy came as later growths. He laid the basis of Israel's subsequent peculiar individuality, not by any one formal act, but in virtue of his having throughout the whole of his long life been the people's leader, judge, and centre of union. A correct conception of the manner in which the Torah was made by him can be derived from the narrative contained in Exod. xviii., but not from the long section which follows, relating to the Sinaitic covenant (chap. xix. seq.). The giving of the law at Sinai has only a formal, not to say dramatic, significance. It is the product of the poetic necessity for such a representation of the manner in which the people was constituted Jehovah's people as should appeal directly and graphically to the imagination. Only so can we justly interpret those expressions according to which Jehovah with His own mouth thundered the ten commandments down from the mountain to the people below, and afterwards for forty days held a confidential conference with Moses alone on the summit. For the sake of producing a solemn and vivid impression, that is represented as having taken place in a single thrilling moment which in reality occurred slowly and almost unobserved. Why Sinai should have been chosen as the scene admits of ready explanation. It was the Olympus of the Hebrew peoples, the earthly seat of the Godhead, and as such it continued to be regarded by the Israelites even after their settlement in Palestine (Judges v. 4, 5). This immemorial sanctity of Sinai it was that led to its being selected as the ideal scene of the giving of the law, not conversely. If we eliminate from the historical narrative the long Sinaitic section which has but a loose connection with it, the wilderness of Kadesh becomes the locality of the preceding and subsequent events. It was during the sojourn of many years here that the organisation of the nation, in any historical sense, took place. "There He made for them statute and ordinance, and there He proved them," as we read in Exod. xv. 26 in a dislocated poetical fragment. "Judgment and trial," "Massa and Meribah," point to Kadesh as the place referred to; there at all events is the scene of the narrative immediately following (Exod. xvii. = Num. xx.), and doubtless also of Exod. xviii. If the legislation of the Pentateuch cease as a whole to be regarded as an authentic source for our knowledge of what Mosaism was, it becomes a somewhat precarious matter to make any exception in favour of the Decalogue. In particular, the following arguments against its authenticity must be taken into account. (1) According to Exod. xxxiv. the commandments which stood upon the two tables were quite different. (2) The prohibition of images was during the older period quite unknown; Moses himself is said to have made a brazen serpent which down to Hezekiah's time continued to be worshipped at Jerusalem as an image of Jehovah. (3) The essentially and necessarily national character of the older phases of the religion of Jehovah completely disappears in the quite universal code of morals which is given in the Decalogue as the fundamental law of Israel; but the entire series of religious personalities throughout the period of the judges and the kings-- from Deborah, who praised Jael's treacherous act of murder, to David, who treated his prisoners of war with the utmost cruelty--make it very difficult to believe that the religion of Israel was from the outset one of a specifically moral character. The true spirit of the old religion may be gathered much more truly from Judges v. than from Exod. xx. (4) It is extremely doubtful whether the actual monotheism which is undoubtedly pre-supposed in the universal moral precepts of the Decalogue could have formed the foundation of a national religion. It was first developed out of the national religion at the downfall of the nation, and thereupon kept its hold upon the people in an artificial manner by means of the idea of a covenant formed by the God of the universe with, in the first instance, Israel alone (compare sections 6-10). As for the question regarding the historical presuppositions of Mosaism, there generally underlies it a misunderstanding arising out of theological intellectualism-an attribute found with special frequency among nontheologians. Moses gave no new idea of God to his people. The question whence he could have derived it therefore need not be raised. It could not possibly be worse answered, however, than by a reference to his relations witb the priestly caste of Egypt and their wisdom. It is not to be believed that an Egyptian deity could inspire the Hebrews of Goshen with courage for the struggle against the Egyptians, or that an abstraction of esoteric speculation could become the national deity of Israel. It is not inconceivable indeed, although at the same time quite incapable of proof, that Moses was indebted to the Egyptian priests for certain advantages of personal culture, or that he borrowed from them on all hands in external details of organisation or in matters of ritual. But the origin of the germ which developed into Israel is not to be sought for in Egypt, and Jehovah has nothing in common with the colourless divinity of Penta-ur or with the God-forsaken dreariness of certain modern Egyptologists. That monotheism must have been a foreign importation, because it is contrary to that sexual dualism of Godhead which is the fundamental characteristic of Semitic religion, is an untenable exaggeration which has recently become popular out of opposition to the familiar thesis about the monotheistic instinct of the Semites (Noldeke, Literar. Centralbl., 1877, p. 365). Moab, Ammon, and Edom, Israel's nearest kinsfolk and neighbours, were monotheists in precisely the same sense in which Israel itself was; but it would be foolish surely in their case to think of foreign importation. Manetho's statements about the Israelites are for the most part to be regarded as malicious inventions: whether any genuine tradition underlies them at all is a point much needing to be investigated. The story of Exod. ii. 1 seq. is a mythus of frequent recurrence elsewhere, to which no further significance is attached, for that Moses was trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians is vouched for by no earlier authorities than Philo and the New Testament. According to the Old Testament tradition his connexion is with Jethro's priesthood or with that of the Kenites. This historical presupposition of Mosaism has external evidence in its favour, and is inherently quite probable. ******* 2. THE SETTLEMENT IN PALESTINE. The kingdom of Sihon did not permanently suffice the Israelites, and the disintegration of the Canaanites to the west of Jordan in an endless number of kingdoms and cities invited attack. The first essay was made by Judah in conjunction with Simeon and Levi, but was far from prosperous. Simeon and Levi were annihilated; Judah also, though successful in mastering the mountain land to the west of the Dead Sea, was so only at the cost of severe losses which were not again made up until the accession of the Kenite families of the south (Caleb). As a consequence of the secession of these tribes, a new division of the nation into Israel and Judah took the place of that which had previously subsisted between the families of Leah and Rachel; under Israel were included all the tribes except Simeon, Levi, and Judah, which three are no longer mentioned in Judges v., where all the others are carefully and exhaustively enumerated. This half-abortive first invasion of the west was followed by a second, which was stronger and attended with much better results. It was led by the tribe of Joseph, to which the others attached themselves, Reuben and Gad only remaining behind in the old settlements. The district to the north of Judah, inhabited afterwards by Benjamin, was the first to be attacked. It was not until after several towns of this district had one by one fallen into the hands of the conquerors that the Canaanites set about a united resistance. They were, however, decisively repulsed by Joshua in the neighbourhood of Gibeon; and by this victory the Israelites became masters of the whole central plateau of Palestine. The first camp, at Gilgal, near the ford of Jordan, which had been maintained until then, was now removed, and the ark of Jehovah brought further inland (perhaps by way of Bethel) to Shiloh, where henceforward the headquarters were fixed, in a position which seemed as if it had been expressly made to favour attacks upon the fertile tract Iying beneath it on the north. The Bne Rachel now occupied the new territory which up to that time had been acquired,--Benjamin, in immediate contiguity with the frontier of Judah, then Ephraim, stretching to beyond Shiloh, and lastly Manasseh, furthest to the north, as far as to the plain of Jezreel. The centre of gravity, so to speak, already lay in Ephraim, to which belonged Joshua and that is mentioned as the last achievement of Joshua that at the waters of Merom he defeated Jabin, king of Hazor, and the allied princes of Galilee, thereby opening up the north for Israelitish settlers. It is quite what we should expect that a great and united blow had to be struck at the Canaanites of the north before the new comers could occupy it in peace; and King Jabin, who reappears at a later date, certainly does not suit the situation described in Judges iv. v. ******* The Book of Joshua represents the conquest of western Palestine as having been the common undertaking of all the tribes together, which, after the original inhabitants have been extirpated, are exhibited as laying the ownerless country at Joshua's feet in order that he may divide it by lot amongst them. But this is a "systematic" generalisation, contradicted by the facts which we otherwise know. For we possess another account of the conquest of Palestine, that of Judges i., which runs parallel with the Book of Joshua. It is shorter indeed and more superficial, yet in its entire mode of presenting the subject more historical. According to its narrative, it appears that Joshua was the leader of Joseph and Benjamin only, with whom indeed Issachar, Zebulon, Dan, Naphtali, and Asher made common cause. But before his time the tribe of Judah had already crossed the Jordan and effected a lodgment in the territory which lay between the earlier seat of the nation in the wilderness of Kadesh and its then settlement on the plateau of Moab, forming in some degree a link of connection between the two. It might be supposed that the tribe of Judah had not taken the longer route to the eastward of the Dead Sea at all, but had already at Kadesh broken off from the main body and thence turned its steps directly northward. But the representation actually given in Judges i., to the effect that it was from the direction of the Jordan and not from that of the Negeb that they came to take possession of their land, finds its confirmation in the fact that the southern portion of their territory was the last to come into their possession. The tradition is unwavering that Hebron was taken not by Judah but by Caleb, a family which stood in friendly relations with Israel, but had no connexion with it by blood. It was only through the policy of David that Caleb, Othniel, Jerachmeel, and the rest of the Kenites who had their homes in the Negeb became completely incorporated with Judah, so that Hebron became at last the capital of that tribe. Its oldest seats, however, lay further to the north, in the region of Tekoa, Bethlehem, Baal Judah. It harmonises well with this view to suppose that Simeon and Levi must have made at the same time their attempt to effect a settlement in the hill country of Ephraim. One of their families, Dinah bath Leah, met with a favourable reception in the town of Shechem, and began to mix freely with its population, and thus the way was paved for the establishment of peaceable relations between the old inhabitants of the land and the new importations. But these relations were brought to an end by the two brothers who, in concert it must be supposed with their sister, fell upon the Shechemites and massacred them. The final result proved disastrous. The Canaanites of the surrounding country united against them and completely destroyed them. There can be no doubt as to the trustworthiness of the somewhat enigmatical records of those events which are given in Gen. xlix. and xxxiv.; in no other way is it possible to explain why Simeon and Levi, which originally came upon the stage of history on an equal footing with Reuben and Judah, should have already disappeared as independent tribes at the very beginning of the period of the judges. Now, that the destruction of Shechem by the Manassite Abimelech is quite distinct from the attack made by Simeon and Levi need hardly be said. On the other hand, the occurrence cannot be regarded as pre-Mosaic, but must be assigned to a time previous to the conquest of the hill country of Ephraim by Joseph; for after Joseph's settlement there the two sons of Leah had manifestly nothing more to hope for in that locality. We are shut up, therefore, to the conclusion that they crossed the Jordan at the same time as Judah separated himself from the main body in search of a suitable territory. That Simeon accompanied Judah in the first westward attempt is expressly stated in Judges i. The fate of Levi, again, cannot be separated from that of Simeon (Gen. xlix. 5-7); that he is not expressly mentioned in Judges i. ought not to cause surprise, when it is considered that later generations which regarded Levi as neither more nor less than a priest would have some difficulty in representing him as a thoroughly secular tribe. Such nevertheless he must have been, for the poet in Genesis xlix. 5-7 puts him on a footing of perfect equality with Simeon, and attributes to both brothers a very secular and bloodthirsty character; he has no conception that Levi has a sacred vocation which is the reason of the dispersion of the tribe; the dispersion, on the contrary, is regarded as a curse and no blessing, an annihilation and not the means of giving permanence to its tribal individuality. The shattered remains of Simeon, and doubtless those of Levi also, became incorporated with Judah, which thenceforward was the sole representative of the three sons of Leah, who according to the genealogy had been born immediately after Reuben the first-born. Judah itself seems at the same time to have suffered severely. Of its three older branches, Er, Onan, and Shelah, one only survived, and only by the accession of foreign elements did the tribe regain its vigour,--by the fresh blood which the Kenites of the Negeb brought. For Zarah and Pharez, which took the place of Er and Onan after these had disappeared, belonged originally, not to Israel, but to Hezron or the Kenites; under this designation are included families like those of Othniel, Jerachmeel, and Caleb, and, as has been already remarked, even in David's time these were not reckoned as strictly belonging to Judah. Thus the depletion which the tribe had to suffer in the struggle with the Canaanites at the beginning of the period of the judges was the remote cause of the prominence which, according to 1Chronicles ii., the Bne Hezron afterwards attained in Judah. The survivors of Simeon also appear to have been forced back upon these Hezronites in the Negeb; the cities assigned to them in the Book of Joshua all belong to that region. ******* Even after the united resistance of the Canaanites had been broken, each individual community had still enough to do before it could take firm hold of the spot which it had searched out for itself or to which it had been assigned. The business of effecting permanent settlement was just a continuation of the former struggle, only on a diminished scale; every tribe and every family now fought for its own land after the preliminary work had been accomplished by a united effort. Naturally, therefore, the conquest was at first but an incomplete one. The plain which fringed the coast was hardly touched; so also the valley of Jezreel with its girdle of fortified cities stretching from Acco to Bethshean. All that was subdued in the strict sense of that word was the mountainous land, particularly the southern hill country of "Mount Ephraim;" yet, even here the Canaanites retained possession of not a few cities, such as Jebus, Shechem, Thebez. It was only after the lapse of centuries that all the lacunae were filled up, and the Canaanite enclaves made tributary. The Israelites had the extraordinarily disintegrated state of the enemy to thank for the ease with which they had achieved success. The first storm subsided comparatively soon, and conquerors and conquered alike learned to accommodate themselves to the new circumstances. Then the Canaanites once more collected all their energies to strike a blow for freedom. Under the hegemony of Sisera a great league was formed, and the plain of Jezreel became the centre of the reorganised power which made itself felt by its attacks both northwards and southwards. The Israelites were strangely helpless; it was as if neither shield nor spear could be found among their 40,000 fighting men. But at last there came an impulse from above, and brought life and soul to the unorganised mass; Deborah sent out the summons to the tribes, Barak came forward as their leader against the kings of Canaan who had assembled under Sisera's command by the brook of Kishon. The cavalry of the enemy was unable to withstand the impetuous rush of the army of Jehovah, and Sisera himself perished in the flight. From that day the Canaanites, although many strong towns continued to be held by them, never again raised their heads. After these occurrences some further changes of a fundamental character took place in the relations of the tribes. The Danites proved unable to hold against the forward pressure of the Philistines their territory on the coast to the west of Benjamin and Ephraim; they accordingly sought a new settlement, which was found in the north at the foot of Hermon. In this way all the secondary tribes westward of Jordan (Asher, Naphtali, Dan) came to have their seats beside each other in the northern division of the land. Eastward of Jordan, Reuben rapidly fell from his old prominence, sharing the fate of his next eldest brethren Simeon and Levi. When Eglon of Moab took Jericho, and laid Benjamin under tribute, it is obvious that he must previously have made himself master of Reuben's territory. This territory became thenceforward a subject of constant dispute between Moab and Israel; the efforts to recover it, however, did not proceed from Reuben himself, but from Gad, a tribe which knew how to assert itself with vigour against the enemies by which it was surrounded. But if the Hebrews lost ground in the south, they materially enlarged their borders in the north of the land eastward of Jordan. Various Manassite families, finding their holdings at home too small, crossed the Jordan and founded colonies at Bashan and northern Gilead. Although this colonisation, on account of the rivalry of the Aramaeans, who were also pressing forward in this direction, was but imperfectly successful, it nevertheless was of very great importance, inasmuch as it seemed to give new strength to the bonds that united the eastern with the western tribes. Not only was Gilead not lost; it even became a very vigorous member of the body politic. /1/ ***************************** 1. It is probable that Manasseh's migration to the territory eastward of Jordan took place from the west, and later than the time of Moses. The older portions of the Hexateuch speak not of two and a half but only of two trans-Jordanic tribes, and exclude Manasseh; according to them the kingdom of Sihon alone was subdued by Moses, not that of Og also, the latter, indeed, being a wholly legendary personage. In the song of Deborah, Machir is reckoned among the western tribes, and it was not until much later that this became the designation of the Manassites eastward of Jordan. It is also worth noticing that Jair's colonisation of northern Gilead did not take place until the time of the judges (Judges x. 3 seq.), but is related also in Num. xxxii. 39-42. ***************************** The times of agitation and insecurity which followed upon the conquest of Palestine invited attacks by the eastern nomads, and once more the Israelite peasantry showed all its old helplessness, until at last the indignation of a Manassite of good family, Gideon or Jerubbaal, was roused by the Midianites, who had captured some of his brothers and put them to death. With his family, that of Abiezer, he gave pursuit, and, overtaking the enemy on the borders of the wilderness, inflicted on them such chastisement as put an end to these incursions. His heroism had consequences which reached far beyond the scope of his original purpose. He became the champion of the peasantry against the freebooters, of the cultivated land against the waste; social respect and predominance were his rewards. In his native town of Ophrah he kept up a great establishment, where also he built a temple with an image of Jehovah overlaid with the gold which he had taken from the Midianites. He transmitted to his sons an authority, which was not limited to Abiezer and Manasseh alone, but, however slightly and indirectly, extended over Ephraim as well. On the foundations laid by Gideon Abimelech his son sought to establish a kingship over Israel, that is, over Ephraim and Manasseh. The predominance, however, which had been naturally accorded to his father in virtue of his personal merits, Abimelech looked upon as a thing seized by force and to be maintained with injustice; and in this way he soon destroyed those fair beginnings out of which even at that time a kingdom might have arisen within the house of Joseph. The one permanent fruit of his activity was that Shechem was destroyed as a Canaanite city and rebuilt for Israel. /1/ ************************************ 1. On the narratives contained in the Book of Judges see Bleek, Einl. ins Alte Testament (4th ed.), 88-98, and especially the sections on Barak and Sisera, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, the Danite migration, and the Benjamites of Gibeah (93-98). *********************************** The most important change of the period of the judges went on gradually and in silence. The old population of the country, which, according to Deuteronomy, was to have been exterminated, slowly became amalgamated with the new. In this way the Israelites received a very important accession to their numbers. In Deborah's time the fighting men of Israel numbered 40,000; the tribe of Dan when it migrated to Laish, counted 600 warriors; Gideon pursued the Midianites with 300. But in the reigns of Saul and David we find a population reckoned by millions. The rapid increase is to be accounted for by the incorporation of the Canaanites. At the same time the Hebrews learned to participate in the culture of the Canaanites, and quietly entered into the enjoyment of the labours of their predecessors. From the pastoral they advanced to the agricultural stage; corn and wine, the olive and the fig, with them are habitually spoken of as the necessaries of life. It was not strange that this change in the manner of their everyday life should be attended with certain consequences in the sphere of religion also. It is inconceivable that the Israelites should have brought with them out of the desert the cultus they observed in the time of the kings (Exod. xxii. xxiii. xxiv.), which throughout presupposed the fields and gardens of Palestine; they borrowed it from the Canaanites. /1/ ****************************** 1. In the earliest case where the feast of the ingathering, afterwards the chief feast of the Israelites, is mentioned, it is celebrated by Canaanites of Shechem in honour of Baal (Judges ix. 27). ***************************** This is confirmed by the fact that they took over from these the "Bamoth" or "high places" also, notwithstanding the prohibition in Deuteronomy xii. It was natural enough that the Hebrews should also appropriate the divinity worshipped by the Canaanite peasants as the giver of their corn, wine, and oil, the Baal whom the Greeks identified with Dionysus. The apostasy to Baal, on the part of the first generation which had quitted the wilderness and adopted a settled agricultural life, is attested alike by historical and prophetical tradition. Doubtless Baal, as the god of the land of Canaan, and Jehovah, as the God of the nation of Israel, were in the first instance co-ordinated. /2/ ***************************** 2. In Judges v. Jehovah retains his original abode in the wilderness of Sinai, and only on occasions of necessity quits it to come to Palestine. **************************** But it was not to be expected that the divinity of the land should permanently be different from the God of the dominant people. In proportion as Israel identified itself with the conquered territory, the divinities also were identified. Hence arose a certain syncretism between Baal and Jehovah, which had not been got over even in the time of the prophet Hosea. At the same time the functions of Baal were more frequently transferred to Jehovah than conversely. Canaan and Baal represented the female, Israel and Jehovah the male, principle in this union. Had the Israelites remained in the wilderness and in barbarism, the historical development they subsequently reached would hardly have been possible; their career would have been like that of Amalek, or, at best, like those of Edom, Moab, and Ammon. Their acceptance of civilisation was undoubtedly a step in the forward direction; but as certainly did it also involve a peril. It involved an overloading, as it were, of the system with materials which it was incapable of assimilating at once. The material tasks imposed threatened to destroy the religious basis of the old national life. The offensive and defensive alliances among the tribes gradually dissolved under the continuance of peace; the subsequent occupation of the country dispersed those whom the camp had united. The enthusiastic _elan_ with which the conquest had been achieved gave way to the petty drudgery by which the individual families, each in its own circle, had to accommodate themselves to their new surroundings. Yet under the ashes the embers were still aglow; and the course of history ever fanned them anew into flame, bringing home to Israel the truths that man does not live by bread alone, and that there are other things of worth than those which Baal can bestow; it brought ever again into the foreground the divineness of heroical self sacrifice of the individual for the good of the nation. 3. THE FOUNDATION OF THE KINGDOM, AND THE FIRST THREE KINGS. The Philistines were the means of arousing from their slumber Israel and Jehovah. From their settlements by the sea on the low-lying plain which skirts the mountains of Judah on the west, they pressed northwards into the plain of Sharon, and thence into the plain of Jezreel beyond, which is connected with that of Sharon by the upland valley of Dothan. Here, having driven out the Danites, they came into direct contact with the tribe of Joseph, the chief bulwark of Israel, and a great battle took place at Aphek, where the plain of Sharon merges into the valley of Dothan. The Philistines were victorious and carried off as a trophy the Israelite standard, the ark of Jehovah. Their further conquests included, not only the plain of Jezreel and the hill country bordering it on the south, but also the proper citadel of the country, "Mount Ephraim." The old sanctuary at Shiloh was destroyed by them; its temple of Jehovah thenceforward lay in ruins. Their supremacy extended as far as to Benjamin; the Philistines had a nec,ib in Gibeah. /1/ ************************** 1. _nec,ib_ is an Aramaic word of uncertain meaning. In the name of the town _Nec,ibin_ (Nisibis) it certainly seems to mean "pillars;" according to 1Kings iv. 5 and xxii. 48 (where it is pointed niccab), "governor", seems the best translation, and this is the only rendering consistent with the expression in 1Samuel xiii. 3 ("Jonathan slew the _necib_," &c.). *************************** But the assertion that they had confiscated all weapons and removed all smiths must be regarded as an unhistorical exaggeration; under their regime at all events it was possible for the messengers of a beleaguered city on the east of Jordan to summon their countrymen in the west to their relief. The shame of the Israelites under the reproach of Philistine oppression led, in the first instance, to a widespread exaltation of religious feeling. Troops of ecstatic enthusiasts showed themselves here and there, and went about with musical accompaniments in processions which often took the shape of wild dances; even men of the most sedate temperament were sometimes smitten with the contagion, and drawn into the charmed circle. In such a phenomenon, occurring in the East, there was nothing intrinsically strange; among the Canaanites, such "Nebiim"--for so they were styled--had long been familiar, and they continued to exist in the country after the old fashion, long after their original character, so far as Israel was concerned, had been wholly lost. The new thing at this juncture was that this spirit passed over upon Israel, and that the best members of the community were seized by it. It afforded an outlet for the suppressed excitement of the nation. The new-kindled zeal had for its object, not the abolition of Baal worship, but resistance to the enemies of Israel. Religion and patriotism were then identical. This spirit of the times was understood by an old man, Samuel ben Elkanah, who lived at Ramah in south-western Ephraim. He was not himself one of the Nebiim; on the contrary, he was a seer of that old type which had for a long time existed amongst the Hebrews much as we find it amongst the Greeks or Arabs. Raised by his foreseeing talent to a position of great prominence, he found opportunity to occupy himself with other questions besides those which he was professionally called on to answer. The national distress weighed upon his heart; the neighbouring peoples had taught him to recognise the advantages which are secured by the consolidation of families and tribes into a kingdom. But Samuel's peculiar merit lay, not in discovering what it was that the nation needed, but in finding out the man who was capable of supplying that need. Having come to know Saul ben Kish, a Benjamite of the town of Gibeah, a man of gigantic form, and swift, enthusiastic nature, he declared to him his destiny to become king over Israel. Saul very soon had an opportunity for showing whether Samuel had been a true seer or no. The city of Jabesh in Gilead was besieged by the Ammonites, and the inhabitants declared themselves ready to surrender should they fail in obtaining speedy succour from their countrymen. Their messengers had passed through all Israel without meeting with anything more helpful than pity, until at last tidings of their case reached Saul as he was returning with a yoke of oxen from the field. Hewing his cattle in pieces, he caused the portions to be sent in all directions, with the threat that so should it be done with the oxen of every one who should refuse to help in relieving Jabesh. The people obeyed the summons, fell suddenly one morning upon the Ammonites, and delivered the beleaguered city. Having thus found Saul the man for their need, they refused to let him go. In Gilgal, Joshua's old camp, they anointed him king. The act was equivalent to imposing upon him the conduct of the struggle against the Philistines, and so he understood it. The first signal for the attack was given by his son Jonathan, when he slew the _necib_ of the Philistines at Gibeah. These in consequence advanced in force towards the focus of the revolt, and took up a position opposite Gibeah on the north, being divided from it only by the gorge of Michmash. Only a few hundred Benjamites ventured to remain with Saul. The struggle opened with a piece of genuine old heroic daring. While the Philistines were dispersed over the country in foraging expeditions, Jonathan, accompanied by his armour-bearer only, and without the knowledge of Saul, made an attack upon the weak post which they had left behind at the pass of Michmash. After the first had been surprised and overmastered, the others took to flight, no doubt in the belief that the two assailants were supported. They carried their panic with them into the half-deserted camp, whence it spread among the various foraging bands. The commotion was observed from Gibeah opposite, and, without pausing to consult the priestly oracle, King Saul determined to attack the camp. The attempt was completely successful, but involved no more than the camp and its stores; the Philistines themselves effected an unmolested retreat by the difficult road of Bethhoron. Saul was no mere raw stripling when he ascended the throne; he already had a grown-up son at his side. Nor was he of insignificant descent, the family to which he belonged being a widespread one, and his heritage considerable. His establishment at Gibeah was throughout his entire reign the nucleus of his kingdom. The men on whom he could always reckon were his Benjamite kinsmen. He recognised as belonging to him no other public function besides that of war; the internal affairs of the country he permitted to remain as they had been before his accession. War was at once the business and the resource of the new kingdom. It was carried on against the Philistines without interruption, though for the most part not in the grand style but rather in a series of border skirmishes. /1/ ********************************* 1 As regards the position of Samuel in the theocracy and the relation in which the stood to Saul, the several narratives in the Book of Samuel differ widely. The preceding account, so far as it relates to Samuel, is based upon 1Samuel ix., x. 1-15, xi., where he appears simply as a Roeh at Ramah, and has nothing to do either with the administration of the theocracy or with the Nebiim. Compare Prolegomena above, chap. VII. ********************************* It is not without significance that the warlike revival of the nation proceeded from Benjamin. By the battle of Aphek Ephraim had lost at once the hegemony and its symbols (the camp-sanctuary at Shiloh, the ark of the covenant). The centre of Israel gravitated southward, and Benjamin became the connecting link between Ephraim and Judah. It would appear that there the tyranny of the Philistines was not so much felt. Their attacks never were made through Judah, but always came from the north; on the other hand, people fled from them southwards, as is instanced by the priests of Shiloh, who settled in Nob near Jerusalem. Through Saul Judah entered definitely into the history of Israel; it belonged to his kingdom, and it more than most others supplied him with energetic and faithful supporters. His famous expedition against the Amalekites had been undertaken purely in the interests of Judah, for it only could possibly suffer from their marauding hordes. Among the men of Judah whom the war brought to Gibeah, David ben Jesse of Bethlehem took a conspicuous place; his skill on the harp brought him into close relations with the king. He became Saul's armour-bearer, afterwards the most intimate friend of his son, finally the husband of his daughter. While he was thus winning the affections of the court, he at the same time became the declared favourite of the people, the more so because unexampled good fortune attended him in all he undertook. This excited the jealousy of Saul, naturally enough in an age in which the king always required to be the best man. Its first outburst admitted of explanation as occasioned by an attack of illness; but soon it became obtrusively clear that the king's love for his son-in-law had changed into bitter hatred. Jonathan warned his friend and facilitated his flight, the priests of Nob at the same time providing him with arms and food. He went into the wilderness of Judah, and became the leader of a miscellaneous band of outlaws who had been attracted by his name to lead a roving life under his leadership. His kinsmen from Bethlehem were of their number, but also Philistines and Hittites. Out of this band David's bodyguard subsequently grew, the nucleus of his army. They reckoned also a priest among them, Abiathar ben Ahimelech ben Ahitub ben Phinehas ben Eli, the solitary survivor of the massacre of the sons of Eli at Nob which Saul had ordered on account of suspected conspiracy with David. Through him David was able to have recourse to the sacred lot before the ephod. In the end he found it impossible to hold his own in Judah against Saul's persecutions, especially as his countrymen for the most part withheld their assistance. He therefore took the desperate step of placing his services at the disposal of Achish the Philistine king of Gath, by whom he was received with open arms, the town of Ziklag being assigned him as a residence. Here with his band he continued to follow his old manner of life as an independent prince, subject only to an obligation to render military service to Achish. Meanwhile the Philistines had once more mustered their forces and marched by the usual route against Israel. Saul did not allow them to advance upon Gibeah, but awaited their attack in the plain of Jezreel. A disastrous battle on Mount Gilboa ensued; after seeing his three eldest sons fall one after another at his side, Saul threw himself upon his sword, and was followed by his armour-bearer. The defeat seemed to have undone the work of his life. The immediate consequence at least was that the Philistines regained their lost ascendancy over the country to the west of Jordan. Beyond Jordan, however, Abner, the cousin and generalissimo of Saul, made his son Ishbaal, still a minor, king in Mahanaim, and he was successful in again establishing the dominion of the house over Jezreel, Ephraim, and Benjamin, of course in uninterrupted struggle with the Philistines. But he did not regain hold of Judah. David seized the opportunity to set up for himself, with the sanction of the Philistines, and, it may safely be presumed, as their vassal, a separate principality which had its centre of gravity in the south, which was inhabited, not by the tribe of Judah properly so called, but by the Calebites and Jerachmeelites. This territory Abner disputed with him in vain. In the protracted feud between the houses of Saul and David, the fortunes of war declared themselves ever increasingly for the latter. Personal causes at last brought matters to a crisis. Abner, by taking to himself a concubine of Saul's called Rizpah, had roused Ishbaal's suspicions that he was aiming at the inheritance, and was challenged on the point. This proved too much for his patience, and forthwith he abandoned the cause of his ward (the hopelessness of which had already perhaps become apparent), and entered into negotiations with David at Hebron. When about to set out on his return he fell by the hand of Joab in the gate of Hebron, a victim of jealousy and blood-feud. His plans nevertheless were realised. His death left Israel leaderless and in great confusion; Ishbaal was personally insignificant, and the people's homage continued to be rendered to him only out of grateful fidelity to his father's memory. At this juncture he also fell by assassins' hands. As he was taking his midday rest, and even the portress had gone to sleep over her task of cleaning wheat, two Benjamite captains introduced themselves into his palace at Mahanaim and murdered him in the vain hope of earning David's thanks. The elders of Israel no longer hesitated about offering David the crown, which he accepted. His residence was immediately transferred from Hebron to Jebus, which until then had remained in possession of the Canaanites, and first derives historical importance from him. It lay on the border between Israel and Judah,--still within the territory of Benjamin, but not far from Bethlehem; near also to Nob, the old priestly city. David made it not only the political but also the religious metropolis by transferring thither from Kirjathjearim the ark of the covenant, which he placed within his citadel on what afterwards became the temple hill. Still the crown was far from being a merely honorary possession; it involved heavy responsibilities, and doubtless what contributed more than anything else to David's elevation to the throne was the general recognition of the fact that he was the man best fitted on the whole to overtake the labour it brought with it, viz., the prosecution of the war with the Philistines, a war which was as it were the forge in which the kingdom of Israel was welded into one. The struggle began with the transference of the seat of royalty to Jerusalem; unfortunately we possess only scanty details as to its progress, hardly anything more indeed than a few anecdotes about deeds of prowess by individual heroes. The result was in the end that David completed what Saul had begun, and broke for ever the Philistine yoke. This was undoubtedly the greatest achievement of his reign. From the defensive against the Philistines David proceeded to aggressive war, in which he subjugated the three kinsfolk of Israel,--Moab, Ammon, and Edom. He appears to have come into conflict first with the Moabites, whom he vanquished and treated with savage atrocity. Not long afterwards the king of Ammon died, and David sent an embassy of condolence to Hanun his successor. Hanun suspected in this a sinister design,--a suspicion we can readily understand if David had already, as is probable, subjugated Moab,--and with the utmost contumely sent back the messengers to their master forthwith, at the same time making preparations for war by entering into alliance with various Syrian kings, and particularly with the powerful king of Soba /1/ ************************************** 1. Soba appears to have been situated somewhat to the north of Damascus, and to have bordered on the west with Hamath. The Aramaeans were beginning even at that period to press westwards; the Hittites, Phoenicians, and Israelites had common interests against them. To the kingdom of Soba succeeded afterwards that of Damascus. ********************************* David took the initiative, and sent his army under command of Joab against Rabbath-Ammon. The Syrians advanced to the relief of the besieged city; but Joab divided his forces, and, leaving his brother Abishai to hold the Ammonites in the town in check, proceeded himself against the Syrians and repulsed them. On their afterwards threatening to renew the attack in increased force, David went against them in strength and defeated them at Helam "on the river." It seems that as a result of this the kingdom of Soba was broken up and made tributary to Damascus. Rabbath-Ammon could not now hold out any longer, and the Ammonites shared the fate of their Moabite brethren. Finally, Edom was about the same time coerced and depopulated; and thus was fulfilled the vision of Balaam,--the youngest of the four Hebrew nationalities trod the three elder under his feet. So far as external foes were concerned, David henceforward had peace; but new dangers arose at home within his own family. At once by ill-judged leniency and equally ill-timed severity he had completely alienated his son Absalom, who, after Amnon's death, was heir-apparent to the throne. Absalom organised a revolt against his father, and to foster it availed himself of a misunderstanding which had arisen between David and the men of Judah, probably because they thought they were not treated with sufficient favour. The revolt had its focus in Hebron; Ahithophel, a man of Judah, was its soul; Amasa, also of Judah, its arm; but the rest of Israel was also drawn into the rebellion, and only the territory to the east of Jordan remained faithful. Thither David betook himself with precipitancy, for the outbreak had taken him completely by surprise. At Mahanaim, which had once before been the centre from which the kingdom was regained, he collected his faithful followers around him with his 600 Cherethites and Pelethites for a nucleus, Absalom against Ahithophel's advice allowing him time for this. In the neighbourbood of Mahanaim, in the wood of Ephraim, the decisive blow was struck. Absalom fell, and with his death the rebellion was at an end. It was Joseph that, in the first instance, penitently sent a deputation to the king to bring him back. Judah, on the other hand, continued to hold aloof. Ultimately a piece of finesse on the king's part had the effect of bringing Judah also to its allegiance, though at the cost of kindling such jealousy between Israel and Judah that Sheba the Benjamite raised a new revolt, this time of Israelites, which was soon, however, repressed by Joab. David seems to have died soon afterwards. His historical importance is very great. Judah and Jerusalem were wholly his creation, and, though the united kingdom of Israel founded by him and Saul together soon fell to pieces, the recollection of it nevertheless continued in all time to be proudly cherished by the whole body of the people. His personal character has been often treated with undue disparagement. For this we must chiefly blame his canonisation by the later Jewish tradition which made a Levitical saint of him and a pious hymn-writer. It then becomes a strange inconsistency that he caused military prisoners to be treated with barbarity, and the bastard sons of Saul to be hanged up before the Lord in Gibeon. But if we take him as we find him, an antique king in a barbarous age, our judgment of him will be much more favourable. The most daring courage was combined in him with tender susceptibility; even after he had ascended the throne be continued to retain the charm of a pre-eminent and at the same time child-like personality. Even his conduct in the affair of Uriah is not by any means wholly to his discredit; not many kings can be mentioned who would have shown repentance public and deep such as he manifested at Nathan's rebuke. Least to his credit was his weakness in relation to his sons and to Joab. On the other hand, the testament attributed to him in 1Kings ii. cannot be justly laid to his charge; it is the libel of a later hand seeking to invest him with a fictitious glory. In like manner it is unjust to hold him responsible for the deaths of Abner and Amasa, or to attribute to him any conspiracy with the hierocracy for the destruction of Saul, and thus to deprive him of the authorship of the elegy in 2Samuel i, which certainly was not the work of a hypocrite. Solomon had already reached the throne, some time before his father's death, not in virtue of hereditary right, but by palace intrigue which had the support of the bodyguard of the Six Hundred. His glory was not purchased on the battlefield. So far was he from showing military capacity that he allowed a new Syrian kingdom to arise at Damascus, a far more dangerous thing for Israel than that of Soba which had been destroyed, and which it succeeded. During this reign Edom also regained its independence, nothing but the port of Elath remaining in Solomon's hands. As regards Moab and Ammon we have no information; it is not improbable that they also revolted. But if war was not Solomon's forte, he certainly took much greater pains than either of his predecessors in matters of internal administration; according to tradition, the wisdom of the ruler and the judge was his special "gift." Disregarding the tribal system, he divided his kingdom into twelve provinces, over each of which he placed a royal governor, thus making a beginning of vigorous and orderly administration. /1/ ********************************** 1. Very possibly the Canaanites, whose complete absorption falls within this period, were an element that helped to loosen the bonds of tribal unity, and consolidate a state in its place. ********************************* Judah alone he exempted from this arrangement, as if to show special favour. For his aim was less the advantage of his subjects than the benefit of his exchequer, and the same object appears in his horse traffic (1Kings ix. 19), his Ophir trade (1Kings x. 11), and his cession of territory to Hiram (1Kings ix. 11). His passions were architecture, a gorgeous court, and the harem, in which he sought to rival other Oriental kings, as for example his Egyptian father-in-law. For this he required copious means-forced labour, tribute in kind, and money. He had especially at heart the extension and improvement of Jerusalem as a strong and splendid capital; the temple which he built was only a portion of his vast citadel, which included within its precincts a number of private and public buildings designed for various uses. It is plain that new currents were introduced into the stream of the nation's development by such a king as this. As formerly, after the occupation, Canaanite culture had come in, so now, after the establishment of the kingdom, the floodgate was open for the admission of Oriental civilisation in a deeper and wider sense. Whatever the personal motives which led to it may have been, the results were very importent, and by no means disadvantageous on the whole. On the basis of the firmer administration now introduced, stability and order could rest; Judah had no cause to regret its acceptance of this yoke. Closer intercourse with foreign lands widened the intellectual horizon of the people, and at the same time awakened it to a deeper sense of its own peculiar individuality. If Solomon imported Phoenician and Egyptian elements into the worship of Jehovah at his court temple, the rigid old Israelite indeed might naturally enough take offence (Exodus xx. 24-26), but the temple itself nevertheless ultimately acquired a great and positive importance for religion. It need not be denied that mischievous consequences of various kinds slipped in along with the good. The king, moreover, can hardly be blamed for his conduct in erecting in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem altars to deities of Ammon and Egypt. For those altars remained undisturbed until the time of Josiah, although between Solomon and him there reigned more than one pious king who would certainly have destroyed them had he found them as offensive as did the author of Deuteronomy. 4. FROM JEROBOAM I. TO JEROBOAM II. After the death of Solomon the discontent which had been aroused by his innovations, and especially by the rigour of his government, openly showed itself against his successor; and when Rehoboam curtly refused the demands which had been laid before him by an assembly of the elders at Shechem, they withdrew from their allegiance and summoned to be their king the Ephraimite Jeroboam ben Nebat, who already had made an abortive attempt at revolt from Solomon, and afterwards had taken refuge in Egypt. Only Judah and Jerusalem remained faithful to the house of David. Among the causes of the revolt of the ten tribes, jealousy of Judah must certainly be reckoned as one. The power of Joseph had been weakened by the Philistines, and by the establishment of the monarchy the centre of gravity had been shifted from the north where it naturally lay. But now it was restored to its old seat; for once more it was situated, not in Judah, but in Joseph. Monarchy itself, however, was not abolished by the revolting tribes, conclusively showing how unavoidable and how advantageous that institution was now felt to be; but at the same time they did not refrain from attempts to combine its advantages with those of anarchy, a folly which was ultimately the cause of their ruin. As for their departure from the Mosaic cultus observed at Jerusalem on the other hand, it was first alleged against them as a sin only by the later Jews. At the time religion put no obstacle in the way of their separation; on the contrary, it actually suggested and promoted it (Ahijah of Shiloh). The Jerusalem cultus had not yet come to be regarded as the alone legitimate; that instituted by Jeroboam at Bethel and at Dan was recognised as equally right; images of the Deity were exhibited in all three places, and indeed in every place where a house of God was found. So far as the religious and intellectual life of the nation was concerned, there was no substantial difference between the two kingdoms, except indeed in so far as new displays of vigorous initiative generally proceeded from Israel. /1/ ************************************* 1. Even in the Deuteronomic redaction of the Book of Kings indeed, and still more by the Chronicler, the political rebellion of Israel is regarded as having been ecclesiastical and religious in its character. The Book of Chronicles regards Samaria as a heathen kingdom, and recognises Judah alone as Israel. But in point of fact Judah takes up the history of Israel only after the fall of Samaria; see ## 6, 7. ************************************ Rehoboam did not readily accept the situation; he sought to reduce the revolt by force of arms, with what degree of success is shown by the fact that his rival found himself constrained to take up his residence at Peniel (near Mahanaim) on the other side of Jordan. The invasion of Shishak, however, who took Jerusalem and burnt it, gave Jeroboam at last a breathing space. The feud continued indeed, but Rehoboam could no longer dream of bringing back the ten tribes. The scale by and by turned in Israel's favour. King Baasha, who had seated himself on the throne in place of Nadab, Jeroboam's son, took the offensive, and Asa ben Rehoboam had no help for it but to call in Benhadad of Damascus against his adversary. In this way he gained his immediate purpose, it is true, but by the most dangerous of expedients. Baasha's son Elah was supplanted by his vizier Zimri, who, however, was in his turn unable to hold his own against Omri, who had supreme command of the army. Against Omri there arose in another part of the country a rival, Tibni ben Ginath, who succeeded in maintaining some footing until his death, when Omri became supreme. Omri must be regarded as the founder of the first dynasty, in the proper sense of that word, in Israel, and as the second founder of the kingdom itself, to which he gave a permanent capital in Samaria. The Bible has hardly anything to tell us about him, but his importance is evident from the fact that among the Assyrians "the kingdom of Omri" / 1/ ********************************** 1. Bit Humri, like )OIKOS *LUSANIOU, and similar territorial names in Syriac. ********************************* was the ordinary name of Israel. According to the inscription of Mesha, it was he who again subjugated Moab, which had become independent at the death of David or of Solomon. He was not so successful against the Damascenes, to whom he had to concede certain privileges in his own capital (1Kings xx. 34) /2/ ********************************** 2. Omri's accession is to be placed somewhere about 900 B.C It is a date, and the first, that can be determined with some precision, if we place the battle of Karkar (854) near the end of Ahab's reign, and take the servitude of Moab, which lasted forty years and ended with Ahab's deatb, to begin in Omri's first decade. ********************************** Ahab, who succeeded Omri his father, seems during the greater part of his reign to have in some sort acknowledged Syrian suzerainty. In no other way can we account for the fact that in the battle of Karkar against the Assyrians (854 B.C.) a contingent was contributed by him. But this very battle made the political situation so clear that he was led to break off his relations with Damascus. With this began a series of ferocious attacks on Israel by Benhadad and Hazael. They were met by Ahab with courage and success, but in the third year of that fifty years' war he fell in the battle at Ramoth Gilead (c. 851). ***** After the events recorded in 1Kings xx., a forced alliance with Damascus on the part of Samaria is incredible; but the idea of spontaneous friendly relations is also inadmissible. Schrader indeed finds support for the latter theory in 1Kings xx. 34; but in that passage there is no word of any offensive or defensive alliance between the rival kings; all that is stated is that Ahab releases the captive Benhadad on condition (BBRYT) that the latter undertakes certain obligations, particularly those of keeping the peace and restoring the cities which had been taken. By this arrangement no change was made in the previously strained relations of the two kingdoms; and, moreover, the BRYT was not kept (xxii. 1 seq.). Not much nearer the truth than the preceding is the view that the danger threatened by Assyria drove the kings of Syria and Palestine into one another's arms, and so occasioned an alliance between Ahab and Benhadad also. For if feelings of hostility existed at all between the two last named, then Ahab could not do otherwise than congratulate himself that in the person of Shalmaneser II. there had arisen against Benhadad an enemy who would be able to keep him effectually in check. That Shalmaneser might prove dangerous to himself probably did not at that time occur to him; but if it had he would still have chosen the remote in preference to the immediately threatening evil. For it was the political existence of Israel that was at stake in the struggle with Damascus; in such circumstances every ally would of course be welcome, every enemy of the enemy would be hailed as a friend, and the political wisdom which Max Duncker attributes to Ahab would have been nothing less than unpardonable folly. The state of matters was at the outset in this respect just what it continued to be throughout the subsequent course of events; the Assyrian danger grew in subsequent years, and with it grew the hostility between Damascus and Samaria. This fact admits only of one explanation,--that the Israelites utilised to the utmost of their power for their own protection against the Syrians the difficulties into which the latter were thrown by Shalmaneser II., and that these in their turn, when the Assyrians gave them respite, were all the fiercer in their revenge. On the evidence of the monuments and the Bible we may even venture to assert that it was the Assyrian attacks upon Damascus which at that time preserved Israel from becoming Aramaic,--of course only because Israel made the most of them for her political advantage. Assuming that Ahab the Israelite (Ahabu Sirlaai) fought in the battle of Karkar (854) on the side of the king of Damascus, it was only because he could not help himself; but if it is actually the case that he did so, the battle of Karkar must have taken place BEFORE the events recorded in 1Kings xx. **** The Moabites took advantage of an accession under such critical circumstances to shake off the yoke imposed by Omri forty years before; an accurate account of their success, obviously written while the impression of it was still fresh, /1/ has come down to ******************************* 1. It is obvious that Mesha's narrative is to be taken with 2Kings i. 1, and not with 2Kings iii. ****************************** us in the famous inscription of King Mesha. Ahaziah, Ahab's immediate successor, was obliged to accept the situation; after his early death a futile attempt again to subjugate them was made by his brother Joram. Such a campaign was possible to him only in the event of the Syrians keeping quiet, and in point of fact it would appear that they were not in a position to follow up the advantage they had gained at Ramoth; doubtless they were hampered by the inroads of the Assyrians in 850 and 849. As soon as they got a little respite, however, they lost no time in attacking Joram, driving him into his capital, where they besieged him. Samaria had already been brought to the utmost extremities of famine, when suddenly the enemy raised the siege on account of a report of an invasion of their own land by the "Egyptians and Hittites." Possibly we ought to understand by these the Assyrians rather, who in 846 renewed their attacks upon Syria; to ordinary people in Israel the Assyrians were an unknown quantity, for which it would be natural in popular story to substitute something more familiar. This turn of affairs relieved Joram from his straits; it would even seem that, favoured by a change of dynasty at Damascus, he had succeeded in taking from the Syrians the fortress of Ramoth in Gilead, which had been the object of Ahab's unsuccessful endeavours, when suddenly there burst upon the house of Omri the overwhelming catastrophe for which the prophets had long been preparing. When the prophets first made their appearance, some time before the beginning of the Philistine war, they were a novel phenomenon in Israel; but in the interval they had become so naturalised that they now had a recognised and essential place in connection with the religion of Jehovah. They had in the process divested themselves of much that had originally characterised them, but they still retained their habit of appearing in companies and living together in societies, and also that of wearing a peculiar distinctive dress. These societies of theirs had no ulterior aims; the rabbinical notion that they were schools and academies in which the study of the Torah and of sacred history was pursued imports later ideas into an earlier time. First-rate importance on the whole cannot be claimed for the Nebiim, but occasionally there arose amongst them a man in whom the spirit which was cultivated within their circles may be said to have risen to the explosive pitch. Historical influence was exercised at no time save by these individuals, who rose above their order and even placed themselves in opposition to it, but always at the same time had their base of operations within it. The prototype of this class of exceptional prophets, whom we not unjustly have been accustomed to regard as the true, is Elijah of Thisbe, the contemporary of Ahab. ln compliment to Jezebel his wife, Ahab had set up in Samaria a temple with richly endowed religious services in honour of the Syrian Baal. In doing so he had no intention of renouncing Jehovah; Jehovah continued to be the national God after whom he named his sons Ahaziah and Jehoram. The destruction of Jehovah's altars or the persecution of His prophets was not at all proposed, or even the introduction of a foreign cultus elsewhere than in Samaria. Jehovah's sovereignty over Israel being thus only remotely if at all imperilled, the popular faith found nothing specially offensive in a course of action which had been followed a hundred years before by Solomon also. Elijah alone was strenuous in his opposition; the masses did not understand him, and were far from taking his side. To him only, but not to the nation, did it seem like a halting between two opinions, an irreconcilable inconsistency, that Jehovah should be worshipped as Israel's God and a chapel to Baal should at the same time be erected in Israel. In solitary grandeur did this prophet tower conspicuously over his time; legend, and not history, could alone preserve the memory of his figure. There remains a vague impression that with him the development of Israel's conception of Jehovah entered upon a new stadium, rather than any data from which it can be ascertained wherein the contrast of the new with the old lay. After Jehovah, acting more immediately within the political sphere, had established the nation and kingdom, he now began in the spiritual sphere to operate against the foreign elements, the infusion of which previously had been permitted to go on almost unchecked. /1/ ****************************************** 1. It is worth noticing how much more frequent from this period onwards proper names compounded with the word Jehovah become. Among the names of the judges and of the kings before Ahab in Israel and Asa in Judah, not a single instance occurs; thenceforward they become the rule. ****************************************** The Rechabites, who arose at that time, protested in their zeal for Jehovah altogether against all civilisation which presupposes agriculture, and in their fundamental principles aimed at a recurrence to the primitive nomadic life of Israel in the wilderness; the Nazarites abstained at least from wine, the chief symbol of Dionysiac civilisation. In this indeed Elijah was not with them; had he been so, he would doubtless have been intelligible to the masses. But, comprehending as he did the spirit from which these demonstrations proceeded, he thought of Jehovah as a great principle which cannot coexist in the same heart with Baal. To him first was it revealed that we have not in the various departments of nature a variety of forces worthy of our worship, but that there exists over all but one Holy One and one Mighty One, who reveals Himself not in nature but in law and righteousness in the world of man. The indignation he displayed against the judicial murder at Jezreel was as genuine and strong as that which he manifested against the worship of Baal in Samaria; the one was as much a crime against Jehovah as the other. Elijah ascended to heaven before he had actually achieved much in the world. The idea which his successors took from him was that it was necessary to make a thorough clearance from Samaria of the Baal worship and of the house of Ahab as well. For this practical end Elisha made use of practical means. When Elijah, after the murder of Naboth, had suddenly appeared before Ahab and threatened him with a violent end, an officer of high command had been present, Jehu ben Nimshi, and he had never forgotten the incident. He now found himself at the head of the troops at Ramoth Gilead after the withdrawal to Jezreel of Joram ben Ahab from the field to be healed of his wound. To Elisha the moment seemed a suitable one for giving to Jehu in Jehovah's name the command now to carry out Elijah's threat against the house of Ahab. Jehu gained over the captains of the army, and carried out so well the task with which the prophet had commissioned him that not a single survivor of Ahab's dynasty or of his court was left. He next extirpated Baal and his worshippers in Samaria. From that date no worship of foreign gods seems ever to have recurred in Israel. Idolatry indeed continued to subsist, but the images, stones, and trees, even the seraphim apparently, belonged to the cultus of Jehovah, or were at least brought into relation with it. Jehu founded the second and last dynasty of the kingdom of Samaria His inheritance from the house of Omri included the task of defending himself against the Syrians. The forces at his disposal being insufficient for this, he resorted to the expedient of seeking to urge the Assyrians to renew their hostilities against the Arameeans. For this end his ambassadors carried presents to Shalmaneser II.; these were not of a regular but only of an occasional character, but the vanity of the great king represents them as the tribute of a vassal. In the years 842 and 839 Assyrian campaigns against Hazael of Damascus actually took place; then they were intermitted for a long time, and the kings of Samaria, Jehu and his two successors, were left to their own resources. These were evil times for Israel. With a barbarity never intermitted the frontier war went on in Gilead, where Ammon and Moab showed themselves friendly to the Syrian cause (Amos i.); occasionally great expeditions took place, one of which brought King Hazael to the very walls of Jerusalem. It was only with the greatest difficulty that Israel's independence was maintained. Once more religion went hand in hand with the national cause; the prophet Elisha was the main stay of the kings in the struggle with the Syrians, "the chariot and horsemen of Israel." Joash ben Joahaz ben Jehu at last succeeded in inflicting upon Syria several blows which proved decisive. Thenceforward Israel had nothing to fear from that quarter. Under Joash's son, Jeroboam II., the kingdom even reached a height of external power which recalled the times of David. Moab was again subdued; southwards the frontier extended to the brook of the wilderness (Amos vi. 14), and northward to Hamath. 5. GOD, THE WORLD, AND THE LIFE OF MEN IN OLD ISRAEL. Before proceeding to consider the rise of those prophets who were the makers of the new Israel, it will not be out of place here to cast a glance backwards upon the old order of things which perished with the kingdom of Samaria. With reference to any period earlier than the century 850-750 B.C., we can hardly be said to possess any statistics. For, while the facts of history admit of being handed down with tolerable accuracy through a considerable time, a contemporary literature is indispensable for the description of standing conditions. But it was within this period that Hebrew literature first flourished--after the Syrians had been finally repulsed, it would seem. Writing of course had been practiced from a much earlier period, but only in formal instruments, mainly upon stone. At an early period also the historical sense of the people developed itself in connection with their religion; but it found its expression in songs, which in the first instance were handed down by word of mouth only. Literature began with the collection and writing out of those songs; _the Book of the Wars of the Lord_ and _the Book of Jashar_ were the oldest historical books. The transition was next made to the writing of prose history with the aid of legal documents and family reminiscences; a large portion of this early historiography has been preserved to us in the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings. Contemporaneously also certain collections of laws and decisions of the priests, of which we have an example in Exodus xxi. xxii., were committed to writing. Somewhat later, perhaps, the legends about the patriarchs and primitive times, the origin of which cannot be assigned to a very early date, /1/ ***************************************** 1. Even the Jehovistic narratives about the patriarchs belong to the time when Israel had already become a powerful kingdom; Moab, Ammon,, and Edom had been subjugated (Genesis xxvii. 29), and vigorous frontier wars were being carried on with the Syrians about Gilead (Genesis xxxi. 52). In Genesis xxvii. 40 allusion is made to the constantly repeated subjugations of Edom by Judah, alternating with successful revolts on the part of the former; see Delitzsch on K)$R;. ************************************* received literary shape. Specially remarkable is the rise of a written prophecy. The question why it was that Elijah and Elisha committed nothing to writing, while Amos a hundred years later is an author, hardly admits of any other answer than that in the interval a non-literary had developed into a literary age. How rapid the process was may be gathered from a comparison between the singularly broken utterances of the earlier oracle contained in Isaiah xv. xvi. with the orations of Isaiah himself. We begin our survey with that of the family relations. Polygamy was rare, monogamy the rule; but the right of concubinage was unlimited. While a high position was accorded both by affection and custom to the married wife, traces still existed of a state of society in which she was regarded as property that went with the inheritance. The marriage of relations was by no means prohibited; no offence was taken at the circumstance that Abraham was the husband of his sister (by a different mother). Parents had full power over their children; they had the right to sell and even to sacrifice them. In this respect, however, the prevailing usage was mild, as also in regard to slaves, who socially held a position of comparative equality with their masters, and even enjoyed some measure of legal protection. Slavery, it is plain, had not thc same political importance as with the Greeks and Romans; it could have been abolished without any shock to the foundations of the state. Throughout this period agriculture and gardening continued to be regarded as man's normal calling (Genesis iii. iv.); the laws contained in Exod. xxi.-xxiii. rest entirely upon this assumption. To dwell in peace under his vine and under his fig-tree was the ideal of every genuine lsraelite. Only in a few isolated districts, as in the country to the east of Jordan and in portions of Judah, did the pastoral life predominate. Art and industry were undeveloped, and were confined to the production of simple domestic necessaries. Commerce was in old time followed exclusively by the Canaanite towns, so that the word "Canaanite" was used in the general sense of "trader." But by and by Israel began to tread in Canaan's footsteps (Hosea xii. 8, 9), /1/ **************************** 1. "Canaan (i.e., Ephraim Canaanised) has deceitful balances in his hand, and loves to overreach. Ephraim indeed saith, I am become rich, I have gained weealth; but all his profits will not suffice for (expiation of) the guilt which he has incurred." **************************** The towns grew more influential than the country; money notably increased; and the zeal of piety was quite unable to arrest the progress of the change which set in. The kings themselves, from Solomon onwards, were the first to set the bad example; they eagerly sought to acquire suitable harbours, and in company or in competition with the Syrians entered upon large commercial transactions. The extortions of the corn-market, the formation of large estates, the frequency of mortgages, all show that the small peasant proprietorship was unable to hold its own against the accumulations of wealth. The wage-receiving class increased, and cases in which free Hebrews sold themselves into slavery were not rare. On all hands the material progress of the commonwealth made itself felt, the old simplicity of manners disappeared, and luxury increased. Buildings of hewn stone began to be used even by private individuals. The towns, especially the chief ones, were fortified; and in time of war refuge was sought in them, and not as formerly in woods and caves. Even in the time of David the Israelites always fought on foot; but now horses and chariots were regarded as indispensable. The bow came to be the principal weapon of offence, and a military class appears to have sprung up. The monarchy retained in the kingdom of the ten tribes its military character; the commander-in-chief was the first person in the kingdom. In internal affairs its interference was slight; with systematic despotism it had little in common, although of course within its narrow sphere it united executive and legislative functions. It was little more than the greatest house in Israel. The highest official was called "master of the household." The court ultimately grew into a capital, the municipal offices of which were held by royal officials. The provinces had governors who, however, in time of war withdrew to the capital (1Kings xx.); the presumption is that their sole charge was collection of the revenue. The state was not charged with affairs of internal administration; all parties were left free to maintain their own interests. Only in cases in which conflicts had emerged in consequence could the king be approached. Ruling and judging were regarded as one and the same; there was but one word for both (2Kings xv. 5). Still, the king was not altogether the only judge; there were, in fact, a number of independent jurisdictions. Wherever within a particular circle the power lay, there the right of judging was also found, whether exercised by heads of families and communities or by warriors and powerful lords. It was only because the king was the most powerful that he was regarded as the judge of last resort; but it was equally permitted to apply to him from the first. Of method and rule in these things there was but little; a man was glad to find any court to receive his complaint. Of course without complaint one got no justice. The administration of justice was at best but a scanty supplement to the practice of self-help. The heir of the murdered man would not forego the right of blood revenge; but his family or the commune gave him aid, and in case of need took his place, for bloodshed had at all hazards to be atoned for. The firm establishment of civil order was rendered all the more difficult by the continual wars and violent changes of dynasty which ever and anon made its very existence problematical. Power, which is more important than righteousness to a judicatory, was what the government was wanting in In the simpler social conditions of the earlier time a state which was adapted merely for purposes of war might easily be found to work satisfactorily enough, but a more complex order of things had now arisen. Social problems had begun to crop up; for the poor and the proletariat the protection of a thoughtful government had come to be required, but was not forthcoming. But these defects did not check all progress. The weakness of the government, the want of political consolidation, were insufficient to arrest intellectual advance or to corrupt the prevailing moral tone and feeling for justice; in fact it was precisely in this period (the period in which the main part of the Jehovistic history must have been written) that the intellectual and moral culture of the people stood at its highest. Even when the machinery of the monarchy had got out of order, the organisation of the families and communes continued to subsist; the smaller circles of social life remained comparatively untouched by the catastrophes that shook the greater. Above all, the national religion supplied the spiritual life with an immovable basis. The favourite illustrations of the power of religion in the Israel of that period are drawn from the instances of great prophets who raised kings out of the dust and smote them to it again. But the influence and importance of these is generally exaggerated in the accounts we have. That among them there occasionally occurred manifestations of such power as to give a new turn in history is indeed true; a figure like that of Elijah is no mere invention. But such a man as he was a prophecy of the future rather than an actual agent in shaping the present. On the whole, religion was a peaceful influence, conserving rather than assailing the existing order of things. The majority of the prophets were no revolutionists; rather in fact were they always too much inclined to prophesy in accordance with the wishes of the party in power. Besides, in ordinary circumstances their influence was inferior to that of the priests, who were servants of royalty at the chief sanctuaries, but everywhere attached to the established order. The Torah of Jehovah still continued to be their special charge. It was not even now a code or law in our sense of the word; Jehovah had not yet made His Testament; He was still living and active in Israel. But the Torah appears during this period to have withdrawn itself somewhat from the business of merely pronouncing legal decisions and to have begun to move in a freer field. It now consisted in teaching the knowledge of God, in showing the right God-given way where men were not sure of themselves. Many of the counsels of the priests had become a common stock of moral convictions, which, indeed, were all of them referred to Jehovah as their author, yet had ceased to be matters of direct revelation. Nevertheless the Torah had still occupation enough, the progressive life of the nation ever affording matter for new questions. Although in truth the Torah and the moral influence of Jehovah upon the national life were things much weightier and much more genuinely Israelitic than the cultus, yet this latter held on the whole a higher place in public opinion. To the ordinary man it was not moral but liturgical acts that seemed to be truly religious. Altars of Jehovah occurred everywhere, with sacred stones and trees--the latter either artificial (Asheras) or natural--beside them; it was considered desirable also to have water in the neighbourhood (brazen sea). In cases where a temple stood before the altar it contained an ephod and teraphim, a kind of images before which the lot was cast by the priest. Of the old simplicity the cultus retained nothing; at the great sanctuaries especially (Bethel, Gilgal, Beersheba) it had become very elaborate. Its chief seasons were the agricultural festivals--the passover, the feast of weeks, and most especially the feast of the ingathering at the close of the year. These were the only occasions of public worship properly so called, at which every one was expected to attend; in other cases each worshipper sought the presence of God only in special circumstances, as for example at the beginning and at the end of particular undertakings. The cultus, as to place, time, matter, and form, belonged almost entirely to the inheritance which Israel had received from Canaan; to distinguish what belonged to the worship of Jehovah from that which belonged to Baal was no easy matter. /1/ ****************************************** 1. The description of the cultus by the Prophet Hosea shows this very clearly. It is obvious enough, however, that the object was to serve JEHOVAH, and not any foreign deity, by this worship. ***************************************** It was the channel through which also paganism could and did ever anew gain admittance into the worship of Jehovah. Yet that publicity of the cultus which arose out of the very nature of Jehovah, and in consequence of which the teraphim even were removed from the houses to the temples, cannot but have acted as a corrective against the most fatal excesses. As for the substance of the national faith, it was summed up principally in the proposition that Jehovah is the God of Israel. But "God" was equivalent to "helper;" that was the meaning of the word. "Help," assistance in all occasions of life,--that was what Israel looked for from Jehovah, not "salvation" in the theological sense. The forgiveness of sins was a matter of subordinate importance; it was involved in the "help," and was a matter not of faith but of experience. The relation between the people and God was a natural one as that of son to father; it did not rest upon observance of the conditions of a pact. But it was not on that account always equally lively and hearty; Jehovah was regarded as having varieties of mood. To secure and retain His favour sacrifices were useful; by them prayer and thanksgiving were seconded. Another main article of faith was that Jehovah judges and recompenses, not after death (then all men were thought to be alike), but upon the earth. Here, however, but little account was taken of the individual; over him the wheel of destiny remorselessly rolled; his part was resignation and not hope. Not in the career of the individual but in the fate of families and nations did the righteousness of Jehovah find scope for its manifestation; and this is the only reason why the religion could dispense with the conceptions of heaven and hell. For the rest, it was not always easy to bring the second article into correlation with the first; in practice the latter received the superior place. It need hardly be said that superstition of every kind also abounded. But the superstition of the Israelites had as little real religious significance as had that poetical view of nature which the Hebrews doubtless shared in greater or less degree with all the other nations of antiquity. 6. THE FALL OF SAMARIA. Under King Jeroboam II., two years before a great earthquake that served ever after for a date to all who had experienced it, there occurred at Bethel, the greatest and most conspicuous sanctuary of Jehovah in Israel, a scene full of significance. The multitude were assembled there with gifts and offerings for the observance of a festival, when there stepped forward a man whose grim seriousness interrupted the joy of the feast. It was a Judaean, Amos of Tekoa, a shepherd from the wilderness bordering on the Dead Sea. Into the midst of the joyful tones of the songs which with harp and tabor were being sung at the sacred banquet he brought the discordant note of the mourner's wail. For over all the joyous stir of busy life his ear caught the sounds of death: "the virgin of Israel is fallen, never more to rise; lies prostrate in her own land with no one to lift her up." He prophesied as close at hand the downfall of the kingdom which just at that moment was rejoicing most in the consciousness of power, and the deportation of the people to a far-off northern land. There was something rotten in the state of Israel in spite of the halcyon days it enjoyed under Jeroboam II. From the indirect results of war, from changes in the tenure and in the culture of the soil, from defective administration of justice, the humbler classes had much to suffer; they found that the times were evil. But it was not this that caused Amos to foresee the end of Israel, not a mere vague foreboding of evil that forced him to leave his flocks; the dark cloud that threatened on the horizon was plain enough--the Assyrians. Once already at an earlier date they had directed their course south-westwards, without, however, on that occasion becoming a source of danger to the Israelites. But now that the bulwark against the Assyrians, Aram of Damascus, was falling into ruins, a movement of these against Lebanon in the time of Jeroboam II. opened to Israel the alarming prospect that sooner or later they would have to meet the full force of the irresistible avalanche. What then? The common man was in no position truly to estimate the danger; and, so far as he apprehended it, he lived in the firm faith that Jehovah would not abandon His people in their straits. The governing classes prided themselves on the military resources of Israel, or otherwise tried to dismiss from their minds all thought of the gravity of the situation. But Amos heard the question distinctly enough, and did not hesitate to answer it: the downfall of Israel is imminent. It was nothing short of blasphemy to utter anything of this kind, for everything, Jehovah Himself included, depended on the existence of the nation. But the most astounding thing has yet to come; not Asshur, but Jehovah Himself, is bringing about the overthrow of Israel; through Asshur it is Jehovah that is triumphing over Israel. A paradoxical thought--as if the national God were to cut the ground from under His own feet! For the faith in Jehovah as the God of Israel was a faith that He intervenes on behalf of His people against all enemies, against the whole World; precisely in times of danger was religion shown by staying oneself upon this faith. Jehovah might indeed, of course, hide His face for a time, but not definitively; in the end He ever arose at last against all opposing powers. "The day of the Lord" was an object of hope in all times of difficulty and oppression; it was understood as self-evident that the crisis would certainly end in favour of Israel. Amos took up the popular conception of that day; but how thoroughly did he change its meaning! "Woe to them who long for the day of the Lord!--What to you is the day of the Lord,? It is darkness, not light." His own opposition to the popular conception is formulated in a paradox which he prefixes as theme to the principal section of his book:--"Us alone does Jehovah know," say the Israelites, drawing from this the inference that He is on their side, and of course must take their part. "You only do I know," Amos represents Jehovah as saying, "therefore do I visit upon you all your sins." If the question, Whereon did Jehovah's relation to Israel ultimately rest? be asked, the answer, according to the popular faith, must substantially be that it rested on the fact that Jehovah was worshipped in Israel and not among the heathen, that in Israel were His altars and His dwelling. His cultus was the bond between Him and the nation; when therefore it was desired to draw the bond still closer, the solemn services of religion were redoubled. But to the conception of Amos Jehovah is no judge capable of accepting a bribe; with the utmost indignation he repudiates the notion that it is possible to influence Him by gifts and offerings. Though Israel alone has served Him he does not on that account apply any other standard to it than to other nations (chaps. i. ii.). If Israel is better known to Him, it does not follow that on that account He shuts His eyes and blindly takes a side. Neither Jehovah nor His prophet recognises two moral standards; right is everywhere right, wrong always wrong, even though committed against Israel's worst enemies (ii. 1). What Jehovah demands is righteousness,--nothing more and nothing less; what He hates is injustice. Sin or offence to the Deity is a thing of purely moral character; with such emphasis this doctrine had never before been heard. Morality is that for the sake of which all other things exist; it is the alone essential thing in the world. It is no postulate, no idea, but at once a necessity and a fact, the most intensely living of personal powers-Jehovah the God of Hosts. In wrath, in ruin, this holy reality makes its existence known; it annihilates all that is hollow and false. Amos calls Jehovah the God of Hosts, never the God of Israel. The nation as such is no religious conception to him; from its mere existence he cannot formulate any article of faith. Sometimes it seems as if he were denying Israel's prerogative altogether. He does not really do so, but at least the prerogative is conditional and involves a heavy responsibility. The saying in iii. 2 recalls Luke xii. 47. The proposition "Jehovah knows Israel" is in the mouth of Amos almost the same thing as "Israel knows Jehovah; " save only that this is not to be regarded as any merit on Israel's part, but as a manifestation of the grace of Jehovah, who has led His people by great deeds and holy men, and so made Himself known. Amos knows no other truth than that practical one which he has found among his own people and nowhere else, Iying at the foundation of life and morality, and which he regards as the product of a divine providential ordering of history. From this point of view, so thoroughly Israelitish, he pronounces Israel's condemnation. He starts from premisses generally conceded, but he accentuates them differently and draws from them divergent conclusions. Amos was the founder, and the purest type, of a new phase of prophecy. The impending conflict of Asshur with Jehovah and Israel, the ultimate downfall of Israel, is its theme. Until that date there had subsisted in Palestine and Syria a number of petty kingdoms and nationalities, which had their friendships and enmities with one another, but paid no heed to anything outside their own immediate environment, and revolved, each on its own axis, careless of the outside world, until suddenly the Assyrians burst in upon them. These commenced the work which was carried on by the Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks, and completed by the Romans. They introduced a new factor, the conception of the world,--the world of course in the historical sense of that expression. In presence of that conception the petty nationalities lost their centre of gravity, brute fact dispelled their illusions, they flung their gods to the moles and to the bats (Isaiah ii.). The prophets of Israel alone did not allow themselves to be taken by surprise by what had occurred, or to be plunged in despair; they solved by anticipation the grim problem which history set before them. They absorbed into their religion that conception of the world which was destroying the religions of the nations, even before it had been fully grasped by the secular consciousness. Where others saw only the ruin of everything that is holiest, they saw the triumph of Jehovah over delusion and error. Whatever else might be overthrown, the really worthy remained unshaken. They recognised ideal powers only, right and wrong truth and falsehood; second causes were matters of indifference to them, they were no practical politicians. But they watched the course of events attentively, nay, with passionate interest. The present, which was passing before them, became to them as it were the plot of a divine drama which they watched with an intelligence that anticipated the _denouement_. Everywhere the same goal of the development, everywhere the same laws. The nations are the _dramatis personae_, Israel the hero, Jehovah the poet of the tragedy. /1/ ***************************** 1. In very much the same way the threatened and actual political annihilation of Ionia led to the rise of Greek philosophy (Xenophanes, Heraclitus). ***************************** The canonical prophets, the series of whom begins with Amos, were separated by an essential distinction from the class which had preceded them and which still continued to be the type of the common prophet. They did not seek to kindle either the enthusiasm or the fanaticism of the multitude; they swam not with but against the stream. They were not patriotic, at least in the ordinary acceptation of that word; they prophesied not good but evil for their people (Jer. xxviii. 8). Until their time the nation had sprung up out of the conception of Jehovah; now the conception of Jehovah was casting the nation into the shade. The natural bond between the two was severed, and the relation was henceforward viewed as conditional. As God of the righteousness which is the law of the whole universe, Jehovah could be Israel's God only in so far as in Israel the right was recognised and followed. The ethical element destroyed the national character of the old religion. It still addressed itself, to be sure, more to the nation and to society at large than to the individual; it insisted less upon a pure heart than upon righteous institutions; but nevertheless the first step towards universalism had been accomplished, towards at once the general diffusion and the individualisation of religion. Thus, although the prophets were far from originating a new conception of God, they none the less were the founders of what has been called "ethical monotheism." But with them this ethical monotheism was no product of the "self-evolution of dogma," but a progressive step which had been called forth simply by the course of events. The providence of God brought it about that this call came at an opportune period, and not too suddenly. The downfall of the nation did not take place until the truths and precepts of religion were already strong enough to be able to live on alone; to the prophets belongs the merit of having recognised the independence of these, and of having secured perpetuity to Israel by refusing to allow the conception of Jehovah to be involved in the ruin of the kingdom. They saved faith by destroying illusion. The event which Amos had foreseen was not long in coming. The Israelites flew spontaneously, like "silly doves," into the net of the Assyrians. Zechariah ben Jeroboam was overthrown after a short reign, Shallum his murderer and successor was also unable to hold his own, and was followed after the horrors of a civil war by Menahem ben Gadi (745 B.C). But Menahem, in the presence of domestic (and perhaps also foreign) assailants, /1/ had no other ********************************** 1. It is not inconceivable that the wars carried on by Tiglath-pileser II. against Hamath had some connection with his interventions in favour of Menahem. The kingdom of Hamath, which may have been threatened by Jeroboam II., may have availed itself of the state of matters which followed his death to secure its own aggrandisement at Israel's expense; in correspondence with this attack from the northern side another by Judah in concert with Hamath may well have been made from the south. In this way, though not without the aid of pure hypothesis, it might be possible to fit into the general historical connection the fragmentary Assyrian notices about Azariah of Judah and his relations to Hamath; the explanations suggested by the Assyriologists have hitherto been total failures. But in that case it would certainly be necessary to assume that the Assyrians were badly informed as to the nature of the relations between Hamath and Judah, and also as to the individual who at that time held the throne of Judah. Uzziah (= Azariah), who in his old age had become a leper, could only nominally at best have been king of Judah then. ************************************* resort than to purchase by payment of a great tribute the assistance of King Tiglath-pileser II., who at that time was giving new force to the Assyrian predominance in these regions. By such means he succeeded in attaining his immediate end, but the further consequence was that the rival party in the state turned for support to Egypt, and Palestine now became the arena of conflict between the two great world-powers. Menahem transmitted his kingdom to Pekahiah; Pekahiah was murdered about 735 B.C. by Pekah, and Pekah himself shortly afterwards was overthrown. All this happened within a few years. It would have been possible to conjecture the state of the country in these circumstances, even if we had not been informed of it by means of the prophetical book of Hosea, which dates from the time when the Assyrians had begun indeed to tamper with the country, but had not yet shown their full design. After the death of Jeroboam II. there had been wild outbursts of partisan war; none of the kings who in quick succession appeared and disappeared had real power, none established order. It was as if the danger from without, which was only too obviously threatening the existence of the kingdom, had already dissolved all internal bonds; every one was at war with his neighbour. Assyrians and Egyptians were called in to support this or that government; by such expedients the external confusion was, naturally, only increased. Was there any other quarter in which help could yet be sought? The people, led by the priests, turned to the altars of Jehovah, and outdid itself in pious works, as if by any such illusory means, out of all relation to the practical problem in hand, the gangrene of anarchy could possibly be healed. Still more zealous than Amos against the cultus was Hosea, not merely on the ground that it had the absurd motive of forcing Jehovah's favour, but also because it was of heathenish character, nature-worship and idolatry. That Jehovah is the true and only helper is certainly not denied by Hosea. But His help is coupled with the condition that Israel shall undergo a complete change, and of such a change he sees no prospect. On this account the downfall of the state is in Hosea's view inevitable, but not final ruin, only such an overthrow as is necessary for the transition to a new and fair recommencement. In Hosea's prophecies the relation between Jehovah and Israel is conceived of as dissoluble, and as actually on the point of being dissolved, but it has struck its roots so deep that it must inevitably at last establish itself again. The first actual collision between Israel and Assyria occurred in 734. Resin, king of Damascus, and Pekah, king of Samaria, had united in an expedition against Judah, where at that time Ahaz ben Jotham occupied the throne. But Ahaz parried the blow by placing himself under the protection of the Assyrians, who perhaps would in any case have struck in against the alliance between Aram and Israel. Tiglath-pileser made his first appearance in 734, first on the sea-coast of Palestine, and subsequently either in this or in the following year took up his quarters in the kingdom of the ten tribes. After he had ravaged Galilee and Gilead, he finally concluded a peace with Samaria conditionally on his receiving the head of King Pekah and a considerable yearly tribute. Hosea ben Elah was raised to the throne in Pekah's place and acknowledged by the Assyrian as a vassal For some ten years he held his position quietly, regularly paying his dues. But when at the death of Tiglath-pileser the Syro-Palestinian kingdoms rebelled _en masse_, Samaria also was seized with the delirium of patriotic fanaticism (Isaiah xxviii.). Relying upon the help of Seve, king of Ethiopia and Egypt, Hosea ventured on a revolt from Assyria. But the Egyptians left him in the lurch as soon as Shalmaneser IV., Tiglath-pileser's successor, invaded his territory. Before his capital had fallen, Hosea himself fell into the hands of the Assyrians. Samaria offered a desperate resistance, and succumbed only to Sargon, Shalmaneser's successor (72I). Energetic measures were adopted by the victor for the pacification of the country; he carried all the inhabitants of mark into captivity to Calachene, Gozanitis, and Armenia. Much light is thrown upon the conditions of the national religion then and upon its subsequent development by the single fact that the exiled Israelites were absorbed by the surrounding heathenism without leaving a trace behind them, while the population of Judah, who had the benefit of a hundred years respite, held their faith fast throughout the period of the Babylonian exile, and by means of it were able to maintain their own individuality afterwards in all the circumstances that arose. The fact that the fall of Samaria did not hinder but helped the religion of Jehovah is entirely due to the prophets. That they had foreseen the downfall of the state, and declared in the name of religion that it was inevitable, was a matter of much greater historical importance than the actual downfall itself. 7. THE DELIVERANCE OF JUDAH. Hitherto the small kingdom of Judah had stood in the background. Its political history had been determined almost exclusively by its relation to Israel. Under the dynasty of Omri the original enmity had been changed into a close but perhaps not quite voluntary friendship. Judah found itself drawn completely into the train of the more powerful neighbouring state, and seems even to have rendered it military service. The fall of the house of Omri was an ominous event for Judah as well as Israel; Jehu, as he passed to the throne, put to death not only Ahaziah the king but also two and forty other members of the royal house of David who had fallen into his hands; and those who still survived, children for the most part, were murdered wholesale by the regent Athaliah for reasons that are unknown. Only one little boy, Joash, was concealed from her fury, and by a successful conspiracy six years afterwards was placed upon the throne of his ancestors. At that time the Syrians were extending their incursions to Judah and Philistia, and Joash bought them off from Jerusalem with the temple treasures. Perhaps it was this disgrace that he expiated with his death; in like manner perhaps the assassination of his successor Amaziah is to be accounted for by the discredit he had incurred by a reckless and unsuccessful war against Israel. Just as Israel was beginning to recover itself after the happy termination of the Syrian wars, Judah also experienced its period of highest prosperity. What Jeroboam II. was to the northern kingdom, Uzziah was to that of the south. He appears to have obtained possession of Edom, and for a considerable time to have held that one province of David's conquests which fell to Judah; and at the trading port of Elath he revived the commerce which Solomon had created. The prosperity of his long reign was uninterrupted till in his later years he was smitten with leprosy, and found it necessary to hand over the affairs of the kingdom to his son Jotham. But Jotham appears to have died about the same time as his father,--his successor, still in very early youth (Isaiah iii. 12), being Ahaz ben Jotham ben Uzziah. If Judah could not compare with Israel in political and general historical importance, it nevertheless enjoyed more than one considerable advantage over the larger kingdom. It was much safer from foreign foes; for the Egyptians, as a rule, were not dangerous neighbours. But its chief advantage consisted in the stability of its dynasty. It was David who had elevated Judah and Jerusalem to a position of historical significance, and the prosperity of his house was most intimately connected with that of the town and territory, and even with that of religion. On two separate occasions it occurred that a king of Judah was murdered by subjects, but in both cases the "people of the land" rose up against the assassins and once more placed a member of the Davidic family upon the throne. The one actual recorded revolution was that against Athaliah, which had for its object the restoration of the throne to the legitimate heir. Under shelter of the monarchy the other institutions of the state also acquired a measure of permanency such as was not found at all in Israel, where everything depended on the character of individuals, and the existing order of things was ever liable to be subjected to fresh dispute. Life in Judah was a much more stable affair, though not so exciting or dramatic. Possibly the greater isolation of the little kingdom, its more intimate relations with the neighbouring wilderness, and the more primitive modes of life which resulted, were also factors which contributed to this general result. In the capital of course the life was not primitive, and its influence was undoubtedly greater than that of the country. Successive kings exerted themselves for its external improvement, and in this respect Hezekiah ben Ahaz was specially distinguished. Above all they manifested sincere interest in the temple, which from an early period exerted a powerful force of attraction over the entire mass of the population. They regulated the cultus according to their individual tastes, added to it or curtailed it at their pleasure, and dealt with the sacred treasures as they chose. Although the priests had in a certain sense great power--the conspiracy against Athaliah was led not by a prophet but by a priest,--they were nevertheless subjects of the king, and had to act according to his orders. That the cultus of Jehovah at Jerusalem was purer than that at Bethel or at Samaria is an assertion which is contradicted by more than one well-attested fact. In this respect there was no essential difference between Israel and Judah. It was in Israel that the reaction against Baal-worship originated which afterwards passed over into Judah; the initiative in all such matters was Israel's. There the experiments were made from which Jerusalem learned the lesson. How deep was the interest felt in the affairs of the larger kingdom by the inhabitants even of one of the smaller provincial towns of Judah is shown in the instance of Amos of Tekoah. Step by step with the decline of Israel after the death of Jeroboam II. did Judah rise in importance; it was already preparing to take the inheritance. The man through whom the transition of the history from Israel to Judah was effected, and who was the means of securing for the latter kingdom a period of respite which was fruitful of the best results for the consolidation of true religion, was the Prophet Isaiah. The history of his activity is at the same time the history of Judah during that period. Isaiah became conscious of his vocation in the year of King Uzziah's death; his earliest discourses date from the beginning of the reign of Ahaz. In them he contemplates the imminent downfall of Samaria, and threatens Judah also with the chastisement its political and social sins deserve. In chapter ix., and also in chapters ii.-v., he still confines himself on the whole to generalities quite after the manner of Amos. But on the occasion of the expedition of the allied Syrians and Ephraimites against Jerusalem he interposed with bold decision in the sphere of practical politics. To the very last he endeavoured to restrain Ahaz from his purpose of summoning the Assyrians to his help; he assured him of Jehovah's countenance, and offered him a token in pledge. When the king refused this, the prophet recognised that matters had gone too far, and that the coming of the Assyrians could not be averted. He then declared that the dreaded danger would indeed be obviated by that course, but that another far more serious would be incurred. For the Egyptians would resist the westward movement of Assyria, and Judah as the field of war would be utterly laid waste; only a remnant would remain as the basis of a better future. The actual issue, however, was not yet quite so disastrous. The Egyptians did not interfere with the Assyrians, and left Samaria and Damascus to their fate. Judah became indeed tributary to Assyria, but at the same time enjoyed considerable prosperity. Henceforward the prophet's most zealous efforts were directed to the object of securing the maintenance, at any price, of this condition of affairs. He sought by every means at his command to keep Judah from any sort of intervention in the politics of the great powers, in order that it might devote itself with undivided energies to the necessities of internal affairs. He actually succeeded in maintaining the peace for many years, even at times when in the petty kingdoms around the spirit of revolt was abroad. The ill success of all attempts elsewhere to shake off the yoke confirmed him in the conviction that Assyria was the rod of chastisement wielded by Jehovah over the nations, who had no alternative but to yield to its iron sway. While thirty years passed thus peacefully away so far as foreign relations were concerned, internal changes of all the greater importance were taking place. Hezekiah ben Ahaz undertook for the first time a thoroughgoing reformation in the cultus of Jehovah. "He removed the high places, and brake the pillars, and cut down the Ashera, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made;" so we are told in 2Kings xviii. 4, with a mixture of the general and the special that does not inspire much confidence. For, e.g., the "high places" which Solomon had raised on the Mount of Olives were not removed by Hezekiah, although they stood quite close to Jerusalem, and moreover were consecrated to foreign deities. But in every respect there must have been a wide difference between the objects and results of the reformations of Hezekiah and Josiah. Undoubtedly Hezekiah undertook his reforms in worship under the influence of Isaiah. Following in the footsteps of Hosea, who had been the first to take and to express offence at the use of images in the worship of Jehovah, this prophet, utilising the impression which the destruction of Samaria had produced in Jerusalem (Isaiah xvii., cf. Jeremiah iii.), strove to the utmost against the adoration of the work of men's hands in the holy places, against the Asheras and pillars (sun-pillars), and above all against the ephods, i.e., the idols of silver and gold, of which the land was full. But against the high places in and by themselves, against the multiplicity of the altars of Jehovah, he made no protest. "( In the Messianic time) ye shall loathe and cast away as an unclean thing your graven images with silver coverings and your molten images overlaid with gold," he says (xxx. 22); and the inference is that he contemplated the purification of the high places from superstitious excesses, but by no means their abolition. To this one object /1/ ******************************** 1. That is, to the abolition of the images. Jeremiah's polemic is directed no longer against the images, but against wood and stone, i.e, Asheras and pillars. The date of the reformation under Hezekiah is uncertain; perhaps it ought to be placed after Sennacherib's withdrawal from Jerusalem. ******************************** Hezekiah's reformation seems to have confined itself,--an object of much greater primary importance than the destruction of the altars themselves. Their destruction was a measure which arose simply out of despair of the possibility of cleansing them. Sargon, king of Assyria, was succeeded in 705 by Sennacherib. The opportunity was seized by Merodach Baladan of Babylon to secure his independence; and by means of an embassy he urged Hezekiah also to throw off the yoke. The proposal was adopted, and the king of Judah was joined by other petty kingdoms, especially some of the Philistine towns. Relations with Egypt were established to secure its support in case of need. Sennacherib's more immediate and pressing business in Babylon enabled Palestine to gain some time; but the issue of that revolt made self-deception impossible as to the probable result of the other movement. This was the period at which Isaiah, already far advanced in life, wielded his greatest influence. The preparations for revolt, the negotiations with Egypt, were concealed from him,-a proof how greatly he was feared at court. When he came to know of them, it was already too late to undo what had been done. But he could at least give vent to his anger. With Jerusalem, it seemed to him, the story of Samaria was repeating itself; uninstructed by that sad lesson, the capital was giving itself up to the mad intoxication of leaders who would inevitably bring her to ruin. "Quietness and rest" had been the motto given by Jehovah to Judah, powerless as it was and much in need of a period of peace; instead of this, defiance based on ignorance and falsehood expressed the prevailing temper. But those who refused to listen to the intelligible language of Jehovah would be compelled to hear Him speak in Assyrian speech in a way that would deafen and blind them. Isaiah shows himself no less indignant against the crowd that stupidly stared at his excitement than against the God-forsaken folly of the king, with his counsellors, his priests, and his prophets. They do not suffer themselves to be shaken out of their ordinary routine by the gravity of such a crisis as this; the living work of Jehovah is to them a sealed book; their piety does not extend beyond the respect they show for certain human precepts learnt by rote. Meanwhile Sennacherib, at the head of a great army, was advancing against Philistia and Judah along the Phoenician coast (701). Having captured Ascalon, he next laid siege to Ekron, which, after the combined Egyptian and Ethiopian army sent to its relief had been defeated at Eltheke, fell into the enemy's hand, and was severely dealt with. Simultaneously various fortresses of Judah were occupied, and the level country was devastated (Isaiah i.). The consequence was that Hezekiah, in a state of panic, offered to the Assyrians his sub-mission, which was accepted on payment of a heavy penalty, he being permitted, however, to retain possession of Jerusalem. He seemed to have got cheaply off from the unequal contest. The way being thus cleared, Sennacherib pressed on southwards, for the Egyptians were collecting their forces against him. The nearer he came to the enemy the more undesirable did he find it that he should leave in his rear so important a fortress as Jerusalem in the hands of a doubtful vassal. Notwithstanding the recently ratified treaty, therefore, he demanded the surrender of the city, believing that a policy of intimidation would be enough to secure it from Hezekiah. But there was another personality in Jerusalem of whom his plans had taken no account. Isaiah had indeed regarded the revolt from Assyria as a rebellion against Jehovah Himself, and therefore as a perfectly hopeless undertaking which could only result in the utmost humiliation and sternest chastisement for Judah. But still more distinctly than those who had gone before him did he hold firm as an article of faith the conviction that the kingdom would not be utterly annihilated; all his speeches of solemn warning closed with the announcement that a remnant should return and form the kernel of a new commonwealth to be fashioned after Jehovah's own heart. For him, in contrast to Amos, the great crisis had a positive character; in contrast to Hosea, he did not expect a temporary suspension of the theocracy, to be followed by its complete reconstruction, but in the pious and God-fearing individuals who were still to be met with in this Sodom of iniquity, he saw the threads, thin indeed yet sufficient, which formed the links between the Israel of the present and its better future. Over against the vain confidence of the multitude Isaiah had hitherto brought into prominence the darker obverse of his religious belief, but now he confronted their present depression with its bright reverse; faint-heartedness was still more alien to his nature than temerity. In the name of Jehovah he bade King Hezekiah be of good courage, and urged that he should by no means surrender. The Assyrians would not be able to take the city, not even to shoot an arrow into it nor to bring up their siege train against it. "I know thy sitting, thy going, and thy standing," is Jehovah's language to the Assyrian, "and also thy rage against me. And I will put my ring in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest." And thus it proved in the issue. By a still unexplained catastrophe, the main army of Sennacherib was annihilated on the frontier between Egypt and Palestine, and Jerusalem thereby freed from all danger. The Assyrian king had to save himself by a hurried retreat to Nineveh; Isaiah was triumphant. A more magnificent close of a period of influential public life can hardly be imagined. ***** What Sennacherib himself relates of his expedition against his rebellious vassals in Palestine (George Smith, Assyrian Eponym Canon, p. 67, 68, 131-136) runs parallel with 2 Kings xviii. 14-16, but not with the rest of the Bible narrative. These three verses are peculiar, and their source is different from that of the context. After having captured various Phoenician cities, and received tribute from a number of kings, his first measure is forcibly to restore the Assyrian governor who had been expelled from Ascalon, and next he turns his arms against Ekron. This city had put in irons its own king, Padi (who remained loyal to the suzerain), and handed him over to Hezekiah, who appears as the soul of the rebellion in these quarters. The Egyptians, who as usual have a hand in the matter, advance with an army for the relief of the beleaguered city, but are defeated near Eltheke in the immediate neighbourhood; Ekron is taken, remorselessly chastised, and forced to take Padi back again as its king. For Hezekiah in the meantime has delivered up his prisoner, and, terrified by the fall of his fortresses and the devastation of his territory, has accepted the position of a vassal once more, paying at the same time a heavy fine, inclusive of 30 talents of gold and 800 of silver. Such is the Assyrian account. If we treat the 300 talents mentioned in 2Kings xviii. 14 as Syrian (=800 Babylonian), it completely fills in the vague outlines given in 2Kings xviii. 14-16, and, while confirming in their place immediately after ver. 13 these verses, unrelated as they are to the main connection of the Biblical narrative, corrects them only in one point, by making it probable that the subjection of Hezekiah (which is not equivalent to the surrender of his city) took place while Sennacherib was still before Ekron, and not at later date when he had gone further south towards Libnah. As regards his further advance towards Egypt, and the reasons of his sudden withdrawal (related by Herodotus also from Egyptian tradition), the great king is silent, having nothing to boast of in it. The battle of Eltheke, which is to be regarded only as an episode in the siege of Ekron, being merely the repulse of the Egyptian relieving army, was not an event of great historical importance, and ought not to be brought into any connection either with 2Kings xix. 7 or with xix. 35; Sennacherib's inscription speaks only of the first and prosperous stage of the expedition, not of the decisive one which resulted so disastrously for him, as must be clear from the words themselves to every unprejudiced reader. 8. THE PROPHETIC REFORMATION. Isaiah was so completely a prophet that even his wife was called the prophetess after him. No such title could have been bestowed on the wife of either Amos or Hosea. But what distinguished him more than anything else from those predecessors was that his position was not, like theirs, apart from the government; he sat close to the helm, and took a very real part in directing the course of the vessel. He was more positive and practical than they; he wished to make his influence felt, and when for the moment he was unsuccessful in this so far as the great whole of the state was concerned, he busied himself in gathering round him a small circle of like-minded persons on whom his hope for the future rested. Now that Israel had been destroyed, he wished at all events to save Judah. The lofty ideality of his faith (ii. 1 seq.) did not hinder him from calling in the aid of practical means for this end. But the current of his activities was by the circumstances of the case directed into a channel in which after his death they continued to flow towards a goal which had hardly been contemplated by himself. The political importance of the people of Jehovah was reduced to a minimum when Judah only was left. Already at an earlier period in that kingdom the sacred had come to be of more importance than the secular; much more was this the case under the suzerainty of Assyria. The circumstances of the time themselves urged that the religion of Israel should divest itself of all politico-national character; but Isaiah also did his best to further this end. It was his most zealous endeavour to hold king and people aloof from every patriotic movement; to him the true religious attitude was one of quietness and sitting still, non-intervention in political affairs, concentration on the problems of internal government. But he was compelled to leave over for the coming Messiah (xi. 1 seq.) that reformation in legal and social matters which seemed to him so necessary; all that he could bring the secular rulers of his country to undertake was a reform in worship. This was the most easily solved of the problems alluded to above, and it was also that which most closely corresponded to the character of the kingdom of Judah. Thus it came about that the reform of the theocracy which had been contemplated by Isaiah led to its transformation into an ecclesiastical state. No less influential in effecting a radical change in the old popular religion was Isaiah's doctrine which identified the true Israel with the holy remnant which alone should emerge from the crisis unconsumed. For that remnant was more than a mere object of hope; it actually stood before him in the persons of that little group of pious individuals gathered around him. Isaiah founded no "ecclesiola in ecclesia" indeed, but certainly an "ecclesia in civitate Dei." Now began that distinction between the true Israel and the Israel according to the flesh, that bipartite division of the nation which became so important in later times. As head and founder of the prophetic party in Judah, Isaiah was, involuntarily, the man who took the first steps towards the institution of the church. The catastrophe which befell the army of Sennacherib had no very great effect upon the external affairs of Judah. Sennacherib indeed, being busy in the east, was unable to retrieve the loss he had sustained, but his son Esarhaddon, who succeeded him in 681, resumed the Egyptian war with better success. He made himself master of the Nile valley, and brought the Ethiopians into submission. That the petty kingdoms of Palestine returned to the old relations of dependence is to be taken as a matter of course. Judah appears to have resumed the yoke voluntarily, but the Samaritans only after force had been applied; they were afterwards deported, whereupon the deserted country was occupied by foreign colonists, who, however, accepted the cultus of the god of the land. That Manasseh ben Hezekiah should have again come under Assyrian suzerainty appears at that time to have made but little impression; since the time of Ahaz Judah had been accustomed to this relation. The Book of Kings speaks only of internal affairs under the reign of Manasseh. According to it, he was a bad ruler, who permitted, and even caused, innocent blood to flow like water. But what was of greater consequence for the future, he took up an attitude of hostility towards the prophetic party of reform, and put himself on the side of the reaction which would fain bring back to the place of honour the old popular half-pagan conception of Jehovah, as against the pure and holy God whom the prophets worshipped. The revulsion manifested itself as the reform had done, chiefly in matters of worship. The old idolatrous furniture of the sanctuaries was reinstated in its place, and new frippery was imported from all quarters, especially from Assyria and Babylon, to renovate the old religion; with Jehovah was now associated a "queen of heaven." Yet, as usual, the restoration did more than merely bring back the old order of things. What at an earlier period had been mere naivete now became superstition, and could hold its ground only by having imparted to it artificially a deeper meaning which was itself borrowed from the prophetical circle of ideas. Again, earnestness superseded the old joyousness of the cultus; this now had reference principally to sin and its atonement. Value was attached to services rendered to the Deity, just in proportion to their hardness and unnaturalness; at this period it was that the old precept to sacrifice to Jehovah the male that opens the matrix was extended to children. The counter- reformation was far from being unaffected by the preceding reformation, although it understood religious earnestness in quite another sense, and sought, not to eliminate heathenism from the cultus, but to animate it with new life. On the other hand, the reaction was, in the end, found to have left distinct traces of its influence in the ultimate issue of the reformation. We possess one document dating from Manasseh's time in Micah vi. 1- vii. 6. Here, where the lawlessness and utter disregard of every moral restraint in Judah are set in a hideous light, the prophetic point of view, as contrasted with the new refinements in worship, attains also its simplest and purest expression. Perhaps to this period the Decalogue also, which is so eloquently silent in regard to cultus, is to be assigned. Jehovah demands nothing for Himself, all that He asks is only for men; this is here the fundamental law of the theocracy. Manasseh's life was a long one, and his son Amon walked in his ways. The latter died after a brief reign, and with his death a new era for Judah began. It was introduced by the great catastrophe in which the Assyrian empire came to an end. The sovereignty of the world was beginning to pass out of the hands of the Semites into those of the Aryans. Phraortes of Media indeed was unsuccessful in his attempt against the Assyrians, but Cyaxares beat them and proceeded to besiege their capital. The Scythian invasion of Media and Western Asia (c. 630) at this juncture gave them another respite of more than twenty years; but even it tended to break in pieces the great, loosely-compacted monarchy. The provinces became gradually disintegrated, and the kingdom shrivelled up till it covered no more than the land of Asshur. /1/ **************************************** 1. Our knowledge of the events of the second half of the 7th century has remained singularly imperfect hitherto, notwithstanding the importance of the changes they wrought on the face of the ancient world. The account given above is that of Herodotus (i. 103-106), and there the matter must rest until really authentic sources shall have been brought to light. With regard to the final siege of Nineveh, our chief informant is Ctesias as quoted by Diodorus (ii. 26, 27). Whether the prophecy of Nabum relates to the LAST siege is doubtful (in spite of ii. 7, and the oracle given in Diodorus, (OTI THN *NINON )OUDEIS (ELEI KATA KRATOS )EAN MH PROTERON (O POTAMOS TH| POLEI GENHTAI POLEMOS), inasmuch as Nahum (i. 9) expressly speaks of the siege alluded to by him as the first, saying, "the trouble shall not rise up the second time." ****************************************** The inroad of the Scythians aroused to energy again the voice of prophecy which had been dumb during the very sinful but not very animated period of Manasseh's reign. Zephaniah and Jeremiah threatened with the mysterious northern foe, just as Amos and Hosea had formerly done with the Assyrians. The Scythians actually did invade Palestine in 626 (the 13th year of Josiah), and penetrated as far as to Egypt; but their course lay along the shore line, and they left Judah untouched. This danger that had come so near and yet passed them by, this instance of a prophetic threatening that had come to pass and yet been mercifully averted, made a powerful impression upon the people of Judah; public opinion went through a revolution in favour of the reforming party which was able to gain for itself the support also of the young king Josiah ben Amon. The circumstances were favourable for coming forward with a comprehensive programme for a reconstruction of the theocracy. In the year 621 (the eighteenth of Josiah) Deuteronomy was discovered, accepted, and carried into effect. The Deuteronomic legislation is designed for the reformation, by no means of the cultus alone, but at least quite as much of the civil relations of life. The social interest is placed above the cultus, inasmuch as everywhere humane ends are assigned for the rites and offerings. In this it is plainly seen that Deuteronomy is the progeny of the prophetic spirit. Still more plainly does this appear in the _motifs_ of the legislation; according to these, Jehovah is the only God, whose service demands the whole heart and every energy; He has entered into a covenant with Israel, but upon fundamental conditions that, as contained in the Decalogue, are purely moral and of absolute universality. Nowhere does the fundamental religious thought of prophecy find clearer expression than in Deuteronomy,--the thought that Jehovah asks nothing for Himself, but asks it as a religious duty that man should render to man what is right, that His will lies not in any unknown height, but in the moral sphere which is known and understood by all. /1/ ************************************** 1. The commandments which I command thee are not unattainable for thee, neither are they far off; not in heaven so that one might say, Who can climb up into heaven and bring them down, and tell us them that we might do them! not beyond the sea so that one might say, Who shall go over the sea, and fetch them, and tell us them that we might do them!--but the matter lies very near thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, so that thou canst do it (Deut. xxx. 11-14). **************************************** But the result of the innovation did not correspond exactly to its prophetic origin. Prophecy died when its precepts attained to the force of laws; the prophetic ideas lost their purity when they became practical. Whatever may have been contemplated, only provisional regulations actually admitted of being carried, and even these only in co-operation with the king and the priests, and with due regard to the capacity of the masses. The final outcome of the Deuteronomic reformation was principally that the cultus of Jehovah was limited to Jerusalem and abolished everywhere else,--such was the popular and practical form of prophetic monotheism. The importance of the Salomonic temple was thereby increased in the highest degree, and so also the influence of the priests of Jerusalem, the sons of Zadok, who now in point of fact got rid entirely of their rivals, the priests of the country districts. 9. JEREMIAH AND THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. Josiah lived for thirteen years after the accomplishment of his great work. It was a happy period of external and internal prosperity. The nation possessed the covenant, and kept it. It seemed as if the conditions had been attained on which, according to the prophets, the continuance of the theocracy depended; if their threatenings against Israel had been fulfilled, so now was Judah proving itself the heir of their promises. Already in Deuteronomy is the "extension of the frontier" taken into consideration, and Josiah actually put his hand to the task of seeking the attainment of this end. Jehovah and Israel, religion and patriotism, once more went hand in hand. Jeremiah alone did not suffer himself to be misled by the general feeling. He was a second Amos, upon a higher platform-- but, unlike his predecessor, a prophet by profession; his history, like Isaiah's, is practically the history of his time. In the work of introducing Deuteronomy he had taken an active part, and throughout his life he showed his zeal against unlawful altars and against the adoration of wood and stone (Asheras and pillars). But he was by no means satisfied with the efforts of the reformation that had been effected; nothing appeared to him more sinful or more silly than the false confidence produced by it in Jehovah and in the inviolability of His one true temple. This confidence he maintained to be delusive; Judah was not a whit better than Israel had been, Jerusalem would be destroyed one day like the temple of Shiloh. The external improvements on which the people of Judah prided themselves he held to leave this severe judgment unaffected; what was needed was a quite different sort of change, a change of heart, not very easy positively to define. An opportunity for showing his opposition presented itself to the prophet at the juncture when King Josiah had fallen at Megiddo in the battle with Pharaoh Necho (608), and when the people were seeking safety and protection by cleaving to Jehovah and His holy temple. At the instance of the priests and the prophets he had almost expiated with his blood the blasphemies he had uttered against the popular belief; but he did not suffer himself to be driven from his course. Even when the times had grown quiet again, he persisted, at the risk of his life and under universal reproach and ridicule, in his work as a prophet of evil. Moments of despair sometimes came to him; but that he had correctly estimated the true value of the great conversion of the nation was speedily proved by the facts. Although Deuteronomy was not formally abolished under Jehoiakim, who as the vassal of Egypt ascended the throne of his father Josiah, nevertheless it ceased to have practical weight, the battle of Megiddo having shown that in spite of the covenant with Jehovah the possibilities of non-success in war remained the same as before. Jehoiakim tended to return to the ways of Manasseh, not only as regarded idolatry, but also in his contempt for law and the private rights of his subjects;--the two things seem to stand in connection. The course of events at last brought upon the theocracy the visible ruin which Jeremiah had been so long expecting. After the Egyptians had, with comparative ease, subjugated Syria at the time when the Medes and Chaldaeans were busied with the siege of Nineveh, Nebuchadnezzar, that task accomplished, came upon them from Babylon and routed them on the Euphrates near Carchemish (605-4). The people of Judah rejoiced at the fall of Nineveh, and also at the result of Carchemish; but they were soon undeceived when the prospect began to open on them of simply exchanging the Egyptian for the Chaldaean yoke. The power of the Chaldaeans had been quite unsuspected, and now it was found that in them the Assyrians had suddenly returned to life. Jeremiah was the only man who gained any credit by these events. His much ridiculed "enemy out of the north," of whom he had of old been wont to speak so much, now began to be talked of with respect, although his name was no longer "the Scythian" but "the Babylonian." It was an epoch,--the close of an account which balanced in his favour. Therefore it was that precisely at this moment he received the Divine command to commit to writing that which for twenty-three years he had been preaching, and which, ever pronounced impossible, had now showed itself so close at hand. After the victory of Carchemish the Chaldaeans drove Pharaoh out of Syria, and also compelled the submission of Jehoiakim (c. 602). For three years he continued to pay his tribute, and then he withheld it; a mad passion for liberty, kindled by religious fanaticism, had begun to rage with portentous power amongst the influential classes, the grandees, the priests, and the prophets. Nebuchadnezzar satisfied himself in the first instance with raising against Judah several of the smaller nationalities around, especially the Edomites; not till 597 did he appear in person before Jerusalem. The town was compelled to yield; the more important citizens were carried into exile, amongst them the young king Jechoniah, son of Jehoiakim, who had died in the interval; Zedekiah ben Josiah was made king in his stead over the remnant left behind. The patriotic fanaticism that had led to the revolt was not broken even by this blow. Within four years afterwards new plans of liberation began to be again set on foot; but on this occasion the influence of Jeremiah proved strong enough to avert the danger. But when a definite prospect of help from Pharaoh Hophra (Apries) presented itself in 589, the craving for independence proved quite irrepressible. Revolt was declared; and in a very short time the Chaldaean army, with Nebuchadnezzar at its head, lay before Jerusalem. For a while everything seemed to move prosperously; the Egyptians came to the rescue, and the Chaleaeans were compelled to raise the siege in order to cope with them. At this there was great joy in Jerusalem; but Jeremiah continued to express his gloomy views. The event proved that he was right; the Egyptians were repulsed and the siege resumed. The city was bent on obstinate resistance; in vain did Jeremiah, at continual risk of his life, endeavour to bring it to reason. The king, who agreed with the prophet, did not venture to assert his opinion against the dominant terrorism. The town in these circumstances was at last taken by storm, and along with the temple, reduced to ruins. Cruel vengeance was taken on the king and grandees, and the pacification of the country was ensured by another and larger deportation of the inhabitants to Babylon. Thus terminated in 586 the kingdom of Judah. The prophets had been the spiritual destroyers of the old Israel. In old times the nation had been the ideal of religion in actual realisation; the prophets confronted the nation with an ideal to which it did not correspond. Then to bridge over this interval the abstract ideal was framed into a law, and to this law the nation was to be conformed. The attempt had very important consequences, inasmuch as Jehovah continued to be a living power in the law, when He was no longer realised as present in the nation; but that was not what the prophets had meant to effect. What they were unconsciously labouring towards was that religious individualism which had its historical source in the national downfall, and manifested itself not exclusively within the prophetical sphere. With such men as Amos and Hosea the moral personality based upon an inner conviction burst through the limits of mere nationality; their mistake was in supposing that they could make their way of thinking the basis of a national life. Jeremiah saw through the mistake; the true Israel was narrowed to himself. Of the truth of his conviction he never had a moment's doubt; he knew that Jehovah was on his side, that on Him depended the eternal future. But, instead of the nation, the heart and the individual conviction were to him the subject of religion. On the ruins of Jerusalem he gazed into the future filled with joyful hope, sure of this that Jehovah would one day pardon past sin and renew the relation which had been broken off-though on the basis of another covenant than that laid down in Deuteronomy. "I will put my law upon their heart, and write it on their mind; none shall say to his neighbour, Know the Lord, for all shall have that knowledge within them." 10. THE CAPTIVITY AND THE RESTORATION The exiled Jews were not scattered all over Chaldaea, but were allowed to remain together in families and clans. Many of them, notwithstanding this circumstance, must have lapsed and become merged in the surrounding heathenism; but many also continued faithful to Jehovah and to Israel. They laboured under much depression and sadness, groaning under the wrath of Jehovah, who had rejected His people and cancelled His covenant. They were lying under a sort of vast interdict; they could not celebrate any sacrifice or keep any feast; they could only observe days of fasting and humiliation, and such rites as had no inseparable connection with the holy land. The observance of the Sabbath, and the practice of the rite of circumcision, acquired much greater importance than they formerly possessed as signs of a common religion. The meetings on the Sabbath day out of which the synagogues were afterwards developed appear to have first come into use during this period; perhaps also even then it had become customary to read aloud from the prophetic writings which set forth that all had happened in the providence of God, and moreover that the days of adversity were not to last for ever. Matters improved somewhat as Cyrus entered upon his victorious career. Was he the man in whom the Messianic prophecies had found their fulfilment? The majority were unwilling to think so. For it was out of Israel (they argued) that the Messiah was to proceed who should establish the kingdom of God upon the ruins of the kingdoms of the world; the restitution effected by means of a Persian could only be regarded as a passing incident in the course of an historical process that had its goal entirely elsewhere. This doubt was met by more than one prophetical writer, and especially by the great anonymous author to whom we are indebted for Isaiah xl.-lxvi. "Away with sorrow; deliverance is at the door! Is it a humiliating thing that Israel should owe its freedom to a Persian? Nay, is it not rather a proof of the world-wide sway of the God of Jacob that He should thus summon His instruments from the ends of the earth? Who else than Jehovah could have thus sent Cyrus? Surely not the false gods which he has destroyed? Jehovah alone it was who foretold and foreknew the things which are now coming to pass,--because long ago He had prearranged and predetermined them, and they are now being executed in accordance with his plan. Rejoice therefore in the prospect of your near deliverance; prepare yourselves for the new era; gird yourselves for the return to your homes." It is to be observed, as characteristic in this prophecy, how the idea of Jehovah as God alone and God over all--in constantly recurring lyrical parenthesis he is praised as the author of the world and of all nature--is yet placed in positive relation to Israel alone, and that upon the principle that Israel is in exclusive possession of the universal truth, which cannot perish with Israel, but must through the instrumentality of Israel, become the common possession of the whole world. "There is no God but Jehovah, and Israel is his prophet." For many years the Persian monarch put the patience of the Jews to the proof; Jehovah's judgment upon the Chaldaeans, instead of advancing, seemed to recede. At length, however, their hopes were realised; in the year 538 Cyrus brought the empire of Babylon to an end, and gave the exiles leave to seek their fatherland once more. This permission was not made use of by all, or even by a majority. The number of those who returned is stated at 42,360; whether women and children are included in this figure is uncertain. On arriving at their destination, after the difficult march through the desert, they did not spread themselves over the whole of Judah, but settled chiefly in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. The Calebites, for example, who previously had had their settlements in and around Hebron, now settled in Bethlehem and in the district of Ephrath. They found it necessary to concentrate themselves in face of a threatened admixture of doubtful elements. From all sides people belonging to the surrounding nations had pressed into the depopulated territory of Judah. Not only had they annexed the border territories--where, for example, the Edomites or Idumaeans held the whole of the Negeb as far as to Hebron; they had effected lodgments everywhere, and-- as the Ammonites, Ashdodites, and especially the Samaritans--had amalgamated with the older Jewish population, a residue of which had remained in the country in spite of all that had happened. These half-breed "pagani" (Amme haarec 'oxloi) gave a friendly reception to the returning exiles (Bne haggola); particularly did the Samaritans show themselves anxious to make common cause with them. But they were met with no reciprocal cordiality. The lesson of religious isolation which the children of the captivity had learned in Babylon, they did not forget on their return to their home. Here also they lived as in a strange land. Not the native of Judaea, but the man who could trace his descent from the exiles in Babylon, was reckoned as belonging to their community. The first decennia after the return of the exiles, during which they were occupied in adjusting themselves to their new homes, were passed under a variety of adverse circumstances and by no means either in joyousness or security. Were these then the Messianic times which, it had been foretold, were to dawn at the close of their captivity? They did not at all events answer the expectations which had been formed. A settlement had been again obtained, it was true, in the fatherland; but the Persian yoke pressed now more heavily than ever the Babylonian had done. The sins of God's people seemed still unforgiven, their period of bond-service not yet at an end. A slight improvement, as is shown by the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah, followed when in the year 520 the obstacles disappeared which until then had stood in the way of the rebuilding of the temple; the work then begun was completed in 516. Inasmuch as the Jews were now nothing more than a religious community, based upon the traditions of a national existence that had ceased, the rebuilding of the temple, naturally, was for them an event of supreme importance. The law of the new theocracy was the Book of Deuteronomy; this was the foundation on which the structure was to be built. But the force of circumstances, and the spirit of the age, had even before and during the exile exerted a modifying influence upon that legislative code; and it continued to do so still. At first a "son of David" had continued to stand at the head of the Bne haggola, but this last relic of the old monarchy soon had to give way to a Persian governor who was under the control of the satrap of trans-Euphratic Syria, and whose principal business was the collection of revenue. Thenceforward the sole national chief was Joshua the high priest, on whom, accordingly, the political representation also of the community naturally devolved. In the circumstances as they then were no other arrangement was possible. The way had been paved for it long before in so far as the Assyrians had destroyed the kingdom of Israel, while in the kingdom of Judah which survived it the religious cultus had greater importance attached to it than political affairs, and also inasmuch as in point of fact the practical issue of the prophetic reformation sketched in Deuteronomy had been to make the temple the national centre still more than formerly. The hierocracy towards which Ezekiel had already opened the way was simply inevitable. It took the form of a monarchy of the high priest, he having stepped into the place formerly occupied by the theocratic king. As his peers and at his side stood the members of his clan, the Levites of the old Jerusalem, who traced their descent from Zadok (Sadduk); the common Levites held a much lower rank, so far as they had maintained their priestly rank at all and had not been degraded, in accordance with Ezekiel's law (chapter xliv.), to the position of mere temple servitors. "Levite," once the title of honour bestowed on all priests, became more and more confined to members of the second order of the clergy. Meanwhile no improvement was taking place in the condition of the Jewish colonists. They were poor; they had incurred the hostility of their neighbours by their exclusiveness; the Persian Government was suspicious; the incipient decline of the great kingdom was accompanied with specially unpleasant consequences so far as Palestine was concerned (Megabyzus). All this naturally tended to produce in the community a certain laxity and depression. To what purpose (it was asked) all this religious strictness, which led to so much that was unpleasant? Why all this zeal for Jehovah, who refused to be mollified by it? It is a significant fact that the upper ranks of the priesthood were least of all concerned to counteract this tendency. Their priesthood was less to them than the predominance which was based upon it; they looked upon the neighbouring ethnarchs as their equals, and maintained relations of friendship with them. The general community was only following their example when it also began to mingle with the Amme haarec. The danger of Judaism merging into heathenism was imminent. But it was averted by a new accession from without. In the year 458 Ezra the scribe, with a great number of his compatriots, set out from Babylon, for the purpose of reinforcing the Jewish element in Palestine. The Jews of Babylon were more happily situated than their Palestinian brethren, and it was comparatively easy for them to take up a separatist attitude, because they were surrounded by heathenism not partial but entire. They were no great losers from the circumstance that they were precluded from participating directly in the life of the ecclesiastical community; the Torah had long ago become separated from the people, and was now an independent abstraction following a career of its own. Babylonia was the place where a further codification of the law had been placed alongside of Deuteronomy. Ezekiel had led the way in reducing to theory and to writing the sacred praxis of his time; in this he was followed by an entire school; in their exile the Levites turned scribes. Since then Babylon continued to be the home of the Torah; and, while in Palestine itself the practice was becoming laxer, their literary study had gradually intensified the strictness and distinctive peculiarities of Judaism. And now there came to Palestine a Babylonian scribe having the law of his God in his hand, and armed with authority from the Persian king to proceed upon the basis of this law with a reformation of the community. Ezra did not set about introducing the new law immediately on his arrival in Judaea In the first instance he concentrated his attention on the task of effecting a strict separation between the Bne haggola and the heathen or half-heathen inhabitants. So much he could accomplish upon the basis of Deuteronomy, but it was long before he gave publicity to the law which he himself had brought. Why he hesitated so long it is impossible to say; between the seventh and the twentieth year of Artaxerxes Longimanus (458-445 B.C.) there is a great hiatus in the narrative of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. The main reason appears to have been that, in spite of the good will of the Persian king, Ezra had not the vigorous support of the local authorities. But this was indispensably necessary in order to secure recognition for a new law. At last, in 445, it fell to the lot of a Jew, who also shared the views of Ezra, Nehemiah ben Hakkelejah, /1/ ****************************************** 1. According to the present punctuation this name is Hakalja (Hachaljah), but such a pronunciation is inadmissible; it has no possible etymology, the language having no such word as _hakal_. The name in its correct form means "wait upon Jehovah." ******************************************* the cupbearer and the favourite of Artaxerxes, to be sent as Persian governor to Judaea. After he had freed the community from external pressure with vigour and success, and brought it into more tolerable outward circumstances, the business of introducing the new law-book was next proceeded with; in this Ezra and Nehemiah plainly acted in concert. On the first of Tisri--the year is unfortunately not given, but it cannot have been earlier than 444 B.C.--the promulgation of the law began at a great gathering in Jerusalem; Ezra, supported by the Levites, was present. Towards the end of the month, the concluding act took place, in which the community became solemnly bound by the contents of the law. Special prominence was given to those provisions with which the people were directly concerned, particularly those which related to the dues payable by the laity to the priests. The covenant which hitherto had rested on Deuteronomy was thus expanded into a covenant based upon the entire Pentateuch. Substantially at least Ezra's law-book, in the form in which it became the Magna Charta of Judaism in or about the year 444, must be regarded as practically identical with our Pentateuch, although many minor amendments and very considerable additions may have been made at a later date. The character of the post-Deuteronomic legislation (Priestly Code) is chiefly marked, in its external aspects, by the immense extension of the dues payable to the priests, and by the sharp distinction made between the descendants of Aaron and the common Levites; this last feature is to be traced historically to the circumstance that after the Deuteronomic reformation the legal equality between the Levites who until then had ministered at the "high places" and the priests of the temple at Jerusalem was not _de facto_ recognised. Internally, it is mainly characterised by its ideal of Levitical holiness, the way in which it everywhere surrounds life with purificatory and propitiatory ceremonies, and its prevailing reference of sacrifice to sin. Noteworthy also is the manner in which everything is regarded from the point of view of Jerusalem, a feature which comes much more boldly into prominence here than in Deuteronomy; the nation and the temple are strictly speaking identified. That externalisation towards which the prophetical movement, in order to become practical, had already been tending in Deuteronomy finally achieved its acme in the legislation of Ezra; a new artificial Israel was the result; but, after all, the old would have pleased an Amos better. At the same time it must be remembered that the kernel needed a shell. It was a necessity that Judaism should incrust itself in this manner; without those hard and ossified forms the preservation of its essential elements would have proved impossible. At a time when all nationalities, and at the same time all bonds of religion and national customs, were beginning to be broken up in the seeming cosmos and real chaos of the Graeco-Roman empire, the Jews stood out like a rock in the midst of the ocean. When the natural conditions of independent nationality all failed them, they nevertheless artificially maintained it with an energy truly marvellous, and thereby preserved for themselves, and at the same time for the whole world, an eternal good. As regards the subsequent history of the Jewish community under the Persian domination, we have almost no information. The high priest in Nehemiah's time was Eliashib, son of Joiakim and grandson of Joshua, the patriarchal head of the sons of Zadok, who had returned from Babylon; he was succeeded in the direct line by Joiada, Johanan, and Jaddua (Nehemiah xii. 10, 11, 22); the last-named was in office at the time of Alexander the Great (Josephus, Antiquities, xi. 8). Palestine was the province which suffered most severely of all from the storms which marked the last days of the sinking Persian empire, and it is hardly likely that the Jews escaped their force; we know definitely, however, of only one episode, in which the Persian general Bagoses interfered in a disagreeable controversy about the high-priesthood (cir. 375). To this period also (and not, as Josephus states, to the time of Alexander) belongs the constitution of the Samaritan community on an independent footing by Manasseh, a Jewish priest of rank. He was expelled from Jerusalem by Nehemiah in 432, for refusing to separate from his alien wife. He took shelter with his father-in-law Sanballat, the Samaritan prince, who built him a temple on Mount Gerizim near Shechem, where he organised a Samaritan church and a Samaritan worship, on the Jerusalem model, and on the basis of a but slightly modified Jerusalem Pentateuch. If the Samaritans had hitherto exerted, themselves to the utmost to obtain admission into the fellowship of the Jews, they henceforward were as averse to have anything to do with these as these were to have any dealings with them; the temple on Mount Gerizim was now the symbol of their independence as a distinct religious sect. For the Jews this was a great advantage, as they had no longer to dread the danger of syncretism. They could now quite confidently admit the Amme haarec into their communion, in the assurance of assimilating them without any risk of the opposite process taking place. The Judaizing process began first with the country districts immediately surrounding Jerusalem, and then extended to Galilee and many portions of Peraea. In connection with it, the Hebrew language, which hitherto had been firmly retained by the Bne haggola, now began to yield to the Aramaic, and to hold its own only as a sacred speech. ____________ 11. JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. The post-Deuteronomic legislation is not addressed to the people, but to the congregation; its chief concern is the regulation of worship. Political matters are not touched upon, as they are in the hands of a foreigner lord. The hierocracy is taken for granted as the constitution of the congregation. The head of the cultus is the head of the whole; the high priest takes the place of the king. The other priests, though his brothers or his sons, are officially subordinate to him, as bishops to the supreme pontiff. They, again, are distinguished from the Levites not only by their office but also by their noble blood, though the Levites belong by descent to the clergy, of which they form the lowest grade. The material basis of the hierarchical pyramid is furnished by the contributions of the laity, which are required on a scale which cannot be called modest. Such is the outward aspect of the rule of the holy in Israel. Inwardly, the ideal of holiness governs the whole of life by means of a net of ceremonies and observances which separate the Jew from the natural man. "Holy" means almost the same as "exclusive." Originally the term was equivalent to divine, but now it is used chiefly in the sense of religious, priestly, as if the divine were to be known from the worldly, the natural, by outward marks. It had so fallen out, even before the exile, that the reform of the theocracy which the prophets demanded began in the cultus; and after the exile this tendency could not fail to be persisted in. The restoration of Judaism took place in the form of a restoration of the cultus. Yet this restoration was not a relapse into the heathen ways which the prophets had attacked. The old meaning of the festivals and of the sacrifices had long faded away, and after the interruption of the exile they would scarcely have blossomed again of themselves; they had become simply statutes, unexplained commands of an absolute will. The cultus had no longer any real value for the Deity; it was valuable only as an exercise of obedience to the law. If it had been at first the bond connecting Israel with heathenism, now, on the contrary, it was the shield behind which Judaism retreated to be safe from heathenism. There was no other means to make Judaism secure; and the cultus was nothing more than a means to that end. It was the shell around the faith and practice of the fathers, around the religion of moral monotheism, which it alone preserved until it could become the common property of the world. The great public worship gave the new theocracy a firm centre, thus keeping it one and undivided, and helped it to an organisation. But of more importance was the minor private cultus of pious exercises, which served to Judaize the whole life of every individual. For the centre of gravity of Judaism was in the individual. Judaism was gathered from scattered elements, and it depended on the labour of the individual to make himself a Jew. This is the secret of the persistence of Judaism, even in the diaspora. The initiatory act of circumcision, which conferred an indelible character, was not the only safeguard; the whole of the education which followed that act went to guard against the disintegrating effects of individualism. This is the real significance of the incessant discipline, which consisted mainly in the observance of laws of purity and generally of regulations devised to guard against sin. For what holiness required was not to do good, but to avoid sin. By the sin and trespass offerings, and by the great day of atonement, this private cultus was connected with that of the temple; hence it was that all these institutions fitted so admirably into the system. The whole of life was directed in a definite sacred path; every moment there was a divine command to fulfil, and this kept a man from following too much the thoughts and desires of his own heart. The Jews trained themselves with an earnestness and zeal which have no parallel to create, in the absence of all natural conditions, a holy nation which should answer to the law, the concrete embodiment of the ideals of the prophets. In the individualism thus moulded into uniformity lay the chief difference which separated the new period from the old. The aim was universal culture by the law, that the prophecy should be fulfilled which says: "They shall all be taught of God." This universal culture was certainly of a peculiar kind, and imposed more troublesome observances than the culture of our day. Yet the strange duties which the law imposed were not universally felt to be a heavy burden. Precepts which were plain and had to do with something outward were very capable of being kept; the harder they seemed at first, the easier were they when the habit had been formed. A man saw that he was doing what was prescribed, and did not ask what was the use of it. The ever-growing body of regulations even came to be felt as a sort of emancipation from self. Never had the individual felt himself so responsible for all he did and left undone, but the responsibility was oppressive, and it was well that there should be a definite precept for every hour of his life, thus diminishing the risk of his going astray. Nor must we forget that the Torah contained other precepts than those which were merely ceremonial. The kernel did not quite harden into wood inside the shell; we must even acknowledge that moral sentiment gained very perceptibly in this period both in delicacy and in power. This also is connected with the fact that religion was not, as before, the custom of the people, but the work of the individual. A further consequence of this was, that men began to reflect upon religion. The age in question saw the rise of the so-called "Wisdom," of which we possess examples in the Book of Job, in the Proverbs of Solomon and of the Son of Sirach, and in Ecclesiastes. This wisdom flourished not only in Judah, but also at the same time in Edom; it had the universalistic tendency which is natural to reflection. The Proverbs of Solomon would scarcely claim attention had they arisen on Greek or Arabian soil; they are remarkable in their pale generality only because they are of Jewish origin. In the Book of Job, a problem of faith is treated by Syrians and Arabians just as if they were Jews. In Ecclesiastes religion abandons the theocratic ground altogether, and becomes a kind of philosophy in which there is room even for doubt and unbelief. Speculation did not on the whole take away from depth of feeling; on the contrary, individualism helped to make religion more intense. This is seen strikingly in the Psalms, which are altogether the fruit of this period. Even the sacrificial practice of the priests was made subjective, being incorporated in the Torah, i.e., made a matter for every one to learn. Though the laity could not take part in the ceremony, they were at least to be thoroughly informed in all the minutiae of the system; the law was a means of interesting every one in the great public sacrificial procedure. Another circumstance also tended to remove the centre of gravity of the temple service from the priests to the congregation. The service of song, though executed by choirs of singers, was yet in idea the song of the congregation, and came to be of more importance than the acts of worship which it accompanied and inspired. The Holy One of Israel sat enthroned, not on the smoke-pillars of the altar, but in the praises of the congregation pouring out its heart in prayer; the sacrifices were merely the external occasion for visiting the temple, the real reason for doing so lay in the need for the strength and refreshment to be found in religious fellowship. By the Torah religion came to be a thing to be learned. Hence the need of teachers in the church of the second temple. As the scribes had codified the Torah, it was also their task to imprint it on the minds of the people and to fill their life with it; in this way they at the same time founded a supplementary and changing tradition, which kept pace with the needs of the time. The place of teaching was the synagogue; there the law and the prophets were read and explained on the Sabbath. The synagogue and the Sabbath were of more importance than the temple and the festivals; and the moral influence of the scribes transcended that of the priests, who had to be content with outward power and dignity. The rule of religion was essentially the rule of the law, and consequently the Rabbis at last served themselves heirs to the hierarchs. At the same time, while the government of the law was acknowledged in principle, it could at no time be said to be even approximately realised in fact. The high-born priests who stood at the head of the theocracy, cared chiefly, as was quite natural, for the maintenance of their own supremacy. And there were sheep in the flock not to be kept from breaking out, both in the upper and in the lower classes of society; the school could not suppress nature altogether. It was no trifle even to know the six hundred and thirteen commandments of the written law, and the incalculable number of the unwritten. Religion had to be made a profession of, if it was to be practiced aright. It became an art, and thereby at the same time a matter of party:, the leaders of the religious were of course the scribes. The division became very apparent in the time of the Hellenization which preceded the Maccabaean revolt; at that period the name of Pharisees, i.e., the Separated, came into vogue for the party of the religious. But the separation and antipathy between the godly and the ungodly had existed before this, and had marked the life of the congregation after the exile from the very first. It was the law that gave the Jewish religion its peculiar character. But, on the other hand, a hope was not wanting to that religion; the Jews cherished the prospect of a reward for the fulfilling of the law. This hope attached itself to the old prophecies, certainly in a very fantastic way. The Jews had no historical life, and therefore painted the old time according to their ideas, and framed the time to come according to their wishes. They stood in no living relation with either the past or the future; the present was not with them a bridge from the one to the other; they did not think of bestirring themselves with a view to the kingdom of God. They had no national and historical existence, and made no preparations to procure such a thing for themselves; they only hoped for it as a reward of faithful keeping of the law. Yet they dreamed not only of a restoration of the old kingdom, but of the erection of a universal world-monarchy, which should raise its head at Jerusalem over the ruins of the heathen empires. They regarded the history of the world as a great suit between themselves and the heathen. In this suit they were in the right; and they waited for right to be done them. If the decision was delayed, their sins were the reason; Satan was accusing them before the throne of God, and causing the judgment to be postponed. They were subjected to hard trials, and if tribulation revived their hopes, with much greater certainty did it bring their sins into sorrowful remembrance. Outward circumstances still influenced in the strongest way their religious mood. But the old belief in retribution which sought to justify itself in connection with the fortunes of the congregation proved here also unequal to the strain laid upon it. Even in Deuteronomy it is maintained that the race is not to suffer for the act of an individual. Jeremiah's contemporaries thought it monstrous that because the fathers had eaten sour grapes the teeth of the children should be set on edge. Ezekiel championed in a notable way the cause of individualism on this ground. He denounced the Jews who had remained in Palestine, and who regarded themselves as the successors of the people of Jehovah because they dwelt in the Holy Land and had maintained some sort of existence as a people. In his view only those souls which were saved from the dispersion of the exile were to count as heirs of the promise; the theocracy was not to be perpetuated by the nation, but by the individual righteous men. He maintained that each man lived because of his own righteousness, and died because of his own wickedness; nay more, the fate of the individual corresponded even in its fluctuations to his moral worth at successive times. The aim he pursued in this was a good one; in view of a despair which thought there was nothing for it but to pine and rot away because of former sins, he was anxious to maintain the freedom of the will, ie., the possibility of repentance and forgiveness. But the way he chose for this end was not a good one; on his showing it was chance which ultimately decided who was good and who was wicked. The old view of retribution which allowed time for judgment to operate far beyond the limit of the individual life had truth in it, but this view had none. Yet it possessed one merit, that it brought up a problem which had to be faced, and which was a subject of reflection for a long time afterwards. The problem assumed the form of a controversy as to the principle on which piety was rewarded--this controversy taking the place of the great contest between Israel and the heathen. Were the wicked right in saying that there was no God, i.e., that He did not rule and judge on earth? Did He in truth dwell behind the clouds, and did He not care about the doings of men? In that case piety would be an illusion. Piety cannot maintain itself if God makes no difference between the godly and the wicked, and has nothing more to say to the one than to the other; for piety is not content to stretch out its hands to the empty air, it must meet an arm descending from heaven. It must have a reward, not for the sake of the reward, but in order to be sure of its own reality, in order to know that there is a communion of God with men and a road which leads to it. The usual form of this reward is the forgiveness of sins; that is the true motive of the fear of God. That is to say, as long as it is well with him, the godly man does not doubt, and so does not require any unmistakable evidence by which he may be justified and assured of the favour of God. But misfortune and pain destroy this certainty. They are accusers of sin, God's warnings and corrections. Now is the time to hold fast the faith that God leads the godly to repentance, and destroys the wicked, that He forgives the sin of the former, but punishes and avenges that of the latter. But this faith involves a hope of living to see better things; the justification of which the good man is sure must at last be attested by an objective judgment of God before the whole world, and the godly delivered from his sufferings. Hence the constant anxiety and restlessness of his conscience; the judgment passed upon him is ultimately to be gathered from the external world, and he can never be sure how it is to turn out. And a principle is also at stake the whole time, namely, the question whether godliness or ungodliness is right in its fundamental conviction. Each individual case at once affects the generality, the sufferings of one godly person touch all the godly. When he recovers and is saved, they triumph; when he succumbs, or seems to succumb, to death, they are cast down, unless in this case they should change their minds about him and hold him to be a hypocrite whom God has judged and unmasked. In the same way, they are all hurt at the prosperity of an ungodly man, and rejoice together at his fall, not from jealousy or pleasure in misfortune for its own sake, but because in the one case their faith is overturned, while in the other it is confirmed. The tortures incident to this curious oscillation between believing and seeing are set forth in the most trenchant way in the Book of Job. Job, placed in an agonizing situation, condemned without hope to the death of sinners, and yet conscious of his godliness, demands vengeance for his blood unjustly shed. But the vengeance is to be executed on God, and in such a case who can be the avenger? There is no one but God Himself, and thus the striking thought arises, that God will be the champion against God of his innocence, after having first murdered it. From the God of the present he appeals to the God of the future; but the identity between these two is yet maintained, and even now the God who slays him is the sole witness of his innocence, in which the world and his friends have ceased to believe. God must be this now if He is to avenge him in the future. An inner antinomy is in this way impersonated; the view of the friends is one of which the sufferer himself cannot divest himself; hence the conflict in his soul. But, supported by the unconquerable power of his good conscience, he struggles till he frees himself from the delusion; he believes more firmly in the direct testimony of his conscience than in the evidence of facts and the world's judgment about him, and against the dreadful God of reality, the righteous God of faith victoriously asserts Himself. Job in the end reaches the conclusion that he cannot understand God's ways. This is a negative expression of the position that he holds fast, in spite of all, to himself and to God; that is to say, that not outward experience, but inner feeling, is to decide. This inner feeling of the union of God with the godly meets us also in some of the Psalms, where, in spite of depression arising from untoward circumstances, it maintains itself as a reality which cannot be shaken, which temptations and doubts even tend to strengthen. It was a momentous step when the soul in its relations to God ventured to take its stand upon itself, to trust itself. This was an indirect product of prophecy, but one of not less importance than its direct product, the law. The prophets declared the revelation of God, which had authority for all, but along with this they had their own personal experience, and the subjective truth of which they thus became aware proved a more powerful solvent and emancipator than the objective one which formed the subject of their revelation. They preached the law to deaf ears, and laboured in vain to convert the people. But if their labour had produced no outward result, it had an inner result for them. Rejected by the people, they clung the more closely to Jehovah, in the conviction that the defeated cause was favoured by Him, that He was with them and not with the people. Especially with Jeremiah did prophecy, which is designed primarily to act on others, transform itself into an inner converse with the Deity, which lifted him above all the annoyances of his life. In this relation, however, there was nothing distinctively prophetical, just because it was a matter of the inner life alone, and was sufficient for itself; it was just the essence of the life of religion that the prophets thus brought to view and helped to declare itself. The experience of Jeremiah propagated itself and became the experience of religious Israel. This was the power by which Israel was enabled to rise again after every fall; the good conscience towards God, the profound sentiment of union with Him, proved able to defy all the blows of outward fortune. In this strength the servant, despised and slain, triumphed over the world; the broken and contrite heart was clothed and set on high with the life and power of the Almighty God. This divine spirit of assurance rises to its boldest expression in the 73rd Psalm: "Nevertheless I am continually with Thee; Thou holdest me by my right hand; Thou guidest me with Thy counsel, and drawest me after Thee by the hand. If I have Thee, I desire not heaven nor earth; if my flesh and my heart fail, Thou, God, art for ever the strength of my heart, and my portion." The life surrendered is here found again in a higher life, without any expression of hope of a hereafter. In the Book of Job we do indeed find a trace of this hope, in the form that even after the death of the martyr, God may still find opportunity to justify him and pronounce him innocent; yet this idea is only touched on as a distant possibility, and is at once dropped. Certainly the position of that man is a grand one who can cast into the scale against death and devil his inner certainty of union with God-- so grand indeed that we must in honesty be ashamed to repeat those words of the 73d Psalm. But the point of view is too high. The danger was imminent of falling from it down into the dust and seeking comfort and support in the first earthly experience that might offer, or, on the other hand, sinking into despair. Subjective feeling was not enough of itself to outbid the contradictions of nature; the feeling must take an objective form, a world other than this one, answering the demands of morality, must build itself up to form a contrast to the world actually existing. The merit of laying the foundations for this religious metaphysic which the time called for belongs, if not to the Pharisees themselves, at least to the circles from which they immediately proceeded. The main features of that metaphysic first appear in the Book of Daniel, where we find a doctrine of the last things. We have already spoken of the transition from the old prophecy to apocalypse. With the destruction of the nation and the cessation of historical life, hope was released from all obligation to conform to historical conditions; it no longer set up an aim to which even the present might aspire, but ran riot after an ideal, at the advent of which the historical development would be suddenly broken off. To be pious was all the Jews could do at the time; but it caused them bitter regret that they had no part in the government of the world, and in thought they anticipated the fulfilment of their wishes. These they raised to an ever-higher pitch in proportion as their antagonism to the heathen became more pronounced, and as the world became more hostile to them and they to the world. As the heathen empires stood in the way of the universal dominion of Israel, the whole of them together were regarded as one power, and this world-empire was then set over against the kingdom of God, i.e., of Israel. The kingdom of God was entirely future; the fulfilling of the law did not prepare the way for it, but was only a statutory condition for its coming, not related to it inwardly as cause to effect. History was suddenly to come to a stop and cease. The Jews counted the days to the judgment; the judgment was the act by which God would at once realise all their wishes. The view thus taken of the world's history was a very comprehensive one and well worked out from its principle, yet of an entirely negative character; the further the world's history went wilfully away from its goal, the nearer did it unintentionally approach its goal. In this view, moreover, the earth always continued to be the place of hope; the kingdom of God was brought by the judgment into earthly history; it was on earth that the ideal was to be realised. A step further, and the struggle of the dualism of the earth was preluded in the skies by the angels, as the representatives of the different powers and nations. In this struggle a place was assigned to Satan; at first he was merely the accuser whom God Himself had appointed, and in this character he drew attention to the sins of the Jews before God's judgment-seat, and thereby delayed the judicial sentence in their favour; but ultimately (though this took place late, and is not met with in the Book of Daniel) he came to be the independent leader of the power opposed to God, God's cause being identified with that of the Jews. But as this prelude of the struggle took place in heaven, its result was also anticipated. The kingdom of God is on earth a thing of the future, but even now it is preserved in heaven with all its treasures, one day to descend from there to the earth. Heaven is the place where the good things of the future are kept, which are not and yet must be; that is its original and true signification. But the most important question came at last to be, how individuals were to have part in the glory of the future? How was it with the martyrs who had died in the expectation of the kingdom of God, before it came? The doctrine of the _zakuth_ was formed: if their merit was not of service to themselves, it was yet of service to others. But this was a solution with which individualism could not rest content. And what of the ungodly? Were they to escape from wrath because they died before the day of judgment? It was necessary that the departed also should be allowed to take some part in the coming retribution. Thus there arose--it is remarkable how late and how slowly--the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, that the kingdom of God might not be of service only to those who happened to be alive at the judgment. Yet at first this doctrine was only used to explain particularly striking cases. The Book of Daniel says nothing of a general resurrection, but speaks in fact only of a resurrection of the martyrs and a punishment of the wicked after death. With all this the resurrection is not the entrance to a life above the earth but to a second earthly life, to a world in which it is no longer the heathen but the Jews who bear rule and take the lead. Of a general judgment at the last day, or of heaven and hell in the Christian sense, the Jews know nothing, though these ideas might so easily have suggested themselves to them. It is not easy to find points of view from which to pronounce on the character of Judaism. It is a system, but a practical system, which can scarcely be set forth in relation to one leading thought, as it is an irregular product of history. It lives on the stores of the past, but is not simply the total of what had been previously acquired; it is full of new impulses, and has an entirely different physiognomy from that of Hebrew antiquity, so much so that it is hard even to catch a likeness. Judaism is everywhere historically comprehensible, and yet it is a mass of antinomies. We are struck with the free flight of thought and the deep inwardness of feeling which are found in some passages in the Wisdom and in the Psalms; but, on the other hand, we meet with a pedantic asceticism which is far from lovely, and with pious wishes the greediness of which is ill-concealed; and these unedifying features are the dominant ones of the system. Monotheism is worked out to its furthest consequences, and at the same time is enlisted in the service of the narrowest selfishness; Israel participates in the sovereignty of the One God. The Creator of heaven and earth becomes the manager of a petty scheme of salvation; the living God descends from His throne to make way for the law. The law thrusts itself in everywhere; it commands and blocks up the access to heaven; it regulates and sets limits to the understanding of the divine working on earth. As far as it can, it takes the soul out of religion and spoils morality. It demands a service of God, which, though revealed, may yet with truth be called a self-chosen and unnatural one, the sense and use of which are apparent neither to the understanding nor the heart. The labour is done for the sake of the exercise; it does no one any good, and rejoices neither God nor man. It has no inner aim after which it spontaneously strives and which it hopes to attain by itself, but only an outward one, namely, the reward attached to it, which might as well be attached to other and possibly even more curious conditions. The ideal is a negative one, to keep one's self from sin, not a positive one, to do good upon the earth; the morality is one which scarcely requires for its exercise the existence of fellow-creatures. Now pious exercises can dam up life and hold it in bounds, they may conquer from it more and more ground, and at last turn it into one great Sabbath, but they cannot penetrate it at the root. The occupation of the hands and the desire of the heart fall asunder. What the hands are doing has nothing in common with the earth, and bears no reference to earthly objects; but with the Jews the result of this is that their hope assumes a more worldly complexion. There is no connection between the Good One and goodness. There are exceptions, but they disappear in the system. The Gospel develops hidden impulses of the Old Testament, but it is a protest against the ruling tendency of Judaism. Jesus understands monotheism in a different way from his contemporaries. They think in connection with it of the folly of the heathen and their great happiness in calling the true God their own; He thinks of the claims, not to be disputed or avoided, which the Creator makes on the creature. He feels the reality of God dominating the whole of life, He breathes in the fear of the Judge who requires an account for every idle word, and has power to destroy body and soul in hell. "No man can serve two masters; ye cannot serve God and Mammon; where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." This monotheism is not to be satisfied with stipulated services, how many and great soever; it demands the whole man, it renders doubleness of heart and hypocrisy impossible. Jesus casts ridicule on the works of the law, the washing of hands and vessels, the tithing of mint and cummin, the abstinence even from doing good on the Sabbath. Against unfruitful self-sanctification He sets up another principle of morality, that of the service of one's neighbour. He rejects that lofty kind of goodness, which says to father and mother, If I dedicate what I might give to you, that will be best even for you yourselves; He contends for the weightier matters in the law, for the common morality which sees its aim in the furtherance of the well-being of others, and which commends itself at once to the heart of every one. Just this natural morality of self-surrender does He call the law of God; that supernatural morality which thinks to outbid this, He calls the commandment of men. Thus religion ceases to be an art which the Rabbis and Pharisees understand better than the unlearned people which know nothing of the law. The arrogance of the school fares ill at the hands of Jesus; He will know nothing of the partisanship of piety or of the separateness of the godly; He condemns the practice of judging a man's value before God. Holiness shrinks from contact with sinners, but He helps the world of misery and sin; and there is no commandment on which He insists more than that of forgiving others their debts as one hopes for forgiveness himself from heaven. He is most distinctly opposed to Judaism in His view of the kingdom of heaven, not as merely the future reward of the worker, but as the present goal of effort, it being the supreme duty of man to help it to realise itself on earth, from the individual outwards. Love is the means, and the community of love the end. Self-denial is the chief demand of the Gospel; it means the same thing as that repentance which must precede entrance into the kingdom of God. The will thereby breaks away from the chain of its own acts, and makes an absolutely new beginning not conditioned by the past. The causal nexus which admits of being traced comes here to an end, and the mutual action, which cannot be analysed, between God and the soul begins. Miracle does not require to be understood, only to be believed, in order to take place. With men it is impossible, but with God it is possible. Jesus not only affirmed this, but proved it in His own person. The impression of His personality convinced the disciples of the fact of the forgiveness of their sins and of their second birth, and gave them courage to believe in a new divine life and to live it. He had in fact lost His life and saved it; He could do as he would. He had escaped the limits of the race and the pains of self-seeking nature; He had found freedom and personality in God, who alone is master of Himself, and lifts those up to Himself who seek after Him. Jesus works in the world and for the world, but with His faith He stands above the world and outside it. He can sacrifice Himself for the world because He asks nothing from the world, but has attained in retirement with God to equanimity and peace of soul. And further, the entirely supra-mundane position, at which Jesus finds courage and love to take an interest in the world, does not lead Him to anything strained or unnatural. He trusts God's Providence, and resigns Himself to His will, He takes up the attitude of a child towards Him, and loves best to call Him the Heavenly Father. The expression is simple, but the thing signified is new. He first knows Himself, not in emotion but in sober quietness, to be God's child; before Him no one ever felt himself to be so, or called himself so. He is the first-born of the Father, yet, according to His own view, a first-born among many brethren. For He stands in this relation to God not because His nature is unique, but because He is man; He uses always and emphatically this general name of the race to designate His own person. In finding the way to God for Himself He has opened it to all; along with the nature of God He has at the same time discovered in Himself the nature of man. Eternity extends into the present with Him, even on earth He lives in the midst of the kingdom of God; even the judgment He sees inwardly accomplished here below in the soul of man. Yet He is far from holding the opinion that he who loves God aright does not desire that God should love him in return. He teaches men to bear the cross, but he does not teach that the cross is sweet and that sickness is sound. A coming reconciliation between believing and seeing, between morality and nature, everywhere forms the background of His view of the world; even if He could have done without it for His own person, yet it is a thing He takes for granted, as it is an objective demand of righteousness. So much is certain; for the rest the eschatology of the New Testament is so thoroughly saturated with the Jewish ideas of the disciples, that it is difficult to know what of it is genuine. Jesus was so full of new and positive ideas that He did not feel any need for breaking old idols, so free that no constraint could depress Him, so unconquerable that even under the load of the greatest accumulations of rubbish He could still breathe. This ought ye to do, He said, and not to leave the other undone; He did not seek to take away one iota, but only to fulfil. He never thought of leaving the Jewish community. The Church is not His work, but an inheritance from Judaism to Christianity. Under the Persian domination the Jews built up an unpolitical community on the basis of religion. The Christians found themselves in a position with regard to the Roman Empire precisely similar to that which the Jews had occupied with regard to the Persian; and so they also founded, after the Jewish pattern, in the midst of the state which was foreign and hostile to them, and in which they could not feel themselves at home, a religious community as their true fatherland. The state is always the presupposition of the Church; but it was at first, in the case both of the Jewish and of the Christian Church, a foreign state. The original meaning of the Church thus disappeared when it no longer stood over against the heathen world-power, it having become possible for the Christians also to possess a natural fatherland in the nation. In this way it became much more difficult to define accurately the spheres of the state and the Church respectively, regarding the Church as an organisation, not as an invisible community of the faithful. The distinction of religious and secular is a variable one; every formation of a religious community is a step towards the secularisation of religion; the religion of the heart alone remains an inward thing. The tasks of the two competing organisations are not radically different in their nature; on the one side it may be said that had not the Christian religion found civil order already in existence, had it come, like Islam, in contact with the anarchy of Arabia instead of the Empire of Rome it must have founded not the Church, but the state; on the other side it is well known that the state has everywhere entered into possession of fields first reclaimed to cultivation by the Church. Now we must acknowledge that the nation is more certainly created by God than the Church, and that God works more powerfully in the history of the nations than in Church history. The Church, at first a substitute for the nation which was wanting, is affected by the same evils incident to an artificial cultivation as meet us in Judaism. We cannot create for ourselves our sphere of life and action; better that it should be a natural one, given by God. And yet it would be unjust to deny the permanent advantages of the differentiation of the two. The Church will always be able to work in advance for the state of the future. The present state unfortunately is in many respects only nothing more than a barrier to chaos; if the Church has still a task, it is that of preparing an inner unity of practical conviction, and awakening a sentiment, first in small circles, that we belong to each other. Whether she is to succeed in this task is certainly the question. The religious individualism of the Gospel is, and must remain for all time, the true salt of the earth. The certainty that neither death nor life can separate us from the love of God drives out that fear which is opposed to love; an entirely supra-mundane faith lends courage for resultless self-sacrifice and resigned obedience on earth. We must succeed: _sursum corda_! 12. THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD. Palestine fell into Alexander's possession in 332; after his death it had an ample share of the troubles arising out of the partition of his inheritance. In 320 it was seized by Ptolemy I., who on a Sabbath-day took Jerusalem; but in 3I5 he had to give way before Antigonus. Even before the battle of Ipsus, however, he recovered possession once more, and for a century thereafter Southern Syria continued to belong to the Egyptian crown, although the Seleucidae more than once sought to wrench it away. In the priestly dynasty during the period of the Ptolemies, Onias I. ben Jaddua was succeeded by his son Simon I., after whom again came first his brothers Eleazar and Manasseh, and next his son Onias II.; the last-named was in his turn followed by his son Simon II., whose praises are sung by the son of Sirach (xlix. 14-16). At the side of the high priest stood the gerusia of the town of Jerusalem, as a council of state, including the higher ranks of the priesthood. The new sovereign power was at once stronger and juster than the Persian,--at least under the earlier Ptolemies; the power of the national government increased; to it was intrusted the business of raising the tribute. As a consequence of the revolutionary changes which had taken place in the conditions of the whole East, the Jewish dispersion (diaspora) began vigorously to spread. It dated its beginning indeed from an earlier period,--from the time when the Jews had lost their land and kingdom, but yet, thanks to their religion, could not part with their nationality. They did not by any means all return from Babylon; perhaps the majority permanently settled abroad. The successors of Alexander (diadochi) fully appreciated this international element, and used it as a link between their barbarian and Hellenic populations. Everywhere they encouraged the settlement of Jews,--in Asia Minor, in Syria, and especially in Egypt. Alongside of the Palestinian there arose a Hellenistic Judaism which had its metropolis in Alexandria. Here, under Ptolemy I. and II., the Torah had already been translated into Greek, and around this sprung up a Jewish-Greek literature which soon became very extensive. At the court and in the army of the Ptolemies many Jews rose to prominent positions; everywhere they received the preference over, and everywhere they in consequence earned the hatred of, the indigenous population. After the death of Ptolemy IV. (205) Antiochus III. attained the object towards which he and his predecessors had long been vainly striving; after a war protracted with varying success through several years, he succeeded at last in incorporating Palestine with the kingdom of the Seleucidae. The Jews took his side, less perhaps because they had become disgusted with the really sadly degenerate Egyptian rule, than because they had foreseen the issue of the contest, and preferred to attach themselves voluntarily to the winning side. In grateful acknowledgment, Antiochus confirmed and enlarged certain privileges of the "holy camp," i.e., of Jerusalem (Josephus, Antiquities, xii. 3, 3). It soon, however, became manifest that the Jews had made but a poor bargain in this exchange. Three years after his defeat at Magnesia, Antiochus III. died (187), leaving to his son Seleucus IV. an immense burden of debt, which he had incurred by his unprosperous Roman war. Seleucus, in his straits, could not afford to be over-scrupulous in appropriating money where it was to be found: he did not need to be twice told that the wealth of the temple at Jerusalem was out of all proportion to the expenses of the sacrificial service. The sacred treasure accordingly made the narrowest possible escape from being plundered; Heliodorus, who had been charged by the king to seize it, was deterred at the last moment by a heavenly vision. But the Jews derived no permanent advantage from this. It was a priest of rank, Simon by name, who had called the attention of the king to the temple treasure; his motive had been spite against the high priest Onias III., the son and successor of Simon II. The circumstance is one indication of a melancholy process of disintegration that was at that time going on within the hierocracy. The high-priesthood, although there were exceptional cases, such as that of Simon II., was regarded less as a sacred office than as a profitable princedom; within the ranks of the priestly nobility arose envious and jealous factions; personal advancement was sought by means of the favour of the overlord, who had something to say in the making of appointments. A collateral branch of the ruling family, that of the children of Tobias, had by means of the ill-gotten wealth of Joseph ben Tobias attained to a position of ascendancy, and competed in point of power with the high priest himself. It appears that the above-mentioned Simon, and his still more scandalous brother AIenelaus, also belonged to the Tobiadae, and, relying upon the support of their powerful party (Josephus, Antiquities, xii. 5, 1), cherished the purpose of securing the high-priesthood by the aid of the Syrian king. The failure of the mission of Heliodorus was attributed by Simon to a piece of trickery on the part of Onias the high priest, who accordingly found himself called upon to make his own justification at court and to expose the intrigues of his adversary. Meanwhile Seleucus IV. died of poison (175), and Antiochus IV. Epiphanes did not confirm Onias in his dignity, but detained him in Antioch, while he made over the office to his brother Jason, who had offered a higher rent. Possibly the Tobiadae also had something to do with this arrangement; at all events, Menelaus was at the outset the right hand of the new high priest. To secure still further the favour of the king, Jason held himself out to be an enlightened friend of the Greeks, and begged for leave to found in Jerusalem a gymnasium and an ephebeum, and to be allowed to sell to the inhabitants there the rights of citizenship in Antioch,--a request which was readily granted. The malady which had long been incubating now reached its acute phase. Just in proportion as Hellenism showed itself friendly did it present elements of danger to Judaism. From the periphery it slowly advanced towards the centre, from the diaspora to Jerusalem, from mere matters of external fashion to matters of the most profound conviction. /1/ Especially did the upper and cultivated ************************************* 1. The Hellenising fashion is amusingly exemplified in the Grecising of the Jewish names; e.g., Alcimus = Eljakim, Jason = Jesus, Joshua; Menelaus = Menahem. **************************************** classes of society begin to feel ashamed, in presence of the refined Greeks, of their Jewish singularity, and to do all in their power to tone it down and conceal it. In this the priestly nobility made itself conspicuous as the most secular section of the community, and it was the high priest who took the initiative in measures which aimed at a complete Hellenising of the Jews. He outdid every one else in paganism. Once he sent a considerable present for offerings to the Syrian Hercules on the occasion of his festival; but his messenger, ashamed to apply the money to such a purpose, set it apart for the construction of royal ships of war. The friendship shown by Jason for the Greek king and for all that was Hellenic did not prevent Antiochus IV. from setting pecuniary considerations before all others. Menelaus, intrusted with the mission of conveying to Antioch the annual Jewish tribute, availed himself of the opportunity to promote his own personal interests by offering a higher sum for the high-priesthood, and having otherwise ingratiated himself with the king, gained his object (171). But though nominated, he did not find it quite easy to obtain possession of the post. The Tobiadae took his side, but the body of the people stuck to Jason, who was compelled to give way only when Syrian troops had been brought upon the scene. Menelaus had immediately, however, to encounter another difficulty, for he could not at once pay the amount of tribute which he had promised. He helped himself so far indeed by robbing the temple, but this landed him in new embarrassments. Onias III., who was living out of employment at Antioch, threatened to make compromising revelations to the king; he was, however, opportunely assassinated. The rage of the people against the priestly temple-plunderer now broke out in a rising against a certain Lysimachus, who at the instance of the absent Menelaus had made further inroads upon the sacred treasury. The Jews' defence before the king (at Tyre) on account of this uproar resolved itself into a grievous complaint against the conduct of Menelaus. His case was a bad one, but money again helped him out of his straits, and the extreme penalty of the law fell upon his accusers. The feelings of the Jews with reference to this wolfish shepherd may easily be imagined. Nothing but fear of Antiochus held them in check. Then a report gained currency that the king had perished in an expedition against Egypt (170); and Jason, who meanwhile had found refuge in Ammanitis, availed himself of the prevailing current of feeling to resume his authority with the help of one thousand men. He was not able, however, to hold the position long, partly because he showed an unwise vindictiveness against his enemies, partly (and chiefly) because the rumour of the death of Antiochus turned out to be false. The king was already, in fact, close at hand on his return from Egypt, full of anger at an insurrection which he regarded as having been directed against himself. He inflicted severe and bloody chastisement upon Jerusalem, carried off the treasures of the temple, and restored Menelaus, placing Syrian officials at his side. Jason fled from place to place, and ultimately died in misery at Lacedaemon. The deepest despondency prevailed in Judaea; but its cup of sorrow was not yet full. Antiochus, probably soon after his last Egyptian expedition (168), sent Apollonius with an army against Jerusalem. He fell upon the unsuspecting city, disarmed the inhabitants and demolished the walls, but on the other hand fortified Acra, and garrisoned it strongly, so as to make it a standing menace to the whole country. Having thus made his preparations, he proceeded to carry out his main instructions. All that was religiously distinctive of Judaism was to be removed; such was the will of the king. The Mosaic cultus was abolished, Sabbath observance and the rite of circumcision prohibited, all copies of the Torah confiscated and burnt. In the desecrated and partially-destroyed temple pagan ceremonies were performed, and upon the great altar of burnt-offering a small altar to Jupiter Capitolinus was erected, on which the first offering was made on 25th Kislev 168. In the country towns also heathen altars were erected, and the Jews compelled, on pain of death, publicly to adore the false gods and to eat swine's flesh that had been sacrificed to idols. The princes and grandees of the Jews had represented to Antiochus that the people were ripe for Hellenisation; and inasmuch as, apart from this, to reduce to uniformity the extremely motley constituents of his kingdom was a scheme that lay near his heart, he was very willing to believe them. That the very opposite was the case must of course have become quite evident very soon; but the resistance of the Jews taking the form of rebellious risings against his creatures, he fell upon the hopeless plan of coercion,--hopeless, for he could attain his end only by making all Judaea one vast graveyard. There existed indeed a pagan party; the Syrian garrison of Acra was partly composed of Jews who sold themselves to be the executioners of their countrymen. Fear also influenced many to deny their convictions; but the majority adhered firmly to the religion of their fathers. Jerusalem, the centre of the process of Hellenisation, was abandoned by its inhabitants, who made their escape to Egypt, or hid themselves in the country, in deserts and caves. The scribes in especial held fast by the law; and they were joined by the party of the Asidaeans (i.e., pious ones). 13. THE HASMONAEANS. At first there was no thought of meeting violence with violence; as the Book of Daniel shows, people consoled themselves with thoughts of the immediate intervention of God which would occur in due time. Quite casually, without either plan or concert, a warlike opposition arose. There was a certain priest Mattathias, of the family of the Hasmonaeans, a man far advanced in life, whose home was in Modein, a little country town to the west of Jerusalem. Hither also the Syrian soldiers came to put the population to a positive proof of their change of faith; they insisted upon Mattathias leading the way. But he was steadfast in his refusal; and, when another Jew addressed himself before his eyes to the work of making the heathen offering, he killed him and the Syrian officer as well, and destroyed the altar. Thereupon he fled to the hill country, accompanied by his sons (Johannes Gaddi, Simon Thassi, Judas Maccabaeus, Eleazar Auaran, Jonathan Apphus) and other followers. But he resolved to defend himself to the last, and not to act as some other fugitives had done, who about the same time had allowed themselves to be surrounded and butchered on a Sabbath-day without lifting a finger. Thus he became the head of a band which defended the ancestral religion with the sword. They traversed the country, demolished the altars of the false gods, circumcised the children, and persecuted the heathen and heathenishly disposed. The sect of the Asidaeans also intrusted itself to their warlike protection (1Maccabees ii. 42). Mattathias soon died and left his leadership to Judas Maccabaeus, by whom the struggle was carried on in the first instance after the old fashion; soon, however, it assumed larger dimensions, when regular armies were sent out against the insurgents. First Apollonius, the governor of Judaea, took the field; but he was defeated and fell in battle. Next came Seron, governor of Ccelesyria, who also was routed near Bethhoron (I66). Upon this Lysias, the regent to whom Antiochus IV., who was busied in the far east, had intrusted the government of Syria and the charge of his son, Antiochus Philopator, a minor, sent a strong force under the command of three generals. Approaching from the west, it was their design to advance separately upon Jerusalem, but Judas anticipated their plan and compelled them to quit the field (166). The regent now felt himself called on to interpose in person. Invading Judaea from the south, he encountered the Jews at Bethsur, who, however, offered an opposition that was not easily overcome; he was prevented from resorting to the last measures by the intelligence which reached him of the death of the king in Elymais (165). The withdrawal of Lysias secured the fulfilment of the desires of the defenders of the faith in so far as it now enabled them to restore the Jerusalem worship to its previous condition. They lost no time in setting about the accomplishment of this. They were not successful indeed in wresting Acra from the possession of the Syrians, but they so occupied the garrison as to prevent it from interfering with the work of restoration. On 25th Kislev 165, the very day on which, three years before, "the abomination of desolation" had been inaugurated, the first sacrifice was offered on the new altar, and in commemoration of this the feast of the dedication was thenceforth celebrated. As it was easy to see that danger still impended, the temple was put into a state of defence, as also was the town of Bethsur, where Lysias had been checked. But the favourable moment presented by the change of sovereign was made use of for still bolder attempts. Scattered over the whole of Southern Syria there were a number of Jewish localities on which the heathens now proceeded to wreak their vengeance. For the purpose of rescuing these oppressed co-religionists, and of bringing them in safety to Judaea, the Maccabees made a series of excursions, extending in some cases as far as to Lebanon and Damascus. Lysias had his hands otherwise fully occupied, and perhaps did not feel much disposed to continue the fight on behalf of the cultus of Jupiter Capitolinus. Daily gaining in boldness, the Jews now took in hand also to lay regular siege to Acra. Then at last Lysias yielded to the pressure of Syrian and Jewish deputations and determined to take serious steps (162). With a large force he entered Judaea, again from the south, and laid siege to Bethsur. Judas vainly attempted the relief of the fortress; he sustained near Bethzachariah a defeat in which his brother Eleazar perished. Bethsur was unable to hold out, being short of provisions on account of the sabbatic year. The Syrians advanced next to Jerusalem and besieged the temple; it also was insufficiently provisioned, and would soon have been compelled to surrender, had not Lysias been again called away at the critical moment by other exigencies. A certain Philip was endeavouring to oust him from the regency; as it was necessary for him to have his hands free in dealing with this new enemy, he closed a treaty with the temple garrison and the people at large, in accordance with which at once the political subjection and the religious freedom of the Jews were to be maintained; Thus the situation as it had existed before Antiochus IV. was restored. Only no attempt was made to replace Menelaus as high priest and ethnarch; this post was to be filled by Alcimus. The concessions thus made by Lysias were inevitable; and even King Demetrius I., son of Seleucus IV., who towards the end of 162 ascended the throne and caused both Lysias and his ward to be put to death, had no thought of interfering with their religious freedom. But the Maccabees desired something more than the _status quo ante_; after having done their duty they were disinclined to retire in favour of Alcimus, whose sole claim lay in his descent from the old heathenishly-disposed high-priestly family. Alcimus was compelled to invoke the assistance of the king, who caused him to be installed by Bacchides. He was at once recognised by the scribes and Asidaeans, for whom, with religious liberty, everything they wished had been secured; the claims to supremacy made by the Hasmonaeans were of no consequence to them. Doubtless the masses also would ultimately have quietly accepted Alcimus, who of course refrained from interference with either law or worship, had he not abused the momentary power he derived from the presence of Bacchides to take a foolish revenge. But the consequence of his action was that, as soon as Bacchides had turned his back, Alcimus was compelled to follow him. For the purpose of restoring him a Syrian army once more invaded Judaea under Nicanor (I60), but first at Kapharsalama and afterwards at Bethhoron was defeated by Judas, and almost annihilated in the subsequent flight, Nicanor himself being among the slain (13th Adar = Nicanor's day). Judas was now at the acme of his prosperity; about this time he concluded his (profitless) treaty with the Romans. But disaster was impending. In the month of Nisan, barely a month after the defeat of Nicanor, a new Syrian army under Bacchides entered Judaea from the north; near Elasa, southward from Jerusalem, a decisive battle was fought which was lost by Judas, and in which he himself fell. The religious war properly so called had already been brought once for all to an end by the convention of Lysias. If the struggle continued to be carried on, it was not for the faith but for the supremacy,--less in the interests of the community than in those of the Hasmonaeans. After the death of Judas the secular character which the conflict had assumed ever since 162 continually became more conspicuous. Jonathan Apphus fought for his house, and in doing so used thoroughly worldly means. The high-priesthood, i.e., the ethnarchy, was the goal of his ambition. So long as Alcimus lived, it was far from his reach. Confined to the rocky fastnesses beside the Dead Sea, he had nothing for it but, surrounded by his faithful followers, to wait for better times. But on the death of Alcimus (159) the Syrians refrained from appointing a successor, to obviate the necessity of always having to protect him with military force. During the interregnum of seven years which followed, Jonathan again came more and more to the front, so that at last Bacchides concluded an armistice with him on the basis of the _status quo_ (1Maccabees ix. 13). From his residence at Michmash Jonathan now exercised a _de facto_ authority over the entire nation. When accordingly Alexander Balas, a reputed son of Antiochus IV., rose against Demetrius, both rivals exerted themselves to secure the alliance of Jonathan, who did not fail to benefit by their competition. First of all, Demetrius formally recognised him as prince of Judah; in consequence of this he removed to Jerusalem, and expelled the heathen and heathenishly disposed, who continued to maintain a footing only in Acra and Bethsur. Next Alexander Balas conferred on him the title of "high priest of the nation and friend of the king;" in gratitude for which Jonathan went over to his side (152). He remained loya], although Demetrius now made larger offers; he was justified by the event, for Demetrius I. had the worst of it and was slain (150). The victorious Balas heaped honours upon Jonathan, who maintained his fidelity, and fought successfully in his interests when in I47 Demetrius II., the son of Demetrius I., challenged a conflict. The high priest was unable indeed to prevent the downfall of Alexander in 145; but Demetrius II., won by presents, far from showing any hostility, confirmed him in his position in consideration of a tribute of 300 talents. Jonathan was grateful to the king, as he showed by going with 3000 men to his aid against the insurgent Antiochenes. But when the latter drew back from his promise to withdraw the garrison from Acra, he went over to the side of Trypho, who had set up a son of Alexander Balas (Antiochus) as a rival. In the war which he now waged as Seleucid-strategus against Demetrius he succeeded in subduing almost the whole of Palestine. Meanwhile his brother Simon remained behind in Judaea, mastered the fortress of Bethsur, and resumed with great energy the siege of Acra. All this was done in the names of Antiochus and Trypho, but really of course in the interests of the Jews themselves. There were concluded also treaties with the Romans and Lacedaemonians, certainly not to the advantage of the Syrians. Trypho sought now to get rid of the man whom he himself had made so powerful. He treacherously seized and imprisoned Jonathan in Ptolemais, and meditated an attack upon the leaderless country. But on the frontier Simon, the last remaining son of Mattathias, met him in force. All Trypho's efforts to break through proved futile; after skirting all Judaea from west to south, without being able to get clear of Simon, he at last withdrew to Peraea without having accomplished anything. On the person of Jonathan, whom he caused to be executed, he vented the spleen he felt on the discovery that the cause for which that prince had fought was able to gain the victory even when deprived of his help. Simon, in point of fact, was Jonathan's equal as a soldier and his superior as a ruler. He secured his frontier by means of fortresses, made himself master of Acra (141), and understood how to enable the people in time of peace to reap the advantages that result from successful war; agriculture, industry, and commerce (from the haven of Joppa) began to flourish vigorously. In grateful recognition of his services the high-priesthood and the ethnarchy were bestowed upon him as hereditary possessions by a solemn assembly of the people, "until a trustworthy prophet should arise." Nominally the Seleucidae still continued to possess the suzerainty. Simon naturally had detached himself from Trypho and turned to Demetrius II., who confirmed him in his position, remitted all arrears of tribute, and waived his rights for the future (142). The friendship of Demetrius II. and of his successor Antiochus Sidetes with Simon, however, lasted only as long as Trypho still remained in the way. But, he once removed, Sidetes altered his policy. He demanded of Simon the surrender of Joppa, Gazara, and other towns, besides the citadel of Jerusalem, as well as payment of all tribute resting due. The refusal of these demands led to war, which in its earlier stages was carried on with success, but the scales were turned after the murder of Simon, when Sidetes in person took the field against John Hyrcanus, Simon's son and successor. Jerusalem capitulated; in the negotiations for peace the surrender of all the external possessions of the Jews was insisted upon; the suzerainty of the Syrians became once more a reality (I35). But in 130 the powerful Antiochus Sidetes fell in an expedition against the Parthians, and the complications anew arising in reference to the succession to the Syrian throne placed Hyrcanus in a position to recover what he had lost and to make new acquisitions. He subjugated Samaria and Idumaea, compelling the inhabitants of the latter to accept circumcision. Like his predecessors, he too sought to secure the favour of the Romans, but derived no greater benefit from the effort than they had done. After a prosperous reign of thirty years he died in 105. By Josephus he is represented as a pattern of all that a pious prince ought to be; by the rabbins as representing a splendid high-priesthood. The darkness of the succeeding age lent a brighter colour to his image. The external splendour of the Hasmonaean kingdom did not at once die away,--the downfall of the Seleucidae, which was its negative condition, being also a slow affair. Judah Aristobulus, the son of Hyrcanus, who reigned for only one year, was the first to assume the Greek title of royalty; Ituraea was subdued by him, and circumcision forced upon the inhabitants. His brother Jonathan (Jannaeus) Alexander (104-79), in a series of continual wars, which were never very prosperous, never-theless succeeded in adding the whole coast of Philistia (Gaza) as well as a great portion of Peraea to his hereditary dominions. /1/ ********************************************* 1. A number of half-independent towns and communes lay as tempting subjects of dispute between the Seleucidae, the Nabathaeans or Arabs of Petra, and the Jews. The background was occupied by the Parthians and the Romans. ******************************************** But the external enlargement of the structure was secured at the cost of its internal consistency. From the time when Jonathan, the son of Mattathias, began to carry on the struggle no longer for the cause of God but for his own interests, the scribes and the Asidaeans, as we have seen, had withdrawn themselves from the party of the Maccabees There can be no doubt that from their legal standpoint they were perfectly right in contenting themselves, as they did, with the attainment of religious liberty, and in accepting Alcimus. The Hasmonaeans had no hereditary right to the high-priesthood, and their politics, which aimed at the establishment of a national monarchy, were contrary to the whole spirit and essence of the second theocracy. The presupposition of that theocracy was foreign domination; in no other way could its sacred--i.e., clerical-- character be maintained. God and the law could not but be forced into the background if a warlike kingdom, retaining indeed the forms of a hierocracy, but really violating its spirit at every point, should ever grow out of a mere pious community. Above all, how could the scribes hope to retain their importance if temple and synagogue were cast into the shade by politics and clash of arms? But under the first great Hasmonaeans the zealots for the law were unable to force their way to the front; the enthusiasm of the people was too strong for them; they had nothing for it but to keep themselves out of the current and refuse to be swept along by it. Even under Hyrcanus, however, they gained more prominence, and under Jannaeus their influence upon popular opinion was paramount. For under the last-named the secularisation of the hierocracy no longer presented any attractive aspects; it was wholly repellent. It was looked upon as a revolting anomaly that the king, who was usually in the field with his army, should once and again assume the sacred mantle in order to perform the sacrifice on some high festival, and that his officers, profane persons as they were, should at the same time be holders of the highest spiritual offices. The danger which in all this threatened "the idea of Judaism" could not in these circumstances escape the observation of even the common people; for this idea was God and the law, not any earthly fatherland. The masses accordingly ranged themselves with ever-growing unanimity on the side of the Pharisees (i.e., the party of the scribes) as against the Sadducees (i.e., the Hasmonaean party). /1/ ***************************************** 1. PRW# means "separated," and refers perhaps to the attitude of isolation taken by the zealots for the law during the interval between 162 and 105. CDWQY (*SADDOUKAIOS) comes from CDWQ (*SADDOUK, LXX.) the ancestor of the higher priesthood of Jerusalem (1Kings ii. 35; 1Samuel ii. 35; Ezekiel xliv. 15), and designates the governing nobility. The original character of the opposition, as it appeared under Jannaeus, changed entirely with the lapse of time, on account of the Sadducees' gradual loss of political power, till they fell at last to the condition of a sort of "fronde." On one occasion, when Alexander Jannaeus had returned to Jerusalem at the feast of tabernacles, and was standing in his priestly vestments before the altar to sacrifice, he was pelted by the assembled crowd of worshippers with citrons from the green branches they carried. By the cruelty with which he punished this insult he excited the populace to the highest pitch, and, when he lost his army in the disaster of Gadara, rebellion broke out. The Pharisees summoned the Syrian king Demetrius Eucaerus; Jannaeus was worsted and fled into the desert. But as he wandered in helplessness there, the patriotism of the people and sympathy for the heir of the Maccabees suddenly awoke; nature proved itself stronger than that consistency which in the cause of the Divine honour had not shrunk from treason. The insurgents for the most part went over to the side of the fugitive king; the others he ultimately overpowered after a struggle which lasted through several years, Demetrius having withdrawn his intervention. The vengeance which he took on the Pharisees was a bloody one; their only escape was by voluntary exile. Thenceforward he had peace so far as they were concerned. His last years were occupied with the reacquisition of the conquests which he had been compelled to yield to the Arabs during the civil war. He died in the field at the siege of Ragaba in Peraea (79). Under Queen Salome, his widow, matters were as if they had been specially arranged for the satisfaction of the Pharisees. The high-priesthood passed to Salome's son, Hyrcanus II.; she herself was only queen. In the management of external affairs her authority was absolute (Antiquities, xiii. 16, 6); in home policy she permitted the scribes to wield a paramount influence. The common assertion, indeed, that the synedrium was at that time practically composed of scribes, is inconsistent with the known facts of the case; the synedrium at that time was a political and not a scholastic authority. /1/ ************************************* 1. Kuenen, "Over de Samenstelling van het Sanhedrin," in Proceedings of Royal Netherl. Acad., 1866. ************************************** In its origin it was the municipal council of Jerusalem (so also the councils of provincial towns are called synedria, Mark xiii. 9), but its authority extended over the entire Jewish community; alongside of the elders of the city the ruling priests were those who had the greatest number of seats and votes. John Hyrcanus appears to have been the first to introduce some scribes into its composition; it is possible that Salome may have increased their number, but even so this high court was far from being changed into a college of scribes like that at Jamnia. If the domination of the Pharisees at this time is spoken of, the expression cannot be understood as meaning that they already held all the public offices, but only at most that the holders of those offices found it necessary to administer and to judge in their spirit and according to their fundamental principles. The party of the Sadducees (consisting of the old Hasmonaean officers and officials, who were of priestly family indeed, but attached only slight importance to their priestly functions) at length lost all patience. Led by Aristobulus, the second son of Jannaeus, the leaders of the party came to the palace, and begged the queen to dismiss them from the court and to send them into the provinces. There they were successful in securing possession of several fortresses /2/ in preparation for insurrection, a favourable ********************************************* 2. Alexandrium, Coreae, and similar citadels, which were at that time of great importance for Palestine and Syria. ********************************************* opportunity for which they were watching. Such an opportunity occurred, it seemed to Aristobulus, as his mother lay on her death-bed. The commandants of the fortresses were at his orders, and by their assistance an army also, with which he accordingly advanced upon Jerusalem, and, on the death of Salome, made himself master of the situation (69). Hyrcanus was compelled to resign office. With this event the good understanding between the civil government and the Pharisees came to an end; the old antagonisms became active once more, and now began to operate for the advantage of a third party, the Idumaean Antipater, Hyrcanus's confidential friend. After the latter, aided by Antipater, had at length with great difficulty got himself into a position for asserting his rights against Aristobulus, the Pharisees could not do otherwise than rank themselves upon his side, and the masses joined them against the usurper. With the help of the Nabataean monarch the effort to restore the elder brother to the supreme authority would doubtless have succeeded had not the Romans procured relief for Aristobulus, besieged as he was in Jerusalem (65), though without thereby recognising his claims. Pompey continued to delay a decision on the controversy in 64 also when the rival claimants presented themselves before him at Damascus; he wished first to have the Nabataeans disposed of, and to have free access to them through Judaea. This hesitation roused the suspicions of Aristobulus; still he did not venture to take decisive action upon them. He closed the passes (to Mount Ephraim) against the Romans, but afterwards gave them up; he prepared Jerusalem for war, and then went in person to the Roman camp at Jericho, where he promised to open the gates of the city and also to pay a sum of money. But the Roman ambassadors found the gates barred, and had to return empty-handed. Aristobulus thereupon was arrested, and siege was laid to Jerusalem. The party of Hyrcanus, as soon as it had gained the upper hand, surrendered the town; but the supporters of Aristobulus took their stand in the temple, and defended it obstinately. In June 63 the place was carried by storm; Pompey personally inspected the Holy of Holies, but otherwise spared the religious feelings of the Jews. But he caused the chief promoters of the war to be executed, and carried Aristobulus and his family into captivity. He abolished the kingship, but restored the high-priestly dignity to Hyrcanus. The territory was materially reduced in area, and made tributary to the Romans; the city was occupied by a Roman garrison. 14. HEROD AND THE ROMANS. Henceforward Roman intervention forms a constant disturbing factor in Jewish history. The struggle between the Pharisees and the Sadducees continued indeed to be carried on, but only because the momentum of their old feud was not yet exhausted. The Pharisees in a sense had been victorious. While the two brothers were pleading their rival claims before Pompey, ambassadors from the Pharisees had made their appearance in Damascus to petition for the abolition of the kingship; this object had now to some extent been gained. Less ambiguous than the victory of the Pharisees was the fall of the Sadducees, who in losing the sovereignty of the Jewish state lost all real importance. But the intervention of the foreign element exercised its most powerful influence upon the temper of the lower classes. Though in times of peace the masses still continued to accept the guidance of the rabbins, their patriotism instantly burst into flame as soon as a pretender to the throne, belonging to the family of Aristobulus, appeared in Palestine. During the decennia which immediately followed, Jewish history was practically absorbed in vain attempts to restore the old Hasmonaean kingdom. Insurrections of steadily increasing dimensions were made in favour of Aristobulus, the representative of the national cause. For Hyrcanus was not regarded as a Hasmonaean at all, but merely as the creature of Antipater and the Romans. First, in the year 57, Alexander the son of Aristobulus broke into rebellion, then in 56 Aristobulus himself and his son Antigonus, and in 55 Alexander again. Antipater was never able to hold his own; Roman intervention was in every case necessary. The division of the Hasmonaean state into five "aristocracies" by Gabinius had no effect in diminishing the feeling of national unity cherished by the Jews of Palestine. Once again, after the battle of Carrhae, a rising took place, which Cassius speedily repressed. In 49 the great Roman civil war broke out; Caesar instigated Aristobulus against Antipater, who in common with the whole East had espoused the cause of Pompey. But Aristobulus was poisoned by the opposite party while yet in Italy, and about the same time his son Alexander was also put to death at Antioch; thus the danger to Antipater passed away. After the battle of Pharsalus he went over to Caesar's side, and soon after rendered him an important service by helping him out of his difficulties at Alexandria. By this means he earned the good-will of Caesar towards the whole body of the Jews and secured for himself (or Hyrcanus) a great extension of power and of territory. The five "synedria" or "aristocracies" of Gabinius were superseded, the most important conquest of the Hasmonaeans restored, the walls of Jerusalem, which Pompey had razed, rebuilt. However indisputable the advantages conferred by the rule of Antipater, the Jews could not forget that the Idumaean, in name of Hyrcanus, the rightful heir of the Hasmonaeans, was in truth setting up an authority of his own. The Sadducaean aristocracy in particular, which formerly in the synedrium had shared the supreme power with the high priest, endeavoured to restore reality once more to the nominal ascendancy which still continued to be attributed to the ethnarch and the synedrium. "When the authorities (hoi 'en telei) of the Jews saw how the power of Antipater and his sons was growing, their disposition towards him became hostile" (Josephus, Antiquities, xiv. 9, 3). They were specially jealous of the youthful Herod, to whom Galilee had been entrusted by his father. On account of the arbitrary execution of a robber chief Ezechias, who perhaps had originally been a Hasmonaean partisan, they summoned him before the synedrium, under the impression that it was not yet too late to remind him that he was after all but a servant. But the defiant demeanour of the culprit, and a threatening missive which at the same time arrived from Sextus Caesar demanding his acquittal, rendered his judges speechless, nor did they regain their courage until they had heard the stinging reproaches of Sameas the scribe. Yet the aged Hyrcanus, who did not comprehend the danger that was threatening himself, postponed judgment upon Herod, and gave him opportunity to withdraw. Having been appointed strategus of Coelesyria by Sextus Caesar in the meanwhile he soon afterwards appeared before Jerusalem at the head of an army, and the authorities were compelled to address themselves in a conciliatory manner to his father and to Phasael his brother in order to secure his withdrawal. The attempt to crush the serpent which had thus effected a lodgment in the Hasmonaean house came too late. The result of it simply was that the Herodians had now the advantage of being able to distinguish between Hyrcanus and his "evil counsellors." From that moment the downfall of the Sadducaean notables was certain. It was of no avail to them that after the battle of Philippi (42) they accused Herod and Phasael (Antipater having been murdered in 43) before Antony of having been helpful in every possible way to Cassius; Antony declared himself in the most decisive manner for the two brothers. In their despair--for properly speaking they were not national fanatics but only egoistic politicians--they ultimately made common cause with Antigonus the son of Aristobulus, and threw themselves into the arms of the Parthians, perceiving the interests of the Romans and of Herod to be inseparable (40). Fortune at first seemed to have declared in favour of the pretender. The masses unanimously took his side; Phasael committed suicide in prison; with a single blow Herod was stripped of all his following and made a helpless fugitive. He took refuge in Rome, however, where he was named king of Judaea by the senate, and after a somewhat protracted war he finally, with the help of the legions of Sosius, made himself master of Jerusalem (37). The captive Antigonus was beheaded at Antioch. King Herod began his reign by reorganising the synedrium; he ordered the execution of forty-five of its noblest members, his most zealous opponents. These were the Sadducaean notables who long had headed the struggle against the Idumaean interlopers. Having thus made away with the leaders of the Jerusalem aristocracy, he directed his efforts to the business of corrupting the rest. He appointed to the most important posts obscure individuals, of priestly descent, from Babylon and Alexandria, and thus replaced with creatures of his own the old aristocracy. Nor did he rest content with this; in order to preclude the possibility of any independent authority ever arising alongside of his own, he abolished the life-tenure of the high-priestly office, and brought it completely under the control of the secular power. By this means he succeeded in relegating the Sadducees to utter insignificance. They were driven out of their native sphere--the political--into the region of theoretical and ecclesiastical discussion, where they continued, but on quite unequal terms, their old dispute with the Pharisees. It was during the period of Herod's activity that the Pharisees, strictly speaking, enjoyed their greatest prosperity (Sameas and Abtalion, Hillel and Shammai); in the synedrium they became so numerous as almost to equal the priests and elders. Quite consistently with their principles they had abstained from taking any part in the life and death struggle for the existence of the national state. Their leaders had even counselled the fanatical defenders of Jerusalem to open the gates to the enemy; for this service they were treated with the highest honour by Herod. He made it part of his general policy to favour the Pharisees (as also the sect of the Essenes, insignificant though it was), it being his purpose to restrict the national life again within those purely ecclesiastical channels of activity which it had abandoned since the Maccabaean wars. However reckless his conduct in other respects, he was always scrupulously careful to avoid wounding religious susceptibilities (Antiquities, xiv. 16, 3). But although the Pharisees might be quite pleased that the high-priesthood and the kingship were no longer united in one and the same person, and that interest in the law again overshadowed interest in politics, the populace for their part could never forgive Herod for overthrowing the old dynasty. That he himself, at least in religious profession, was a Jew did not improve his position, but rather made it worse. It was not easy for him to stifle the national feeling after it had once been revived among the Jews; they could not forget the recent past, and objected to being thrust back into the time when foreign domination was endured by them as a matter of course. The Romans were regarded in quite a different light from that in which the Persians and the Greeks had been viewed, and Herod was only the client of the Romans. His greatest danger seemed to arise from the still surviving members of the Hasmonaean family, to whom, as is easily understood, the national hopes clung. In the course of the earlier years of his reign he removed every one of them from his path, beginning with his youthful brother-in-law Aristobulus (35), after whom came his old patron Hyrcanus II. (30), then Mariamne his wife (29), and finally his stepmother Alexandra (28), the daughter of Hyrcanus and the widow of Alexander Aristobuli. Subsequently, in 25, he caused Costobarus and the sons of Babas to be executed. While thus occupied with domestic affairs, Herod had constant trouble also in his external relations, and each new phase in his political position immediately made itself felt at home. In the first instance he had much to suffer from Cleopatra, who would willingly have seen Palestine reduced under Egyptian domination once more, and who actually succeeded in inducing Antony to take from Herod several fair and valuable provinces of his realm. Next, his whole position was imperilled by the result of the battle of Actium; he had once more ranged himself upon the wrong side. But his tact did not fail him in winning Octavianus, as before it had made Antony his friend. In fact he reaped nothing but advantage from the great overturn which took place in Roman affairs; it rid him of Cleopatra, a dangerous enemy, and gave him in the new imperator a much better master than before. During the following years he had leisure to carry out those splendid works of peace by which it was his aim to ingratiate himself with the emperor. He founded cities and harbours (Antipatris, Caesarea), constructed roads, theatres, and temples, and subsidised far beyond his frontier all works of public utility. He taxed the Jews heavily, but in compensation promoted their material interests with energy and discretion, and built for them, from 20 or 19 B.C. onwards, the temple at Jerusalem. To gain their sympathies he well knew to be impossible. Apart from the Roman legions at his back his authority had its main support in his fortresses and in his system of espionage. But just as the acme of his splendour had been reached, he himself became the instrument of a terrible vengeance for the crimes by which his previous years had been stained; as executioner of all the Hasmonaeans, he was now constrained to be the executioner of his own children also. His suspicious temper had been aroused against his now grown-up sons by Mariamne, whose claims through their mother to the throne were superior to his own; his brother Pheroras and his sister Salome made it their special business to fan his jealousy into flame. To show the two somewhat arrogant youths that the succession was not so absolutely secure in their favour as they were supposing, the father summoned to his court Antipater, the exiled son of a former marriage. Antipater, under the mask of friendship, immediately began to carry on infamous intrigues against his half brothers, in which Pheroras and Salome unconsciously played into his hands. For years he persevered alike in favouring and unfavouring circumstances with his part, until at last, by the machinations of a Lacedemonian, Eurycles, who had been bribed, Herod was induced to condemn the sons of Mariamne at Berytus, and cause them to be strangled (Samaria, 7-6 B.C.). Not long afterwards a difference between Antipater and Salome led to the exposure of the former. Herod was compelled to drain the cup to the dregs; he was not spared the knowledge that he had murdered his children without a cause. His remorse threw him into a serious illness, in which his strong constitution wrestled long with death. While he lay at Jericho near his end he gave orders for the execution of Antipater also; and to embitter the joy of the Jews at his removal he caused their elders to be shut up together in the hippodrome at Jericho with the injunction to butcher them as soon as he breathed his last, that so there might be sorrow throughout the land. The latter order, however, was not carried out. His death (4 B.C.) gave the signal for an insurrection of small beginnings which gradually spread until it ultimately infected all the people; it was repressed by Varus with great cruelty. Meanwhile Herod's connexions were at Rome disputing about the inheritance. The deceased king (who was survived by several children of various marriages) had made a will, which was substantially confirmed by Augustus. By it his son Philip received the northern portion of the territory on the east of the Jordan along with the district of Paneas (Caesarea Philippi); his thirty-seven years' reign over this region was happy. Another son, Herod Antipas, obtained Galilee and Peraea; he beautified his domains with architectural works (Sepphoris, Tiberias; Livias, Machaerus), and succeeded by his fox-like policy in ingratiating himself with the emperors, particularly with Tiberius, for that very cause, however, becoming odious to the Roman provincial officials. The principal heir was Archelaus, to whom Idumaea, Judaea, and Samaritis were allotted; Augustus at first refused him the title of king. Archelaus had experienced the greatest difficulty in carrying through his claims before the emperor in face of the manifold oppositions of his enemies; the vengeance which he wreaked upon his subjects was so severe that in 6 A,D. a Jewish and Samaritan embassy besought the emperor for his deposition. Augustus assented, banishing Archelaus to Vienne, and putting in his place a Roman procurator. Thenceforward Judaea continued under procurators, with the exception of a brief interval (41-44 A.D.), during which Herod Agrippa I. united under his sway all the dominions of his grandfather. /1/ **************************************** 1. Agrippa was the grandson of Mariamne through Aristobulus. Caligula, whose friendship he had secured in Rome, bestowed upon him in 37 the dominions of Philip with the title of king, and afterwards the tetrarchy of Antipas, whom he deposed and banished to Lugdunum (39). Claudius added the possessions of Archelaus. But the kingdom was again taken away from his son Agrippa II. (44), who, however, after the death of his uncle, Herod of Chalcis, obtained that principality for which at a later period (52) the tetrarchy of Philip was substituted. His sister Berenice is known as the mistress of Titus; another sister, Drusilla, was the wife of the procurator Felix. The descendants of Mariamne through Alexander held for some time an Armenian principality. **************************************** The termination of the vassal kingship resulted in manifest advantage to the Sadducees. The high priest and synedrium again acquired political importance; they were the responsible representatives of the nation in presence of the suzerain power, and conceived themselves to be in some sort lords of land and people (John xi. 48). For the Pharisees the new state of affairs appears to have been less satisfactory. That the Romans were much less oppressive to the Jews than the rulers of the house of Herod was a consideration of less importance to them than the fact that the heathen first unintentionally and then deliberately were guilty of the rudest outrages upon the law, outrages against which those sly half-Jews had well understood how to be on their guard. It was among the lower ranks of the people, however, that hatred to the Romans had its proper seat. On the basis of the views and tendencies which had long prevailed there, a new party was now formed, that of the Zealots, which did not, like the Pharisees, aim merely at the fulfilment of all righteousness, i.e., of the law, and leave everything else in the hands of God, but was determined to take an active part in bringing about the realisation of the kingdom of God (Josephus, Antiquities, xviii. 1, 1). As the transition to the new order of things was going on, the census of Quirinius took place (6-7 A.D.); it occasioned an immense excitement, which, however, was successfully allayed. On the withdrawal of Quirinius, Coponius remained behind as procurator of Judaea; he was followed, under Augustus, by Marcus Ambivius and Annius Rufus; under Tiberius, by Valerius Gratus (15-26 A.D.) and Pontius Pilatus (26-36 A.D.); under Caligula, by Marcellus (36-37) and Marullus (37-41 A.D.). The procurators were subordinate to the imperial legati of Syria; they resided in Caesarea, and visited Jerusalem on special occasions only. They had command of the military, and their chief business was the maintenance of the peace and the care of the revenue. They interested themselves in affairs of religion only in so far as these had a political side; the temple citadel Antonia was constantly garrisoned with a cohort. The administration of justice appears to have been left to a very considerable extent in the hands of the synedrium, but it was not allowed to give effect to any capital sentence. At the head of the native authorities stood at this time not so much the actual high priest as the college of the chief priests. The actual office of high priest had lost its political importance in consequence of the frequency with which its holders were changed; thus, for example, Annas had more influence than Caiaphas. The principle of interfering as little as possible with the religious liberty of the Jews was rudely assailed by the Emperor Caius, who like a second Antiochus, after various minor vexations, gave orders that his image should be set up in the temple of Jerusalem as in others elsewhere. It was entirely through the courage and tact of the Syrian governor P. Petronius that the execution of these orders was temporarily postponed until the emperor was induced by Agrippa I. to withdraw them. Caius soon afterwards died, and under the rule of Agrippa I., to whom the government of the entire kingdom of his grandfather was committed by Claudius, the Jews enjoyed much prosperity; in every respect the king was all they could wish. This very prosperity seems, however, to have caused them fresh danger. For it made them feel the government by procurators, which was resumed after the death of Agrippa I., to be particularly hard to bear, whatever the individual characters of these might be. They were Cuspius Fadus (from 44, under whom Theudas), Tiberius Alexander (the Romanised nephew of Philo, till 48), Cumanus (48-52, under whom the volcano already began to give dangerous signs of activity), and Felix (52-60). Felix, who has the honour to be pilloried in the pages of Tacitus, contrived to make the dispeace permanent. The influence of the two older parties, both of which were equally interested in the maintenance of the existing order, and in that interest were being drawn nearer to each other, diminished day by day. The masses broke loose completely from the authority of the scribes; the ruling nobility adapted itself better to the times; under the circumstances which then prevailed, it is not surprising that they became thoroughly secular and did not shrink from the employment of directly immoral means for the attainment of their ends. The Zealots became the dominant party. It was a combination of noble and base elements; superstitious enthusiasts (Acts xxi. 38) and political assassins, the so-called sicarii, were conjoined with honest but fanatical patriots. Felix favoured the sicarii in order that he might utilise them; against the others his hostility raged with indiscriminating cruelty, yet without being able to check them. The anarchy which he left behind him as a legacy was beyond the control of his able successor Porcius Festus (60-62), and the last two procurators, Albinus (62-64) and Gessius Florus, acted as if it had been their special business to encourage and promote it. All the bonds of social order were dissolved; no property was secure; the assassins alone prospered, and the procurators went shares with them in the profits. It was inevitable that deep resentment against the Romans should be felt in every honest heart. At last it found expression. During his visit to Jerusalem in May 66 Florus laid hands upon the temple treasure; the Jews allowed themselves to go so far as to make a joke about it, which he avenged by giving over a portion of the city to be plundered, and crucifying a number of the inhabitants. He next insisted upon their kissing the rod, ordering that a body of troops which was approaching should be met and welcomed. At the persuasion of their leaders the Jews forced themselves even to this; but a constant succession of fresh insults and cruelties followed, till patience was quite exhausted at last, and in a violent street fight the Romans were so handled that the procurator withdrew from the town, leaving only the cohort in Antonia. Once again was an attempt at pacification made by Agrippa II., who hastened from Alexandria with this purpose, but the Jews could not bring themselves to make submission to Gessius Florus. It so happened that at this juncture the fortress of Masada on the Dead Sea fell into the hands of the Zealots; the courage of the party of action rose, and at the instance of the hot-headed Eleazar the son of Ananias, a man, still young, of highest priestly family, the sacrifice on behalf of the emperor was discontinued, ie., revolt was declared. But the native authorities continued opposed to a war. At their request King Agrippa sent soldiers to Jerusalem; at first they appeared to have some effect, but ultimately they were glad to make their escape in safety from the city. The cohort in Antonia was in like manner unable to hold its own; freedom was given it to withdraw; but, contrary to the terms of capitulation, it was put to the sword. The war party now signalised its triumph over all elements of opposition from within by the murder of the high priest Ananias. A triumph was gained also over the outer foe. The Syrian legate, Cestius Gallus, appeared before Jerusalem in the autumn of 66, but after a short period raised the siege; his deliberate withdrawal was changed into a precipitate flight in an attack made by the Jews at Bethhoron. The revolt now spread irresistibly through all ranks and classes of the population, and the aristocracy found it expedient itself to assume the leadership. An autonomous government was organised, with the noblest members of the community at its head; of these the most important was the high priest Ananus. Meanwhile Nero entrusted the conduct of the Jewish war to Vespasian, his best general. In the spring of 67 he began his task in Galilee, where the historian Josephus had command of the insurgents. The Jews entirely distrusted him and he them; in a short time the Romans were masters of Galilee, only a few strong places holding out against them. Josephus was besieged in Jotapata, and taken prisoner; the other places also were unable to hold out long. Such of the champions of freedom in Galilee as escaped betook themselves to Jerusalem; amongst these was the Zealot leader John of Giscala. There they told the story of their misfortunes, of which they laid the blame upon Josephus, and upon the aristocratic government as having no heart for the common cause and having treachery for their motto. The Zealots now openly aimed at the overthrow of the existing government, but Ananus bravely withstood them, and pressed so hard on them that they summoned the Idumaeans into the city to their aid. These honourable fanatics indeed withdrew again as soon as they had discovered that they were being used for sinister designs; but in the meanwhile they had accomplished the work of the Zealots. The old magistracy of Jerusalem was destroyed, Ananus with the heads of the aristocracy and very many other respectable citizens put to death. The radicals, for the most part not natives of the city, came into power; John of Giscala at their head tyrannized over the inhabitants. While these events were taking place in Jerusalem, Vespasian had subdued the whole country, with the exception of one or two fortresses. But as he was setting about the siege of the capital, tidings arrived of the death of Nero, and the offensive was discontinued. For almost two years (June 68 to April 70), with a short break, war was suspended. When Vespasian at the end of this period became emperor, he entrusted to Titus the task of reducing Jerusalem. There in the interval the internal struggle had been going on, even after the radicals had gained the mastery. As a counterpoise to John of Giscala the citizens had received the guerilla captain Simon bar Giora into the city; the two were now at feud with each other, but were alike in their rapacity towards the citizens. John occupied the temple, Simon the upper city Iying over against it on the west. For a short time a third entered into competition with the two rivals, a certain Eleazar who had separated from John and established himself in the inner temple. But just as Titus was beginning the siege (Easter, 70) John contrived to get rid of this interloper. Titus attacked from the north. After the lower city had fallen into his hands, he raised banks with a view to the storm of the temple and the upper city. But the defenders, who were now united in a common cause, taught him by their vigorous resistance that his object was not to be so quickly gained. He therefore determined to reduce them by famine, and for this end completely surrounded the city with a strong wall. In the beginning of July he renewed the attack, which he directed in the first instance against the temple. The tower of Antonia fell on the 5th, but the temple continued to beheld notwithstanding; until the I7th the daily sacrifice continued to be offered. The Romans succeeded in gaining the outer court in August only. To drive them out, the Jews in the night of August 10-11 made a sortie, but were compelled to retire, the enemy forcing their way behind them into the inner court. A legionary flung a firebrand into an annexe of the temple, and soon the whole structure was in flames. A terrible slaughter of the defenders ensued, but John with a determined band succeeded in cutting his way out, and by means of the bridge over the Tyropceon valley made his escape into the upper city. No attack had as yet been directed against this quarter; but famine was working terrible ravages among the crowded population. Those in command, however, refused to capitulate unless freedom to withdraw along with their wives and children were granted. These terms being withheld, a storm, after the usual preparations on the part of the Romans, took place. The resistance was feeble; the strong towers were hardly defended at all; Simon bar Giora and John of Giscala now thought only of their personal safety. In the unprotected city the Roman soldiers spread fire and slaughter unchecked (September 7, 70). Of those who survived also some were put to death; the rest were sold or carried off to the mines and amphitheatres. The city was levelled with the ground; the tenth legion was left behind in charge. Titus took with him to Rome for his triumphal procession Simon bar Giora and John of Giscala, along with seven hundred other prisoners, also the sacred booty taken from the temple, the candlestick, the golden table, and a copy of the Torah. He was slightly premature with his triumph; for some time elapsed, and more than one bloody battle was necessary before the rebellion was completely stifled. It did not come wholly to an end until the fall of Masada (April 73). I5. THE RABBINS. Even now Palestine continued for a while to be the centre of Jewish life, but only in order to prepare the way for its transition into thoroughly cosmopolitan forms. The development of thought sustained no break on account of the sad events which had taken place, but was only directed once more in a consistent manner towards these objects which had been set before it from the time of the Babylonian exile. On the ruins of the city and of the temple the Pharisaic Judaism which rests upon the law and the school celebrated its triumph. National fanaticism indeed was not yet extinguished, but it burnt itself completely out in the vigorous insurrection led by Simeon bar Koziba (Bar Cochebas, 132-135). That a conspicuous rabbin, Akiba, should have taken part in it, and have recognised in Simeon the Messiah, was an inconsistency on his part which redounds to his honour. Inasmuch as the power of the rabbins did not depend upon the political or hierarchical forms of the old commonwealth, it survived the fall of the latter. Out of what hitherto had been a purely moral influence something of an official position now grew. They formed themselves into a college which regarded itself as a continuation of the old synedrium, and which carried forward its name. At first its seat was at Jamnia, but it soon removed to Galilee, and remained longest at Tiberias. The presidency was hereditary in the family of Hillel, with the last descendants of whom the court itself came to an end. /1/ *************************************** 1. The following is the genealogy of the first Nasi:--Gamaliel ben Simeon (Josephus, Vita, 38) ben Gamaliel (Acts v. 34, xxii. 3) ben simeon ben Hillel. The name Gamaliel was that which occurred most frequently among the patriarchs; see Codex Theod. xvi. 8, 22. *************************************** The respect in which the synedrial president was held rapidly increased; like Christian patriarchs under Mahometan rule, he was also recognised by the imperial government as the municipal head of the Jews of Palestine, and bore the secular title of the old high priests (nasi, ethnarch, patriarch). Under him the Palestinian Jews continued to form a kind of state within a state until the 5th century. From the non-Palestinian Jews he received offerings of money. (Compare Gothofredus on Codex Theod., xvi. 8, "De Judaeis;" and Morinus, Exer. Bibl., ii. exerc. 3, 4). The task of the rabbins was so to reorganise Judaism under the new circumstances that it could continue to assert its distinctive character. What of external consistency had been lost through the extinction of the ancient commonwealth required to be compensated for by an inner centralisation proportionately stronger. The separation from everything heathenish became more pronounced than before; the use of the Greek language was of necessity still permitted, but at least the Septuagint was set aside by Aquila (Cod. Justinian., Nov. 146) inasmuch as it had now become the Christian Bible. For to this period also belongs the definitive separation between the synagogue and the church; henceforward Christianity could no longer figure as a Jewish sect. Intensified exclusiveness was accompanied by increased internal stringency. What at an earlier period had still remained to some extent fluid now became rigidly fixed; for example, an authentic text of the canon was now established, and at the same time the distinction between canon and apocrypha sharply drawn. The old tendency of the scribes to leave as little as possible free to the individual conscience, but to bring everything within the scope of positive ordinance, now celebrated its greatest triumphs. It was only an apparent movement in the direction of liberty, if regulations which had become quite impossible were now modified or cancelled. The most influential of the rabbins were indeed the least solicitous about the maintenance of what was old, and had no hesitation in introducing numerous and thoroughgoing innovations; but the conservatives R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and R. Ishmael ben Elisha were in truth more liberal-minded than the leaders of the party of progress, notably than R. Akiba. Even the Ultramontanes have never hesitated at departures from the usage of the ancient and mediaeval church; and the Pharisaic rabbins were guided in their innovations by liberal principles no more than they. The object of the new determinations was simply to widen the domain of the law in a consistent manner, to bring the individual entirely under the iron rule of system. But the Jewish communities gave willing obedience to the hierarchy of the rabbins; Judaism had to be maintained, cost what it might. That the means employed were well adapted to the purpose of maintaining the Jews as a firmly compacted religious community even after all bonds of nationality had fallen away cannot be doubted. But whether the attainment of this purpose by incredible exertion was a real blessing to themselves and the world may very well be disputed. One consequence of the process of intellectual isolation and of the effort to shape everything in accordance with hard and fast rules and doctrines was the systematisation and codification of juristic and ritual tradition, a work with which a beginning was made in the century following the destruction of Jerusalem. Towards the end of the 2nd century the Pharisaic doctrine of Hillel as it had been further matured by Akiba was codified and elevated to the position of statute law by the patriarch Rabban Judah the Holy (Mishna). /1/ ************************************* 1. The Mishna succeeded almost, but not quite, in completely doing away with all conflicting tendencies. At first the heterodox tradition of that time was also committed to writing (R. Ishmael ben Elisha) and so handed down,--in various forms (col]ection of the Baraithas, that is, of old precepts which had not been received into the Mishna, in the Tosephtha). Nor did the active opposition altogether die out even at a later period; under favouring circumstances it awoke to new life in Karaism, the founder of which, Anan ben David, lived in Babylonia in the middle of the 8th century. ************************************ But this was only the first stage in the process of systematising and fixing tradition. The Mishna became itself the object of rabbinical comment and supplement; the Tannaim, whose work was registered in the Mathnetha (Mishna, DEUTERWSIS = doctrine), were followed by the Amoraim, whose work in turn took permanent shape in the Gemara (= doctrine). The Palestinian Gemara was reduced to writing in perhaps the 4th or 5th century; unfortunately it has been preserved to us only in part, but appears to have reached the Middle Ages in a perfect state (compare Schiller-Szinessy in the Academy, 1878, p. 170 seq.). Even thus the process which issued in the production of the Talmud was not yet completed; the Babylonian Amoraim carried it forward for some time longer, until at last at the rise of Islam the Babylonian Gemara was also written down. In the sth century Palestine ceased to be the centre of Judaism. Several circumstances conspired to bring this about. The position of the Jews in the Roman Empire had changed for the worse with the elevation of Christianity to be the religion of the state; the large autonomy which until then they had enjoyed in Palestine was now restricted; above all, the family of the Patriarchs, which had come to form a veritable dynasty, became extinct. /1/ **************************************** 1. Compare Gothofredus on Cod. Theod., xvi. 8, 29, ad voc. "post excessum patriarcharum." **************************************** But this did not make an end of what may be called the Jewish church-state; henceforward it had its home in Babylonia. From the period of the exile, a numerous and coherent body of Jews had continued to subsist there; the Parthians and Sassanidae granted them self-government; at their head was a native prince (Resh Galutha,--can be clearly traced from 2nd century A.D. onwards) who, when the Palestinian patriarchate came to an end, was left without a rival. This remarkable relic of a Jewish commonwealth continued to exist until the time of the Abassides. /2/ ************************************ 2. See Noeldeke, Tabari; 68, 118, and Kremer, Culturgeschichte des Orients unter den Chalifen, i. 188, ii. 176. ************************************ Even as early as the beginning of the 3rd century A.D. certain rabbins, at their head Abba Areka (Rab), had migrated from Palestine and founded a settlement for learning in the law in Babylonia. The schools there (at Pumbeditha, Sora, Nahardea) prospered greatly, vied with those of Palestine, and continued to exist after the cessation of the latter, when the patriarchate became extinct; thus they had the last word in the settlement of doctrine. Alongside of the settlement of tradition went another task, that of fixing the letters of the consonantal text of the Bible (by the Massora), its vowel pronunciation (by the punctuation), and its translation into the Aramaic vernacular (Targum). Here also the Babylonians came after the Palestinians, yet of this sort of erudition Palestine continued to be the headquarters even after the 5th century. With this task--that of attaining to the greatest possible conformity to the letter and of continuing therein--the inner development of Jewish thought came to an end. /1/ *************************************** 1. Compare F. Weber, System der altsynagagalen palaestinischen Theologie, Leipsic, 1880. **************************************** The later Hebrew literature, which does not fall to be considered here, contributed very few new elements; in so far as an intellectual life existed at all among the Jews of the Middle Ages, it was not a growth of native soil but proceeded from the Mahometan or Latin culture of individuals. The Kabbala at most, and even it hardly with justice, can be regarded as having been a genuine product of Judaism. It originated in Palestine, and subsequently flourished chiefly in the later Middle Ages in Spain, and, like all other methodised nonsense, had strong attractions for Christian scholars. 16. THE JEWISH DISPERSION. Something still remains to be said with reference to the diaspora. We have seen how it began; in spite of Josephus (Antiquities, xi. 5, 2), it is to be carried back not to the Assyrian but merely to the Babylonian captivity; it was not composed of Israelites, but solely of citizens of the southern kingdom. It received its greatest impulse from Alexander, and then afterwards from Caesar. In the Graeco-Roman period Jerusalem at the time of the great festival presented the appearance of a veritable Babel (Acts ii. 9-11); with the Jews themselves were mingled the proselytes (Acts ii. 11), for even already that religion was gaining considerable conquests among the heathen; as King Agrippa I. writes to the Emperor Caius (Philo, Legat. ad Gaium, sec. 36), "Jerusalem is the metropolis not only of Judaea but of very many lands, on account of the colonies which on various occasions ('epi xairwn) it has sent out into the adjoining countries of Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, and Coelesyria, and into the more remote Pamphylia, Cilicia, the greater part of Asia Minor as far as to Bithynia and the remotest parts of Pontus; likewise into Europe--Thessaly, Boeotia, Macedonia, AEtolia, Attica, Argos, Corinth, most parts (and these the fairest) of the Peloponnesus. Nor are the Jewish settlements confined to the mainland only; they are found also in the more important islands, Euboea, Cyprus, Crete. I do not insist on the countries beyond the Euphrates, for with few exceptions all of them, Babylon and the fertile regions around it, have Jewish inhabitants." In the west of Europe also they were not wanting; many thousands of them lived in Rome. In those cities where they were at all numerous they, during the imperial period, formed separate communities; Josephus has preserved a great variety of documents in which the Roman authorities recognise their rights and liberties (especially as regards the Sabbath rest and the observance of festivals). Of greatest importance was the community in Alexandria; according to Philo a million of Jews had their residence there under an ethnarch for whom a gerusia was afterwards substituted by Augustus (In Flac., secs. 6, 10). The extent to which this diaspora was helpful in the diffusion of Christianity, the manner in which the mission of the apostles everywhere attached itself to the synagogues and proseuchai, is well known from the New Testament. That the Christians of the 1st cenentury had much to suffer along with the Jews is also a familiar fact. For at this period, in other respects more favourable to them than any other had previously been, the Jews had occasionally to endure persecution. The emperors, taking umbrage at their intrusiveness, more than once banished them from Rome (Acts xviii. 2). The good will of the native population they never secured; they were most hated in Egypt and Syria, where they were strongest. /1/ ********************************** 1. Compare Schuerer, Neutest. Zeitgeschichte (1874), sec. 31. The place taken by the Jewish element in the world of that time is brilliantly set forth by Mommsen in his History of Rome (book v. chapter ii.; English translation iv. p. 538 seq., 1866):-- "How numerous even in Rome the Jewish population was already before Caesar's time, and how closely at the same time the Jews even then kept together as fellow-countrymen, is shown by the remark of an author of this period, that it was dangerous for a governor to offend the Jews in his province, because he might then certainly reckon on being hissed after his return, by the populace of the capital. Even at this time the predominant business of the Jews was trade.... At this period too we encounter the peculiar antipathy of the Occidentals touards this so thoroughly Oriental race and their foreign opinions and customs. This Judaism, although not the most pleasing feature in the nowhere pleasing picture of the mixture of nations which then prevailed, was, nevertheless, an historical element developing itself in the natural course of things,... which Caesar just like his predecessor Alexander fostered as far as possible....They did not, of course, contemplate placing the Jewish nationality on an equal footing with the Hellenic or Italo-Hellenic. But the Jew who has not, like the Occidental, received the Pandora's gift of political organisation, and stands substantially in a relation of indifference to the state, who, moreover, is as reluctant to give up the essence of his national idiosyncrasy as he is ready to clothe it with any nationality at pleasure and to adapt himself up to a certain degree to foreign habits--the Jew was, for this very reason, as it were, made for a state which was to be built on the ruins of a hundred living polities, and to be endowed with a somewhat abstract and, from the outset, weakened nationality. In the ancient world also Judaism was an effective leaven of cosmopolitanism and of national decomposition." ********************************************* The position of the Jews in the Roman Empire was naturally not improved by the great risings under Nero, Trajan (in Cyrene, Cyprus, Mesopotamia), and Hadrian. The East strictly so called, became more and more their proper home. The Christianization of the empire helped still further in a very special way to detach them from the Western world. /1/ *********************************** 1. For a brief time only were they again favoured by Julian the Apostate; compare Gibbon, chapter xxiii. *********************************** They sided with the Persians against the Byzantines; in the year 614 they were even put in possession of Jerusalem by Chosroes, but were not long able to hold their own against Heraclius. /2/ ************************************* 2. Gibbon, chapter xlvi. ************************************* With Islam also they found themselves in greater sympathy than with Christianity, although they were cruelly treated by Mahomet in Arabia, and driven by Omar out of the Hejaz, and notwithstanding the facts that they were as matter of course excluded from citizenship, and that they were held by Moslems as a whole in greater contempt than the Christians. They throve especially well on what may be called the bridge between East and West, in Mauretania and Spain, where they were the intellectual intermediaries between the Arab and the Latin culture. In the Sephardim and Ashkenazim the distinction between the subtler Oriental and the more conservative Western Jews has maintained itself in Europe also. From the 8th century onwards Judaism put forth a remarkable side shoot in the Khazars on the Volga; if legend Is to he believed, but little was required at one time to have induced the Russians to accept the Jewish rather than the Christian faith. In the West the equal civil rights which Caracalla had conferred on all free inhabitants of the empire came to an end, so far as the Jews were concerned, in the time of Constantine. The state then became the secular arm of the church, and took action, though with less severity, against Jews just as against heretics and pagans. As early as the year 315, Constantine made conversion from Christianity to Judaism a penal offence, and prohibited Jews, on pain of death, from circumcising their Christian slaves. These laws were re-enacted and made more severe by Constantius, who attached the penalty of death to marriages between Jews and Christians. Theodosius I. and Honorius, indeed, by strictly prohibiting the destruction of synagogues, and by maintaining the old regulation that a Jew was not to be summoned before a court of justice on a Sabbath-day, put a check upon the militant zeal of the Church, by which even Chrysostom, for example, allowed himself to be carried away at Antioch. But Honorius rendered them ineligible for civil or military service, leaving open to them only the bar and the decurionate, the latter being a _privilegiium odiosum_. Their liberty to try cases by their own law was curtailed; the cases between Jews and Christians were to be tried by Christian judges only. Theodosius II. prohibited them from building new synagogues, and anew enforced their disability for all state employments. Most hostile of all was the orthodox Justinian, who, however, was still more severe against Pagans and Samaritans. /1/ ****************************************** 1. Cod. Theod., xvi. 8: "De Judaeis, Coelicolis, et Samaritanis;" Cod. Just., i. 9: "De Judaeis et Coelicolis." With regard to these coelicolae, see Gothofredus on Cod. Theod., xvi. 8, 9, and also J. Bernays, "Ueber die Gottesfuerchtigen bei Juvenal," in the Comm. Philol in hon. Th. Mommsen, 1877, p. 163. ****************************************** He harassed the Jews with a law enjoining them to observe Easter on the same day as the Christians, a law which it was of course found impossible to carry out. /2/ ******************************************* 2. Gibbon, chapter xlvii. ******************************************* In the Germanic states which arose upon the ruins of the Roman empire, the Jews did not fare badly on the whole. It was only in cases where the state was dominated by the Catholic Church, as, for example; among the Spanish Visigoths, that they were cruelly oppressed; among the Arian Ostrogoths, on the other hand, they had nothing to complain of. One thing in their favour was the Germanic principle that the law to be applied depended not on the land but on the nationality, as now in the East Europeans are judged by the consuls according to the law of their respective nations. The autonomy of the Jewish communities, which had been curtailed by the later emperors, was now enlarged once more under the laxer political and legal conditions. The Jews fared remarkably well under the Frankish monarchy; the Carolingians helped them in every possible way, making no account of the complaints of the bishops. They were allowed to hold property in land, but showed no eagerness for it; leaving agriculture to the Germans, they devoted them selves to trade. The market was completely in their hands; as a specially lucrative branch of commerce they still carried on the traffic in slaves, which had engaged them even in ancient times. /1/ *************************************** 1. Agobardus Lugdunensis, Die Insolentia Judaeorum, De Judaicis superstitionibus. Agobard was no superstitious fanatic, but one of the weightiest and most enlightened ecclesiastics of the Middle Ages. *************************************** Meanwhile the Church was not remiss in seeking constantly repeated re-enactments of the old imperial laws, in the framing of which she had had paramount influence, and which she now incorporated with her own canon law. /2/ *************************************** 2. Compare Decret. i., dist. 45, c. 3; Decr. ii., caus. 23, qaest. 8, c. 9, caus. 28, qu. 1, c. 10-12; Decr. iii., de consecr., dist. 4, c. 93; Decretal. Greg. 5, 6 ("De Judaeis, Sarracenis, et eorum servis"), 5, 19, 18; Extrav. commun 5, 2. *************************************** Gradually she succeeded in attaining her object. In the later Middle Ages the position of the Jews in the Christian society deteriorated. Intercourse with them was shunned; their isolation from being voluntary became compulsory; from the I3th century onwards they were obliged to wear, as a distinctive mark (more necessary in the East than in the West), a round or square yellow badge on their breast. /3/ ***************************************** 3. Compare Du Cange, s. v. "Judaei;" also Reuter, Gesch. d. Aufklaerung im Mittelalter, i. 154 seq. In spite of all the legal restrictions laid upon them, the Jews still continued to have great influence with the princes, and more especially with the popes, of the Middle Ages. ***************************************** The difference of religion elicited a well-marked religious hate with oft-repeated deadly outbreaks, especially during the period of the crusades, and afterwards when the Black Death was raging (1348-50). Practical consequences like these the Church of course did not countenance; the popes set themselves against persecutions of the Jews, /4/ ***************************************** 4. Decr. ii. 23, 8, 9. Alexander II. omnibus episeopis Hispaniae: Dispar...est Judaeorum et Sarracenorum eausa; in illos enim, qui Christianos persequuntur et ex urbibus et propriis sedibus pellunt, juste pugnatur, hi vero ubique servire parati sunt. ******************************************** but with imperfect success. The popular aversion rested by no means exclusively on religious considerations; worldly motives were also present. The Jews of that period had in a still higher degree than now the control of financial affairs in their hands; and they used it without scruple. The Church herself had unintentionally given them a monopoly of the money market, by forbidding Christians to take interest. /5/ ******************************************** 5. Decretal. Greg. v. 19, 18. Innocent III. in name of the Lateran Council: Quanto amplius Christiana religio ab exactione compescitur usurarum, tanto gravisu super his Judaeorum perfidia insolescit, ita quod brevi tempore Christianorum exhauriunt facultates. Volentes igitur in hac parse prospicere Christianis, ne a Judaeis immaniter aggraventur, synodali decreto statuimus, ut, si de caetero quocunque praetextu Judaaei a Christianis graves immoderatasve usuras extorserint, Christianorum eis participium subtrahatur, donec de immoderato gravamine satisfecerint competenter.... Principibus autem injungimus, ut propter hoc non sint Christianis infesti, sed potius a tanto gravamine studeant cohibere Judaeos. ****************************************** In this way the Jews became rich indeed, but at the same time made themselves still more repugnant to the Christian population than they previously were by reason of their religion. Having, according to the later mediaeval system, no rights in the Christian state, the Jews were tolerated only in those territories where the sovereign in the exercise of free favour accorded them protection. This protection was granted them in many quarters, but never for nothing; numerous and various taxes, which could be raised or changed in a perfectly arbitrary way, were exacted in exchange. But in countries where the feeling of nationality attained to a vigorous development, the spirit of toleration was speedily exhausted; the Jews were expelled by the act of the state. England was the first kingdom in which this occurred (1290); France followed in 1395, Spain and Portugal in 1492 and 1495. In this way it came about that the Holy Roman Empire-- Germany, Italy, and adjoining districts--became the chief abode of the Jews. /1/ In the anarchy which here prevailed they could best ***************************************** 1. The Polish Jews are German Jews who migrated in the Middle Ages to Poland, but have maintained to the present day their German speech, a mediaeval South-Frankish dialect, of course greatly corrupted. In Russian "German" and "Jew" mean the same thing. ****************************************** maintain their separate attitude, and if they were expelled from one locality they readily found refuge in some other. The emperor had indeed the right of extirpating them altogether (with the exception of a small number to be left as a memorial); but, in the first place, he had in various ways given up this right to the states of the empire, and, moreover, his pecuniary resources were so small that he could not afford to want the tax which the Jews as his "servi camerae" paid him for protecting their persons and property. In spite of many savage persecutions the Jews maintained their ground, especially in those parts of Germany where the political confusion was greatest. They even succeeded in maintaining a kind of autonomy by means of an arrangement in virtue of which civil processes which they had against each other were decided by their own rabbins in accordance with the law of the Talmud. /2/ ********************************************** 2. Stobbe, Die Juden in Deutschl. waehr. d. Mittelalt., Brunsw., 1866. ********************************************** The Jews, through their having on the one hand separated theselves, and on the other hand been excluded on religious grounds from the Gentiles, gained an internal solidarity and solidity which has hitherto enabled them to survive all the attacks of time. The hostility of the Middle Ages involved them in no danger; the greatest peril has been brought upon them by modern times, along with permission and increasing inducements to abandon their separate position. It is worth while to recall on this point the opinion of Spinoza, who was well able to form a competent judgment (Tract. Theol. polit., c. 4, ad fin.):-- "That the Jews have maintained themselves so long in spite of their dispersed and disorganised condition is not at all to be wondered at, when it is considered how they separated themselves from all other nationalities in such a way as to bring upon themselves the hatred of all, and that not only by external rites contrary to those of other nations, but also by the sign of circumcision, which they maintain most religiously. Experience shows that their conservation is due in a great degree to the very hatred which they have incurred. When the king of Spain compelled the Jews either to accept the national religion or to go into banishment, very many of them accepted the Roman Catholic faith, and in virtue of this received all the privileges of Spanish subjects, and were declared eligible for every honour; the consequence was that a process of absorption began immediately, and in a short time neither trace nor memory of them survived. Quite different was the history of those whom the king of Portugal compelled to accept the creed of his nation; although converted, they continued to live apart from the rest of their fellow-subjects, having been declared unfit for any dignity. So great importance do I attach to the sign of circumcision also in this connection, that I am persuaded that it is sufficient by itself to maintain the separate existence of the nation for ever." The persistency of the race may of course prove a harder thing to overcome than Spinoza has supposed; but nevertheless he will be found to have spoken truly in declaring that the so-called emancipation of the Jews must inevitably lead to the extinction of Judaism wherever the process is extended beyond the political to the social sphere. For the accomplishment of this centuries may be required.