The Natural History of Christianity

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The Natural History of Christianity

T. H. Huxley

1. The presuppositions of the word 'Christos'

2. The nature of the ChristosJewish conception

3. Christianity presupposes Judaism

4. Judaic evidence = Old Testament = Law & prophets

5. What we know about them as historical documents. lack of value as evidence

6. DelugeCreationBen ElohimEveFall

7. Stages of JudaismEthicsPropheticNomic, hierurgical& ethicalreign

8. Ethical stage

9. Prophetic stage

10. Nomic stage

11. impression of foreign ideas

12. The diaspora & its influencesuncircumcision before Paul refer below to Adiabene *

NazariteReshabites*

13. Babylonian JudaismThe Levitical Law

14. The Maccabean & post Maccabean feud Chasidim PhariseesEssenesJohn

15. Persian ideasSatansaviourlast judgmentresurrection of body

16. Jesus of Nazarethhistory & teachingsexoteric & esoteric doctrines miraclesMessiahship

did he claim it or not?

17. The sect of the NazarenesStephen

18. Paul. Christians of Antioch19. Paulinism as a modification of Judaism by Rabbinical criticism its adaptation to Jews & to

Gentiles

20. Contest between Nazarenism & Christianityend of Nazarenism

21. The organization of the Nazarene association

22. The organization of the Gentile associations in the Greco-Roman world

23. The organization of the Pauline ecclesiaeorgiastic tendencies

neglect of traditional history

no hierarchy in Paul *

no logos doctrine

24. Comparison of last Gospel with synopticschief Pauline epistles

25. 4th Gospel marks the coalescence of Hellenism with Paulinism & with a traditional history ofJesus (=the Nazarene tradition) (without miraculous books)

26. Hellenismtheological & ethical

Ethical stageProphetical

= early sages

Nomics

Philosophical Schools


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Poets Jurisconsults

27. Theological progress from Homeric polytheism to monotheism

28. The 'Logos' of HeraclitusAlexandrian Judaism

The 'Logos' of John

29. Academic & Stoic ethics & the doctrine of the jurisconsultsCiceroSeneca

30. Pietism & asceticism of the MysteriesMithraism

Reign of terror of the Emperors

31. Christian dogma as represented by fourth Gospel explained by Justine

32. Nicene Christianity

33. Post Nicene Christianity

34. Conclusion

[109] In dealing with a complicated subject it is desirable to start from premisesaccepted by everyone; and, I believe, no one disputes the fact that Christianity arose in

Palestine amidst the Jews and was an offshoot of Judaism nearly nineteen centuries

ago. In fact, the very name of 'Christianity' presupposes the existence of a dogma held

by the Jews and by them only; inasmuch as it is based upon the word 'Christos' which

signifies 'anointed' and is the Greek equivalent for the Hebrew 'Mascheah' or 'Messiah'

by which term the Jewish people, long before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, denoted a

more or less supernatural person for whose coming they looked. Jewish theologians

might not be agreed on all points as to the nature and the attributes of the Messiah and

the course of action to be expected from him; yet they for the most part were generally

agreed in the belief that whenever, and in whatsoever form, he might come, he wouldin some way deliver the chosen people from their enemies and oppressors and

establish a 'kingdom of heaven' of which he, as the vicegerent of Jahveh, would be the

ruler and they the chief, if not the only, citizens. The Messiah, or Christos, was to be

the anointed king of the Israel to come, as David had been the anointed king of the

Israel past and gone; and, whatever opinions may have been held by the more

thoughtful and pious among the Jews, during the last few centuries of their political

existence, there can be no doubt [110] that the Messiah of the commonalty was a

heroic ruler and statesman who would reduce the Gentiles to submission and

permanently establish the temporal domination of the throne of David.

Christ, therefore, is the name of an office, like 'Imperator' or 'Viceroy'; and it cannot,

with more than conventional propriety, be used as a proper name. Whoever filled the

office would be 'the Christ.' Strictly speaking, any one who believes in the past,

present, or future, existence of the Messiah of tradition has a right to call himself a

'Messianist' or 'Christian'and when the latter name first made its appearance (as it is

said, at Antioch) the most orthodox of Jews, might have claimed it as properly as any


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of the Sectaries to whom it was applied and who were originally known to the Jews as

Nazarenes. The difference between the Jew and the Nazarene lay in the

circumstance that, while the former yet looked for the Messiah, the latter believed he

had already appeared in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

The vast fabric of the Christian faith then rests, like a pyramid on its apex, on theasserted historical fact that a Galilean Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, the events of whose

brief public career took place somewhere between the years 26 A.D. and 36 A.D. was

the 'Messiah' for whom the Jews looked. Whether he was so or not is obviously a

question of evidence and therefore lies within the province of the intellect just as

much as is the assertion that the Prince of Wales is the heir to the throne. The

characteristics of the Jewish Messiah must be somewhere or other au[111]thoritatively

defined; and Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph the carpenter, must, inclusively and

exclusively, satisfy the definition just as the Queen's eldest son satisfies the definition

of heir to the throne.

Now the only source of such an authoritative definition is the series of ancient Hebrew

documents known as the Law and the Prophets, and it is sufficient to read other

books not strictly included by the Jews in their classification, the first Gospel, or the

Pauline epistles, or the works of Justin, to see that the early Christians and the Jews

were agreed on this point. It follows that the fundamental assumption of Christianity

rests upon the fundamental assumption of Judaism concerning the authority of the

Law and the Prophets. If there is no good foundation for the Messianic hypothesis,

dogmatic Christianity collapses, whether Jesus answers to the Messianic definition or

not.

Therefore in attempting to elucidate the Natural History of Christianity, we are

compelled to go back to the Natural History of Judaism; and the first step towards

obtaining any adequate knowledge of that history is the formation of a correct

judgment as to the value of our chief and often only source of information, the

Hebrew Scriptures.

Whatever the nature and the value of that operation of the mind which is called Faith,

it is surely the extremity of folly, to imagine that it has any place in any enquiry the

object of which, in the first place, is to ascertain whether certain events which are said

to have taken place did take place or not; and, in the second place, to determine

whether A.B. was the person denoted by a certain description or whether he was not.

Nor, [112] I think, can it be seriously maintained that it is proper to accept all the

statements made in certain ancient writings, without the most careful consideration of

the value of their authority. 'Faith' has about as much function here as in the

discussion of the shape of the earth. If the whole human race 'confessed' the earth to

be flat (as they did at one time) save one man who had acquired the elements of


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geometry, that one man would be not only entitled, but bound, to pay not the slightest

attention to the rest. And, bearing this in mind, we may now proceed to consider the

authority which attaches to the Hebrew Scriptures.1

In these scriptures the title of 'the Law' appertains to the Pentateuch, Genesis, Exodus,

Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. The term 'Prophet' is used in a wider sense thanours inasmuch as it includes the four historical books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and

Kings, in addition to Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor writersto whom

(with Daniel) we more usually restrict the name. Altogether, therefore, we have 24

books to consider. The contents of these books are extremely varied. They contain an

account of the natural and civil history of the world, so far as it interested the Jews,

from the beginning of things down to the time of the reestablishment of the nation

after the exile in the 5th century B.C.2; a system of theology; a code of ethics; a code

of civil3[113] and ecclesiastical law.

The extreme zealots for the authority of these writers, whether Jew or Christian,affirm that they are, in every point, great and small, exactly and literally true; their

writers having acted merely as instruments of the Deity in composing them.

It is probable, however, that there are very few sober and competent judges who, at

present, hold this extreme view. And, therefore, it may suffice to remark that whether

it is true or not there is no means of proving it to be true. For even if the Scriptures

any where affirmed their own infallibilityit would be absurd to take such an

affirmation as evidence when the very point in dispute is that infallibility. It is well

known, however, that the Scriptures no where make such a declaration. We find in

them indeed, on almost every page the affirmation that God said this and God said

thatbut whether the persons who made the affirmation used the words in our modern

sense; and whether they were not merely truthful, but scientifically trustworthy, is

quite another question, and one to which it is hopeless to look for a satisfactory

answer.4

And for this reason. We do not know, with any approximation to certainty, who wrote

the majority of the documents composing these twenty-four books nor when they

were written nor what modifications they have undergone since they were written; nor

who finally edited them when they took their present shape. All that can be said [114]

is that the extraordinarily careful scrutiny to which they have been subjected by

generation after generation of investigators render the following information either

certainly true or extremely probable.

1. The original documents have been produced in just the same way as any other

books. They are all that is left of memoirs, legends, speculations, orations, political

and other, current among the Hebrews, during a period of many centuries. It is as if
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the literature of the Greeks had been destroyed to a far greater extent than it

unfortunately has been; and that some unknown editor or editors had put together, as

well as he or they could, quasi historical and historical fragments of the works of

Homer and Hesiod, Lycurgus, Solon, and Thucydides, with copious extracts from

Plato, Socrates, and Demosthenes; and that scholars had been called upon to

determine their relative age and historical value and reconstruct Greek History, Law,Religion, Philosophy and Science out of them.

2. But the question is of no very great importance in relation to my present purpose

and sinks into insignificance in comparison with that which has next to be dealt with. I

have affirmed that the Law and the Prophets contain a number of important assertions

which are either demonstrably false or are so improbable that, in view of the nature of

the evidence, we are bound to refuse to accept them. In fact the number of such stories

which I might name is Legion. From the nature of the case it is but rarely that the

falsity of any one of them can be positively demonstrated and its existence accounted

for. But there is one legend giving a circumstantial account of an event which if it

happened, would be one of the most important and stupendous of all events in human

history which can be proved to be false and can be traced to its fountain head. This is

the Legend of the Deluge.

Certain of the prophetical writings, ascribed to e.g. Hosea, Amos, Micah, Isaiah, Ezra,

Jeremiah, Ezekiel are substantially genuine documents of the 8th to 6th century B.C.

and the religious ideas of the Jews at that time may be safely collected from them.

b. The book of judgesSamuelKingsprobably as genuine history as, say, Livyand

certain Greek material derived from record of great antiquity.

c. Joshua and the Pentateuch form one work the Hextateuch which has been compiled

from various sources and received its final form after the exile.

d. Deuteronomy is the oldest portion of it which existed as a bodythe Lawsand

dates from 7th century.

e. Daniel is a fiction of the 2nd century B.C.

3. What conclusions respecting the history of Israel are deducible from Judges,Samuel, Kingsassuming that they are as veracious as Livy.

[115] The Hexateuchal compilations.5

4. Finally, there is a great deal of evidence to show that the actual events of Jewish

history and the causes which brought about the development of Judaism, are totally
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different from the orthodox representation of themespecially in this particular, that

there is no reason to assume supernatural intervention in the one or the other.

In proof of the first of the propositions just laid down I must refer to any work which

fairly exhibits the processes and states the results of modern biblical criticism. If after

duly weighing the evidence anyone can be of opinion that God wrote the Pentateuchby the hand of Moses; that Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings are divinely inspired;

and that the several prophets uttered all the prophesies which appear under their

names, as we now have them, by divine commandall I can say is that his reasoning

faculties and mine must be constituted upon different principles.

[116] Purely historical and literary criticism then sufficiently shews that there is no

internal ground for setting the value of these books any higher than that of other

ancient recordsor for supposing that they have been brought into existence by other

agencies.

But there is more to be said than this. In certain cases these writings contain certain

statements of the greatest importance in respect to great events which are

demonstrably untrue. It is certain that the two accounts of the Creation are

inconsistent with one another and both untrue. It is certain that the account of the

deluge is untrue. The account of [the] origin of Eve and origin of death [are] untrue.

Under these circumstances, the presumption is against the truthfulness of temptation

and fall, of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Theophanies, of the plagues of Egypt, the

Exodus and the origin of the Law, sun and moon standing still, and the various later

Theophanies and miracles. Elijah! Elisha!

It is not permissable to believe these on the only evidence offered.

[117] Such being the nature of the documents from which we derive our acquaintance

with Judaism it is impossible to accept any statements we find in them without the

most careful and critical sifting. If the story of the deluge is a mere myth, what are we

to think of Shem; of the genealogy which connects Abraham with him; of the

promises made to Abraham; of Isaac's quasi miraculous birth; of the origin of the

twelve tribes from Jacob and his sons; of the plagues of Egypt and of all the wonders

of the Exodus and of Sinai? To all appearance, these parts of the narrative are meantto be taken as exactly true; but so are those which tell us of the deluge and of the

origin of Eve; and if the latter statements are mere myths, why should the former be

anything else?

When we are told by the Pentateuch that the whole civil and religious organization of

the Hebrew nation, down to the most insignificant details of sacerdotal millinery was


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detailed by the Almighty to the leader of a horde of fugitives who gathered about

Sinai in the course of their wanderings between Egypt and Palestine; and that the

subsequent history of the Jews as a settled nation down to the time of the exile, is

essentially a record of the attempt made (with very little success) by the religious

leaders of the people to make them shape their state according to the model set before

them in Horeb and in Moab; we not only have the right, but it is our bounden duty, toask for the evidence that [118] this story is any more true than the no less precise and

detailed story of the Flood.

But when this search is properly instituted the result is singular. The evidence in

favour of the miraculous institution of Judaism breaks down the moment we cross-

examine the witnesses; the truth of one part of the Pentateuch is irreconcilable with

that of another part; and that of the Histories is irreconcilable with both.

Rightly interpreted the Hebrew records prove that as in the civil, so in the religious

order Israel passed through several stages of development. The Jewish religionexhibits an early ethnic stage in which it presents no essential difference from that of

any other people; then we find it in a stage which has its analoguethough not an

exact resemblance elsewhere, which may be called prophetic seeing that its distinctive

features are the work of the prophets set forth in their writings; and finally it passes

into a condition, the distinctive features of which are the synagogues and schools in

which the Law and the Prophets are studied and expounded as the rule of life. It can

hardly be said that this state has even an analogue among contemporary non-Jewish

nations.6

The object of the Jewish, as of all other religious practices, is to obtain the favour or

avert the wrath of beings superior to man, while able and willing to affect his fortunes

for good or evil. In the Jewish, as in all other religions, two modes of influencing the

[119] higher powers are recognized. One of these modes is the hierurgical: the

powers are to be propitiated or appeased by certain acts whether purification, or

sacrifice, or liturgic, or ascetic performances. The other mode is the ethical: the

divine favour is earned by moral goodness in action and piety in disposition; the

divine anger is averted by repentence followed by well doing. In the Jewish as in all

other religious history, the hierurgic method is almost exclusively dominant in the

earliest stages of religious life; and the epochs of the religious are marked by the

varying fortunes of the attempt to subordinate it to the ethical method which

inevitably follows in the wake of progress towards higher civilization.

The earliest trustworthy traditions shew us the fore-fathers of the Jewish nation as a

tribe of 'wandering Arameans' migrating gradually with their flocks and herds from

the pastoral plains of Mesopotamia and those offered by the northeast outskirts of the

delta of the Nile. Here they were caught and held in the net of Egyptian civilization


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until oppression drove them to revert to their old habits of vagabondage and take to

the desert country which lies between Egypt and Palestine. [120] Giving a wide berth

to the land of their bondage, they hovered about the northern and eastern frontiers of

the settled and civilized country of Canaan peopled by men of the same race and

tongue as themselves, making a profitable raid here and being defeated and driven

back there, until at last they became strong enough to cross the Jordan; to overrun theopen country of Canaan; and finally to possess themselves of many of the towns,

slaughtering the men and making slaves of the women and children, according to the

approved practice of their age. In these points, savage and brutal as the deeds of the

Israelites seem to us, they were neither better nor worse than their powerful and long-

civilized neighbours in Egypt and in Babylonia. The Canaanites doubtless looked

upon them as the Persians of our day look upon the Turcoman tribes; and repaid them

in full whenever they got the chance.

The conquest of Canaan was a very slow and never completed operation. It is certain

that the territory supposed to be allotted to the twelve tribes, was never wholly

occupied by them; it is certain that the supposed injunctions to extirpate the

Canaanites were never carried out; and during the long anarchy of the period of the

'Judges' there is no reason to doubt that the invading and the invaded peoples largely

intermixed. The Palestinian Canaanites were no more exterminated by the Hebrews,

than the Celtic population of England was extirpated by the Teutonic invaders; in fact,

the ease with which the pop[121]ulations would mix was far greater in the former

case; for neither in race, nor in language, nor in customs, is there evidence of any such

racial, social and religious difference between Canaanite and Hebrew, as obtained

between Celt and Saxon.

I have dealt at length with the religion of the Hebrews during the time of the Judges

and early Kings in an Essay on the 'Evolution of Theology' republished in this volume

(p. [CE IV, 287]) and it appears to me that the evidence leaves no doubt that Judaism

during this epoch, was in no essential respect different from the monotheistic

Gentilism of ancient or modern times. It was henotheistic, not monotheistic; it

permitted certain forms of idolatry: in practice it was hierurgic. There was no central

temple though there were sanctuaries of pre-eminent repute; no objection to sacrifice

in high places; no hierarchical priesthood. Whether the sabbaths and the great feasts of

later times were observed is uncertain.

7

In the course of the eleventh century B.C. a strong king welded the discordant tribal

elements of the Hebrew people into a small but relatively powerful nation which

reached the summit of its outward prosperity under his son Solomon who built the

first temple after a Phoenician model and organized a pompous liturgy. But he neither

recognized the exclusive right of priests to sacrifice: nor forbade the worship of

Jahveh elsewhere than in Jerusalem nor excluded the worship of other Gods.
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The oppressive government of Solomon and of his son [122] Rehoboam appears to

have been the chief agent in bringing about the secession of the 'ten tribes' and the

establishment of the rival northern and southern kingdoms, in the early part of the

tenth century. But it is probable that religious divisions had something to do with the

revolution. The subsequent history of both the northern and the southern kingdoms

tells of a struggle between a strict and exclusive Jahveism accompanied by a tendencytowards a higher morality; and the idolatrous, often grossly immoral, syncretism to

which the mass of the people tended. In Ephraim the ancient ways, on the whole,

prevailed until it was swept away by the Assyrians. In the kingdom of Judah on the

other hand, the Jahvistic party, after three centuries of varying fortunes, achieved a

signal victory. The greatest of all events in the real history of the Jewish religion, was

the publication of the 'Book of the Law' and its formal adoption by King Josiah in 622

B.C. which marks the passage of Judaism from its primitive hierurgic to its middle

orprophetic stage.

[123] What was this 'Book of the Law' which Hilkiah the high priest is reported to

have 'found' in the temple? I do not think that any one who duly weighs the evidence

will fail to arrive at the following conclusions. First; that it was not the 'Law'

contained in Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers, nor a recapitulation nor abstract of

it. Second; that it was essentially the 'Law' contained in Chaps. V-XXVI and XXVIII

of the book of Deuteronomy.

According to the Deuteronomist, Moses himself set forth by word of mouth, the

statutes and the ordinances which he records. Moses then wrote them down with his

own hand and delivered the book of the Law thus composed to 'the Priests, the

Levites' for safe custody in the Ark along with the tables of stone on which the 'ten

words' were engraved which it already contained. And all this happened in Moab, just

before the Hebrews crossed the Jordanin the fortieth year of their wanderings. But

the Deuteronomist expressly declares that this Moabitic Law or Covenant was not the

first promulgated since the Exodus, but the second. The earlier Law was proclaimed

from amidst the lightnings of Sinai nearly forty years previously in the form of the

short code known as the 'ten words'.

"The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. The Lord made not this

covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us alive this day" (V. 2-

3).8

[124] And Moses goes on to remind these contemporary witnesses to whom he is

supposed to speak that, in their terror, they begged him hereafter, to act as their

intermediary with Jahveh; and that he laid this request before the Lord who granted it,

adding:


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"But, as for thee, stand thou here by me and I will speak unto thee all the

commandments and the statutes and the Judgments which thou shalt teach them that

they may do them in the land which I give thee to possess." (V. 22)

Moses proceeds to tell his hearers, obviously for the first time, what these statutes

given in Horeb, but not published there, are. And then he has finished, theDeuteronomist adds, as it were to anticipate any possible doubt that Moses had by

command retained the Deuteronomic Law in petto for thirty-nine years.

"These are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make

with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which he made

with them in Horeb." (XXIX.)

Thus, there is no escape from the conclusion that the Deuteronomist either never

heard of, or wilfully ignores the elaborate code of minute regulations respecting the

Tabernacle and the sacrifices which are said in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers tohave been delivered by Jahveh himself in Sinai. In fact, he makes Moses himself

implicitly deny any such occurrence.

"Ye shall not do after all the things that we do here this day, every man whatsoever is

right in his own eyes." (XII., 8)

[l25] It would seem that Moses could not possibly have referred in this manner, to any

wilful neglect of the elaborate provisions of the Levitical Law, which assuredly leave

no Israelite free to do "whatsoever is right in his own eyes." And the conviction that

the asserted publication of the Levitical Law in Sinai is a mere myth of later date thanDeuteronomy, is confirmed by the remarkable statement in Joshua (V. 2-9) that none

of the children born during the forty years wandering in the wilderness were

circumcised. Yet, according to Leviticus (XII. 3) circumcision on the eighth day, was

one of those religious acts expressly commanded in Sinai, and Genesis tells us that

circumcision is the very sign of the Abrahamic covenant.

In connexion with this topic, it is worthy of remark that the Deuteronomist, though

very urgent about the Sabbath, does not enjoin circumcision. The practice, indeed, is

referred to several times,9but the reference is oblique and with a covert depreciation

of the physical operation as in comparison with the ethical 'circumcision of the heart.'Nor are the difficulties of this question diminished by the circumstance that,

according to the extraordinary story in ExodusMoses himself omitted to circumcise

his own children; and his wife, Zipporah, originated the practice in his family. It really

must [126] be regarded as an open question, whether circumcision was regarded as

asine qua non of Judaism until a comparatively late period.


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The current notion that Deuteronomy is a mere recapitulation or codification of a

large number of statutes published nearly forty years earlier in Sinaiis, on these and

various other grounds, untenable. According to the Deuteronomist two covenants

were made by Jahveh with his people during their wanderings between Egypt and

Palestine, one in Sinai, one in Moab. He expressly tells us that the terms of the first

Covenant are the ten Commandments and nothing else; the terms of the second, theDeuteronomic Lawand nothing else. Not only does the Deuteronomist ignore the

existence of any other Law in the pastbut he asserts in the strongest terms, the

completeness and sufficiency of the first and second codes taken together for the

people, when their habits shall have changed from those of nomadic tribes, to those of

settled husbandmen and dwellers in towns. The second is a prospective code not yet in

operation; but not only are the Israelites forbidden to neglect any of its provisions;

they are as strongly commanded to add nothing to them. They are neither "to add

thereto nor to diminish from it." The future king is "to write him a copy of this law"

"to read therein all the days of his life"; "that he may keep all the words of this law

and these statutes" and turn not aside to the right hand or [127] the left: it is this law

which is to be read to the people every seven years; and which is to be laid up in the

Ark for permanent reference. The force of language can no further go in commanding

the maintenance of this particular code in its integrity, positively and negatively; at

least until that 'prophet' arise who, at some future time, is to take the place of Moses as

the mouthpiece of Jahveh. Neither king, nor Priest, nor noble is endowed with any

legislative poweronly Jahveh can alter through his prophet that which has been

promulgated through his prophet.

But while these facts conclusively prove that the professedly Sinaitic legislation of

Exodus and Leviticus (in addition to the ten words) was unknown to the

Deuteronomist10and that in drawing up an imaginary constitution for the nation after

it had settled in Canaan, he felt he had a perfectly free hand: they also prove just as

clearly that the professed date and authorship of the Deuteronomic constitution are

fictitious and that we have to deal with a Jewish Abb Sieyes, who shelters himself

under the revered authority of Moses. In all the centuries that intervened between the

crossing of the Jordan and the time of King Josiahnobody knows anything about the

Law laid up in the Arkno king is known to have read it; and no septennial reading

to the people [128] is on record; while the most imperative provisions of the Law are

disregarded by both king and people.

In the abundant writings ascribed to the great prophets of the 8th and 7th centuries

B.C. there is no allusion to it: on the other hand, in that of Jeremiah in the end of 7th

and beginning of 8th century (Hilkiah's discovery), the resemblance in style and

substance to Deuteronomy are close.11Nearly two centuries after Hilkiah's discovery,

Ezra and Nehemiah publish a fresh 'Law of Moses' which most indubitably contained
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a great many provisions especially in regard to matters of ritual, over and above those

to be found in Deuteronomy and in accordance with those in Exodus, Leviticus and

Numbers, and practically identical with those observed up to the destruction of

Jerusalem.12

Thus the conclusion seems inevitable that the 'Moabitic' Law of Deuteronomy isreally a document composed within the half century that preceded the exileand that

its introduction and supplements are of the same or perhaps somewhat later date.

Whether the Sinaitic Law of which the Deuteronomist speaks, had the origin ascribed

to itor whether this story has no more historical value than that about the publication

of the Levitical Law which the Deuteronomist ignores is an open question.

[129] Deuteronomic Judaismif that name may be given to the religious views set

forth in the book of Deuteronomyis in many ways extremely remarkable. The ethnic

anthropomorphism of the earliest Jahveh worship has vanished; not only is idolatry inall shapes absolutely prohibitedbut any sort of recognition of the power and reality of

other Gods is sternly prohibited as a combination of blasphemy and treason. Jahveh, it

is said, is God in Heaven above and in the earth beneath and there is none else and he

is a jealous and a terrible God, a devouring fire to his enemies. But it is not in this

aspect of the divine nature that the Deuteronomist loves to dwell; rather does he insist

on the justice of the God who is no respector of persons; on the mercy of him who

declares himself the protector of the poor and desolate and the friend of the stranger;

on the tenderness of him who loves his people as his children, desiring nothing but

their love and obedience in return; and who, if he punish, chastens as a father chastens

his son. And all this, not on account of any merits of Israel but for the sake of the love

he bare their forefathers and the promises he made then. We are present at the dawn of

[130] the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, of the absolute Justice of the Divine

Government; we see in germ the doctrines of Election and of Grace.

Again the Deuteronomic Law in its social bearings is no mere series of prohibitions of

antisocial acts; it is, on the contrary full of positive injunctions to deal fraternally with

other men. Help to the afflicted and the destitute is obligatory; neighbourly kindness is

enforced by the strongest sanctionsthere are what in modern legislation would be

termed a septennial relief clause in favour of debtors; a workmen's protection clause; a

clause protecting fugitive slaves from extradictionDivorce is restrained in favour of

the woman. Blood revenge is regulated. The old solidarity of the family with a

criminal parent is abolishedand it is decreed that a man shall suffer only for his own

sins. Though, in criminal cases, the lex talionis is enacted yet excessive punishment

and still more torture are prohibited for the very remarkable reason that punishment

should not be pushed so far as to degrade the guilty.


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The penalties of heresythat is to say of worshipping strange gods or even inciting

theretoare sharp indeed; but in the ages of Christianity13a Dominican 'brother' would

have had but a poor opinion of an inquisitorial process which neither employs torture

nor permits burning alive. In fact in many respects, it is only in modern Europe that

legislation has approximated [131] for good or evil to the stage of socialistic

philanthropy reached by the Deuteronomist.

As in primitive Judaism, the rewards promised for obedience and the penalties

threatened for disobedience are wholly of a temporal character"That which is

altogether just shalt thou follow that thou mayest live and inherit the land which the

Lord thy God giveth thee" (XVI. 20).

Peace; abundant crops; increase of flocks and herds; numerous offspring; health and

long life are promised to the righteous; war, scarcity; murrain; childlessness; blains

and boils and early death, to the wicked: of Heaven and Hell there is absolutely

nothing.14

On the hierurgic side the Deuteronomic Law exhibits some equally notable changes.

In the Sinaitic covenant (according to the Deuteronomic version of it) there are only

three stipulations of a ritual character: the prohibition of the worship of other gods, the

abstinence from idolatry of every description, and the observance of the sabbath as a

memorial of the deliverance from Egypt.15The practice of [132] circumcision is not

ordained; nothing is said about clean or unclean meats nor about abstinence from

blood; nor about sacrifices, feasts or fasts, or purification.

Of course it does not follow from these omissions that in the opinion of the

Deuteronomist circumcision ought not to be practised and that as a matter of fact it

was not; nor that food regulations were not observed; nor that sacrificial and purifying

acts were not performed during the old nomadic existence of the Israelites and under

the Judges and earlier kings.16Even if there were no evidence on the subject analogy

would be wholly opposed to any such conclusion. To go no further, the books of

Samuel and Kings leave no doubt about the prevalence of circumcision, the practice

of sacrifice, and the existence of feasts. But we may conclude from the phrase which

the Deuteronomist has put into the mouth of Mosesthat up to the promulgation of the

Moabitic covenant "every man did that which was right in his own eyes," that in hisbelief, throughout the forty years of wandering, each tribe and family, followed its

tribal and family traditions and conducted its worship where it pleased and as it

pleased,17though no doubt a general resemblance ran through the whole. And as the

time assigned to the publication of the Moabitic law itself was merely the fiction of a

writer five or six centuries later, it may [133] be permissible to draw the conclusion
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which all Jewish history confirms that up to the time of Josiah the Moabitic Law was

unknown.

It is necessary to bear this in mind; for the Deuteronomist has a good deal to say about

ritual and might be imagined to have originated that which probably he only regulates.

The Law which he enunciates contemplates the establishment of one central sanctuaryand the performance of all sacrificial rites there. It enacts that all males shall attend

three great festive and sacrificial meetings at the central sanctuary; at the vernal

equinox, the Passover and the feast of unleavened bread; about the summer solstice

i.e. seven weeks "from the time thou beginnest to put the sickle to the standing corn"

(Deut. XVI. 9); the feast of weeks; towards the autumn equinox, after the threshing of

the corn and storing of the wine from the wine press, the feast of tabernacles. No

doubt the practice of meeting for festive and sacrificial purposes at these great natural

epochs of the year was of great antiquitybut the Deuteronomist makes the celebration

of them at the central sanctuary obligatory. It is important to observe that at all these

meetings the sacrifices retain the cheerful and festive character of a feast in which the

worshipper and the Deity are commensals, attributed in the book of Samuel to the

yearly sacrifice of Elkanah at Shilohwhen Eli's reproof to Hannah whom he suspects

of having taken too much wine is of the mildest [134] character. To Elkanah and his

family the annual sacrifice was a banquet at which Jahveh was supposed to be present

as a highly honoured guest before whom one might enjoy oneself respectfully but to

the full, as humble subjects entertaining Royalty.

So then sacrificial rites are prescribed in Deuteronomy; the Israelite head of the family

is exhorted to "rejoice before the Lord thy God thou and thy son and thy daughter and

thy man servant and thy maid servant and the Levite that is within thy gates, and the

stranger and the fatherless and the widow that are in the midst of thee" (Deut. XVI.

10-11). "Thou shalt be altogether joyful." (XVI. 16)18

The first fruits and the tithes are to be enjoyed by the Paterfamilias and his belongings

in the same spirit. The Levite is supposed to be 'within thy gates,' that is to say a sort

of family priest19and his claim is placed exactly on the same footing as that of the

poor, the fatherless and the stranger.

On the other hand, the Deuteronomist knows nothing of the expiatory sacrifices of

later Judaism: there is no appointed day of atonement; nor any fast day. There is no

shew bread and no incense. No tithes, "holy to the Lord" [135] are devoted

exclusively to sacerdotal purposes; no claim is made by Jahveh to be universal ground

landlord; no mention of priests as distinct from Levites; no contemplation of the

existence of a high priest; not a solitary word about the sacred vestments and holy

upholstery of the central sanctuary20the minutest details of which are asserted to have

been laid down by Jahveh in Sinai, in other books of the Pentateuch.
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Here again it is to be observed that the absence of any legislation on these points in

the Moabitic covenantwhile utterly incompatible with the notion that the

Deuteronomist believed that which is stated about the ritual portion of the Sinaitic law

in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbersby no means involves the assumption that there

were no expiatory sacrifices; nor devoted tithes, nor sacred vestments and other

sacerdotal frippery, with other inevitable accompaniments of a priestly hierarchy,among the Israelites of his day.

But supposing these things to have existed before the exile and there can be little

doubt they did since they existed in the surrounding nations, what the omissions of the

Deuteronomist do shew is this: that the writer deliberately and intentionally limited

the sacralis of Judaism; minimised the religious value of ritual; and practically refused

to have anything to do with sacerdotalism.

And this is the more remarkable when we reflect that [136] the Deuteronomist

ascribes the utmost importance to, and treats at length of, a class of persons who areneither Levites nor Priests, nor laymen of high official position or renown, but whose

authority to intervene in all questions whether religious or civil, as the spokesmen of

Jahveh, is fully admitted with no other limitation, than such as might arise out of the

application of certain means of testing the genuineness of their claims to authority

which are duly laid down. (Deut. ) These are the prophetswhose function was by no

means merely, perhaps not even principally, that of foretelling events; but rather that

of acting as living oracles and mouthpieces of the Deity whom they served.

These self-appointed envoys whose divine inspiration had no guarantee but their own

word and in the case of predictions, their verification, were not only in the popular

estimation, but historically, the successors and heritors of the soothsayers and divines

of old Israel. In the time of Samuel we find them organized into associations stirred by

wild music into orgiastic dances and voluble outpourings of mysterious speech; in that

of Ahab, Elijah and Elisha are wonder working dervishes and foretellers such as the

East has always been able to shew; while yet later the name and the spirit of

prophetism fall upon men like Joel and Micah, Isaiah and Jeremiah who in eloquence,

in ethical purity and religious fervour attain the highest level which either Jew

or21[137] Gentile has reached: and yet, in their resort to coarse and even grotesque

devices to awaken popular attentionretain a marked affinity to the older and lower

type.

The constitution of Israel designed by the Deuteronomist is a prophetocracy, as has

been pointed out. Neither king, nor noble, nor priest, nor people have the smallest

legislative authority. The Law is delivered through a prophet, and King and people are

expected to yield exact obedience to it until it is modified by the deliverance of

another prophet. "I will raise up a prophet among thy brethren like unto thee: and I


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will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak to them all that I shall commend

him." (Deut. XVIII. 18)

The exaltation of the prophetical office in Deuteronomy is a tolerably clear hint that

the author was a prophet or at any rate, a strong supporter of prophetism. And this

suspicion is confirmed by the very close correspondence between the aim andtendencies of the prophetical writings and those of Deuteronomy.

"As for my law, they have rejected it.... Your burnt offerings are not acceptable nor

your sacrifices pleasing unto me." (Jeremiah VI.19.20)

The law which the prophet Jeremiah here speaks of as rejected was obviously not the

hierurgic lawfor he implies that the burnt offerings and sacrifices were duly

presented and in another passage an even stronger slight is thrown upon ritual.

[138] "For I spake not unto your fathers neither commanded I them in the day Ibrought them out of the land of Egypt concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices."22

Clearly, therefore, 'my law' means the ethical and social law as laid down by the

prophets.

There is abundant evidence of what the prophets considered the law of Jahveh to be,

both before and after the time at which the Deuteronomic law was propounded; and

the spirit and the tendency of their injunctions are altogether similar to those of the

Deuteronomist. But there is just the difference between the latter and the prophets,

which inevitably must exist between the reforming thinker and the reforminglegislator. The legislator cannot suddenly break with the past: he has to make the best

of existing conditions and very often to act upon the adage that 'the half is better than

the whole.'

The prophets constantly pour scorn upon the whole sacrificial system and especially

on the theory of atonement for sin by sacramental and sacrificial means. To them

there is no atonement save the offering of a contrite spiritno expiation save ceasing

to do ill and learning to do well. They ignore the priest; and have no manner of respect

for decorative ecclesiasticismneither for incense, nor for [138a] music, nor for

vestiarial dandyisms. They appeal to the authority neither of the priest, nor oftradition, nor to any written law; some even look on the class of professional prophets

with but scant respectand declare themselves neither prophet nor son of prophet.

Their sole guide is the inner light of reason and conscience; they appeal only to the

intuitive knowledge which they assume their hearers to possess of the nature of God

and of the conduct pleasing to him, which in the ultimate result means that which the
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moral sense certifies to be right. The prophets of Israel are the earliest and the

extremest of all protestants.

They are yet more; they represent the earliest democratic, nay sometimes demagogic

radicalism of which the world has any record. They were the first champions of

liberty, fraternity and equality; the first to set forth the claim to respect of that whichlies below us of which Goethe speaks and attributes to a wrong source. The poor, the

miserable, the widow and the orphan, as such, rather than the rich and powerful, they

declare to be Jahveh's peculiar care; they affirm it to be one of the claims of Jahveh to

our homage that he is just and therefore no respector of persons; the duty of the king

is well defined, the obedience of the subject is left to fend for itself; the claims of

poverty and the obligations of wealth are fully set forththe latter are indeed made

onerous to impractibility; but the rights of property remain in the background.

[139] The majesty of sorrow, the grandeur of meekness and patience, and the mighty

thoughts23of the sufferer for an ethical ideal has never been set before the world insuch glowing language as we find in Isaiah's famous personification of Israel as the

man of sorrows.

It is to the writings of the prophets and in the Psalms, which breathe the same spirit in

even more universal form, that we must look for the secret of the prodigious and

world wide influence of Judaism. It is the spiritual patent of nobility of the peasant

and the slave; the charter of the oppressed; the herald of God's judgments upon the

oppressor. In spite of all seeming to the contrary, it asserts that the present world is

governed by right and guided to merciful ends and passionately strives to justify the

ways of God to man. If the wicked flourish it is that their sudden overthrow may be

more appalling; if the righteous suffer unmerited pains it is that the recompense due

by a just God may be counted as an equivalent for the sins of their brethren. The

doctrines of supererogatory merit and of vicarious atonement arose among the

prophets as they must needs come to the front whenever a determined attempt is made

to reason out the assumption, that good and evil are distributed in this world with a

moral purposeand the ideal hero, the Saviour of the people no longer comes to be

regarded as [140] the saint and martyr endowed with the passive heroism of strength

in endurance, in renunciation and in gentleness but the embodiment of the active

virtues, the firm ruler in peace and the brave leader in war.

The majority of mankind always have been poor and miserableoften really oppressed

and always disposed to attribute their sufferings to injustice. Judaism appeals to this

majorityjustifies its complaintspromises that its triumph will come in that kingdom

of God, which is a democratic and socialistic theocracy.


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The dearth of trustworthy materials for the history of the Jews during the six centuries

which followed the destruction of the first temple is greatly to be regretted inasmuch

as we are left very much in the dark when endeavouring to trace the steps by which

pre-exilic Judaism passed into the state in which we find it in the first century A.D.

Certain facts, however, are clear enough. For the first third of the period, at least, the

centre of gravity of Judaism lay not in Jerusalem but [141] in Babylonia. The name ofthe Captivity' suggests that the Jews who underwent transportation to Mesopotamia,

were condemned to a state of servitude such as that which is said to have obtained in

the later days of their residence in Egypt. But nothing could be further from the truth:

after the first rigours of the conquest were over the Jew was better off in gentile

Babylonia, than he has been in any Christian country until quite recent timesand

when the Persian rule was substituted for that of the Babylonian monarchs, the

sorrows of exile became purely sentimental. No one interfered with the Jew's worship

or his business; he could accumulate riches, own land and houses and hold high office

in the state: we find Jews among the confidential ministers of their sovereigns: and if

the least confidence were to be placed in the history of Esther, it would seem that they

were occasionally permitted to enjoy a St. Bartholomew's massacre of their enemies

throughout the dominions of the great king.

The return from the exile was in reality the occupation of Jerusalem and its environs

by a small colony gathered from among Babylonian Jewswhose fervour of pious

enthusiasm or whose ill success in life led them to prefer a hazardous life among

barbarians to the safety and comfort of Babylon. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah

shew that up to their time, not only the intelligent and wealthy of Israel but many a

zealot for the law remained in Mesopotamia. For a century and a half therefore the

headquarters of [142] Judaism was situated in the midst of one of the oldest

civilizations in the world, possessed, as we know now, of voluminous written records

of vast antiquity. After this it came into close relation with the Medic and Persian

invaders of the Babylonian empire who possessed a religion originated independently

of all those hitherto known to the Jewsand which in ethical purity and freedom from

idolatry,24stood on quite as high a level as their own.

Still later, when the Palestinian colony had grown into a new Jewish state, Alexander

and his Macedonians stormed across Western Asia to the Indus; sweeping away the

Persian rule and flooding the East from Egypt to Bactria with the tide of Greekcivilization and Greek thought.

Under the Seleucid,25Jahveh and the Gods of the heathen fought their final battle,

and except for the folly of Antiochus Epiphanes who lacked patience to go on playing

the waiting game, which had hitherto answered so well, Zeus and Philosophy might

have triumphed over Jahveh and the Law in the promised land itself. But Antiochus

had to learn the lesson which Pagan and Christian rulers have so often had to get by


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heart since, that it is as well to think twice, perhaps three times, before pitting brute

force against religious fanaticism. If there is force enough and if it is utilized by

agents whose 'eye shall not pity neither shall they spare; who will smite without

mercy and destroy the heretical man, [143] woman and child; force may be an

effectual remedy for religious disease. But it is not everybody who has the clear

insight of the Deuteronomist into these truths, nor does it lie within the nature of everyruler to be a Philip the Second, while few administrators come up to the standard of

Alva or Torquemada:have neither their courage nor their tenacity of purpose. There

is a want of finish about nine persecutors out of ten and they fail, not as people fondly

suppose, because they employ force, but because they do not employ it with

consistant and ruthless thoroughness. So employed Mahommedan force did

practically extirpate Christianity in many parts of Asia and Africa; while Christian

force put an end to Albigenism in southern France as to Mahammodism in Spain; as,

later, it effectually crushed Protestantism in many parts of Europe.

As it fell out, the Asmonean Mattathias with his 'hammering' son Judas Maccabeus

turned the tables on the Seleucid, drove him out of the land and set afoot a Jewish

revival, the last flare in the socket of the light of Israel as a nation before it was

extinguished in blood in the year 70 A.D.

The 'four beasts' of Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, and Greece had come and gone; and

after all their ravenings Israel stood its ground like little David before the carcases of

the lion and the bear. But there approached a Goliath against whose panoplied

strength the sling and stone of a petty principality not much bigger than Wales, could

be of no avail. The fringe of the Roman empire [144] creeps like the advancing wave

of the tide on a low strand around the boundaries of Juda; sweeps over and retires

again under Pompey; is content to be the real ruler while leaving the show of rule to

the Herodsand then finally submerges the Jewish realm under his sons. The crest of

the wave passed beyond, broke in vain upon the Parthian shore and then began the

slow ebb which lasted till the inundation from the north.

Thus the course of events brought the restored Palestinian Jew into the closest relation

with all the great empires of the old world west of India and into contact with all the

great religious systems, Babylonian, Egyptian, Zoroastrian, Greco-Roman and

possibly even Buddhistic. While on the other hand, in Babylonia, at first;

subsequently in Alexandria under the Greeks and later still in Cyrene, in Rome, and in

all parts of the Roman empire the Jews of the Dispersion spread, multiplied and in

some cases formed communities as strong numerically as that of Juda and much

wealthier.

After the destruction of the Jewish state [145] Judaism existed only in and by the

communities of the Diaspora.


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Thus the ethnic religions and philosophies had the most extensive and favourable

opportunities of acting upon Judaism; while Judaism had equal chances of influencing

them. Nothing short of a miracle could have prevented this natural action and

interactionand no such miraculous interference took place. Judaism absorbed into

itself myths from old Babylon: doctrines of the resurrection and of good and bad

angels from Persian Zoroastrians; it admitted Greek philosophical speculations,possibly even ascetic practices, from Essenes and Pythagoreans. And, on the other

hand, wherever a Jewish community was strong enough to draw upon itself the

attention of the Gentiles it acted as a sort of social ferment and excited as violent an

antagonism in some of its neighbours, as it powerfully attracted others.26

At the dawn of Christianity there was hardly a considerable town in the whole length

and breadth of the empire, which lacked a colony of Jewsand in many cities, such as

Alexandria, they constituted a very large portion of the population and possessed great

wealth. The spirit of proselytism among these colonies of the Dispersion varied with

the fluctuations of religious zeal and the disposition of their hosts. Sometimes

conversions took place on a great scale, as in Damascus, where all the women were

said to be proselytes; or in Adiabene [146] where the whole Royal family were

zealous Jews. But even when the missionary spirit was feeble or its manifestations

dangerous, the synagogue exerted an extraordinary attraction not merely upon the

superstitious but on the spiritually-minded heathen.

These hangers-on of Judaismwho were not proselytes in the proper sense of the

wordare spoken of in the Acts as 'fearers of God'. Largely, but by no means all, of

the lower classes of society, they were the means of diffusing a general acquaintance

with Jewish monotheism, Jewish hatred of idolatry, Jewish ethics and Jewish practices

among their friends and neighbours.

The Jewish type of humanityone of the most remarkable and interesting of the many

varieties of the human raceseems to have assumed its present character very early.

Even in the time of the first Caesars the Jew appears to have become for good and evil

exactly what he is nowmarvelously vigorous and tenacious physically and morally;

of a broad and acute intelligence;27at its best, a noble and gracious embodiment of as

high an ideal as men have ever set before themselves; at its worst, monstrously,

shamelessly base and cruel. As usual, it was the worse side, which was the better

knownso that in the heathen mind, the people who professed the simplest and purest

theology then extant, were bywords for grovelling superstition; the people whose

teachers [147] and lawgivers inculcate a positive morality of the highest order and

preach love and kindness to all men as the rule of life were reputed haters of mankind,

noted for yielding all the most notorious usurers, swindlers and procuresses; the

people whose scruples about cleanness and uncleanness excited alternate smiles and

anger, who would refuse to share the food of the proudest patrician of Rome, yet


22/51

swarmed in filth and beggary in the squalidest dens of the worst quarters of the great

cities.

The Jew is a born financierkeen, frugal, with that unshakeable practical conviction

that 1 + 1 = 2 and 11 = 0 to which so few persons ever attainand free from all the

idiotic prejudices against commerce and trade, which are the nemesis of aristocracies.Every city would furnish the Jewish merchant or money dealer with correspondents

who could be depended upon to give their entire attention to business, legitimate or

illegitimate.

The reckless extravagance of a society of slaveholders, desperate with the weariness

of unsated sensuality, made them the ready prey of the usurer and the Jew soon had a

finger in the affairs of every great house: while at the other end of the social scale the

petty trader chaffered with the slave and with the freedman; told the fortunes or acted

as go between to the women; or it may be secretly initiated the mistress, into the

principles of Judaism and attracted 'God fearers' to the synagogue.

[148] Except for the obstacle opposed to the spread of the teaching of Israel by that

initiatory ceremony, which was held by the stricter Jews to be indispensable to the

status of a proselyte, there can be little question that, in spite of the contempt of

satirists and the hatred of statesmen of the vielle roche , Judaism, in the first century

would have counted a vastly greater number of 'proselytes' and 'fearers of God' than it

did. And it is necessary to remember that there was a diversity of opinion among the

Jews themselves as to the precise extent of the obligations of the ritual law in the case

of converts. The establishment of synagogues in every Jewish community of the

Dispersion, with prayer and the hearing and exposition of the Law and the Prophets

by laymen as their sole business had insensibly reduced the importance of the

priesthood and of the Temple ritual even before the catastrophe of 70 A D.and set up

the almost universally Pharisaic scribes and lawyers as a counterpoise to the

essentially Sadducean sacerdotalism. In the extreme development of Pharisaic

principles among the ascetic Essenes so much of the Law as required attendance at the

Temple sacrifices and prescribed oaths was ignored; baptismal purificatory ritual with

a solemn breaking of bread at meals took the place of that dictated by the Pentateuch,

and marriage, the centre of Jewish life, was almost abolished.

[149] Philo's reprobation of those among his contemporaries, who carried the

allegorical method of which he was a master, to one of its obvious practical

consequences and denied the obligation of precepts thus whittled away into types and

allegoriesshews that there were Alexandrian Jews who were prepared to liberalize

Judaism very widelyand the history of the conversion of Izates tells the same tale.

There were apostles of the uncircumcised long before Paul.


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The significance of the Judaism of the last two centuries of Jewish national existence

in regard to Christianity lies in the first place, in its preparative influence on the

Gentilesin which respect the Law was a pedagogue to Christ in a different sense

from Paul's; in the second place in its offering a medium through which ideas derived

from Greek philosophy filtered into religious speculation; in the third place, in the fact

that this latter day Judaism was essentially Pharisaism and that the tendencies ofPharisaism were more in harmony with the prophetic than with the hierurgic side of

the Law; in the fourth places in the prominence which the Messianic idea assumed.

[150] With the destruction of the Temple and the deportation of all the best elements

of the population in Babyloniacompliance with any of the hierurgic precepts of the

Deuteronomic Law except that relating to the Sabbath and to food became

impossibleand these practices, with circumcision, became the distinctive symbols of

Judaism and assumed a corresponding importance.

It became a matter of life and death with the leaders of the nation, to prevent itspermeation by the religious ideas and final absorption into the mass of its conquerors;

and in the absence of the bond of unity afforded by the temple worship the danger was

imminent.

Nor did the re-establishment of the temple worship render such a catastrophe

impossible or even improbable. On the contrary, the proceedings of Ezra and

Nehemiah shew that, even then, the living spirit of Judaism remained in Babylonia,

though a resurrection of the body of Israel had taken place in Jerusalem.

Now Babylonian Judaism was not only conservative; it was creative. In the middle ofthe time of exileEzekiel, a prophet full of the spirit of Deuteronomy, but also a priest

full of the sacerdotal instinctdevises a code for the future use of Israel restored to the

promised land, just as Deuteronomy professes to furnish a code for the future use of

the nation as it entered therein. Chapters XL. to XLVIII. of Ezekiel contain a new

code promulgated as authoritatively as Moses promulgates his, [151] a very large

moiety of which deals with nothing but the construction of the temple, and the

hierurgic work of the priests. It is further very interesting to observe the prominence

given to sin offerings and atonements; the insistance on circumcision (XLIV).

If Ezekiel had known anything about the hierurgic legislation supposed to have beendelivered from Sinai by Jahveh himself one can only be astonished at his audacity in

disregarding it; but if nothing of the kind existed, what plan for preserving the

integrity of Judaism could be more effectual than that of placing vividly before the

minds of the people the hope of the restoration and the image of the future religious

life of the nation?


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The work of Ezekiel shews not only what might be done in this direction but what

actually was done; and, with it before us, it does not seem a very hazardous step to

place the origin of the Levitical code, the existence of which to the knowledge of the

Deuteronomist and of Ezekiel is incredible, at a period subsequent to the exile.

However this may be, there appears to be no reasonable doubt that the Levitical lawentered into much, though perhaps not all, that corpus juris which was forced upon

the Jerusalem colony by Ezra and Nehemiah, perhaps intercalated among the legends

of the pentateuchal narrative as it is now. And it is probable that from that time, if not

earlier, the origin of that remarkable institution, the synagogue, is to be dated.

[l52] In its essence the synagogue is a place for learning rather than for worshipit is a

lecture room rather than a temple. The Synagogues of Jerusalem were by no means

chapels of ease to the Temple; but something more of the nature of Sunday schools.

The priest had no place there as priest; it was open to every male Israelite to get up in

the synagogue and teach; so long as his teaching was an exposition of or acommentary on the 'Law and the Prophets' which did not fly in the face of tradition.

Long before our era, wherever a community of Jews existed, there also was a

synagogue, with its copy of the Law and the Prophets, with its meetings every sabbath

or oftener, at which portions of the scriptures were read and expounded in successive

order. Thus no Jew, rich or poor, man or woman, could be ignorant of the contents of

these writings; and as common schools for the young prepared the way for

synagogical instruction it was open to the son of a peasant or of the poorest artisan, if

he possessed natural abilities, to become a deeply learned 'lawyer' or a proficient in

the art of the 'scribe.' The Jews had a complete system of elementary education when

our ancestors were blue-painted savages.

It is probable that the impenetrability of the country Jews and of the lower classes of

the towns to those Greek influences which seduced so large a part of the wealthier

sort, under the Seleucid rule, is in great [153] measure due to the synagogues and the

schools and to the devoted attachment to the Law which they implanted and

maintained in the minds of the masses. Human nature is essentially idolatrous; and as

the Jew might make unto himself no graven or painted image of his God, he all the

more readily fell down and worshiped the presentment of the word of God in the

Thora. If he might not have a golden calf, a book might serve the turn; and, for good

and evil, Bibliolatry came into the world as a substitute for the older forms of

Fetichism.

No doubt, for the time, the good immensely preponderated; nay, for all time, it is

surely better that man worship a book than a block however cunningly fashioned. For

the religious idea that lies behind the block easily disappears from view and leaves the


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worshipper a mere fetish; whereas, the religious idea of the book cannot wholly

vanish, however mechanical and liturgic the reading of the book may be made. And,

in the case of the Old Testament of all books in the world, the more carefully they are

read the louder becomes the protest against the idolatry of its worshippers.

But the Nemesis which dogs the steps of every attempt to limit the sovereignty ofreason followed swiftly on the bibliolatry of Israel.

The study of the law passed into a competition of subtlety among pettifogging refiners

on the statutes; and the worthless hierurgic operations condemned by the

pro[154]phets were replaced by the even more worthless ceremonial triflings

connected by spider thread deductions with the enactments of the Pentateuch. A

Chancery pleader of the old school would have yielded awestruck precedence to a

Rabbi.

With all this, it is needful to recollect that except for the Chasidim of the Asmoneantimes and except for their successors the Pharisees, that pure ethical spring, which

takes its rise among the prophets and flows straight through Phariseeism into

Christianity, might have been cut off midway. For the conservative Sadducean party

cared only for the law and the hierurgic practices; the Essenes had diverged into

coenobitic asceticismand were numerically insignificant. But the Pharisees

represented the heart of the nation, its political aspirations and its religious

enthusiasms. In many ways they present a close analogy to our Puritans and the old

kirk of Scotland of the 16th and 17th centuries. There is the same combination of

Book worship with its consequent slavery to minutia of observance as laid down in

the booksopposition to sacerdotalismand spirituality of doctrine in some directions.

The vulgar doctrine that the 'Scribes and Pharisees' were nothing but hypocritical

precisians has about as much claim to historical accuracy as that which puts the

Puritans of the seventeenth century, the Methodists of the eighteenth and the

Evangelicals of the [155] last half of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth

century in the same category. It seems to be forgotten that a scribe is the only person

declared by Jesus to be "not far from the kingdom of God." Paul, the origination of

'Christianity' as distinct from Nazarenism, was a Pharisee, and it was by the

application of Rabbinical dialectics to Pharisaic data, that he had the misfortune to

succeed in laying those foundations on which Christian Rabbis have reared the

appaling fabric of dogmatic Christianity.

During the Asmodean and Herodean times, the old prophetic spirit seems to have been

almost entirely diverted into the channels of Pharisaism and Essenism, though it may

well be that its manifestations, in the old form have merely remained unrecorded. But,

in the early years of the first century, Judas the Galilean seems to have followed pretty


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closely the political precedents set up by the old prophets of Israel and of Judahwho

never boggled at rebellion against, or assassination of, a Baal-worshipping sovereign.

And in John the Baptist, with his eremitic life, his hair garment and leather girdles, we

have in outward seeming a new Elijahas indeed Jesus is said to have declared him to

be.

It is significant of the changed times, however, that John neither thunders against

idolatry nor prompts an ambitious centurion to assassinate the Procurator. The

Asmonean victories had not only left Judaism hence-[156]forward unassailable by

Gentilism, but had converted it into the universal solvent of polytheism and

sacerdotalism, in whatever shapes they might come in contact with it. And, on the

other hand, though John may have resembled Elijah, as to his outward presentiment,

he seems to have been in spirit at one with the later prophets, and not without points

of contact with the Essenes.

His preaching offered forgiveness of sins to those who repent and the sign ofrepentance demanded was submission to the purificatory rite of washing in waterto

which the Essenes had already given so much importance. The religious movement

thus set afoot must certainly have produced a very considerable effect though very

little is known about it. John's disciples formed a religious body which remained

distinct from both Nazarenes and Christians for many years, and their importance in

the estimation of later writers may be measured by the statement in the Acts that a

man of the weight of Apollos received baptism from them and only at a later period

became convinced of the necessity of being baptized in the name of Jesus.

Therefore it is not possible that John could have instructed his hearers that he was

merely the precursor of Jesus. But it by no means follows that John did not regard

himself as the precursor of the Messiah. On the contrary all that is known of the

notions current among the Jews at that time and of their anxious expectation of the

Messiah [157] [suggests] that John's exhortations to repentence were backed by

declarations that the kingdom of heaven was at hand.

What was the origin of this expectation which we hear so much in the first and second

centuries A.D. and so little at any other time?

Messianism is no necessary dogma of the Judaism of the pre-exilic and exilic agewhen the doctrine of the resurrection and the impersonations of evil in the shape of

Satan and the demonic world were unknown to the Jewish world.

The prophets of this age promise that Jahveh will deliver Israel from his enemies; and

not only restore the kingdom of David, but establish it on a more splendid footing than

ever. Their Messiah is an anointed king held in reserve as it were by God until the


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appointed time should be fulfilled, like King Arthur or the Emperor Barbarossa in

British and Germanic legend. They waver between a vision of a Messiah not yet

existent and a proleptic impersonation of him as an actual heavenly beingthey afford

grounds for expecting their restorer to come as a ruler and warrior; and yet give

countenance to the notion that he will appear as the embodiment of a saintly and

ethical ideal. It is like faces in the clouds or in a fire in which every one can find thefeatures he desires to see.

But in the latter centuries of the duration of the Jewish statePersian dualism, with its

demonology, its [158] doctrine of the resurrection and its last judgment, with the

overthrow of Ahriman had entered into the very heart of Judaism. Satan, in the older

literature a sort of angelic procureur generaltakes the place of Ahriman as the enemy

of God and the prince of this world, commander in chief of a host of devilsand the

business of the Messiah is to conquer him and finally put him and all his followers

into the abyss of hell there to endure everlasting pain, while the Messiah and the

resuscitated saints reign in the near kingdom of God.

If any one will study first the older prophets including Ezekielthen the younger

including Danielwith the view of gathering from what they all say or are supposed to

say about the characteristics of the Messiah; I think that by the time he comes to the

end of his researches he will be very much perplexed to know how the Messiah is to

be identifiedbut I do not think he will hesitate to say that the weight of evidence is in

favour of the heroic king and restorer of David's imperial throne.

The story of the life of Jesus as it is handed down to us by the common tradition

embodied in the synoptics is singularly meagre and vague. Neither the period covered

by the biography nor the precise date of any event can be determined with certainty

though we may be sure that they fell somewhere between A.D. 26 and A.D. 36; that

is, during the years of Pilate's procuratorship.28

[159] In the oldest accounts Jesus appears without further introduction and presents

himself to be baptized by John in the Jordan, a rather common tradition. He withdraws

for awhile into the adjacent desertwhich was the favourite retreat of Essene cenobites

and solitary asceticsand then returns to Galilee. Here he opens his career, by reading

and expounding the scriptures in the synagogues of all that region. Afterwards usually

he haunts the neighbourhood of the lake of Tiberias (though occasionally making

excursions as far as Caesarea, or the confines of Tyre and Sidon) wandering hither

and thither and preaching by the way, to the people who gathered about him, just as in

England seventeen or eighteen hundred years later they thronged to hear George Fox

or John Wesley, or as in my early days they gathered round the 'Methodist' or the

'Salvationist' on a village green. How long this Galilean prelude lasted does not

certainly appear; there is nothing to render the supposition of more than a few months


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duration necessary. Jesus is then said to go along the Eastern shore of the Jordan

(thus, avoiding Samaria, as a pious Jew would) to cross it and then travel, by way of

Jericho, to Jerusalem, into which city he makes a triumphal entrance, accompanied

by a crowd of people who cry 'blessed is the kingdom that cometh the kingdom of our

father David: Hosanna in the Highest!'

On the next day, Jesus is said to have entered the temple and to have violently

expelled all the money changers and sellers of sacrificial animals, who, for the [160]

convenience of worshippers, were permitted to carry on their business in one of the

outer courts. It can hardly surprise any rational man, that immediately after these

proceedings, the chiefs of the Jewish nation, who lived in well founded dread of the

use to which the Roman procurator would put any excuse for massacre and extortion

should have sought how they might destroy Jesus. For although to those who

believed him to be the 'Son of God' and the promised 'Messiah' Jesus might be above

all human lawyet to those who utterly repudiated his pretensions, he must by this act

have acquired the appearance of being a dangerous fanatic; a raiser of sedition and of

riot. As affairs then stood in Juda the elements of a terrific explosion were always

present. The procurator well knew that he carried his own life and those of the Roman

garrison in his hand; and he was amply justified in supposing that the leader of a mob

shouting that David's kingdom was come again meant revolt.29And apart from the

religious questions involved, no civil power, even in the freest of states, could or

ought to tolerate such a proceeding as this assault and battery of a number of

peaceable people who were acting within their full legal and customary rights.

However the popularity of Jesus with the masses is [161] said to have prevented any

immediate action on the part of the authorities. Jesus and the twelve, called in Galilee,

the immediate disciples and friends who formed a sort of spiritual body guard around

him, came and went without hindrance; and they cele

Documents

The Natural History of Christianity