Crown Theological Library

GIFT OF
Mrs. £. W. Hopkins.

THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL

THE RELIGION OF
ISRAEL

ALFRED LOISY
PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
AT THE COLLEGE DE FRANCE

TRANSLATED BY ARTHUR GALTON

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK
1910

[All rights reserved.]

TRANSLATOR'S PROLOGUE
AN attempt has been made in the following
pages to transfer the thought of M.
Loisy's La Religion d' Israel into English ; so that
its fine scholarship may be available to readers
who are not on easy terms with the original.
French prose is the most perfect instrument of
thought and speech that the modern world has
given us. Indeed, it might be argued that it is
more perfect, in some of its qualities, than even
Greek and Roman. Though it may not have all
the force, weight, and brevity of the latter, nor
the opulent variety and the subtil distinctions
of the former, yet in lucidity, precision, irony,
and above all in lightness of touch, it yields to
neither. In these respects, it is far superior to
all other existing European languages, and even
to those curious variations in one of them which
are being manufactured so capriciously in Aus
tralasia, South Africa, and North America.
In that great age " when letters were polite,"
French was the language of ambassadors and

vi Translator's Prologue
the medium of international courtesy ; and it
is still the language in which urbanity prevails,
not merely as a tradition, but as a living
practice. Therefore it is most desirable that
theological discussions should be carried on,
whenever it is possible, in French ; so that the
language itself may help to assuage the pro
verbial heat of religious controversy. Most
Englishmen are said to " write in a rage." Our
divines and politicians are, indeed, often angry
enough ; but they are generally even more
culpable through being dull and heavy-handed.
To these faults the Germans usually add an
obscurity, an obtuse rudeness, and a laughable
want of tact, which are all their own. Against
these defects, the urbanity, the clearness, the
practical common-sense, and the lightness of
French are the best preventives ; and all these
good qualities are met with invariably through
out M. Loisy's writings.
As a prose writer, so far as an Englishman
is able to judge, M. Loisy carries on that high
tradition which through Montaigne, Pascal,
Fenelon, "Voltaire, Talleyrand, M6rimee, Renan
has come down, unbroken and unharmed, into
our own time, and is being worthily continued
by many learned and charming authors. It is
not only impossible to estimate the living, but
it is invidious to enumerate and class them; still

Translator's Prologue vii
it would be allowed, perhaps on all hands, that
M. Anatole France personifies best in himself,
and exhibits most happily in his art, those finer
qualities of French prose to which we have
alluded, as they are illustrated by the great
masters whom we have named. As an example
of the more solid and monumental virtues of
French writing, we should point to Monseigneur
Duchesne, now deservedly a member of the
Acad^mie Francaise in succession to the witty
Cardinal Mathieu. M. Duchesne's great book
has been described felicitously as " Une histoire
ancienne de l'Eglise racont^e avec toute la
science du vingtieme siecle dans la langue du
dix-huitieme et a la barbe des th^ologiens du
seizieme." This epigram, which might also be
applied to M. Loisy, we owe to the Abbe" Houtin,
himself the master of a biting and witty prose,
in which he has exposed many antique frauds
and immortalized innumerable dunces. It will
be seen from these examples that the Church,
at any rate in France, has been able so far
to maintain her long connexion with humane
letters, in which she can boast of so many
illustrious names. "Whether that tradition will
survive the dissolution of the Concordat is
perhaps as dubious as the connexion of some
of these writers with the Church. However
this may be, M. Duchesne has not succeeded to

viii Translator's Prologue
Cardinal Mathieu's vacant Hat, nor is he likely
to under the present Pontificate, which is
mortally afraid of wit and scholarship, especially
in historians.
It may be questioned, also, whether any of
our own existing divines and historians are
capable of writing, like Monseigneur Duchesne,
" dans la langue du dix-huitieme siecle," or
whether they would understand precisely what
is meant. If the great age of prose, or perhaps
rather if its traditions, be still surviving and
even flourishing in France it is because, for one
reason, as Renan says so finely, "la langue
frangaise est puritaine": it is exclusive, reverent,
scrupulous ; and its best writers still exercise
themselves deliberately in those great traditions
which, as Pope warns us, and as our current
literature shows, can not ever be neglected with
impunity. Through these methods France can
still produce authors who, without pedantry,
artificiality, or stiffness, are able to give us so
much of the form and spirit which are inherited
from the delightful and cultured age of Louis
XV. In English, the accomplished negligence
of Goldsmith comes nearest to that fascinating
and artless manner; and Goldsmith himself
would have been the ideal translator of M.
Loisy. For all these reasons, it has been a work of

Translator's Prologue ix
unusual difficulty to turn M. Loisy into English.
All translation is at best elusive and disappoint
ing. It resolves itself ultimately into an adoption
of what seems least unsatisfactory, and Proteus
himself is not more volatile than language.
To transfer thought from one language into
another is the best way to realize Homer's
deeper meaning when he says that words are
winged. The present translator knows as well
as most of his readers and possible critics that
any given sentence may be turned in at least
half a dozen ways ; and if he has had to choose
one of them finally, it has never been without
recognising that there are several others equally
accurate and sound. But, since this translation
has had the benefit of M. Loisy's friendly and
very careful supervision, it may be claimed that
he, at any rate, finds no positive error of detail
in the attempt to convey his meaning ; and he
has been good enough to add that, as a com
position, it seems to him readable, flowing, and
successful. If that be the general verdict, the
translator may be fairly satisfied. He has
aimed, so far as possible, at keeping to the
form of M. Loisy's sentences, and to the order
of his words ; but French has more inflections
than English, and they enable it to be gram
matical and clear in many cases where our
uninflected language would be confused. In

x Translator's Prologue
some few passages, therefore, it has been
thought advisable to break up and shorten M.
Loisy's sentences, or to transpose the order of
his clauses, though never it is hoped with any
alteration of the meaning.
It may be remembered that Gibbon wrote
much and easily in French. Indeed, he wavered
long between composing his " Decline and Fall "
in that language or in English. Those who
have studied Gibbon's method will have seen
how forcibly and concisely he makes a story tell
itself by his moving and spirited use of verbs,
and how his careful choice of epithets has often
saved him a long paragraph of description in our
more slovenly and effusive modern style. By
these means he was able to convey, with singular
minuteness, the history of the whole civilized
world for nearly fifteen centuries, in rather less
space than is occupied by Froude or Gardiner
for about sixty years of British history alone.
By similar means, M. Loisy is able to tell his
long story in a more condensed way than most
English writers could have used. Because he is
short, it must not be inferred that he is slight
or superficial, for the precise contrary is true ;
and the translation, probably, is very near to
the original in length.
M. Loisy has christened his book The Religion
of Israel. So refined and scrupulous a scholar

Translator's Prologue xi
does not use words carelessly ; and his volume
neither is, nor professes to be, an History of
the Jews, in the ordinary meaning of that term.
There are many such histories, more or less
apocryphal, and there is no need for another
of the same kind in English. M. Loisy has
given us something much better. He explains
how the religion of Israel has grown up ; analys
ing it, so far as that is possible, into its earliest
and simplest elements ; marking its probable
origins, and setting it in that larger scheme of
comparative religion, which is one of the most
important and fruitful branches of our modern
historical science. He thus traces Judaism to
its beginnings, follows out its growth, and
shows its extraordinary developments. Logical
and entirely natural as the whole process has
been, as one looks back, using the proper clue,
it must be admitted that the religion of Israel
contains a great deal which would be inexplic
able and surprising to its primitive initiators,
and much also that is hardly understood as
yet by its existing adherents, whether Mosaists
or Christians.
The chief clue which M. Loisy possesses is his
oriental scholarship, which enables him to judge
the Hebrew records with first-hand authority,
and with unrivalled knowledge. He gives to
his readers, in the clearest form and in a

xii Translator's Prologue
wonderfully short space, the latest and soundest
results of the higher criticism with regard to
the age, authorship and composition of the canoni
cal and the deutero-canonical books. These
pages alone" would make his volume of the
utmost interest and value to many English
readers. To some, perhaps, who are not versed
in scriptural studies, M. Loisy may appear arbi
trary or revolutionary ; but any one who is
familiar with the vast literature of the Biblical
problem will be impressed more by his sobriety
and caution. In addition to his profound scholar
ship and his practical common-sense, M. Loisy
has a way of looking all round a question, and
seeing it in every point of view, before he
pronounces judgment. This makes him. a safe
teacher and a very awkward antagonist. Even
Professor Harnack, in spite of all his learning,
was- shown that he had missed the essential
point of Christ's teaching when the arguments
of L'J&vangile et L'&glise were applied to " What
is Christianity ? "
The question of what Christianity really is
has come to be asked in our days with more
and more persistence ; and the answer is being
given with an always fuller knowledge, and a
more rigorous application of scientific methods.
M. Loisy has done more than almost any other
single writer to give an answer which may

Translator's Prologue xiii
satisfy the intelligence and scholarship of this
twentieth century. In his two great works,
Le Quatrieme ilvangile and Les lllvangiles Synop-
tiques, he has explored the mysteries which
have enveloped the composition and spirit of
the Gospels. In his Religion d! Israel, he has
examined and explained the foundation upon
which the whole Christian super-structure has
been raised. Whether it be acceptable or not,
the foundations of both Judaism and Christi
anity have been altered by modern investigators.
The old notions about the origin, authorship,
date, order, and contents of the Hebrew records
can not be maintained by any competent scholar.
The general results of criticism must be, and
are, accepted, whatever controversies and un
solved problems may remain about secondary
details ; and archaeology bears out the general
results of grammatical and historical criticism.
The old view, besides being irreconcilable with
our present knowledge of the universe and of
its laws, presented a general scheme of Jewish
history which swarmed with contradictions, im
probabilities, difficulties, absurdities, even impos
sibilities. As we have now come to read the
books, the whole history is made intelligible and
coherent ; and the religion, which is presented
through the history, becomes more interesting
than ever as a factor in the education of

xiv Translator's Prologue
mankind, and as an illustration of the
process. M. Loisy ends his story, significantly, with a
chapter on messianism, into which the Jewish
history belonging to the old world disappeared,
and out of which the Christianity of the new
world has emerged. The problem which, above
all others, engages New Testament scholars at
present is the true relation of Christ to the
messianic kingdom, and his attitude towards
the person and prospects of the messiah. With
this problem is bound up the secret of his mind,
and the whole question of Christian ethics.
It used to be thought, especially by Anglican
theologians, that in matters of criticism the
New Testament could be separated from the
Old, and that scholarship could be pulled up
short at the end of Malachi. We have come to
see, however, that the whole of Judaism is one
long, gradual, and natural evolution, from the
tribal God of nomad Semites in the desert to
the universal God of the later prophets,
who was modified again by Platonic and
Alexandrian metaphysics. Whatever else
Christianity may be, it is an Hellenistic struc
ture built on a Jewish foundation, which was
itself considerably Hellenised long before the
Christian missionaries appeared. Criticism,
then, has not stopped, and cannot stop, at

Translator's Prologue xv
Judaism and the Old Testament; but it is far
more constructive than destructive, and one of
its positive results may be to reconcile Judaism
to Christianity, when each of them is under
stood better. And a farther result may even
be to reconcile the warring Christian sects,
when scholarship dissolves, as it will inevit
ably, the ecclesiastical and theological barriers
between them. Though M. Loisy ends this
volume with messianism, as it was taken over
and adapted by the earliest Christian preachers,
he has in the prolegomena to his Synoptic Gospels
sketched a most illuminative and fascinating
" Life of Christ." This is now being disengaged
from its rather formidable setting, and with
some necessary alterations will form a separate
work, which may probably be published soon.
And all readers of this Religion of Israel will
desire, it may be hoped, to have it presented to
them in due time in English.
With regard to a few details in the present
translation, it should be pointed out that all the
renderings of Scripture are from one or other
of our current English versions, the Authorized
or the Revised, except in some few cases where
M. Loisy's translation has differed from them
substantially, and so is presumably nearer to the
original. In the usage of proper names, our
current English spelling has been followed in-

xvi Translator's Prologue
variably. Noah, for instance, has become an
English word ; Noe has not, and probably never
will, nor has Moyses or Cham ; and so of many
other names with which the Authorized Bible
has familiarized our Protestant Church and
Nation, until they have become household words.
In many ways it is a pity that these familiar
names are not employed uniformly throughout
the whole Bible, instead of the Greek forms
under which some of them are disguised in the
New Testament. In Egyptian and in all other
non-scriptural names, M. Loisy's gallicised form
of spelling has been retained. All educated
persons unite in rejecting the incorrect Jehovah,
so dear to lurid theologians ; but, for very
obvious reasons, the form Yahweh has been
substituted for M. Loisy's Jahv4, though the
word Jahvism remains unaltered. The Bible
and the Prayer Book have also been followed
in their consistent rejection of capital letters
for pronouns and adjectives which refer to the
Divinity. It is significant that their sober
usage is ignored so flagrantly in modern
practice, especially in clerical publications.
An English Bible is very much to be desired
in which the names Yahweh and Elohim
are restored frankly to all the passages where
they once existed in the original. This would
add enormously to an honest and historical

Translator's Prologue xvii
understanding of the text; and these benefits
would be more than doubled if the composite
nature, the various authorship, and the probable
date of the several writings could be indicated
by some clear and simple method of typo
graphy. When all is said and done, it still remains
true that man cannot live by bread alone. The
letter cannot satisfy him, and he requires the
spirit. He must have an ideal ; but the ideal is
not lowered, it is heightened, by a proper under
standing of the religion and history of Israel;
for no other people has lived so completely in
and by its ideals, or has evolved so splendid and
stirring a romance out of its history. The flame
of its poets and prophets almost blinds us to
their intellectual poverty.
The ideal, in any case, is not to be found in
a discredited and incredible theology, sup
ported by the brute force of an oppressive and
obscurantist clergy. M. Loisy has borne a
foremost and distinguished part in that great
struggle which at present is dissolving, and
in the future may shatter, the largest of the
Christian organizations. Fortune has been kind
by liberating him, in spite of himself, from
clerical fetters upon his thoughts and words ;
and still more by enabling him to speak freely,
not only with all his own authority as one of the
1*

xviii Translator's Prologue
best living orientalists, but with all the distinc
tion and weight conferred by the Professorial
Chair of the History of Religions in the College
de France.

PREFACE
THE modest work of which a second edition
is now offered to the public was written
for the Revue du Clerg4 frangais. One part
only, which made a first article, was able to
appear in that periodical, in October, 1900 ;
two other articles would have followed it.
The whole, with a preface in which an endea
vour was made to harmonise the conclusions
of criticism with the principles of Catholic
theology, was issued as a pamphlet in the
early months of 1901. The edition of three
hundred copies, which was sold out immedi
ately, was not for public circulation.
A new edition seemed to be called for,
because our literature is not well supplied
with specialist works on this subject; and the
most undeniable results of criticism are
scarcely popularised in our country. But, on
one hand, it was thought well to abridge
certain arguments of an apologetic nature,
which were appropriate in a work meant to
acquaint the Catholic clergy with the assured

xx Preface
or the probable conclusions of Biblical criti
cism and at the same time to reconcile
them with the official teaching of Catholi
cism. La Religion d'Israel was the continu
ation of some articles about religion and
revelation which were published in the same
review ; and it would have served as the
introduction to some others, on the origins
and development of Christianity, which had
appeared, in a different form, in the works
entitled L'Evangile et L'Eglise and Autour d'un
Petit Livre. The anxiety of adapting Catholi
cism to the modern spirit being henceforth
indifferent to the author, he now abstains
naturally from arguments which were meant
to interpret the teachings of the Church
according to the demands of modern thought.
On the other hand, it was thought indis
pensable to give more space to the historical
exposition. The religion of Israel is the source
from which the Christian religion has flowed.
The two are only one religion among the
others which have divided, and still divide,
mankind. It is no longer the business of the
historian to prove that this religion is true,
and all the others false ; but his function is, so
far as possible, to determine its place in
history, and its relation to worships which
have preceded it, or with which it has been

Preface xxi
in contact during the centuries of its exist
ence. On these conditions only can a study
of the Jewish and Christian past be described
as scientific. But when the absolute and ab
stract point of view of the traditional theology
is given up, other questions keep multiplying ;
and it may be said that every advance in the
knowledge of religious antiquity raises new ones.
First comes the criticism of the sources.
With the old theory of an inspired book, the
historian's task was exceedingly simple : or
rather, no history was possible. The sacred
books of the Jews, dictated by God from
cover to cover, became the Old Testament of
the Christian Church, and could not but be free
from all error and filled with all truth. For
long, their evidence was accepted without
examination ; men were blind to their contra
dictions, their improbabilities, to the mythical
or legendary character of innumerable stories.
Five or six thousand years ago, God had
created the world in six days, and rested on
the seventh ; having made the first man and
woman with his own hands, he was displeased
with their posterity, and had drowned the
whole of it in a universal flood, saving
only the family of Noah, with specimens
of every kind of animal, in a large ark.
After having led Abraham from the middle

xxii Preface
of Chaldaea into Canaan, and eaten with him
under the oak of Mamre, he was interested
in his descendants : he rescued the Hebrews
from Egypt, and made them cross the Red
Sea dry-shod, and fed them in the wilder
ness during forty years with a manna which
tumbled from the sky every morning; he was
even able, afterwards, to make Balaam's
donkey speak, to stop the sun at the com
mand of Joshua, to keep Jonah alive three
days and nights in tne stomach of a great
fish, where the prophet composed a hymn in
his praise ; he preserved the three young men
in the fiery furnace which had been lit by Nebu
chadnezzar ; he carried Habakkuk by the hair
of his head from Judaea to Babylon, with food
ready cooked for Daniel in his lions' den. . . .
We have been driven to see that the Bible
is not a book which was composed in a
superhuman way, but a collection, of very
unequal values, though always dominated by
the same religious spirit, in which, for the
advantage of a creed, historical facts, legendary
traditions, absolute myths, have all been
utilised ; and they can be distinguished
from one another, as in the case of any other
ancient book, by the methods which are usually
applied to the criticism of texts. The greater
part of the books of the Old Testament cannot

Preface xxiii
be accepted as homogeneous writings ; nor, on
the whole, as contemporary evidence for the
facts which they narrate. Tradition has been
much too facile in settling the authorship of
books : giving the Pentateuch to Moses, because
the Law, which was said to have been pro
mulgated by the old prophet in the name of
God, was contained in it ; the Book of Joshua
±o the hero whose actions it describes ; Judges
to Samuel, because he was the last personage
who bore that title.
It has been established without difficulty
that the so-called historical books were origi
nally anonymous compilations, based on older
sources, of exceedingly various origin and
worth, which have been very freely combined
and arranged by the Israelitish hagiographers :
that a third only of the Book of Isaiah was
written by that prophet ; that Daniel is an apoc
ryphal writing, composed during the persecution
of Antiochus Epiphanes ; that the so-called
Psalms of David were most of them, if not all,
written after the captivity in Babylon ; that
the writings issued under the patronage of
Solomon are of the same epoch as the Psalms ;
and so of all the rest.
This upheaval of the received notions about
the origin of the books as a natural conser
quence revolutionised our way of understand-

xxiv Preface
ing the history and religion of Israel. Instead
of beginning with clear and definite informa
tion about the earliest ages of mankind and
the birth of the Hebrew people, the sacred
history gives us consistent facts only after
the establishment of monarchy in Israel.
Moses, Deborah, Gideon, even Samuel, can
hardly be disengaged from legend. Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob and his families, and still more
Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and his
children, the Creation and the Flood, the Tower
of Babel, all slip back into mythology. The Law,
proclaimed by God from Sinai or in the plains
of Moab, was all elaborated in the last years of
the monarchy, or after the captivity : the Mosaic
revelation was nothing more than a theological
romance. Instead of the prophets having come
after the Law, it was they who inspired it.
The religion of Israel survived nevertheless
as a great and an astonishing fact, both in
itself, and through its ulterior manifestation as
Christianity. But, far from being the first
religion in its antiquity, it only appeared
many thousands of years later than the
venerable beliefs of Egypt and Chaldssa. It
was no longer the perfect type, of which all
other religions were only caricatures made
by human ignorance and passion, if not rather
by the promptings of the devil. On the con-

Preface xxv
trary, it depended itself upon a past which
was mythological and pagan ; and it issued
from it by a gradual evolution, without ever
(and how could it ?) becoming wholly detached.
And as it was drawn closer to the other
religions, as it was seen to be one of them,
and to have no right to a place apart from
or above all the others, its story was bound
sooner or later to be fitted into the general
fabric of the history of religions, making only
one chapter in it, and that neither the least
curious nor the least important.
It is thus that a divine epic, which had no
mysteries so long as faith was prostrated
before its wonders, has become a portion of
human history, inevitably complex, obscure
in many of its parts, and swarming with
infinite problems. Because now, since this
religion did not fall from heaven ready-made,
and was not maintained by repeated miracles,
it is necessary to know whence came the
details of its worship and beliefs, and in
what circumstances it transformed itself during
the progress of the centuries.
Our ultimate knowledge about the history of
religions, especially in what relates to the oldest
Oriental worships, will no doubt throw light
upon many of the questions which still
puzzle us in the religion of Israel. For the

xxvi Preface
present, many of these questions, and above
all some of those which are connected with
the origins, remain undecided. What is cer
tain is, that the religion of Israel was pro
duced in a relatively modern epoch, and in
a peculiar environment ; that its evolution
depended on the actual history of the people
among whom it originated or developed ; that
the miraculous in its legends, like that in
all other religions, was a product of the
believing imagination ; that what characterises
it in comparison with others is not a series
of more or less extraordinary prodigies, like
the changing of the Nile waters into blood,
or the mysterious hand which wrote the fate
of Babylon on the wall during Belshazzar's
feast, but the force of the moral instinct
which drew up out of the worship of Yahweh,
the special God of Israel, a conception of a
universal God, and an ideal of perfect justice :
which made religion a duty, and duty a
religion; which operated or prepared the
metamorphosis of a national and exclusive
religion into a religion both universal and
ardently proselytising.
We are compelled, then, in this new edition,
to present the religion of Israel as it appears
now to the historian, both in itself and in
its own development, as well as in its rela-

Preface

xxvn

tion to the other religions of antiquity, and
to the general history of religion. The
reader must please admit that a summary
exposition, such as this is, will not allow of
arguments, nor of special proofs, nor even
of references beyond those to the Biblical
sources. We have tried to show as much as is
possible the degree of certainty or of proba
bility which pertains to our varying conclusions.
Many of these can only be hypotheses. Those
who are thereby astonished, and who find that
a solid tradition is thrown over for mere
guesses, will show only that they do not yet
understand the real nature of the tradition
which they extol, and of the evidence which
the historian must interpret. A plausible con
jecture is always worth more than a false
assertion, even when it is traditional. And
what is really important in such matters is the
general truth of the landscape, notwithstanding
some inevitable haziness in the details.
It is natural that an attempt of this nature
should appear extremely rash to people who
accept all the narratives of Scripture as literal
history, and who take refuge, for matters
which concern the origins of religion, in the
point of view set forth by Bossuet in his
Discours sur I'Histoire Universelle. Faith is
never disproved ; and we have no intention of
refuting either Bossuet or his modern followers.

XXVIII

Preface

But, looking only at the probability of opinions,
one may hold such a refutation to be superfluous ;
because it has been done long ago, and it would
be useless to do it over again.
Others, perhaps, will pronounce us sufficiently
retrograde, or at least too cautious, since we
do not overflow with pan-babylonism, as it
has been made fashionable by learned Assyrio-
logists, or even with such and such a system
of religious philosophy, quite novel doubtless,
and full of promise.
The life of the Israelite religion did not
consist in a series of annexations from neigh
bouring worships ; and, though foreign influ
ences cannot be denied, the fundamental
character of Jahvism must be sought else
where than in its assimilative powers. The
question of borrowing, then, is secondary:
it cannot, either, be decided without direct
evidence, certain connections, and detailed ana
logies ; certainly not by coincidences which may
be fortuitous, or by superficial resemblances.
An Assyriologist of great eminence has been
able to maintain that the Babylonian epic of
Gilgamesh inspired all the Biblical story,
including the Gospels, and even the Greek
mythologies; proofs have been brought for
ward ; but the system is not proved, and every
thing looks as though we should have to wait
for that. Another Assyriologist, who is not less

Preface xxix
considerable, wishes to explain the patriarchal
and Mosaic legends, even the histories of 'the
Judges and of David, and all mythologies,
by the astrological myths of Babylon. Chal
daea seems to have been, in fact, the land of
astrology, and also of astronomy; but the
descent of the Biblical traditions from the Baby
lonian myths has not been established clearly,
except for the greater part of those which are
outlined in the first eleven chapters of Genesis.
Let us, then, wait for the years to prove the
system of M. H. Winckler. Historical truth
does not as a rule dwell in such vague and
arbitrary conclusions.
We should also be sober in our conjectures
about the worship of the Hebrews in pre
historic times, about the primitive religion of
the Semites, even about the origins of religion
in mankind. Some distinguished scholars have
presented the religion of certain uncivilised
American and Australian tribes as being
necessarily the first stage in every religion, so
that totemism* would be at the base of Israel's
religion, as of all others. It may well be that
the base of all religions is something just as
* The religion of a tribe bearing the name of, and placed
in a strict relationship with, some species of plant, or often
of animal, held to be endowed with divine powers, and
whose ancestors were supposed to be also the ancestors
of the tribe.

xxx

Preface

lowly as totemism; and that everywhere a
preoccupation with natural forces, or the wor
ship of spirits, of animals, of springs and stones,
has preceded the worship of gods, and above
all of God. It seems not less certain that
religion is a primordial factor in human
society, and that it was really the sacred bond
of the first groups, families, and tribes, in
which humanity began to be conscious of
itself. And the laws of these societies were
rules, according to our view more or less
arbitrary and superstitious, which resembled
closely the tabus of savages ; commands which
were at once religious, moral, and social
in their rude and ignorant simplicity. But it
will no doubt be advisable, until evidence,
and above all ancient evidence, which is con
tinually becoming more full and better studied,
shall have enlightened the subject, not to
imagine too great a uniformity in the religious
evolution of the primitive peoples. It is true
that analogous conditions of living produce
analogous institutions. However, analogy is
not identity. Has not the human spirit infi
nite resources for varying the idola of its
thought and imagination, or even the principles
of its conduct and the forms of its social
relationships ? Let us, then, study the history
of religions according to historical methods
and by historical evidence : being sure that, if

Preface xxxi
all the other sciences are able, on occasion
and in a certain way, to serve historical criti
cism, as it can also in the same sense be of
help to them, no other science can supply the
want of that which is the very substance
of history, namely, evidence and proved facts.
An exhaustive bibliography of the subject
here treated would fill volumes. It must be
enough to point out those recent works which
can be studied with most advantage, and
which have been used most for the present
publication.* We make no claim to supersede
them. Nor do we think we have either
followed them blindly or differed from them
without good reason. The finest independence
in such matters is, perhaps, to eschew any
system, and to keep as nearly as possible
to the sources ; so that the mutual balance
between the old documents and their new
interpretation may be adjusted, as though
automatically, before the eyes of the reader.
* Lagrange, Etudes sur les religions semitiques (second
edition, 1905). Smend, Lehrbuch der alttestamentUchen
ReUgionsgeschichte (second edition, 1899). Stade,
Biblische Theologie des Alien Testaments, i. (1905). B.
Meyer, Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstcemme (1906).
Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums im neutestament-
lichen Zeitalter (1903). Schuerer, Oeschichte des Jiidischen
Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi, third edition (1898-1901).
Volz, Jiidische Eschatologie von Daniel bis Akiba
(1903).

CONTENTS

PACtB
TRANSLATOB'S PEOLOGUE . . .V
PEEFAOE ..... six
CHAPTER I. THE SOUEOES . . . . .3
II. THE OEIGINS .... 43
III. THE OLD JAHVISM . . . .95
IV. PBOPHECY ..... 143
V. JUDAISM ..... 193
VI. MESSIANISM .... 237
INDEX ...... 279

THE SOURCES

CHAPTER I
THE SOURCES
THE principal, and one might almost say the
only, source for a history of the religion
of Israel, before the Greek domination, is that
collection of books which Christian tradition
has defined as the Old Testament ; and those
books are preserved, for the most part in their
original language, in the Hebrew Bible. It is
of these documents especially, which are held
sacred by Jews and Christians, that we have
now to estimate the contents and value. The
other writings, numerous as they are, which
deal with the history of Judaism under Greek
and Roman domination, until the final over
throw of the Jewish nationality, either bear
only upon the external history of religion, or
do not present the same difficulties of analysis
and interpretation as do the biblical records.
Moreover, they are submitted by everybody,
without hesitation, to the ordinary laws of

4 The Religion of Israel
criticism. Besides, if the religion of Israel still
presents, during this period, many problems of
which the solution is dubious, nevertheless its
general position is« sufficiently clear, and is
known with certainty. Outlines and summaries,
then, may suffice for the non-biblical sources ; and
we shall devote ourselves, rather, to a criticism
and examination of the biblical authorities.
§ 1
The collection or canon of the Old Testament
was not settled definitely until near the begin
ning of the Christian era. The compilation of
the five books of Moses, so-called, or the
Pentateuch, was made about the year 400 B.C.
This is the Law, which is the earliest and
the fundamental part of the Hebrew Bible.
The second part embraces the series of writers
who are known as the ancient prophets : the
books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings;
and the farther series known as the later
prophets : Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the
twelve minor prophets. In spite of his subject
and purpose, Daniel did not get into this second
series, which probably closed before he was
made public ; but he found his way into the
third part of the collection, which was called
the Sacred Writings, or the Hagiographa. This
third part includes the Psalms, Proverbs, Job,

The Sources 5
the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ec-
clesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah,
Chronicles (the Paralipomena of the Greek and
Latin Bibles). The ecclesiastical Bible contains,
besides certain writings which circulated chiefly
among the Hellenistic Jews, and which were
not promoted into the official canon of the
Synagogue, Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah,
the additions to the books of Daniel and Esther,
Ecclesiasticus, the Wisdom of Solomon, so-called,
Tobit, Judith, and the two books known as the
Maccabees. The series of the earlier prophets
was a continuation of the Law, and must have
acquired its definite form about the same time.
The collection of the prophets, in the stricter
sense, must have been settled a little later,
towards the end of the third century before our
era. The collection of Hagiographa seems to
have been established in fact, if not officially
recognised, about the end of the second century
before Christ.
As was natural, the canonisation of all these
books led to a relative fixing of their text,
which was soon honoured with a meticulous
respect. Nevertheless, a comparison with the
old Greek version, known as the Septuagint,
shows that, during the two or three centuries
immediately before the Christian era, the
Hebrew copies contained numerous variations ;

6 The Religion of Israel
and that in certain books, in Jeremiah for in
stance, there were recensions or versions which
differed considerably from one another. These
differences, slight as they may be, were the con
tinuation, in some sense, of that long work of
editing and compiling, out of which process the
chief books in the sacred collection have issued
in their present form.
Certain popular songs, such as the paean of
Deborah or David's elegy on the death of Saul
and Jonathan, may be considered the most
ancient documents in the Hebrew literature.
From the times of David and Solomon the
kings had official archives, and historical
records soon came into existence. But from
these sources, which were more or less secular,
the pious writers who culled from them have
utilised only those outlines and quotations which
they could adapt to their purposes of edification.
The first experiment in a religious literature
may be placed, it would seem, in the ninth
century, to which date we may assign the
oldest fragments which have entered into the
composition of the Hexateuch (that is, the Penta
teuch and Joshua), viz., the Jahvistic and
Elohistic histories.
This designation of the historical sources is
borrowed from the divine names which are
used in them respectively. The Jahvistic history

The Sources 7
begins with the creation of the world, and
thenceforward employs the name Yahweh as
the proper designation of God, implying that
this name was known to mankind from the
beginning. The Elohistic history only begins
with Abraham, the supposed ancestor of the
Hebrew people, and it assumes that the name
Yahweh, the exclusive title of the God of Israel,
was revealed only to Moses, the organiser of the
Israelitish nation and the founder of its religion.
These two histories were collections of legends
about the origins of the Hebrew people and of
their religious practices. They have as their
joint foundation the cycles of patriarchal and
Mosaic traditions. Though they seem to differ
in appearance, the purpose of these two cycles
is in reality the same ; they both aim at ex
plaining and legalising the settlement of the
Israelites in the land of Canaan. The patri
archal legends present Israel through its
mythical ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
without laying much stress upon the sojourn
of the Hebrews in Egypt; while the Mosaic
legends, on the other hand, are written with
a view to the conquest of Palestine, since they
make the exodus from Egypt their basis. The
story of Joseph reconciles these two legen
dary cycles, without, however, concealing their
parallelism.

8 The Religion of Israel
The Jahvistic history contains an earlier cycle
of legends about the origins of mankind ; a
veritable mythology, of which the foreign
source cannot be doubted, although the tradi
tion of Israel has chastened the polytheism,
and to a large extent has recomposed the
material according to its own spirit. The story
of the flood was taken certainly from Chaldaea,
and a narrative more ancient than that in the
Hebrew story has been found among the cunei
form inscriptions. The affinity is much less
close between the Jahvistic histories of the
creation and of the first sin and various
Babylonian fables. Since Palestine had felt
Babylonian influences from the earliest times,
we cannot assign a precise date to these borrow
ings, which we need not suppose to have been
made either directly from or contemporaneously
with the documents which have led to a belief
in them.
It has been possible to discriminate between
the Jahvistic and Elohistic sources, as well as
to discern the other elements which have been
combined into the Pentateuch, and to recon
struct them, more or less, because the work of
compilation was effected by quite elementary
processes, which left unaltered the particular
style of each contribution. Pains were not
always taken to avoid duplications whenever

The Sources 9
the texts gave parallel accounts, and the
compilers were not embarrassed even by con
tradictions when they were not too glaring.
Nevertheless, the dexterity of the joinings,
deliberate omissions, glosses, and editorial
manipulations have all made the connexion
and position of many details extremely dubious.
The sources, moreover, are not individual
compositions, but collections which had already
been tampered with before they were submitted
to a common editorship. So that behind the
Jahvistic and Elohistic documents we can guess
at the work of an earlier writer, who made
the original draft, combining his material with
more or less freedom, arranging the old legen
dary traditions with more or less originality,
fitting into his narrative old popular songs and
even such other literary matter as he had at his
disposal. But this first attempt would be added
to and rehandled continually by other persons,
who worked in the spirit of the original editor,
and who belonged, if one may so express it, to
his school. It is not probable that the Jahvistic
and Elohistic histories were wholly independent
of one another. Both have, in spite of certain
special tendencies, the same religious character.
In certain places the Elohistic history seems
more archaic, though many believe in the
priority of the Jahvistic history, and consider

10 The Religion of Israel
the Elohistic to be in some way dependent on
it. The Jahvistic history must have been
written in Judah and the Elohistic in Israel.
Both of them are connected with those collections
of precepts which were the nucleus of the Law.
That version of the Law can be dated which
was found in the temple at Jerusalem, in 621
B.C., under King Josiah ; and it is preserved for
us in Deuteronomy. Everything leads us to
believe that it was composed for the purpose
of that reformation which its discovery pror
duced. But the primitive text, even of this
document, has been added to like that of the
others ; and it was manipulated again before
being mingled with the Jahvistic and Elohistic
histories during the times of the captivity. It
was in the spirit and temper of Deuteronomy
that that re-editing of Judges, of Samuel, and
of the Kings was carried out, in which ancient
documents, heroic and prophetic legends,
extracts from the chronicles and memoirs of
the kings, were all squared with theological
and pietistic interests.
The chief part of the Law, which deals
mainly with ritual, and which fills a portion of
Exodus, the whole of Leviticus, and the larger
part of Numbers, contains a compilation styled
by critics the Law of Holiness.* This was
* Ley. xvii.-xxvi,

The Sources n
arranged at Babylon, during the captivity.
Besides this, there is material similar, at any
rate in plan, to the Jahvistic and Elohistic
histories, and which is known as the Sacer
dotal History. It begins with the creation of
the world and continues till the division of
Palestine among the tribes, under the leader
ship of Joshua. It does not linger among the
antique legends, which are collected in the
earlier sacred histories, farther than is neces
sary to connect the chief institutions and
religious customs with decisive events in the
past. Thus, the sabbath is connected with the
creation of the world ; the abstinence from
blood, with the deluge ; circumcision, with
Abraham ; the whole system of sacrifices and
ritual, with the revelation at Sinai. Finally,
additions were made, according to need and
opportunity, to the legislative code which was
formed by mingling the Sacerdotal Histories
with the Law of Holiness. Many of these
additions would seem to be later than the
promulgation of the Sacerdotal Code, which
was made by Ezra in 444 B.C. As the legal
precepts of the Jahvistic record were supposed
to have been dictated by Yahweh to Moses on
Sinai, and those of the Elohistic records on
Horeb, and Deuteronomy in the plains of Moab,
so the ritual of the Sacerdotal Code had also

12 The Religion of Israel
been taught by God to Moses on Mount Sinai.
It is well known that the Code of Hammurabi,
which has been discussed so frequently of late,
was revealed in a similar way to the King of
Babylon by the god Shamash.
The Scribes who flourished after Ezra
detached that part of the Sacerdotal Code
which was concerned with the division of the
Promised Land, and then, by amalgamating
the two compilations formed from joining the
Jahvistic and Elohistic history on to Deutero
nomy, and uniting the Sacerdotal History with
the Levitical Legislation, they made up the
Pentateuch. The utterances of the prophets seem to have
been collected at once by their disciples, and
preserved. The most ancient collection is that
of Amos (about 750), which has received only
slight and unimportant additions. The collec
tion of Hosea's utterances, which is a little later,
has come to us under very similar conditions.
The Book of Isaiah consists of two parts, which
can be distinguished easily: i., chapters 1-39,
and ii., chapters 40-66. Not a line of the second
part can be attributed to the prophet who
was a contemporary of Hezekiah. Two-thirds
of this part were written shortly before Cyrus
took Babylon, and the remaining third was
composed in the times of the Persian domina-

The Sources 13
tion. The first part of the book contains
prophecies by the original Isaiah, amplified
by details borrowed from the Book of Kings,
and by prophetical fragments belonging to
many epochs, even as late as the Greek
domination. The Book cannot have acquired
its existing form until near the end of the third
century before our era.
The Book of Jeremiah includes a relatively
large number of authentic utterances, dictated
by the prophet to his disciple Baruch, and some
biographical information, arranged probably by
the same disciple ; but the whole was finally
re-cast, filled out with later pieces, and
coloured. The Book of Ezekiel, perhaps, of all
the prophetical collection, has the most regular
construction, and has suffered least from re-
editing in traditional interests. About a third
of the Book of Micah, who lived at the same
time as Isaiah, is authentic ; the remainder was
added later, and especially after the exile.
Nahum wrote a little before the fall of
Nineveh (608 ?) ; but his prophecy, which is
very short, has been enlarged by a psalm
placed at the beginning, and this is post-exilian.
Zephaniah wrote under Josiah, but his
prophecy appears to have been highly coloured.
Habakkuk, the contemporary of Jeremiah,
prophesied against the Chaldseans ; but his

14 The Religion of Israel
utterance has been lengthened by two psalms,
one as a prologue and the other as a kind of
epilogue. Obadiah and Joel both lived after
the captivity. Haggai was contemporary with
the rebuilding of the temple under Darius I.
Zechariah belonged to the same period ; but
the second part of his titular book is not his,
and seems to have been written under the
Greek domination. The so-called Book of
Malachi is anonymous, and was undoubtedly
written shortly before the promulgation of the
Sacerdotal Code by Ezra. The romance of
Jonah must have been composed about the
year 300, and the psalm which that prophet is
imagined to have composed in the stomach of
his fish was added later.
Thus, the handling of the prophets' books was
very similar to that of the books which are
called historical. They were all utilised for the
edification of the Jewish community ; and, for
this purpose, they were pitched in the key, so
to speak, of the religious evolution. The multi
plication of anonymous prophecies, after the
captivity, bears witness to the decay of the
prophetical ministry ; and the number of
pseudonymous prophecies in the apocalyptic
literature, which begins with Daniel, is a con
sequence of its total disappearance, though
anonymous fragments were still added by

The Sources 15
collectors of prophecies to writings which bore
the name of some author. The fortune of
these apocrypha depended on the credence
which was given them.
After a certain period of hesitation, most
critics have decided to bring down the composi
tion of the Psalms, except perhaps of a very
few, to a date after the exile, under the Persian
domination, and even into the times of the
Maccabees. The whole of the sapiential books
appear to be later than the captivity. The
Book of Job was written under the Persian
domination, and it is not all from a single hand.
The collection of Proverbs is apparently of the
same age. Ecclesiastes is later, and must have
been composed in the times of the Greek
domination, probably towards the close of the
third century. The Proverbs got into the
canon as a production of Solomon, and so
did Ecclesiastes, though it was not admitted
without serious difficulty. Attributed also to
Solomon, a collection of songs for wedding
feasts was able to get into the Bible, and to
hold its position there ; the Song of Songs, as
we have it now, is also of the third or second
century B.C. It has no bearing on religious
history, except through its allegorical interpre
tations ; or, rather, through the complete in
version which has transformed it into a sacred

1 6 The Religion of Israel
and pious writing. The Book of Ruth would
seem to have been written for a controversial
purpose by a contemporary of Ezra and
Nehemiah. Esther is certainly later than the
persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes and the
establishment of the Asmonsean dynasty.
Towards the middle of the third century
may be placed the composition of that
historical summary, edited in the spirit and
style of the Priestly Code, which contained
originally the Chronicles as well as the Books
of Ezra and Nehemiah. The Lamentations
attributed to Jeremiah are not by that prophet.
They were written partly during the exile and
partly after the return. The Book of Daniel
was composed during the persecution by
Antiochus Epiphanes, probably in the early
part of the year 164. It was issued under the
name of a legendary personage, who was made
contemporary with the last Kings of Judah,
with Nebuchadnezzar and the last King of
Babylon, and with Cyrus.
The First Book of the Maccabees tells the
history of the Jewish people from the accession
of Antiochus Epiphanes until the death of the
High Priest Simon Maccabseus. It is the finest
piece of historical writing that Jewish antiquity
has bequeathed us ; but, at the same time, it is
almost a secular production. The author wrote

The Sources 17
near the opening of the first century before the
present era. With the Second Book of the
Maccabees, which deals only with the early
period of the Maccabsean rising, we are taken
back into the atmosphere of edifying literature.
The editor lived before the taking of Jerusalem
by Titus, and he professes to abridge an earlier
writer, Jason of Cyrene, who must have com
posed his work in the latter half of the second
century B.C. The Book of Tobit is a pious
novel, founded on a popular story; it was
composed probably in the second century before
our era by some Jew of the dispersion.
Judith is also a romance, but more national
than pious ; it is very similar in tendency to
Esther, and is most probably of the same
period. The Epistle attributed to Jeremiah is a
production of Hellenistic Judaism, and it is not
possible to date it even approximately. The
whole of Baruch seems to have been written
after the destruction of Jerusalem by the
Romans in a.d. 70. The Book of Ecclesiasticus
was put together about the year 200 B.C. ; it
would have been admitted into the Hebrew
canon, with Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, if the
author, instead of advertising himself, had
placed his work under the patronage of
Solomon. The author of Wisdom took that
course ; but, as he wrote in Greek, he was only
3

1 8 The Religion of Israel
able to get into the canon of the Christian
Church. In conclusion, it will be fitting to mention
here the psalms attributed to Solomon, and
which were written about the year 50 B.C., as
well as the pseudonymous apocalypses, which
followed the precedent of Daniel, those of them
at least which preceded the arrival of Christ
ianity. The Book of Enoch is a collection of
writings which are later than Daniel ; but most
of them, if not all, are earlier than the Christian
period. The Assumption of Moses was issued
early in our era; and there are compositions
of Jewish origin in the Sibylline Books. Many
other apocryphal writings are lost. From the
time of Antiochus Epiphanes more especially,
Hellenistic Judaism was most prolific in pseud-
epigraphical writings, which were composed
for purposes of controversy and edification.
One may assert, without being paradoxical, that
impersonality has been the leading character
istic of Israelitish literature from its beginning ;
but that anonymity prevailed in ancient times,
while in Judaism, and since the Greek domin
ation, pseudonymity grew to outrageous pro
portions. This habit is not without significance
for the historian ; neither has it failed to raise
many problems for the critics.

The Sources ig
§2
It was neither a simple nor an easy task to
construct a consistent and fairly certain history
from this chaos of traditions, which were manipu
lated and changed perpetually : from this mass
of writings which were without author or dates,
unless they were spurious and misdated.
It is not surprising that several scholars have
thought it impossible to find a key to the
religious history of Israel before the Babylonian
captivity ; and that, relying upon the tone and cer
tain peculiarities of the final re-editing, they have
maintained that all the books of the Hebrew
canon were composed after the exile. This
view would simplify the task of the historian
enormously ; but it would mean a considerable
suppressing of criticism, and so of history. A
closer study of the peculiar genius of this
literature, more attention to the processes of
editing and of construction, and to the various
elements which are combined sometimes in
the same book and even on the same page,
enable us, it would seem, to acknowledge more
genuine material, and to derive from it a richer
store of information.
No text, really, can be worthless to an his
torian ; because his first business is to settle
its meaning, and then, if he can, to discover

2o The Religion of Israel
its origin. For instance, a story about the
creation of the world, which one may read
in the Bible or elsewhere, may not be his
torical in itself ; but it does express the beliefs
and thoughts of given times and circum
stances. The Book of Job is not a record
of patriarchal history, but it does inform us
about the problems which were being stirred
in Jewish minds under the pressure of the
Law. Stories like Esther and Judith, or Jonah
and Tobit, if they be taken literally, give us
only false notions about the relations of Israel
with Nineveh and the Assyrian monarchy, or
with the Kings of Persia and their court at
Susa ; but they are invaluable witnesses
to the religious and moral atmosphere, or to
family relations, or to the bitterness of national
feeling, in the Jewish community at certain
definite epochs. The history of primitive ages
in the sacerdotal documents of the Hexateuch
is a tissue of exaggerations and impossibilities;
but how much does it not reveal to us about
the mentality of the Jews as they returned
from exile? And do not all the primitive legends
enable us to realize in a living way the times
which preceded the theological reformation
and the predominance of the Law? Thus the
chaos becomes a veritable mine for those who
understand how to work it.

The Sources 21
Assuredly, however, historical information is
more easy to compile for the post-exilian times ;
although the pre-exilian are not wholly dark.
No one disputes the general outlines of Israelite
history after the establishment of the Kingdom :
a short period of unity, under David and
Solomon ; a schism between Ephraim and Judah
under Solomon's successor, and an ensuing
period of hostility; Ephraim then threatened
by Damascus, and soon after destroyed by
Assyria; Judah overthrown a little later by
Babylon ; but its remnant forming itself again
into a community with religious autonomy under
the sovereignty of Persia, Greece, and Rome.
Now this frame-work of political history may
be reconstructed from our existing documents ;
and, in a similar way, our documents are fitted
into this frame-work. So also is the evolution
of the religious history, which was always in
the closest relation with the political history.
The system of Deuteronomy which was so
unreal in its presentation of the past, and the
conceptions of the Priestly Code and of Chron
icles which were even more artificial, were not
able to eliminate every thing which stultified
them in the genuine traditions of antiquity.
Post-exilian Judaism only recognised one sanc
tuary where it was lawful to sacrifice to the
God of Israel : this is a certain fact, guaranteed

2 2 The Religion of Israel
by all the evidence which we have, both sacred
and profane, for the last period of Jewish
history, that is to say after the captivity. But
tradition asserts that this fact, which was
equally strange and undeniable, was of Mosaic
institution ; though this did not hinder the avowal
that it was not the ancient practice. For it
names the King who destroyed the sanctuaries
outside Jerusalem, namely Josiah ; and it goes
on to describe the occasion : the priest Hilkiah
finding in the Temple a book of the Law which
prescribed this rule. Josiah had no knowledge
that Yahweh had made this revelation to Moses,
and all his predecessors had been as ignorant
of their duty as himself. Tradition also affirms
that they had not carried it out. Deuteronomy,
too, does not require this unity of sacrificial
service as a thing natural and needing no ex
planation ; it describes it, rather, as a measure
directed against the innumerable sanctuaries
which existed throughout the country. From
this clue, and from many others which are
subsidiary to it, we can see that Deuteronomy,
at any rate in its chief contents, was the very
book of which the discovery caused the action
of Josiah. Deuteronomy, moreover, in style
and language has the closest similarity to
Jeremiah, who was the leading prophet of that
age.

The Sources 23
A reformation postulates an existing state
which it is desirable to change, because it is
unsatisfactory. Before Josiah, every town or
hamlet possessed its own place of worship,
where it sacrificed to the national God. A
collection of laws, which was shorter and more
archaic in form than Deuteronomy, the Book
of the Covenant, embedded in Exodus, authorizes
sacrifice "in every place where Yahweh has
caused his name to be remembered."* Besides
this, Amos and Hosea, who preached in Ephraim,
did not require that men should go to Jerusalem
to sacrifice. They protested against sacrifices
in general, because they saw that there was a
better and more efficacious way of serving God.
The legends of Samuel and Elijah exhibit those
prophets themselves sacrificing away from the
sanctuary of the ark, and in a manner not
prescribed by the ritual attributed to Moses.
It is not less significant that the Jahvistic and
Elohistic histories take the patriarchs to the
very sanctuaries which were condemned by
Deuteronomy : to Bethel, to Shechem, to
Hebron, to Beersheba, as though to dedicate
them in perpetuity to the worship of Yahweh.
To these patriarchal and prophetic legends might
be added legends from the heroic days of the
Judges, which bear witness to religious practices
* Exodus xx. 24.

24 The Religion of Israel
very different from those which are authorized
by the legislation of Deuteronomy and of the
Priestly Code.
The various documents fall into groups, and
throw light upon one another. Ezekiel is a
prelude to the Sacerdotal Code which guided
the reformation of Ezra and Nehemiah; and
the Chronicles depend on it, as giving a mis
representation of history in agreement with
the sacred legislation. Jeremiah goes with
Deuteronomy, which was ushered in by the
ministry of Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah ; and
which itself inspired the commentary on the
traditions deposited in the books of Judges,
Samuel, and Kings. Taken out of their set
ting, these traditions and the patriarchal legends
give some notion of the religion of Israel before
the literary prophets, and before any official
promulgation of a law attributed to Moses.
These legends themselves justify certain de
ductions, more or less probable, concerning the
origins of the Israelite people and religion.
They were not imagined altogether by the
contemporaries of the early Kings of Israel and
Judah; but they represent national memories,
more or less vitiated and transformed by the
lapse of time. Although the patriarchal legends,
for instance, teach us nothing about the per
sonages who figure in them, for the good reason

The Sources 25
that they never existed ; yet they do inform us,
not only about the genius of ancient Israel, but
about its origins, about the events which
moulded it into a people, and about its relations
with its neighbours or with the populations
which preceded it on the soil of Palestine.
None of these things can be indifferent to the
history of a religion which has been modified
by these circumstances and connexions. If the
deductions, which have been mentioned, cannot
have either the precision or the certitude of
direct and authentic evidence they do not cease
to be legitimate, provided they are used with
tact. Indeed, they constitute the history of
times which are wanting in more exact inform
ation. Abraham and Sarah are mythical
personages ; but their legend proves the impor
tance of the sanctuaries at Hebron, and the
annexation of them to the God of Israel. For
these holy places existed before the coming of
the Hebrews, and they belonged to the Gods
which were specially venerated by the popu
lations of Canaan. It is hardly rash to guess
that Abraham and Sarah were the ancient
divinities of the district, who were harmonised
in the legend so as to be subordinated to the
God who supplanted them. We are told that
Jacob, after wrestling with Yahweh through
a whole night, was called Israel by the God

26 The Religion of Israel
who failed to conquer him. This miraculous
contest is no more historical than the battle
of the Titans with Jupiter; but it enables us
to see clearly that the tribes who were con
sidered the posterity of Jacob only took the
name of Israel at the period of the conquest. It
also leads us to suspect that Jacob himself was
a divine personage ; and, as the memories of
the patriarch are connected with the sanctuary
of Bethel, his place of worship probably was
there. Abraham never went into Egypt ; but
the fable which brought him there was made
to support the Mosaic legends, as they required
an old connexion of the Hebrews, while still
nomads, with the land of the Pharaohs. The
legend of Joseph has a similar meaning; and
as it was pretended that the tomb of this
patriarch was at Shechem, it came about that
Shechem had a sacred cave like that of Machpelah
at Hebron ; and the hero said to be buried in
it no doubt originated also in a God. The
legend of Isaac, which gravitated round Beer
sheba, leads us to suppose that Isaac also had
been the divinity of that shrine.
As the old population of Canaan was not
exterminated, as it should have been, by the
invading tribes, but was progressively conquered
and assimilated by them, so the religious
customs, the myths, the Gods, of the Canaanite

The Sources 27
sanctuaries, entered little by little, and by
transforming themselves, into the traditions of
Israel. This double assimilation is revealed
and witnessed to by the ancient narratives.
The original meaning of these ancient legends,
so far as it can be restored conjecturally,
would be no longer intelligible, even to the
sharpest criticism, if a comparison with other
religions of antiquity, and even with the non-
semitic ones, did not help us to discover and
interpret it. But analogous cases are not
wanting to us. Jacob and his twelve sons,
who are the twelve tribes of Israel, have just
as much reality as the forefathers of the
Greeks ; as Hellen and his posterity, Doros
and iEolos, Xuthos, Ion* and Acheeus. The
eccentric and ancient customs, circumcision,
abstinence from blood, distinctions of clean
and unclean, of purity and impurity, seem
open to at least a satisfactory explanation
when the same or analogous practices are met
with among other primitive peoples. Not only
the artless cosmogony of the Jahvistic historian,
but the more advanced theory of the sacerdotal
history, and the story of the flood as well,
have their parallels and their originals, at least
as to the frame-work of the narratives, in
old eastern mythologies, and especially in the
Chaldaean. And the nabi of Israel, the wild

28 The Religion of Israel
and half-mad prophet, has his brethren in
other religions. Moses ihimself, with his
magician's rod, is like those divining priests
who are found more or less anywhere. The
strange oracle consulted by Saul and David,
and which answered the questions put to it
by throwing lots, has its resemblances else
where. If the religion of Israel reaches a great
height in its prophets of the seventh and
eighth centuries, in its psalmists, and in the
author of Job, nevertheless its origin was very
humble. The farther back one explores towards
that origin, the more do possibilities of com
parison abound ; and they make up, in some
degree, for the ominous gaps and obscurities
in the evidence.

§ 3
Some questions, however, of extreme gravity
remain, and always probably will remain, with
out any certain answer. Of this nature are
questions about the sojourn of Israel in Egypt
and the exodus, to point to the most glaring
instance ; since they bear upon the actual origin
of the worship of Yahweh. The most ancient
tradition was from the first over-burdened with
contradictory legends. Neither the details of
the sojourn in Egypt, nor of the coming of

The Sources 29
Israel to Sinai, nor of the career of Moses, can
be disentangled clearly.
The legend of Joseph personifies the arrival
of Israel in Egypt ; but it is impossible to think
that Israel came into Egypt as a family, and
went out as a nation. Jacob and his twelve
sons represent Israel collectively : Israel must,
therefore, have come in as a nation. Never
theless the tradition enables us to see clearly
that Israel only existed as a nation after it had
taken Yahweh as its God; and that Yahweh
only became the God of Israel after, or in conse
quence of, the exodus. Before that, Israel did
not exist as an assemblage of tribes bound to
one another by a common worship : it existed
only as a number of kindred tribes wandering
over the Arabian desert and through the
peninsula of Sinai. Nothing hinders us from
believing that some of these tribes established
themselves for a certain time on the frontiers
of Egypt, in the land of Goshen; and that,
not satisfied with the conditions there, they
moved away again to rejoin their brethren
in the desert. It is not, however, by any
Egyptian influence upon the religion of Israel
that one can prove this ; because hardly a
trace of any such influence can be made out:
the tradition depends solely on the persistence
with which the memory of some early con-

30 The Religion of Israel
nexion with Egypt was maintained ; a connexion
witnessed to by the legends of Abraham,
Joseph, and Moses. Still these legends are but
legends : the artificial and accumulated details
which they may exhibit, which assuredly they
do exhibit, prevent us from judging with any
certainty about their real and historical sig
nificance. In any case it seems plain that the memories
of Egypt, " the house of bondage," and of the
exodus, acquired through tradition an import
ance which was always growing, and which
they did not have in the beginning. The
conquest of Canaan was made from the east,
by crossing the Jordan, for the occupation of
the country held by those tribes to which the
name of Israel more properly belonged ; and
from the south, by way of the desert, for the
territory which afterwards became Judaea.
The northern tribes, nevertheless, had the same
God as Judah ; and it was in the preceding
conditions of a common life that Israel and
Judah had accepted this worship. The con
ditions of their nomadic life had brought them
into contact with Yahweh, who, we cannot
doubt, was the divinity of Sinai. The con
nexion between the tribes and the God can be
explained without reference to Egypt; but our
concern is not with possibilities. The tribes

The Sources 31
in their wandering life became acquainted with
the God Yahweh. Since they all believed
themselves related to this God, a sort of con
federation was doubtless formed among them
in the beginning under the name and patronage
of the divinity. The occasion of this treaty
may have been possibly an emigration of tribes
leaving the north-eastern territory of Egypt
to join their fortunes with the allied tribes
who lived in the desert. It was in the name
of Yahweh that the exodus was effected, and
that the league of tribes was negotiated.
Certain assyriologists have argued that Egypt
was not Egypt, but the Sinaitic peninsula,
which bore in the cuneiform inscriptions the
name of Musri, and was thus confused by
Israelitic tradition with the name of Egypt,
Misraim. Some have gone so far as to assert
that David must have been originally the ruler
of Caleb, in the district of Hebron ; that he
submitted, first Judah, and then the other
tribes, to his authority; and that it was he
who imposed on all Israel, the Israel which he
had just consolidated, the religion of Yahweh,
a divinity who was venerated on Mount Sinai,
in the land of Musri, by the Arabian tribes.
But this hypothesis hardly needs refuting.
Israelitic tradition knew quite well what it
understood by the word Misraim ; and the

32 The Religion of Israel
records about the times of the Judges are suffi
ciently reliable to guarantee the existence,
before David, of the worship of Yahweh by the
tribes who were settled in Canaan.
It is true, however, that tradition has
fluctuated about the locality of Sinai. The
" mountain of God," according to the most
ancient texts, was not in the southern region
of the Sinaitic peninsula, where for centuries
that high peak was sought from which the
covenant between Yahweh and Israel had
been proclaimed. Moses met with Yahweh in
the land of Midian,* which was in Arabia, on
the eastern shore of the Elanitic gulf. It was
from thence, according to the song which in
troduces the blessings of Moses, that Yahweh
had come to find Israel :
Yahweh is come from Sinai ;
He hath appeared to them from Seir ;
He shined forth from Mount Paran,
And he is come to Meribah-Kadesh.t
To go from the traditional Sinai to Kadesh,
which was in the desert south of Judah, one
would not travel by Seir and Paran. The
direction indicated requires a starting-point
* Exodus ii. 15 ; iii. 1, 2.
+ Deut. xxxii. 2. The last line is restored from the
Septuagint, as the Hebrew does not make sense.

The Sources 33
in the extreme north-west of Arabia. Again,
it seems established now that the most ancient
legend about the exodus, of which the verse
just quoted is an echo, did not take Israel
from Egypt to Mount Sinai, but straight to
Kadesh, where Moses explained to the people
the wishes of Yahweh.
Moses bore, according to all probability, an
Egyptian name. If it be thought that the
tradition of a sojourn in Egypt and an exodus
must be denied altogether, one is led on also
to hold that the personality of Moses is fic
titious, as that of Aaron seems to be, who is
given him as a brother. On the other hand,
his Egyptian name may validate the tradition
of a sojourn in Egypt ; although the story of
the child Moses exposed on the Nile, and saved
as it were by miracle, may be rightly suspect ;
since it is constructed out of fabulous materials
for which there are many other applications,
from the legend of the old Chaldaean king Sargon
to that of the child Jesus flying from the rage
of cruel Herod. The argument brought forward
just now in favour of a meeting of the tribes
in the desert, for the inauguration of the people
and religion of Israel, might be urged as well
in support of the traditions about Moses.
As the establishment of a common worship
seems to be connected with certain special
4

34 The Religion of Israel
circumstances, so it is not incompatible with
the functions of a person who may have been,
in these circumstances, the leader in establish
ing a national and religious unity, as well as
a priest and prophet of Yahweh. This per
sonage may have been the intermediary between
the tribes of the desert and those in Egypt;
and it would be he who, in the name of
Yahweh, led the latter to Kadesh. The treaty
which united the tribes in the worship of
Yahweh may have been ratified near that
sacred spring, whose waters Moses is said to
have brought from the rock by striking it with
his magician's wand.
To this example, from which some notion can
be formed as to the extreme complexity of the
problems, and the measure of probability
attaching to their solution, it would be
easy to add a very large number which
are only hinted at in the following chap
ters. There are other problems which it is
now impossible to decide. Granted that the
legends of the patriarchs symbolise chiefly the
settlement of Israel in Canaan, it is useless to
inquire in what conditions Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob were enabled to sojourn in the country
which their descendants held afterwards, or
what worship they practised. There is no
interest either in searching out the primitive

The Sources 35
origins of the tribes of Israel, or their possible
migrations before the period when they are
found on the borders of Palestine, and already
organized for its conquest. The stages in the
migration of Abraham, who was thought to
have been born in Ur of the Chaldees, then to
have come to Haran in upper Mesopotamia, and
at length from there into the land of Canaan,
are perhaps nothing more than editorial com
binations to make a fictitious link with the
cycle of legends about the creation, the flood,
and the genealogies of the nations. These
legends would seem to be less ancient in Israel,
or at any rate to have another source, than
those which deal with the settlement in Canaan,
and the cycle of patriarchal and Mosaic legends
which are concerned with the occupation of
Palestine. No doubt Israel belongs by race and
speech to that group of peoples called Semitic,
who came very early into Chaldaea, and then
founded the empire of Nineveh, who populated
the coast towns of Phoenicia, and the territory
of Canaan ; who established on the frontiers of
Palestine the little kingdoms of Idumaea, Moab,
and Amnion ; who furnished later the Aramaean
migration, and who are represented finally in
the history of the world by the Arabs. But it
would be vain to pretend to try to fix the time,
the place, or the circumstances, in which the

36 The Religion of Israel
ancestors of Israel were merged with those of
the nations just enumerated. All that can be
said plausibly is that the Hebrew migration
happened soon after the Canaanite, and was
like an advance-guard of the Aramaean. The
common cradle of them all was Arabia.
The proved usage, during the fourteenth
century before our era, in the various countries
between the Euphrates and Egypt, of the Baby
lonian language and of cuneiform writing for
what may be described already as a diplomatic
correspondence between the rulers of those
countries and the King of Egypt, who was then
their suzerain, is a fact of the highest import
ance for the history of the ancient peoples of
Western Asia. One may deduce from it a long
and vigorous domination, and therefore a lasting
influence by the Chaldaean Empire over all these
territories during the centuries which preceded
the domination of the Egyptians. But it is not
possible to say whether the ancestors of the
Hebrews had their fortunes linked in any way
with this Chaldsean supremacy. It seems even
very hazardous to establish any connexion
between this Chaldaean predominance and the
origin which the Bible attributes to Abraham.
The ancient hegemony of Babylon did not cease
to affect the history of Israel and its religion,
since the Chaldaean influence was exercised over

The Sources 37
all the Canaanite populations, with which the
Hebrews were in contact, and which they
assimilated. It is also very probable that it
never ceased to be exercised directly by an
official usage of the Babylonian language, and
by a certain knowledge of its literature, while
the invading hordes of nomadic Israelites were
beginning to penetrate into the land of Canaan.
The cuneiform texts of the El-Amarna corres
pondence, to which we have just alluded, do
not otherwise give us any special information
about the history of Israel. If the warlike
bands of Chabiri, who are there mentioned, be,
as is probable, Hebrews, it follows that the
invasion of Canaan by their tribes had begun
about the fourteenth century before our era ;
and no conclusion can be drawn about what
their religion was or was not at that period.
One would like to be assured that the writer
of a certain letter found at Taanek (the ancient
Taanach mentioned in the song of Deborah*) and
which might be of the same date as those found
at El-Amarna, was a worshipper of Yahweh. The
man calls himself Achiyami, which might be the
same name as Achijahu (" Jahu," or " Yahweh
his brother") ; and he has a very lofty conception
of his God. t But the identification of the divine
* Judges v. 19.
t See Ohantpie de la Saussaye, Lehrbuch der Religions-

38 The Religion of Israel
names is only guess-work. Let us say at least
that the condition of Palestine at the opening
of the Israelite invasion is not a matter of
indifference to our knowledge, because whatever
we can discover about the political situation
helps us to understand the progress of the
conquest; and all that we can get to know
about the religious condition throws light also
upon the ultimate relations between Jahvism
and the worships of the Canaanites.
There is much less knowledge to be drawn
from Egyptian evidence. The mention of
Israel among the Palestinian populations, in
an inscription of King Minephtah, in the
twelfth century before our era, tells us no
more than that of the Chabiri from El-Amarna.
The inscription seems to refer to tribes which
are still nomadic rather than to a people settled
in towns. The names of Jacobel and Josephel
in an inscription of Toutmosis III.,* only prove
the usage of these names to describe some
Canaanite places, at a time when without any
doubt there was no question of a people of
Israel. And there are reasons for thinking that
geschichte. (3rd edn.) II. 352-3. The translation given
of Achiyami's letter is far from certain in its details.
* Sixteenth century B.C. The names may be resolved
into Jacob-El = " El rewards " or supplants, and Joseph-El
=" El assembles."

The Sources 39
the shortened forms, Jacob and Joseph, stand for
the eponymous divinities of towns or tribes.*
In comparison with the very ancient civiliza
tions from which these evidences come, Israel
and its religion are wholly modern. It is this,
above all, which is revealed to us by an history
of the East, reconstructed in its essentials by
the amazing archaeological discoveries of last
century.
* See E. Meyer, 249-53, 281-2, 292.

THE ORIGINS

CHAPTER II

THE ORIGINS

THE roots of the Israelite worship go down
to the common hot-bed of all the Semitic
religions. At the same time, since it was in its
beginnings the religion of nomads it differs not
only from religions with a lettered mythology
and an elaborated ritual, like those of Babylon
and Nineveh ; but also from the religion of the
Phoenicians who were addicted to shipping and
trade, as well as from that of the agricultural
and settled populations of Palestine : and it
approaches nearer to the religion, or perhaps to
the forms of religion, which prevailed among
the Arabs before Islam. It must be observed,
however, that the notions and religious customs
of Israel, though resembling those which must
have prevailed in very early times among all
the Semites, yet have many points of analogy
with those of non-civilized races, and must be
compared with the rudimentary worships of
primitive humanity.
43

44 The Religion of Israel

According to the favourite theory of the last
few years, the most ancient religions were
forms of animism, of spirit- worship ; and the
practices of this worship were analogous to
the fetishism of savages. Later on, under the
pressure of various circumstances, by the ming
ling of tribes, by migrations and conquests, by
the development of society, an hierarchy was
conceived among the spirits ; the personality of
special Gods, the Gods of tribes and cities and
peoples, was indicated more and more clearly :
and this led to polytheism. A feeling of national
pride or of theological fanaticism may have led
certain groups of men to the worship of a single
God, to monolatry ; and by a subordination of
the Gods to a supreme head, by varying systems
of a divine monarchy conceived after the fashion
of earthly kingdoms, there may be found the
rudiments of monotheism. Thence, either by
an intellectual process as among the Greek
philosophers, or by the influence of a strong
moral feeling as with the Hebrew prophets,
men were led on to an exclusive monotheism.
It is, however, proper to observe, that animism
itself means a process of reflection, and is there
fore a form of religious consciousness which has
not been identical throughout the human family.

The Origins 45
Now uncivilized man can easily be imagined as
conceiving and believing himself surrounded
with unknown and indeterminate forces, of
which he might think he understood the
symptoms, and might go on to think that he
had captured the influence. This, again, means
reflection. But one may assert that no man
ever made any start in religion, or even in self-
consciousness, using the terms strictly, without
any reflection at all. Everywhere the vaguer
notion of powers or influences, as compared
with that of spirits, must have been taken
almost for a natural experience, or for an
inevitable deduction resulting from that experi
ence. Caprice and delusion only began with
the reasonings by which men hoped to prescribe
a method for imprisoning and directing these
mysterious forces. Among primitive men this
method is simply magic. But magic thus
understood is at least the contemporary of
religion, if it did not always precede it. And
certainly an impassable barrier cannot be set
up between magic and religion ; since magic has
existed, and still exists, under more or less
attenuated forms, in religions of which no one
would venture to contest the high development.
Magic is only a ruder way of handling the
divine. It is religion not yet differentiated
from the commoner human functions ; and not

46 The Religion of Israel
confined exclusively to the category of things
sacred. Magic becomes superstition as soon as
religion is born, just as a lower form of religion
becomes superstitious in comparison with a
higher. Magic may have the fear of its object,
but neither reverence nor love for it. Never
theless it means already precaution, regularity,
even hope, in the face of what is mysterious ;
one may not say as yet in view of the infinite.
The concept of a religious evolution is, properly
speaking, nothing but an hypothesis ; a con
venient theory to make a setting for the data
which are given us by the study of religions.
So far as this, it may help us to a classification
of the recorded facts. But we must be on our
guard not to mistake this mere abstract setting
for an inevitable law or the infallible plan of all
religious history ; since history does not show
us the undeviating application of this pretended
law. The fetishism of savages has probably for
hundreds or thousands of years been such, or
nearly such, as it may be seen to-day. The
ancient polytheistic religions did not transform
themselves gradually into monotheism. And as
the higher religions have experienced incontest-
ably their alternating periods of progress and
of decadence, so the lower religions have known
times of growth, of impulse more or less
conscious towards a better state, and then a

The Origins 47
recoil, brought on either by external circum
stances, or by that dull stagnation which is
inherent in all religious traditions that are once
stereotyped ; and finally they may go through a
long decrepitude, which resembles the perpetual
childhood of peoples without a future.
The monotheism of the Greek philosophers
was not a natural fruit of Hellenic religion : one
might as well say that the spiritualistic philo
sophy of Victor Cousin and Jules Simon was
a product of Christianity. These results of
rationalistic speculation may depend in some
ways upon the religious doctrines which existed
previously to them ; but they do not follow
from them, since they are wholly outside the
living religion. They are perhaps remains of
beliefs which it has been hoped might be trans
formed into rudiments of science ; but they
have in them no element of reformation or of
religious progress, and they hardly appertain
to the history of religion. The Graeco-Roman
paganism in the course of its existence went
through many changes and adaptations ; but it
remained until the very end a polytheistic
religion. It yielded to Christian monotheism,
having been unable either to absorb or to
transform it ; or to assimilate to it, at any rate
directly, by transforming itself.
On the other hand, the religion of Israel, as

48 The Religion of Israel
we know it by the Bible, was certainly a
monotheism, in which progress may assuredly
be seen ; but it does not appear as the logical
and natural evolution of an earlier polytheism.
The exclusive worship of Yahweh, which was a
fundamental principle of the Israelite religion
after Moses, did not grow out of a polytheistic
worship by eliminating Gods who had been
conceived formerly as equals of the God of
Israel, then as his inferiors, and who were still
honoured in his company. Yahweh, in Scrip
ture, will not tolerate the association of strange
Gods with himself; but he does not seem to
remember that he had to expel any Gods who
had formerly been jointly with him the tradi
tional and lawful protectors of his people.
It is a proved fact that ignorant savages
have still no other religion than animism and
fetishism. It is also certain that the civilized
peoples of antiquity nationalized their Gods,
and formed an hierarchical notion of the divine
world, in which the God of the ruling city or of
the conquering race occupied the highest rank.
And it is affirmed, on the other side, that clear
minds, already cultured though in polytheistic
surroundings, recognised or foresaw that the
balance of the world could only be maintained
by a single principle or by one sovereign master.
Only all these facts, which are dressed up by the

The Origins 49
historians of religion, do not amount to a
mathematical series, in which every stage issues
from that which preceded, and will result in
that which follows, according to the logical
requirements of an evolutionary system. The
evolution doubtless is real, but it does not
follow a regular progression ; and its various
manifestations shatter all the theories by which
we may endeavour to confine it.
All the polytheistic religions have been more
or less fetishist, but this has not kept them
from showing a certain tendency towards
monotheism, by an hierarchical subordination
of the individual Gods to a supreme head,
the sovereign of the other Gods. The majority
of known religions have been formed out
of many discordant principles, through the
mingling of tribes and nations ; and the in
ferior elements which one may meet with in
a religion are not necessarily its most ancient
parts. For they may have been brought into
it by the influences of an older worship ; and
by a kind of survival, which often seems out
of harmony with the principles of the religion
in which it occurs. Because the higher religions
are not produced spontaneously by the lower ;
and although reformers usually go to the
traditions of the past for their foundation,
although for their success they need a support
5

50 The Religion of Israel
from the hopes and feelings of their own
time, yet their personal action, inspiration, and
experiences count high among the causes which
have produced new religions. But, as there is
never any complete innovation, so neither is
there any uninterrupted progress towards an
ideal conceived by the founders of religions.
Preceding worships never cease to maintain
themselves, in spite of everything, in higher
and newer religions. Polytheism has a tendency
to survive in monotheism ; while fetishism, and
even magic, are able to lodge themselves more
or less in religions which profess a theoretical
monotheism, and which were established on
that principle.
On the other hand, the multiplicity, the
variety, and even the external coarseness of
the symbols are not so incompatible as might
be thought with simplicity of faith and
purity of religious feeling. That primitive
man, or man come to the earliest stage of
religion, has conceived of the divinity as the
immediate cause of natural phenomena, and
at the same time as a spirit, a kind of
attenuated genius, who moves freely through
space ; that he has thought to put himself
into relation with it by means of a material
object, by a fetish of any description; this is
in accordance with all the probabilities : since,

The Origins 51
without referring to pagan mythologies, a
storm is still considered a theophany in the
Bible; and the God of the patriarchs used
consecrated stones for his shrine and symbol.
But if the materialised forms of the religious
thought be put aside, the rudimentary notion
of an all-powerful God can be detected in
the natural agent, and the germ of God the
Father may be discovered in an anthropomor
phic spirit.
It has often happened that the fatherhood
of a God has been conceived as real and
physical, not merely as a moral relationship ;
and the tutelary God of a tribe has been
imagined as its primitive ancestor. Neverthe
less a moral notion of some sort did exist
under this childish fancy, and the physical
paternity was only a material explanation of
it. Fetishism is a tangible witness to the divine
presence. Whatever one may do, there can
be no religion without images. The highest
conception that man can form of God is still
an idol, in the first meaning of the word,
within which he tries to bound the infinite.
He desires to feel God at his disposal ; and
inasmuch as he does not know how to
conceive of him as present, within himself
and in his conscience, he imagines him by
his side, and wishes to control him under

52 The Religion of Israel
his hand. He wishes also to have him on his
side ; and generally, in practice, he does not split
up his worship among many supernatural
beings, whom he might think equally power
ful and equally interested in his affairs ; but
he has a spirit or a God who is his own
special guardian, or that of his family, his
tribe, his nation, if the sphere of his relationships
be enlarged. This God is in fact the sole
God for him ; and polytheism should be
ascribed rather to the mentality of the wor
shipper than to his religion.
A worship, then, comparatively pure can
exist early, and among tribes far removed
from civilization ; under forms of ritual and
in company with notions which to us are
downright stupid or even shocking, but which
are congruous with the mental state and the
material circumstances of those who find in
them a God and a religion. A species of tradi
tional monotheism was thus able to establish
itself among tribes which were cut off from
the movements which produced the earliest
nations and civilizations, as well as the first
durable systems of polytheistic religion. The
world, no doubt, swarmed with spirits ; but
the tutelary genius of the family or tribe was,
from the religious point of view, the only
one which existed for it, which had in

The Origins 53

relation to it a well-defined personality and
a continuity of action. It was with this spirit
that was established the mystical relationship
and the perpetual communion which consti
tute a religion : it was he who was the
lord and father, the true chief, and the
supernatural ancestor. A conscious and
pondered monotheism issued far more easily
from one of these tribal worships, than from
a lettered and intricate polytheism, born of
political circumstances, promoted into a national
service, identified with the history of the
people which maintained it, allegorizing that
history more or less in its myths, and per
petuating itself by institutions which were all
the more opposed to religious progress in so
far as they were united firmly to the parti
cular institutions of an highly organized society.
The notion of duty has undergone the same
vicissitudes as the notion of God. There cannot
be a religion without some kind of religious
morality. The God-spirit stirs up a feeling of
personal devotion to himself. Man pictures him
in his own image, with a will, desires, and even
caprices, which must all be satisfied if his
protection and an appropriate reward are to
be earned. So far as he is a spirit the God
is to be reverenced as placable and ultimately
beneficent ; as a power he is to be respected

54 The Religion of Israel
because he is aloof and sacred. But neither
his goodness nor his holiness are conceived
as fundamental attributes : they are rather
qualities and motions, physical as much as
moral properties, and their various aspects are
not clearly separable. In polytheistic religions
the Gods of light are the Gods of justice ;
and even in Job * the sun shaketh the wicked
out of the earth. This is because physical candor
and moral purity were formerly associated
in men's -thoughts : because the shining God,
the foe of darkness and confusion, who scatters
with his beams the chaos of night, the
immaculate God, whose very nature abhors
all corruption, was, at the same time and, it
may be added, for these reasons, the enemy
also of dark and maligant actions. And
why is it also in Leviticus + that God
requires unblemished victims, why does he
exclude from his priesthood the blind and
mutilated, why does he ban the lepers? It
is, declares the sacred book, because he is
holy ; and the same reason is given, in the
same terms, to forbid theft, murder, and
adultery. Acts which hurt the welfare of the tribe
and the goods of its members, which hit at
the God himself through his family and
* Job xxxviii. 12-15. + Leviticus xix.-xx.

The Origins 55
clients, were regarded formerly as specially evil
and punishable. But it is obvious that this
condemnation was not based on a reasoned
experience nor on profound arguments. That
which we now describe as superstition held a
large place in it. A man exposed himself to
the anger of the spirits by doing such or
such a thing ; he was liable to a murderous
explosion of that divine electricity which was
diffused everywhere : his way was barred by
a defensive prohibition, absolute or relative,
enacted by the heads of the family or clan,
or even by the priests, who were still more or
less wizards and magicians ; and such a pro
hibition was sacred, both in itself and by the
ceremonial of its proclamation. For the
earliest laws, it would seem, were tabus: the
notification of things which must not be
done. The penalty was joined to the prohi
bition. Whosoever violated the latter was
enveloped in a divine curse, outlawed for a
time or permanently, according to the nature
of the case, devoted to the harmful powers,
expelled from his tribe to which he had become
a danger. Personal, family, and social morality
was thus a religious morality; and it was as
rudimentary as the religion.
It is from this foundation of confused notions,
in which spirit hardly disengages itself from

56 The Religion of Israel
matter, or an abstract notion from sensuous
feelings, from a mass of customs which to us
are strange and superstitious that there emerges
suddenly the religion of Israel : the exclusive
worship of a single God who has, like others,
a personal name, since he is called Yahweh ;
but who soon separates himself from the others
by preventing them from holding a place
beside him. § 2
Patriarchal elohism has formerly been dis
cussed at length. And it is less needful to
delay over it now, because we talk no longer
about Hebrew patriarchs, but about Semitic
nomads ; and we no longer try to establish a
theory, about the primitive religion of the
Semites, on the Biblical usage of the word
Elohim. That word is used, practically, to mean God ;
although the plural form seems to require
that it should be translated " the Gods,"
and it often has this meaning in Scripture
when there is a question of alien Gods. Some
people have wished to see in this a proof of
polytheism among the forefathers of Israel.
Old grammarians and apologists of the Bible
thought they removed the difficulty by asserting
gravely that the word Elohim was applied to

The Origins 57
the true God as a plural of majesty. Others
have imagined that the plural number sym
bolised the multiplicity of attributes or per
fections in God; but this explanation is a
little too metaphysical and subtil. There is a
detail, too, which complicates the problem.
The singular Eloh, which is found in other
Semitic languages, is not met with in Hebrew,
except in poetry, to signify God, and then
with precisely the same meaning as Elohim;
it is never used with the meaning of " a
God." It would seem that in Hebrew the
plural was older than the singular ; the latter
being derived, as to its usage, from the
former ; and the use of the singular being
relatively new, limited, and almost unnatural.
The use of the plural, then, is not a
clear proof of polytheism, as if the word
expressed inevitably a multiplicity of persons.
On the other hand, the plural cannot have
been originally a term of unity. It must
have conveyed formerlyvan impersonal notion,
though doubtless not an abstract one. It is
not the spontaneous definition of a rigorously
monotheistic notion. The etymological sense
of the word is not clear : it must be related
to the word El, which means " God " or " a
God ; " and which forms its plural regularly,
Elim, divine beings. Force seems to be the

58 The Religion of Israel
primitive notion attached to the word El, and
it must have had at first a concrete and
personal meaning ; an El is a very strong,
supernatural, and divine being. But we must
not conclude that El was formerly a sort of
proper name, which afterwards became common.
The use of this word as a proper name, or
as the equivalent of a divine personal name,
is not more significant than the usage of the
word baal, "Lord," under similar conditions.
And the etymology derived from the notion
of guidance or mastership, " he to whom one
is driven by longing," or " close to whom one
goes for protection," even if it were as certain
as it is unlikely, would not prove that El
was formerly the proper name of the God
of the Semites. For this etymology would not
involve an unity of being ; and it certainly
is arbitrary to pre-suppose a time when the
ancestors of all the Semitic peoples formed
a homogeneous society worshipping a single
God. Elohim, as a noun of quality, might mean
" a terror," " a dread power." Hebrew is
inclined to use the plural to embody psycho
logical impressions and general notions. If
the existence of plurals of majesty be exceed
ingly dubious, emphatic plurals cannot be
challenged. The same tribes who from of old

The Origins 59
employed the word El to describe their God
or some special God, and the word Elim to
describe " the Gods," might well understand by
Elohim the divine power, without troubling
about the unity or the multiplicity of the divine
beings. In Israel, where the personality of
Yahweh absorbed the totality of divine power,
it became habitual to apply the word Elohim
as a term of unity to Yahweh or to any other
God, and as a collective or plural noun to Gods
in general.
Nomads have a religion of the clan. The
tribe is a social and religious unity. The group
is responsible for the individual, and the
individual belongs to the group. This spirit
of solidarity, which makes of the tribe a petty
world, with strict internal obligations, but with
none at all outside itself, is summed up, as one
may say, in the tutelary genius of the tribe,
who is its father and ruler. As it does not
trouble about the rest of the world, so it does
not conceive of its God as occupying himself
with what goes on upon earth and in the skies.
Heaven and earth are filled with divine beings
who ordain what happens. The scene of action
of the God does not over-pass the limit of
extension of his human family. He has his
special name, and his favourite place : a spring,
a tree, or a grove, a stone, or a mass of rock.

60 The Religion of Israel
The poem which Deuteronomy has given
us as the blessings of Moses to the tribes still
describes Yahweh as "him that dwelt in the
bush " ; * and it is clear that this bush, in which
the God of Israel made himself known to his
prophet, was considered at first as his usual
abode. That is why Moses was warned to take
off his shoes before approaching it, if he would
avoid being treated as sacrilegious, t
The sanctuary of the God is a place marked
out for acts of worship. The rites practised
there have for their sole end the maintenance
of relations, the community of life, so to speak,
between the God and his clients. And as it
is a tie of blood which unites them, so it is
in blood that they communicate most willingly.
It is often by a pledge of blood that the
addition of a new member to the tribe is
ratified, and also the alliances of tribes with
one another, if it so happen that several
coalesce under the auspices of their various
divinities, or of the God of a leading tribe.
The common meal which took place on those
occasions was not merely a sign of fraternity :
it was understood as a participation in the
same sacred life which had its highest source in
the God.
It may be asked, whence came this God of
* Deuteronomy xxxiii. 16. t Exodus iii. 2-5.

The Origins 61
the tribe ; and sometimes an adoption by the
clan has been imagined of a divinity chosen
from a populous pantheon. But, if we go back
to the beginning, was not the organization of
tribal worship prior to the constitution of
polytheism in a hierarchy of divine families ?
And, apart from the influence of the civilization
and religion of a settled people over nomads,
could one find the leading Gods of the mytho
logies at the head of wandering tribes? The
ancient God of the tribe is still not far removed
from an attenuated spirit. It is to define him
too precisely, to say he is the personification
of a natural force, or even the soul of an ancient
chief guarding his posterity : he might approach
to being both one and the other, without being
exactly either one or the other. But he
belongs to that world of spirits who people
the air, the earth, and the waters, and into
which also the spirits of the dead may return.
How, then, did they know him? Why did
they adopt him? Probably he made himself
known, like Yahweh in the bush. Some
accidental and amazing chance may have re
vealed his presence, or even the nature of
his habitation may have betrayed him. A
link may have been forged and strengthened,
a kind of agreement struck. They may have
annexed the spirit by the fitting rites, and

62 The Religion of Israel
the spirit may have given himself to the tribe,
so far as a spirit can give himself. Or, rather,
the question is not one to be asked or' settled ;
certainly not with the implication that one
can imagine a society without any religion,
and adopting a tutelary spirit for the sole
purpose of having a God : and is the personality
of the God to be explained by the way in
which the tribe organized itself into a conscious
society? . . .
The state of the evidence, it would seem,
does not warrant us in affirming that the
Semitic tribes went through a period of
totemism, strictly speaking, in which every
clan worshipped some kind of animal, to which
it thought itself related. Nevertheless it is
not fitting to be too sceptical in this matter,
nor to assert that nothing analogous is to be
found among the ancestors of Israel. If the
Bible is accurate in connecting with the
memory of Moses the brazen serpent which
was the object of a special worship in the
temple of Jerusalem down to the time of
Hezekiah, although the story in Numbers *
about the cures worked by this fetish may
only be a mythical explanation of the tra
ditional worship, yet one may infer that the
tribe of Moses held the serpent as a sacred
* Numbers xxi, 6-9.

The Origins 63
animal : that the brazen serpent had been a
symbol of Yahweh, as the bull was in the
days of the kings of Israel ; and that Yahweh
himself in his beginnings may have been a
snake God.*
If we imagine several tribes preserved by
their way of life and their isolation from the
relationships and the commingling which
generate a practising polytheism, in which the
life of the clan ensures to the tutelary God
the advantage of an almost exclusive worship ;
where there still remains more of animism
than of polytheism and mythology in the
modern sense of those words; where the God
is distinctly personal without being wholly
disengaged from nature; where he is not the
head of a divine family, but the parent of
his worshippers ; where the metaphysical unity
of God is not conceived more clearly than the
actual unity of the world, or than the physical
and moral unity of mankind in its various
branches ; where the tribe forms, as it were,
a world and a humanity limited by its God:
through these comparisons, we should probably
* See E. Meyer, 116, 426-7. This author asks if the
magic rod of Moses, which changed itself into a snake,
was not in fact the brazen serpent ; and also the sign
or standard (nSs) which gave its name to the altar of
Yahweh-nissi.

6a. The Religion of Israel
get the least imperfect and inaccurate notion
that we can frame of the very singular
environment in which germinated the worship
of Yahweh, the God of Israel, and afterwards
the universal God. § 3
Before working out the historical growth
and progress which were attained by these
notions of God, it may be advisable to glance
at the details of worship which, though insisted
upon by the Jahvist traditions, betray the signs
nevertheless of a more distant origin, and
show in their own way that the religion of
Moses and the prophets came to light through
less pure traditions, which never ceased to
affect the external forms of Israelite monotheism
down to the overthrow of the Jewish nation,
and even right on to our own times.
The chief practices of the Mosaic religion
did not come from the notion of one spiritual
God, infinitely just and beneficent, but from
conceptions which were far less exalted ; and
if the original meaning of these practices was
modified in the course of time, under the
influences of a higher ideal, their primitive
character is not less recognisable. Regarded
in the light of these fundamental practices,
the religion of Israel may be reduced to

The Origins 65
circumcision, rules concerning things clean and
unclean, sacrifices, the sabbath, the prescribed
feasts, and the ark of Yahweh. Now not one
of these details is attached necessarily to the
notion of a God who is supremely just, and
to whom one becomes acceptable only by purity
of heart, for they all, on the contrary, belong
rather to the notion of a tribal or national God.
They pertain, also, to the notion of a God of
nature, who lives with his people and as they
do, supplying them abundantly with the fruits
of the earth, and the f ruitfulness of their cattle.
And behind these notions even earlier traces
can be detected, reaching back into the period
when magic was confounded with religion.
Some people have aimed at giving a physical
reason for the origin of circumcision. But
granted that there was in fact such a reason,
which is at best uncertain, the men who first
adopted this custom were incapable of under
standing it as a medical practice or as a matter
of common utility. They mingled with it
superstitious fancies which for us must deprive
it of any exalted symbolism. To do violence
to the human body, especially in a part of it
which was sacred before it was shameful, and
to draw blood from it, could not be an ordinary
act, but was a sacrament of the highest efficacy,
whatever else may have been its purpose.

66 The Religion of Israel
It has been imagined, too, that circumcision
might have been formerly a mutilation inflicted
on prisoners of war, and that it was afterwards
explained as a token of submission, or of
consecration to the Gods. But circumcision
seems never to have been regarded as a mark
of subjection ; and the story of the hundred
Philistines whom David mutilated, after killing
them, cannot be utilised in support of this
hypothesis. David, in fact, did not circumcise
against their will a hundred living Philistines:
he brought to Saul the material evidence of
his exploit, namely the slaughter of a hundred
uncircumcised.* The most ancient writings already attribute
to this rite a capital importance. It is enough
to recall the adventure of Moses, when he was
attacked by Yahweh himself in the wilderness,
and delivered by the intervention of his wife
Zipporah, who, having circumcised their boy
with a flint, touched her uncircumcised husband
with the shred of flesh taken from the child,
so that Moses himself might have the appear
ance of being circumcised, t It may be admitted
* 1 Samuel xviii. 27.
t Exod. iv. 24, 25. The text is doubtful, and it might
read that the mark was imprinted on Yahweh himself
by Zipporah, who says to God, not to Moses, "A bloody
husband art thou to me." See E. Meyer, 59.

The Origins 67
willingly that the Jahvist historian, to whom
we owe this narrative, has wished to demon
strate how in Israel the circumcision of
children was substituted for the earlier custom
of circumcising youths at the age of puberty.
The obligation of the rite may have been held
binding in itself, without having any need of
justification, by the natural exclusion of an
uncircumcised person from every relation with
Yahweh. In any case, the meaning of this
savage incident would be less high. On this
occasion Yahweh did not behave as God, but
as a ferocious being appeasable by blood.
The basis of the equally ancient narrative in
Joshua,* about the circumcision of the Israelites
after crossing Jordan, enables us to infer that
in order to hold the land of Yahweh lawfully
the children of Jacob had to submit to a sacred
mutilation. It compels us also to suspect that
circumcision was not practised in Israel before
the arrival in Canaan, although it was customary
with the Egyptians. We have seen that the
Jahvist historian takes it back a little farther,
to Moses, but not into patriarchal times.
In the priestly document of the Hexateuch,
circumcision is presented with another explana
tion, as being the indispensable condition of
legal purity, and the sign of the alliance
* Joshua v. 2-9.

68 The Religion of Israel
between God and the posterity of Abraham.
The divine preference appears as the only
reason for the necessity of the custom. But,
whence the reason for so whimsical a choice?
The efficacy which the writer attributes to it,
by reason of its divine institution, is wholly in
the moral sphere, and does not come in any sense
from the rite itself, as in the earlier accounts.
Possibly because he holds the custom to be
more ancient than Moses, or rather because
Abraham is for him the real father of the
Hebrews, who must have borne the sign of
election ; and so he attaches the precept of
circumcision to the call of the patriarch.
In reality, circumcision was known elsewhere
than in Israel, and was practised before the
supposed date of Abraham. It was habitual
in Egypt from the earliest antiquity, and it
may be supposed, with sufficient probability,
to have been an old custom of the African
tribes, made known through the Egyptians to
some of the western Semites. It was not a
Semitic practice, because the Semites of Mesopo
tamia appear to have been completely ignorant
of it; and even the priestly writer does not
imagine that Abraham could have known it in
the country of his birth. It belongs undoubtedly
to that kind of trial, often strange and sanguin
ary, by which among half -civilized peoples the

The Origins 69
passing from youth into manhood is consecrated;
and which initiates a young man into the social
and religious life of his tribe. The mutilation
itself, and the spilling of blood, under the
conditions in which they were carried out
formerly, were religious symbols, and these
among savages are not discriminated from
their effects : an agreement by blood expresses
and inaugurates the adult freedom of a young
man, and his incorporation into his tribe. Even
this meaning need not be primitive, if the rite,
as is hinted by the foregoing quotation from
Exodus, were anciently a sort of homage to the
spirits, so as to prevent or avert their anger
and its vengeance.
When the organization of the clan was re
placed by a higher social state, circumcision,
rooted as it was in custom, was maintained
while taking on a sense more or less different
from that which it had in the beginning. It
was preserved in Egypt among the priests as
the symbol of a religious purity from which
common men were dispensed. It was kept
among the Arabs as a general custom, and a
ceremony preceding marriage, losing thereby
much of its sacred character. Among the
Israelites its religious significance prevailed ;
and circumcision, maintained as an universal
obligation, was a sign of initiation into the

70 The Religion of Israel
national religion. It was desirable to assure
the advantages of this initiation as early as
possible, to those capable of receiving it, and
thence came the circumcision of children. The
use of sharpened flints for the operation wit
nesses to the hoary antiquity of the custom.
The choice of the eighth day after birth may
have some relation to the ancient practice of
immolating the first-born.
The distinction between things clean and
unclean, between states of purity and im
purity, which fills so great a place in the
Mosaic legislation, belongs to the same order
of naturalistic conceptions. We are guilty of
a foolish anachronism if we imagine that the
terms pure and impure were, in the beginning,
equivalents of clean and dirty, or healthy and
unhealthy. The notion of pure and impure in
the Bible is exclusively religious : it is neither
moral nor utilitarian. If certain legal com
mands or prohibitions resulted in good physio
logical consequences, that was not the motive
which decided the order or the prohibition. The
meaning is to be sought in the ancient notions of
holiness. Holy things were those of which the
usage was withdrawn, wholly or in part, from
man, and reserved to the divinity. Impure
things were those which the divinity abhorred,
and which for that reason were not tolerated

The Origins 71
in his service. Between the two are things
common, simply pure or indifferent, which
might occasionally be infected by worship or
impurity. It is in these forms, and with these
general applications, that notions of holiness,
of purity, of impurity, appear not only in the
religion of Israel, but in many other religions.
A thing impure would often seem to be
something connected with a foreign or a lower
religion ; for instance, to the worship of spirits,
or of the dead. Consequently, that which has
become impure was in its beginning sacred, in
a wider sense, as a habitation of spirits, or
a receptacle of supernatural activity. The
distinction of holy and impure was made
afterwards, between things which were related
to the Gods and became appropriated to their
worship, and those which continued more or
less in the usage of spirits or of magic. The
primitive identity of holy and impure is shown
in that both are contagious in the same
way ; and that the touching of holy things
requires a ceremony of purification, or if you
will of de-consecration, similar to that which is
required by the touching of impure things.
Thus the same ritual ablutions are used in the
two Cases.
Why were certain kinds of animals held to
be impure, and certain conditions of man and

72 The Religion of Israel
of woman, and corpses? It may be said,
speaking generally, that the reason was a
superstitious fear, which counselled a tem
porary or a permanent interdict of certain
persons, animals, and things. A harmful
plant, a mischievous or repulsive beast, was
mistrusted formerly as the incarnation of a
dangerous spirit; or even a certain animal
may have been held so sacred that man had
not ordinarily a right to touch it. Everything
which related to generation, to illnesses, and to
death has been thought by early peoples to be
involved in the working of unseen and terrible
forces, contact with which was not free from
danger. Hence have come the rules about
sexual relations, the impurities of man and
woman, abstinence from blood, conceived as
the seat of life and the containing vessel of
the spirit, about the handling of corpses, and
the treatment of diseases which were regarded
as a species of diabolic possession.
Everywhere primitive medicine was made up
of exorcisms, and the doctors were priests, at
least when they were sorcerers and wizards.
If the MoSaic regulations about lepers be read
with care, it will be seen easily that the end
in view was neither the healing of the
disease, nor properly speaking the measures to
be taken against contagion, but the state of

The Origins 73
impurity, of religious incapacity, one might
say of divine reprobation, in which the patient
found himself. If one ought not to touch a
leper, that was not really because it exposed
a man to the danger of catching the disease,
but because by contact he shared in the leper's
impurity, which brought with it some of the
curse involved, and exposed one to the action
of the evil spirit who was in the leper. This
simple and popular conception of illness is to
be found even in the Gospels, in which the
space occupied by stories of possession is
notorious. The most recent Biblical texts set forth
sacrifices as the natural and indispensable means
of getting into communication with the deity ;
whether to pay him homage or thanks, or to
win his protection, or to expiate faults com
mitted against him and to appease his anger.
It has been disputed how sacrifice came for
merly to be thought so necessary, and so
entirely natural. Admitting that religion had
its sole origin in fear, many have thought that
sacrifice was at first only a childish expedient
to calm or forestall the rage of the higher
powers, by offering presents which were
thought pleasing to them. Nevertheless, since
the religious feeling is not made up solely of
fear, but of confidence also, and since religion

kJ

74 The Religion of Israel
is not merely a guarantee against the divine,
but is also a means of appropriating it, so
sacrifice was not only a simple way of buy
ing from the Gods a little security, but the
notion of communion was associated with the
notion of offering. The supernatural efficacy
of sacrifice did not come solely because it was
a gift accepted by the deity, but because it
was also the means of forming, carrying on,
strengthening, and renewing the active tie
which united the God to his worshippers. The
most ancient sacrifices were not meals served
up to the God alone ; they were banquets in
which the God had, as was right, the better
part, but to which he admitted his servitors
with himself : it was not only homage that was
rendered him, but there was an efficacious
sacrament of his alliance with his followers.
It is true that in historical times, after
Israel was established in Canaan, and Yahweh
had become Lord of the country, the whole
mass of sacrifices and ritual offerings was
conceived as a tribute pertaining naturally to
the deity. But the usual participation of the
offerer, the prescribed conditions for being
admitted to the sacred feast, the character of
holiness that was attached to the things
offered, and especially to the sacrificial victims,
all show that the feeling of a divine com-

The Origins 75
munion still survived. St. Paul was arguing
entirely according to ancient notions when
he wrote * " The bread which we break is it
not a communion of the body of Christ ? seeing
that we who are many are one body, one
bread, for we all partake of the one bread.
Behold Israel after the flesh : have not they
which eat the sacrifices communion with the
altar ? " The Apostle ought to have said :
" mess-mates of God " ; respect for the Eternal
attenuated here the wording of the prin
ciple on which the whole argument rests.
" But I say that the things which the Gentiles
sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to
God : and I would not that ye should have
communion with devils. Ye cannot drink the
cup of the Lord and the cup of devils. Ye
cannot partake of the table of the Lord, and
of the table of devils."
Amos declares that the Israelites in the
wilderness offered no sacrifices to Yahweh. t
But his assertion is contradicted by the most
ancient legends, and by all the probabilities :
it does prove, however, that there was no
knowledge in the time of this prophet of any
Mosaic legislation about sacrifices ; and it
means that the ritual of sacrifices, in the eighth
century before our era, was, for the most part,
* 1 Cor. x. 16-21. t Amos v. 29.

76 The Religion of Israel
that which Israel had borrowed from the
Canaanites, not that which its nomadic an
cestors had practised formerly. Certain narra
tives appear to suggest the vague memory of an
evolution. Thus the legend connected with
the altar of Yahweh-Shalom at Ophrah
may be meant to explain the substitution of
holocausts and offerings by fire for the presen
tation of food : Gideon had made ready a kid,
and was bringing it all prepared for the God,
with unleavened bread ; but Yahweh made
him put everything on the sacred stone, then
he touched the food with his staff, and im
mediately flame burst out of the rock, the
meats disappeared, and Yahweh with them.*
It might be argued from this that the old
custom of the place authorized the presenting of
cooked food as an offering, but that the Israelite
custom substituted for such offerings the burn
ing of victims, or of the portions of victims
which were set apart for Yahweh. But this
substitution was not peculiar to Israel ; and
there remained in the worship of Yahweh some
traces of primitive custom, since the daily
offering of the shew-bread was continued until
the destruction of the second temple.
We may infer that the method of conveying
to the God his portion would vary with the
* Judges vi. 17-24.

The Origins 77
opinions which were current about the deity.
The blood, as a vital fluid, was from very early
times the food reserved exclusively for the divine
spirit, even when he lived in stones, in trees, or in
other objects. Besides, the blood was specially
sacred as the seat of life, and very soon there
was a scruple about taking it. The other parts
of the victim which were judged, for analogous
reasons, to be particularly sacred and so fit
for the God, were burnt so as to be offered
him in the smoke. The Biblical metaphor
about sacrifices of a pleasing smell were then
understood literally. It was after having
sniffed the fumes of the sacrifice offered by
Noah that Yahweh resolved not to cause
another flood. There would have been no
reason to consider the sacrifices as an offering,
if it had not been imagined that they brought
some advantage to the deity; and the part
which the worshippers took to nourish them
selves with when a victim was sacrificed would
have been meaningless if it were not bound
to procure them the advantages of a closer
union with their God.
The difficulty of tracing back the notions
which produced the custom of sacrifices is
caused by the complexity of the practice
itself ; for all the elements in it have neither
the same origin, nor have been derived from

78 The Religion of Israel
the same conceptions. It is not easy to say
whether the notion of sacrifice as an offering
preceded or followed the notion of sacrifice as
a communion ; or whether, indeed, the two
notions are not equally old, though perhaps
they may have originated formerly in different
circumstances, or even possibly in the same.
Nomadic Israel must have practised the sacri
fice of communion before learning the system
of offerings which it got to know in Canaan.
The sacrifice of communion, too, is congruous
with the life of a tribe. The worship of spirits
leads more naturally to simple offerings. And
certain sacrifices would seem to have no con
nexion with the notion either of offering or of
communion. There are some which do not
reflect the usual intercourse of a family with
its divine father, or of a people with its
heavenly master and guardian.
Human sacrifices were not unknown to
ancient Israel. The legend of Jephthah, which
must be the mythical explanation of some local
worship, does not fail to show that the im
molation of a human victim was allowed, at
least in exceptionally grave circumstances.
The legend dealing with the sacrifice of Isaac
is not less significant; for it is evidently
meant to show that Yahweh deigned to be
satisfied with animals, and that he did not

The Origins 79
insist upon the children of his worshippers,
though he had the right to exact them. These
notions and prepossessions imply an earlier and
regular practice of human sacrifices, especially
in the sanctuary of El Mor4 at Shechem,*
whither Elohim had led Abraham for the
sacrifice of his son. The sanctuary, in fact, was
Canaanite ; but the legend is not very old and
deals with a worship practised by Israel in
imitation of Canaan. This worship is reproved,
in addition, with singular moderation ; and we
shall see farther on that the sacrifice of the
first-born may have been practised in Israel
for longer and far more generally than is
usually admitted. Human sacrifice was the
rule in Canaan at the foundation of towns, and
even of houses. It is hardly probable that the
Israelites never followed this example. When
Hiel the Bethelite rebuilt Jericho in the days of
Ahab, he sacrificed his eldest son at its founda
tion, and his youngest when he set up the gates. I
In the affair of Jephthah it may be said that
* The reading Moriah, in Genesis xxii. 2 is faulty. One
should read, probably, "in the land of the Amorites."
It was a question of consecrating the holy place of
Shechem, and the text seems to have been changed
because of the Samaritans.
f Kings xvi. 34. The Biblical tradition wishes to
imply that these youths died through a curse uttered
formerly by Joshua (vi. 26) ; but the original meaning

80 The Religion of Israel
the human sacrifice was thought to be an
unusual method of propitiation. But why had
human blood so high an efficacy? As to sacri
fices of foundation, when the victim was laid
under the building, we are led naturally to
suppose that they were connected rather with
the spirits of the place than with a deity.
Nevertheless the prevalence of the custom at
a time and with surroundings in which the
worship of the Gods had long flourished does not
allow us to doubt that the practice was adapted
to their service ; just as it is certain that the
sacrifice of the first-born was offered to Yahweh
in the decline of the Davidic monarchy. Incon-
testably, too, the Gods liked blood.
The rite of the Passover is older than the
settlement of Israel in Canaan : older, even,
than the worship of Yahweh by Israel. It was
celebrated by night ; and the blood on the door
posts was for the spirit who went his rounds in
the darkness, as he attacked men under cover
of the gloom. The liking of the Semitic Gods,
and even of Yahweh, for blood, was it not
a legacy to them from the spirits? The tabu
of blood supposes a pre-existing custom. The
cannot be doubted. After the recent excavations at
Taanech, for instance, it may be asserted that the body
of the elder son was put under the foundation-stone, and
of the younger below the gates.

The Origins 81

spirits would not have loved blood if men them
selves had not begun by having a taste for it.
The conclusion that there was both life and
a spirit in the blood could not be wholly primi
tive ; it is parallel to the deyelopment of
animism ; it may have caused the prohibition,
and have contributed afterwards to its obser
vance. The importance of bloody rites may
have been conceived later ; the offering of
blood, under certain fixed conditions, which
made it a ceremony of consecration, bringing
the maximum of divine efficacy of which any
given matter was capable, would lead on to
its being considered the most solemn and im
portant of all religious acts.
But it is not enough to say that blood became
pleasing to the Gods because formerly it was
thought grateful to the spirits ; a ceremony
with blood seems to have had in itself a con
straining power over the will of the Gods, since
magic had probably used blood in its most
potent charms. The Bible quotes the case of
a human sacrifice made by Mesha, King of
Moab : this king, besieged by the kings of
Israel, Judah, and Edom, and reduced to the
last extremity, offered his son as a burnt offer
ing on the city wall. "And there was great
wrath against Israel," * says the historian of
* 2 Kings iii. 27.
7

82 The Religion of Israel
the Kings, who hardly knows to what influence
to attribute the panic of the besiegers, but who
does not doubt that the sacrifice of Mesha let
loose against his enemies a supernatural force
which put them to flight. Mesha certainly
offered the sacrifice to his God, Chemosh ; but
it was not done to present him with his son as
an offering or as food, it was to determine the
volition of the God, to force the hand of destiny.
Perhaps in these extraordinary cases the
original notion that was attached to bloody
sacrifices reappears ; and thus perhaps human
sacrifices may be explained, of which the origin
is not necessarily later than that of animal
sacrifices. On one side human sacrifices may
be connected historically with the worship of
the dead, to whom it was desirable to give
companions and servants ; but these butcheries
were not as yet strictly speaking sacrifices,
and a reason for the special efficacy attri
buted to the ritual offering of men and animals
must be sought elsewhere.
The conditions in which the sacrificers lived
must have influenced the choice of victims.
That choice was determined also by special
considerations, such as the sacred character
attributed to particular kinds of animals.
Any victim, even a human one, was suitable
for magic purposes and the nourishment of

The Origins 83
spirits. In the worship of a tribe organized
under the protection of a God, the domestic
animals serve for the sacrifice of communion.
Finally every rite, the grossest, the most absurd
and cruel, which had none of these qualities
for those who first adopted and handed it on,
maintained itself when once established, and
was perpetuated by the influence of tradition ;
it changed its significance according to need,
but it lived on, and was held to be a necessary
element in the social fabric or an essential
ingredient of religion. This power of religious
tradition was needed to make the sacrifice of
a living being, which was a magic rite origi
nally and in its first conception, a regular means
of divine communion and propitiation ; and to
continue it in the religion of Israel, even
when its notions of God had made such
practices superfluous, and might seem rather
to exclude them ; and to propel, the theory
at least, right into the Christian theology,
which has contrived to find in the death of
the Christ an offering upon which the whole
scheme of salvation depends.
The Sabbath was an application of that
religious interdict which we have seen exer
cised in regard to things and persons. In
Babylon, the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first,
and twenty-eighth of each month, intervals

84 The Religion of Israel
corresponding to the phases of the moon, were
days either holy or nefasti, according to the
point of view from which the prohibition of
certain works or occupations was looked at.
As there are certain holy places into which
access is not allowed to ordinary mortals, or
only under certain fixed conditions, so there
are also holy seasons, which are violated by
various human acts. In its origin, the mean
ing of the sabbath among the Israelites was
not different. To sanctify the sabbath was to
respect the prohibition in which that day was
involved, by abstaining from work ; by work
ing, one profaned, or soiled, or violated the
sabbath day. The sabbath was holy in itself,
through its divine institution, as the precincts
of a shrine are holy through their appropria
tion by the God who chooses to dwell in them.
The obligation to observe it is not based upon
humanitarian or moral reasons, but on a
religious motive after the manner of antiquity.
It is hardly necessary to say that the sabbath
existed before the explanation which is given
of it in the Biblical story of the creation. But,
in the story itself the consecration of the
sabbath is not an appropriation of that day
to works of piety, it is the tabu which the
Creator is held to have put on that day, which
henceforth belonged to him exclusively, and

The Origins 85

on which human activities were offensive to
him. By abstaining himself from work on
that day, God gave to man an example of the
abstention which he ought to observe. It was
the speculative theologian annexing for the
benefit of monotheism the traditional notions
of a consecrated season.
Apparently, the observance of the sabbath
varied in the progress of the centuries. Many
think now that, under that name, the full moon
was celebrated formerly; and that the obser
vance of a weekly sabbath, with a division of
the year into weeks which do not correspond
with the lunar months, is not very ancient.
This division must have been borrowed by the
Israelites, probably from Chaldaea; but this
latter hypothesis is not otherwise established.
By degrees, as humanitarian sentiment was
joined bo the religious notion, men began to
wish that slaves, hirelings, and even beasts of
burthen should be released from work. After
the exile, though the primitive character of
the institution was not wholly obliterated, yet,
through the meetings of the synagogue, the
sabbath took a leading place in Jewish life,
and acquired a higher kind of sanctification by
religious instruction and community in prayer.
The observance of the new moon, which
was unimportant in the Law, was developed

86 The Religion of Israel
in the Israelite worship down to the period
of the exile. It was the feast of the opening
month ; and its object formerly was to welcome
the reappearance of the moon. It goes back
without any doubt to the nomadic time, and it
was stamped with a naturalistic character
which gradually faded out of it.
The feasts which are far better known, the
Passover, Pentecost, Tents or Tabernacles, be
came solemn commemorations of the exodus,
of the giving of the Law, of the sojourn in
the wilderness, though at first they had
other meanings. The feast of the Passover
had acquired its traditional interpretation
before the captivity ; but the historical explana
tion of the two other feasts is less ancient.
The ritual of all three shows that they were
connected originally with the progression of
the seasons and of the crops, and with the
increase of cattle. Thus the Passover is the
feast of spring and of renewal ; Pentecost, the
festival of harvest ; the feast of Tabernacles
celebrates the gathering in of fruit and the
vintage. The spiritual meaning came later.
The sacrifice of the paschal lamb, a rite which
contrasts so frankly with the ordinary ways of
sacrifice in the levitical code, is a family sacrifice
for the new year. The victim, a lamb or a kid
of the previous spring, would be just fit to in-

The Origins 87
augurate the new year. The blood on the
door indicated then the consecration of the
house and all the family, of goods and persons.
The Law forbad eating the lamb uncooked, or
breaking its bones, while it ordained that it
should be eaten wholly at one meal : possibly
because in an earlier time the victim was eaten
raw, with its bones pounded. From all its details,
this practice must have gone back to the time
when the forefathers of Israel lived as nomadic
shepherds. It was a sacrifice of communion,
not connected specially with the worship of
Yahweh, but which may in primitive times
have been connected with the worship of spirits,
but not necessarily derived from totemism,
with which there has sometimes been an effort
to connect it.
The feast of Unleavened Bread, which lasted
seven days, was formerly distinct from the
sacrifice of the paschal lamb. It belonged, like
Pentecost and Tabernacles, to the series of
agricultural feasts which Israel annexed from
the Canaanites. It was the feast of the new
bread, and consecrated the opening of harvest,
as Pentecost did the close. The usage of bread
without leaven, the only sort allowed by the
Mosaic liturgy, is explained in the old texts
by an accidental circumstance in the exodus
from Egypt: the flour being carried away in

88 The Religion of Israel
the kneading-troughs without having had time
to ferment.* But a general principle excluded
all fermented products from the sacrifices, as
being corrupt, and repugnant to the deity.
With regard to bread specially, the Bible leads
us to think that anciently all bread was made
unfermented, and baked in the ashes : religious
custom, which is essentially conservative, re
tained as a sacred rite what had been the
ordinary custom.
In Hebrew, the word which means " feast "
(chag) has etymologically the signification
"dance"; the feast being designated by the
most prominent thing in the primitive
solemnity, namely the sacred dance, the
rhythmic march, accompanied by cries or chants,
and executed round the altar or the place of
sacrifice, while the victims were being pre
pared and killed. Men still danced round the
ark at Shiloh ; and David, too, danced before
the ark when he brought it up to Zion. t The
sacrificial meal crowned the festival.
To understand the real meaning of the ark,
which is described as " of the covenant," the
strange narrative of Exodus must be read ; J
in which Yahweh, on Horeb, made known to
* Exod. xii. 34.
t Judges xxi. 19-21 ; 2 Sam. vii. 12-14.
X Exod. xxxiii. 12-17.

The Origins 89

Moses that he did not will to quit the holy
mountain in order to accompany Israel. Moses
declares that he cannot be responsible for
leading the people unless Yahweh agrees to
go with him. And Yahweh yields to the wish
of Moses. The "name" of Yahweh was over
the ark, meaning his actual presence in person,
although invisible; and, as "the angel of
Yahweh," who, in the old texts, signifies usually
the visible apparition of God, it amounts, in
view of the sojourn of Yahweh on Sinai, to a
kind of bi-location, which must not be criticised
from the point of view of a more developed
theology. The abiding presence of Yahweh in
the ark was not conceived differently from
that of the pagan deities in their statues, and
in the sacred boats or arks which held their
images. This presence may even have been
attached to two stones which, according to
the old stories, were the only objects contained
in the ark : if not, it must have inhered in
the chest itself. The sacred stones were after
wards transformed by legend into tables of
the Law. The atmosphere of dread which
encompassed the ark is a notion that is still
pagan, by which are exhibited the almost
material localisation of the divine presence,
and the semi-physical nature of Yahweh's
holiness, which are outraged by a human look

90 The Religion of Israel
or even touch on the coffer of the God. When
the ark was carried about it was thought that
Yahweh was carried too. The ark was taken
into battle to ensure the direct protection of
the God of Israel.
Such campaigns were not always fortunate.
It is recorded that Yahweh was once taken
by the Philistines, but that he did so much
mischief to Dagon, the God of Ashdod, in the
temple where he had been put, and afflicted
the Philistines with so many plagues, that they
were obliged to send him back.* The ark thus
returned, and after diverse wanderings, allowed
itself to be brought to Jerusalem by David,
and was afterwards set up in Solomon's temple.
After that time all trace of it is lost ; and we do
not know whether it perished with the temple
in 586, or whether it had vanished earlier.
It is doubtful whether the ark had accom
panied the Israelites from the desert. It is a
piece of sacred furniture which does not agree
altogether with the worship of nomads. The
tradition which connects Moses with the holy
place of Kadesh seems to ignore the ark, and
to recognise only a tent with an oracle of
Yahweh, which possibly was the magic rod,
but more probably the famous oracle of the
lots, the ephod with the urim and thummim,
* 1 Sam. iv.-vii. 1.

The Origins 91
which Moses made speak. It has been thought
that the ark was the palladium of the tribes
of Joseph, and that it may have belonged
formerly to a Canaanite God. An ark must
have existed at Shechem, to which it is said
Joseph's bones were carried out of Egypt.*
This ark never, probably, contained bones, and
it is not more certain that it came from
Egypt ; but if it belonged to a Canaanite God
of vegetation, who died and rose every year,
like Adonis, it might be taken for both the
dwelling and the coffin of the God. May it
not have been the dwelling-place of the pro
tector of Shechem, El- or Baal-Berith, the God
of the covenant ; and may it not have been
attributed to Yahweh when the God of Shechem
was identified with the God of Israel, and
then moved to Shiloh? However, it always
appeared formerly as a veritable fetish, as
much venerated and feared as a divine image.
A point less commonly noticed than the
foregoing, and which brings the ancient religion
of Israel very near to the primitive worships,
and even to magic, is the power attributed to
certain formulae. The blessing or the curse of
certain persons, and in certain conditions, are
conceived as dooms of fate which no power
divine or human can change. When Isaac
* Gen. 1. 26 ; Josh. xxiv. 32.

92 The Religion of Israel
blessed Jacob, thinking to bless Esau, he could
not take back his words, or one might say the
happy fortunes which he had bestowed errone
ously on his second son ; and he does not
dream of retracting them, nor of praying
Yahweh to revoke a grant which to us would
have been invalidated by the fraud. He has
no escape but in a secondary blessing, which
only gives to the hapless Esau something that
is not excluded by the privileges given to the
fortunate Jacob.* The curse of Noah weighs
for evermore on Canaan, t When Balaam sets
out to curse Israel, Yahweh is compelled to
hurry before him, to stop him on the way, and
to put words of blessing into the mouth of
the oracular wizard. J For the curse once
uttered, Yahweh himself could not avert the
consequences. It is the magic power of a
sacred incantation which thus passes into the
words of fathers or the oracles of prophets,
and we may add into the judgments of priests
and chiefs, when they pronounce grave sen
tences and utter laws. The word is thus a
supernatural power. Something divine works
in its formulae. It disposes of things and of
men ; and if things be sometimes refractory,
men at least obey their own commanding voice.
Gen. xxvii. 1-40. t Gen. ix. 25.
I Numb. xxii. 2-35.

THE OLD JAHVISM

CHAPTER III

THE OLD JAHVISM

NOTHING is more dubious than the chrono
logy of Israel before the time of the
Kings. The accession of David may be placed
about the year 1000 B.C. The reign of that prince
marks the finishing of the conquest, and the
establishment of an Israelitish nation ; but we
do not know how to make any probable esti
mate of the time which had elapsed since the
tribes first invaded Canaan. According to the
Assyrian and Egyptian evidence already men
tioned, it is possible those invasions had begun
about the close of the fifteenth century. The
stories in Judges, which have some historical
consistency, seem to refer to the later period
of those obscure times rather than to the
earlier. Moses would have appeared at the
opening of that period as a somewhat hazy
figure, but the foundation of Jahvism is in
separable from his name. The assimilation of
95

96 The Religion of Israel
the Canaanite religions to the worship of
Yahweh is rather indicated than formally at
tested, but it was the natural and inevitable
sequel to the conquest. From the tenth century
to the middle of the eighth there was a national
worship, and only some few traits foretold the
evolution which was to transform it into a
monotheism with universalistic sympathies.
§ 1
The God of Israel had a name, just like the
God of Moab and the God of Ammon. In fact
he could not do without one, and he called
himself Yahweh.* It is not known where he
got this name. According to all probability it
existed before Moses. It may be that Yahweh
was the God of Sinai ; the God, that is, of
various tribes who lived in the neighbourhood
of the sacred mountain ; the tribe, for example
of the Kenites or of Cain, with which an old
tradition connects Moses, before he led the
Israelites out of Egypt. Perhaps Yahweh
was the particular God of the Israelite clan,
whence Moses issued; and his name may have
been one of the divine titles which the ancestors
of the Hebrews had brought from their original
* It is no doubt superfluous to remind the reader that
the name Jehovah is a barbarism, which has not even
the privileges of antiquity.

The Old Jahvism 97
country, or from one of the lands through
which they had wandered. These two hypo
theses are not incompatibles. The worship of
Yahweh may have started in the north-west
region of Arabia, beyond Idumaea ; and it may
have been brought to the sanctuary of Kadesh,
its second country, by tribes who had lived for
some time in the land of Midian ; among others,
the tribe of Levi, to which Moses belonged,
and which seems for many years to have
gravitated round the district of Kadesh. Moses
would not have been able to rally the tribes
under the protection of Yahweh if the name
of this God had been unknown to them all ;
and it would appear quite certain that Yahweh
was not, before Moses, the joint deity of the
tribes who afterwards worshipped him. No one
has succeeded in proving that the name was
either of Canaanite, or of Egyptian, or of
Assyrian derivation.
The etymology given in the Bible is less
ancient than the name itself, of which the primi
tive meaning is very doubtful : it is in reality
nothing but a jingle of words, like several others
in the old sources of the Pentateuch ; and it
does not contain that metaphysical depth which
has been read into it since. According to the
Elohistic source, Moses himself did not know
the name of the God who was sending him
8

98 The Religion of Israel
into Egypt to deliver his brethren. "And
Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come
unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto
them, The God of your fathers hath sent me
unto you; and they shall say to me, What is
his name? what shall I say unto them? And
God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM : and
he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children
of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. . . .
this is my name for ever, and this is my
memorial unto all generations." Yahweh gives
his answer while withholding it. He says,
further, that there is no necessity for knowing
his name ; and the reason for withholding it
is the very puissance and sanctity of that con
secrated name, which ought not to be handed
over to men to be used at their caprice. But
since, after all, a name is indispensable, the God
playing upon the assonance of the name
Yahweh with the word ehie, I AM, which he
had just used when he declared I AM THAT I
AM, said that Moses to indicate the deity who
was sending him should employ the phrase just
uttered, by using its equivalent Yahweh.* This
* Exod. iii. 13-15. The reply " I AM hath sent me" is
obscure and inaccurate. For Yahweh means " It is," not
"I am," if the etymology be admissible at all. It is
possible that ehie has in this passage replaced Yahweh,
when the divine name ceased to be pronounced in reading

The Old Jahvism 99
does not mean that the God of Israel was taken
for absolute being, but that he was a mysterious
being, who owed no responsibility for what he
was to any person. Let them call him Yahweh,
without prying farther. The old author would,
probably, not have been sorry to find a more
picturesque explanation of the divine name ;
but he does not appear able to have seen more
clearly than our modern critics into the original
signification of the word. It cannot even be
decided whether the form Jahu, which is met
with in compound personal names, is older than
the form Yahweh or is shortened from it.
What appears historically probable is that
the departure from Egypt, and the federation
of leading tribes which resulted later in the
Israelitish people, was effected under the pat
ronage of this divine name ; that Yahweh
became thenceforward the God of those tribes,
and their sole protector. Moses accomplished
the deliverance of Israel by invoking the power
and authority of Yahweh. He thus founded
together the religion and the nationality of
Israel, by uniting the tribes in the worship of
Yahweh : the exclusive worship of a deity who
seems never to have been represented under a
Scripture, because the usual Adonai or Elohim could not
be substituted here. Kautzsch, Die heilige Schrift (3rd.
ed.), 91.

ioo The Religion of Israel
human form. Statues were not manufactured
in the wilderness. Yahweh is the God of Israel ;
Israel is the people of Yahweh, and must
worship none but him : these were the prin
ciples of the Mosaic religion. They are not
formed upon philosophical reasonings, nor upon
metaphysical conceptions of the divine unity;
but upon a very active religious instinct, and
upon the very clear notion which Moses him
self had acquired of Yahweh, of his nature, and
of his moral character.
The religion of Moses was far from being a
rigorous monotheism. To find such a mono
theism in the original texts, it has to be read
into them arbitrarily. But a people which
conceived of Yahweh as a spirit of the night,
battling with Jacob and with Moses himself,
stopping Balaam's ass, travelling in the ark,
and if he were not actually the brazen serpent
yet owning a name, like his neighbour Gods,
and having like them too a people to watch
over, conceived of him obviously as a definite
and limited God, very powerful no doubt within
his own sphere of action, and working marvels
in the interest of his worshippers, but still a
God amongst other Gods, though undoubtedly
the strongest, the greatest, and perhaps already
the best. It is, then, superfluous to point
to the stage of monotheism which had been

The Old Jahvism 101
reached early by the priesthoods of Egypt and
Chaldaea ; a doctrine relatively learned, with
a tendency to pantheism, in no sense popular,
and which has no visible connexion with the
service of a barbarian God, exceedingly indi
vidual and selfish, excessively capricious and
fanciful, such as the old Yahweh was.
Yahweh was originally a mountain God.
The connexion of the word Sinai with Sin,
the moon God of the Chaldaeans, does not
warrant us in turning the protector of Israel
into a lunar deity. It has been observed that
the Sinai of Midian was a volcanic district,
and that this explains why Yahweh was a fiery
God, a God of storms, and so made easily into
a God of war. His exclusiveness might be
due to the same cause. This redoubtable spirit,
worshipped by uncultured tribes, was not
softened into the patriarch of a divine family,
like the deities of the nations. He was self-
sufficing, and would not tolerate the proximity
of other Gods. This trait is witnessed to
beyond any doubt. It is not only the tradition
of Israel that vouches for it. The tribe of
the Kenites, which passed into Canaan in the
rear of Israel, but was not merged in it until
the captivity, also worshipped Yahweh. Now
we find a Kenite, about the middle of the
ninth century, Jonadab, chief of the clan of

102 The Religion of Israel
Rechab, by the side of Jehu when there was
a question of extirpating the religion of Baal.
The Rechabites were fanatical and immovable
Jahvists : they held to the custom of the desert,
and continued to live in tents. The spirit of
this venerable tribe is an important clue to
the nature of primitive Jahvism. The clan
of Rechab owed nothing to the prophets of the
golden age, but it followed the way of life
which was their ideal; and, like the prophets,
it chose to know none other God but Yahweh.
Its dogged fidelity to the ancient religion aids
the historian to understand how the notion
of a worship, which excluded every other
divinity but the national God, was able to
exist from the beginning and to maintain itself
in Israel. It explains also the attitude and the
grievance of the prophets.
The God of Israel opposed himself to the
Gods of the foreigner. By so doing, he
acknowledged their existence ; and was then
unable to pose as the only God, beside whom
none other could exist. Israelites were
forbidden to worship the Gods of their
neighbours; but these Gods received the
lawful homage of their own people. Jephthah
did not shrink from saying to the King of
Moab, "Wilt not thou possess that which
Chemosh thy God giveth thee to possess?

The Old Jahvism 103
So whomsoever Yahweh our God hath dis
possessed from before us, them will we
possess ! " * In a foreign country, one is far
from his presence, and has to recognise
other Gods. The holiness of Yahweh consists
in his inviolability and inaccessibility, in his
power to make his will respected, but not
in the moral perfection of his nature. His
character, it has been said, shows a few
moral qualities, but is not precisely moral.
His power, his knowledge, and above all his
goodness, are limited. The God who is thought
to have killed out-right those who peeped
into his ark, or who stretched out a hand
to save it from tumbling, is not a judge who
adjusts his punishment to the crime, but a
terrific being whom one irritates by approach
ing too closely. The least infraction of his
will, the slightest attack on the majesty of
his name, drives him into a phrensy ; but he
punishes or ignores such offences according
to his whim. He is implicated in the pettiest
tricks in the story of Jacob ; and it is narrated
that he became an accomplice in theft for
the benefit of his people, when he showed
them a way of filching valuables from the
Egyptians : when, through signal cowardice,
both Abraham and Isaac lent themselves to
* Judges xi. 24.

104 The Religion of Israel
the stealing of their wives, the ways in which
he vindicated their honour, are not far from
ridiculous. His justice is the attribute of a God who
makes his clients successful, who does right
to Israel by giving him a prosperous life and
victory in battle. He is guardian of the national
law, which is held to be just and good, and is
also the expression of the divine will. So far
as he punishes the violation of this law he is
protector of the social order. As his name is
invoked in oaths, he is terrible to perjurers.
He avenges the shedding of blood, but he
avenges it by blood ; and it may happen that
he avenges it on the guiltless. It was he who
ordered the immolation of some descendants
of Saul, to expiate the wrong done by their
ancestor to the Gibeonites.* Nevertheless he
is a defender of the weak, the widow, and the
orphan ; but this quality, which is in conformity
with the social conditions of Canaan, only
appeared perhaps after the conquest.
In the same way, a peremptory choice of both
good and evil, even moral evil, is attributed to
him. The more terrible a catastrophe is, the
more surely is his intervention recognised.
It was thought quite natural that he should
exterminate in a single night all the first-born
* 2 Sam. xxi. 14.

The Old Jahvism 105
of Egypt: it was the Passing Through of
Yahweh. Plagues and illnesses were his work,
as they were the work of spirits. He blinds
or befools those on whose ruin he is set. He
provokes the crime which he punishes. As
any violent transport of the mind, good or
bad, every high gift or every defect of the
intelligence, were attributed to spirits, so in
like manner they were attributable to Yahweh,
who thus became the good and evil genius
of his people. It was his good genius which
in the end prevailed ; but it was a long time
before his mercy was pre-eminent, and one
could rest with confidence under the shadow
of his wings.
It may, then, be surmised that tribes more
or less related, and which in their earlier
wanderings had known the God of Sinai,
found themselves at the time of Moses partly
in the region of Kadesh, in the desert south
of Palestine, and partly in Egypt in the land
of Goshen. The latter must have been those
who were described afterwards as the tribes
of Joseph, the children of Rachel; the others
were those who were described as children
of Leah, and at first as Levi, the clans
of Simeon, those from whom Judah issued.
The tribes in Egypt, wishing to regain their
freedom, plotted with the desert tribes; and

106 The Religion of Israel
Moses, the priest of Yahweh, who was the
God of Levi, was the leader of the fugitive
tribes, and brought them out to their kinsmen,
In gratitude to Yahweh, who had delivered
them by his servant, perhaps in extraordinary
circumstances and through dangers happily
overcome, they entered -by a solemn covenant
into a federation which was ratified in the
name of the mighty God of Kadesh and Sinai.
An act of this nature may explain the
persistence of the religious tie which never
ceased to unite the tribes, in spite of the
separations and political divisions which were
caused later. But the object of the union had
nothing mystic about it; because it does not
seem to have been formed only by reason of
the accomplished exodus ; but with a view to
defence against other tribes, who were alien to
the religion of Yahweh, and especially against
Amalek: perhaps, also, with a view to the
invasion of Canaan, which soon began. The
conquest, in fact, was carried out in the name
of Yahweh, who was held to be the actual
leader of the adventurous wars. When they
had entered Canaan it was always under the
invocation and protection of Yahweh that
the scattered tribes reassembled to face the
common danger. The Wars of Yahweh was the
title of one of the oldest books written in Israel.

The Old Jahvism 107
Yahweh, as the God of Israel, had his official
interpreters ; his priests, his seers. Moses was
the first of them. The priestly families, which
served the sanctuaries of Shiloh and of Dan
later on, professed to be descended from him.
Not one of the legal collections inserted into
the Pentateuch can be attributed to him; they
all pertain to an Israel established in Canaan.
Moses does seem, however, to have founded the
Tora, the instructions of Yahweh ; because he
gave decisions in his name about matters of
right and justice. These decisions were dictated
to him by the oracle which was kept in a tent
pitched near the sacred spring of Meribah, at
Kadesh. The actual name of Meribah means
" strife." The name of Massah, a place near
Meribah, means "trial," and may thus have
some connexion with that ancient tribunal,
which certainly was not unacquainted with
ordeals. And the divine word Yahweh-nissi,
which belongs to the same set of institutions,
may have an analogous meaning.*
Moses figures in an old story about the battle
of Rephidim, which may have been taken from
" The Wars of Yahweh." There he does not
appear as a military leader, which certainly
* Nissi may be connected with the same radical as
Massah. The Bible points to another derivation : see
above, p. 63, note.

108 The Religion of Israel
he never was, but as a wizard priest. While
Israel, under the leadership of Joshua, fought
with Amalek, Moses was on the hill above,
" with God's rod in his hand." " And it came to
pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel
prevailed : and when he let down his hand,
Amalek prevailed." * He was, therefore, sup
ported until the evening, and Israel's victory
was complete.
Did he still accompany the tribes who
assembled themselves on the banks of Jordan,
to invade Canaan from the east ? The want of
evidence about the place of his tomb is urged in
a contrary sense. But the texts on this point
are, rather, dubious and contradictory. We
read at the end of Deuteronomy t that Moses
was buried near Beth-Peor, but that the place
of his burial is not known. The first informa
tion is precise enough to exclude the second.
Perhaps it was believed formerly, and according
to a sound tradition, that they possessed his
tomb; and the prophets, to discourage the
worship of Baal-Peor, denied that Moses lay
in the place mentioned. His name, therefore,
remained always connected with the religion
of the desert. -""" L
A new period began for the worship of
Yahweh by the settlement in Canaan. The
* Exod. xvii. 8-13. t Deut. xxxiv. 6.

The Old Jahvism 109
conquest did not happen in the systematic
way described in the book of Joshua : namely,
a country over-run and occupied in a few
years, after the extermination of the inhabi
tants. It was effected, rather, little by little,
through a gradual and continuous penetration,
in which war without being exceptional was
neither perpetual nor general. There was a
mingling and an assimilation of the older popu
lations and of the new-comers. The final pre
ponderance of Israel was assured in the time
of David by the conquest of Jerusalem. Then
only did Yahweh become sovereign of the
whole country. But by that time the religion
of the desert had already yielded to the in
fluence of the Canaanite religions. That
influence must have been stronger in the
early times, before the establishment of the
monarchy ; it was restrained by national senti
ment, the worship of Yahweh being synony
mous with Israelitish patriotism ; later, it
was resisted and overcome by the prophets ;
and certainly from the beginning there was
a puritan tradition, cherished by certain more
rigorous clans, especially among the priestly
families who inherited the tradition of Moses,
and by individuals whose exceptional fervour
predisposed them to be inspired by Yahweh
and to become the defenders of his rights.

no The Religion of Israel
The influence of an encompassing polytheism
was only overcome at last by the fall of
Jerusalem and the exile to Babylon ; but it
had lasted sufficiently long and gone suffi
ciently deep to leave ineffaceable traces even
after the establishment of legal Judaism.
The Deuteronomist interpretation of the
legends about the Judges suggests a very false
notion of the religious history of Israel at the
time of the conquest. It makes out a recurring
series of complete apostasy, alternating with
periods of fidelity not less complete ; Yahweh
was abandoned for the Baals of Canaan; he
avenged himself by sending a foreign con
queror; enslaved Israel cried to its God, and
Yahweh raised up a deliverer who inaugurated
a time of pure religion. Now Yahweh was
never abandoned as the special God of the
Israelitish tribes ; and it is most significant
that his worship was maintained after the
entry into Canaan, and amid populations more
civilized than Israel, from whom Israel learnt
their civilization. Nothing shows better the
extraordinary force of the religious impres
sions which were stamped upon the tribes by
the desert. But in times of peace, and in
districts where the Israelite clans were inter
mingled with Canaanite populations, the wor
ship of local Gods became associated necessarily

The Old Jahvism

in

with the worship of Yahweh : according to the
accepted beliefs, these Gods were lords of
the soil and dispensers of the riches of the
land, and they could not be ignored. In course
of time they were assimilated by Yahweh, and
absorbed by him ; but, prior to the assimilation,
there was an approximation and a mingling of
the worships. It was only in times of war,
when the fate of the clans was at stake, that
the God of Israel took exclusive possession of
his own people, and that his worship was
practised with intolerance. The old Yahweh-
Sabaoth, the God of Hosts,* reappeared at the
head of his troops and led them to victory. By
the final success of the invasion he triumphed,
and suppressed the Canaanitish deities, who
were wholly eclipsed in the splendour of the
victorious God.
" Let Yahweh arise, and let his enemies be scattered,
Let them also which hate him flee before him."
Such was the battle hymn with which the ark
of Shiloh was greeted, when the armies of
* Yahweh-Sabaoth is a divine title compounded like
Yahweh-Shalom, Yahweh-nissi. It designates Yahweh
as God of a special sanctuary, which may have been
Shiloh, where the ark was. Yahweh of the Armies means
probably the divine leader of the Israelite hordes. The
name is very old ; and perhaps it was only later that there
were dreams of celestial armies.

112 The Religion of Israel
Israel moved against the enemy. And when
they halted, to encamp after the battle :
"Halt! Yahweh,
With the battalions of Israel."*
On these occasions Yahweh fought for his
people, less ostentatiously than the Homeric
Gods, but just as the God Ashur did with the
Assyrians, and Ammon of Thebes with Rameses.
At Gibeon, he killed more enemies with his
hail-stones than the warriors of Israel did
with their swords.
The book of The Wars of Yahweh must have
described the wonders accomplished by Israel
under the leadership of its God, from the
period of the desert until the establishment
of the monarchy. If only a few attenuated
extracts have come down to us from this
grandiose romance, it is doubtless because in
the end its contents were found more scan
dalous than edifying. It remains, however,
that Yahweh was " mighty in battle." t He
was stronger and more redoubtable than all
the Baals of Canaan, who were the petty and
pacific Lords of agricultural populations. It
* Literally, "with the myriads and thousands of Israel "
(Numb. x. 35-6). In verse 36 the text reads shubd,
'return"; but it would be better to read shebd, "rest."
t Psa. xxiv. 8.

The Old Jahvism 113
should be noticed, also, that the stories in
Judges refer to invasions which threatened
the independence and safety of the populations
among whom Israel was settling, as well as
those of the Israelites themselves : Moabites,
Ammonites, Midianites, and Philistines are
mentioned. The case of Sisera is obscure ; but
it is at any rate the question of a sovereign
who wished to extend his rule over the terri
tory of Canaan. The victories of Yahweh
over external enemies would gain him the
recognition and worship of the Canaanites.
These do not appear to have been warlike.
Ordinarily, they came to terms with their in
vaders, and thus peoples and religions were
amalgamated. The case of Gideon's son,
Abimelech, made King of Shechem by a popu
lation which was not Israelite, is characteristic
of the situation. Nevertheless, there were
cases of resistance ; some towns were shut
against the nomadic invaders, and small
coalitions were formed against them. These
hostilities occurred specially in the earlier
times ; for then Yahweh showed himself
pitiless. If a besieged town held out to the
last extremity, the cherem was declared, a vow
of extermination, which meant the wholesale
destruction of both population and property.
Jericho was treated in that way, and was not
9

114 The Religion of Israel
rebuilt until the days of the kings. Men and
beasts were killed ; the whole town was burnt,
including the houses with all their furniture,
except objects of gold, silver, bronze, and iron,
which were reserved for Yahweh.
This terrible curse was not peculiar to
Jahvism, and it would be a mistake to see in
it an unusual exhibition of religious intoler
ance. That Which fell under the cherem was
not what was vowed to Yahweh, but rather
what was not included in the vow ; and the
destruction of men and cattle should not be
regarded as a monstrous holocaust. The
cherem, in old times, was rather a solemn
malediction, involving in a pernicious influence,
as magical incantations did, everything included
in it. Yahweh, like his worshippers, abhorred
what was tainted by a cherem, and he would
not accept it. It is even related, in connexion
with the taking of Jericho, that the next
expedition failed because an Israelite had kept"
back certain objects from destruction : the whole
camp was polluted, Yahweh would not go out
with the warriors ; and matters were only put
into a normal state again by burning the
criminal with his plunder, his children, his
cattle, his tent, and covering all their remains
with a great heap of stones.* Yahweh was
* Joshua vii.

The Old Jahvism 115
thus made the custodian of a practice older
than himself. He held things under a cherem
as things unclean ; and the cherem was only
unclean because sacred, but in the evil sense,
through possession by a spirit of death. The
tribes had known the cherem before entering
Canaan, before belonging to Yahweh : they
employed it now, and Yahweh with them, for
the honour of the God and the furtherance
of his cause.
However, a system of life in common was
bound to be established, and was established
soon, between Israel and the Canaanite popu
lation, as groups of Israelites settled among
the people of Canaan : and it was impossible
to exclude religion from that common life.
We know already what the religion of Israel
was. The worship of Canaan was a low
polytheism, which concealed only superficially
a basis of animism and fetishism, the inherit
ance from old times, and perhaps also in part
from the shadowy peoples who had lived in
the country before the Canaanites possessed it.
Each locality had a special God, its Baal,
whose worship was associated with that of a
spring, a rock, a tree, a cave, all sacred. The
altars were cut in the rock, or made of hewn
stones, and were generally on a height. By
the altar were the sacred pillar and stake,

116 The Religion of Israel
the masseba and the ashera, legacies of primi
tive religion, but now indispensable accessories
of worship, and always a sign of the divine
presence. They symbolised the Baal of the
place, and the Ashera or Astarte, his consort.
Gods and Goddesses should have special names ;
and it was easy to distinguish them by adding
the name of their high place : the Baal of one
city is not to be confounded with that of a
neighbouring city, any more than the cities
themselves are to be confused. The division
of the country into petty lordships, more or
less independent, explains this multiplication
of Gods.
The worship corresponded to the agricultural
life of the population. The great feasts com
memorated the gathering in of harvests and
fruits. It was usually a joyous worship;
because the Baals were nearly always kindly,
and did not grudge the fruits of the earth.
Nevertheless, the sacrifice of new-born children
was frequent, and probably did not cause the
least repugnance. For the most part the
bodies were not burnt, as in Judah later, under
the last kings, but were deposited in earthen
vessels round the altars. We cannot say if
this was an offering of the first-born. In any
case the practice is rather a survival of old
animistic and magical religions than a product

The Old Jahvism 117
of Semitic polytheism. The same can be said
of the prostitution which was associated with
the worship of the Canaanite Baals. The
hiero-douloi of both sexes were designated as
male and female saints, and the term was not
used in mockery; for they were consecrated
personages, vowed to the Gods, and not only
given to their worshippers. We know that
everything connected with generation was
sacred to primitive people. Religious prosti
tution was often connected with the worship of
the Goddesses of fecundity ; but it is improbable
that these notions were produced by mythology,
because the morality of the Gods after all
only reflects that of men. This institution
originated more possibly in a religious tradi
tion which preserved, while modifying more or
less, customs which were anterior in certain
places to any regular organization of the
family. Yahweh supplanted by degrees the Baals
in their own sanctuaries, and they were identi
fied with him. The Baal of Shechem, El-
Berith, " God of the Covenant," the God of
Bethel, the God of Beersheba, "the Fear of
Isaac," the God of Hebron, whose name perhaps
was El-Shaddai, gave place to Yahweh, who
was thought to have consecrated the old places
of worship by appearing to the forefathers of

118 The Religion of Israel
Israel. But these imagined ancestors were
none other than the Gods themselves, identified
at once with Yahweh who replaced them as
a tutelary God, and transformed into heroes,
the servants of Yahweh, and the first disciples
of his religion: it was Yahweh who had been
worshipped by other titles before his name
had been uttered in Canaan. The ancient local
fables were re-edited, so far as was necessary,
to make up the legend of the sole Yahweh and
his only people. The Canaanite divinities, who
were considered the fathers of their people,
were transformed as Gods into Yahweh; and,
in their capacity of ancestors, they were grafted
on to the pedigree of Israel. Yahweh did not
even neglect to multiply himself a little, like
the ancient Baals, according to the sanctuaries :
at Shiloh, Yahweh-Sabaoth was worshipped,
Yahweh-Shalom at Ophra, and Yaweh-hissi
at Kadesh. But the personality of the God
remained indivisible in the national conscious
ness, and we may say that he only multiplied
himself for the convenience of his worshippers.
The substitution of Yahweh for the ancient
Gods was at times very rapid : before the
close of David's reign the God of Israel had
annexed the holy places of Jerusalem. With
the sanctuaries, their rites and customs passed
over to the worship of Yahweh. Even the

The Old Jahvism 119
consecrated prostitution went on as a
reverend practice. The legend of Judah and
Tamar * shows that it was not thought shame
ful. Deuteronomy was obliged to forbid it
within the temple at Jerusalem, where it was
continued until the reformation by Josiah,
although it had been opposed by the prophets,
at least after Amos and Hosea.
Yahweh without as yet severing himself
wholly from Sinai became an inhabitant of
Canaan and of its shrines : he was both seig
neur (baal) and king (melek). It was he who
presided over agriculture, and gave the rain
in its season ; he received the first-fruits of the
earth ; he adopted the Canaanite feasts of
harvest and vintage, and probably also the
sabbath which the prophet Hosea mentions
among the customs of the Baals, and which
was really one of the Canaanitish customs
introduced into the worship of Yahweh.
The simplest relations of Israel with its
neighbours involved a certain communion in
worship. Joining in the same meal formed a
religious connexion. The legend of Joseph
remarks that the Egyptians did not eat with
strangers, but the Israelites made no scruple.
The smallest contract required the interven
tion of the Gods for the oaths, sacrifices, and
* Gen. xxxviii.

120 The Religion of Israel
meals which it entailed. Marriages between
Israelites and Canaanites brought the customs
of the two worships right into the household.
Thus everything conspired to make a fusion
inevitable. That this syncretism did not result in a poly
theistic religion, with a pantheon ruled by a
supreme God, was due to the religious and
patriotic feeling of Israel, which was summed
up by faith in Yahweh, and was strong enough
to prevent the maintenance of the Canaanitish
deities alongside the God of Israel. Religious
unity went parallel with national unity : as the
latter was brought about by Israel, and to its
advantage ; so the former was accomplished
by Yahweh, and for his benefit. The old Gods
represented a local autonomy which had to
disappear before a political unification under
the leaders of Israel : Yahweh represented
the unity and the domination of a con
quering people. With his oracula, and the
Torah of his priests : with his warlike temper,
which made him the veritable captain of
Israel's armies; with the system of holy wars
which transformed the Israelite warriors
temporarily into a kind of military order,
subjected to very strict military regulations,
which were its discipline ; with his enthusiasts,
of whom we shall speak presently, and who,

The Old Jahvism 121
under the titles of nazirs and nabis, served him
as witnesses before populations most sensitive
to all manifestations of faith, and especially
to the most extravagant, Yahweh imposed
himself in every place when Israel gained a
footing. If he had become by this time the
Lord of heaven and earth, it would have been
possible to subordinate the local Gods to him,
in the form of heavenly spirits, as was done
afterwards with the Gods of the nations ;
but, in these early times, Yahweh was not
transcendental enough for such a combination
to be possible. His burning jealousy sufficed
to obliterate his^ rivals. The Israelite who
worshipped him according to the rites of
Canaan remained not less his vassal ; but the
Canaanite who worshipped Yahweh yielded
to the exclusiveness of this new God, who was
so far more exacting and redoubtable than the
old ones. § 3
In the train of David, Yahweh installed
himself as master on Mount Zion and in Jeru
salem. It was related that the ark of Shiloh,
captured by the Philistines in the time of Eli
the priest, had been sent away by them in a
cart without a driver, and that it had so come
to Beth Shemesh. The people of that place

122 The Religion of Israel
had not dared to keep it, because of the deaths
which happened in the neighbourhood, and
they offered it to the dwellers in Kirjath
Jearim in Judah; where it was lodged with
a certain Abinadab, whose son was deputed
to minister to Yahweh in his sacred chest. It
was there that David came to fetch it. The
identity of the ark of Kirjath Jearim with
that of Shiloh may be doubted. David, how
ever, seems to have been most eager to transfer
this ark to Jerusalem, which would be hardly
explicable if I the sacred object had not a well-
known past. At Shiloh, the ark had belonged
to the tribes of Joseph. If its fortunes had
brought it into Judah, it would seem to have
been rather neglected there, all the more that
the places where it sojourned remained more or
less, as it would seem, in the power of the
Philistines until the reign of David. He was
able to recover it as a symbol of the unity
which was effected between the northern
tribes and Judah. His priest, Abiathar, a
descendant of Eli, had charge of the ark of
Shiloh. And David went with all his household to
Baal of Judah (the place was named Kirjath
Jearim, " Town of the Woods," or Kirjath-Baal
"Town of Baal," and it may be asked if the
latter name has not some connexion with the

The Old Jahvism 123
sojourn of the ark) to bring thence the ark
of God, who is called Yahweh-Sabaoth. And
they set the ark of God upon a new cart, and
brought it out of the house of Abinadab that
was in the hill, and Uzzah and Ahio the sons
of Abinadab drave the new cart. And David
and all the house of Israel danced before Yah
weh with all their might, and sang with lyres,
and harps, and tambourines, and castanets, and
cymbals. At a certain place the cart
threatened to over-turn; and Ahio who was
walking in front reached out his hand to save
the ark, and he fell down, smitten. David, in
fear, renounced for the present bringing the
ark into the city ; and left it with a foreigner,
Obededom of Gath. After only three months,
since no accident had happened to Obededom,
and Yahweh had blessed him, the king resolved
to house the ark with himself. These details
are most significant : it may be said that David
had not been familiar with the worship of the
ark, and that he did not adopt it without
some hesitation.
Thenceforward the alliance between Yahweh
and the house of David was sealed, and it was
as profitable to the deity as to the dynasty.
David won the prestige which secured his pos
terity on the throne of Judah till the overthrow
of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans. Yahweh gained

124 The Religion of Israel
from it the assurance of his permanent triumph
over the Gods of Canaan, for the monarchy of
Israel meant the reign of Yahweh over a sub
missive and united country. Nevertheless, if
the king were vicar of Yahweh, the religion had
flourished for so long before the establishment
of the monarchy that the sovereign did not
become in Israel, as he might have otherwise,
the incarnation of the national God, and the
supreme authority in matters of religion.
Jahvism made use of him ; gave him authority ;
and it was no small advantage for him to be
Yahweh's anointed; he was a consecrated person.
But he was not the high priest of his God, and
the Torah of Yahweh was not at his disposal.
Never did a King of Israel or of Judah receive,
like Hammurabi, a revealed code to promul
gate. The law of Yahweh had other inter
preters. The priesthood and prophetism, two
institutions which did not issue from Israel's
royalty, and which survived it, were the channels
of religious tradition. We shall have now to
discuss them both.
The origins of the Levitical priesthood are
not wanting in obscurity. There did exist a
tribe of Levi allied closely to Simeon, and it lost
as he did, and even more, its territorial im
portance. The blessing of Jacob* attributes the
* Gen. xlix. 5-7.

The Old Jahvism 125
ruin of these two tribes to an act of violence,
which Yahweh punished. The legend about the
taking of Shechem by the two brethren * may
be connected with this tradition. But it was
not that raid which caused the loss of the two
tribes. Remaining on the borders of the desert,
and being neighbours of Amalek, they possibly
succumbed in the long conflict against that here
ditary foe, who was only overcome by Saul.
The blessing of Moses postulates, on the other
hand, that Levi had no other function than the
priesthood. Is there here a deception caused
by the same word being used for a priest and
as the name of an old tribe ? Or was it out of
the ruins of this tribe, and by its influence, that
the priesthood of Yahweh was organized and
perpetuated ? The latter hypothesis seems the
more likely.
We have seen previously that several priestly
families, and those not the least conspicuous,
professed to be descended from Moses. On the
other hand it is certain that the shrines could be
served by the first-comer who was consecrated
for that purpose. It was the same with the ark,
so long as it was with Abinadab, at " the town of
the woods." But a very clearly marked pro
fessional aptitude was recognised in the tribe of
Levi ; and Levites seem to have sought out a
* Gen. xxxiv.

126 The Religion of Israel
ministry wherever it could be found, even
among other tribes. It would be because they
were a Mosaic tribe, and specially Jahvist, if
we may so express it, that they enjoyed this
preference and credit. They possessed the
traditions of the worship that was proper for
Yahweh. One may, then, see in them the
descendants of the ancient priests of Levi, who
had ministered, after Moses, in the shrine at
Kadesh : driven thence by Amelek, and dis
persed through Israel after the destruction of
their tribe, the priests of Levi would have
become types of the genuine priesthood. Cer
tainly, however, they did not minister in all the
sanctuaries, and all the priests of Israel in the
time of the kings were not real Levites.
Zadok the priest of Solomon was not. But
the name soon went with the function ; and the
priests who were not Levites by origin were
none the less attached to the sacred tribe.
The blessing of Jacob ignores this development.
The blessing of Moses endorses it. The per
sonality of Aaron is like a doubling of Moses :
but in the end he becomes ancestor of the house
of Zadok, which held possession of the priest
hood in Jerusalem, and all other sacerdotal
families were simply grafted on to Levi.
The blessing of Moses defines thus the
priestly functions :

The Old Jahvism 127
"May thy urim and thy thummim be with the kindred
of thy servant.
Whom thou has proved at Massah,
With whom thou hast striven at the waters of
Meribah . . .
For they have kept thy word
And have observed thy law.
They have taught thy judgments to Jacob,
And thy commandments to Israel ;
They offer the incense to thy nostrils,
And the sacrifice upon thy altar."
The servant is Moses ; his kindred are the
Levites ; the origin of the priesthood is attached
to the sanctuary of .Kadesh by the reference
to Massah and Meribah. The text refers to some
etymological legends which have not been
preserved in the Biblical tradition: in our
records it is not Moses, but Yahweh, who is
tried, and with whom there is a disagreement.
Sacrifice is put in the last place because it
was not yet the chief duty of the priests. For
they were not very numerous in old times ; and
sacrifice was offered by families or clans,
without the indispensable ministration of a
priest. There was no priest where there was
not a " house of God," a shrine with an oracle.
It was the oracle of Yahweh which was the
business of the priest, the reason for his exist
ence and the cause of his reputation. The
answers of the oracle are the judgments and

128 The Religion of Israel
the Tora of Yahweh. It was the oracle which
built up the customary law of Israel and the
Mosaic tradition. It was consulted, too, for
private as well as public matters. Divination
was concerned with affairs of another kind.
It was the oracle which was held to have
denounced the violation of the cherem at
Jericho ; to have indicated Saul for the
monarchy ; to have revealed Jonathan's in
voluntary disobedience to a prohibition by Saul ;
to have enlightened David beforehand about
the result of his plans. The priests must also
have been medical exorcists ; if the examination
of lepers was deputed to them by the Mosaic
law, it was doubtless because they had at all
times been concerned with illnesses. Their
jurisdiction extended also to every case of
litigation, not only in matters of ceremonial
and religious observance, but also in matters of
law, custom, and behaviour. In matters of law,
the monarchy must have curtailed their duties ;
for it was the function of the king, too, to
judge, and his rulings were not subjected to
the revision of the priests. Religious and moral
education was entirely in their hands, for the
prophets often rebuked them for neglect of
duty in this matter. The one who is known
by the name of Malachi exhibits the priests as
inculcators of a good life, as depositaries of

The Old Jahvism 129
knowledge, and ambassadors of Yahweh
because doctors of his Law! It cannot, how
ever, be shown that their teaching consisted
in anything else than replying to those who
consulted them. Even when they became royal
officers, they represented a tradition with which
the political authority had to reckon ; from
which it never dreamed of freeing itself,
because those traditions expressed the senti
ment of the nation.
So far as they were entrusted with the divine
oracles in the matter of predicting the future,
the priests soon gave place to the prophets.
There is no mention of consulting the urim
and thummim after the reign of David.
Mechanical divination was replaced by living
oracles. The origins of Israelite prophetism are not
explained more clearly in the texts than those
of the Levitical priesthood. In the old portions
of Samuel's legend he is described as a seer
(ro6) ; and it is remarked that the term seer
was applied in those times to the persons who
were afterwards called prophets (nabi). In
reality, they were not merely two nouns which
were used successively to indicate the same
office, but these names were designations
formerly of two classes of people. Samuel was
a seer ; but prophets are mentioned in his
10

130 The Religion of Israel
legend, and they were enthusiasts, or it mig
be said individuals divinely possessed, who
made a profession of that state, and were
frankly nothing else. In those days, the type
of Israelite prophet, which was realised in
Amos and his successors, had not yet been
evolved. The prophets of the eighth century
had still something of the soothsayer, but
nothing of the priest. Samuel was a little of
both. The prophets of his time, it would seem,
were not descended from one or the other,
although they were servants of Yahweh.
During the time which extends from Samuel
to Elisha, seers and prophets were approaching
one another, until they coincided in the person
of Elijah's disciple. But what Renan describes
as the corybantism of the prophets was very
much weakened. The prophets became seers
because they had ceased to be outside the
domain of reason, and they received the com
munications of Yahweh by visions ; and the
antique seers acquired up to a certain point
characteristics of prophets which were more
extravagant and odd than those attributed to
Samuel in the old narratives.
The seer must have been prior to Jahvism.
He was concerned with many things which
had no direct connexion with Yahweh and
his governance of Israel. He might be con-

The Old Jahvism 131
suited about strayed cattle, just as much as
about public affairs. Balaam was a seer, and
he does not come to us out of an Israelitish
tradition : Israel knew of seers among the
neighbouring peoples. The seer is rather the
diviner who speaks in the name of a divinity,
according to certain signs or internal visions,
than a man possessed, if by that term be
understood an ecstatic or a corybant. Thus the
antique prophets of Israel, like Deborah and
Samuel, were seers : they were successors of
Moses, and gave oracles in the name of
Yahweh. They could, when required, utter
efficacious blessings or cursings, as Balaam did ;
for they were also, to some extent, sorcerers.
When Deborah wished to send Barak against
Sisera, in the name of Yahweh, he refused to
march unless the wise woman came with him :
" And she said, I will surely go with thee :
notwithstanding the journey that thou takest
shall not be for thine honour ; for Yahweh shall
deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman."*
It is believed commonly that the nabi only
appeared after the time of the conquest, and
under Canaanitish influences ; and it may be
noticed that Baal had his inspired followers,
according to the legend of Elijah. But though
the evidence is unassailable, it does not follow
* Judges iv. 8-9.

132 The Religion of Israel
that Israel had not nabis long before the times
of Samuel, and that Jahvism did not produce
them spontaneously. Amos, who repudiates
being a nabi or the son, that is the disciple, of
a nabi, attributes the institution of prophets to
Yahweh, without hesitation, and of nazirites
too.* The nabi wore a dress of skins, and
this may be a relic of the desert : he belonged
wholly to Yahweh, like the nazirite, and the
two may both have been originated by Jahvism.
The ancient nazirites would seem to have
been men possessed by Yahweh for the holy
wars. They let their hair grow long, and
drank no strong drink. These were perpetual
nazirites, by the vow of their parents. Later,
the condition of a nazirite became a form of
asceticism, undertaken for a time, as a pious
work. By a freak of the legends, the ideal
nazirite, the champion of Israel and of its
God, became associated with the more or less
fabulous history of Samson.
The nabis were fanatics of another sort, but
none the less fanatics of Yahweh. They
swarmed at the time of the war against the
Philistines ; they reappeared again, simultane
ously with the Rechabites, at the period of
the Syrian war and the alliance with Tyre,
under Ahab.
* Amos ii. 11-12.

The Old Jahvism 133

Seers, nabis, nazirites issue from the lower
forms of worship. They are persons who have
a spirit. The seers, in their capacity of
diviners, have a knowledge of omens, and in
this they approach to the magician. As
visionaries, they are, like the nabis, men with
a spirit, thought to be led by a supernatural
power, which dictates their oracles. Nabis
were even, on special occasions, favoured by
divine revelations. At such times their utter
ances, like those of the seers, had an efficacy
resembling that of magical incantations, like
the solemn formulae of blessing and cursing.
" All that he says comes to pass," * says the
servant of Saul to his master, referring to
Samuel. Their oracles are like lots, which
bind the future. That is why the old records
put into the mouth of Balaam an account of
the future which is ordained for Israel. These
men with a spirit are endowed with formid
able powers. The legends of Elijah and Elisha
are full of terrifying episodes, which witness
at any rate to the fear in which nabis were
held. The habit of consulting them was early,
and the profession must have been lucrative.
They used artificial means to produce inspira
tion, and music was one of them. Elisha,
when consulted by the kings of Judah and
¦•'¦ 1 Sam. ix. 5.

134 The Religion of Israel
Israel, had a minstrel brought before he gave
his answer. " And it came to pass when the
minstrel played, that the hand of Yahweh came
upon him. And he said, Thus saith Yahweh." *
In the days of Samuel and Elisha, the nabis
formed a sort of community, under the
management of a head. Marriage was not
forbidden to them. They gave themselves up
to symptoms which so nearly resembled mad
ness that the Hebrew word which describes
them is the same as that used for insanity.
They went about in troupes, accompanied by
musicians. Their folly was catching. It is
narrated that Saul, after his first meeting
with Samuel, falling in upon his way with a
troup of nabis, was drawn to them by the
divine spirit, and joined in their clamour.
Whence the popular saying. " Is Saul also
among the prophets ? " t It is obvious that
such people were feared as channels of the
spirit, and a little despised on account of their
extravagance. The officers of Jehu did not
hesitate to describe as a madman the disciple
of Elisha who promised the sovereignty of
Israel to their captain ; but when they knew
what he was urging, they hastened to proclaim
as king him who was pointed out by Yahweh. \
* 2 Kings iii. 15-16. + 1 Sam. x. 10-12.
t 2 Kings ix. 4-13.

The Old Jahvism 135
At times of crisis, under an able head, the
association might play a leading part in
politics, while seeming only to defend the
national religion. The house of Ahab learnt
this to its cost.
The separation between Israel and Judah,
after the death of Solomon, was due to
political causes. The northern tribes bore
with impatience the supremacy of Judah, and
above all the fiscal system established by
David's successor. It is possible that the
prophets encouraged the secession, less because
of the foreign worships authorized by Solomon
in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, than by
his general attitude, which was that of a pro-
phane monarch influenced by the civilization
of the neighbouring peoples. In any case,
Jeroboam, the leader of the rebellion, was
rather supported than disowned by the pro
phets. The worship organized in the new kingdom
was independent of the temple which had just
been built in Jerusalem, and was not different
from that practised in the country before
David, as well as during his reign and in
Solomon's. The worship of Yahweh on the
high places of Gilgal, Shechem, Bethel, and
Dan was traditional, and had been held as
lawful as that which was practised at the

136 The Religion of Israel
sanctuary of the ark. Until the times of
Amos and Hosea, the prophets did not inveigh
against that worship. Even the representation
of Yahweh under the form of a bull does not
seem to have caused the opposition and scandal
which it produced later. Doubtless it went
beyond the traditions of ancient Jahvism, and
that is why it was condemned by the reform
ing movement of the eighth century. But it
may be doubted whether it was inaugurated
by Jeroboam. The intention attributed to him,
by the Deuteronomist compiler of the Book
of Kings, of hindering his people from going
to Jerusalem for the feasts, is a sheer
anachronism ; the northern sanctuaries having
been frequented from times far more ancient
than Solomon's temple, which was only a
religious centre for the House of David, and
for the town where it was built. And it was
not necessary, either, to invent images of
Yahweh to replace the ark. Symbols of the
divine presence existed everywhere. That of
the bull might have been adopted as well as
the stone of Bethel, and it was not more
blamable in itself than the brazen serpent.
The reproach of having appointed to the divine
service men who were not Levites is no better
founded, since the priesthood was not yet an
hereditary privilege of the real or imaginary

The Old Jahvism 137
descendants of the ancient priests of Levi. All
these accusations were only formulated many
centuries after the event, to discredit both
the ancient form of worship, and a schism
which the Jahvist puritans had been far from
blaming when it first occurred.
It was probably the official introduction of
an alien worship that brewed a quarrel between
the King of Samaria and the prophets, or at any
rate a party of them. Ahab was, so far as
we can judge, a brave prince and an able
statesman. To defend himself against the
King of Damascus, his too-powerful neighbour,
he leant on Phoenicia, and he married a
daughter of the King of Tyre. One consequence
of this alliance, which brought foreigners to
Samaria, was the building of a temple to Baal-
Melcarth. The protest of Jahvism was em
bodied in Elijah, who had also denounced the
judicial murder of Naboth. That affair was
nothing extraordinary in an oriental country ;
but the conscience of Israel, formed by the
Torah of Yahweh, had already attained a
standard of justice which would not tolerate
such a violation of right. The intrusion of the
Tyrian Baal was a far more serious matter.
It was an injury to the majesty of the God
of Israel on his own territory, although Yahweh
remained the national God, and did not cease

138 The Religion of Israel
to be honoured as such by Ahab and his two
sons who reigned after him. That the opposi
tion of Elijah was not founded upon any
principle of rigorous monotheism is proved by
the fact that, according to his legend, he lived
without scruple at Sarepta, in pagan territory,
with a widow who certainly practised the
worship of her country. But all the policy of
Ahab, which was wise to those who thought
only of the prosperity of the kingdom, was
equally condemned by the zealots of Jahvism,
because their God refused to share any of his
honour with others. And Yahweh, who was
the only lawful master of Israel, was he not
able also to protect it ?
Nevertheless, Ahab was popular, and all
the prophets were not against him. It was only
under Joram, his son, and his ^second successor,
that an army plot, encouraged or even pro
voked by Elisha, set Jehu on the throne.
Jehu was the candidate of the prophets ; and
the motto of the revolution was a rupture
with Tyre, and the expulsion of its Baal. The
Jahvist reaction was stained by the most
odious murder, and was practically limited to an
expulsion of the foreign worship. Jehu was
helped in his bloody task by Jonadab, the chief
of the Rechabites. If there were then no
reformation of the national worship, it was

The Old Jahvism 139
because the most zealous Jahvists did not see
any need for it. The Ephraimite kingdom
was none the less enfeebled, and it was only
under the grandson and the great-grandson of
Jehu that it rallied for a time, when the power
of Damascus was broken by the Assyrian con
querors. The old Elisha, as long as he lived,
supported the house of Jehu. It is said that
on his death-bed he foretold the victories of
Israel over the Syrians. King Joash, grand
son of Jehu, had come to see him ; and the
nabi, in this instance one might still say the
magician, ordered him to strike some arrows
on the ground : Joash obeyed, and smote thrice ;
"And the man of God was wroth with him,
and said, Thou shouldest have smitten five or
six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till
thou hadst consumed it : whereas now thou
shalt smite Syria but thrice." *
From these times onward, it is clear that
prophecy and royalty will be unable to agree,
if royalty considers its interests, seeks necessary
alliances abroad, and if it does not reckon with
the sentiment of the men of God. The force of
the religious tradition which, by the prophets,
overthrew the dynasty of Ahab in Israel,
re-established by the priests the family of
David in Jerusalem, after the usurpation of
* 2 Kings xiii. 19.

140 The Religion of Israel
Athaliah. Everywhere the religious question
intruded, became more and more acute, and
rendered impossible the normal working of a
secular monarchy. Jahvism prepared the ruin
of the Hebrew states. It may be pointed out,
in compensation, that these petty kingdoms
must inevitably have perished, like their neigh
bours ; and the prophets secured the perpetua
tion of Israel, through its religion.

PROPHECY

CHAPTER IV
PROPHECY
ONE of the most singular characteristics of
Jahvism is assuredly the evolution
which out of the seer, diviner, and sorcerer,
out of the raving enthusiast, produced the
prophet of the last period of the monarchy ;
the judge of kings, the defender of the poor,
the preacher of righteousness, always pre
occupied with a future by the traditions of
his office, but subordinating his predictions to
his moral teaching. Prophecy became the
interpreter of a religion that condemned all
methods of divination, using the term accu
rately. Nevertheless, some traces of its origin
remained until the last vestiges of a Jewish
nationality had vanished. The religious ideal
was being continuously purified; but the scheme
and notion of a future, whose course it was
thought possible to fix, survived in a Judaism
petrified under the Law, and even under the
143

144 The Religion of Israel
Gospel though it had shaken off the legal
fetters. An imperious preoccupation with the
future fell away from Judaism and Christianity
only when they had become religious organiza
tions without any national setting, and had
thus transfused the greater part of their
expectations into an immortality which is
imagined to provide an equitable and imme
diate compensation for the present life, by
atoning for its miseries and injustice. The
zenith of prophecy in Israel was attained at
the epoch of the Assyrian invasions, and it
did not last after the destruction of the
Judaic monarchy by Nebuchadnezzar. This
was the period of the prophets who wrote,
and it was also the beginning of the Law.
§ 1
The intrusion of Assyria into Palestinian
affairs drove the prophets to look far beyond
the frontiers of Israel ; and to frame larger and
deeper conceptions of the world and of man
kind, and consequently of God. Their political
horizon, was enlarged indefinitely : their con
ception of the providential government, of its
laws and plans, widened in proportion ; but
Yahweh still held the primacy which had been
his formerly. Whence came this victorious
people? Who gave it its high fortune? Why

Prophecy 145
did it prevail against Israel? These were the
tragic and practical questions which clamoured
for an immediate answer ; and which the pro
phets could only decide by the principle of a
moral monotheism, unless they were to repu
diate their special tradition of a just and
almighty God, and so degraded Yahweh to an
equality with the Baals whom they had always
regarded with contempt. It must be Yahweh
who stirred up the King of Asshur because
everything which happens in the world is
caused by Yahweh's will. It must be Yahweh
who made the King of Assyria succeed, and not
the Gods of his own country ; because Yahweh
is the real master of heaven and earth. If
Yahweh allows the Assyrian king to oppress
Israel, it is because Yahweh himself is angry
with his people, and angry with good reason.
They have not served him as he wishes : they
have worshipped other Gods, in spite of his
prohibition ; they thought to have honoured
him sufficiently by their sacrifices, he who
requires above all things the practice of
righteousness, respect for duty, and fidelity to
his Law.
But, in spite of having become the lord of
heaven and earth, and the disposer of history,
the God of the prophets before the captivity
is not yet the sole and absolute God. He is
11

146 The Religion of Israel
always merely the God of Israel : he is really
occupied with his own people alone, and is
only concerned with other nations so far as to
use them as instruments for those designs.
And when, after the terrible judgment which
they predicted for that guilty people, they
foresaw a restoration, it is always Israel that is
in question, and not mankind. No doubt
Yahweh had separated himself so far from the
other Gods that it was no longer possible to
consider him in the same rank with them, and
he had left them scarcely any influence in the
administration of the universe. But these Gods
were not yet reduced to the rank of inferior
spirits : they were not yet condemned to non
existence, though they were Gods for whom
there was not any farther use.
While the prophets of the eighth century,
Amos, Hosea, Micah, required that men should
obey the Law of Yahweh, they do not refer to
any written law. It seems that only a part,
and not the least important, though the least
considerable in bulk, of the statutes which are
now in the Pentateuch was written in their
times. If one or other of those first collections
are found more or less in agreement with what
the prophets held to be the religious, moral, and
social duties of every Israelite, they did not con
stitute the whole Law of Yahweh ; for that also

Prophecy 147
included the teaching given by the prophets
themselves in the name of the God of Israel.
It may be admitted freely that the Jahvist
decalogue, which is contained in the thirty-
fourth chapter of Exodus, and that part of the
same book which is known as The Booh of the
Covenant, represented for the eighth and ninth
centuries the written commandments of the
divine Law.
The decalogue may have been constructed
thus : —
Thou shalt not worship any foreign God.
Thou shalt not cast any molten Gods.
Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread.
[Thou shalt give] me all the first-born.
Thou shalt solemnize the feast of weeks,
And the feast of the vintage at the year's end.
Thou shalt not mix with leavened bread the blood of
my victim.
Nothing of the Paschal victim should remain till the
morning :
Thou shalt bring the first-fruits of thy harvest into
the house of Yahweh thy God.
Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk.*

* Exod. xxxiv. 14-26. The text has been liberally com
mentated, and the reconstruction of the ten precepts is
hypothetical. The commandment about the Sabbath is
omitted here, v. 21, because it is not in its place between
instructions about the three great feasts, and it is rather a
commentary on the Sabbath than a commandment. The
command about the first-born is retained, because it is not

148 The Religion of Israel
This little Torah is exclusively ritualistic :
we may believe it is of priestly origin, and un
doubtedly it is earlier than the first writing
prophets, who attached no importance to ritual.
But it displays the exclusive worship of Yahweh,
by ordaining the feasts which we may describe as
national : the Passover and the Unleavened
Bread, the feasts of the harvest and the vintage.
The prohibition of molten images may be
directed already against the bulls of Dan and
Bethel. If the document did not originate in
Jerusalem, " the house of Yahweh " would mean
every sanctuary whither first-fruits could be
brought to the priests.
The Book of the Covenant* lays down the
principles of domestic and social morality, and
at the same time the essential regulations of
worship. Unity in the place of worship is
expressly denied. " An altar of earth shalt
thou make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon
thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings,
thy sheep, and thine oxen : in any place where
I cause my name to be remembered I will
unconnected with the Paschal victim ; but the text seems
to be vitiated, and the words "thou shalt give " have been
added for the sake of the parallelism, according to Exod. xxii.
28. The original meaning of this commandment will be
shown later.
* Exod. xx. 22 ; xxiii. 23.

Prophecy 149
come unto thee and I will bless thee. And if
thou make me an altar of stone, thou shalt
not build it of hewn stones : for if thou lift
up thy tool upon it thou hast polluted it.
Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine
altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered
thereon."* Simple orders, for a worship that
has nothing in common with the gorgeous
construction of stone and metal which made
the temples of Solomon and of the restoration
conspicuous. It is the description of a sanc
tuary which might exist in the smallest centres
of population. The Book of the Covenant
demands also for Yahweh all the first-born,
and the first-fruits. It strikes with the cherem,
the curse of blood, whoever sacrifices to any
other God than Yahweh.
But one ought to sacrifice to Yahweh. The
prophets before Amos never dreamed of
preaching a centralization of worship in
Jerusalem ; and even Amos and Hosea while
protesting against the forms of worship, made
no protest against the multiplicity of sacrificial
places. Before then no one had suspected that
the system of sacrifice might lead to abuses.
Everything went on as though worship were
guided only by a traditional custom, which
authorized sacrifice in all the towns and
* Exod. xx. 24-26.

150 The Religion of Israel
villages, though with a decided preference for
certain shrines which were specially venerated.
It is no less true that the prophets after the
middle of the eighth century condemned the
worship that was practised in their time ; and
which, for the most part, resembled that which
was sanctioned by the documents just quoted.
Nevertheless, they are not conscious of inno
vating, though they rebuke a religious,
political, and social state to which the pre
ceding centuries had conformed. Their claim
of going back to the beginning is usual among
religious reformers. It involves, none the less,
an impossibility. The past can never be
revived, except under new forms ; and the
prophets in effect renewed the meaning of the
old creed : Yahweh is the God of Israel, and
Israel is the people of Yahweh. For the
requirements of God had risen into the moral
order, and were no longer chiefly ritual ; and
the morality in question was not identical
with custom. It was acquiring the absolute
character of ideal justice, though it was of
necessity still affected by date and environ
ment. Yahweh was considered as united to
Israel by his free choice, which he could with
draw, and not by a kind of natural and irre
vocable fatality. He explained contemporary
events by means of his prophets, according to

Prophecy 151
the principles of wisdom and justice ; for they
are no longer manifestations of a more or less
arbitrary decree.
The notion of the ruin of Israel by the
judgment of its God could never have been
formed by the old Jahvists : nor was it
accepted, any more, by the mass of people
who were upbraided by the prophets for their
infidelity. Nevertheless the prophets did not
allow that an opinion other than their own
might be held on all these questions. The
faith which possessed them was a hindrance
to grasping the reality of the past, or the
true relation of the present to that past which
they interpreted capriciously through their
own conceptions of it. They did not speak of
Israel's life in the desert by any reliable tradi
tion ; but they fashioned an ideal for them
selves, which they contrasted with the abuses
of the present.
They must not, however, be imagined as
entirely aloof from the ordinary beliefs of
their time. Hosea, for instance, describing the
future condition of Israel in exile, speaks thus
of the offering of the first-fruits, and of its
necessity :

1 They shall not pour out wine to the Lord.
•Neither shall they be pleasing unto him :

152 The Religion of Israel
Their sacrifices shall be unto them as the bread of
mourners ;
All that eat thereof shall be polluted :
For their bread shall be for their own appetite ;
It shall not come into the house of Yahweh." *
As it was impossible to offer the first-fruits
of the harvest, all the produce of the earth is
contaminated, like the bread used at funeral
banquets : they themselves are not holy, but
impure, like everything belonging to the spirits.
These uncompromising believers are quiet
spirits compared with the frenzied nabis in
former times. They bore, however, the same
name and dress. They were always visionaries,
who mistook for revelations of Yahweh the
conceptions which swarmed in their own
heads. Their symbolical actions are another
proof of their excitability. Isaiah walked
without clothes and shoes in the streets of
Jerusalem, like a prisoner of war, to show the
fate of those who would oppose the King of
Assyria. Jeremiah carried a yoke on his
shoulders, to show the necessity of submitting
to the King of Babylon : another prophet tore
off his yoke and smashed it, to proclaim the
deliverance. Ezekiel went still farther ; but
he belonged to the decadence of prophecy, and
many of his figurative acts were probably
* Hosea ix. 4.

Prophecy 153
mere written symbolism. It should be noted,
that in the time of Jeremiah and perhaps long
before, the officials of the temple in Jerusalem
included special inspectors or overseers of the
prophets ; and that in the out-buildings of the
sanctuary there was a prison where excitable
and unruly nobis were put in the stocks. This
appeared quite natural, and Jeremiah himself
made acquaintance with that prison.*
The first prophets who are described as
writers were something very different from
men of letters. Their oracles were still a verbal
teaching, like the Torah of the priests ; but
they were generally rhythmic, and in the form
of brief declamations. The prophets did not
think of writing until their preaching was not
listened to, or was prevented. Thus Jeremiah,
after twenty years of his ministry, dictated to
Baruch the whole series of menacing predic
tions which he had uttered from the begin
ning ; and he sent his disciple to read them
in the temple, so as to produce a greater effect
than by a single prophecy. The reading made
a stir ; but the king's men seized the book,
and Jehoiakin burnt it. Jeremiah had to
repeat his dictation, though the reading was
not repeated, t Generally, it was the disciples
of the prophets who collected their predic-
* Jer. xx. 1-3, xxix. 26. t Jer. xxxvi.

154 The Religion of Israel
tions, so that their accuracy might be proved
by the event.
Nothing was impossible to faith ; that
accuracy, almost invariably stultified by facts,
did not fail to be asserted by Jewish and
Christian tradition. The texts have been fre
quently corrected or completed afterwards,
and the interpretation was always indulgent.
And even at present, when it is asserted that
the utterances of the prophets were a preach
ing, and when this characteristic is exagger
ated, it is urged freely that their threats and
promises were conditional, and that their accom
plishment depended on the repentance or the
obduracy of Israel. That condition may be
found in some cases ; but more often the
prophets thought they were making certain
and absolute predictions. Their credit rested
on their supposed knowledge of the future. It
was by reason of this imagined knowledge
that they were consulted, and in their con
fidence of that knowledge they answered. And
ordinarily, as was natural, the event did not
confirm either their menacing or their favour
able provisions, in the ways they had indicated.
As far as regards particular predictions about
individuals, the prophets were only experienced
diviners, who were dominated by considerations
of morality. It can hardly be said that they

Prophecy 155
foresaw the future of their religion ; for the
histories of Judaism and of Christianity have
differed widely from their preconceptions.
What is true is that their glowing hope has
in a certain measure created the object of it,
by ensuring the preservation of their beliefs.
§ 2
Surely the Lord Yahweh will do nothing,
But he revealeth his secret with his servants the
prophets ;
The lion hath roared, who will not fear ?
The Lord Yahweh hath spoken, who can but
prophesy ? " *
So says Amos, of Tekoa in Judah, whom the
divine inspiration had taken from his flocks,
to lead him to Bethel, and to make him
prophesy there against Ephraim, in the time
of Jeroboam II. Before him, " the day of
Yahweh" meant the triumph of Israel over
its enemies. For him " the day of Yahweh "
is the day when the God of Israel chastises his
people. A nation whom he does not name,
but which can only be Assyria, will come and
remove Israel out of its country. Worship is
corrupt, the great men are greedy and oppress
the small : Israel is of no more account with
* Amos iii. 7-8.

156 The Religion of Israel
Yahweh than the Philistines and the Aramaeans ;
it will be exterminated from the earth.
Amos is all pessimism. His successors are no
less ; but they do not rest, and could not rest,
in the prospect of a ruin which would leave
Yahweh without any worshipper on earth. A
reign Jof justice will come after the great catas
trophe. The notion of chastisement is not less
conspicuous among the prophets before the
captivity. Their passion in foretelling the
destruction of their country seems at first
inexplicable. Is it an understanding of the
situation, and of the political future of the
East ? Certainly they guaged the inevitable
fate, which awaited the petty states of Palestine,
better than the sovereigns and their ministers.
Though it was evidently not their clear vision
which made them pessimists, but their pessimism
which made them see clearly. They think
everything goes from bad to worse in religion
and society : menace from abroad conies abund
antly to satisfy their appetite for chastisement.
Neither should the grim character, which
Jahvism drew from its origins, be forgotten,
nor the ferocious temper of its God. The
moment his people were thought not to be
giving him satisfaction, the rage of Yahweh
knew no half measures. Possibly he had become
even more terrible since he had learnt to be

Prophecy 157
more exacting morally. Was he not the God
who to cure the evils of humanity had destroyed
it entirely by a flood ?
Some fifteen years after Amos, there came
Hosea. Deceived by his wife, the prophet
discerned in that infidelity a figure of Israel's
offences against its God. He would not allow
that the religion of his people resembled that
of the natives ; but he finds that the worship
of Yahweh, as it is practised all about him,
is merely a service of Baal. Israel is an idolater
from the beginning. Yahweh says by his
prophet :
' ' As grapes in the wilderness,
I have found Israel ;
As the first ripe on the fig-tree in her season,
I saw your fathers :
But they all went to Baal-Peor,
And bowed themselves to Baal " *
Hosea talks with a superb disdain of the
calf of Bethel. He considers that royalty was
established in spite of Yahweh, and that it is
one of Israel's sins. Not in him will be
discovered the notion of a messianic prince, t
Idol and king will perish together, without
recovery. Hosea names the executor of the
* Hosea ix. 10.
t Hosea ii. 1-3 and iii. 5 are regarded as interpolations.

158 The Religion of Israel
divine judgments : the King of Assyria. During
his time, in fact, Menahem was tributary
to Tiglath - Pileser. Hosea condemned the
efforts made to propitiate that earthly ruler,
though the King of Samaria could not help
himself. But help should not be sought from
any human power. Yahweh alone is the
sufficing aid.
This repudiation of foreign alliances was not
due only to trust in the God of Israel, but to the
fact that alliances with the foreigner meant
also a covenant with his Gods, and an official
recognition of them. The good feeling and the
relations that followed would certainly lead
on to acts which would be blamable by faith.
But it is evident that the policy of the prophets
was not politic, and that it must end in the
ruin of the state.
Notwithstanding these gloomy prognostica
tions, Hosea was not hopeless. The recon
ciliation which was made in his own household
prefigured that which would occur between
Yahweh and his people, after the impending
punishment. This was the earliest outline of
the kingdom of God ; but the conception
remained vague ; and the future happiness
was limited to Israel, but an Israel purified.
Isaiah prophesied in Jerusalem about the
year 740, and he was prophesying still in 701.

Prophecy 159
He had seen the destruction of the kingdom of
Israel by Sargon, in 722, and twenty-one years
later the devastation of Judah by the armies of
Sennacherib. In the earlier time, condemning
the state of religion, almost as Amos and Hosea
had, he foretold the ruin of Israel and Judah by
the Assyrians. He saw corruption and injustice
everywhere. Yahweh will punish, but not
without relenting and making exceptions. A
son of the prophet was named Shear-Jashub,
" the remnant shall return," to show that a body
of righteous persons will survive the great trial
and perpetuate the chosen race. Belonging to
a country in which monarchy was powerful and
reverenced, he conceived the Israel of the future
governed by a blameless king. He even
regarded Yahweh as a king who, from his
throne, governed all the dwellers upon earth ;
and it has been said, with reason, that the
universal monarchy of Assyria helped him to
imagine the universal monarchy of God.*
Like Hosea, he wished to supersede all politics
by trust in Yahweh. In 734, the very existence
of Judah was threatened by a coalition between
Rezin King of Damascus, and Pekah King of
Israel. By the rules of common sense, the
kingdom could only be safe under the protection
of Assyria, and by giving tribute to Tiglath-
* Smend, 220.

160 The Religion of Israel
Pileser. Isaiah wished that there should be no
dealings with him. By order of Yahweh he
presented himself, with " The-Remnant-Shall-
Return," before Ahaz, and assured him that his
enemies could not prevail against him. As a
guarantee of the divine word, he offered the
king a choice of miracles. Ahaz, whose mind
was made up, and who shrunk from seeing a
miracle, evaded skilfully by saying he would not
tempt Yahweh. This roused the anger of the
prophet, who predicted the near ruin of
Damascus and of Israel, and the laying waste
of Judah. The prudent policy of Ahaz having
borne its fruits, and the threatened danger
proving imaginary so far as Judah was con
cerned, Isaiah recommended submission to the
King of Assyria, and resisted the plan of an
Egyptian alliance, which was formed later with
a view to regaining independence. Yahweh
himself would destroy Assyria after his people
had been sufficiently punished. Hezekiah allied
himself to Egypt, and revolted definitely against
Sennacherib : and Isaiah blamed him for
wishing to be saved by human means ; he gave
warning of a certain disaster, but asserted that
Jerusalem and the temple would not perish.
" Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help ;
And stay on horses, and trust in chariots,
Because they are many ;

Prophecy 161
' And in horsemen because they are very strong :
But they look not to the Holy One of Israel,
Neither seek they Yahweh. . . .
Now the Egyptians are men, and not God ;
And their horses flesh, and not spirit.
And when Yahweh shall stretch out his hand,
Both he that helpeth shall stumble,
And he that is holpen shall fall. . . .
Then shall the Assyrian fall with the sword,
Not of man ; and the sword not of men
Shall devour him . . . Saith Yahweh
Whose fire is in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem."*
Now it happened that Sennacherib, victorious,
and with only Jerusalem to take, was obliged
to retire into his own country without gaining
the city ; and he was satisfied with a tribute,
which seems to have been paid loyally until
the end of the Assyrian empire.
For once, the event confirmed the prophecy;
and possibly it was after the deliverance of
Jerusalem, and under the influence of the
accomplished prophecy, that the religious
reform took place, which is attributed to
Hezekiah in the Book of Kings. It is needless
to ask what would have happened if Jerusalem
had perished in 701. A prophecy would equally
have been realized, since Micah, a contemporary
of Isaiah, had said : —
* Isa. xxxi. 1, 3, 8, 9. In the last passage, the fire of
sacrifice is meant : see xxx. 33,
12

162 The Religion of Israel
" Zion shall become a ploughed field,
Jerusalem shall be a heap of ruins,
And the temple hill a high wood." *
But, if Micah had been right, the Jahvism of
Judah would not have left more trace in history
than that of Israel. It remains that Hezekiah
carried out a reformation of worship according
to the wishes, apparently, of the prophets.
We cannot say with confidence what was the
purpose of this reform; as the records which
we have of it are not contemporary. Perhaps
the king wished to do in reality, though with
less rigour in detail, what was done afterwards
by Josiah ; to destroy idolatry, and to cen
tralise the Judaean worship in Jerusalem.
But it is well to notice that if the reformation
happened immediately after the deliverance of
the city, in 701, Hezekiah then possessed no
more than his capital ; and we do not know
when or how the towns captured by the
Assyrians were restored. The most certain
and striking incident of this purification of
worship was the destruction of the brazen
serpent, which had never ceased to be wor
shipped in the temple. War, then, was declared
against images of the deity.
The movement had no permanence; perhaps
* Micah iii. 12.

Prophecy 163
because a sufficiently high sanction was not
attached to the new state of things. The
reformation does not seem to have been autho
rized by any traditional record of undisputed
weight, nor to have been embodied after the
event in a Law which the prophets could back
up as an expression of the divine will. It
was the personal action of Hezekiah and his
spiritual advisers ; it fell with the king who
had supported it, and the polytheistic leanings
which had been shown slightly under Ahaz,
perhaps in consequence of the relations with
Assyria, reappeared and triumphed politically
under Manasseh. § 3
As the domination of Assyria continued to
extend, the almighty power of Yahweh was
not proved so clearly. For the first time,
probably, polytheism was introduced into the
temple of Zion. Manasseh admitted there the
worship of the stars, after the manner of
Assyria, and especially the chariot of Shamash,
the Sun-God ; and he ventured to place the
" Queen of Heaven " by the side of Yahweh.
The people joined willingly in these novelties ;
on the roofs of the capital, they set up altars
to the Gods of the sky. This invasion of
Assyrian worship was not caused only by the

164 The Religion of Israel
private tastes of the king ; but was due as well
to the political situation of the kingdom, which
was more strictly subjected to the kings
Esarhaddon and Assurbannipal, who were for
long masters of Egypt, than it had been to
Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon, and Sennacherib.
Assyria overran Jerusalem with its armies,
its civilization, and its Gods : Manasseh and
his people served the new masters, both earthly
and heavenly. We do not know how the
worship of these strange Gods was combined
with that of Yahweh, who remained the
national God. Perhaps a kind of local hierarchy
was arranged, in which Yahweh kept the first
place, and this may not have been without
influence upon the conceptions of the following
age ; perhaps the foreign Gods may have been
made into celestial spirits, to whom Yahweh
delegated the government of the peoples.
The traditions of Canaan were not neglected.
The sacrifice of the first-born was a custom
regularly practised. If we may believe the
prophets, the sacrifices were made to Moloch. But
the same prophets make us understand that those
who followed this practice believed they were
honouring Yahweh. Certain critics are not
willing to admit the antiquity of this custom
in Israel ; and some even challenge what the
Book of Kings relates of Ahaz, who sacrificed

Prophecy 165
the eldest of his children. But Israelite anti
quity did not know our way of estimating
human life ; it understood quite differently
both the rights of parents over their children,
and the modes of doing honour to the Gods.
The texts are not limited to hindering the
extension of a practice abominable in itself,
but not more ridiculous than the sacrifice of
cattle. Jeremiah believes himself compelled to
say that Yahweh had never ordered tophet
to be set up in the valley of Hinnom, a place
consecrated to the sacrifice of children by fire ; *
therefore this worship was connected with the
God of Israel. Ezekiel seems to contradict
Jeremiah, but he is more accurate when he
makes Yahweh himself say :
' ' I gave them statutes that were not good
And judgements wherein they should not live ;
And I polluted them in their own gifts
By making them burn each first-born :
It was to destroy them,
So that they might know I am Yahweh." f
A favourable exegesis can say that the
prophet speaks according to the belief of his
readers, as to the obligation of such sacrifices ;
but it is certainly he himself who judges the
custom as bad, and attributes it to Yahweh as
* Jer. vii. 31, xix. 5. t Ezek. xx. 25-6.

1 66 The Religion of Israel
such. The precision of his language raises the
suspicion that a text existed in the Law,
containing the traditional formula on this
matter. And such a text did exist. We read
in The Book of the Covenant : " Thou shalt not
" delay to offer the first-fruits of thy threshing-
" floor and wine press. Thou shalt give me the
" first-born of thy sons ; and thou shalt do the
" same with thy cow and thy sheep. He shall
" be seven days with his mother ; and on the
" eighth day thou shalt give him to me." * The
text is clear, and the assimilation to the first
born of the flock is sufficiently eloquent.
Doubtless, the compilers of the Pentateuch
interpreted this order by others, where there is
a question of ransom ; but the text in itself
does not provide for this substitution, and one
may add excludes it. The formula of the oldest
decalogue, quoted previously : " Every first-born
belongs to me," t had originally the same inter
pretation; and the adapter of the passage
understands it indifferently of men and cattle,
though he is careful to note the obligation of
ransom for men.
It should be noted, too, that the combination
of ransom or of a substituted offering could only
originate in minds to which the notion of im
molating was familiar and natural. Nothing
* Exod. xxii. 29-30. t Exod. xxxiv. 19.

Prophecy 167
is gained by saying that the regulation which
is admitted for the produce of cattle was only
applied systematically to man as a reminder
of duty. The very assimilation reveals a
mentality still very near to that of people
who found it equally needful and believed it
equally expedient to sacrifice to Yahweh their
first child as to offer him the first-born of
their cow or their goat.
We have already considered the historical
bearing of the legends about Jephtha's daughter
and the sacrifice of Isaac. The failure to
protest among the prophets of the eighth
century cannot be alleged as disproving the
custom of sacrificing children in their time ;
for they may have been less shocked by it
than we are willing to admit. Hosea seems
to allude to it.* Micah t speaks of the sacrifice
of a first-born as of a thing just as normal
as the sacrifice of a calf or a lamb : he puts
it aside on precisely the same grounds, by saying
that it is necessary to practice righteousness.
Isaiah himself, who must, it is said, have pro
tested, if Ahaz had really sacrificed his son ;
(and may he not have done it without the
* Hosea xiii. 2, a dubious text.
t Micah vi. 7. The passage is not less striking even if
it be by another prophet, a contemporary of Manasseh, as
some allow.

1 68 The Religion of Israel
fact of his protest coming down to us ?) Isaiah
speaks of tophet as a man who is not other
wise scandalized by it : he wishes to see all
the Assyrians burnt in it as a splendid holo
caust to the Holy One of Israel :
"A tophet is prepared of old ;
Yea for the king it is made ready.
He hath made it deep and large,
Straw and wood in masses :
The breath of Yahweh, like a sulphurous flood,
Shall kindle it."*
From this passage it may be inferred that
the tophet existed in the time of Hezekiah,
and doubtless long before. Isaiah does not
shrink from the pyre of Moloch being kindled
by Yahweh himself; and this approximation
would be impossible, even metaphorically or
jestingly, if Yahweh were not Moloch. But
Isaiah knows " Yahweh-Melek."
Though the state of the documents does not
allow us to affirm, it does at least enable us
to conjecture, that the tophet of the valley of
Hinnom, the future gehenna, was a holy place
in Jerusalem before the conquest of the city
by David; and that human sacrifices were
offered there, especially the sacrifices of children
and first-born, to the God of the city, to its
* Isa. xxx. 33.

Prophecy 169
Melek. Yahweh would have inherited the
divine title, the sanctuary, and the sacrifices,
without however a complete loss of all memory
of what the original worship of the place had
been. In the time of Manasseh, this worship
was more flourishing than ever; and as the
growth of polytheism provoked a Jahvist
reaction, the strongest known since the settle
ment in Canaan, that reaction condemned the
worship, perhaps for the first time in Judaea :
it was rendered to the ancient Melek, and re
jected for Yahweh.
Manasseh's reign was long ; not less long
was the supremacy of polytheism : it lasted,
too, under the son of Manasseh, Amon, who
reigned only two years, and perished by a
violent death. Following a system of relative
compulsion, the syncretism of these kings was,
it may be said, persecuting. The prophets had
become too exacting and bold to keep silent:
it is hardly surprising that their freedom of
speech cost some of them their lives. Never
theless history has not recorded the name of
any such martyr; and the prophetic literature
does not show a single fragment which can
be attributed with certainty to that vexed
period. It was, perhaps, during these times
of humiliation that the servants of Yahweh
grasped the necessity for a code which might

170 The Religion of Israel
order the whole religious life of persons,
localities, and of the nation itself. Thus might
be explained the origin of Deuteronomy, and
the great movement which caused its invention,
in the days of Josiah. § 4
This book was found in the temple, as we
know, by the priest Hilkiah, in 621 ; was pre
sented to the king as the Law of Yahweh,
which Moses had promulgated before his death,
in the plains of Moab ; was accepted by Josiah
as a divine revelation, and used by him to carry
out a more extensive and minute reform than
any which had been ventured on before. Every
thing was foreseen ; the execution was prompt ;
and it was indeed a new system which was
inaugurated in place of the old. The story in
Kings leaves not the smallest doubt as to this.*
It is certain that the matter of this Law was
for the most part new to Josiah and his con
temporaries. If the pious king had known
the wishes of Yahweh earlier, he would have
carried them out ; he did not think he was
offending Yahweh by not forbidding in the
high places a worship that had been always
practised, except perhaps during a few years
in the reign of Hezekiah ; by tolerating, more
* 2 Kings xxii. 2-13.

Prophecy 171
or less, the worship of strange gods, as almost
all the kings had done since Solomon. If
this existence of a Law of Moses were not
unknown, if it were admitted that the priests
were its holders and interpreters, then the whole
bearing of that which Hilkiah said he had
found had been ignored. Besides, though the
Book of Kings speaks of a Law of Yahweh,
it does not say that Law had been written by
Moses ; still less does it imply that the book
invented by Hilkiah was the original manuscript
of a Mosaic work, stored away for centuries
and at last forgotten near the ark.
It has been guessed that Deuteronomy was
written under Manasseh, forgotten in the
temple, and found accidentally ] a few years
later. This hypothesis is unlikely, because the
roll could not have remained unnoticed in the
shrine of Yahweh ; and the text of Kings
does not lead us to suppose that it was found
in any out-building of the sacred edifice. If
one wishes in this affair to distinguish between
deceivers and deceived, it is a very small matter
whether Hilkiah and Shaphan, the official of
Josiah who brought the book to him, were
the first dupes instead of being the first
tricksters. Deuteronomy, either the first draft,
or the fundamental document of the book
which has come to us under that name, must

172 The Religion of Israel
have been written to be deposited in the
temple : its discovery cannot have been acci
dental. From a literary point of view, it was
like a new edition of the old texts, especially
of the Book of the Covenant, worked out with
an eye to existing needs. The author, speaking
in the name of Moses, wrote what Moses would
have said, what he would not have failed to
teach, in the present circumstances : he con
sidered his work as an oracle of Yahweh, and
undoubtedly he could not conceive of it other
wise. The readers for whom the book was
intended would have been unable, too, to con
sider it good and true unless it had been pre
sented to them in this way; it seemed also
perfectly simple and guileless to refer it back
to Yahweh, its principal author. In the very
probable case that the editor plotted with
Hilkiah to deposit the precious writing in
the shrine, that which seems to us, and which
would be for us, a trick might be done without
the personages in question having the least
consciousness of the fraud which they were
committing against the people and the king.
The divine threats, which made so great an
impression upon the mind of Josiah, were
similar to those which the prophets had been
accustomed to make use of in the name of
Yahweh.

Prophecy 173

The mode of promulgation is worth noticing.
"The king sent, and they gathered unto him
"all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. And
"the king went up to the house of Yahweh,
" and all the men of Judah and all the in-
" habitants of Jerusalem with him, and the
"priests, and the prophets, and all the people,
" both small and great : and he read in their
" ears all the words of the book of the
" covenant which was found in the house of
" Yahweh. And the king stood by the pillar,
"and made a covenant before Yahweh, to
" walk after Yahweh, and to keep his com-
" mandants and his testimonies, and his
" statutes, with all his heart, and all his soul,
" to confirm the words of this covenant, that
" were written in this book : and all the
" people stood to the covenant." * Nothing
shows better the national character of Jahvism.
Everything was done as at the accession of
a king : he, on taking possession of the throne,
published the charter of his reign, which his
subjects, represented by the leaders of the
people, swore to observe. Josiah announced
the charter of Yahweh ; then he swore, in
his own name and in the name of his people,
to be faithful to it, so that the whole nation
was bound by an engagement with its God
* 2 Kings xxiii. 1-3.

174 The Religion of Israel
to everything which it had pleased him to
ordain. There were precedents for this in the texts,
if not in fact. The Jahvist decalogue and the
old Book of the Covenant were described as
agreements of this kind; we do not know
whether they were ratified under the same
conditions. The Book of Kings mentions a
sworn agreement for extirpating the worship
of Baal, at the accession of Josiah ; but it
would be rash to assimilate that proposal to
either one or other of these instances. The
most pertinent passage is, perhaps, that in
which we see Joshua assembling the children
of Israel at Shechem, before his death ; and,
after reminding them of Yahweh's favours, as
well as of his requirements, putting before
them the choice between this exacting God
and the Gods which their fathers had wor
shipped " beyond the river," or the Gods of
the Amorites, the ancient Gods of the country :
and the people declares that it wishes to serve
Yahweh, and is eager to reject the other Gods.
Then Joshua made a covenant with the people,
gave it laws and ordinances, and set up a pillar
to be a witness of the agreement which had
been undertaken.* Now that stone happened
* Joshua xxiv. The narrative belongs to the Elohistic
source of the Hexateuch, but the editing is not perhaps
much earlier than Deuteronomy.

Prophecy 175
to be under the sacred tree of Moreh, whose
deity was most probably none other than
El-Berith, "the God of the Covenant," the
ancient deity of Shechem. It was, then, from
the old sanctuary of Shechem, where Yahweh
identified himself with "the God of the
Covenant," that the notion of an alliance may
have come, as well as some of the oldest texts
in which the regulations imposed on Israel by
Yahweh are summarized.* The solemn forms
of agreement undertaken by Josiah and his
people create somehow a perpetual and sacred
obligation, and the violation of it enables all
the national misfortunes to be explained as a
just vengeance of heaven.
This Law of Yahweh was not a ritual, nor
a volume of doctrine, but a complete manual
of theocratic government. The will of the
God regulated everything autocratically: re
ligion, policy, morality, social and international
relations. The supreme unity of the God of
Israel, if not his absolute monotheism, was
formulated in the clearest terms, and every
practical consequence was deduced from it.
The centralization of public worship was
established in principle, and at once, by the
prohibition to sacrifice outside the temple of
* Several critics think the Book of the Covenant was
formerly united to Joshua xxiv. in the Elohistic source.

176 The Religion of Israel
Jerusalem, " the place which Yahweh has chosen
to put his name there." * Formerly every
domestic animal killed for ordinary use, or
for family rejoicings, was a kind of sacrifice.
As a proof, we may recall a well-known episode
in the wars of Saul against the Philistines : t the
people had taken many oxen and sheep in the
enemy's camp, and, being famished after a long
battle, they killed the beasts and eat them on
the spot. Great was the emotion of Saul when
he learned this profanation ; he had a large
stone brought, which became an altar, and on
it was poured out the blood of all the animals to
be eaten. According to Deuteronomy, as the
killing for sacrifice might only be done hence
forth in Jerusalem, it is allowed that domestic
animals, oxen, sheep, goats, may be killed for
ordinary use, but without any sacrifice, speaking
strictly : care is taken, however, to point out
that the animal must always be bled, and that
the blood must be poured out with certain pre
cautions, so that even in ordinary butchering
there remained a notion of primitive sacrifice,
and of the portion due to Yahweh. It was a
suppression of sacrifices by family and clan ; if
private sacrifices were still allowed they could
only take place in the national sanctuary, where
vhey must be much less frequent, and where
* Deut. xii. 5. f 1 Sam. xiv. 32-5.

Prophecy 177
they were bound to lose a part of their
primitive character.
The priesthood was organized strictly : all the
Levites who ministered in shrines of Yahweh
outside the capital were affiliated to the clergy
of Jerusalem. The carrying out of this measure
would not have been unattended with difficulty,
if there had been time to apply it. After the
exile, the priestly Levites of Deuteronomy, who
had formed only one class, became both priests
and Levites : the former being the descendants
of Zadok, that is members of the family who
were hereditary occupants of the Jerusalem
priesthood, and the descendants of other sacer
dotal families who were able to prove their
right ; and the latter, who became henceforth
a subordinate class, to which lower ministrations
were entrusted, were descended from families
which had formerly served local sanctuaries,
and which had resigned or been refused the
sacerdotal rank.
From a moral stand-point, the Deuteronomistic
legislation shows the progress made, by the
influence of the prophets, in the ideal con
ception of society. Though religiously intoler
ant, as it was forced to be to attain its end,
it nevertheless exhales an humanitarian spirit,
a tenderness for the poor, a passion for justice.
It was not in reality a political code, though
13

178 The Religion of Israel
it affected every interest in the national life :
it was, rather, a teaching for all religious
consciences, from the sovereign downwards.
One may, in short, estimate the progress made
since the days of Elijah by the contents of the
new decalogue, reproduced in Exodus, before
the Book of the Covenant, and in Deuteronomy.*
The two versions proceed from a single source,
probably a little earlier than the reformation
of Josiah, and which aimed at improving the
old Jahvist decalogue, or rather at superseding
it. The ten commandments must have been
thus formulated originally :
I am Yahweh thy God, who brought thee out of the
land of Egypt, the house of bondage.
Thou shalt have no other God but me.
Thou shalt not make idols for thyself.
Thou shalt not utter vainly the name of Yahweh thy
God.
Remember the seventh day, to sanctify it.
Honour thy father and thy mother.
Thou shalt not kill.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Thou shalt not steal.
Thou shalt not be a false witness against thy neighbour.
Thou shalt not covet anything of thy neighbour's.
The absolute prohibition of divine images
shows a progress in the Jahvist reaction. The
* Exod. xx. 1-17 ; Deut. v. 6-21.

Prophecy 179
absence of any strictly ritual commands is
another proof. The substitution of moral
obligations for ritual practices is most signifi
cant. The majority of these regulations had
been long accepted, at any rate as between mem
bers of the same clan and between Israelites.
But the novelty consisted in generalizing their
obligations, and in presenting them as the
genuine service which Yahweh demanded. It
is the application of the prophets' maxim :
justice rather than sacrifice.
But, as a religion lives by ritual traditions and
not only by moral precepts, the established
worship had to be reckoned with. It had been
maintained by so regulating it as to take away
everything which was stultified by the ideal
of the prophets. Deuteronomy was a law of
priests drafted by prophetical inspiration. The
reformation could not have succeeded without
the help of the Jerusalem priests, and to them
the centralization of worship could not be dis
pleasing. In the compromise between ritual
and spiritual religion, the priest was bound to
gain more than the prophet ; and it may even
be said that the book itself which canonized
the essential matters in the prophetic teaching
was a preparation for the end of prophecy. As
soon as the will of Yahweh was fixed in
writing, there was no more need to evoke it

180 The Religion of Israel
perpetually by inspired men : the book was
always there. And Deuteronomy, which re
cognised the prophets as channels of Yahweh,
placed them under a rule which could not
but impede their action : the prophet, whose
prediction did not come to pass, must die.
We may believe, however, that no prophet
was executed for this crime. What killed the
institution was that the Torah of Yahweh,
which the prophets had almost taken away
from the priests, was submitted again to the
latter by this book ; until by the doctors of
the book it was taken away finally from the
priests. According to the Book of Kings, Josiah not
only reformed the popular religion, abolished
the tophet in the vale of Hinnom, and destroyed
all places of worship outside Jerusalem, but
he went and profaned the holy place of Bethel,
in the ancient territory of the northern king
dom. He even took measures to eradicate all
idolatry from private worship. Thus he re
moved the teraphim, a species of domestic idol,
of which the usage had hitherto been common,
and uncensured as it would seem by the pro
phets. The teraphim were probably a relic of
spirit - worship : they were the kindly genii
of a house ; but there is no proof that they
were ancestral spirits. Their images must have

Prophecy 1 8 1
been fairly big, since Michal, to conceal the
flight of David from the messengers of Saul,
had put the household teraphim into her
husband's bed. Hosea speaks of teraphim as
common objects of worship. In the sanctu
aries, the teraphim went usually with the ephod,
the oracular image or instrument of Yahweh.
Deuteronomy does not mention the teraphim
specially ; but it is natural that they should
have been included in the general condemnation
of divine images. We can see by this instance
that ancient Jahvism was deeply tinged with
beliefs and practices analogous to those of the
pagan religions, and which came from the same
source, namely spirit-worship. Its purification
could not have happened in a day.
The reformation of Josiah had no immediate
success, because it did not alter the spirit of
the nation, and it did not last long. The pious
king was able to remove the public monuments
of alien worships, the altars and the idols. He
was able to interfere, more or less completely,
with the traditional sacrifices on the high places.
He could even celebrate the feasts in honour
of Yahweh as they had never been witnessed
before ; so that all the children of Judah seemed
to come together, and to be occupied wholly
with their God, without any idolatry or de
bauch sullying their homage. But, though a

1 82 The Religion of Israel
certain external order had been established,
minds were not regenerated. The mass of
the population,* which was idolatrous under
Manasseh and Amon, had not been taken with
a sudden fervour of monotheism because a book
of the Law had been found in the temple ;
because Josiah had chosen, conformably to that
book and to the exhortations of the prophets,
to honour Yahweh in such or such a manner,
and to the exclusion of any other God. It is
probable that the people at first, like the
king himself, had been frightened by the threats
contained in the book, and which had been
brought home to them by current politics : they
may have believed, too, that they had recovered
their ancestral religion, and that they would
earn the favour of Yahweh by carrying it out.
But these impressions were not lasting. The
idolatrous spirit was repressed for only a few
years, and it continued to indulge itself by
private superstitions. The true worship of
Yahweh, the love of his glory and of justice,
which Deuteronomy aimed at implanting,
flourished only in a weak minority. Then there
came the catastrophe of Megiddo, which seemed
to ruin for ever the experiment of Josiah.
The religious establishment which he had tried
to found could only be solidified by time, by
sustained effort, and by the help of favouring

Prophecy 183
circumstances. The sad end of the pious king
who, strong in his faithfulness to his God,
was driven audaciously to meet the Egyptian
army, and who fell a victim to his confidence,
through unwillingness to treat with foreigners,
seemed to be the condemnation of his work.
Jeremiah himself, who loved him, seldom recalls
his memory ; because this model of princes had
become through his death an argument against
God. There was no return, however, to the
idolatrous excesses of Manasseh's reign : the
worship of the temple remained pure ; but
every one recovered his liberty, and foreign
worships had a renewed freedom of action.
There was not, therefore, less confidence in
Yahweh, and the indestructibility of the temple
was believed in. That is why they ventured
twice to oppose Nebuchadnezzar, though relying
too upon Egypt.
Deuteronomy and Josiah had travailled only
for the future : the volume, in fact, remained,
with a remembrance of the experience gained
by it; and it never had to be found again,
because it was never suffered to be lost. The
faithful servitors of Yahweh knew whence they
could draw upon the Law of their God : they
knew, too, that that Law had been actually
practised; and they were able to discern what
was still wanting for the perfect regulation of

184 The Religion of Israel
Israel's life as the people of God. The point
had been gained that the religion of Israel
was founded upon a revelation unique in
history ; that Israel was, by election of the
true God, a people promoted above all others ;
that even its past was unique by reason of the
wonders which Yahweh had wrought for its
necessities, and in its favour. By managing
to place the Jews outside the ordinary ways
followed by nations destined to survive,
Deuteronomy founded Judaism; because it
prepared the organization of a religious com
munity whose existence did not depend on
the life of a Judaean state.
§ 5
If the religious history of Israel, in the years
which immediately preceded the taking of Jeru
salem by Nebuchadnezzar, is not comprised
entirely in the life and activity of Jeremiah,
at any rate the fortunes and the writings of
that prophet give us the truest notion of it.
Jeremiah, even before the death of Josiah, did
not believe in the conversion of the people. He
did not cease to foretell the ruin of the nation,
even at the risk of drawing upon himself the
vengeance of the sovereigns and the hatred of
the mob. He was frankly unpopular, as Isaiah
never was, and he said everything to make him

Prophecy 185
so. No one understood him. Jehoiakin loathed
him. Zedekiah venerated him, so far as he did
not fear him ; but he did not venture to pro
tect him openly against his enemies. It was all
because Jeremiah foresaw a terrible affliction,
even for the small number of righteous persons,
and a ruin without measure for the majority,
which were superstitious and gross, blind and
selfish. He mocked at the prophets of good for
tune, who flattered the people ; and he main
tained that sinister forebodings were the only
true ones, that one cannot be a messenger of
Yahweh by saying that Judah will not be
destroyed. As these miserable auguries afflicted him who
drew them, so he suffered deeply from the
opposition which he encountered; and as he
could only encourage himself by the sense of
duty, he must have seen and felt the incor
rigible obstinacy of those whom he was trying
to snatch from the divine judgment. He was
convinced that a long trial was necessary to
purify men's minds. He affirmed that scarcely
any one, except himself, understood the inevit
able and salutary nature of the trial. He saw
coming the ruin of his nation ; and was so con
vinced that he seemed to desire it. The captives
of Babylon seemed to him in a better way than
the Jews left in Palestine by Nebuchadnezzar,

1 86 The Religion of Israel
and it was in fact that band of exiles which
saved the religion of the prophets. He did
not see the restoration of religion ; and the
Jews who took him into Egypt were by no
means obedient to his words. Whatever his
actual end, he was the martyr of his destiny;
because he strove all his life for a cause that
perished, so to speak, in his hands ; and if he
never ceased to believe in the triumph of God,
he only experienced for himself the bitterness
of defeat.
His attitude to the reformation of Josiah is
obscure in the history. He seems to have had
little or no part in it, to have expected nothing
from it, to have been dissatisfied by it. Inter
preters are not agreed about the meaning which
should be given to a passage in his prophecies,
when he says :
' ' Even the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed
times,
And the turtle, and the swallow and the crane
observe the times of their coming ;
But my people know not the ordinance of Yahweh.
How can you say We are wise,
And the law of Yahweh is with us?
But, behold, the false pen of the scribes
Hath wrought falsely."*
Certainly this is little flattering, on any hypo-
* Jer. viii. 7-8.

Prophecy 187
thesis, to the written Law. The prophecy
may have been uttered before the publication
of Deuteronomy; but it was not recorded,
probably, until long after, and the language
of the prophet is very difficult to explain,
if he recognised any writing whatever as
the Law of Yahweh. Many have refused
to think that he could treat as a fraud
the publication of the book found by Hil
kiah. But it is not precisely the literary
forgery, nor the artifice of its discovery, which
he thus appreciates : it is the actual matter
of all the received texts, which seems to him
either to correspond imperfectly with the will
of Yahweh, or to order things contrary to it.
Jeremiah appears to be acquainted with no
other Law than the teaching of the prophets.
He judges the Torah of the priests severely,
and Deuteronomy may have been for him, as
it is really in many ways, a priestly law. The
man who could make Yahweh say, " I spake not
"unto your fathers, nor commanded them in
" the day that I brought them out of the land
" of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sac-
" rifices : but this thing I commanded them
"saying, Hearken unto my voice, and I will
"be your God, and ye shall be my people,"*
may well have disapproved a regulation of
* Jer. vii. 22-3.

1 88 The Religion of Israel
worship which was alleged to have been pro
mulgated in the land of Moab. Even the cen
tralization of worship at Jerusalem would not
appeal much to the prophet who never ceased
to announce the approaching ruin of the town
and temple. The nobis who helped the refor
mation were those rather who, like Isaiah,
believed the inviolability of Zion. They were
the nationalist and optimistic prophets, whom
Jeremiah treated as false prophets, although
they might be as sincere as himself in their
convictions. As a matter of fact, to secure the future of
Jahvism, it was not enough to criticise exist
ing abuses according to the standard of a pure
religion. Religions, in history, are not theories,
nor sentiment, nor mystical aspirations, but the
traditions of social life guaranteed by the con
secration of a ritual. A spirit animates such
institutions ; but the institutions give con
sistency to the spirit, and keep it in touch
with life. It has been said often that the
religion of the prophets was materialized, nar
rowed, and lowered by the Law. Properly
speaking, a religion of the prophets has never
existed ; any more than a religion of Jesus has
existed ; but there was a large and strenuous
effort to raise the worship of Israel towards
an ever-growing perfection in all that concerns

Prophecy 189
religious belief, the moral sense, and social
justice. So far as that effort tended to disen
gage itself from institutions, and to recognise
no law but personal inspiration, it was lost, and
could only lose itself in the void. In so far as
it was embodied in an institution, it lived and
worked. Jeremiah represented the pure spirit
of prophetic Jahvism. It was the written
Law, that he despised, which saved out of his
generous dreams all that was able to be utilised
by the future time.

4;

JUDAISM

CHAPTER V

JUDAISM

THE opportunity never came of practising
the law of Deuteronomy in its early fresh
ness. The agony of the Judaean kingdom began
with the death of Josiah (610). Jerusalem fell
in 586. The temple was destroyed, and Yahweh
had no longer an earthly habitation. The
nation itself vanished for a time, and, in a
sense, for ever ; because Judaism was thence
forward not a nation but a religion. The best
elements in the population had been transported
to Chaldaea, and those chosen few were tempered
by adversity; for they rallied to Yahweh and
his ministers, the priests and prophets : their
religion was all that remained to them of the
past, all in it that had a future. The morally
weak and the superstitious melted away into
the pagan populations. As those who had been
carried away from Samaria were assimilated by
the populations among whom the kings of
14 193

194 The Religion of Israel
Assyria had settled them, so the Judaeans whose
religious faith was not strong and pure ceased
quickly to be Jahvists. But there remained a
faithful band in whom the spirit of the prophets
and the Law survived. It lived on memory and
hope. The book of Ezekiel and the second part
of Isaiah (xl.-lv.) show us what were then the
thoughts and aspirations of pious Israelites.
They waited for the restoration, and prepared
for it. When it was carried out, it followed a
plan arranged, so to say, beforehand ; and which
was influenced by other considerations than the
actual position created for the remnant of Judah
by the political situation of the time.

From the point of view of antiquity nothing
could be more abnormal than the religious
position of the believing exiles who were the
guardians of Jahvism. The principles and
teaching of the prophets did not allow them
to serve the Gods of Chaldaea : on the other
hand, Judaean tradition, strengthened yet more
by the Deuteronomic reformation, fixed Yahweh
in Zion. It was impossible to organize in
Babylon a system of worship whose only lawful
seat must be at Jerusalem. Thus they clung all
the more strictly to those religious practices

Judai

sm 195
which could survive on a foreign soil: it was
now that the sabbath and circumcision acquired
their supreme importance as characteristic
Jewish practices.
They were convinced, by the exhortations of
the prophets, and by Deuteronomy, that the
misfortunes of the nation had been caused
because its worship was not blameless ; and
they believed, always according to the prophets,
that the religion of their ancestors had been
little better than infidelity from the beginning.
Thus they were brought to imagine for the
future Israel a pure religion that would guard
its professors against a repetition of the divine
chastisement. It is so that we must explain
the making of rituals, which could have no
immediate usage, but which would be utilised
by the re-established worship. Up to now oral
traditions and practice had been sufficient ; but,
now the temple worship had ceased, the new
ritual could only exist in writing. Therefore
they set to work and codified the ancient
practices, making them agree with the prophetic
standards ; for now it was above all things
necessary to conciliate the requirements of
this moral religion with the traditional and
popular practices of worship. Priests were
better qualified for this task than any one else :
that is why the achievement of this age is

196 The Religion of Israel
personified best in Ezekiel, who was a priest,
a prophet, and one may say an editor of Law.
As a prophet, Ezekiel still taught ; but his
literary activity was greater than his preaching.
He is, so far as we know, the first of the student
or bookish prophets who wrote apocalyptic
visions. The priest in him is revealed because
the prophet is a ritualist, which Jeremiah was
not at all, though of sacerdotal origin* ; neither
was Isaiah, nor Amos, nor Hosea. It required
a priest to conceive the messianic reign in the
model of a precise liturgy, subordinated narrowly
to the ritual of the temple. As a moralist,
Ezekiel enforced vigorously the doctrine of
individual responsibility, which scarcely agrees
with older notions about the chastisement of
Israel as a people, and for the sins of its fathers.
He conceived the relation of Israel with Yahweh
as a covenant, made in the desert, for a
ritualistic purpose, and especially for the
observance of the sabbath, which seemed to
him the essential mark of Jahvism; and it is
with respect to those old laws that he speaks of
the malicious commandments which were given
by Yahweh to Israel for its destruction. \ Differ-
* But Jeremiah did not belong to the Jerusalem priest
hood. Perhaps this fact should be weighed when we try
to explain his complete indifference about the temple.
t See above, p. 165.

Judaism 197
ing, thus, from Jeremiah, he acknowledged the
Book of the Covenant and Deuteronomy as
Mosaic laws. The great sin of Israel was
idolatry : therefore the Israel of the future will
be distinguished by a worship that conforms to
the laws established by Yahweh himself. A
more complete repudiation of the past could
not be imagined. This prophet, above all others,
has taught Judaism to misunderstand its own
history.* The life of Israel has been a continual idolatry;
Ezekiel calls it prostitution, and he develops the
symbolism, utilized by Hosea, of Yahweh's
marriage with his people, by following it out
in realistic descriptions that go very near to
obscenity. Instead of a patriarchal nobility, he
gives to his nation as ancestors an Amorite
father and a Hittite mother. Jerusalem,
Samaria, Sodom: it is all the same thing.
The God of Ezekiel is more anthropomorphic,
one might say freely more archaic, than the God
of Jeremiah. The prophet saw him in human
shape, driving in a fantastic carriage. But this
God has lost all connexion with Sinai. The
" glory of Yahweh " comes from the north, from
the hill of the Gods, which Ezekiel seems to
identify with the Garden of Eden. A habitation
had to be found for Yahweh, since he had left
* Stade, 84.

198 The Religion of Israel
Zion ; and he had become too great to be sent back
into the wilderness. Though Ezekiel abhorred
strange worships his imagination was filled with
mythological subjects. The usage of pagan myths
in apocalyptic writings begins with him. He
seems to have made the Gods into auxiliaries
of Yahweh ; the seven celestial beings who
carried out the destruction of Jerusalem* might
be the Gods of the seven planets, and the one
with an inkhorn would be Nabu. Was the
mind of the Jahvist priest fertilized in Babylon
by these materials borrowed from polytheism ?
It may be admitted freely. But would it not be
more likely that in the reign of Manasseh, there
would be formed in the temple at Jerusalem
a kind of gnostic syncretism, which the
Deuteronomic reformation did not attack, or
which was only pruned and not eradicated?
The Jahvist story of the flood, which is not very
old, might come from this period.
By the anonymous author, who is usually
known as the Second Isaiah, the purely ideal
treatment of Jeremiah is revived ; but the
decadence of prophecy is shown by the
author not making himself known. His work
is no longer an exhortation, nor even an
original prophecy. It consists of eloquent
displays about the approaching deliverance of
* Ezek. ix.

Judaism 199
Israel ; and, however remarkable it may be, in
the sentiment which inspires it and by its
musical style, it depends very much for its
matter on the prophetic writers of the past.
The author never says anything by his own
inspiration, though he speaks often in the
name of Yahweh. He is a prophet, since he
announces and interprets the plans of God,
but he is very little of a visionary. Instead
of being, like Ezekiel, a man of the future
Law, he is merely a man of hope ; and he
draws freely on every subject that can
stimulate and nourish confidence.
In him, at length, we find the expression
of an absolute monotheism : Yahweh alone
has made the world, and directs history ; he
only is God, and the strange Gods, whom
the author identifies with their images, are
a mere nothing. This latter notion did not
prevail, at least not wholly, over that of
Ezekiel. The Gods survived in the condition
of spirits subordinated to the sole God. It
was allowed that —
When the Most High formed the nations,
When he separated the children of men,
He settled the borders of the peoples
According to the numbers of the sons of God ;
For the portion of Yahweh was Jacob,
And his inheritance was Israel.*

\Deut. xxxii. 8-9, following the Septuagint.

200 The Religion of Israel
Then two notions mingled ; and it was
held that the Gods of the nations did not
really exist, but that they were spirits whom
God had entrusted with the care of the
peoples, or who had taken it upon themselves ;
and that they had performed their duties
badly. While insisting upon the creation of the
world by Yahweh, the Second Isaiah had no
philosophic theory of creation, that is of a
world drawn out of nothing. Yahweh organ
ized chaos, and even triumphed over it.
Though his mind was not tinged with
mythology like Ezekiel's, the anonymous writer
acknowledges a struggle of Yahweh against
the power of darkness, whom the Demiurge
had to overcome before he could organize
the existing world.
Awake, awake, put on strength
O arm of Yahweh ;
Awake as in the days of old,
The generations of ancient times !
Is it not thou who hast split Bahab
And pierced the dragon ? *
Rahab is the redoubtable Tiamut, whom the
Babylonian Demiurge, Marduk, cut in two, to
make heaven and earth. This myth may
* Isa. li. 9-10.

Judais

m 201
have been known to the Jews before the
captivity. Traces of it have been found in
Job, and in several psalms. The priestly
writer of the Hexateuch has chosen to ignore
it in his systematic narrative of the cos
mogony ; although neither has he any notion
of a creation, and he also confronts the Demi
urge with a chaos, which has to be organized,
In the same way that the Second Isaiah
has reached the notion of a sole and universal
God, so he has formed a larger conception
of Israel's office than any of his predecessors.
Israel was chosen to proclaim the true God
to the nations : he has foundered in this task,
but he will rise again, and his restoration
will be the saving of the Gentiles. It was a
large and gracious vision, and it is the
nearest approach to universalism that is found
in the prophets; by the width of its horizon
it exceeds the Gospel of Jesus ; and Saint
Paul himself, under the pressure of circum
stances, has rather narrowed it. That the
author is later than Jeremiah and Ezekiel,
and is an imitation of them, can hardly
be doubted. For him there are two Israels:
a real and historic Israel of the past, a
guilty Israel, too, alas ! which has not ful
filled its mission, and which Yahweh has
punished justly; and an ideal Israel, faithful

202 The Religion of Israel
and perfect, represented formerly without any
doubt by the righteous and the prophets,
which has suffered in their persons all the
tribulations that have afflicted the chosen
people, but to which above all the future
belongs, since it will emerge from death to
enlighten the nations :
It is too small a thing to establish the tribes of Jacob
And to bring back the survivors of Israel :
I make thee the light of the Gentiles,
So that my salvation may go to the ends of the earth.*
Ezekiel segregated Israel from the Gentiles
in his city of the future, and the Lord
divided him from them in the actual world.
The Second Isaiah amalgamates pagans and
Israelites, and even foresees, a little rashly,
the conversion of Cyrus. A privilege,
however, is reserved to the people of God :
it will reign over the converted Gentiles.
The reality cannot fail to be short of so
fine a dream ; but, possibly, not a less ardent
hope was required to bring about a new and
voluntary migration of these exiles who had
taken root in the land of their enemies, and
who in the end had done so well there.
When Cyrus granted them leave to go back
into their own country, they did not all avail
themselves of it; and many Jews, who
* Isa. xlix. 6.

Judaism 203

remained faithful to Yahweh and in com
munion with their brethren in Palestine, con
tinued to live by the waters of Babylon. The
fortunes of Judaism were long precarious in
Jerusalem; and the Babylonian colony supported
it by encouragement, by its faith, by its favour
with the rulers, and also with its money. The
exiles who returned, under Zerubbabel, to settle
in Jerusalem and to rebuild the town, and then
the temple, were few in number, and they
were soon isolated in the midst of a population
which had not learnt the lesson of the captivity.
The smaller peasantry, which had remained
in the land, had not forgotten Yahweh,
but its religion was that of the time before
the exile ; and it had neither the zeal nor
the legalist temper of the Jews who came
from Babylon. Thanks to the help which
came thence, the Jerusalem settlement was by
degrees consolidated ; and when its pious
fervour grew timid or seemed to wane the
exiled believers provided for its needs. From
the exile there was [imported by Ezra, and
under the auspices of Nehemiah, that Law
which finally moulded Judaism.
§ 2
If the last chapters of Ezekiel, (xl.-xlviii.)
in which the status of the future Israel is

204 The Religion of Israel
planned, had not been attached to the writings
of a known prophet, and if their author had
not covered them with the name of Moses, by
presenting them as a revelation made to Israel
in the wilderness, they might have figured in
the Law. Other heirs of the sacerdotal tra
dition, working in the same spirit, elaborated
a ritual which has been incorporated in that
document of the Hexateuch which is known
as the Priestly Code. This document has been
styled by writers The Law of Holiness, * because
of the theory which dominates it : to make
Israel a holy people and worthy of the God
whom wit serves, by the practice of a worship
regulated down to its minutest details. The
sacerdotal point of view is betrayed by this
anxiety ; for the holiness does not consist solely
in moral perfection, but also, and it might even
be said chiefly, in a ritual purity which depends
on primitive notions about the purity and
impurity of things, whose relation to the deity
is conceived in a wholly material way. Ancient
superstitions, otherwise harmless in themselves,
thus take on the appearance of divine pro
hibitions : as for instance the forbidding to sow
two kinds of grain in the same field, or to
use two different kinds of material in the
weaving of a cloth ; or, it may be, that common
* See above, p. 31.

Judaism 205
pagan habits are forbidden, like tattooing, which
primitive Jahvism seems to have practised.*
All this is mingled with commands or pro
hibitions of a moral nature, which are strictly
religious. And they are all justified for similar
reasons : " And ye shall be holy unto me : for
I Yahweh am holy, and have separated you
from the nations, that ye should be mine."t This
separation itself is an element of the holiness
which is prescribed.
The same point of view prevails throughout
the whole Priestly Code. The compilation gives
its rules in the setting of a narrative which
makes the whole work a sort of liturgical his
tory of mankind : an history, it must be said
emphatically, which has little or no connexion
with realities. But the author gains an ad
vantage by linking the origin of the sabbath
with the creation of the world, the prohibition
of blood with the deluge, circumcision with
Abraham ; as he also gains one, more obviously,
by attaching the ritual of the second temple
to Moses and the revelation at Sinai. For he
does not fear to throw back the system of
sacrifices into the times of Moses, at the cost
* Exod. xiii. 9, 16, alludes to it. Apparently the old
prophets were marked on then.' foreheads ; see 1 Kings
xx. 41. Tattooing the hand is alluded to in Isa. xliv. 5.
t Lev. xx. 26.

206 The Religion of Israel
of suppressing in the patriarchal history every
thing contradictory to his systematic theory.
Through the Priestly Code, the same temper
of idealism and ritualism has affected the final
composition of the Law and of the whole
Pentateuch. It may be seen, from the Book of Nehemiah,
that the promulgation of the Law by Ezra was
made under similar conditions to the promul
gation of Deuteronomy by Josiah ; and that
the priestly legislation, as a whole, was not
known previously by the community which
bound itself so solemnly to observe it. As
Josiah had rent his clothes, in sign of poignant
grief, when he had heard the reading of
Deuteronomy, overwhelmed as he was by the
wrath of Yahweh for the neglect of this
Law by the former generations, who had been
ignorant of it, so the people assembled by
Ezra was dissolved in tears when it acquired
a knowledge of the new code. And as Josiah
and the people had sworn to observe the Law
of Hilkiah, so Nehemiah and the assembled
Jews swore to keep the Law of Ezra. This
time the undertaking was even put down
in writing : Nehemiah signed it, so did the
priests and nobles ; and the multitude followed
their leaders, promising "with curse and oath
to walk in Yahweh's Law, which had been

Judaism 207
given by Moses the servant of Yahweh." *
Finally, in the same way as the author of
Kings observed, with profound truth, that never
since the time of the Judges (nor even before
it), had a Passover been celebrated like that
held by Josiah in the eighteenth year of his
reign, so the Book of Chronicles points out,
rightly, that neither since the time of Joshua
(nor in any other time), had the children of
Israel kept the Feast of Tabernacles as they
did after the promulgation of Ezra's Law.t
The practical conditions by means of which
Israel shall be truly Yahweh's nation, the priestly
nation which it ought to be for the God who,
by a special choice, has separated it from all
the peoples, are laid down with the utmost
detail in the Levitical code. The land occupied
by the children of Jacob is holy, as the property
of God ; but even more holy is the tabernacle,
that is the temple, the only place in the
world where the divine worship may be cele
brated, and where Yahweh becomes present to
receive the offerings due to him. Holy are
the seasons which God sets apart as belonging
specially to himself, and in particular his
sabbaths. But the sabbatical system grew
to extravagant proportions : the earth itself
* Neh. x. 29.
t See 2 Kings xxiii. 22. ; Neh. viii. 17.

208 The Religion of Israel
must have its sabbath, and rest untilled every
seventh year; and at the end of seven sabba-
tory cycles, there must be a great sabbath,
the year of Jubilee ; also a rest for the soil,
and a season when alienated estates must go
back to their original owners. This curious
social economy was meant to prove the sovereign
rights of Yahweh, the only real proprietor of
Israel's land. A whole system of dues was
organized to acknowledge this right: first-fruits,
tithes, and a regulated series of offerings in
the temple. Holy must be all the children of
Israel by the rigorous observance of circumcision,
and of all the commandments about clean and
unclean things, about states of purity and
impurity. They were truly a nation of priests,
and they proclaimed it. But as all could not
carry out the special conditions of purity which
were necessary for the divine service, the people
were represented, in matters of worship, by
the priests, who were held to be descended from
Aaron by his two sons Eleazar and Ithamar;
and by the Levites in the lesser ministries of
God's house, and as attendants on the priests.
The latter had a chief, a high priest, the
supposed successor of Aaron, who became the
leading personage in the new community.
Before Josiah's reformation, the sacerdotal
body had no single head, though the first

Judaism 209
priest of the temple was already a great
person ; but he was dependent on the king,
and the priests of the shrines outside Jeru
salem were not subject to him. Under the
conditions which were prepared for Judaism
in the restoration authorized by Cyrus, the
chief of the Jerusalem priesthood, in all that
was not reserved to the foreign sovereignty,
was the real leader of the Jews : the sacerdotal
code definitely consecrates his supreme autho
rity, and his special dignity in religious matters.
His power was bound to grow, and practically
did grow, little by little. At the return
from exile, there was a kind of rivalry
between Zerubbabel and the priest Joshua,
and also occasional bickerings between Nehe
miah and the high priest Eliashib. But when
he only had to deal with Persian viceroys, the
pontiff, who had enormous revenues, was the
real master of the little Jewish state. Even
more, when the family of Mattathias had re
gained temporarily the national independence,
the political chief, profiting by the fact that he
was of a sacerdotal family, assumed the dignity
of high priest. Herod, who could not pretend
to it, was careful to keep the choice of pontiffs
in his own hands, and not to leave the office too
long with the same person. The Romans did
the same. 15

210 The Religion of Israel
But the religious importance of this pontifi
cate was not equal to its political greatness.
This had not been foreseen by the theorists
of the Levitical code, who were chiefly pre
occupied with the centralization of worship,
with the unity of the sanctuary and of the
sacerdotal hierarchy. The regulation of the
priesthood was a part of the system which
organized the life of the community theo-
cratically, it might even be said ritualistically.
That system is now perfected: it is composed
almost wholly of ancient materials, but it is
new by the spirit which animates it all, and
gives a meaning to every part.
On one hand, it would seem that the over
throw of the first temple and the temporary
suppression of sacrifice effected a purifying and
spiritualizing of the conceptions of Yahweh.
Yahweh is no longer, and above all things,
the God of Israel ; he is God, simply : he is
no longer represented as talking familiarly
with men, and the priestly writer is careful to
suppress the infantile story of Eden, as well
as most things in the patriarchal legends ;
storms are still instruments of divine mani
festation, but because God wills it so, not
by any natural affinity; God withdraws him
self from the world, and from external inter
course with men, to communicate only with

Judai

sm 211
their spirit, perhaps more with their spirit
than their heart. To this tendency, which is
slightly intellectualist, we owe the fine story
of the creation which now opens the Bible, as
well as the philosophy of the old sacred history,
and the notion of successive agreements with
Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses. Nothing
could be less true as history ; but it was a
striking production of rationalizing theology.
It was all reasoned until it seemed to be most
reasonable. On this foundation, Jewish and
Christian monotheism has built a general
philosophy of the universe and of history
which was able to impose itself on the ancient
world, and which has been seriously challenged
only by the scientific labours of recent centuries.
On the other hand, one seems to watch
a materializing of worship that contrasts
strangely with the spiritualization of belief.
Nevertheless Ezra's Law did not materialize
the worship except in relation to us, so to
speak, and not in comparison with what had
existed previously. This Law did not mate
rialize worship so far as we compare it with
the actual religion of the prophets, remem
bering that there never was any prophetical
religion, but only a criticism by the prophets
of a worship thoroughly engrained with
idolatry and superstition : it is this worship

212 The Religion of Israel
that we must compare with the worship of
the Levitical code if we would appraise the
latter justly. At that time, and in those sur
roundings, it could not have entered the mind
of any religious legislator that the system of
sacrifices should be abolished. The sacerdotal
code appears to recommend a more external
and ritualistic religion than Deuteronomy,
because the introduction of many customs
and observances into its rules was thought
desirable, and especially all the details of the
liturgical service : of these things, the authors
of Deuteronomy had not thought it advisable
to speak, though they existed none the less,
and they were bound to attract the legists of
the exile. The rules about things clean and
unclean, and the whole of the sacrificial liturgy,
are only the codification and systematizing of
a very ancient usage. Everything that clashed
with the monotheistic faith was eliminated, as
well as practices obviously tainted with idolatry
and superstition, or which were connected with
divination and worship of the dead. Of all the
rest, out of everything which could be regarded
as an element of worship, was made a cycle
of observances, minutely thought out, in which
was perceived a way of recognising the sove
reignty of God by a service of perpetual
obedience. And it never happened that for the

Judaism 213

majority, or even for the doctors of the Law,
these practices were considered indifferent in
themselves and without intrinsic value. Nor
did their course of development stop even here.
The legislation of Ezra shows the beginning of
a casuistry, whose excessive development will
one day be hurtful to the morality of true
religion. For the present, it is a way of cata
loguing the heritage of the past, while neu
tralising the primitive and more or less
naturalistic meaning of the ancient rites.
In its own time, the sacerdotal code, far
from being reactionary, was rather a stage
of progress in the evolution of Judaism. It
facilitated the compromise, which was begun
by Deuteronomy, between the faith of the
prophets, with its idealizing and individualistic
tendencies, and the necessities of a popular
religion; it might be added, of every religion
which involves the communion of its believers
by means of a settled and traditional worship.
It gave to monotheism, which was defined
henceforward as a creed, that external pro
tection which was needed to implant it firmly
in the conscience of the Jewish people. In
order that the monotheist faith might become
indestructible for Israel, it was necessary that
the chosen people should be segregated, as it
were, and shielded from pagan influences, by

214 The Religion of Israel
submitting to a severe and complicated rule.
" Religions," says Renan, " often gain a con
servative power from the very fetters which
" they impose." * Less shut in by the Law, the
Jewish community would have been more liable
to temptations from without, and might easily
have been diverted from its contribution to the
religious history of mankind. It is true that
this crushing law could only be made efficacious
by being accepted ; but it always had zealous
partizans to ensure its triumph, even by
force if necessary, should its authority seem
threatened. There was one practice, namely, fasting,
which is hardly mentioned in the Law, since
it is inculcated only for the solemnity of the
Expiation, t on the tenth day of the seventh
month, but which acquired nevertheless a
prominent place among the religious customs
of the Jews after the exile. It seems that
they used to commemorate in this way, during
the captivity, their melancholy anniversaries.
Before that, fasts had only been ordered for
public calamities ; but fasting was a usual
custom in the burial rites, and perhaps in
its origin it was connected with worship of
the dead. In public fasts the same ceremonial
* Histoire du Peuple d'Israel, ii. 465.
t Neh. ix. 1.

Judaism 215
was observed as for mourning. For instance,
on the occasion of promulgating Ezra's Law,
" The children of Israel were assembled with
"fasting, and with sack cloth, and with earth
upon them." At that period every important
matter was prepared for by fasting. It was
an exhibition of repentance, to which was added
a public acknowledgment of national sin, and
it soon grew into a fashionable habit of private
devotion. The misfortunes of the nation and
the spirit of post-exilic Judaism are undoubtedly
enough to explain the diffusion of the practice.
§ 3
After the reformation of Ezra and Nehemiah,
Judaism was settled, and it tended progressively
to harden. Up till then, it had been on the
defensive against the petty nations round it, and
against the inhabitants of the former kingdom
of Samaria : the material interests of the com
munity in Jerusalem led them to open their
gates to their neighbours, and to be on friendly
relations with them. These necessities were a
counterpoise to the exacting and exclusive
religious feeling which the old exiles had
brought back from Babylon. It can be seen
clearly that the priests of the temple had
scarcely reached a position of privilege and
profit before they showed themselves less

216 The Religion of Israel
fanatical and narrow than the legists who came
from Babylon, like the scribe Ezra, or than
the pious laity, who also came from abroad,
like Nehemiah.
On the question of marriage, especially, with
non-Jewish women, the priests and inhabitants
of Jerusalem had not the scrupulosity of the
reformers. The Book of Ruth would seem to
have been written against the measures that
zealots for the holiness of Israel wanted to
enforce. As primitive Jahvism was above all
things a religion of men, which troubled as
little about women as about slaves, marriages
with non-Israelite women had long been per
mitted without scruple. But such marriages
had become irreconcilable with the notions that
had been formed about the holiness of Israel,
and about the entire repudiation of all foreign
worship. Polygamy remained licit in theory,
but was little practised ; divorce was wholly at
the will of the husband ; but the blood of the
chosen race must remain pure, and neither
superstition nor idolatry should invade the
home. A struggle was bound to come between
the party of freedom and the zealots of the
Law. The Samaritan schism owed its beginning to
these differences. We have seen already that
the majority of the antique Israelites and

Judaism 217
Judaeans, who had remained in their country,
were really desirous to worship Yahweh, but
they had neither the bitter zeal nor the ex
clusive temper which animated the exiles, those
especially who did not come back, and who
from Babylon watched over the fortunes of
Jahvism in their native land. The old in
habitants would willingly have united them
selves to the worship of Jerusalem, but they
were excluded. They were not organized, how
ever, into a rival community, as they had
probably neither priests nor Law. Now it so
happened that the grandson of the high priest
Eliashib had married the daughter of Sanballat,
the opponent of Nehemiah. When there was
a question of putting away the foreign wives,
which was a fundamental matter in the re
formation planned by Ezra and carried out by
Nehemiah, the grandson of Eliashib preferred
exiling himself to dismissing his wife and
breaking with his father-in-law. And he was
probably not alone; because Nehemiah writes
in his history,* when he boasts of having ex
pelled him, " Remember them, 0 my God,
" because they have defiled the priesthood, and
" the covenant of the priesthood, and of the
"Levites." The banished priests retired to
Samaria ; and thus the sect known as the
* Neh. xii. 29.

218 The Religion of Israel
Samaritans was organized, whose sanctuary was
at Shechem, on mount Gerizim, one of the holy
places of the old kingdom of Israel.
The rupture could not have been at first so
complete as it grew to be in the course of time.
We may hold that the Judaeans of Samaria
kept up some intercourse and connexion with
their native country. The schismatic priests
accepted the Law, as it had been made by Ezra,
and after him by the scribes who edited the
compilations of the Pentateuch. But the estab
lishment of a rival worship so near Jerusalem
could not be effected without hostility, which
soon broke out. The Samaritans accepted only
the Law, and not the collection of the Prophets,
which was made about a century later: nor,
with better reason, that of the Hagiographa.
Their worship was always a strict monotheism,
according to the tenour of the Law ; but it
was a religion without enthusiasm, and there
fore it never showed any capacity for prose
lytizing. It may be noticed that the Saddu
cees, the sacerdotal aristocracy of Jerusalem,
undertook also to base their religion solely
upon the Law, and that they were wanting
altogether in religious zeal. This parallel is
not without historical significance. Samari-
tanism was the antithesis of a proselytizing
organization : it was an association of reason-

Judaism 219
able believers protesting against what seemed
to them an intolerant fanaticism. Great re
ligious creations do not issue out of such
conditions. The Samaritan body was nothing
but a Judaic sect, which in no sense continued
the traditions of the old Israelitish monarchy.
That sect broke away from Judaism at the very
time when the latter was becoming self-con
centrated and vigorous, and was about to exert
the force of its propaganda on the world.
At Jerusalem prophecy was extinguished. At
the beginning of the restoration, while the
temple was rebuilding, a few authoritative
voices were heard, those of Haggai and
Zechariah. By the time of Nehemiah, the
institution was dead. Nehemiah, to be ac
curate, still mentions prophets ; but, according
to him, they were people paid by his opponents
to frighten him with untrue announcements.
"Remember, O my God," writes the pious
governor, " Tobiah and Sanballat, according to
"these their works, and also the prophetess
" Noadiah, and the rest of the prophets that
" would have put me in fear." * Henceforth,
prophecy was only carried on by stealth, in
the pseudonymous literature of the apocalypses.
There is no longer any prophetical teaching.
Sacerdotal instruction vanished, too, in like
* Neh. vi. 14.

220 The Religion of Israel
manner. The ministerial duties of the priest
consisted only in performing a very complicated
ritual. The future belonged to scribes, doctors
of the Law, moralists, casuists. The scribe out
lived, not only the prophet, but the priest ; and
it was by him, with his intangible Law, that
Judaism itself was able to survive. About the
year 200, when Ecclesiasticus was written, he
was already in great repute. He was the sage,
the master, credited with a knowledge of things
divine and human. All this knowledge, how
ever, was co-ordinated with and subordinated
to a proficiency in the Law of God : in time, it
was not thought well to have any other know
ledge. The scribal institution was definitely
established in the time of Herod the Great,
when Hillel and Shammai, the famous heads
of the two schools, were flourishing. They
were then, and they tended to become more
and more, the spiritual guides of the Jews.
Ezra's Law made Judaism ; but we must not
believe that it succeeded in eliminating all
those elements of the older religion which it
had proscribed or dropped. In the same way
that the old patriarchal legends survived in
the form given to the Pentateuch by the
sacerdotal code, so many primitive beliefs were
fitted on to the transcendental God. That God
was self-sufficing: he created the world by

Judai

aism 221

his word, and was its sole governor. His word
was still in his Law for the guidance of his
people ; and there was no more necessity for
prophetical visions, or revealing dreams, any
more than for angels round about him. The
apocalyptic literature was produced, none the
less ; and round its unique deity it organized
a whole celestial court.
In the primitive Jahvism, and still more in
that of the prophets, the spirit of Yahweh
tended to replace the spirits; and when the
angel of Yahweh was mentioned, his personal
manifestation was meant, rather than the
apparition of a being distinct from him.
Heaven and earth formed a single world,
in which heaven was less important than
earth ; because Yahweh lived and acted more
commonly on earth than in heaven. But now
the God was raised altogether above nature ;
and they soon dared not even pronounce his
name of Yahweh, either through a slightly
superstitious fear of a word connected with
so great a majesty, or through some confused
notion that a proper name was wholly un
becoming in the sole and only God. Heaven
became a world distinct from earth : it was
the divine world, where the Eternal reigns in
glory, and which is in opposition to the human
world, where God's will suffers contradiction

222 The Religion of Israel
until it pleases him to enforce it on earth as
in heaven.
And the divine world is not filled by God
alone. The sons of God had functions that
were but ill-defined alongside of the old
Yahweh : they seem to have belonged chiefly
to an old popular mythology, which did not
come through an exclusively Jahvist tradition.
Henceforward, the members of the divine
clan are the servants of God: they are always
astral powers, patrons of the nations, and the
soldiery of heaven. It was imagined sometimes
that Yahweh condemned them, imprisoned
them, killed them, or at least reduced them
violently to obedience when he was displeased
with their behaviour. The theory of Daniel
was more correct. In him, each kingdom has its
heavenly chief; and the empires succeed one
another as their patron becomes most powerful
on high. Michael is the patron of the Jewish
people : Gabriel, the angel of revelation.
Gabriel fights with the angel of Persia, because
that kingdom is condemned to perish ; but, as
he does not succeed in conquering, Michael goes
to help him. The same thing happens when
the angel of the Greeks has to be put down ;
and Gabriel had helped Michael when he had
failed to end the Chaldaean empire. For the
angels of the empires do not despoil one another

Judaism 223

of the primacy: Michael and Gabriel depose
them in succession when the hour fixed by
the prophetic word has rung.
Legions of celestial spirits, as unnumbered
as the stars, with which they are more or
less identical, encompass the throne of God.
Their function is to praise the creator without
ceasing: to make up for the homage that
paganism robs him of on earth. Angels are
the messengers and interpreters of the
divine revelations. Ezekiel still saw Yahweh
himself, as Isaiah had seen him ; but angels,
the executors of the divine will, have come
already into his visions. Zechariah saw only
angels : and angels instructed Daniel. The
angels thus watched over all things : over the
guidance of man, as of the elements. God is
now too great to make the rain and snow fall
himself, or to speak to men. Inferior ministers
see to all things, according to his orders.
Thus, on one hand, the primitive Gods and
some of the primitive spirits, to which must
be joined the cherubim and seraphim, who
seem originally to have been personifications
of storm clouds and lightnings, at least if they
were not simply guardian genii, conceived in
the shape of fantastic beasts, all came to be
formed into a body of celestial powers, ruled
by God ; and very many of thern were con-

224 The Religion of Israel
fined to the ministry of punishment. On the
other hand, on the borders of that region
where the divine influences were exercised, in
the lower world, the spirits of the earth were
still active and unquiet: those which delighted
in waste places, in ruins and in deserts ; the
spirits also of the maladies which afflict man
kind. They, too, like the angels, formed a
multitude without number, all ready to be
enlisted in Satan's army. § 4
Moreover, it has been believed too easily that
post-exilic Judaism is to be found wholly in
the Law. Undoubtedly the Law moulded the
domestic life of the Jews more and more, also
their social arrangements, and their national
life so far as they had one. Until the rising
of the Maccabees, Judaism was a petty ecclesi
astical and theocratic State under the suze
rainty of Persia, and then of Macedonian con
querors. The entry of Pompey into Jerusalem
(in 64 B.C.) marks the close of a short period
of independence, which was not revived by the
reign of Herod. But the Asmonaean monarchy
existed only to secure the supremacy of the
Law, since it was born of a revolt against
Hellenism, which first encroached and then
persecuted. It is in this direction that Jewish

Judaism 225
life appears to us most visible and stable.
But its inward forces were nourished by two
sentiments, which are usually connected with
one another, and which soften the dry and
sterilizing influences of legalism : namely per
sonal piety, and messianic hope. It is also
proper to mention a certain striving of Jewish
thought towards philosophy, by a meditation
upon human destiny and the principles of
right living.
The pious Israelite of post-exilian times is
represented in the Psalms, of which only one
portion seems to have been intended at first
for liturgical use. The Psalms express the
religion of the heart, the devotion of indi
viduals ; but individuals who have, so to speak,
an ecclesiastical conscience, a lively sense of
the community. The wholly personal note of
these prayers, which is also at times very
national and Jewish, should not surprise us.
Piety, which is individual religion, derives its
source necessarily from a reverent trust in
the Infinite ; but it is inclined to appropriate
the God who is revealed to it, and to be dis
satisfied if it does not believe itself in personal
possession of the supreme good. Such is the
sentiment shown in those Psalms which are
filled with the living God. Perfect piety, how
ever, while possessing God entirely for itself,
16

226 The Religion of Israel
does not wish to exclude any one from the same
advantage. Jewish piety was more filled with
hope than with generosity ; with only some
rare exceptions, it remained more or less per
suaded that the possession of God was a
national and hereditary possession of its own
In reading the Psalms, one is forced to own
that, for all pious Jews, it was good to live
under the Law :
The Law of Yahweh is an undefiled Law,
Converting the soul ;
The testimony of Yahweh is sure,
And giveth wisdom to the simple ;
The statutes of Yahweh are right,
And rejoice the heart ;
The commandment of Yahweh is pure,
And giveth light unto the eyes ;
The fear of Yahweh is clean,
And endureth for ever ;
The judgements of Yahweh are true,
And righteous altogether :
More to be desired are they than gold,
Yea than much fine gold ;
Sweeter also than honey,
And the honey-comb :
Moreover by them is Thy servant taught,
And in keeping of them.
There is great reward.*
Messianism was the answer to the problem,
which troubled the sages, about the destiny
* Psa. xix, 7-11.

Judaism 227
of man, and the justice of God. The Law
compelled this question to be raised. It
promised life to every one who followed its
precepts ; but what it contemplated above all
was the national prosperity, the rewarding of
the fidelity of all. The same principle of
strict retribution did not fail to be applied to
individuals ; but, if it were already puzzling to
discover the fulfilment in the course of history,
it was far more disconcerting to prove the
truth in individual cases. A belief in the
resurrection of the dead only appeared late,
and later still was any notion of the im
mortality of the soul. The prophetic religion
banned any worship of the dead, and it would
have thought it an outrage to God to declare
men immortal.
The dead praise not thee, Yahweh,
Neither all they that go down into silence . . ,*
For Sheol t cannot praise thee,
Death cannot celebrate thee :
They that go down into the pit
Cannot hope for thy truth.
The living, the living, he shall praise thee. . . . X
Thus spake the psalmists, continually, in
pious emulation. Ancient Israel had known
* Psa. cxv. 17. t The abode of the dead.
X Isa. xxxviii. 18-19.

228 The Religion of Israel
the worship of the dead, and the practices
usually connected with it among the non-
civilized. The dead were assimilated more or
less to the spirits, and they were dealt with
accordingly. Even the calling up of the dead
had been practised, though it was soon held
to be unlawful. That kind of divination bor
dered on magic, and became easily suspected
by religion. It is related that Saul had put
away those who had the secret of it; but, on
the eve of his death, before engaging in his
last battle with the Philistines, being unable
to get any oracle out of Yahweh, he went to
Endor, to consult a witch, who, in spite of the
royal prohibition, went on exercising her
trade. The scene of the calling up, whether
historical or no, does not cease to be instruc
tive. " What seest thou ? " said Saul to the
woman. — " I see a God coming up out of the
earth."— " What form is he of?"— "An old
man cometh up ; and he is covered with a
robe." And Saul perceived that it was
Samuel.* Thus the dead was an elohim, a
supernatural being, a spirit of the grave, which
did not hinder him from keeping the same
dress as when he lived ; and his first word was
to complain of being troubled, like a man
whose slumber is disturbed. Neither the priests
* 1 Sam. xxviii. 13-14.

Judaism 229
nor the prophets of Yahweh could encourage
these superstitions. But they had not ceased
to be fashionable even in the time of Isaiah.
Deuteronomy forbad them strictly, and it is
said that Josiah suppressed them. The ancient
practices in the worship of the dead were
turned into the customs of mourning ; and, of
the popular beliefs about the dead, there re
mained only the notion of a shadowy survival,
which was not complete annihilation, but was
even less near to human life.
Job wished to die at his birth, because death
was a perpetual sleep :
Now I should have lien down and been quiet ;
I should have slept ; then should I have been at rest :
With kings and councillors of the earth,
Who built themselves mausoleums ;
Or with princes that had gold,
And filled their houses with silver. . . .
There the wicked cease from troubling,
And there the weary be at rest :
There the prisoners are at ease together ;
They hear not the voice of the task-master.
The small and the great are there
And the slave is free from his master.*
This question of the grave was of no conse
quence to faith, because there was neither
happiness nor suffering in the realm of the
* Job iii. 13-15, 17-19.

230 The Religion of Israel
dead, neither punishment nor reward. Remu
neration, therefore, had to be placed in this
life. By the progress of civilization and the
movement of thought in the times of the
Persian and Greek domination, and doubtless
also by the growth of individual piety, it
came to be asked how providential justice
could be demonstrated by facts, or even
adjusted with realities. Psalms and sapiential
books testify that the grave scandal of that
time was the misery of the just and the
felicity of the wicked. Perhaps it is not super
fluous to say that by the " just " here must
be understood above all the observers of the
Law ; and by the " wicked," similarly, not only
criminals of high and low degree, but men
who were too free in thought and practice.
The eyes were shut as much as possible to the
evidence ; and men repeated after the psalmists :
"I have been young, and now am old,
"Yet saw I never the righteous forsaken."*
They repeated that the prosperity of the
wicked is fleeting ; and passing, too, is the
tribulation of the godly man : that the latter
is blessed after his death, and in his posterity;
* Psa. xxvii. 25.

Judaism 231
that the former is cursed in his tomb, and
punished in his descendants. But all the
righteous did not die old, and some of them
perished in misfortune. Was, then, the sin
cerity of their goodness to be suspected, or
the reality of their deserving?
The problem, as we know, is magnificently
set forth in Job, where an old legend is used
as a framework for the discussion. The friends
of Job support the common thesis, that good
ness is always recompensed : and Job urges
the objections. Against those who wish to
believe him guilty because he is unfortunate,
Job does not rely on the witness of his own
conscience : he appeals to a divine witness,
which in the end is given him. But there is
no solution. Yahweh, who intervenes to wind
up the debate, only declares the mystery : his
justice is as unfathomable as his creative
wisdom and the effects of his power. It must
be believed, though it cannot be proved. It is
only asserted that a good man may be hurt
without his innocence being suspected, and
without being justified himself in arraigning
God. Ordinary faith could only raise itself
to this height with difficulty. We can see
how the mass of believers, in a crisis like the
persecution by Antiochus Epiphanes, came to
accept the theory of a resurrection.

232 The Religion of Israel
Formerly there were sages who, without
speculating differently about the justice of
God, professed to teach men the art of
happiness. It was the art of right living.
But the sages formerly did not understand
it altogether as the doctors of the Law did,
though, in Ecclesiasticus, sage and doctor
coalesce. From the standpoint of the Law and
of piety, sin is a fault against God: from the
standpoint of wisdom it is a folly; piety thus
becomes prudence, and duty interest. All
wisdom, however, is a gift of God, and revela
tion itself is wisdom, since it teaches how to
live properly. God having become absolutely
transcendent, they finished — and was it only
by some Hellenic influence? We may guess
it, though it is less easy to prove — they finished
by conceiving Wisdom as an intermediary
between God and man: it was she who had
created the world, and who taught men. Thus
they went towards the conception of a supreme
reason, the cause and standard of all intelli
gence. But philosophical speculation was
bound to be arrested sooner or later, as soon
as it was clearly understood, and the author
of Ecclesiasticus so taught, that the highest
and fullest manifestation of wisdom is con
tained in the Law. Ultimately, the optimism
of the sages who wrote the Proverbs and

Judaism 233
Ecclesiasticus was due to their being believers ;
their confidence in life proceeded from their
faith in Yahweh as the protector of Israel :
it was akin to the messianic hope.
Where that hope failed, wisdom became
naturally pessimist and even sceptical. This is
the case of Ecclesiastes : a spirit filled with
curiosity about all subjects, but a man dis
illusioned about all things; steeped enough in
Hellenism, as it would appear, to see or to
guess the sterility of Jewish particularism, but
not enough to have confidence in himself and
in the worth of reason. The pretended Solomon
confines himself to saying that all things are
vanity, and exceeding vanity : that there is
nothing new under the sun ; that the same end
waits the sage and the senseless ; that man is
bad, and woman worse; that over all is the
supremacy of chance. There is no hope beyond
the tomb: "a living dog is better than a dead
lion." And the reason is that " the living know
" that they will die, while the dead know
" nothing. . . . Whatsoever thy hand findeth to
" do, do it with thy might ; because there is
" neither activity, nor thought, nor knowledge,
" nor wisdom in the Sheol whither thou goest." *
For the rest, Koheleth does not deny the justice
of God : he proclaims only that it is incompre-
* Eccl. ix. 4-5, 10.

234 The Religion of Israel
hensible ; therefore let us fear God, and enjoy
life wisely. But feeling for religion wanes
when the community is wanting. Koheleth is
no longer a Jew, but he is not yet a citizen
of the world. He has not the religion of
humanity. All he stands for is a transcen
dental egoism. We learn from him how the
Jewish faith could destroy itself. We must
search elsewhere to know how it could preserve
itself, and triumph.

MESSIANISM

CHAPTER VI

MESSIANISM

THE capture and the destruction of Jeru
salem by Nebuchadnezzar, in 586, made
an end of the Jewish nationality. The brief
time of independence and prosperity under the
Asmonsean rulers was merely an interlude in
the history of a development which was ex
clusively religious. As that new monarchy was
a pontificate, it experienced internal difficul
ties almost as soon as it was organized ; and
we may question if it developed the normal
conditions of a state that was made to last.
What enabled Judah to survive was its reli
gion ; and its religion preserved it in the midst
of a world where its political influence was
henceforth insignificant. Religion alone sus
tained it, by means of its immovable faith in
the God of Israel, and in the fortune which he
designed for his chosen people. We have just
seen how the trial of their faith consisted
237

238 The Religion of Israel
actually in the contradiction between facts and
theory, when the latter was faced impartially,
and its principles were applied to individual
lives. But, in spite of everything, hope in the
triumph of a nation which had ceased to exist
was maintained by means of the religion which
became the only stay and tie for the remnants
of the ancient people. The dream was a
paradox, but it was not therefore sterilized,
since Christianity issued from it. And now it
is advisable that we should examine it.
§ 1
The messianic theory exists in germ in that
feeling of confidence which is inspired by
prayer ; that feeling especially which a religous
body, a tribe or a nation, cherishes with
regard to its heavenly protector : the theory
is identical, in its essence, with that trust in
the divine protection which is at the root
of all worship. The expectation of glorious
destinies for Israel corresponded to the exalted
notions which had been formed of Yahweh. It
was not possible to imagine an exceedingly
powerful God whose people would not be
dowered with good fortune. But if the expec
tation of Israel had depended only on that
conviction, it would have differed little from
the trust which the Assyrians placed in their

Messianism 239
God Ashur, or Nebuchadnezzar in his God
Marduk, or the Romans in the Gods of the
Capitol and in the Genius of the Eternal City.
Yahweh was not only a very great God, but
a just God, who was not satisfied with the
mere external dues of worship, but whose chief
requirements were in the moral sphere. That
is why, as soon as clear hopes were formed
about the glorious destinies of Israel, the ful
filment of those hopes was made dependent on
moral conditions, namely on the practice of
righteousness ; or, rather, the proclamation of
the triumph was subordinated to that of a
chastisement. The latter, indeed, it would seem,
must precede the former ; and it was far more
prominent in the message of the prophets
until the fall of the Judaean monarchy. There
will be a great judgment by Yahweh of his
faithful people : when that people has been
duly crushed, the righteous, the minority, who
shall have survived the trial, will enjoy their
God in peace, and will taste on earth an
unmixed happiness, every trouble being ex
pelled out of the world along with its wicked
ness. This conception of Israel's future may be
seen in the prophets of the eighth century.
But it is plain that, in earlier times, the
Israelites had counted more upon Yahweh's

240 The Religion of Israel
help in battle, notwithstanding some defeats,
and on his material benefits, in spite of natural
visitations, than they dreamed of moral condi
tions being attached to his favours. The hope
could not be purer than the religious concep
tion. For long, no doubt, it was held that
fat victims were the surest means of gaining
the divine support. The messianic notion had
its course of evolution, hke the conception of
God ; and they grew concurrently.
The felicity of the righteous was the definite
object of the messianic kingdom ; but it was
conceived primarily as the reign of God, and
formerly as the overwhelming victory of
Yahweh. And had not Yahweh always been
the God of glorious battles ? The prophets
had never ceased to conceive him as a re
doubtable warrior. It is he who breaks, when
he wills, the pride of the conquerors whom
they call Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, or
Antiochus. In the threats which Isaiah flung
at the King of Assyria, in those of the
prophets who foretold the ruin of the Chaldaean
power, in the account of the defeat which,
according to Ezekiel, Gog the fabulous King
of Magog is to suffer in Palestine, in the
premonitions of Daniel about the death of
Antiochus Epiphanes, Yahweh shows himself
as the invincible enemy of every pagan king

Messianism 241
As a God jealous of his glory, he is the
enemy of the idolatrous powers ; as God of
Israel, he is the avenger of his people. He
is always the same God, whom the song of
Deborah presents rushing from Sinai, over the
hills of Seir and the plains of Edom, to fight
with Israel against Sisera. The point of view
is enlarged ; but the warm feeling of religious
and patriotic confidence inspired both the
ancient canticle and the latest prophecies. That
is why the very phrasing of this sentiment is
passed on with it from century to century,
the image of Yahweh-Sabaoth, the God of vic
torious battles.
There is another victory which Yahweh
accomplished at the beginning of the world,
and which he follows up daily : that which is
shown in the ordering of nature. It is notorious
that the old legends of the creation did not
shrink from portraying Yahweh bridling the
monsters of chaos. That strife never ended ;
because the Hebrew stories of the creation, like
the other primitive cosmogonies, were at bottom
only a transference into the farthest past of
experiences which were being repeated in the
present. The passing of day into night, of
spring into winter, the death of nature and
its annual resurrection, were all divine works :
it was by the power of beneficent deities, who
17

242 The Religion of Israel
were stronger than the spirits of death and
darkness, that light, order, and life were pro-
, duced in the world. Creation was nothing else
than this great work in its beginning, when
the Gods made the first day issue out of dark
ness ; when the shapes of heaven and earth
were first moulded; when the vernal foliage
sprang first out of the soil ; when the fish took
possession of the waters, the birds of the air,
men and beasts of the solid earth : in spite of
the opposition raised at the beginning by the
monstrous deities of chaos, with an audacity
that was all the greater because hitherto it
had been invincible. Yahweh, too, had himself
beaten Rahab and his allies : he held the sea
enchained. When the great day of his glory
shall come, he will complete his work in nature ;
and then nothing dark, harmful, or unpleasing
will be left in it.
For these reasons, Isaiah describes ferocious
beasts as changed suddenly into harmless beings,
as no doubt it was imagined that they had been
at first ; the anonymous prophets of the captivity
made the wilderness blossom solely in honour
of the exiles' return ; Ezekiel made the holy
land into a paradise, where even the tree of life
will grow and, what we do not find in our
stories of Genesis, a well or stream of life;
Daniel promises an even greater marvel, the

Messianism 243
victory of Yahweh over death, and the resurrec
tion of the just ; the seer of the Apocalypse goes
farther, and at the end of time has the sea itself
destroyed, that last remnant of the chaotic
ocean, the haunt of the beaten Dragon, which
will serve him no longer as a refuge, since it
will have vanished, and the Dragon himself will
be cast into the fire.
The oppressor of Israel appeared as the repre
sentative of the pagan world in rebellion against
Yahweh ; he was, in the political and religious
spheres of contemporary history, what Tiamut-
Rahab were in the order of nature, and in
legends of the cosmogony. He was naturally
compared to them, and then identified with
them. It was not arbitrarily, with the caprice
of a symbolist poet, that Daniel figured the
pagan empires under the shapes of animals.
They were the successors, so to speak, of the
monsters which the traditions of cosmogony
had banished to the frontiers of creation, and
which re-entered with them again into history
so as to be crushed finally by the hand of the
almighty God. While it was Satan himself
who, for a still better reason, was identified
with the old enemy, the idolatrous and perse
cuting empire was always the Beast, the mon
ster who represented on earth the power of
the Dragon, and who must share in his ruin
as he had shared in his proud impiety.

244 The Religion of Israel
The character of Satan grew in the course
of centuries. He appeared first at the return
from the captivity. Then he was only a mem
ber of the celestial society, who had his place
among the sons of God, the beings who form
the court of Yahweh. He exercised over men
a sort of inspection, which was not tutelary,
because at the divine tribunal he was the
accuser of the guilty and the recommender of
punishment. He impersonated in some way an
aspect of the divinity which the character of
Yahweh had ended by out-growing, namely a
sort of jealous curiosity which spies out human
weaknesses and arranges trials to show them
up, rather than to give men the opportunity
to surmount them. Such he appears in the
Book of Job. And it may be said that his
function as a rather ill-natured critic tended to
change him into a declared enemy of those
whom he accused : finally, he became the
enemy of God himself, being opposed to all
his merciful plans for his own people and for
mankind. He was identified with the snake
of Eden and the monster of chaos, so that he
came to represent in the world and in history
that evil power which is opposed to the reign
of God. He became the head of the wicked
spirits. All the elements of his personality are
mythological, but they are taken from various

Messianism 245
sources; and if, in the latter phase of his
evolution, he resembles the Ahriman of Persian
dualism, this does not imply that the Persian
influence can explain him completely. That
influence served rather to make him definite
than to create him.
Amos, as we have said above, seems to have
stopped short at the prospect of a judgment
of Israel by Yahweh. It would have been a
victory without results, and with all the
appearances of a defeat. JJosea foresaw a
reconciliation of Yahweh with his people, after
their chastisement. Isaiah waited for the in
auguration of a reign of justice, in which the
small number of elect will be ruled by a king
after God's heart. Jeremiah was chiefly the
prophet of chastisement, but he did not believe
in the final ruin of his people. While the
dreadful siege, which was to end in the destruc
tion of the Jewish state, had already begun he
bought a field in his native town, and executed
all the deeds of the contract, to show that
Judah would revive, and that there would be
a future for Yahweh's people. The prophet
seems to have associated the remnant of
Ephraim with the remnant of Judah. Yahweh
will reunite his scattered children, under a
prince of the house of David, who will make
the right triumph. In these dreams of happi-

246 The Religion of Israel
ness, the Gentiles have no share : the foreigners
must be kept in awe, or destroyed by the God
of Israel, or driven out by fear, or struck with
wonder by the puissance of Yahweh. Of their
conversion, properly speaking, there is no ques
tion. When Jerusalem had fallen, and the restora
tion of the Davidic monarchy appeared either
impossible or hardly desirable, the messianic
notion was changed in form. Ezgkiel gave only
a very attenuated function to the prince of the
future Israel : he gratified himself by imagining
a religious society, living round the temple, con
secrated as it were to its worship, happy in its
separation from the world ; a kingdom of litur
gical felicity, whose coming Nehemiah, Ezra,
and the Law itself, tried to bring about: the
nations would not succeed in troubling it ; the
invasion of Gog, the King of Magog, symbolises
the last attempt of oriental paganism against
the kingdom of the saints ; and this attack,
which the author of the Johannine Apocalypse
will reproduce later, is a kind of tragic interlude
in the happiness of the elect, which nothing
afterwards shall disturb.
In the Second Isaiah, the triumph of Yahweh
is confused with the return from exile and the
restoration of Jerusalem : God will guide his
people through the wilderness ; the nations will

Messianism 247
partake in the happiness of Israel, but rather
as clients and tributaries, than as people ad
mitted to a full share of messianic prosperity
Those parts of the book, however, which deal
with the Servant of Yahweh present Israel as
the missionary of God to the Gentiles, whose con
version is announced. The ideal and righteous
Israel has atoned by suffering for the historical
and sinful Israel. Yahweh will return again
to Zion, and his faithful will come back with
him. No uncircumcised shall tread the ground
of the holy city. There shall be no more sorrows
and tears. Jerusalem will be the paradise
of God.
The Messianic king reappears in the second
portion of Zechariah.
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion ;
Shout with joy, O daughter of Jerusalem !
Behold, thy king cometh unto thee :
He is just and conquering ;
Lowly, and seated upon an ass,
Even upon a colt, the foal of an ass,
He will cause to disappear the chariots of Ephraim,
And the horses of Jerusalem ;
The bow of war shall be destroyed.
His dominion shall be from sea to sea,
And from the river to the ends of the earth.*
The failure of these gorgeous hopes was no
* Zech. ix. 9-10.

248 The Religion of Israel
discouragement to faith. Israel, stirred up by
its reformers, entered resolutely on the practice
of the Law, convinced that the divine promises
would accomplish themselves when the people
had risen to the height of their providential
vocation. Above all, in critical times, they
consulted the ancient books, so as to draw from
them consolation for the present and encourage
ment for the future. They believed that not
a single word of those oracles would fail, and
they waited with a feverish anxiety for the
fulfilment which always lingered. The way in
which Daniel interprets the seventy years,
which Jeremiah had fixed as the duration of
the captivity, shows how they applied ancient
prophecies to new circumstances, by methods
of symbolical interpretation : the seventy years
of the captivity, which ought to end in the
kingdom of God, are seventy weeks of years,
which must elapse between the exile and the
great event. The Book of Daniel was written
in view of the persecution of Antiochus Epi
phanes, as the second part of Isaiah was with
a foresight of the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus.
Nevertheless, they expected the salvation of
God in the immediate future. The more im
minent their peril became, the nearer they
thought must be Yahweh's miraculous inter
vention. They imagined the time had come

Messianism 249
when the Kingdom of God should replace the
persecuting and idolatrous empires of the world.
It is easy to see in Daniel how the experience
of the past has enlarged the horizon of the
prophets. Instead of simply facing the present
situation and announcing a near crisis, with
a glorious restoration of the true Israel, the
new prophet looks back, perhaps many centuries,
and designs a setting into which Bossuet was
not afraid of adjusting universal history. He
sees four empires which followed, by absorbing,
one another : and of which the last, more than
any of its predecessors, gave a proof of its inso
lence to Yahweh and of cruelty to his people.
Through their connexion, these four empires
were but one ; the empire of idolatry, the
kingdom of evil and error which Yahweh allows
the powers of darkness to set in motion against
his people, to chastise and purify them. The
empire of this world must succumb, giving place
to the empire of God; and the righteous who
have died will rise again to have their part
in it. § 2
" At that time," said the angel Gabriel to the
pseudo-Daniel, "shall Michael stand up, the
" great prince which standeth for the children
" of thy people ; and there shall be a time of

250 The Religion of Israel
"trouble, such as never was since there was a
"nation even to that same time : and at that
'Hime thy people shall be delivered, every one
" that shall be found written in the book. And
"many of them that sleep in the dust of the
" earth shall wake, some to everlasting life, and
"some to shame and everlasting contempt.
"And they that be wise shall shine as thebright-
" ness of the firmament ; and they that turn
"many to righteousness, as the stars for ever
" and ever." * The last verses which have been
added to the Book of Isaiah, and which must
be of about the same period as Daniel, explain
the fate of the damned, and make their suffer
ings an ingredient in the happiness which awaits
the elect. "And it shall come to pass, that
"from one new moon to another, and from
"one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come
" to worship before me, saith the Lord. And
"they shall go forth, and shall look upon the
"carcases of the men that have transgressed
" against me ; for their worm shall not
" die, neither shall their fire be quenched ;
"and they shall be an abhorring unto all
" flesh." t It is evident that the unlimited
burning of these corpses is the punishment of
the individuals of whom they were the bodies.
The inferno of the damned exists alongside of
* Dan. xii. 1-3. \ Isa. lxvi. 23-4.

Messianism 251
Jerusalem the blessed, and the fire of Gehenna
burns now in the same place where the pyres
of Moloch used to flare. Thus eschatology
acquired the ingredients which were yet want
ing to it : resurrection and judgment, ever
lasting happiness of the good, everlasting
torment of the wicked. These are the sub
jects which the greater number of the apo
calypses will work out, though for a long time
a certain vagueness adhered to these beliefs,
and they were not added immediately to the
general and ordinary faith of the Jews. Tobit,
even Baruch, the Assumption of Moses, the
First Book of Maccabees ignored the resurrec
tion : the Second Book of Maccabees mentions
it, but in the manner of an apologist who
argues with objectors. In fact, not only the
Samaritans, but the Sadducees, the Jewish
priesthood, did not accept it.
This theory of the resurrection appears all
at once in Daniel in a form which betrays
its origin, one might even say its necessity.
It is not yet all men who rise, but " many of
the dead " ; those who had held relations with
the God of Israel, either by obeying or by
opposing him, that is the righteous and their
persecutors. Neither the resurrection nor the
judgment is universal. Each is referred directly
to the welfare of Israel, but is not applied

252 The Religion of Israel
generally. It is a solution of the special crisis
and problem which Judaism has to face in the
persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes. There
are martyrs now, and they are dead; but who
will venture to say that they will have no
part in the Kingdom of God, which is so
near? They should be among the first in it:
therefore they will live again. There were
also renegades, who denied the religion of
their fathers, and who helped the enemy in
persecuting their brethren ; can it be that
those of them who are dead, too, will by that
death escape the punishment they deserve?
The latter will come back also, to undergo
the eternal shame that is their due. It is the
spontaneous demand of faith. When judgment
and resurrection come to be spoken about for
all the human race, the notions will be at
tached to an end of the world, and a cosmic
regeneration. Here a certain reflection is
manifested, and the direct influence of some
foreign teaching may be more easily admitted.
Even so far as it bears on the fate of Israel,
the resurrection implies a complete evolution
in the ancient beliefs about the dead, and
in the very notion of God. Formerly the
kingdom of the dead was a region into which
the power of Yahweh had not extended ; and
the dead might be treated as spirits, they

Messianism 253
were beyond religion. But now, no limits
were set to the divine power: if one rose to
heaven, God is there ; if one sunk under the
earth, he is there also. Thus there was no
reason why his justice should not be exercised
beyond death. And the conscience of the
pious revolted against admitting that death
could separate him finally from his God. The
cares of personal salvation, and the principle
of a retribution according to merit, both led
straight to a notion of justice and of an ex
tended life beyond the tomb. That justice
meant the judgment of God, and that life
meant the resurrection ; because they had
not reached the Greek notion of a spiritual
and immortal soul. That which survived in
death was not an imperishable soul, it was
the shade of the individual ; in order that
the individual should live, in spite of death,
he had to rise again. Thus Enoch, Moses,
and Elijah were imagined always living. By
the power of Yahweh, their lot might become
that of all the righteous.
This belief imposed itself by what may be
described as its actuality. It was united closely
to the belief in a great judgment, to the fevered
expectation of God's kingdom, which they
desired to think of as imminent. The more
unhappy they were, the nearer they believed

254 The Religion of Israel
themselves to the end ; to that divine interven
tion which would turn the anguish of the
righteous into final happiness, and into ever
lasting punishment the exalting insolence of
the wicked. The imagination revelled in the
providential circumstances of that happy event,
which was decreed in heaven, of which the
prophetic indications were searched out from
the sacred books. Elijah, for instance, who had
been taken to heaven, must return ; even before
Daniel, there were speculations about it. The
last verses of Malachi, which seem to have
been added later, though the author of Eccle
siasticus knew them, attributed to him a
ministry of reconciliation before "the great
and terrible day of Yahweh." * Ecclesiasticus
adds that he will " restore the tribes of Jacob."t
Elsewhere it is an angel who inaugurates the
reign of God : in Daniel, it is Michael, the
angel of the chosen people. These interven
tions replaced that of the messiah-king ; but
the apocalyptic tradition found a way of
amalgamating the two notions.
One of the Psalms of Solomon, so-called,
expresses itself thus about the messianic king : —
Be careful, O Lord, to raise up their king, the son of
David,

* Mai. iv. 23-24. t Ecclus. xlviii. 10.

Messianism 255

At the time appointed by thee, so that he may rule
Israel thy servant.
Gird him with power, to crush the unrighteous tyrants,
To clear Jerusalem of the heathen who oppress it
miserably.
In wisdom and justice may he lay waste the country
of the sinners ;
May he break the pride of sinners like the potter's
vessel ;
With a rod of iron he shall destroy their being,
And with the breath of his mouth will he utterly
destroy the heathen.
May the nations at his threatening flee before him,
And may he punish the sinners for the imaginations
of their heart.
Then will he gather an holy people, and rule over
them in righteousness.
And he will judge the tribes of the people who are
sanctified by the Lord, his God.
He will not suffer unrighteousness to remain amongst
them,
And no man given to wickedness shall dwell among
them ;
For he shall know them all as the sons of God.
He shall divide them the land according to their tribes,
Neither settler nor stranger shall dwell among them.
He shall judge peoples and nations with equity and
wisdom.
So long as they serve him, he will hold the Gentiles in
his yoke
And he will extol the Lord openly before the whole earth.
He will cause Jerusalem to be pure and holy, as at
the beginning,
So that the Gentiles shall come from the ends of the
earth to behold her glory,

256 The Religion of Israel
And their enfeebled children shall bring presents ;
And they shall see the glory which the Lord, his God,
hath fulfilled in him.
And he shall be the righteous king over them, taught
by God ;
No iniquity shall be among them in his time ;
For they shall all be holy, and their king shall be the
anointed of the Lord.
He shall not trust in horses, in horsemen and bows ;
He shall not heap up gold and silver for his warfare,
Neither will he put his trust in numbers in the day of
battle. . . .
He shall himself be free from sin, to rule a mighty
people,
To chastise their leaders, and to destroy sinners by the
power of his word.
While he liveth he shall not be feeble in the service
of his God,
For God will strengthen him with his holy spirit,
And make him wise in counsel with strength and
righteousness.
The blessing of the Lord shall make him of a good
courage,
And he shall not fail.*
This is a modest ideal and sparing in the mira
culous, it is due rather to the prophetic litera
ture than to Daniel and the apocalypses. The
Messiah is the king and type of righteousness,
but he is not raised above humanity. He is a
personage less supernatural and transcendent
than Elijah or Michael. He is given differently
* Psa. of Solomon xvii. 21-33, 36-38.

Messianism 257
in that part of the Book of Enoch which is
called The Parables, and which seems to have
been written about the end of the reign
of Alexander Jannaeus (104-78). There the
Messiah bears the names of The Elect and Son
of Man, after the passage in Daniel where the
Man symbolises the reign of the saints,* which
is to succeed the pagan empires, typified by the
beasts. But the Messiah is not really one of the
human family: he is "The heavenly man" of
Saint Paul, created by God from all eternity,
but kept in heaven till his manifestation in the
last time. " Before the sun was made, or the
" signs of the Zodiac, and the stars of heaven,
"his name was uttered before the Lord of
"spirits. . . . All the inhabitants of the earth
" shall bow down before him. ... It is for this
" that he hath been chosen and hidden before
"the Lord from before the creation of the
" world." t In the day of the resurrection The
Elect will gather the just and the saints. He
was only conceived as pre-existing in relation
to his eschatological functions; and he did not
intervene, like John's Logos, in the creation of
the world and the history of mankind.
The hopes of the Jews were thus clothed in
forms that were various enough, and, judged
only by the literature, it might be thought that
* Dan. vii. 13. t Enoch xlviii. 3, 6.
18

258 The Religion of Israel
the person of the Messiah did not count for
much. But it appears certain that the people
were more occupied than the books with the
expected liberator, and that for him the
national independence was a matter of the first
importance. The pious and righteous prince of
the Psalms of Solomon was acceptable to the
devout, and the heavenly man of Enoch to the
theologians ; but the first-comer who spoke
about the liberty of Israel was the favourite of
the populace. The historian Josephus records
many instances of adventurers who thus gained
credit. Judas the Galilean, who stirred up a
revolt over the enrolment of Quirinius, declared
that it was shameful and heinous to pay taxes
to the Romans, considering that the Jews
should have no master but God. Those
were the principles which roused uneducated
believers. During the siege of Jerusalem by
Titus, they never tired of waiting for a mani
festation from heaven, to save the city and the
temple. In the time of Hadrian, Barcochba got
himself recognised as Messiah, and he was
greeted in that capacity by Akiba, one of the
most learned rabbis of his age. The ideal of
Jesus was only popular through the simplicity
of its conceptions : it was not so at all through
the purity of its moral characteristics, nor by
the depth of its religious sentiment, which relied

Messianism 259
upon God alone for the avenging act by which
the natural freedom of the kingdom of the just
would be established.
Speaking generally, it may be said that all
those who talked in those days about the king
dom of God and its coming, about the Messiah
and his reign, were sure to find some believers.
No one was exacting about proofs and evidence :
only the conclusion mattered. If, by an impos
sibility, any one had come forward to expose
the spurious Daniel, by showing that he was an
ignoramus in his history of the kings of Baby
lon ; that he was mistaken when he introduced
an empire of the Medes between the Chaldaean
and Persian empires ; that he did not know
even the duration of the latter, the censor
would have merely wasted his time over this
learning and criticism. The dark language of
the apocalypses always lends itself to the sub-
tilties of exegesis and the subterfuges of apolo
gists. A people that is greedy in hopes does not
trouble about the foundation for the promises
made to it. At the time of Antiochus, messianic
hope did not lead to a kingdom of God, but to a
temporary restoration of the Jewish nationality.
Undeniably it harboured a great deal of illu
sion; and if it could inspire much heroism, it
could also lead by blind fanaticism to the
gravest disasters.

260 The Religion of Israel
The popular imagination was assuredly more
stirred by the material forms in which the
announcement of God's kingdom was expressed
than with the spiritual and moral basis which
underlay the apocalyptic visions, as formerly
the message of the prophets. They pondered
more upon the revolution that God was thought
to be preparing than upon the conditions of
righteousness which were necessary for sharing
in the kingdom of the saints. The messianic
hope roused the Jews against the Roman
domination, and the results were other than in
Maccabaean days. The inward quality of this
hope, a faith solely religious and moral, an
aspiration for goodness through truth and
justice, were mingled with hopes of a brilliant
fortune in this world, of Israel's material vic
tory over the Gentiles, of the vengeance of the
national God on those who had oppressed his
people. The Gospel of Jesus made the spiritual
element prevail over the material; but it was
only the crucified Messiah who caused the
notion of an earthly, national, and political
triumph to disappear among his followers.
Christianity issued, so to speak, from the
ambiguity to which Jesus owed his death.
And one may assert, too, that messianism
killed the people which aimed at its literal
fulfilment.

Messianism 261
§ 3
Judaism, however, was very widely dissemi
nated through the pagan world long before the
appearance of Christianity : it had carried on an
active propaganda, and not unsuccessfully ; but
it remained the religion of the Jews while
Christianity, which was by its origin a Jewish
sect, became an universal religion through
breaking with Judaism.
It is certain that the community in Babylon
was, after the captivity, a very zealous promoter
of Judaism ; it was even, along with Jerusalem,
its head-quarters, and it can hardly be con
sidered a foreign settlement. Otherwise, the
Jewish propaganda did not really begin until
the time of the Greek domination. The Egyp
tian colony only became really important under
the Ptolemies. It was the Maccabaean move
ment which gave a new impulse to Judaism.
This, having won for a time its political inde
pendence in Palestine, extended its influence by
war. The Jews, moreover, spread themselves
everywhere, as the writers of classical antiquity
bear witness. They point out, too, their credit
and influence, and the activity of their prosely
tizing. This diffusion of the Jews, and their
influence throughout the pagan world, are
attested indirectly but most significantly by the

262 The Religion of Israel
story of the apostle Paul. It may be said that
wherever that missionary of the Gospel carried
the faith of Christ he found organized syna
gogues, which had not only their Jewish follow
ing, but also other adherents, recruited from
paganism, and composed especially of those
"who feared God"; that is of persons who,
without entering the Jewish community through
circumcision, accepted monotheism, attended the
services of the synagogue, and observed certain
rules of the Law. It was in this half-Jewish
world that the Christian preaching won its
earliest recruits.
The older Judaism had favoured to some
extent a propaganda among the Gentiles. We
have seen what were the hopes of the Second
Isaiah. The same notions are also found in
the closing chapters of the book (lvi.-lxvi.),
which are from a later writer, and in certain
psalms. The prophet, who is known by the
name of Malachi, in his criticism of contem
porary Judaism, goes so far as to set pagans
on the same footing as Jewish believers, and
to say that the Gentiles pay God a homage
that is equally acceptable to him, if not even
more so, than the sacrifices of the temple. The
Book of Jonah has something of the same kind.
The Wisdom literature had at first a tendency
to conceive of religion as a moral belief, more

Messianism 263
or less disengaged from the Law. The perse
cution of Antiochus Epiphanes stirred up a
revival of the Jewish spirit; and, in Palestine
at least, there was a strong reaction against
the spread of pagan thought and manners ;
but proselytism of the Gentiles did not cease
to be carried on. In the method of treating
them, two tendencies were soon developed
among the doctors of the Law : one, more
liberal, facilitating intercourse with non-Jews,
and helpful to proselytizing; this was the way
of Hillel and his school: the other was narrower,
and scrupulous in all intercourse with pagans,
and really opposed to any propaganda; this
was represented by Shammai and his disciples.
It was the latter method which prevailed finally
at the time of the revolt against Rome. The
Books of Esther and Judith show that mistrust
of the heathen could easily pass into hatred.
Judaism had, to favour it, the fascination
that all the eastern religions then exercised over
the Roman world, which could no longer satisfy
its religious aspirations by its traditional wor
ships : and it had an advantage over the
other eastern religions in its loftier teaching,
its genuine morality, its tougher and more
extended organization. All the synagogues of
the dispersion, not only within the empire but
beyond it, used the same sacred books ; they

264 The Religion of Israel
all, even those which were most accessible to
pagans, were zealous for the Law ; they were
all in touch with Jerusalem by their regular
contributions and pilgrimages. And a strong
feeling of brotherhood, instead of hierarchical
fetters, united all these scattered communities
into a religious society filled with vitality and
strength. But Judaism had against it certain practices,
several of which were annoying and eccentric :
circumcision especially was a practice which
the heathen considered ridiculous. The Law had
moulded Judaism in such a way that without
being either a nation or a church, strictly
speaking, it was a kind of national church
into which people could not be admitted
without becoming Jewish : to belong to it was,
so to speak, for a man to proclaim himself
in his own country a member of an alien
society. It was not thus with the other and
less exclusive oriental worships, which might
be adopted without breaking from paganism.
That rupture, which Judaism enforced sharply
by its external modes of living, was based also
upon the demands of monotheism. And mono
theism thus interpreted was precisely what
the heathen understood least. What the most
enlightened pagans said about the God of the
Jews, and about their offensive disdain for all

Messianism 265
other Gods, shows they were not yet ripe for
comprehending an absolute monotheism. In
fact, it was partly through tempering mono
theism by the gnosis of trinitarian doctrines,
and partly through identifying Jesus with the
deity, that Christianity was enabled to lead
the pagan world to accept the doctrine of a
sole God.
It would seem, besides, that hostility against
the Jews grew in proportion to their diffusion,
their influence, and the success of their propa
ganda. A kind of anti-semitism existed in
Graeco-Roman antiquity, caused by contempt
for a sect which in spite of everything was
exclusive, and was suspected for that reason,
which was exacting and peculiar in its customs.
And much dislike was roused by the pride
of the Jews, which was haughty not only to
the religions but to the civilization of paganism.
And the Jews, there is no doubt, imagined
themselves the depositaries of a higher wisdom,
which came to them from God, by a special
privilege. The author of Ecclesiasticus shows
Wisdom seeking for a settled habitation; and,
by the Creator's order, she set up her tent in
Jacob, and her dwelling-place on Zion.* The
human race thus found itself in a position of
signal inferiority when confronted with the
* Ecclus. xxiv. 7-11.

266 The Religion of Israel
Jews : God had abandoned the Gentiles to
ignorance and error, while it pleased him to
instruct Israel. Placed before the pagan civili
zation, the Jews seemed inclined for a time
to appropriate it, but only by affecting to
rediscover in it their own property. Never was
there seen such a torrent of apocryphal and
spurious literature as was produced by the
Hellenistic Judaism : as much to heighten its
importance with the pagans, to silence their
objections, to humiliate them in that which
they considered their most valuable possession,
namely science and philosophy, as to extend
among them a propaganda of Israelitish
monotheism. Marvellous legends concerning
the origins of the Greek translation of the
scriptures, the Septuagint, forged quotations
from classical authors, deceptive fables about
the heroes in the Bible, fictions of every kind
for the greater glory of Israel and its religion :
nothing was overlooked which could serve
to exalt the Jews above the pagans. All the
ancient civilizations had been schooled by Israel
and its ancestors : all the philosophers of Greece
and Rome owed to the Law whatever they
knew about truth. The Jews really believed
that they were the light of the world ; but
they understood the question rather differently
from the old prophets. If, then, the choicest

Messianism 267
spirits of antiquity were unable to appreciate
the religious value of Judaism, it was partly,
perhaps, because the way in which it was
presented was not likely to give them a high
notion of it. The Jewish literature inspired
them with little esteem or trust ; and so they
did not try to solve the riddle which the Jewish
religion presented to them : the striking con
tradiction between its national worship, and
its universal God. The petty aspects of the
system were far more visible.
The reign of Herod was the most prosperous
time of Judaism under the Roman domination.
Herod, understanding the people whom he had
to govern, ordered his administration so as
never to wound their religious prejudices ; a
policy of which the imperial government showed
itself incapable when it ruled directly. By his
political shrewdness he was able to acquire a
sort of protectorate over all the Jews who
were scattered through the Roman world ;
this both strengthened their position in the
empire, and was most favourable to their
propaganda. He guaranteed the safety of the
Jews abroad while he repressed their fanaticism
at home. After him, that fanaticism broke
loose. The first act of the Roman authority, when
Archelaus the tetrarch of Judsea was deposed,
was a census for levying taxes, which

268 The Religion of Israel
immediately stirred up a rebellion: it was
intolerable to the people of God to feel them
selves subjected so completely to a foreign rule.
This was a prelude to the troubles which
under Nero and Hadrian, brought about the
ruin of Jerusalem, and separated Judaism from
the land in which it had waited so long and
vainly for the kingdom of Yahweh. As far
as religious history is concerned, it is sufficient
to add that the enmity against Rome was
always growing, and that hatred of the pagans
destroyed proselytism. After the war which
ended in the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus,
monotheistic propaganda became the work of
Christianity, which was now separated from
Judaism and rejected by it. Judaism thence
forward was barred against all external
influence : it regarded all profane culture with
horror, and absorbed itself in a microscopic
study and a scrupulous observance of its Law.
§ 4
And, what is more extraordinary, messianism
also fell, as though exhausted or played out,
in the last convulsions of Jewish nationalism,
under Hadrian. The subject of the Messiah
was no more than a thesis for rabbinical
discussions, like any other point of Biblical
doctrine ; but the messianic fever, which had

Messianism 269
had its final crisis in the rising of Barcochba,
and its last visions in the apocalypses of the
pseudo Ezra and Baruch, was for ever quieted.
The Messiah will come, no doubt, but no one
expects him. The Law alone reigns over the
souls broken by their dreadful experiences, and
dominates a religious society ever more strictly
bound, which finds peace in its isolation. Events
had deprived their hopes of all earthly foun
dations, by destroying the temple and giving
over Jerusalem to the Gentiles. Until it may
please God to bring forth his kingdom, which no
one dreams now of advancing by any human
agency, Judaism shall be a national church,
scattered through the world ; while Chris
tianity, which issued from it, becomes an
universal church.
About the time of the Christian era,
messianism, as it had been moulded by the
persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes and the
Maccabaean rising, by the Roman conquest and
the troubles which ensued on the death of
Herod, could number among the Jews,
especially in Palestine, almost as many
adherents as there were practical believers ;
but all these believers had not the same ideals,
and all the Palestinian Jews had not the same
reality of faith.
We know that, in the actual times when

270 The Religion of Israel
Jesus of Nazareth appeared, various tendencies
prevailed among the Jews, and a sort of
compromise was reached which kept the people
more or less in a complete and voluntary
submission to the Romans. The party which
we may describe as messianic, and which had
reconquered the national independence by arms
in the days of the Maccabees, lived on chiefly
among those who were called Pharisees, that
is the devout and zealous, the " separated " from
the profane world ; who clung to a rigorous
observance of the Law, and who saw in that
a pledge of deliverance for Israel. Full of
hatred and contempt for paganism, they bore
the yoke of the foreigner impatiently, while
waiting for God to liberate his people. Many
of them, especially among the doctors of the
Law, who were the most enlightened part of
the Pharisean sect, drew sufficient inward joy
from the study and practice of the command
ments, and they had no wish at all to
precipitate God's hour, nor to encourage any
movements of revolt, which the most ordinary
prudence would have disapproved. The popu
lace was urged on without thinking, by the
ardour of its faith, and by an immoderate desire
for a victory by God, which would have won
the national independence from the conquered
Gentiles. The notion of a resurrection of the

Messianism 271
just having penetrated since Daniel into the
popular beliefs, they flattered themselves that
God would soon crush the foreign oppressor,
send his Messiah, and establish again the throne
of David ; and that the righteous dead would
rise and take their place among the elect in the
new kingdom.
Nevertheless the Pharisees, whether moder
ates or zealots, were not officially the religious
heads of the people. The Sadducean priests,
the real or imaginary descendants of Zadok,
did not share their inflated and risky hopes.
In the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, several
members of the higher priesthood were
favourable to Hellenism ; and, in the times
which followed, the priests of Jerusalem, who
were rich and well endowed, seemed always
more anxious to maintain their existing
security than to toil for the coming reign
of the saints. The present, in fact, was too
profitable for them not to mistrust a future
brought in by revolution. Under the various
powers which had followed one another, the
position of the priests had always been better
than that of the people. The state of things
by which they profited, and about which
they had little to complain, was good for
them to preserve. If the national independ
ence could have been gained without running

272 The Religion of Israel
too many risks, they would have preferred
independence to subjection ; when fanaticism
broke bounds, at the end of Nero's reign,
they followed the movement in spite of them
selves, trying always to restrain it, after
having done their utmost to hinder it. As
the Law was Israel's single rule of life, and
was also the source of their own revenues,
they made a profession of respecting the
Law, and of not looking beyond it for truths
and hopes : they thus came to oppose the
theory of a resurrection, which was the
corner-stone of current messianism; and, with
the resurrection, the waiting for a kingdom
of God. Politicians invested with a sacred
character, the Sadducees had ceased to be
a religious influence. Their only power
came from their social position ; and they
strove, for very human motives, to cool the
religious and national sentiment which was
inflamed by messianic expectations. They
were implacable enemies to the personification
of these hopes, when it presented itself before
them, simple and unarmed, in the features
of Jesus.
Such were the two great parties before
whom Christ found himself, and they both
rejected him. They were not two separate
sects within Judaism : rather, they were two

Messianism 273
tempers which divided it, without causing
an external schism ; two groups, each unable
to establish itself without the other. Two
bodies which, though mutually hostile, clung
to a common worship, for reasons in which
religion was concerned ; and which were even
capable of joint action for a common purpose.
In this more or less heterogeneous amalgam,
the Pharisees represented the living Judaism,
with its traditional faith, and also its narrow
spirit ; a legacy of the nationalism, of the
ritualism, and of all that past which they
wished to impose on the future. The Sadducees
represented the political power of the hier
archy. The Essenes, whom it would be erroneous
to put on a level with Pharisees and Sadducees,
were organized as a sect : it was a kind of
ascetic Judaism, set up outside the Law, and
under influences which are little known to
us. They lived in community, had no personal
property, and their ways were comparable to
those of a religious order. They had no
part in the worship of the temple ; but they
had their own rites, multifarious baths and
ablutions, which had a sacramental character.
Their common meal was like another sacra
ment, by its meaning and its solemnity: they
honoured the Pentateuch, but they also had
19

274 The Religion of Israel
secret books. They kept the sabbath.
Marriage was repudiated by them ; but
Josephus says that some of them allowed
it under certain conditions. They condemned
oaths, except that oath which they took
upon entering the order, after a preparatory
noviciate. The existence of such a sect,
whose origin was prior to the close of the second
century before Christ, shows at least that
strange developments could be produced in
Judaism, notwithstanding the tyranny of
tradition. The Essenes do not seem to have
been condemned, but rather esteemed, by
orthodox Judaism. On the other hand, they
do not seem to have had any profound effect
upon it : nor does Christianity seem, at any
rate in the beginning, to have had any con
nexion with the Essenes.
Thus the work of Moses and the prophets
had reached the stage of maturity, if it had not
passed it : all progress became impossible under
the yoke of the Law ; and religion tended to
lose itself, on one hand in extravagance, on the
other in worldliness. To continue growing, it
had to burst its traditional covering, as the
germ that wishes to expand must split the seed
which contains it. It was through Christianity
that the religion of Israel conquered the Roman
world. But, independently of that success,

Messianism 275
which was not altogether its own, its particular
history is extraordinary enough ; and the moral
renovation of the ancients' Jahvism by the
prophets is one of the most fruitful incidents
for the historian of religions. Perhaps there
is not another which shows more clearly that
the phenomenon of religion cannot be reduced
to another form of human activity, nor explained
solely by causes pertaining to the social order ;
but that it expresses, in its purest manifesta
tions, an endeavour to attain, beyond what is
real and tangible, an ideal or a transcendent
reality, conceived as the principle and goal
of a moral life.
It is almost useless to ask whether Judaism
by itself could have accomplished the work of
Christianity. What Judaism could do of itself,
it did. A religious society so strongly consti
tuted was not really free to transform itself
into another society, with the same expression
of belief and the same moral principles, but
without the same obsolete practices and the
same exclusive spirit. We cannot imagine
the authorities of Judaism, its priests and
doctors, deciding to sacrifice the letter of the
Law, to suppress the traditional observances,
to transform themselves into an universal
church, which would accept pagans without
branding them by the Jewish circumcision.

276 The Religion of Israel
Such a metamorphosis would have been a
suicide of the old religion. A society cannot
either wish or effect a suicide of that kind, even
if it be the indispensable and certain condition
of a renewed life. The individuals could not
all see, either at the same time or clearly
enough, the need for such a transformation;
the mass of believers would never understand
the necessity ; those who led them would
neither dare nor wish to discuss it. Nothing
could make a form of religion, which still
satisfied the majority of its adherents, although
running a proximate risk of losing them,
suddenly become something different from
what it actually was.
Christianity owed its success to its separation
from Judaism, which treated it as a heresy.
If, by an impossibility, all the Jews had accepted
Jesus for their Messiah when he went up to
preach in Jerusalem, the war of extermination
which ended in the catastrophe of A.D. 70 would
have broken out thirty years earlier ; and there
would have been no Christianity. Jesus could not
have been then accepted ; because the circum
stances and conditions of his appearance did not
endorse his message, which was the announce
ment of God's kingdom: he did not wish to
lead the people into a revolt against Rome ; and
he was not able to make the priests and scribes

Messianism 277
recognise a mission which was guaranteed by
nothing, except the assertion of him who
declared himself invested with it. But, when
that mission had become through his death an
object of belief to his firm disciples, and the
object of a faith repudiated by Judaism, the
notion of a monotheism that was not Jewish
was able to emerge and consolidate. Many
pagans who feared God, but who could not
make themselves complete Jews, came to the
first preachers of a risen Jesus. An ardent
genius was found to disclose the future way,
when the question was raised whether the legal
observances were necessary for the salvation of
the converted. Without their perceiving it,
Judaism had already been left. Paul under
stood that the new believers need not be made
to enter it ; and, without wishing it himself, he
effected the rupture. Judaism remained with
its Law, which preserved it while keeping it
from spreading ; and Christianity, released from
the Law, went forward towards those destinies
which befitted a young religion able to adapt
itself to the mentality and the religious
temperament of those whom it wished to gain.

INDEX

INDEX OP PERSONS

Aaron, 83, 126, 208
Abiathar, 122
Abimeleoh, 113
Abinadab, 122, 123, 125
Abraham, 7, 11, 25, 26, 30, 34-6, 68,
79, 103, 211
Achaius, 27
Aohiyami, 37
Adam, 211
Adonis, 91
^Jolos, 27
Ahab, 79, 132, 135, 137-9
Ahaz, 160, 163-4, 167
Ahio, 123
Ahriman, 245
Akiba, 258
Alexander Jannaeus, 257
Amnion, the God, 112
Amon, 169, 182
Amos, 12, 23-4, 75, 119, 130, 132, 136,
146, 149, 155
Antiochus Epiphanes, 16, 18, 231,
240, 248, 252, 259, 262, 269, 271
Archelaus, 267
Ashera, 115
Ashur, the God, 112, 239
Assurbannipal, 164
Astarte, 115
Athaliah, 140

Baal, 102, 131
Baals, 110, 112, 115-19

Baal-Berith, 91
Baal of Judah, 122
Baal-Meloarth, 137
Balaam, 92, 100, 131, 133
Barak, 131
Barooohba, 258, 269
Baruch, 13
Baruch, Apocalypse of, 269
Beast, the, 243
Bossuet, 249

Caleb, 31
Canaan, 91
Canaanites, 76
Chemosh, 82, 102
Christ, 262, 272
Cousin, Victor, 47
Cyrus, 12, 16, 202, 209, 248

Dagon, 90
Darius, 14
David, 21, 28, 31-2, 66, 88, 90, 95,
109, 118, 121-2, 128, 181, 271
Deborah, 37, 131, 241
Doros, 27 E
El-Berith, 91, 117, 175
Eleazar, 208
Eli, 121
Eliashib, 209

28o

Index of Persons

Elijah, 23, 130-1, 133, 137-8, 253-4,
256
Elisha, 130, 133-4, 138-9
El-Shaddai, 117
Enoch, 253
Esarhaddon, 164
Esau, 92
Ezekiel, 152, 165, 194, 196-8, 240,
242, 246
Ezra, 11, 12, 14, 16, 24, 203, 206,
215-17, 246
Ezra, Apocalypse of, 269
G
Gabriel, 22-3, 24-9
Genius of Borne, the, 239
Gideon, 76
Gog, 240, 246

Habakkuk, 13
Hadrian, 258, 268
Haggai, 14, 219
Hammurabi, 12, 124
Hellen, 27
Herod, 33, 209, 220, 224, 266, 269
Hezekiah, 12, 62, 160-2, 167, 170
Hiel, 79
Hilkiah, 22, 170-2
Hillel, 220, 262
Hosea, 23-4, 119, 136, 146, 149, 151,
157-8, 167, 181, 196, 245

I AM, 98
Ion, 27
Isaac, 26, 34, 78, 92, 103, 157
Isaiah, 13, 24, 152, 158-68, 188, 196,
229, 240, 242, 245
" Isaiah," the Second, 198-203, 246,
248, 250
"Isaiah," the- author of lvi.-lxvi.,
262
Israel (Jacob), 25, 26, 68

Israel, the people, passim
Ithamar, 208

Jacob, 25, 26, 27, 29, 34, 92, 100
Jacobel, 38
Jahvism, passim
Jason of Cyrene, 1
Jehoiakin, 153, 185
Jehu, 99, 101-2, 134, 138-9
Jephtha, 78-9, 102, 167
Jeremiah, 13, 16, 24, 152-3, 165, 183,
185-9, 196-7, 245
Jeroboam, 135-6
II., 155
Jesus, 33, 258, 260, 265, 270, 272, 276,
277
Jews, passim
Joash, 139
Job, 229, 231
Joel, 14
Jonadab, 101, 138
Jonathan, 128
Joram, 138
Joseph, 26, 29, 30, 91, 105, 119
Josephel, 38
Josephus, 258, 274
Joshua, 11, 108, 174
„ , the Priest, 209
Josiah, 10, 13, 22-3, 119, 170-5, 180-3,
229
Judah, 105, 109, passim
Judaism, passim
Judas, the Galilean, 258
Judges, the, 23, 32, 110
Jupiter, 26

Koheleth, 223, 234

Law, passim
Leah, 105
Levi, 105

Index of Persons

281

M
Maooabssus, Simon, 16
Malaohi, 128, 262
Manasseh, 163-4, 169, 171, 182, 198
Marduk, 200, 239
Mattathias, 209
Menahem, 158
Mesha, 81-2
Miohael, 222-3, 249, 254, 256
Micah, 146, 161-2, 167
Miohal, 181
Minephtah, 38
Moloch, 164, 167, 251
Moses, 7, 11, 12, 22-4, 28-34, 48, 60,
62, 66-8, 88, 90-1, 95-100, 105-9,
211, 253, 274
Moses, the blessings of, 125-7
N
Naboth, 137
Nabu, 198
Nahum, 13
Nebuohadnezzar, 16, 188, 185, 239-
Nehemiah, 16,24, 203, 206, 209, 215-
19, 249
Nero, 268, 272
Noadiah, 219
Noah, 77, 92, 211

O

Obadiah, 14
Obededom, 123

Paul, 75, 201, 257, 262, 277
Patriarchs, the, 23, 56
Pekah, 159
Pompey, 224
Prophets, the, 12, and passim
Ptolemies, the, 261

Queen of Heaven, the, 168
Quirinius, 258

B
Baohael, 105
Barneses, 112
Beohab, 102, 242-3
Eenan, 130, 214
Bezin, 159 S
Samson, 182
Samuel, 23, 129-34, 228
Sanballat, 219
Sarah, 25
Sargon, 33, 158, 164
Satan, 224, 243-5
Saul, 28, 104, 124, 128, 133-4, 176,
228
Soribes, the, 12
Sennaoherib, 159-61, 164, 240
Shammai, 220, 262
Shamash, 12, 163
Shaphan, 171
Shewr-Jashub, 159-60
Simeon, 105
Simon, Jules, 49
Sisera, 113, 131, 241
Solomon, 15, 17, 21, 185, 171

Tamar, 119
Tiamut, 208, 243
Tiglath-Pileser, 158, 160, 164
Titus, 17, 258, 268
Tobiah, 219
Toutmosis III., 38

U

Uzzah, 123

Xanthos, 27

Yahweh, passim, and under the
following special headings : —
Yahweh, a Bull God, 63, 136
„ , a Snake God, 63, 100

282

Index of Places

Yahweh-Shalom, 76, 118
Yahweh, loves blood, 79-80
„ , the Name of, 89
„ , the Angel of, 89, 221
„ , captured by Philistines, 90
„ , meaning of the name, 96-
100
„ , equivalent to " It is " ; not
to I AM
„ , a spirit of the night, 100
„ , his early character, 101
„ , a Mountain God, 101
„ , a Eire God, 101
„ , a Storm God, 101
„ , non-moral, 103
„ , irritable and frantic, 103,
156
„ , tricky and thievish, 103
„ , kills Egyptian First-born,
104
„ , his Passing Through, 105
„ , the God of Levi, 106
„ the God of Kadesh and
Sinai, 106
„ , The Wars of, 106, 107, 112
,. , a War God, 111, 240, 241
„ , mighty in battle, 112
Yahweh-Sabaoth, 111, 118, 123, 241
Yahweh-Nissi, 107, 118
Yahweh, supplants Canaanite
Baals, 117-18
„ , becomes an inhabitant of
Canaan, 119
„ , becomes a Baal, 119

Yahweh, becomes a Malek, 119, 168
„ , jealous, exolusive, 121
„ , takes possession of Zion,
121
„ , demands First-born chil-
dren, 149
„ , the Day of, 155
„ , his ferocity and rage,166-7
„ , Moloch, 164, 167
„ , orders holocausts of First
born, 165
Yahweh-Melek, 168-9
Yahweh, his Law " found," 170
„ a theocracy, 175
, becomes homeless, 193
, spiritualized and enlarged,
210
, his name not uttered, 221
, eludes the problem of Job,
231
, loves fat victims, 240
, vanquishes Chaos, 241
, orders Nature, 242
, the Servant of, 247
, the great and terrible Day
of, 254

Zadok, 126, 177, 271
Zechariah, 14, 219, 247
Zedekiah, 185
Zephaniah, 13
Zerubbabel, 203, 209
Zipporah, 66

INDEX OP PLACES

Amalek, 106, 108, 125-6
Ammon, 35
Ammonites, 113
Amorites, 174

Arabia, 32-3, 36, 97
Arabian Desert, 29
Arabian tribes, 31, 69
Ashdod, 90
Assyria, 21, 144, 16

Index of Places

283

Baal-Peor, 157
Babylon, 11, 12, 21, 86, 43, 83, 110,
152, 261
Bethsheba, 23, 26, 117
Bethel, 23, 26, 117,185, 148, 155,157,
180
Beth-Peor, 108
Beth-Shemesh, 122 0
Canaan, 82, 85, 37, 74, 78-9, 113
„ , conquest of, 30, 37, 95, 106,
108
„ , settlement of, 34-5, 108,
115
Chaldaea, 85
Chaldaean Empire, 36
Capitol, the, 239

Damascus, 21, 137, 139, 160
Dan, 107, 135, 149 E
Eden, garden of, 197, 210
Edom, 241
Egypt, 26, 29-31, 33-4, 36, 87, 91, 96,
98-9, 105, 160, 183
„ , sojourn in, 28-9, 33, 68-9
Egyptians, 119
El-Amarna, 37-8
Elamitic Gulf, 32
El-More, 79
Ephraim, 21, 23, 165
Endor, 228
Eternal City, the, 239
Euphrates, 36

Gehenna, 168, 251
Gerizim, 218
Gibeon, 112
Gilgal, 135

Goshen, 29, 105
Greeoe, 21

Haran, 35
Hebron, 23, 25-6, 31, 117
Hinnom, 165, 168, 180
Horeb, 11, 88 I,J,K
Idumaea, 35, 97
Jericho, 71, 113-14, 128
Jerusalem, 17, 23, 90, 109, 110, 118,
121, 132, 139, 149, 152, 160-1, 164,
193, 251, 258, 261, 264, 268-9
Jordan, 30, 67, 108
Judaea, 30
Judah, 21, 30-2, 122, 136, 160, 237
Kadesh, 32-4, 90, 96, 105, 107, 118,
126-7
Kirjath-Baal, 122
Kirjath-Jearim, 122 M
Macpelah, 26
Magog, 240, 246
Massah, 107, 137
Medes, 259
Megiddo, 182
Meribah-Kadesh, 32, 107, 127
Mesopotamia, 35, 68
Midian, 32, 97
Midianites, 113
Mizraim, 31
Moab, 35, 81, 170
Moabites, 113
Moreh, 176
Musri, 31 N, O, P, B
Nineveh, 13, 20, 35, 43
Nile, 33
Ophra, 76, 118
Palestine, 11, 26, 35, 38

284 Index of Subjects

Paran, 32
Persia, 21
Philistines, 66, 90, 113, 121, 132, 156
176, 228
Phoenicia, 35, 137
Phoenicians, 43
Promised Land, 12
Bephidim, 107
Borne, 21, 239, 263, 266, 268, 276
Eomans, 209, 239, 258-9, 267,269-70
S
Samaria, 137
Sarepta, 138
Seir, 32, 241
Shechem, 23, 26, 75, 91, 117, 125, 135s
174-5, 218

Sheol, 227, 233
Shiloh, 91, 107, 111, 118, 122
Sinai, 11, 12, 29-33, 89, 96, 105, 119,
241
Susa, 20

Taanak, 27
Tekoa, 155
Temple, the, 22, 90, 119, 136, 149
153, 160, 193, 269
Town-of-the-Woods, 122, 125
Tyre, 132, 138

V,Z
TJr of the Chaldees, 35
Zion, 88, 121, 188, 198

INDEX OP SUBJEOTS

A
•• Amos," 12
Animism, 44, 48, 63, 81, and. passim
Angel, of the Greeks, 222
„ , of Persia, 222
„ , of Yahweh, 221
Anti-Semitism, 265
" Apocalypse, of Ezra," 269
" Apocalypse, of Baruch," 269
" Apocalypse, of John," 243, 246
Apocalyptic literature, 14
Apocalyptio writing, begins with
Ezekiel, 196
Apocryphal writing, passim, and
265-7
Arabs, 35, 43
Aramaean migration, 35-6
Aramaeans, 166
Archives, 6
Ark, 65, 88-91, 100, 111, 121-23, 136
Ass, Balaam's, 100
Ashera, 116
Asmonaean dynasty, 224, 237

Assyrian monarchy, 20, and passim
" Assumption of Moses," 251
B
Baal, baals, passim
Babylonian Captivity, 19
„ language, 36
"Baruch," 5, 17, 251
Blessings irrevocable, 91
Blood, passim, and see Yahweh
„ , abstinence from, 11, 27
„ , offerings of, 81
Bondage, the house of, 30
Brazen Serpent, 62, 100, 162
Bull God, 63

Cain, tribe of, 96
Canaan, religions of, 115-21
Canon, of O.T. settled, 4
Casuistry, dates from Ezra, 213
Chabiri, the, 37-8
Chaldaean mythology, 27, 85

Index of Subjects 285

Chaldaeans, 13
Cherem, 113-16, 128, 149
Cherubim, 223
Christ, the saorifioe of, 83
Christianity, 47, 260-1, 266, 268-9,
274-7
" Chronioles," 5, 21, 24, 207
City, the Eternal, 239
,. >¦ , story of, 211
Creation, 11
Clan, God of, 59, 61
„ , religion of, 59
Communion, 75, 78-9, 83, 87, and
passim
"Covenant, Book of," 23, 147-8,
166, 172, 174, 178, 197
Curses, irrevocable, 91

Dances, sacred, 81
"Daniel," 4, 5, 14, 16, 18, 222, 240,
242-3, 249-51, 257, 259, 271
Day, of Yahweh, 165
Dead, worship of, passim
Deoalogue, the Jahvist, 147, 174
„ , the new in " Ex." and
" Deut.," 178
Deluge, 11
"Deuteronomy," 10-12, 21-24, 60,
108, 119, 176, 178, 183, 197, 211
" Deuteronomy," origin and
"invention" of, 170-1
Deuteronomy, promulgation and
acceptance, 173
Deuteronomy, [b, law of priests
drafted by prophets, 179-80
Deuteronomy effeots declme of
prophecy, 179
Deuteronomy founds Judaism,
184
Dragon, the, 243
Duty, 53 E

" Eoclesiastes," 5, 15, 17,

"Eoolesiastious," 5, 17, 220, 232-3,
254, 265
Egyptian influence, 29
Ehie, 98
El, 57-9
Ettm, 57-9
Eloh, 57
Elohim, 66-58, 79, 228
Elohism, 56
Elohistio history, 6-9, 10-12, 23
" Enoch," 18, 257-8
Ephod, 90, 181
Eschatology, 251
Essenes, 273-4
"Esther," 6, 16, 17, 20, 262
"Exodus," 10, 23, 69, 86-8
Exodus, the, 28-31, 83
" Ezekiel," 4, 13, 24
"Ezra," 5 F
Fanaticism, ferooity, passim, and
see Yahweh
Fatherhood of God, physical, 61
Fasting, 214
Feast (chag) = danoe, 81
Feasts, 65, 86, 148
Fetishism, 44, 46, 48-9, 61
First-born, offered to Yahweh, 149,
164, 166-7
„ , demanded by Yahweh,
166
„ , ordered by "Book of
Covenant," 166-7
Flood, Chaldaean story of, 9, 27, 77
G
" Genesis," 242
Gibeonites, 104
God, passim
God, of the bush, 60, 61
God the Father, in germ, 51
God, the sons of, 222
Gospel, the, 201
Greek domination, 18-15, 18, 224,
230, 261

286

Index of Subjects

" Habakkuk," 13
" Haggai," 14
Hagiographa, the, 4, 5
Hebrews, the, 37, 68
Hellenism, 224, 233, 271
" Hexateuch," 6, 20, 67
Hiero-Douloi, 117
High Priesthood, originates, 208
Homeric Gods, the, 112
"Hosea," 12

Idols, indispensable, 51
Immortality, 227
Isaac, the fear of, 117
Islam, 43
" Isaiah," 4, 13, 22, 25
„ xl.-lv., 194

Jacob, the blessings of, 124, 126
Jahvism, passim
Jahvistic history, the 6, 9-12, 23, 27
Jehovah, the term inaccurate, 96
"Jeremiah," 4, 6, 13
„ epistle of," 5, 17
" Job," 4, 15, 19, 20, 54, 200, 229,
231
" Joel," 14
" Jonah," 14, 20, 262
Joseph, the tribes of, 132
" Joshua," 4, 6, 67, 109
Judaism, passim
" Judges," 4, 10, 24, 95, 113
''Judith," 5, 17, 20, 262
" Just, the," 230

Kenites, 96, 101
Kingdom of God, the ; germs of in
Hosea
„ „ „ becomes uni
versal in Isaiah

Kingdom of God, the; 252, 269, 268-
9,276
"Kings," 4, 10, 18, 24, 82

"Lamentations," 5, 16
Law, the, passim
„ of Holiness," 10, 11, 204
„ „ Yahweh, " found," 170
„ the, a summary of all wisdom
232
„ „ tables of, 89
Lepers, 72-3
Levi, tribe of, 97, 125
Levites, 125, 177
Levitical legislation, 12
" Leviticus," 10
Logos, the, 257 M
" Malachi," 14, 254
" 1 Maccabees," 16, 251
" 2 Maccabees," 17, 251
Maccabees, the, 5, 15, 276
Maccabaean rising, 17, 224, 260-1,
269
Magic, passim
Masseba, 115
Messiah, the, 257-60, 268-70, 271
„ a crucified, 260
Messianic hope, 225, 260
„ notion, its growth, 240
„ King, 247, 254-6
„ Prince, 157
Messianism, passim
"Micah," 13
Monolatry, 44
Monotheism, passim
„ not the religion of
Moses, 100
Morality, 63
" Moses, Assumption of," 18, 251
Mountain of God, 32
Mourning, 215, 219

Index of Subjects 287

N
Nabi, 27, 121, 129, 131-4, 189, 152,
188
Nabis, unruly, put in stocks, 153
'• Nahum," 13
Nazir, 121, 132, 133
" Nehemiah," 5, 206
New Moon, 85-6
" Numbers," 10, 62

" Obadiah," 14
Oracle, 120, 127-9, 131, 133, 153, 172,
181, 228

Paganism, 47
Pantheism, 101
Paschal Lamb, 86, 87
Passover, 80, 86, 148
" Parables of Enoch," 257
Paralipomena, 5
" Pentateuch," 4, 6, 12, 97, 107
Pentecost, 86-7
Persian domination, 12, 15, 230
Pharaohs, the, 26
Pharisees, 270-1, 273
Piety, personal, 225
Polygamy, licit, 216
Polytheism, 44, 52-3, 56, 63
„ in the Temple, 163
Popular songs, 6
Priesthood, the Levitical ; its origin
and functions, 124-9
„ reorganized, 177
"Priestly Code, the," 21, 24, 204-6
Prophecies, anonymous, 14
„ , pseudonymous, 14
Prophecy, passim
Prophetism, passim, and 129-40
Prophets, their habitual inacouracy,
154-5
„ , writing or literary, 153
„ , the modernity of, 19

Prostitution, Sacred, 117
" Proverbs," 4, 15, 17, 232
" Psalms," 4, 15, 225-6, 230
" Psalms of Solomon," 18, 258
Purity and impurity, 27, 70-73
E
Eahab, the monster, 200
Eeohabites, the, 102, 132, 138
Eeligion, passim
Eesurrection of the dead, 227, 251,
271
Boe= a seer, 129
" Euth," 6, 16, 216

S
Sabbath, 11, 65, 83-5
„ a Canaanite custom, 119
Sabbatarianism, growth of, 207-8
" Sacerdotal Code," 11, 12, 14, 24,
204-5, 213
" Sacerdotal History," 11, 12, 27
Sacrifices, 65, 73-8, and passim
„ , human, 78-80
„ , of Christ, 83
„ , domestic and not sacer
dotal, 127, 176
Sadducees, 218, 251, 271-3
Samaritan Schism, 216-19, 251
" Samuel," 4, 10, 24
Scribes the, inaugurated, 220, 276
Seers, 129, 132
Semites, 35, 43, 56, 68
" Septuagint, the," 5, 266
Seraphim, the, 223
Serpent, the Brazen, 62
Servant of Yahweh, the, 247
Shew bread, 76
Sibylline Books, 18
Snake of Eden, the, 244
Snake God, 63
" Solomon, Psalms of," 18, 254
Son of Man, 257

288

Index of Subjects

" Song of Songs," 5, 15
Spirit worship, 44
Superstition, 55
Synagogue, 85, 262

Tabernacles, feast of, 86-7, 207
Tabu, 80, 84
Tattooing, of prophets, 205
Teraphim, 180-1
Thummim, 90, 129
Titans, 26
" Tobit," 6, 17, 20, 261
Tophet, 165, 167-8, ,180
Torah, the,-OQVi20, 124, 128, 137,
148, 153, 180, 187
Totemism, 56, 62, 87
Tribes, the twelve, 27

U
Unleavened bread, 87-8, 148
Urim, 90, 129

W
"Wars of Yakweh, the," 106-7,
112
" Wicked " the, 230
" Wisdom," 5, 17
Wisdom personified and Judaised,
232, 265
Witch of Endor, 228

" Zeohariah," 14
" Zephaniah," 13

UNWIN BBOIHEBS, LIMITED, THE QBESHAM PBESS, WOKING AND LONDON.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 9002 05032 5506