•■■■"■•" ■'■■' : f$i™ ill sfipp siiiiiiii |||t JEWISH THEOLOGY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA ■ SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO JEWISH THEOLOGY SYSTEMATICALLY AND HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED BY Dr. K. KOHLER PRESIDENT HEBREW UNION COLLEGE Ncfo Horfe THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1918 All rights reserved Copyright, 1918, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1918. NortoooB JJkrss J. 8. Cushlng Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mast)., U.S.A. TO THE MEMORY OF Ebwarfc X. Ibeinsbeimer The Lamented President of the Board of Governors of Zhe Ibebrew 1flnion College In Whom Zeal for the High Ideals of Judaism and Patriotic Devo- tion to Our Blessed Country Were Nobly Embodied IN FRIENDSHIP AND AFFECTION ty .*•!' ►»>.' »- **> •■- PREFACE In offering herewith to the English-reading public the pres- ent work on Jewish Theology, the result of many years of research and of years of activity as President and teacher at the Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati, I bespeak for it that fairness of judgment to which every pioneer work is entitled. It may seem rather strange that no such work has hitherto been written by any of the leading Jewish scholars of either the conservative or the progressive school. This can only be accounted for by the fact that up to modern times the Rab- binical and philosophical literature of the Middle Ages sufficed for the needs of the student, and a systematic exposition of the Jewish faith seemed to be unnecessary. Besides, a real demand for the specific study of Jewish theology was scarcely felt, inasmuch as Judaism never assigned to a creed the prominent position which it holds in the Christian Church. This very fact induced Moses Mendelssohn at the beginning of the new era to declare that Judaism "contained only truths dictated by reason and no dogmatic beliefs at all." Moreover, as he was rather a deist than a theist, he stated boldly that Judaism "is not a revealed religion but a revealed law intended solely for the Jewish people as the vanguard of universal monotheism." By taking this legalistic view of Judaism in common with the former opponents of the Mai- monidean articles of faith — which, by the way, he had him- self translated for the religious instruction of the Jewish youth — he exerted a deteriorating influence upon the normal devel- opment of the Jewish faith under the new social conditions. The fact is that Mendelssohn emancipated the modern Jew viil PREFACE from the thraldom of the Ghetto, but not Judaism. In the Mendelssohnian circle the impression prevailed, as we are told, that Judaism consists of a system of forms, but is sub- stantially no religion at all. The entire Jewish renaissance period which followed, characteristically enough, made the cultivation of the so-called science of Judaism its object, but it neglected altogether the whole field of Jewish theology. Hence we look in vain among the writings of Rappaport, Zunz, Jost and their followers, the entire Breslau school, for any attempt at presenting the contents of Judaism as a sys- tem of faith. Only the pioneers of Reform Judaism, Geiger, Holdheim, Samuel Hirsch, Formstecher, Ludwig Philippson, Leopold Stein, Leopold Loew, and the Reform theologian par excellence David Einhorn, and likewise, Isaac M. Wise in America, made great efforts in that direction. Still a system of Jewish theology was wanting. Accordingly when, at the suggestion of my dear departed friend, Dr. Gustav Karpeles, President of the Society for the Promotion of the Science of Judaism in Berlin, I undertook to write a compendium (Grun- driss) of Systematic Jewish Theology, which appeared in 1910 as Vol. IV in a series of works on Systematic Jewish Lore (Grundriss der Gesammtwissenschaft des Judenthums), I had no work before me that might have served me as pattern or guide. Solomon Schechter's valuable studies were in the main confined to Rabbinical Theology. As a matter of fact I ac- cepted the task only with the understanding that it should be written from the view-point of historical research, instead oi a mere dogmatic or doctrinal system. For in my opinion the Jewish religion has never been static, fixed for all time by an ecclesiastical authority, but has ever been and still is the result of a dynamic process of growth and development. At the same time I felt that I could not omit the mystical element which pervades the Jewish religion in common with all others. As our prophets were seers and not philosophers or moralists, PREFACE ix so divine inspiration in varying degrees constituted a factor of Synagogal as well as Scriptural Judaism, Revelation, there- fore, is to be considered as a continuous force in shaping and reshaping the Jewish faith. The religious genius of the Jew falls within the domain of ethnic psychology concerning which science still gropes in the dark, but which progressive Judaism is bound to recognize in its effects throughout the ages. It is from this standpoint, taken also by the sainted founder of the Hebrew Union College, Isaac M. Wise, that I have writ- ten this book. At the same time I endeavored to be, as it behooves the historian, just and fair to Conservative Judaism, which will ever claim the reverence we owe to our cherished past, the mother that raised and nurtured us. While a work of this nature cannot lay claim to complete- ness, I have attempted to cover the whole field of Jewish belief, including also such subjects as no longer form parts of the religious consciousness of the modern Jew. I felt especially called upon to elucidate the historical relations of Judaism to the Christian and Mohammedan religions and dwell on the essential points of divergence from them. If my language at times has been rather vigorous in defense of the Jewish faith, it was because I was forced to correct and refute the prevail- ing view of the Christian world, of both theologians and others, that Judaism is an inferior religion, clannish and exclusive, that it is, in fact, a cult of the Old Testament Law. It was a matter of great personal satisfaction to me that the German work on its appearance met with warm appreciation in the various theological journals of America, England, and France, as well as of Germany, including both Jewish and Christian. I was encouraged and urged by many ' ' soon to make the book accessible to wider circles in an English translation." My friend, Dr. Israel Abrahams of Cambridge, England, took such interest in the book that he induced a young friend of his to prepare an English version. While this did not answer the x PREFACE purpose, it was helpful to me in making me feel that, instead of a literal translation, a thorough revision and remolding of the book was necessary in order to present it in an acceptable Eng- lish garb. In pursuing this course, I also enlarged the book in many ways, especially adding a new chapter on Jewish Ethics, which, in connection with the idea of the Kingdom of God, appeared to me to form a fitting culmination of Jewish theology. I have thus rendered it practically a new work. And here I wish to acknowledge my great indebtedness to my young friend and able pupil, Rabbi Lee J. Levinger, for the valuable aid he has rendered me and the painstaking labor he has kindly and unselfishly performed in going over my manu- script from beginning to end, with a view to revising the diction and also suggesting references to more recent publica- tions in the notes so as to bring it up to date. I trust that the work will prove a source of information and inspiration for both student and layman, Jew and non- Jew, and induce such as have become indifferent to, or preju- diced against, the teachings of the Synagogue, or of Reform Judaism in particular, to take a deeper insight into, and look up with a higher regard to the sublime and eternal verities of Judaism. "Give to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning." Cincinnati, November, 191 7. CONTENTS TAGE Preface *" Introduction : CHAPTER I. The Meaning of Theology . . . ... i II. What is Judaism ? 7 III. The Essence of the Religion of Judaism . 15 IV. The Jewish Articles of Faith 19 PART I: GOD A. GOD AS HE MAKES HIMSELF KNOWN TO MAN V. Man's Consciousness of God and Belief in God . 29 VI. Revelation, Prophecy, and Inspiration ... 34 VII. The Torah, the Divine Instruction .... 42 VIII. God's Covenant 48 B. THE IDEA OF GOD IN JUDAISM DC. God and the Gods S 2 X. The Names of God 58 XI. The Existence of God . .64 XII. The Essence of God . 72 XIII. The One and Only God 82 XIV. God's Omnipotence and Omniscience .... 91 XV. God's Omnipresence and Eternity .... 96 XVI. God's Holiness 101 XVLI. God's Wrath and Punishment 107 XVIII. God's Long-suffering and Mercy . . . .112 XIX. God's Justice 118 XX. God's Love and Compassion . . . . .126 CONTENTS CHAPTER XXI. God's Truth and Faithfulness XXII. God's Knowledge and Wisdom XXIII. God's Condescension i34 138 142 THE C. GOD IN RELATION TO THE WORLD XXIV. The World and Its Master . XXV. Creation as the Act of God XXVI. The Maintenance and Government of World XXVII. Miracles and the Cosmic Order . XXVIII. Providence and the Moral Government of the World XXIX. God and the Existence of Evil . XXX. God and the Angels .... XXXI. Satan and the Spirits of Evil XXXII. God and the Intermediary Powers 146 152 156 160 167 176 180 189 197 XXXIII. XXXIV. XXXV. XXXVI. XXXVII. XXXVIII. XXXIX. XL. XLI. XLII. I XLIII. XLIV. XLV. XLVI. XLVII. PART II: MAN Man's Place in Creation 206 The Dual Nature of Man 212 The Origin and Destiny of Man . . . .218 God's Spirit in Man 226 Free Will and Moral Responsibility . . .231 The Meaning of Sin 238 Repentance, or the Return to God . . . 246 Man, the Child of God 2 56 Prayer and Sacrifice 261 The Nature and Purpose of Prayer . . .271 Death and the Future Life 2fB The Immortal Soul of Man 286 Divine Retribution: Reward and PUNISHMENT . 298 The Individual and the Rack . . . . 3>° The Moral Elements of Civilization . . .316 CONTENTS xm PART III: ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD CHAPTER PAGE XLVIII. The Election of Israel 323 XLIX. The Kingdom of God and the Mission of Israel 331 L. The Priest-people and its Law of Holiness . . 342 LI. Israel, the People of the Law, and its World Mission 354 LII. Israel, the Servant of the Lord, Martyr and Messiah of the Nations 367 LIII. The Messianic Hope 378 LIV. Resurrection, a National Hope . . . .392 LV. Israel and the Heathen Nations . . . -397 LVI. The Stranger and the Proselyte .... 408 LVIL Christianity and Mohammedanism the Daughter- religions of Iudaism 426 LVHI. The Synagogue and its Institutions . . -447 LIX. The Ethics of Judaism and the Kingdom of God 477 List of Abbreviations 493 Index 497 JEWISH THEOLOGY CHAPTER I The Meaning of Theology i. The name Theology, "the teaching concerning God," is taken from Greek philosophy. It was used by Plato and Aristotle to denote the knowledge concerning God and things godly, by which they meant the branch of Philosophy later called Metaphysics, after Aristotle. In the Christian Church the term gradually assumed the meaning of systematic ex- position of the creed, a distinction being made between Rational, or Natural Theology, on the one hand, and Dogmatic Theology, on the other. 1 In common usage Theology is understood to be the presentation of one specific system of faith after some logical method, and a distinction is made between Historical and Systematic Theology. The former traces the various doctrines of the faith in question through the different epochs and stages of culture, showing their his- torical process of growth and development; the latter pre- sents these same doctrines in comprehensive form as a fixed system, as they have finally been elaborated and accepted upon the basis of the sacred scriptures and their authoritative interpretation. 2. Theology and Philosophy of Religion differ widely in their character. Theology deals exclusively with a specific religion ; in expounding one doctrinal system, it starts from 1 Compare Heinrici: Theologische Encyclopaedic, p. 4; Enc. Brit. art. The- ology. 2 .flivVILH THEOLOGY a positive heaef ii? a diane revelation and in the continued working of the divine spirit, affecting also the interpretation and further development of the sacred books. Philosophy of Religion, on the other hand, while dealing with the same subject matter as Theology, treats religion from a general point of view as a matter of experience, and, as every philos- ophy must, without any foregone conclusion. Consequently it submits the beliefs and doctrines of religion in general to an impartial investigation, recognizing neither a divine reve^ lation nor the superior claims of any one religion above any other, its main object being to ascertain how far the universal laws of human reason agree or disagree with the assertions of faith. 1 3. It is therefore incorrect to speak of a Jewish religious philosophy. This has no better right to exist than has Jewish metaphysics or Jewish mathematics. 2 The Jewish thinkers of the Spanish-Arabic period who endeavored to harmonize revelation and reason, utilizing the Neo-Platonic philosophy or the Aristotelian with a Neo-Platonic coloring, betray by their very conceptions of revelation and prophecy the in- fluence of Mohammedan theology; this was really a graft of metaphysics on theology and called itself the "divine science," a term corresponding exactly with the Greek "theol- ogy." The so-called Jewish religious philosophers adopted both the methods and terminology of the Mohammedan theologians, attempting to present the doctrines of the Jewish faith in the light of philosophy, as truth based on reason. Thus they claimed to construct a Jewish theology upon the foundation of a philosophy of religion. 1 Heinrici, 1. c, p. 14 f., 212; Hagenbach-Kautsch : Encyc. d. theolog. Wiss., p. 28-30; Rauwenhoff: Religions philosophic, F.inl., xiii ; Margolis: "The Theological Aspect of Reformed Judaism," in Yearbook of C. C. A. R., 1903, p. 188-192. Lauterbach, J. E., art. Theology. 2 See, however, Geiger: Nachgel. Schrijtcn, II, ^-8; also Margolis, I.e., p. 192-196. THE MEANING OF THEOLOGY 3 But neither they nor their Mohammedan predecessors succeeded in working out a complete system of theology. They left untouched essential elements of religion which do not come within the sphere of rational verities, and did not give proper appreciation to the rich treasures of faith depos- ited in the Biblical and Rabbinical literature. Nor does the comprehensive theological system of Maimonides, which for centuries largely shaped the intellectual life of the Jew, form an exception. Only the mystics, Bahya at their head, paid attention to the spiritual side of Judaism, dwelling at length on such themes as prayer and repentance, divine forgiveness and holiness. 4. Closer acquaintance with the religious and philosophical systems of modern times has created a new demand for a Jewish theology by which the Jew can comprehend his own religious truths in the light of modern thought, and at the same time defend them against the aggressive attitude of the ruling religious sects. Thus far, however, the attempts made in this direction are but feeble and sporadic ; if the structure is not to stand altogether in the air, the necessary material must be brought together from its many sources with pains- taking labor. 1 The special difficulty in the task lies in the radical difference which exists between our view of the past and that of the Biblical and medieval writers. All those things which have heretofore been taken as facts because related in the sacred books or other traditional sources, are viewed to-day with critical eyes, and are now regarded as more or less colored by human impression or conditioned by human judgment. In other words, we have learned to distinguish between subjective and objective truths, 2 whereas theology by 1 A fine beginning in this direction has been made by Professor Schechter in Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, New York, 1909. 2 See Joel : "D. Mosaismus u. d. Heidenthum, " in Jahrb. f. Jued. Gesch. und Lit., 1904, p. 70-73. 4 JEWISH THEOLOGY its very nature deals with truth as absolute. This makes it imperative for us to investigate historically the leading idea or fundamental principle underlying a doctrine, to note the different conceptions formed at various stages, and trace its process of growth. At times, indeed, we may find that the views of one age have rather taken a backward step and fallen below the original standard. The progress need not be uniform, but we must still trace its course. 5. We must recognize at the outset that Jewish theology cannot assume the character of apologetics, if it is to accom- plish its great task of formulating religious truth as it exists in our consciousness to-day. It can no more afford to ignore the established results of modern linguistic, ethnological, and historical research, of Biblical criticism and comparative religion, than it can the undisputed facts of natural science, however much any of these may conflict with the Biblical view of the cosmos. Apologetics has its legitimate place to prove and defend the truths of Jewish theology against other systems of belief and thought, but cannot properly defend either Biblical or Talmudic statements by methods incompatible with scientific investigation. Judaism is a religion of historical growth, which, far from claiming to be the final truth, is ever regenerated anew at each turning point of history. The fall of the leaves at autumn requires no apology, for each successive spring testifies anew to nature's power of resurrection. The object of a systematic theology of Judaism, accord- ingly, is to single out the essential forces of the faith. It then will become evident how these fundamental doctrines possess a vitality, a strength of conviction, as well as an adaptability to varying conditions, which make them potent factors amidst all changes of time and circumstance. Ac- cording to Rabbinical tradition, the broken tablets of the covenant were deposited in the ark beside the new. In like THE MEANING OF THEOLOGY 5 manner the truths held sacred by the past, but found inade- quate in their expression for a new generation, must be placed side by side with the deeper and more clarified truths of an advanced age, that they may appear together as the one divine truth reflected in different rays of light. 6. Jewish theology differs radically from Christian theol- ogy in the following three points : A. The theology of Christianity deals with articles of faith formulated by the founders and heads of the Church as conditions of salvation, so that any alteration in favor of free thought threatens to undermine the very plan of salva- tion upon which the Church was founded. Judaism recog- nizes only such articles of faith as were adopted by the people voluntarily as expressions of their religious consciousness, both without external compulsion and without doing violence to the dictates of reason. Judaism does not know salvation by faith in the sense of Paul, the real founder of the Church, who declared the blind acceptance of belief to be in itself meritorious. It denies the existence of any irreconcilable opposition between faith and reason. B. Christian theology rests upon a formula of confession, the so-called Symbolum of the Apostolic Church, 1 which alone makes one a Christian. Judaism has no such formula of confession which renders a Jew a Jew. No ecclesiastical authority ever dictated or regulated the belief of the Jew; his faith has been voiced in the solemn liturgical form of prayer, and has ever retained its freshness and vigor of thought in the consciousness of the people. This partly accounts for the antipathy toward any kind of dogma or creed among Jews. C. The creed is a conditio sine qua non of the Christian Church. To disbelieve its dogmas is to cut oneself loose from membership. Judaism is quite different. The Jew is 1 See Schaff-Herzog's Encycl., art. Apostles' Creed and Symbol. 6 JEWISH THEOLOGY born into it and cannot extricate himself from it even by the renunciation of his faith, which would but render him an apostate Jew. This condition exists, because the racial com- munity formed, and still forms, the basis of the religious com- munity. It is birth, not confession, that imposes on the Jew the obligation to work and strive for the eternal verities of Israel, for the preservation and propagation of which he has been chosen by the God of history. 7. The truth of the matter is that the aim and end of Judaism is not so much the salvation of the soul in the here- after as the salvation of humanity in history. Its theology, therefore, must recognize the history of human progress, with which it is so closely interwoven. It does not, therefore, claim to offer the final or absolute truth, as does Christian theology, whether orthodox or liberal. It simply points out the way leading to the highest obtainable truth. Final and perfect truth is held forth as the ideal of all human searching and striving, together with perfect justice, righteousness, and peace, to be attained as the very end of history. A systematic theology of Judaism must, accordingly, con- tent itself with presenting Jewish doctrine and belief in re- lation to the most advanced scientific and philosophical ideas of the age, so as to offer a comprehensive view of life and the world ("Lebens- und Weltanschauung") ; but it by no means claims for them the character of finality. The unfolding of Judaism's truths will be completed only when all mankind has attained the heights of Zion's mount of vision, as beheld by the prophets of Israel. 1 1 See Schechter : Studies in Judaism, Intr., XXI-XXII ; p. 147, 198 f- ; Fos- ter: The Finality of the Christian Religion, Chicago, 1906; Friedr. Delitssch : Zur Weilerentwicklung der Religion, 1908 ; and comp. Orelli : Rrligiousgcsihichte, 276 f., and Dorner: Bcilr. z. Wciterentwicklung d. christl. Religion, 173. CHAPTER II What is Judaism? i . It is very difficult to give an exact definition of Judaism because of its peculiarly complex character. 1 It combines two widely differing elements, and when they are brought out separately, the aspect of the whole is not taken sufficiently into account. Religion and race form an inseparable whole in Judaism. The Jewish people stand in the same relation to Judaism as the body to the soul. The national or racial body of Judaism consists of the remnant of the tribe of Judah which succeeded in establishing a new commonwealth in Judaea in place of the ancient Israeli tish kingdom, and which survived the downfall of state and temple to continue its existence as a separate people during a dispersion over the globe for thousands of years, forming ever a cosmopolitan ele- ment among all the nations in whose lands it dwelt. Juda- ism, on the other hand, is the religious system itself, the vital element which united the Jewish people, preserving it and regenerating it ever anew. It is the spirit which endowed the handful of Jews with a power of resistance and a fervor of faith unparalleled in history, enabling them to persevere 1 For the origin of the name Judaism, see Esther VIII, 17. Compare Yahduth, Esther Rabbah III, 7; II Mace. II, 21; VIII, 1, 14, 38; Graetz : G. d. J., II, 174 f. ; Jost: G. d. Jud., I, 1-12 ; I.E., art. Judaism. Regarding the unfairness of Christian authors in their estimate of Judaism, see Schechter,l. c, 232-251 ; M. Schreiner : D.juengst. Urtheile ii.d.Judentlmm, p. 48-58. Dubnow, Asher Ginzberg and the rest of the nationalists underrate the religious power of the Jew's soul, which forms the essence of his character and the motive power of all his aspirations and hopes, as well as of all his achievements in history. 7 8 JEWISH THEOLOGY in the mighty contest with heathenism and Christianity. It made of them a nation of martyrs and thinkers, suffering and struggling for the cause of truth and justice, yet forming, consciously or unconsciously, a potent factor in all the great intellectual movements which are ultimately to win the entire gentile world for the purest and loftiest truths concerning God and man. 2. Judaism, accordingly, does not denote the Jewish nationality, with its political and cultural achievements and aspirations, as those who have lost faith in the religious mission of Israel would have it. On the other hand, it is not a nomistic or legalistic religion confined to the Jewish people, as is maintained by Christian writers, who, lacking a full appreciation of its lofty world-wide purpose and its cosmopolitan and humanitarian character, claim that it has surrendered its universal prophetic truths to Christianity. Nor should it be presented as a religion of pure Theism, aiming to unite all believers in one God into a Church Uni- versal, of which certain visionaries dream. Judaism is noth- ing less than a message concerning the One and holy God and one, undivided humanity with a world-uniting Messianic goal, a message intrusted by divine revelation to the Jewish people. Thus Israel is its prophetic harbinger and priestly guardian, its witness and defender throughout the ages, who is never to falter in the task of upholding and unfolding its truths until they have become the possession of the whole human race. 3. Owing to this twofold nature of a universal religious truth and at the same time a mission intrusted to a specially selected nation or race, Judaism offers in a sense the sharpest contrasts imaginable, which render it an enigma to the student of religion and history, and make him often incapable of impartial judgment. On the one hand, it shows the most tenacious adherence to forms originally intended to preserve the Jewish people in its priestly sanctity and scparateness, WHAT IS JUDAISM? 9 and thereby also to keep its religious truths pure and free from encroachments. On the other hand, it manifests a mighty impulse to come into close touch with the various civilized nations, partly in order to disseminate among them its sublime truths, appealing alike to mind and heart, partly to clarify and deepen those truths by assimilating the wisdom and culture of these very nations. Thus the spirit of sep- aratism and of universalism work in opposite directions. Still, however hostile the two elements may appear, they emanate from the same source. For the Jewish people, unlike any other civilization of antiquity, entered history with the proud claim that it possessed a truth destined to become some day the property of mankind, and its three thousand years of history have verified this claim. Israel's relation to the world thus became a double one. Its priestly world-mission gave rise to all those laws and customs which were to separate it from its idolatrous surround- ings, and this occasioned the charge of hostility to the nations. The accusation of Jewish misanthropy occurred as early as the Balaam and Haman stories. As the separation continued through the centuries, a deep-seated Jew-hatred sprang up, first in Alexandria and Rome, then becoming a consuming fire throughout Christendom, unquenched through the ages and bursting forth anew, even from the midst of would-be liberals. In contrast to this, Israel's prophetic ideal of a humanity united in justice and peace gave to history a new meaning and a larger outlook, kindling in the souls of all truly great leaders and teachers, seers and sages of mankind a love and longing for the broadening of humanity which opened new avenues of progress and liberty. Moreover, by its conception of man as the image of God and its teaching of righteousness as the true path of life, Israel's Law estab- lished a new standard of human worth and put the imprint of Jewish idealism upon the entire Aryan civilization. io JEWISH THEOLOGY Owing to these two opposing forces, the one centripetal, the other centrifugal, Judaism tended now inward, away from world-culture, now outward toward the learning and the thought of all nations; and this makes it doubly difficult to obtain a true estimate of its character. But, after all, these very currents and counter-currents at the different eras of history kept Judaism in continuous tension and fluc- tuation, preventing its stagnation by dogmatic formulas and its division by ecclesiastical dissensions. "Both words are the words of the living God" became the maxim of the contending schools. 1 4. If we now ask what period we may fix as the beginning of Judaism, we must by no means single out the decisive moment when Ezra the Scribe established the new common- wealth of Judaea, based upon the Mosaic book of Law, and excluding the Samaritans who claimed to be the heirs of ancient Israel. This important step was but the climax, the fruitage of that religious spirit engendered by the Judaism of the Babylonian exile. The Captivity had become a re- fining furnace for the people, making them cling with a zeal unknown before to the teachings of the prophets, now offered by their disciples, and to the laws, as preserved by the priestly guilds ; so the religious treasures of the few became the com- mon property of the many, and were soon regarded as "the inheritance of the whole congregation of Jacob." As a matter of fact, Ezra represents the culmination rather than the starting point of the great spiritual reawakening, when he came from Babylon with a complete Code of Law, and pro- mulgated it in the Holy City to a worshipful congregation. 2 It was Judaism, winged with a new spirit, which carried the great unknown seer of the Exile to the very pinnacle of pro- phetic vision, and made the Psalmists ring forth from the harp of David the deepest soul-stirring notes of religious 1 Erub. 13 b. »Neh. VIII, 1-18; Ez. VII, 12-28. WHAT IS JUDAISM? n devotion and aspiration that ever moved the hearts of men. Moreover, all the great truths of prophetic revelation, of legis- lative and popular wisdom, were then collected and focused, creating a sacred literature which was to serve the whole com- munity as the source of instruction, consolation, and edifica- tion. The powerful and unique institutions of the Synagogue, intended for common instruction and devotion, are altogether creations of the Exile, and replaced the former priestly Torah by the Torah for the people. More wonderful still, the priestly lore of ancient Babylon was transformed by sublime monotheistic truths and utilized in the formation of a sacred literature ; it was placed before the history of the Hebrew patriarchs, to form, as it were, an introduction to the Bible of humanity. Judaism, then, far from being the late product of the Torah and tradition, as it is often considered, was actually the creator of the Law. Transformed and unfolded in Babylonia, it created its own sacred literature and shaped it ever anew, filling it always with its own spirit and with new thoughts. It is by no means the petrifaction of the Mosaic law and the prophetic teachings, as we are so often told, but a continuous process of unfolding and regeneration of its great religious truth. 5. True enough, traditional or orthodox Judaism does not share this view. The idea of gradual development is pre- cluded by its conception of divine revelation, by its doctrine that both the oral and the written Torah were given at Sinai complete and unchangeable for all time. It makes allowance only for special institutions begun either by the prophets, by Ezra and the Men of the Great Synagogue, his associates, or by the masters of the Law in succeeding centuries. Never- theless, tradition says that the Men of the Great Synagogue themselves collected and partly completed the sacred books, except the five books of Moses, and that the canon was made under the influence of the holy spirit. This holy spirit re- mained in force also during the creative period of Talmudism, 12 JEWISH THEOLOGY sanctioning innovations or alterations of many kinds. 1 Modern critical and historical research has taught us to distinguish the products of different periods and stages of development in both the Biblical and Rabbinical sources, and therefore compels us to reject the idea of a uniform origin of the Law, and also of an uninterrupted chain of tradition reaching back to Moses on Sinai. Therefore we must attach still more importance to the process of transformation which Judaism had to undergo through the centuries. 2 Judaism manifested its wondrous power of assimilation by renewing itself to meet the demands of the time, first under the influence of the ancient civilizations, Babylonia and Persia, then of Greece and Rome, finally of the Occidental powers, molding its religious truths and customs in ever new forms, but all in consonance with its own genius. It adopted the Babylonian and Persian views of the hereafter, of the upper and the nether world with their angels and demons ; so later on it incorporated into its religious and legal system elements of Greek and Egyptian gnosticism, Greek philosophy, and methods of jurisprudence from Egypt, Babylon, and Rome. In fact, the various parties which arose during the second Temple beside each other or successively — Sadducees and Pharisees, Essenes and Zealots — represent, on closer obser- vation, the different stages in the process of assimilation which Judaism had to undergo. In like manner, the Hellenistic, Apocryphal and Apocalyptic literature, which was rejected and lost to sight by traditional Judaism, and which partly fills the gap between the Bible and the Talmudic writings, casts a flood of light upon the development of the Halakah 1 See M. Bloch: Tekanot, and art. Tekanot J. E. Regarding inspiration see J. E. ; Sanh. 99 a; Meg. 7 a; Maim. : March, IT, 45 ; camp. Yerush. Al>. Zar., I, 40; Homy. Ill, 48 c ; Levit. R. VI, 1; IX, 9; and Yoma 9 b. The laying on of hands for ordination (Semikah) implied originally the imparting of the holy spirit, see J. E., art. Authority. 2 See Geiger, J. Z., I, p. 7. WHAT IS JUDAISM? 13 and the Haggadah. Just as the book of Ezekiel, which was almost excluded from the Canon on account of its divergence from the Mosaic Law, has been helpful in tracing the develop- ment of the Priestly Code, 1 so the Sadduceean book of Ben Sira 2 and the Zealotic book of Jubilees 3 — not to mention the various Apocalyptic works — throw their searchlight upon pre-Talmudic Judaism. 6. Instead of representing Judaism — as the Christian theologians do under the guise of scientific methods — as a nomistic religion, caring only for the external observance of the Law, it is necessary to distinguish two opposite funda- mental tendencies ; the one expressing the spirit of legalistic nationalism, the other that of ethical or prophetic universalism. These two work by turn, directing the general trend in the one or the other direction according to circumstances. At one time the center and focus of Israel's religion is the Mosaic Law, with its sacrificial cult in charge of the priesthood of Jerusalem's Temple; at another time it is the Synagogue, with its congregational devotion and public instruction, its inspiring song of the Psalmist and its prophetic consolation and hope confined to no narrow territory, but opened wide for a listening world. Here it is the reign of the Halakah holding fast to the form of tradition, and there the free and fanciful Haggadah, with its appeal to the sentiments and views of the people. Here it is the spirit of ritualism, bent on separating the Jews from the influence of foreign elements, and there again the spirit of rationalism, eager to take part in general culture and in the progress of the outside world. The liberal views of Maimonides and Gersonides concern- 1 Aboth d. R. Nathan, I ; Shab. 30 b with reference to Ezek. XLIII-XLIV. 2 See Geiger : Z. D. M. G., XII, 536 ; Schechter, Wisdom of Ben Sira, p. 35. 3 See J. E., art. Jubilees, Book of. Very instructive in this connection is a comparative study of the Falashas, the Samaritans, especially the Dosithean sect, and the still problematical sect discovered through the document found by Schechter, edited by him under the title Fragments ofaZadokite Sect. 14 JEWISH THEOLOGY ing miracle and revelation, God and immortality were scarcely shared by the majority of Jews, who, no doubt, sided rather with the mystics, and found their mouthpiece in Abraham ben David of Posquieres, the fierce opponent of Maimonides. An impartial Jewish theology must therefore take cognizance of both sides ; it must include the mysticism of Isaac Luria and Sabbathai Horwitz as well as the rationalism of Albo and Leo da Modena. Wherever is voiced a new doctrine or a new view of life and life's duty, which yet bears the imprint of the Jewish consciousness, there the well-spring of divine inspiration is seen pouring forth its living waters. 7. Even the latest interpretation of the Law, offered by a disciple who is recognized for true conscientiousness in religion, was revealed to Moses on Sinai, according to a Rabbinical dictum. 1 Thus is exquisitely expressed the idea of a continuous development of Israel's religious truth. As a safeguard against arbitrary individualism, there was the prin- ciple of loyalty and proper regard for tradition, which is aptly termed by Professor Lazarus a "historical continuity." 2 The Midrashic statement is quite significant that other creeds founded on our Bible can only adhere to the letter, but the Jewish religion possesses the key to the deeper meaning hidden and presented in the traditional interpretation of the Scrip- tures. 3 That is, for Judaism Holy Scripture in its literal sense is not the final word of God ; the Bible is rather a living spring of divine revelation, to be kept ever fresh and flowing by the active force of the spirit. To sum up: Judaism, far from offering a system of beliefs and ceremonies fixed for all time, is as multifarious and manifold in its aspects as is life itself. It comprises all phases and characteristics of both a national and a world religion. 1 See Yer. Hag., I, 76, and elsewhere. 2 Ethics of Judaism, I, 8-10; Geiger : J. Z., IX, 263. 3 See Pesik. R., V, p. 146; Midr. Tanhuma, ed. lUiber, Wayera and Ki Thissa. 17. (Jump, the legend of Moses and Akiba, Men. 29 b. CHAPTER III The Essence of the Religion of Judaism i. We have seen how difficult it is to define Judaism clearly and adequately, including its manifold tendencies and insti- tutions. Still it is necessary -that we reach a full under- standing of the essence of Judaism as it manifested itself in all periods of its history, 1 and that we single out the funda- mental idea which underlies its various forms of existence and its different movements, both intellectual and spiritual. There can be no disputing the fact that the central idea of Judaism and its life purpose is the doctrine of the One Only and Holy God, whose kingdom of truth, justice and peace is to be universally established at the end of time. This is the main teaching of Scripture and the hope voiced in the liturgy; while Israel's mission to defend, to unfold and to propagate this truth is a corollary of the doctrine itself and cannot be separated from it. Whether we regard it as Law or a system of doctrine, as religious truth or world-mission, this belief pledged the little tribe of Judah to a warfare of many thousands of years against the hordes of heathendom with all their idolatry and brutality, their deification of man and their degradation of deity to human rank. It betokened a battle for the pure idea of God and man, which is not to end until the principle of divine holiness has done away with every form of life that tends to degrade and to disunite man- kind, and until Israel's Only One has become the unifying power and the highest ideal of all humanity. 1 Comp. Geiger: Nachgel. Schr., 11,37-41; also his Jud. u. s. Gesch., 1,20-35; Beck: D.Wesen d. Judenlhiims; Eschelbacher : D. Judenthum u. d. Wesen d. Christenthums ; Schreiner, 1. c, 26-34. IS 1 6 JEWISH THEOLOGY 2. Of this great world-duty of Israel only the few will ever become fully conscious. As in the days of the prophets, so in later periods, only a "small remnant" was fully imbued with the lofty ideal. In times of oppression the great mul- titude of the people persisted in a conscientious observance of the Law and underwent suffering without a murmur. Yet in times of liberty and enlightenment this same majority often neglects to assimilate the new culture to its own superior spirit, but instead eagerly assimilates itself to the surrounding world, and thereby loses much of its intrinsic strength and self-respect. The pendulum of thought and sentiment swings to and fro between the national and the universal ideals, while only a few maturer minds have a clear vision of the goal as it is to be reached along both lines of development. Nevertheless, Judaism is in a true sense a religion of the people. It is free from all priestly tutelage and hierarchical interference. It has no ecclesiastical system of belief, guarded and supervised by men invested with superior powers. Its teachers and leaders have always been men from among the people, like the prophets of yore, with no sacerdotal privilege or title ; in fact, in his own household each father is the God- appointed teacher of his children. 1 3. Neither is Judaism the creation of a single person, either prophet or a man with divine claims. It points back to the patriarchs as its first source of revelation. It speaks not of the God of Moses, of Amos and Isaiah, but of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, thereby declaring the Jewish genius to be the creator of its own religious ideas. It is t here- fore incorrect to speak of a "Mosaic," "Hebrew," or "Israel- itish," religion. The name Judaism alone expresses the pres- ervation of the religious heritage of Israel by the tribe of Judah, with a loyalty which was first displayed by Judah himself in the patriarchal household, and which became its ehar- " Dcut. VI, 7 ; XI, 19. THE ESSENCE OF THE RELIGION OF JUDAISM 17 acteristic virtue in the history of the various tribes. Like- wise the rigid measures of Ezra in expelling all foreign elements from the new commonwealth proved instrumental in impressing loyalty and piety upon Jewish family life. 4. As it was bound up with the life of the Jewish people, Judaism remained forever in close touch with the world. Therefore it appreciated adequately the boons of life, and escaped being reduced to the shadowy form of "otherworld- liness." * It is a religion of life, which it wishes to sanctify by duty rather than by laying stress on the hereafter. It looks to the deed and the purity of the motive, not to the empty creed and the blind belief. Nor is it a religion of redemption, contemning this earthly life ; for Judaism repudiates the assumption of a radical power of evil in man or in the world. Faith in the ultimate triumph of the good is essential to it. In fact, this perfect confidence in the final victory of truth and justice over all the powers of falsehood and wrong lent it both its wondrous intellectual force and its high idealism, and adorned its adherents with the martyr's crown of thorns, such as no other human brow has ever borne. 5. Christianity and Islam, notwithstanding their alienation from Judaism and frequent hostility, are still daughter-reli- gions. In so far as they have sown the seeds of Jewish truth over all the globe and have done their share in upbuilding the Kingdom of God on earth, they must be recognized as divinely appointed emissaries and agencies. Still Judaism sets forth its doctrine of God's unity and of life's holiness in a far superior form than does Christianity. It neither permits the deity to be degraded into the sphere of the sensual and human, nor does it base its morality upon a love bereft of the vital principle of justice. Against the rigid monotheism of Islam, which demands blind submission to the stern decrees of inexorable fate, Judaism on the other hand urges its belief 1 See Geiger : Nachgel. Schr., II, 37 f. 1 8 JEWISH THEOLOGY in God's paternal love and mercy, which educates all the chil- dren of men, through trial and suffering, for their high destiny. 6. Judaism denies most emphatically the right of Chris- tianity or any other religion to arrogate to itself the title of "the absolute religion" or to claim to be "the finest blossom and the ripest fruit of religious development." As if any mortal man at any time or under any condition could say with- out presumption : "I am the Truth" or "No one cometh unto the Father but by me." x "When man was to proceed from the hands of his Maker," says the Midrash, "the Holy One, Blessed be His name, cast truth down to the earth, saying, 'Let truth spring forth from the earth, and righteousness look down from heaven.'" 2 The full unfolding of the reli- gious and moral life of mankind is the work of countless gen- erations yet to come, and many divine heralds of truth and righteousness have yet to contribute their share. In this work of untold ages, Judaism claims that it has achieved and is still achieving its full part as the prophetic world- religion. Its law of righteousness, which takes for its scope the whole of human life, in its political and social relations as well as its personal aspects, forms the foundation of its ethics for all time ; while its hope for a future realization of the Kingdom of God has actually become the aim of human history. As a matter of fact, when the true object of religion is the hallowing of life rather than the salvation of the soul, there is little room left for sectarian exclusiveness, or for a heaven for believers and a hell for unbelievers. With this broad outlook upon life, Judaism lays claim, not to perfec- tion, but to perfectibility; it has supreme capacity for grow- ing toward the highest ideals of mankind, as beheld by the prophets in their Messianic visions. •John XTV, 6. Comp. Dorner, 1. c, 173; and bis Grundpr obleme J. Kc- ligions philosophic; Orelli : Rdi&ionsgcschichk, 276 f. 2 Gen. R. VIII, 5- CHAPTER IV The Jewish Articles of Faith i. In order to reach a clear opinion, whether or not Judaism has articles of faith in the sense of Church dogmas, a question so much discussed since the days of Moses Mendelssohn, it seems necessary first to ascertain what faith in general means to the Jew. 1 Now the word used in Jewish literature for faith is Emunah, from the root Aman, to be firm ; this denotes firm reliance upon God, and likewise firm adherence to him, hence both faith and faithfulness. Both Scripture and the Rabbis demanded confiding trust in God, His messengers, and His words, not the formal acceptance of a prescribed belief. 2 Only when contact with the non- Jewish world emphasized the need for a clear expression of the belief in the unity of God, such as was found in the Shema, 3 and when the proselyte was expected to declare in some definite form the fundamentals of the faith he espoused, was the importance of a concrete confession felt. 4 Accordingly we find the beginnings of a formulated belief in the synagogal liturgy, in the Emeth we 1 See Schechter : Studies, 147-181 and notes 351 f. ; Mendelssohn : Ges. Sckr., III,32i. Comp. Schlesinger : Bach Ikkarim, 630-632 ; Bousset : Religion d. Judenthums, 170 f., 175, and thereto Perles : Bousset, 112 f. ; Martin Schreiner : 1. c, 35 f.; J. E., art. Faith and Articles of Faith (E. G. Hirsch) ; Felsenthal, Margolis, and Kohler, in Y. B. C. C. A. R., 1897, p. 54; 1903, p. 188-193; 1905, p. 83; Neumark: art. Bikarim in Ozar ha Yahduth; D. Fr. Strauss: D. ckristl. Glaubenslehre, I, 25. 2 See Gen. XV, 6 ; Mek. to Ex. XIV; J. E., art. Faith. 3 Deut. VI, 1-6; XI, 13-21; Num. XV, 37-41. 4 See Bousset, II, 224 f. The term Pistis = faith, assumes a new meaning in Hellenistic literature. 19 20 JEWISH THEOLOGY Yatzib l and the Alenu, 2 while in the Haggadah Abraham is represented both as the exemplar of a hero of faith and as the type of a missionary, wandering about to lead the heathen world towards the pure monotheistic faith. 3 While the Jewish concept of faith underwent a certain transformation, influenced by other systems of belief, and the formulation of Jewish doctrines appeared necessary, particularly in opposi- tion to the Christian and Mohammedan creeds, still belief never became the essential part of religion, conditioning sal- vation, as in the Church founded by Paul. For, as pointed out above, Judaism lays all stress upon conduct, not confession ; upon a hallowed life, not a hollow creed. 2. There is no Biblical nor Rabbinical precept, "Thou shalt believe ! " Jewish thinkers felt all the more the need to point out as fundamentals or roots of Judaism those doc- trines upon which it rests, and from which it derives its vital force. To the rabbis, the " root " of faith is the recognition of a divine Judge to whom we owe account for all our doings. 4 The recital of the Shema, which is called in the Mishnah "accepting the yoke of God's sovereignty," and which is followed by the solemn affirmation, "True and firm belief is this for us" B (Emeth we Yatzib or Emeth we Emunah), is, in fact, the earliest form of the confession of faith. 6 In the course of time this confession of belief in the unity of God was no longer deemed sufficient to serve as basis for the whole structure of Judaism ; so the various schools and authorities endeavored to work out in detail a series of fundamental doctrines. 3. The Mishnah, in Sanhedrin, X, 1. which seems to date back to the beginnings of Pharisaism, declares the following 1 See J. E., art. Emeth we Yatzib. ! See J. E., art. Menu. 3 See J. E., art. Abraham in Apocryphical and Rabbinical Lit. 4 Sifra Behukothai, III, 6 ; Sank. 38 b ; Targ. Y. to Gen. IV, 8. 1 Ber. II, 2 ; see Kohler : Monatschrift, 1883, p. 445. • Kohler, 1. c. THE JEWISH ARTICLES OF FAITH 21 three to have no share in the world to come : he who denies the resurrection of the dead ; he who says that the Torah — both the written and the oral Law — is not divinely revealed ; and the Epicurean, who does not believe in the moral govern- ment of the world. 1 We find here (in reverse order, owing to historical conditions), the beliefs in Revelation, Retribu- tion, and the Hereafter singled out as the three fundamentals of Rabbinical Judaism. Rabbi Hananel, the great North African Talmudist, about the middle of the tenth century, seems to have been under the influence of Mohammedan and Karaite doctrines, when he speaks of four fundamentals of the faith : God, the prophets, the future reward and punish- ment, and the Messiah. 2 4. The doctrine of the One and Only God stands, as a matter of course, in the foreground. Philo of Alexandria, at the end of his treatise on Creation, singles out five prin- ciples which are bound up with it, viz. : 1, God's existence and His government of the world ; 2, His unity; 3, the world as His creation ; 4, the harmonious plan by which it was established ; and 5, His Providence. Josephus, too, in his apology for Judaism written against Apion, 3 emphasizes the belief in God's all-encompassing Providence, His incorporeal- ity, and His self-sufficiency as the Creator of the universe. 1 The Mishnaic Apicoros corresponded to the Greek, Epicoureios, and was no longer understood by the Talmudists ; see Schechter : Studies in Judaism, I, 157. It is defined by Josephus : Antiquities, X, 11, 7: "The Epicureans . . . are in a state of error, who cast Providence out of life, and do not believe that God takes care of the affairs of the world, nor that the universe is governed by a Being which outlives all things in everlasting self-sufficiency and bliss, but de- clare it to be self-sustaining and void of a ruler and protector . . . like a ship without a helmsman and like a chariot without a driver." Comp. also Oppen- heim in Monatschr., 1864, p. 149. 2 See Rappaport: "Biography of R. Hananel," in Bikkure ha Itlim, 1842. 3 Contra Apionem, II, 22. See J. G. Mueller : Josephus' Schrift gegen Apion, 3"-3i3- 22 JEWISH THEOLOGY The example of Islam, which had very early formulated a confession of faith of speculative character for daily recitation, 1 influenced first Karaite and then Rabbanite teachers to elab- orate the Jewish doctrine of One Only God into a philosophic creed. The Karaites modeled their creed after the Moham- medan pattern, which gave them ten articles of faith ; of these the first three dwelt on: i, creation out of nothing; 2, the existence of God, the Creator; 3, the unity and incorpo- reality of God. 2 Abraham ben David {Ibn Daud) of Toledo sets forth in his "Sublime Faith" six essentials of the Jewish faith: 1, the existence; 2, the unity; 3, the incorporeality ; 4, the omnip- otence of God (to this he subjoins the existence of angelic beings) ; 5, revelation and the immutability of the Law ; and 6, divine Providence. 3 Maimonides, the greatest of all medieval thinkers, propounded thirteen articles of faith, which took the place of a creed in the Synagogue for the fol- lowing centuries, as they were incorporated in the liturgy both in the form of a credo (Ani Maamin) and in a poetic version. His first five articles were: 1, the existence; 2, the unity; 3, the incorporeality; 4, the eternity of God; and 5, that He alone should be the object of worship; to which we must add his 10th, divine Providence. 4 Others, not satisfied with the purely metaphysical form of the Maimoni- dean creed, accentuated the doctrines of creation out of nothing and special Providence. 5 1 See Alfred v. Kremer : Gesch. d. hersch. Idecn d. Islam, 30-41 ; Goldziher, D. M. L. Z., XLIV, p. 168 f.; XLI, p. 72 (., which passages cast much light upon the Jewish Ani Maamin. 2 See Jost : Gesch. d. Jnd., II, 330 f. ; Frankl : art . Karaites in Ersch mid Gru- bcr's Encyclopaedic; Loew : Juedische Dogtnen, Ges. s. I, 154; Schechter, 1. c. 3 J. Guttman: D. Religionsphil. v. Abraham Ibn Daud; David Kaufmann, Gesch. d. AUributcnlchrc; Neumark : Gesch. A. jiudisch. Phil. vols. I and II. 4 Maimonides: Commentary on Mishnah, Sanh., X, 1; Schechter, I.e., 163; Holzer: Gesch. d. Dogmenlchre, Berlin, 1901. B See Loew, 1. c, 156; Schechter, 1. c, 165. THE JEWISH ARTICLES OF FAITH 23 This speculative form of faith, however, has been most severely denounced by Samuel David Luzzatto (1800-1865) as "Atticism" 1 ; that is, the Hellenistic or philosophic tendency to consider religion as a purely intellectual system, instead of the great dynamic force for man's moral and spiritual eleva- tion. He holds that Judaism, as the faith transmitted to us from Abraham, our ancestor, must be considered, not as a mere speculative mode of reasoning, but as a moral life force, manifested in the practice of righteousness and brotherly love. Indeed, this view is supported by modern Biblical re- search, which brings out as the salient point in Biblical teach- ing the ethical character of the God taught by the prophets, and shows that the essential truth of revelation is not to be found in a metaphysical but in an ethical monotheism. At the same time, the fact must not be overlooked that the Jewish doctrine of God's unity was strengthened in the con- test with the dualistic and trinitarian beliefs of other religions, and that this unity gave Jewish thought both lucidity and sublimity, so that it has surpassed other faiths in intellectual power and in passion for truth. The Jewish conception of God thus makes truth, as well as righteousness and love, both a moral duty for man and a historical task comprising all humanity. 5. The second fundamental article of the Jewish faith is divine revelation, or, as the Mishnah expresses it, the belief that the Torah emanates from God (mm ha shamayim). In the Maimonidean thirteen articles, this is divided into four : his 6th, belief in the prophets ; 7, in the prophecy of Moses as the greatest of all ; 8, in the divine origin of the Torah, both the written and the oral Law ; and 9, its immutability. The fundamental character of these, however, was contested 1 See P. Bloch: "Luzzatto als Religionsphilosoph " in Samuel David Luz- zatto, p. 49-71. Comp. Hochmuth: Gotteskenntniss und Gottssverehrung, Ein- leitung. 24 JEWISH THEOLOGY by Hisdai Crescas and his disciples, Simon Duran and Joseph Albo. 1 As a matter of fact, they are based not so much upon Rabbinical teaching as upon the prevailing views of Moham- medan theology, 2 and were undoubtedly dictated by the desire to dispute the claims of Christianity and Islam that they represented a higher revelation. Our modern historical view, however, includes all human thought and belief ; it therefore rejects altogether the assumption of a supernatural origin of either the written or the oral Torah, and insists that the subject of prophecy, revelation, and inspiration in general be studied in the light of psychology and ethnology, of general history and comparative religion. 6. The third fundamental article of the Jewish faith is the belief in a moral government of the world, which mani- fests itself in the reward of good and the punishment of evil, either here or hereafter. Maimonides divides this into two articles, which really belong together, his ioth, God's knowl- edge of all human acts and motives, and n, reward and punishment. The latter includes the hereafter and the last Day of Judgment, which, of course, applies to all human beings. 7. Closely connected with retribution is the belief in the resurrection of the dead, which is last among the thirteen articles. This belief, which originally among the Pharisees had a national and political character, and was therefore connected especially with the Holy Land (as will be seen in Chapter LIV below), received in the Rabbinical schools more and more a universal form. Maimonides went so far as to follow the Platonic view rather than that of the Bible or the Talmud, and thus transformed it into a belief in the con- tinuity of the soul after death. In this form, however, it is actually a postulate, or corollary, of the belief in retribution. 1 See Schechter, 1. c, 167 and the notes. 2 See Horowitz: D. Psychologic u. d.jued. Rdigionsphilosophic, 1883. ' THE JEWISH ARTICLES OF FAITH 25 8. The old hope for the national resurrection of Israel took in the Maimonidean system the form of a belief in the coming of the Messiah (article 12), to which, in the commentary on the Mishnah, he gives the character of a belief in the restora- tion of the Davidic dynasty. Joseph Albo, with others, disputes strongly the fundamental character of this belief; he shows the untenability of Maimonides' position by referring to many Talmudic passages, and at the same time he casts polemical side glances upon the Christian Church, which is really founded on Messianism in the special form of its Chris- tology. 1 Jehuda ha Levi, in his Cuzari, substitutes for this as a fundamental doctrine the belief in the election of Israel for its world-mission. 2 It certainly redounds to the credit of the leaders of the modern Reform movement that they took the election of Israel rather than the Messiah as their cardinal doctrine, again bringing it home to the religious consciousness of the Jew, and placing it at the very center of their system. In this way they reclaimed for the Messianic hope the uni- versal character which was originally given it by the great seer of the Exile. 3 9. The thirteen articles of Maimonides, in setting forth a Jewish Credo, formed a vigorous opposition to the Christian and Mohammedan creeds; they therefore met almost uni- versal acceptance among the Jewish people, and were given a place in the common prayerbook, in spite of their deficien- cies, as shown by Crescas and his school. Nevertheless, we must admit that Crescas shows the deeper insight into the nature of religion when he observes that the main fallacy of the Maimonidean system lies in founding the Jewish faith on speculative knowledge, which is a matter of the intellect, rather than love which flows from the heart, and which alone leads to piety and goodness. True love, he says, requires 1 See J. E., art. Albo by E. G. Hirsch, and the bibliography there. 2 See Schechter, 1. c, p. 162. 3 Isa. XLIX, 9, and elsewhere. 26 JEWISH THEOLOGY the belief neither in retribution nor in immortality. More- over, in striking contrast to the insistence of Maimonides on the immutability of the Mosaic Law, Crescas maintains the possibility of its continuous progress in accordance with the intellectual and spiritual needs of the time, or, what amounts to the same thing, the continuous perfectibility of the re- vealed Law itself. 1 Thus the criticism of Crescas leads at once to a radically different theology than that of Maimonides, and one which appeals far more to our own religious thought. 10. Another doctrine of Judaism, which was greatly under- rated by medieval scholars, and which has been emphasized in modern times only in contrast to the Christian theory of original sin, is that man was created in the image of God. Judaism holds that the soul of man came forth pure from the hand of its Maker, endowed with freedom, unsullied by any inherent evil or inherited sin. Thus man is, through the exer- cise of his own free will, capable of attaining an ever greater perfection by unfolding and developing to an ever higher degree his mental, moral, and spiritual powers in the course of history. This is the Biblical idea of God's spirit as immanent in man ; all prophetic truth is based upon it ; and though it was often obscured, this theory was voiced by many of the masters of Rabbinical lore, such as R. Akiba and others. 2 ii. Every attempt to formulate the doctrines or articles of faith of Judaism was made, in order to guard the Jewish faith from the intrusion of foreign beliefs, never to impose disputed beliefs upon the Jewish community itself. Many, indeed, challenged the fundamental character of the thirteen articles of Maimonides. Albo reduced them to three, viz. : the belief in God, in revelation, and retribution ; others, with more arbitrariness than judgment, singled out three, five, six, or even more as principal doct rines ; ;{ while rigid conservatives, 1 See Schechter, 1. c, p. 169. 2 Aboth, III, 1 ; Gen. R. XXI, 5. * See Schechter. 1. c. THE JEWISH ARTICLES OF FAITH 27 such as Isaac Abravanel and David ben Zimra, altogether disapproved the attempt to formulate articles of faith. The former maintained that every word in the Torah is, in fact, a principle of faith, and the latter 1 pointed in the same way to the 613 commandments of the Torah, spoken of by R. Simlai the Haggadist in the third century. 2 The present age of historical research imposes the same necessity of restatement or reformulation upon us. We must do as Maimonides did, — as Jews have always done, — point out anew the really fundamental doctrines, and discard those which have lost their holdup on the modern Jew, or which conflict directly with his religious consciousness. If Judaism is to retain its prominent position among the powers of thought, and to be clearly understood by the modern world, it must again reshape its religious truths in harmony with the domi- nant ideas of the age. Many attempts of this character have been made by modern rabbis and teachers, most of them founded upon Albo's three articles. Those who penetrated somewhat more deeply into the essence of Judaism added a fourth article, the belief in Israel's priestly mission, and at the same time, instead of the belief in retribution, included the doctrine of man's kinship with God, or, if one may coin the word, his God-childship. 3 Few, however, have succeeded in working out the entire con- tent of the Jewish faith from a modern viewpoint, which must include historical, critical, and psychological research, as well as the study of comparative religion. 12. The following tripartite plan is that of the present attempt to present the doctrines of Judaism systematically along the lines of historical development : 1 See Loew, 1. c, 157, and his " Mafleah" p. 331 ; Schechter, 1. c. 2 Makk. 23 b. 3 See J. E., art. Catechism by E. Schreiber. 28 JEWISH THEOLOGY I. God a. Man's consciousness of God, and divine revelation. b. God's spirituality, His unity, His holiness, His perfection. c. His relation to the world : Creation and Providence. d. His relation to man : His justice, His love and mercy. II. Man a. Man's God-childship ; his moral freedom and yearning for God. b. Sin and repentance ; prayer and worship ; immortality, reward and punishment. c. Man and humanity : the moral factors in history. III. Israel and the Kingdom of God a. The priest-mission of Israel, its destiny as teacher and martyr among the nations, and its Messianic hope. b. The Kingdom of God : the nations and religions of the world in a divine plan of universal salvation. c. The Synagogue and its institutions. d. The ethics of Judaism and the Kingdom of God. PART I. GOD A. GOD AS HE MAKES HIMSELF KNOWN TO MAN CHAPTER V Man's Consciousness of God and Belief in God i. Holy Writ employs two terms for religion, both of which lay stress upon its moral and spiritual nature : Yirath Elohim — "fear of God" — and Daath Elohim — "knowledge or consciousness of God." Whatever the fear of God may have meant in the lower stages of primitive religion, in the Biblical and Rabbinical conceptions it exercises a wholesome moral effect ; it stirs up the conscience and keeps man from wrongdoing. Where fear of God is lacking, violence and vice are rife ; * it keeps society in order and prompts the individual to walk in the path of duty. Hence it is called "the beginning of wisdom." 2 The divine revelation of Sinai accentuates as its main purpose "to put the fear of God into the hearts of the people, lest they sin." 3 2. God-consciousness, or "knowledge of God," signifies an inner experience which impels man to practice the right and to shun evil, the recognition of God as the moral power of life. "Because there is no knowledge of God," therefore do the people heap iniquity upon iniquity, says Hosea, and he hopes to see the broken covenant with the Lord renewed through 1 Gen. XX, n. 2 Ps. CXI, 10; Prov. LX, 10; Job XXVIII, 28. 8 Ex. XX, 20. 29 3 o JEWISH THEOLOGY faithfulness grounded on the consciousness of God. 1 Jeremiah also insists upon "the knowledge of God" as a moral force, and, like Hosea, he anticipates the renewal of the broken cove- nant when "the Lord shall write His law upon the heart" of the people, and "they shall all know Him from the least of them unto the greatest of them." 2 Wherever Scripture speaks of "knowledge of God," 3 it always means the moral and spiritual recognition of the Deity as life's inmost power, determining human conduct, and by no means refers to mere intellectual perception of the truth of Jewish monotheism, which is to refute the diverse forms of polytheism. This misconception of the term "knowledge of God, " as used in the Bible, led the leading medieval thinkers of Judaism, especially the school of Maimonides, and even down to Mendelssohn, into the error of confusing religion and philosophy, as if both resulted from pure reason. It is man's moral nature rather than his intellectual capacity, that leads him "to know God and walk in His ways." 4 3. It is mainly through the conscience that man becomes conscious of God. He sees himself, a moral being, guided by motives which lend a purpose to his acts and his omissions, and thus feels that this purpose of his must somehow be in accord with a higher purpose, that of a Power who directs and controls the whole of life. The more he sees purpose ruling individuals and nations, the more will his God-consciousness grow into the conviction that there is but One and Only God, who in awful grandeur holds dominion over the world. This is the developmental process of religious truth, as it is un- 'Hos. IV, 1,6; II, 2; XIII, 4-5- "- Jer. IX, 23; XXII, 16; XXXI, 32-33- 3 Deut. IV, 39; VII, 9. 4 Knowledge as intellect is brought out as early as the Book of Wisdom, XIII, 1 ; see especially Maimonides : Yesode ha Torah,!, 1 3 ; Moreh, 1, 39 ; III, 28. In opposition, see Rosin : Ethik des Maimonides, 101 ; Luzzatto and Hoch- muth, 1. c; also Dillmann : II. B. d. alttcstanu-nU. Theol., 204 f. CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD AND BELIEF IN GOD 31 folded by the prophets and as it underlies the historic frame- work of the Bible. In this light Jewish monotheism appears as the ripe fruitage of religion in its universal as well as its primitive form of God-consciousness, as the highest attain- ment of man in his eternal seeking after God. Polytheism, on the other hand, with its idolatrous and immoral practices, appeared to the prophets and law-givers of Israel to be, not a competing religion, but simply a falling away from God. They felt it to be a loss or eclipse of the genuine God-consciousness. The object of revelation, therefore, is to lead back all mankind to the God whom it had deserted, and to restore to all men their primal consciousness of God, with its power of moral regenera- tion. 4. In the same degree as this God-consciousness grows stronger, it crystallizes into belief in God, and culminates in love of God. As stated above, 1 in Judaism belief — Emunah — never denotes the acceptance of a creed. It is rather the confiding trust by which the frail mortal finds a firm hold on God amidst the uncertainties and anxieties of life, the search for His shelter in distress, the reliance on His ever-ready help when one's own powers fail. The believer is like a little child who follows confidingly the guidance of his father, and feels safe when near his arm. In fact, the double meaning of Emunah, faith and faithfulness, suggests man's child-like faith in the paternal faithfulness of God. The patriarch Abraham is presented in both Biblical and Rabbinical writings as the pattern of such a faith, 2 and the Jewish people likewise are characterized in the Talmud as "believers, sons of be- lievers." 3 The Midrash extols such life-cheering faith as the power which inspires true heroism and deeds of valor. 4 5. The highest triumph of God-consciousness, however, is attained in love of God such as can renounce cheerfully all 1 Ch. IV. 2 Gen. XV, 6; see J. E., art. Abraham. 3 Shab. 97 a. * Mek. Beshallak 6, p. 41 ab. 32 JEWISH THEOLOGY the boons of life and undergo the bitterest woe without a murmur. The book of Deuteronomy inculcates love of God as the beginning and the end of the Law, 1 and the rabbis declare it to be the highest type of human perfection. In commenting upon the verse, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might," they say: "Love the Law, even when thy life is demanded as its price, nay, even with the last breath of thy body, with a heart that has no room for dissent, amid every visitation of destiny !" 2 They point to the tragic martyrdom of R. Akiba as an example of such a love sealed by death. In like manner they refer the expression, "they that love Thee," 3 to those who bear insults without resentment ; who hear themselves abused without retort ; who do good unselfishly, without caring for recognition ; and who cheerfully suffer as a test of their fortitude and their love of God. 4 Thus through- out all Rabbinical literature love of God is regarded as the highest principle of religion and as the ideal of human per- fection, which was exemplified by Job, according to the oldest Haggadah, and, according to the Mishnah, by Abraham. 5 Another interpretation of the verse cited from Deuteronomy reads, "Love God in such a manner that thy fellow-creatures may love Him owing to thy deeds." 6 All these passages and many others 7 show what a promi- nent place the principle of love occupied in Judaism. This is, indeed, best voiced in the Song of Songs: 8 "For love is strong as death ; the flashes thereof are flashes of fire, a very 1 Deut. VI, 5 ; X, 12 ; XI, 1 ; XIII, 22 ; XXX, 6, 16, 20. 2 Sifre to Deut. VI, 5. « Judges V, 31. «Shab. 88 b. B See Testament of Job, and notes by Kohler, in Semitic Studies in Memory 0} Alexander Kohut, 271, and Sota, V, 5. 8 Sifre, 1. c. 7 See Yoma, 86 a; T. d. El. R., XXIV; Maimonidcs, //. Teshubah, X; Crescas: Or Adonai, I, 3. Comp. Testaments Twelve Patriarchs, Simeon 3, 4 ; Issachar, 5 ; Philo : Quod omnis probus liber, 1 2 and elsewhere. 8 Song of Songs VIII, 6, 7. CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD AND BELIEF IN GOD 33 flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench that love, neither can the floods drown it." It set the heart of the Jew aglow during all the centuries, prompting him to sacrifice his life and all that was dear to him for the glorification of his God, to undergo for his faith a martyrdom without parallel in history. CHAPTER VI Revelation, Prophecy, and Inspiration i. Divine revelation signifies two different things: first, God's self-revelation, which the Rabbis called Gilluy Shekinah, "the manifestation of the divine Presence," and, second, the revelation of His will, for which they used the term Torah min ha Shamayim, "the Law as emanating from God." 1 The former appealed to the child-like belief of the Biblical age, which took no offense at anthropomorphic ideas, such as the descent of God from heaven to earth, His appearing to men in some visible form, or any other miracle ; the latter appears to be more acceptable to those of more advanced religious views. Both conceptions, however, imply that the religious truth of revelation was communicated to man by a special act of God. 2. Each creative act is a mystery beyond the reach of human observation. In all fields of endeavor the flashing forth of genius impresses us as the work of a mysterious force, which acts upon an elect individual or nation and brings it into close touch with the divine. In the religious genius especially is this true ; for in him all the spiritual forces of the age seem to be energized and set into motion, then to burst forth into a new religious consciousness, which is to revolu- tionize religious thought and feeling. In a child-like age when the emotional life and the imagination predominate, and man's mind, still receptive, is overwhelmed by mighty visions, the Deity stirs the soul in some form perceptible to 1 See Sifrc Dcut. XXVI, 8; Sanh. X, i ; J. E., art. Revelation; Dillmann, 6i f. ; Geigcr, I). Jud. u. s. Gesch. I, 34 f. 34 REVELATION, PROPHECY, AND INSPIRATION 35 the senses. Thus the "seer" assumes a trance-like state where the Ego, the self-conscious personality, is pushed into the background ; he becomes a passive instrument, the mouth- piece of the Deity ; from Him he receives a message to the people, and in his vision he beholds God who sends him. This appearance of God upon the background of the soul, which reflects Him like a mirror, is Revelation. 1 3. The states of the soul when men see such visions of the Deity predominate in the beginnings of all religions. Accord- ingly, Scripture ascribes such revelations to non-Israelites as well as to the patriarchs and prophets of Israel, — to Abime- lek and Laban, Balaam, Job, and Eliphaz. 2 Therefore the Jewish prophet is not distinguished from the rest by the capability to receive divine revelation, but rather by the intrinsic nature of the revelation which he receives. His vision comes from a moral God. The Jewish genius perceived God as the moral power of life, whether in the form expressed by Abraham, Moses, Elijah, or by the literary prophets, and all of these, coming into touch with Him, were lifted into a higher sphere, where they received a new truth, hitherto 1 See Deut. XIII, 2-6, where prophet forms a parallel to dreamer of dreams. God appears in a dream to Abraham (Gen. XV, 1, 12), to Abimelek (Gen. XX, 3, 6), to Jacob (XXVIII, 12; XXXI, n; XLVI, 2), to Laban (XXXI, 24), to Balaam (Num. XXIV, 3), and to Eliphaz (Job IV, 3-6). Dream-like visions open the prophetic career of Moses (Exod. Ill, 3-6), Samuel (I Sam. Ill, 1, 15, 21), Isaiah (Is. VI, 1 f.), Jeremiah (Jer. I, 11 f.), Ezekiel (Ezek. I, 4), and others. Revelation in the Bible is Mahazeh, hazon, and hizayon, "vision" — whence hozeh, "seer"; or mar eh, "sight," whence roeh, "seer." See also Geiger: Urschrift, 340; 390. Prophecy without dream or vision is claimed for Moses (Num. XII, 6-8; Exod. XXX, 11; Deut. XXXIV, 10; see Mai- monides: Moreh, II, 43-47; Albo, Ikkarim, III, 8). The revelation on Sinai is described as "the great vision," or mareh: Exod. Ill, 3; XXIV, 17; com- pare Deut. IV, 11-V, 23, according to which only a "voice" is heard. Instead of God the later prophets see an angel, as Zach. I, 8, 11 ; II, 2 f. Compare Yebam. 49 b, as to the difference between Isaiah, who saw God in a vision, and Moses, who saw Him "in a shining mirror." He will appear in the latter way to the righteous in the future world, Sue. 45 b; Lev. R. I, 14; I Cor. XIII, 12. 2 See Gen. XX, 6 ; XXXI, 29 ; Num. XXIV ; Job IV, 16 f. ; XXXVIII, 1. 3 6 JEWISH THEOLOGY hidden from man. In speaking through them, God ap- peared actually to have stepped into the sphere of human life as its moral Ruler. This self-revelation of God as the Ruler of man in righteousness, which must be viewed in the life of any prophet as a providential act, forms the great historical sequence in the history of Israel, upon which rests the Jewish religion. 1 4. The divine revelation in Israel was by no means a single act, but a process of development, and its various stages correspond to the degrees of culture of the people. For this reason the great prophets also depended largely upon dreams and visions, at least in their consecration to the prophetic mission, when one solemn act was necessary. After that the message itself and its new moral content set the soul of the prophet astir. Not the vision or its imagery, but the new truth itself seizes him with irresistible force, so that he is carried away by the divine power and speaks as the mouthpiece of God, using lofty poetic diction while in a state of ecstacy. Hence he speaks of God in the first person. The highest stage of all is that where the prophet receives the divine truth in the form of pure thought and with complete self-consciousness. Therefore the Scripture says of Moses and of no other, "The Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to another." 2 5. The story of the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai is in reality the revelation of God to the people of Israel as part of the great world-drama of history. Accordingly, the chief emphasis is laid upon the miraculous element, the descent of the Lord to the mountain in fire and storm, amid thunder and lightning, while the Ten Words themselves were pro- !The Hebrew word for prophecy is passive, — nibba' or hithnabbc', "to be made to speak," or "to bubble forth," — the Deity being the active power, while the prophet is His mouthpiece. * Ex. XXXIII, 11 ; Deut. XXXIV, 10. REVELATION, PROPHECY, AND INSPIRATION 37 claimed by Moses as God's herald. 1 As a matter of fact, the first words of the narrative state its purpose, the consecration of the Jewish people at the outset of their history to be a nation of prophets and priests. 2 Therefore the rabbis lay stress upon the acceptance of the Law by the people in saying : "All that the Lord sayeth we shall do and hearken." 3 From a larger point of view, we see here the dramatized form of the truth of Israel's election by divine Providence for its historic religious mission. 6. The rabbis ascribed the gifts of prophecy to pagans as well as Israelites at least as late as the erection of the Tab- ernacle, after which the Divine Presence dwelt there in the midst of Israel. 4 They say that each of the Jewish prophets was endowed with a peculiar spiritual power that corresponded with his character and his special training, the highest, of course, being Moses, whom they called "the father of the prophets." 5 The medieval Jewish thinkers, following the lead of Mohammedan philosophers or theologians, regard revelation quite differently, as an inner process in the mind of the prophet. According to their mystical or rationalistic viewpoint, they describe it as the result of the divine spirit, working upon the soul either from within or from without. These two stand- points betray either the Platonic or the Aristotelian influence. 6 Indeed, the rabbis themselves showed traces of neo-Platonism 1 Ex. XIX, 19 ; XX, 19. 2 Ex. XIX, 1-8. 3 Shab. 88 a after Ex. XXIV, 7. 1 Seder Olam R., I and XXI ; Lev. Rab. I, 12-14 ; B. B. 15 b. 5 Hag. 13 b; Sanh. 89 a; Lev. R. 1. c. 6 See Schmiedl : Stud. u. jned.-arabische Religionsphilosophie, 191-192 ; S. Horowitz: D. Prophetologie i. d. jucd. Religionsphilosophie; Sandler: D. Problem d. Prophetie i. d. jued. Religionsphilosophie; J. E., art. Prophets and Prophecy; Emunoth III, 4; Cuzari, I, 95; II, 10-12; Emunah Ramah, II, 5, 1; Moreh, II, 32-48; Yesode ha Torah, VII; Or Adonai, II, 4, 1; Ikkarim, III, 8-12, 17; Nachmanides to Gen. XVIII, 2; Abravanel to Gen. XXI, 27; Comp. Husik, Hist. Med. Jew. Phil., Index s. v. Prophecy; Enc. Rel. Ethics, art. Philosophy and Prophecy. 38 JEWISH THEOLOGY when they described the ecstatic state of the prophets, or when they spoke of the divine spirit speaking through the prophet as through a vocal instrument, or when they made distinctions between seeing the Deity "in a bright mirror" or "through a dark glass." x The view most remote from the simple one of the Bible is the rationalistic standpoint of Maimonides, who, following altogether in the footsteps of the Arabic neo-Aristotelians, assumed that there were different degrees of prophecy, de- pending upon the influence exerted upon the human intel- lect by the sphere of the Highest Intelligence. He enumerates eleven such grades, of which Moses had the highest rank, as he entered into direct communication with the supreme intel- lectual sphere. Still bolder is his explanation of the revela- tion on Sinai. He holds that the first two words were under- stood by the people directly as logical evidences of truth, for they enunciated the philosophical doctrines of the existence and unity of God, whereas the other words they understood only as sounds without meaning, so that Moses had to inter- pret them. 2 In contrast to this amazing rationalism of Mai- monides is the view of Jehuda ha Levi, who asserts that the gift of prophecy became the specific privilege of the descend- ants of Abraham after their consecration as God's chosen people at Sinai, and that the holy soil of Palestine was as- signed to them as the habitation best adapted to its exercise. 3 The other attempt of some rationalistic thinkers of the Middle Ages to have a "sound created for the purpose" 4 of uttering the words "I am the Lord thy God," rather than accepting the anthropomorphic Deity, merits no consideration whatever. 7. It is an indisputable fact of history that the Jewish people, •Horowitz, 1. c. p. n-16; Gen. R. XVII, 6; Lev. R. 1. c; Sanh. 17b; Philo: De Decalog., 21; de Migratione Abrahami, 7 ; comp. I Corinth. XIII, 12. 2 Moreh, 1. c. 3 Cuzari, 1. 0. 4 Kol Nibra : Moreh, I, 65 ; Emunoth, II, 8 ; Cuzari, I, 89. REVELATION, PROPHECY, AND INSPIRATION 39 on account of its peculiar religious bent, was predestined to be the people of revelation. Its leading spirits, its prophets and psalmists, its law-givers and inspired writers differ from the seers, singers, and sages of other nations by their unique and profound insight into the moral nature of the Deity. In striking contrast is the progress of thought in Greece, where the awakening of the ethical consciousness caused a rupture between the culture of the philosophers and the popular religion, and led to a final decay of the political and social life. The prophets of Israel, however, the typical men of genius of their people, gradually brought about an advance of popular religion, so that they could finally present as their highest ideal the God of the fathers, and make the knowl- edge of His will the foundation of the law of holiness, by which they desired to regulate the entire conduct of man. Thus, religion was no longer confined by the limits of nation- ality, but was transformed into a spiritual force for all man- kind, to lead through a revelation of the One and Holy God toward the highest morality. 8. The development of thought brought the God-seeking spirits to the desire to know His will, or, in Scriptural language, His ways, in order to attain holiness in their pursuit. The natural consequence was the gradual receding of the power of imagination which had made the enraptured seer behold God Himself in visions. As the Deity rose more and more above the realm of the visible, the newly conceived truth was real- ized as coming to the sacred writer through the spirit of God or an angel. Inspiration took the place of revelation. This, however, still implies a passive attitude of the soul carried away by the truth it receives from on high. This supernatural element disappears gradually and passes over into sober, self- conscious thought, in which the writer no longer thinks of God as the Ego speaking through him, but as an outside Power spoken of in the third person. 4 o JEWISH THEOLOGY A still lower degree of inspiration is represented by those writings which lack altogether the divine afflatus, and to which is ascribed a share of the holy spirit only through gen- eral consensus of opinion. Often this imprint of the divine is not found in them by the calm judgment of a later gen- eration, and the exact basis for the classification of such writings among the holy books is sometimes difficult to state. We can only conclude that in the course of time they were regarded as holy by that very spirit which was embodied in the Synagogue and its founders, "the Men of the Great Synagogue," who in their work of canonizing the Sacred Scriptures were believed to have been under the influence of the holy spirit. 1 9. Except for the five books of Moses, the idea of a me- chanical inspiration of the Bible is quite foreign to Judaism. Not until the second Christian century did the rabbis finally decide on such questions as the inspiration of certain books among the Hagiographa or even among the Prophets, or whether certain books now excluded from the canon were not of equal rank with the canonical ones. 2 In fact, the in- fluence of the holy spirit was for some time ascribed, not only to Biblical writers, but also to living masters of the law. 3 1 According to the rabbis, the working of the holy spirit ceased with Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, who, with Ezra, were included also among the "Men of the Great Synagogue." See Tos. Sota XIII, 2 ; Seder Olam R. XXX ; Sanh. n a. See J. E., art. Synagogue, Men of the Great; Holy Spirit; In- spiration. Comp. B. B. 14 b, 15 a ; Yoraa 9 b ; Meg. 3 a, 7 a ; I Mace. IV, 46 ; Ps. LXXIV.o; Josephus > Co».i4^'o».,I > 8; Philo: Vita M osis, U, 7 ; Aristeas, 305-307. As to the difference between the spirit of prophecy and the holy spirit, see Cuzari, III, 32-35; Moreh,ll, 3SS7- The Essenes claimed the holy spirit for their apocryphal writings; see IV Esdras XIV, 38; Book of Wisdom VII, 27. 2 On the disputes concerning canonical books, see Yadayim III, 5 ; Ah. d. R. N., I, ed. Schechter, 2-3 ; Shab. 30 b; Meg. 7 a. Comp. B. K. 92 b, where Ben Sira is quoted as one of the Hagiographa. 8 See Tos. Pes. I, 27; IV, 2 ; Sota XIII, 3; Yer. Horay. Ill, 48 c; Lev. R. XXI, 7. REVELATION, PROPHECY, AND INSPIRATION 41 The fact is that divine influence cannot be measured by the yardstick or the calendar. Where it is felt, it bursts forth as from a higher world, creating for itself its proper organs and forms. The rabbis portray God as saying to Israel, "Not I in My higher realm, but you with your human needs fix the form, the measure, the time, and the mode of ex- pression for that which is divine." : 10. While Christianity and Islam, its daughter-religions, must admit the existence of a prior revelation, Judaism knows of none. It claims its own prophetic truth as the revelation, admits the title Books of Revelation (Bible) only for its own sacred writings, and calls the Jewish nation alone the People of Revelation. The Church and the Mosque achieved great things in propagating the truths of the Sinaitic revelation among the nations, but added to it no new truths of an es- sential nature. Indeed, they rather obscured the doctrines of God's unity and holiness. On the other hand, the people of the Sinaitic revelation looked to it with a view of ever revitalizing the dead letter, thus evolving ever new rules of life and new ideas, without ever placing new and old in op- position, as was done by the founder of the Church. Each generation was to take to heart the words of Scripture as if they had come "this very day" out of the mouth of the Lord. 2 1 R. h. Sh. 27 a; Mak. 22 b. 2 Sifre Deut. VI, 4. CHAPTER VII The Torah — the Divine Instruction i. During the Babylonian Exile the prophetic word became the source of comfort and rejuvenation for the Jewish people. Now in its place Ezra the Scribe made the Book of the Law of Moses the pivot about which the entire life of the people was to revolve. By regular readings from it to the assembled worshipers, he made it the source of common instruction. Instead of the priestly Law, which was concerned only with the regulation of the ritual life, the Law became the people's book of instruction, a Torah for all alike, 1 while the prophetic books were made secondary and were employed by the preacher at the conclusion of the service as "words of consolation." 2 Upon the Pentateuch was built up the divine service of the Synagogue as well as the whole system of communal life, with both its law and ethics. The prophets and other sacred books were looked upon only as means of "opening up" or illustrating the contents of the Torah. These other parts of 1 On the term Torah see Smend : Lehrb. d. alltcst. Religionsgesch. ; Stade : Bibl. Theol. d. Alt. Test., Index s. v. Torah; W. J. Beecher : Jour. Bibl, Lit., 1905, 1-16; "Thora a Word Study in the Old Testament." For Torah as Law, see Neh. VIII, 1 ; Joshua I, 7, and throughout the Pentateuch ; as moral instruction, see Hos. IV, 6; VIII, 1; Is. I, 10; Y, 24; XXX, 0; LI, 4; Mic. IV, 2; Jer. XXXVI, 4 f. ; XXXI, 32; Ps. XVI, 8; Prov. VI, 22; VII, 2; Guedeman: Quell, z. G. d. Untcrridits, at the beginning; Claude Montefiore: Hibbert Lectures, 1892, p. 465 f. 2 Nchcmalha, which means the Messianic hope; sec Kohut : Aruch V, 328 and Appendix 59. 4* THE TORAH — THE DIVINE INSTRUCTION 43 the Mikra ("the collection of books for public reading") were declared to be inferior in holiness, so that, according to the Rabbinical rule, they were not even allowed to be put into the same scroll as the Pentateuch. 1 Moreover, neither the number, order, nor the division of the Biblical books was fixed. The Talmud gives 24, Josephus only 2 2. 2 Tradition claims a completely divine origin only for the Pentateuch or Torah, while the rabbis often point out the human element in the other two classes of the Biblical collection. 3 2. The traditional belief in the divine origin of the Torah includes not only every word, but also the accepted inter- pretation of each letter, for both written and oral law are ascribed to the revelation to Moses on Mt. Sinai, to be trans- mitted thence from generation to generation. Whoever denies the divine origin of either the written or the oral law is declared to be an unbeliever who has no share in the world to come, according to the Tannaitic code, and consequently according to Maimonides 4 also. But here arises a question of vital importance : What becomes of the Torah as the divine foundation of Judaism under the study of modern times? Even conservative investigators, such as Frankel, Graetz, and Isaac Hirsch Weiss, not to mention such radicals as Zunz and Geiger, admit the gradual progress and growth of this very system of law, both oral and written. And if different historical conditions have produced the development 1 See B. B. 13 b; Meg. Ill, 1 ; IV, 4; comp. Ned. 22 b; Taan. 9 a; Shab. 104 a ; Sifra Behukothai at end ; Eccl. R. I, 10 ; Ex. R. XXXVIII, 6. Zunz : Gottesd. Vortr., 46 f., and art. Canon and Bible in the various encyclopedias. As to Torah for the whole Bible, see Mek. Shira 1; Sanh. 37 a, 91 b; Ab. Zar. 17 a; M. K. 5 a; comp. I Cor. XIV, 21 ; John X, 34; XII, 34; XV, 25. For Torah as Nomos, or Law, see II Mace. XV, 9. 2 Bousset, 1. c, 128-129. 3 On the divine origin of the Torah, see Sanh. 99 a ; Sifra Kedoshim 8 ; Behar 1 ; Behukothay 8. Regarding the meaning of metammin eth ha yadayim in the sense of taboo for the holy writings, see Geiger : Urschrift, p. 146. * Sanh. 99 a; Maim. H. Teshubah III, 8. 44 JEWISH THEOLOGY of the law itself, we must assume a number of human authors in place of a single act of divine revelation. 1 3. But another question of equal importance confronts us here, the meaning of Torah. Originally, no doubt, Torah signified the instruction given by the priests on ritual or ju- ridical matters. Out of these decisions arose the written laws (Toroth), which the priesthood in the course of time collected into codes. After a further process of development they ap- peared as the various books of Moses, which were finally united into the Code or Torah. This Torah was the foun- dation of the new Judean commonwealth, the "heritage of the congregation of Jacob." 2 The priestly Torah, lightly regarded during the prophetic period, was exalted by post- exilic Judaism, so that the Sadducean priesthood and their successors, the rabbis, considered strict observance of the legal form to be the very essence of religion. Is this, then, the true nature of Judaism ? Is it really — as Christian theologians have held ever since the days of Paul, the great antagonist of Judaism — mere nomism, a religion of law, which demanded formal compliance with its statutes without regard to their inner value? Or shall we rather follow Rabbi Simlai, the Haggadist, who first enumerated the 613 com- mandments of the Torah (mandatory and prohibitive), con- sidering that their one aim is the higher moral law, in that they are all summed up by a few ethical principles, which he finds in the 15th Psalm, Isaiah XXXIII, 15 ; Micah VI, 8 ; Isaiah LVI, 1 ; and Amos V, 4 ? 3 4. All these questions have but one answer, a reconciling one. Judaism has the two factors, the priest with his regard for the law and the prophet with his ethical teaching ; and the Jewish Torah embodies both aspects, law and doctrine. 1 Comp. Kohlcr: Hebrew Union College Annual, 1004, "The Four Ells of the Halakah." 1 Deut. XXXIII, 4- ' Mak. 23 b. THE TORAH — THE DIVINE INSTRUCTION 45 These two elements became more and more correlated, as the different parts of the Pentateuch which embodied them were molded together into the one scroll of the Law. In fact, the prophet Jeremiah, in denouncing the priesthood for its neglect of the principles of justice, and rebuking scathingly the people for their wrongdoing, pointed to the divine law of righteousness as the one which should be written upon the hearts of men. 1 Likewise, in the book of Deuteronomy, which was the product of joint activity by 'prophet and priest, the Law was built upon the highest moral principle, the love of God and man. In a still larger sense the Pentateuch as a whole contains priestly law and universal religion inter- twined. In it the eternal verities of the Jewish faith, God's omnipotence, omniscience, and moral government of the world, are conveyed in the historical narratives as an introduction to the law. 5. Thus the Torah as the expression of Judaism was never limited to a mere system of law. At the outset it served as a book of instruction concerning God and the world and. became ever richer as a source of knowledge and speculation, because all knowledge from other sources was brought into relation with it through new modes of interpretation. Various systems of philosophy and theology were built upon it. Nay more, the Torah became divine Wisdom itself, 2 the architect of the Creator, the beginning and end of creation. 3 While the term Torah thus received an increasingly compre- hensive meaning, the rabbis, as exponents of orthodox Juda- ism, came to consider the Pentateuch as the only book of reve- 1 Jerem. XXXI, 32. 2 Comp. Schechter, Aspects, p. 120-136, and see Ben Sira, XXIV, 8-23; XVII, 11; Baruch III, 38 f.; Apoc. Baruch XXXVIII, 4; XLIV, 16; IV Esdras VIII, 12; IX, 37; Philo: Vita Mosis, II, 3, 9; Gen. R. I; P. d. R. El. III. 3 This apotheosis of the Torah is put in a wrong light by Weber, Juedische Theologie, 157 f., 197, but is stated better in Bousset, 1. c, 136-142. 46 JEWISH THEOLOGY lation, every letter of which emanated directly from God. The other books of the Bible they regarded as due only to the indwelling of the holy spirit, or to the presence of God, the Shekinah. Moreover, they held that changes by the prophets and other sacred writers were anticipated, in essentials, in the Torah itself, and were therefore only its expansions and interpretations. Accordingly, they are frequently quoted as parts of the Torah or as "words of tradition." 1 6. Orthodox Judaism, then, accepted as a fundamental doctrine the view that both the Mosaic Law and its Rabbinical interpretation were given by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai. This viewpoint is contradicted by all our knowledge and our whole mode of thinking, and thus both our historical and religious consciousness constrain us to take the position of the prophets. To them and to us the real Torah is the un- written moral law which underlies the precepts of both the written law and its oral interpretation. From this point of view, Moses, as the first of the prophets, becomes the first mediator of the divine legislation, and the original Decalogue is seen to be the starting point of a long process of develop- ment, from which grew the laws of righteousness and holiness that were to rule the life of Israel and of mankind. 2 7. The time of composition of the various parts of the Pentateuch, including the Decalogue, must be decided by independent critical and historical research. It is sufficient for us to know that since the time of Ezra the foundation of 1 Dibrc Kabbalah, R. h. Sh. 7 a, 19 a; Yer. Halla I, 57 b; see Levy, \V. B., s. v. Kabbalah. 2 The personality of Moses was at first exalted to almost superhuman height; see Ben Sira, XLV, 2; Assutnptio Mosis,!, 14; XI. i<>; l'hilo : Vila Mosis, III, 39 ; Josephus : A ntiquities, IV, 32 b; Bousset, 1. c, 140 f. In contrast to the Church view of Jesus the rabbis later emphasized the human frailties of Moses: "Never did divine majesty descend to the habitations of mortal man, nor did ever a mortal man such as Moses and Elijah ascend to heaven, the dwelling-place of God," taught Rabbi Jose (Suk. 5 a). THE TORAH — THE DIVINE INSTRUCTION 47 Judaism has been the completed Torah, with its twofold aspect as law and as doctrine. As law it contributed to the marvelous endurance and resistance of the Jewish people, inasmuch as it imbued them with the proud consciousness of possessing a law superior to that of other nations, one which would endure as long as heaven and earth. 1 Furthermore, it permeated Judaism with a keen sense of duty and imprinted the ideal of holiness upon the whole of life. At the same time it gave rise also to ritualistic piety, which, while tena- ciously clinging to the traditional practice of the law, fos- tered hair-splitting casuistry and caused the petrifaction of re- ligion in the codified Halakah. As doctrine it impressed its ethical and humane idealism upon the people, lifting them far above the narrow confines of nationality, and making them a nation of thinkers. Hence their eagerness for their mission to impart the wisdom stored in their writings to all humanity as its highest boon and the very essence of divine wisdom. »See Deut. IV, 6-8; Jer. XXXI, 34-35 ; Philo: Vita Mosis, II, 14; Jo- sephus: Apion, II, 277. CHAPTER VIII God's Covenant i. Judaism has one specific term for religion, representing the moral relation between God and man, namely, Berith, covenant. The covenant was concluded by God with the patriarchs and with Israel by means of sacrificial blood, ac- cording to the primitive custom by which tribes or individuals became " blood brothers," when they were both sprinkled with the sacrificial blood or both drank of it. 1 The first cov- enant of God was made after the flood, with Noah as the rep- resentative of mankind ; it was intended to assure him and all coming generations of the perpetual maintenance of the natural order without interruption by flood, and at the same time to demand of all mankind the observance of certain laws, such as not to shed, or eat, blood. Here at the very beginning of history religion is taken as the universal basis of human morality, so developing at the outset the fundamental prin- ciple of Judaism that it rests upon a religion of humanity, which it desires to establish in all purity. As the universal idea of man forms thus its beginning, so Judaism will attain its final goal only in a divine covenant comprising all hu- manity. Both the rabbis and the Hellenistic writers con- sider the covenant of Noah with its so-called Noahitic com- mandments as unwritten laws of humanity. In fact, they are referred to Adam also, so that religion appears in its 1 Sec Herodotus, III, 8; IV, 70; Jcr. XXIV, 18; IT. Clay Trumbull : The Blood Covenant, New York, 1885; Kractschmar : /). BunderwrsteUung i. A. Test., 1896; J. E. and Encycl. of Rel. and Ethics, art. Covenant. 48 GOD'S COVENANT 49 essence as nothing else than a covenant of God with all mankind. 1 2. Accordingly, Judaism is a special basis of relationship between God and Israel. Far from superseding the universal covenant with Noah, or confining it to the Jewish people, this covenant aims to reclaim all members of the human family for the wider covenant from which they have relapsed. God chose for this purpose Abraham as the one who was faithful to His moral law, and made a special covenant with him for all his descendants, that they might foster justice and righteousness, at first within the narrow sphere of the nation, and then in ever-widening circles of humanity. 2 Yet the covenant with Abraham was only the precursor of the covenant concluded with Israel through Moses on Mt. Sinai, by which the Jewish people were consecrated to be the eternal guardians of the divine covenant with mankind, until the time when it shall encompass aU the nations. 3 3. In this covenant of Sinai, referred to by the prophet Elijah, and afterward by many others, the free moral re- lationship of man to God is brought out; this forms the characteristic feature of a revealed religion in contradistinc- tion to natural religion. In paganism the Deity formed an in- separable part of the nation itself ; but through the covenant God became a free moral power, appealing for allegiance to the spiritual nature of man. This idea of the covenant sug- gested to the prophet Hosea the analogy with the conjugal relation, 4 a conception of love and loyalty which became typical of the tender relation of God to Israel through the centuries. In days of direst woe Jeremiah and the book of 1 See Gen. IX, 1-17; Tos. Ab. Zar. VIII, 4; San. 56 a; Gen. R. XVI, XXIV ; Jubilees VI, 10 f. ; Bernays : Ges. Abh. I, 252 f., 272 f. ; II, 71-80. 2 Gen. XV, 18; XVII, 2 f. ; XVIII, 19; Lev. XXVI, 42 ; Jubilees I, 51. 3 Ex. XLX, 5 ; XXIV, 6-8 ; XXXIV, 28 ; Deut. IV-V, XXVIII, XXLX ; Comp. I Kings XIX, 10, 14; Jer. XI; XXXI; XXXIV, 13; Ezek. XVI- XVII. * Hos. II, 18-20. E 5 o JEWISH THEOLOGY Deuteronomy invested this covenant with the character of indestructibility and inviolability. 1 God's covenant with Israel is everlasting like that with the heaven and the earth ; it is ever to be renewed in the hearts of the people, but never to be replaced by a new covenant. Upon this eternal renewal of the covenant with God rests the unique history of Judaism, its wondrous preservation and regeneration throughout the ages. Paul's doctrine of a new covenant to replace the old 2 conflicts with the very idea of the covenant, and even with the words of Jeremiah. 4. The Israelitish nation inherited from Abraham, accord- ing to the priestly Code, the rite of circumcision as a "sign of the covenant," 3 but under the prophetic influence, with its loathing of all sacrificial blood, the Sabbath was placed in the foreground as "the sign between God and Israel." 4 In ancient Israel and in the Judean commonwealth the Abra- hamitic rite formed the initiation into the nationality for aliens and slaves, by which they were made full-fledged Jews. With the dispersion of the Jewish people over the globe, and the influence of Hellenism, Judaism created a propaganda in favor of a world-wide religion of "God-fearing" men pledged to the observance of the Noahitic or humanitarian laws. Rabbinism in Palestine called such a one Ger Toshab — so- journer, or semi-proselyte ; while the full proselyte who ac- cepted the Abrahamitic rite was called Ger Zedek, or proselyte of righteousness. 5 Not only the Hellenistic writings, but also the Psalms, the liturgy, and the older Rabbinical literature 1 Jer. XXXI, 30-32, 34-35; XXXIII, 25; Deut. XXIX, 14. 2 See Ep. Hebrews VIII, 8 f. ; Gal. Ill, 15 ; I Cor. XI, 25 ; Matt. XXIV, 21, and parallels. 3 Gen. XVII, n. 4 Ex. XXXI, 13-17; comp. Deut. X, 16; Josh. V, 9; Isa. LVI, 4-6. See Mek. to Ex. XIX, 5, the controversy between R. Eliezer and R. Akiba, whether the Sabbath or circumcision was the essential si.u;n of the covenant. 6 Ker. 9 a ; Yeb. 45-48 and see Chapter LVI below. GOD'S COVENANT 51 give evidence of such a propaganda, 1 but it may be traced back as far as Deutero-Isaiah, during the reign of Cyrus. His outlook toward a Jewish religion which should be at the same time a religion of all the world, is evident when he calls Israel "a mediator of the covenant between God and the nations," a "light to the peoples," — a regenerator of humanity. 2 5. This hope of a universal religion, which rings through the Psalms, the Wisdom books and the Hellenistic literature, was soon destined to grow faint. The perils of Judaism in its great struggles with the Syrian and Roman empires made for intense nationalism, and the Jewish covenant shared this tendency. The early Christian Church, the successor of the missionary activity of Hellenistic Judaism, labored also at first for the Noahitic covenant. 3 Pauline Christianity, how- ever, with a view to tearing down the barrier between Jew and Gentile, proclaimed a new covenant, whose central idea is belief in the atoning power of the crucified son of God. 4 Indeed, one medieval Rabbinical authority holds that we are to regard Christians as semi-proselytes, as they practically observe the Noahitic laws of humanity. 5 6. Progressive Judaism of our own time has the great task of re-emphasizing Israel's world-mission and of reclaiming for Judaism its place as the priesthood of humanity. It is to proclaim anew the prophetic idea of God's covenant with humanity, whose force had been lost, owing to inner and outer obstacles. Israel, as the people of the covenant, aims to unite all nations and classes of men in the divine covenant. It must outlast all other religions in its certainty that ulti- mately there can be but the one religion, uniting God and man by a single bond. 6 1 Ps. XXII, 28 f ; CXV, 11 ; CXVIII, 4 ; Is. LVT, 6. 2 Isaiah XLIX, 6-8. 3 Acts XV, 20, 29. 4 See J. E., art. Saul of Tarsus ; Enc. Rel. Eth. art. Paul. 5 Isaac ben Shesheth : Responsa, 119. Comp. J. E., art. Christianity. 6 See further, Chapter XLLX. B. THE IDEA OF GOD IN JUDAISM CHAPTER IX God and the Gods i. Judaism centers upon its sublime and simple concep- tion of God. This lifts it above all other religions and satisfies in unique measure the longing for truth and inner peace amidst the futility and incessant changes of earthly existence. This very conception of God is in striking contrast to that of most other religions. The God of Judaism is not one god among many, nor one of many powers of life, but is the One and holy God beyond all comparison. In Him is concentrated all power and the essence of all things ; He is the Author of all existence, the Ruler of life, who lays down the laws by which man shall live. As the prophet says to the heathen world : "The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, these shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens. . . . Not like these is the portion of Jacob ; for He is the Former of all things. . . . The Lord is the true God ; He is the living God and the everlasting King ; at His wrath the earth trembleth, and the nations are not able to abide His indignation." ' 2. This lofty conception of the Deity forms the essence of Judaism and was its shield and buckler in its lifelong contest with the varying forms of heathenism. From the very first the God of Judaism declared war against them all, whether at 1 Jer. X, ii ; 16 and 10. 52 GOD AND THE GODS 53 any special time the prevailing form was the worship of many gods, or the worship of God in the shape of man, the per- version of the purity of God by sensual concepts, or the di- vision of His unity into different parts or personalities. The Talmudic saying is most striking: "From Sinai, the Mount of revelation of the only God, there came forth Sinah, the hostility of the nations toward the Jew as the banner-bearer of the pure idea of God." 1 Just as day and night form a natural contrast, divinely ordained, so do the monotheism of Israel and the polytheism of the nations constitute a spiritual contrast which can never be reconciled. 3. The pagan gods, and to some extent the triune God of the Christian Church, semi-pagan in origin also, are the out- come of the human spirit's going astray in its search for God. Instead of leading man upwards to an ideal which will encom- pass all material and moral life and lift it to the highest stage of holiness, paganism led to depravity and discord. The un- relenting zeal displayed by prophet and law-giver against idolatry had its chief cause in the immoral and inhuman prac- tices of the pagan nations — Canaan, Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon — in the worship of their deities. 2 The deification of the forces of nature brutalized the moral sense of the pagan world ; no vice seemed too horrible, no sacrifice too atrocious for their cults. Baal, or Moloch, the god of heaven, de- manded in times of distress the sacrifice of a son by the father. Astarte, the goddess of fecundity, required the " hallowing" of life's origin, and this was done by the most terrible of sexual orgies. Such abominations exerted their se- ductive influence upon the shepherd tribes of Israel in their new home in Canaan, and thus aroused the fiercest indignation of prophet and law-giver, who hurled their vials of wrath against those shocking rites, those lewd idols, and those who 1 Shab. 89 b. 2 Lev. XVIII, 2, 27 f.; Num. XXV, 3-8; Hos. IV, 10; V, 4. 54 JEWISH THEOLOGY "whored after them." 1 If Israel was to be trained to be the priest people of the Only One in such an environment, tolerance of such practices was out of the question. Thus in the Sinai tic law God is spoken of as " the jealous God " 2 who punishes unrelentingly every violation of His laws of purity and holiness. 4. The same sharp contrast of Jewish ethical and spiritual monotheism remained also when it came in contact with the Graeco-Syrian and Roman culture. Here, too, the myths and customs of the cult and the popular religion offended by their gross sensuality the chaste spirit of the Jewish people. Indeed, these were all the more dangerous to the purity of social life, as they were garbed with the alluring beauty of art and philosophy. 3 The Jew then felt all the more the imperative duty to draw a sharp line of demarcation between Judaism with its chaste and imageless worship and the las- civious, immoral life of paganism. 5. This wide gulf which yawned between Israel's One and holy God and the divinities of the nations was not bridged over by the Christian Church when it appeared on the stage of history and obtained world-dominion. For Christianity in its turn succeeded by again dragging the Deity into the world of the senses, adopting the pagan myths of the birth and death of the gods, and sanctioning image worship. In this way it actually created a Christian plurality of gods in place of the Graeco-Roman pantheon ; indeed, it presented a divine family after the model of the Egyptian and Babylonian religions, 4 and thus pushed the ever-living God and Father of mankind into the background. This tendency has never been •Num. XV, 39; Ex. XXIII, 24; Deut. XX, 18; Sanh. XII, 5; X, 4-6; Ab. Zar. TI-IV; Sanh. 106 a: "Israel's God hates lewdness." ■ Ex. XX, 5; Deut. IV, 24; VI, 15. 3 Sec Philo : De Humanitate ; Doellinger: Heidenthum u. Judentkum, 682, 700 f. ; I. H. Weiss : Dor Dor we Dorcshav, II, 19 f * See J. E., art. Christianity. GOD AND THE GODS 55 explained away, even by the attempts of certain high-minded thinkers among the Church fathers. Judaism, however, in- sists, as ever, upon the words of the Decalogue which con- demn all attempts to depict the Deity in human or sensual form, and through all its teachings there is echoed forth the voice of Him who spoke through the seer of the Exile: "I am the Lord, that is My name, and My glory will I not give to another, neither My praise to graven images." 1 6. When Moses came to Pharaoh saying, "Thus speaketh JHVH the God of Israel, send off My people that they may serve Me," Pharaoh — so the Midrash tells — took his list of deities to hand, looked it over, and said, "Behold, here are enumerated the gods of the nations, but I cannot find thy God among them." To this Moses replied, "All the gods known and familiar to thee are mortal, as thou art ; they die, and their tomb is shown. The God of Israel has nothing in com- mon with them. He is the living, true, and eternal God who created heaven and earth ; no people can withstand His wrath." 2 This passage states strikingly the difference between the God of Judaism and the gods of heathendom. The latter are but deified powers of nature, and being parts of the world, them- selves at one with nature, they are subject to the power of time and fate. Israel's God is enthroned above the world as its moral and spiritual Ruler, the only Being whom we can conceive as self-existent, as indivisible as truth itself. 7. As long as the pagan conception prevailed, by which the world was divided into many divine powers, there could be no conception of the idea of a moral government of the uni- verse, of an all-encompassing purpose of life. Consequently 1 Isa. XLII, 8. Scripture always emphasizes the contrast between Israel's God and the heathen gods. See Ex. XII, 12; XV, 11; XVIII, n; Deut. X, 17; also in the prophets, Isa. XL; XLIV, 9; Jer. X; and the Psalms, XCVI, CXV, CXXXV. Absolute monotheism was a slow growth from this basis. 2 See Ex. R. V, 18. 56 JEWISH THEOLOGY the great thinkers and moralists of heathendom were forced to deny the deities, before they could assert either the unity of the cosmos or a design in life. On the other hand, it was pre- cisely this recognition of the moral nature of God, as manifested both in human life and in the cosmic sphere, which brought the Jewish prophets and sages to their pure monotheism, in which they will ultimately be met by the great thinkers of all lands and ages. The unity of God brings harmony into the intellectual and moral world ; the division of the godhead into different powers or personalities leads to discord and spiritual bondage. Such is the lesson of history, that in poly- theism, dualism, or trinitarianism one of the powers must necessarily limit or obscure another. In this manner the Christian Trinity led mankind in many ways to the lowering of the supreme standard of truth, to an infringement on justice, and to inhumanity to other creeds, and therefore Judaism could regard it only as a compromise with heathenism. 8. Judaism assumed, then, toward paganism an attitude of rigid exclusion and opposition which could easily be taken for hostility. This prevailed especially in the legal systems of the Bible and the rabbis, and was intended primarily to guard the monotheistic belief from pagan pollution and to keep it intact. Neither in the Deuteronomic law nor in the late codes of Maimonides and Joseph Caro is there any tol- eration for idolatrous practices, for instruments of idol-wor- ship, or for idolaters. 1 This attitude gave the enemies of the Jew sufficient occasion for speaking of the Jewish God as hating the world, as if only national conceit underlay the earnest rigor of Jewish monotheism. 9. As a matter of fact, since the time of the prophets Juda- ism has had no national God in any exclusive sense. While the Law insists upon the exclusive worship of the one God of ^eut. VII; XVII, 2 f.; XX, 16; Maimonides: //. Akkum, II-VII; Melakim, VI, 4 ; Yoreh Deah, CXII-XLVIII. GOD AND THE GODS 57 Israel, the narratives of the beginnings in the Bible have a different tenor. They take the lofty standpoint that the heathen world, while worshiping its many divinities, had merely lost sight of the true God after whom the heart ever longs and searches. This implies that a kernel of true piety underlies all the error and delusion of paganism, which, rightly guided, will lead back to the God from whom mankind had strayed. The Godhead, divided into gods — as is hinted even in the Biblical name, Elohim — must again become the one God of humanity. Thus the Jew holds that all worship foreshadows the search for the true God, and that all hu- manity shall at one time acknowledge Him for whom they have so long been searching. Surely the Psalms express, not national narrowness, but ardent love for humanity when they hail the God of Israel, the Maker of heaven and earth, as the world's great King, and tell how He will judge the nations in justice, while the gods of the nations will be rejected as "vanities." l Nor does the divine service of the Jew bear the stamp of clannishness. For more than two thousand years the central point in the Synagogue liturgy every morn- ing and evening has been the battle-cry, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One." And so does the conclusion of every service, the Alenu, the solemn prayer of adoration, voice the grand hope of the Jew for the future, that the time may speedily come when "before the kingdom of Almighty all idolatry shall vanish, and all the inhabitants of the earth perceive that unto Him alone every knee must bend, and all flesh recognize Him alone as God and King." 2 1 Ps. XCVI-XCIX. 2 See Singer's Prayerbook, p. 76-77, and J. E., art. Alenu. CHAPTER X The Name of God i. Primitive men attached much importance to names, for to them the name of a thing indicated its nature, and through the name one could obtain mastery over the thing or person named. Accordingly, the name of God was con- sidered to be the manifestation of His being ; by invoking it man could obtain some of His power; and the place where that name was called became the seat of His presence. There- fore the name must be treated with the same reverential awe as the Deity Himself. None dare approach the Deity, nor misuse the Name. The pious soul realized the nearness of the Deity in hearing His name pronounced. Finally, the different names of God reflect the different conceptions of Him which were held in various periods. 1 2. The Semites were not like the Aryan nations, who be- held the essence of their gods in the phenomena of nature such as light, rain, thunder, and lightning, — and gave them cor- responding names and titles. The more intense religious emotionalism of the Semites 2 perceived the Godhead rather as a power working from within, and accordingly gave it such names as El ("the Mighty One"), EloJia or Pahad ("the Awful One"), or Baal ("the Master"). Elohim, the plural form of Eloha, denoted originally the godhead as divided into a number of gods or godly beings, that is, polytheism. When 1 See Cheyne's Diet. Bibl., art. Name and Names with Bibliography; Jacob: Im Namen Gotles ; Heitmueller, Im NamenJesu, 1903, p. 24 -5- The Name for the Lord occurs Lev. XXIV, 11,16; Deut. XXVIII, 58 ; Geiger, Urschrifi, 26] f. 2 Sec Baudissin, Stud. z. Sent. Religionsgesch., I, 47 ; 17;; Robinson Smith : Religion of the Semites; Max Mueller, Chips from 3°7 f- ! Drummond : Philo Judceus, II, 4-5. 2 See D. F. Strauss : Christl. Glaubenslehre, I, 364-399 ; Windelband : Hist, of Phil., transl. by J. H. Tufts, 2d ed., 1914, p. 54, 98, 128, 327. 3 See Windelband-Tufts, 1. c, 145, 292. 68 JEWISH THEOLOGY 7. The Mohammedan theologians added a new element to the discussion. In their endeavor to prove that the world is the work of a Creator, they pointed as evidence to the multiformity and composite structure, the contingency and dependency of the cosmos ; thus they concluded that it must have been created, and that its Creator must necessarily be the one, absolute, and all-determining cause. This proof is used also by Saadia and Bahya ben Joseph. 1 Its weakness, however, was exposed by Ibn Sina and Alfarabi among the Mohammedans, and later by Abraham ibn Daud and Mai- monides, their Jewish successors as Aristotelians. These proposed a substitute argument. From the fact that the existence of all cosmic beings is merely possible, — that is, they may exist and they may not exist, — these thinkers con- cluded that an absolutely necessary being must exist as the cause and condition of all things, and this absolutely un- conditioned yet all-conditioning being is God, the One who is. 2 Of course, the God so deduced and inferred is a mere abstraction, incapable of satisfying the emotional craving of the heart. 8. While the cosmological proof proceeds from the tran- sitory and imperfect nature of the world, the ontological proof, first proposed by Anselm of Canterbury, the Christian scholas- tic of the XI century, and further elaborated by Descartes and Mendelssohn, proceeds from the human intellect. The mind conceives the idea of God as an absolutely perfect being, and, as there can be no perfection without existence, the con- clusion is that this idea must necessarily be objectively true. Then, as the idea of God is innate in man, God must neces- sarily exist, — and for proof of this they point to the Scriptural verse, "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God," 1 See Strauss, 1. c; Kaufmann, 1. c, 2-3, 58; D. Theologie d. Bachya, p. 222 f.; Husik : Hist. Jew. Phil., p. 32 ff., 8g BE. 2 Kaufmann, 1. c, p. 341 f., 431 f. ; Husik, 1. c, 21S f., 254 f. THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 69 and other similar passages. In its improved form, this ar- gument uses the human concept of an infinitely perfect God as evidence, or, at least, as postulate that such a Being exists beyond the finite world of man. 1 rv Another argument, rather naive in character, which was favored by the Stoics and adopted by the Church fathers, is called de consensu gentium, and endeavored to prove the re- ality of God's existence from the universality of His worship. It speaks well for the sound reasoning of the Jewish thinkers that they refused to follow the lead of the Mohammedans in this respect, and did not avail themselves of an argument which can be used just as easily in support of a plurality of gods. 2 9. All these so-called proofs were invalidated by Immanuel Kant, the great philosopher of Konigsberg, whose critical in- quiry into the human intellect showed that the entire sum of our knowledge of objects and also of the formulation of our ideas is based upon our limited mode of apperception, while the reality or essence, "the thing in itself," will ever remain beyond our ken. If this is true of physical objects, it is all the more true of God, whom we know through our minds alone and not at all through our five senses. Accordingly, he shows that all the metaphysical arguments have no basis, and that we can know God's existence only through ethics, as a postulate of our moral nature. The inner consciousness of our moral obligation, or duty, implies a moral order of life, or moral law; and this, in turn, postulates the existence of God, the Ruler of life, who assigns to each of us his task and his destiny. 3 10. It is true that God is felt and worshiped first as the supreme power in the world, before man perceives Him as 1 See D. F. Strauss, 1. c. ; Windelband-Tufts, p. 292, 393. 2 D. F. Strauss, 1. c, 375, 394; Windelband-Tufts, 1. c, 450. 3 See Windelband-Tufts, 1. c, 549-550. 70 JEWISH THEOLOGY the highest ideal of morality. Therefore man will never cease looking about him for vestiges of divinity and for proofs of his intuitive knowledge of God. The wondrous order, harmony, and signs of design in nature, as well as the impulse of the reason to search for the unity of all things, corroborate this innate belief in God. Still more do the consciousness of duty in the individual — conscience — and the progress of history with its repeated vindication of right and defeat of wrong proclaim to the believer unmistakably that the God of justice reigns. But no proof, however convincing, will ever bring back to the skeptic or unbeliever the God he has lost, unless his pangs of anguish or the void within fill his desolate world anew with the vivifying thought of a living God. n. Among all the Jewish religious philosophers the high- est rank must be accorded to Jehudah ha Levi, the author of the Cuzari, 1 who makes the historical fact of the divine reve- lation the foundation of the Jewish religion and the chief tes- timony of the existence of God. As a matter of fact, reason alone will not lead to God, except where religious intuition forms, so to speak, the ladder of heaven, leading to the realm of the unknowable. Philosophy, at best, can only demon- strate the existence of a final Cause, or of a supreme Intelli- gence working toward sublime purposes ; possibly also a moral government of the world, in both the physical and the spiritual life. Religion alone, founded upon divine revelation, can teach man to find a God, to whom he can appeal in trust in his moments of trouble or of woe, and whose will he can see in the dictates of conscience and the destiny of nations. Reason must serve as a corrective for the contents of revelation, scrutinizing and purifying, deepening and spiritualizing ever anew the truths received through intuition, but it can never be the final source of truth. 1 See Kaufmann, 1. c, p. 223 f., and, opposed to him, Neumark : Jchuda Halevi's Philosophy, Cincinnati, 1909. See also Ilusik, 1. c., 157 ff. THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 71 12. The same method must apply also to modern thought and research, which substituted historical methods for meta- physics in both the physical and intellectual world, and which endeavors to trace the origin and growth of both objects and ideas in accordance with fixed laws. The process of evolu- tion, our modern key with which to unlock the secrets of nature, points most significantly to a Supreme Power and Energy. But this energy, entering into the cosmic process at its outset, causing its motion and its growth, implies also an end, and thus again we have the Supreme Intelligence reached through a new type of teleology. 1 But all these conceptions, however they may be in harmony with the Jewish belief in creation and revelation, can at best supplement it, but can certainly neither supplant nor be identified with it. 1 Compare C. Seligman : Judenth. u. moderne Anschauung. The philosophy of Bergson, which eliminates design and purpose from the cosmos and places Deity itself into the process as the vital urgent of it all, and thus sees God forever in the making, is pantheistic and un- Jewish, and therefore cannot be considered in a theology of Judaism. This does not exclude our accepting minor elements of his system, which contains suggestive hints. H. G. Wells' God the Invisible King (Macmillan, 1917) is likewise a God in the making, man-made, not the Maker and Ruler of man. CHAPTER XII The Essence of God i. An exquisite Oriental fable tells of a sage who had been meditating vainly for days and weeks on the question, What is God? One day, walking along the seashore, he saw some children busying themselves by digging holes in the sand and pouring into them water from the sea. "What are you doing there?" he asked them, to which they replied, "We want to empty the sea of its water." "Oh, you little fools," he ex- claimed with a smile, but suddenly his smile vanished in serious thought. "Am I not as foolish as these children?" he said to himself. "How can I with my small brain hope to grasp the infinite nature of God?" All efforts of philosophy to define the essence of God are futile. "Canst thou by searching find out God?" Zophar asks of his friend Job. 1 Both Philo and Maimonides main- tain that we can know of God only that He is; we can never fathom His innermost being or know what He is. Both find this unknowability of God expressed in the words spoken to Moses: "If I withdraw My hand, thou shalt see My back — that is, the effects of God's power and wisdom — but My face — the real essence of God — thou shalt not see." 2 2. Still, a divinity void of all essential qualities fails to satisfy the religious soul. Man demands to know what God is — at least, what God is to him. In the first word of the 1 Job XI, 7. 2 Ex. XXXIII, 23 ; Maim. ; Yesode ha Torah, I, 8, 10 ; Morch, I. 21a; Kauf- mann,l. c, 431 ; Philo: Mutatio Nom., 2; Vita Mosis, I, a8; Leg. All., I, 29, and elsewhere. See J. Drummond: Philo Judcsus, II, 1S-24. 72 THE ESSENCE OF GOD 73 Decalogue God speaks through His people Israel to the reli- gious consciousness of all men at all times, beginning, "I am the Lord, thy God." This word / lifts God at once above all beings and powers of the cosmos, in fact, above all other existence, for it expresses His unique self-consciousness. This attribute above all is possessed by no being in the world of nature, and only by man, who is the image of his Maker. According to the Midrash, all creation was hushed when the Lord spoke on Sinai, "/ am the Lord." x God is not merely the supreme Being, but also the supreme Self-consciousness. As man, in spite of all his limitations and helplessness, still towers high above all his fellow creatures by virtue of his free will and self-conscious action, so God, who knows no bounds to His wisdom and power, surpasses all beings and forces of the universe, for He rules over all as the one completely self- conscious Mind and Will. In both the visible and invisible realms He manifests Himself as the absolutely free Personality, moral and spiritual, who allots to every thing its existence, form, and purpose. For this reason Scripture calls Him "the living God and everlasting King." 2 3. Judaism, accordingly, teaches us to recognize God, above all, as revealing Himself in self-conscious activity, as determining all that happens by His absolutely free will, and thus as showing man how to walk as a free moral agent. In relation to the world, His work or workshop, He is the self- conscious Master, saying "I am that which I am"; in rela- tion to man, who is akin to Him as a self-conscious rational and moral being, He is the living Fountain of all that knowl- edge and spirituality for which men long, and in which alone they may find contentment and bliss. Thus the God of Judaism, the world's great I Am, forms a complete contrast, not only to the lifeless powers of nature and destiny, which were worshiped by the ancient pagans, 1 Ex. R. XXIX, at the close. 2 Jer. X, 10. 74 JEWISH THEOLOGY but also to the God of modern paganism, a God divested of all personality and self-consciousness, such as He is conceived of by the new school of Christian theology, with its pantheistic tendency. I refer to the school of Ritschl, which strives to render the myth of the man-god philosophically intelligible by teaching that God reaches self-consciousness only in the per- fect type of man, that is, Christ, while otherwise He is entirely immanent, one with the world. All the more forcibly does Jewish monotheism insist upon its doctrine that God, in His continual self-revelation, is the supermundane and self- conscious Ruler of both nature and history. "I am the Lord, that is My name, and My glory will I not give to another," — so says the God of Judaism. 1 4. The Jewish God-idea, of course, had to go through many stages of development before it reached the concept of a transcendental and spiritual god. It was necessary first that the Decalogue and the Book of the Covenant prohibit most stringently polytheism and every form of idolatry, and second that a strictly imageless worship impress the people with the idea that Israel's God was both invisible and incorporeal. 2 Yet a wide step still intervened from that stage to the complete recognition of God as a purely spiritual Being, lacking all qualities perceptible to the senses, and not resembling man in either his inner or his outer nature. Centuries of gradual ripening of thought were still necessary for the growth of this conception. This was rendered still more difficult by the Scriptural references to God in His actions and His revelations, and even in His motives, after a human pattern. Israel's sages required centuries of effort to remove all anthropo- morphic and anthropopathic notions of God, and thus to elevate Him to the highest realm of spirituality. 3 1 Isaiah XLIV, 6. 2 Comp. Dillmann, I. c, 226-235 ! D. F. Strauss, 1. c, I, 525-553. * See J. E., art. Anthropomorphism and Anthropopathism. Comp. Schmiedl, 1. c, 1-30. THE ESSENCE OF GOD 75 5. In this process of development two points of view de- mand consideration. We must not overlook the fact that the perfectly clear distinction which we make between the sen- sory and the spiritual does not appeal to the child-like mind, which sees it rather as external. What we call transcendent, owing to our comprehension of the immeasurable universe, was formerly conceived only as far remote in space or time. Thus God is spoken of in Scripture as dwelling in heaven and looking down upon the inhabitants of the earth to judge them and to guide them. 1 According to Deuteronomy, God spoke from heaven to the people about Mt. Sinai, while Exodus represents Him as coming down to the mountain from His heavenly heights to proclaim the law amid thunder and lightning. 2 The Babylonian conception of heaven prevailed throughout the Middle Ages and influenced both the mystic lore about the heavenly throne and the philosophic cosmology of the Aristotelians, such as Maimonides. Yet Scripture offers also another view, the concept of God as the One en- throned on high, whom "the heavens and the heaven's heavens cannot encompass." 3 The fact is that language still lacked an expression for pure spirit, and the intellect freed itself only gradually from the restrictions of primitive language to attain a purer conception of the divine. Thus we attain deeper insight into the spiritual nature of God when we read the inimitable words of the Psalmist describing His omnipresence, 4 or that other passage : " He that planted the ear, shall He not hear ? He that formed the eye, shall He not see? He that chastiseth the nations, shall He not correct, even He that teaches man knowledge ? " 5 The translators and interpreters of the Bible felt the need of eliminating everything of a sensory nature from God and 1 Ps. XXXIII, 13-14. 8 Deut. IV, 36 ; Ex. XIX, 20. Comp. Gen. XI, 5. » Isa. XL VI, 1. * Ps. CXXXIX, 7-10. B Ps. XCIV, 9. 7 6 JEWISH THEOLOGY of avoiding anthropomorphism, through the influence of Greek philosophy. This spiritualization of the God idea was taken up again by the philosophers of the Spanish-Arabic period, who combated the prevailing mysticism. Through them Jewish monotheism emphasized its opposition to every human representation of God, especially the God-Man of the Christian Church. 6. On the other hand, we must bear in mind that we naturally ascribe to God a human personality, whether we speak of Him as the Master-worker of the universe, as the all- seeing and all-hearing Judge, or the compassionate and merci- ful Father. We cannot help attributing human qualities and emotions to Him the moment we invest Him with a moral and spiritual nature. When we speak of His punitive justice, His unfailing mercy, or His all-wise providence, we transfer to Him, imperceptibly, our own righteous indignation at the sight of a wicked deed, or our own compassion with the sufferer, or even our own mode of deliberation and decision. Moreover, the prophets and the Torah, in order to make God plain to the people, described Him in vivid images of human life, with anger and jealousy as well as compassion and re- pentance, and also with the organs and functions of the senses, — seeing, hearing, smelling, speaking, and walking. 7. The rabbis are all the more emphatic in their assertions that the Torah merely intends to assist the simple-minded, and that unseemly expressions concerning Deity are due to the inadequacy of language, and must not be taken literally. 1 "It is an act of boldness allowed only to the prophets to meas- ure the Creator by the standard of the creature," says the Haggadist, and again, "God appeared to Israel, now as a heroic warrior, now as a venerable sage imparting knowledge, and again as a kind dispenser of bounties, but always in a 1 See Ab. d. R. Nathan II; Bacher: D. Exegetiscke Tcrmhwlogic, I, 8; Schechter, 1. c, 35. THE ESSENCE OF GOD 77 manner befitting the time and circumstance, so as to satisfy the need of the human heart." x This is strikingly illustrated in the following dialogue: "A heretic came to Rabbi Meir asking, 'How can you reconcile the passage which reads, "Do I not fill heaven and earth, says the Lord," with the one which relates that the Lord appeared to Moses between the cherubim of the ark of the covenant?' Whereupon Rabbi Meir took two mirrors, one large and the other small, and placed thern before the interrogator. 'Look into this glass,' he said, 'and into that. Does not your figure seem different in one than in the other ? How much more will the majesty of God, who has neither figure nor form, be reflected differently in the minds of men ! To one it will appear according to his narrow view of life, and to the other in accordance with his larger mental horizon.'" 2 In like manner Rabbi Joshua ben Hanania, when asked sarcastically by the Emperor Hadrian to show him his God, replied : "Come and look at the sun which now shines in the full splendor of noonday ! Behold, thou art dazzled. How, then, canst thou see without bewilderment the majesty of Him from whom emanates both sun and stars?" 3 This re- joinder, which was familiar to the Greeks also, is excelled by the one of Rabban Gamaliel II to a heathen who asked him "Where does the God dwell to whom you daily pray?" "Tell me first," he answered, "where does your soul dwell, which is so close to thee? Thou canst not tell. How, then, can I inform thee concerning Him who dwells in heaven, and whose throne is separated from the earth by a journey of 3500 years?" "Then do we not do better to pray to gods who are near at hand, and whom we can see with our eyes?" 1 Gen. R. XXVII; Mek. Ex. XV; Pes. d. R. K. 109 b; Tanh. to Ex. XXII, 16; Schechter, 1. c, 43 f. 2 Gen. R. IV, 3 ; comp. Pes. d. R. K. 2 b ; Schechter, 1. c, 29 f. 3 Hul. 59, 60; Sanh. 39 a; Philo : De Abrahamo, 16. 78 JEWISH THEOLOGY continued the heathen, whereupon the sage struck home, "Well, you may see your gods, but they neither see nor help you, while our God, Himself unseen, yet sees and protects us constantly." 1 The comparison of the invisible soul to God, the invisible spirit of the universe, is worked out further in the Midrash to Psalm CHI. 8. From the foregoing it is clear that, while Judaism in- sists on the Deity's transcending all finite and sensory limi- tations, it never lost the sense of the close relationship between man and his Maker. Notwithstanding Christian theologians to the contrary, the Jewish God was never a mere abstraction. 2 The words, "I am the Lord thy God," betoken the intimate relation between the redeemed and the heavenly Redeemer, and the song of triumph at the Red Sea, "This is my God, I will extol Him," testifies — according to the Midrash — that even the humblest of God's chosen people were filled with the feeling of His nearness. 3 In the same way the warm breath of union with God breathes through all the writings, the prayers, and the whole history of Judaism. "For what great nation is there that hath God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God is, whenever we call upon Him?" exclaims Moses in Deuteronomy, and the rabbis, commenting upon the plural form used here, Kerobim, = "nigh," remark : "God is nigh to everyone in accordance with his special needs." 4 9. Probably the rabbis were at their most profound mood in their saying, "God's greatness lies in His condescension, as may be learned from the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writ- ings. To quote only Isaiah also : ' Thus saith the High and 1 Mid. Teh. Ps. CIII, 1 ; Sanh. 39 a. 2 See Weber, 1. c, 149 f., 157; Bousset, 1. c, 302, 313 ; von Hartman : Das religiocse Bcumsstscin. Against this Schreiner, 1. c, 49-58, and Schcchtcr, As- pects, 33 f - » Mek. and Tanh. to Ex. XV, ir. 4 Deut. IV, 7 ; Ycr. Ber. IX, 13 a. THE ESSENCE OF GOD 79 Lofty One, I dwell in high and holy places, with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit.' 1 For this reason God selected as the place of His revelation the humble Sinai and the lowly thornbush." 2 In fact, the absence of any mediator in Judaism necessitates the doctrine that God — with all His transcendent majesty — is at the same time "an ever present helper in trouble," 3 and that His omnipotence includes care for the greatest and the smallest beings of creation. 4 10. The doctrine that God is above and beyond the uni- verse, transcending all created things, as well as time and space, might lead logically to the view of the deist that He stands outside of the world, and does not work from within. But this inference has never been made even by the boldest of Jewish thinkers. The Psalmist said, "Who is like the Lord our God, that hath His seat on high, that humbleth Himself to behold what is in heaven and on earth?" 5 — words which express the deepest and the loftiest thought of Judaism. Beside the all-encompassing Deity no other divine power or personality can find a place. God is in all ; He is over all ; He is both immanent and transcendent. His creation was not merely setting into motion the wheels of the cosmic fabric, after which He withdrew from the world. The Jew praises Him for every scent and sight of nature or of human life, for the beauty of the sea and the rainbow, for every flash of light- ning that illumines the darkened clouds and every peal of thunder that shakes the earth. On every such occasion the Jew utters praise to "Him who daily renews the work of creation," or "Him who in everlasting faithfulness keepeth His covenant with mankind." Such is the teaching of the men of the Great Synagogue, 6 and the charge of the Jewish 1 Isa. LVII, 15. See also Deut. X, 17-18; Ps. LXXXVI, 5-6. Comp. R. Johanan, Meg. 31 a. 2 Ex. R. II, 9 ; Mid. Teh. Ps. LXVIII, 7. » Ps. XLVI, 2. 4 Ab. Zar. 3 b. » Ps. CXIII, 5, 6. 6 Ber. 60 b. Singer's Praycrbook, 291. 80 JEWISH THEOLOGY God idea being a barren and abstract transcendentalism can be urged only by the blindness of bigotry. 1 ii. The interweaving of the ideas of God's immanence and transcendency is shown especially in two poems embodied in the songs of the Synagogue, Ibn Gabirol's " Crown of Royalty " and the "Songs of Unity" for each day of the week, composed by Samuel ben Kalonymos, the father of Judah the Pious of Regensburg. Here occur such sentences as these: "All is in God and God is in all"; "Sufficient unto Himself and self- determining, He is the ever-living and self-conscious Mind, the all-permeating, all-impelling, and all-accomplishing Will" ; "The universe is the emanation of the plenitude of God, each part the light of His infinite light, flame of His eternal em- pyrean" ; "The universe is the garment, the covering of God, and He the all-penetrating Soul." 2 All these ideas were borrowed from neo-Platonism, and found a conspicuous place in Ibn Gabirol's philosophy, later influencing the Cabbalah. Similarly the appellation, Makom, "Space," is explained by both Philo and the rabbis as denoting "Him who encompasses the world, but whom the world cannot encompass." 3 An utterance such as this, well-nigh pantheistic in tone, leads directly to theories like those of Spinoza or of David Nieto, the well-known London Rabbi, who was largely under Spino- zistic influence 4 and who still was in accord with Jewish thought. Certainly, as long as Jewish monotheism conceives of God as self-conscious Intellect and freely acting Will, it can easily accept the principle of divine immanence. 12. We accept, then, the fact that man, child-like, invests God with human qualities, — a view advanced by Abraham 1 On pantheism in Judaism see Seligman, 1. c. 2 See Sachs : D. religiocsc Poesic d. J mien, in Spanirn, 235-938 ; Kaufmann : Stud. it. Solomon Ibn Gabirol. 3 Sec Siegfried: Philo, 199-203, 292; Gen. R. LXVIII, 10; comp. Gciger: Zeitschr., XI, 318; Hamburger: R. W. B., II, 986. * See Graetz : G. d. J., X, 319- THE ESSENCE OF GOD 81 ben David of Posquieres in opposition to Maimonides. 1 Still, the thinkers of Judaism have ever labored to divest the Deity of every vestige of sensuousness, of likeness to man, in fact, of every limitation to action or to free will. Every con- ception which merges God into the world or identifies Him with it and thus makes Him subject to necessity, is incom- patible with the Jewish idea of God, which enthrones Him above the universe as its free and sovereign Master. "Am I a God near at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him ? saith the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth?" 2 "To whom will you liken Me, that I should be equal?" 3 i See Maimonides : H. Teshubah, III, 7 and R. A. B. D., notes. * Jer. XXIII, 23. 3 Isa. XL, 25. CHAPTER XIII The One and Only God i. From the very beginning no Jewish doctrine was so firmly proclaimed and so heroically defended as the belief in the One and Only God. This constitutes the essence and foundation of Judaism. However slowly the people learned that there could be no gods beside the One God, and that consequently all the pagan deities were but "naught and vanity," the Judaism of the Torah starts with the proclama- tion of the Only One, and later Judaism marches through the nations and ages of history with a never-silent protest against polytheism of every kind, against every division of the God- head into parts, powers, or persons. 2. It is perfectly clear that divine pedagogy could not well have demanded of a people immature and untrained in re- ligion, like Israel in the wilderness period, the immediate belief in the only one God and in none else. Such a belief is the result of a long mental process ; it is attained only after centuries of severe struggle and crisis. Instead of this, the Decalogue of Sinai demanded of the people that they worship only the God of the Covenant who had delivered them from Egypt to render them His people. 1 But, as they yielded more and more to the seductive worship of the gods of the Canaanites and their other neighbors, the law became more rigid in pro- hibiting such idolatrous practices, and the prophets poured forth their unscathing wrath against the "stiff-necked people" 1 Lev. XIX, 4; XXVI, 1 ; Isaiah II, 8, 11 ; Psalm XCVI, 5. 82 THE ONE AND ONLY GOD 83 and endeavored by unceasing warnings and threats to win them for the pure truth of monotheism. 1 3. The God of Sinai proclaims Himself in the Decalogue as a "jealous God," and not in vain. He cannot tolerate other gods beside Himself. Truth can make no concession to untruth, nor enter into any compromise with it without self-surrender. A pagan religion could well afford to admit foreign gods into its pantheon without offending the ruling deities of the land. On the contrary, their realm seemed rather to be enlarged by the addition. It was also easy to blend the cults of deities originally distinct and unite many divinities under a composite name, and by this process create a system of worship which would either comprise the gods of many lands or even merge them into one large family. This was actually the state of the various pagan religions at the time of the decline of antiquity. But such a procedure could never lead towards true monotheism. It lacks the concep- tion of an inner unity, without which its followers could not grasp the true idea of God as the source and essence of all life, both physical and spiritual. Only the One God of reve- lation made the world really one. In Him alone heaven and earth, day and night, growth and decay, the weal and woe of individuals and nations, appear as the work of an all-ruling Power and Wisdom, so that all events in nature and history are seen as parts of one all-comprising plan. 2 4. It is perfectly true that a wide difference of view exists between the prohibition of polytheism and idolatry in the Decalogue and the proclamation in Deuteronomy of the unity of God, and, still more, between the law of the Pentateuch and the prophetic announcement of the day when Israel's 1 Comp. Ex. XX, 3 ; XXII, 19 ; XXIII, 13 ; with Deut. VI, 4 ; IV, 35, 39 ; XXXII, 39 ; Isaiah XL to XLVIII. 2 See Dillmann, 1. c, 235-241 ; D. F. Strauss, 1. c, 402-408 ; A. B. Davidson : Theology of O. T., p. 105 ; 149 f. 84 JEWISH THEOLOGY God "shall be King of the whole earth, and His name shall be One." 1 Yet Judaism is based precisely upon this higher view. The very first pages of Genesis, the opening of the Torah, as well as the exilic portions of Isaiah which form the culmination of the prophets, and the Psalms also, prove suffi- ciently that at their time monotheism was an axiom of Ju- daism. In fact, heathenism had become synonymous with both image-worship and belief in many gods beside the Only One of Israel, and accordingly had lost all hold upon the Jewish people. The heathen gods were given a place in the celestial economy, but only as subordinate rulers or as the guardian angels of the nations, and always under the dominion of God on high. 2 5. Later, in the contest against Graeco-Egyptian paganism, the doctrine of God's unity was emphasized in the Alexandrian propaganda literature, of which only a portion has been pre- served for us. Here antagonism in the most forcible form is expressed against the delusive cults of paganism, and exclu- sive worship claimed for "the unseen, yet all-seeing God, the uncreated Creator of the world." 3 The Rabbinical Haggadah contains but dim reminiscences of the extensive propaganda carried on previous to Hillel, the Talmudic type of the propa- gandist. Moreover, this period fostered free inquiry and philosophical discussion, and therefore the doctrine of unity emerged more and more from simple belief to become a matter of reason. The God of truth put to flight the gods of false- hood. Hence many gentiles espoused the cause of Judaism, becoming "God-fearing men." 4 6. In this connection it seems necessary to point out the difference between the God of the Greek philosophers — Xenophanes and Anaxagoras, Plato and Aristotle — and the God of the Bible. In abandoning their own gods, the Greek 1 Zach. XIV, 9. ■ Deut. IV, 19 ; Jcr. X, 2. » Bousset, 1. c, 221 f., 348. 4 See Chapter LVI, below. THE ONE AND ONLY GOD 85 philosophers reached a deistic view of the cosmos. As their study of science showed them plan and order everywhere, they concluded that the universe is governed by an all-en- compassing Intelligence, a divine power entirely distinct from the capricious deities of the popular religion. Reflection led them to a complete rupture with their religious belief. The Biblical belief in God underwent a different process. After God had once been conceived of, He was held up as the ideal of morality, including both righteousness and holiness. Then this doctrine was continuously elucidated and deepened, until a stage was reached where a harmony could be established between the teachings of Moses and the wisdom of Plato and Aristotle. To the noble thinkers of Hellas truth was an object of supreme delight, the highest privilege of the sage. To the adherents of Judaism truth became the holiest aim of life for the entire people, for which all were taught to battle and to die, as did the Maccabean heroes and Daniel and his asso- ciates, their prototypes. 7. A deeper meaning was attached to the doctrine of God's unity under Persian rule, in contact with the religious system of Zoroaster. To the Persians life was a continual conflict between the principles of good and of evil, until the ultimate victory of good shall come. This dualistic view of the world greatly excels all other heathen religious systems, insofar as it assigns ethical purpose to the whole of life. Yet the great seer of the Exile opposes this system in the name of the God of Judaism, speaking to Cyrus, the king of Persia ; "I am the Lord and there is none else; beside Me there is no God. I will gird thee, though thou dost not know Me, in order that the people shall know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none beside Me. I form the light and create darkness ; I make peace and also create evil, I am the Lord that doeth these things." 1 This declaration of pure 1 Isa. XLV, s-7. 86 JEWISH THEOLOGY monotheism is incompatible with dualism in both the phys- ical and the moral world; it regards evil as being mere semblance without reality, an opposing force which can be overcome and rendered a source of new strength for the vic- tory of the good. "Out of the mouth of the Most High cometh there not the evil and the good?" ! 8. The division of the world into rival realms of good and evil powers, of angelic and demoniacal forces, which originated in ancient Chaldea and underlies the Zoroastrian dualism, finally took hold of Judaism also. Still this was not carried to such an extent that Satan, the supreme ruler of the demon world, was given a dominion equal to that of God, or inter- fering with it, so as to impair thereby the principle of mono- theism, as was done by the Church later on. As a matter of fact, at the time of nascent Christianity the leaders of the Synagogue took rigid measures against those heretics (Minim) who believed in two divine powers, 2 because they recognized the grave danger of moral degeneracy in this Gnostic dualism. In the Church it led first to the deification of Christ (i.e. the Messiah) as the vanquisher of Satan ; afterwards, owing to a compromise with heathenism, the Trinity was adopted to correspond with the three-fold godhead, — father, mother, and son, — the place of the mother deity being taken by the Holy Ghost, which was originally conceived as a female power (the Syrian Ruha being of the feminine gender) . 3 9. The churchmen have attempted often enough to har- monize the dualism or trinitarianism of Christianity with the monotheism of the Bible. Still Judaism persists in consider- ing such an infringement upon the belief in Israel's one and only God as really a compromise with heathenism. "A 1 Lam. Ill, 38. i Shelhe Reshuyoth, see Hag. 15 a; Deut. R. I. 10; Ecd. R. II, 12; Weber, 1. c, 152 ; Joel, Blicke in d. ReHgionsgesch., II, 157. * D. F. Strauss, 1. c, 409-501 ; J. E., art. Christianity. THE ONE AND ONLY GOD 87 Jew is he who opposes every sort of polytheism," says the Talmud. 1 10. The medieval Jewish thinkers therefore made re- doubled efforts to express with utmost clearness the doctrine of God's unity. In this effort they received special encourage- ment from the example of the leaders of Islam, whose vic- torious march over the globe was a triumph for the one God of Abraham over the triune God of Christianity. A great tide of intellectual progress arose, lending to the faith of the Mohammedans and subsequently also to that of the Jews an impetus which lasted for centuries. The new thought and keen research of that period had a lasting influence upon the whole development of western culture. An alliance was effected between religion and philosophy, particularly by the leading Jewish minds, which proved a liberating and stimulating force in all fields of scientific investigation. Thus the pure idea of monotheism became the basis for modern science and the entire modern world-view. 2 n. The Mohammedan thinkers devoted their attention chiefly to elucidating and spiritualizing the God idea, begin- ning as early as the third century of Islamism, so to interpret the Koran as to divest God of all anthropomorphic attributes and to stress His absolute unity, uniqueness, and the incom- parability of His oneness. Soon they became familiar with neo-Platonic and afterward with Aristotelian modes of specu- lation through the work of Syrian and Jewish translators. With the help of these they built up a system of theology which influenced Jewish thought also, first in Karaite and then in Rabbanite circles. 3 Thus sprang up successively the philo- sophical systems of Saadia, Jehuda ha Levi, Ibn Gabirol, Bahya, Ibn Daud, and Maimonides. The philosophical hymns and the articles of faith, both of which found a place in the lit- 1 Meg. 13 a. 2 Comp. Lange : Gesch. d. Materialismus, I, 149-158. 3 Alfred v. Kremer, 1. c, 9-33 ; J. E., art. Arabic and Arabic- Jewish Philosophy. V 88 JEWISH THEOLOGY urgy of the Synagogue, were the work of their followers. The highest mode of adoring God seemed to be the elaboration of the idea of His unity to its logical conclusion, which satisfied the philosophical mind, though often remote from the under- standing of the multitude. For centuries the supreme effort of Jewish thought was to remove Him from the possibility of comparison with any other being, and to abolish every con- ception which might impair His absolute and simple unity. This mental activity filled the dwellings of Israel with light, even when the darkness of ignorance covered the lands of Christendom, dispelled only here and there by rays of knowl- edge emanating from Jewish quarters. 1 12. The proofs of the unity of God adduced by Moham- medan and Jewish thinkers were derived from the rational order, design, and unity of the cosmos, and from the laws of the mind itself. These aided in endowing Judaism with a power of conviction which rendered futile the conversionist efforts of the Church, with its arguments and its threats. Israel's only One proved to be the God of truth, high and holy to both the mind and the heart. The Jewish masters of thought rendered Him the highest object of their speculation, only to bow in awe before Him who is beyond all human ken; the Jewish martyrs likewise cheerfully offered up their lives in His honor ; and thus all hearts echoed the battle-cry of the centuries, "Hear Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One," and all minds were illumined by the radiant hope, "The Lord will be King of the earth; on that day the Lord shall be One, and His name shall be One." 13. Under all conditions, however, the doctrine of unity remained free from outward compulsion and full of intrinsic vigor and freshness. There was still room for differences of opinion, such as whether God's life, power, wisdom, and unity are attributes — distinct from His being, and qualifying it, — 1 See Draper's Conflict between Religion and Science. THE ONE AND ONLY GOD 89 or whether they are inherent in His nature, comprising His very essence. This controversy aimed to determine the con- ception of God, either by Aristotelian rationalism, as repre- sented by Maimonides, or by the positive religious assumptions of Crescas and others. This is Maimonides' statement of the unity : "God is one ; that is, He is unlike any other unit, whether made one in point of numbers or species, or by virtue of composition, sepa- ration, and simplification. He is one in Himself, there being no multiplicity in Him. His unity is beyond all definition." 1 Ibn Gabirol in his "Crown of Royalty" puts the same thought into poetic form : "One art Thou ; the wise wonder at the mystery of Thy unity, not knowing what it is. One art Thou ; not like the one of dimension or number, as neither addition nor change, neither attribute nor quality affects Thy being. Thou art God, who sustainest all beings by Thy divinity, who holdest all creatures in Thy unity. Thou art God, and there is no distinction between Thy unity, Thy eternity, and Thy being. All is mystery, and however the names may differ, they all tell that Thou art but one." 2 14. Side by side with this rationalistic trend, Judaism always contained a current of mysticism. The mystics ac- cepted literally the anthropomorphic pictures of the Deity in the Bible, and did not care how much they might affect the spirituality and unity of God. The philosophic schools had contended against the anthropomorphic views of the older mystics, and thus had brought higher views of the Godhead to dominance; but when the rationalistic movement had spent its force, the reaction came in the form of the Cabbalah, the secret lore which claimed to have been "transmitted" (according to the meaning of the word) from a hoary past. The older system of thought had stripped the Deity of all reality and had robbed religion of all positiveness ; now, in 1 Maim. : Yesode ha Torah, I, 7. i Sachs, 1. c, 3. 9 o JEWISH THEOLOGY contrast, the soul demanded a God of revelation through faith in whom might come exaltation and solace. 1 Nevertheless the Maimonidean articles of faith were adopted into the liturgy because of their emphasis on the absolute unity and indivisibility of God, by which they constituted a vigor- ous protest against the Christian dogma. Judaism ever found its strength in God the only One, and will find Him ever anew a source of inspiration and rejuvenation. 1 See Schmiedl, 1. c, 239-258. CHAPTER XIV God's Omnipotence and Omniscience i. Among all the emotions which underlie our God-con- sciousness the foremost is the realization of our own weakness and helplessness. This makes us long for One mightier than ourselves, for the Almighty whose acts are beyond comparison. The first attribute, therefore, with which we feeble mortals invest our Deity is omnipotence. Thus the pagan ascribes supreme power over their different realms to his various deities. Hence the name for God among all the Semites is El — "the Powerful One." l Judaism claims for God absolute and un- limited power over all that is. It declares Him to be the source and essence of all strength, the almighty Creator and Ruler of the universe. All that exists is His creation ; all that occurs is His achievement. He is frequently called by the rabbis ha Geburah, the Omnipotence. 2 2. The historical method of study seems to indicate that various cosmic potencies were worshiped in primitive life either singly or collectively under the name of Elohim, "divine powers," or Zibeoth Elohim, "hosts of divine powers." With the acceptance of the idea of divine omnipotence, these were united into a confederacy of divine forces under the dominion of the one God, the "Lord of Hosts." Still these powers of heaven, earth and the deep by no means at once surrendered their identity. Most of them became angels, "messengers" of the omnipotent God, or "spirits" roaming in the realms where once they ruled, while a few were relegated as monsters to the region of superstition. The heathen deities, which 1 See Hebrew Dictionary, El; comp. Dillmann, 1. c, 210, 244. 2 See Levy, W. B. : Geburah. 91 92 JEWISH THEOLOGY persisted for a while in popular belief, were also placed with the angels as "heavenly rulers" of their respective lands or nations about the throne of the Most High. At all events, Israel's God was enthroned above them all as Lord of the universe. In fact, the Alexandrian translators and some of the rabbis actually explained in this sense the Biblical names El Shaddai and J.H.V.H. Zebaoth. 1 The medieval philosophers, however, took a backward step away from the Biblical view when, under the influence of Neoplatonism, they represented the angels and the spirits of the stars as intermediary forces. 2 3. According to the Bible, both the Creation and the order of the universe testify to divine omnipotence. God called all things into existence by His almighty word, unassisted by His heavenly messengers. He alone stretched out the heavens, set bounds to the sea, and founded the earth on pillars that it be not moved ; none was with Him to partake in the work. This is the process of creation according to the first chapter of Genesis and the fortieth chapter of Isaiah. So He ap- pears throughout the Scriptures as "the Doer of wonders," "whose arm never waxes short" to carry out His will. "He fainteth not, neither is He weary." His dominion extends over the sea and the storm, over life and death, over high and low. Intermediary forces participating in His work are never mentioned. They are referrred to only in the poetic description of creation in the book of Job: "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth ? . . . When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." 3 1 See Septuagint to Job V, 17; VIII, 3, and II Sam. V, 10; VII, 8, and Ber. 31 b. 2 See Schmiedl, 1. c, 67 ft*. David Neumark thinks that both the prophet Jeremiah and the Mishnah knew and rejected the belief in angels. See his article Ikkarim in Ozar Ha Yahduth. 3 Gen. XVIII, 14; Num. XI, 13; Is. XL, 1 a ; Jer. V, .-; X, 12; XXVII, 5; XXXII, 17; Zach.VHI,6; Job XXX\ 111, 7; XLII, 1. GOD'S OMNIPOTENCE AND OMNISCIENCE 93 Proof of God's supreme power was found particularly in history, either in His miraculous changing of the natural order, or in His defeat of the mighty hostile armies which bade Him defiance. 1 Often the heathen deities or the celestial powers are introduced as dramatic figures to testify to the triumph of the divine omnipotence, as when the Lord is said to "execute judgment against the gods of Egypt" or when "the stars in their courses fought against Sisera." 2 4. God's power is limited only by His own volition. "He doeth what He willeth." 3 In man the will and the power for a certain act are far apart, and often directly conflicting. Not so with God, for the very idea of God is perfection, and His will implies necessarily the power to accomplish the desired end. His will is determined only by such factors as His knowledge and His moral self-restraint. 5. Therefore the idea of God's omnipotence must be coupled with that of His omniscience. Both His power and His knowledge are unlike man's in being without limitation. When we repeat the Biblical terms of an all-seeing, all-hearing, and all-knowing God, we mean in the first instance that the limitation of space does not exist for Him. He beholds the extreme parts of the earth and observes all that happens under the heavens ; nothing is hidden from His sight. He not only sees the deeds of men, He also searches their thoughts. Look- ing into their hearts, He knows the word, ere it is upon the tongue. Looking into the future, he knows every creature, ere it enters existence. "The darkness and the light are alike to Him." With one glance He surveys all that is and all that happens. 4 He is, as the rabbis express it, "the all-seeing Eye and the all-hearing Ear." 5 ^eut. in, 24; XI, 3; XXVI, 8; XXIX, 2; Jer. X, 6; Ps. LXV, 7; LXVI, 7; LXIV-LXXVIII; I Chron. XXIX, 11, 12. 2 Ex. XII, 12 ; Judges V, 10. ' Da niel IV, 35.