“uncircumcised Philistines” predominated. From the description of Sennacherib’s invasion it is clear that social and economic conditions must have been seriously, perhaps radically disturbed,[1] and the quiescence of Judah during the next few decades implies an internal weakness and a submission to Assyrian supremacy. During the 7th century new movements were coming from Arabia, and tribes growing ever more restless made an invasion east of the Jordan through Edom, Moab and Ammon. Although they were repulsed, this awakening of a land which has so often fed Palestine and Syria, when viewed with the increasing weakness of Assyria, and subsequent vicissitudes in the history of the Edomites, Nabataeans and East Jordan tribes, forbids us to treat the invasion as an isolated raid.[2] Later, the fall of the Judaean kingdom and the deportation of the leading classes brought a new social upheaval. The land was not denuded, and the fact that “some scores of thousands of Jews remained in Judah through all the period of the exile,”[3] even though they were “the poorest of the land,” revolutionizes ordinary notions of this period. (See Jews: § 18). But the Judaean historians have successfully concealed the course of events, although, as has long been recognized, there was some movement Inauguration of New Conditions. upwards from the south of Judah of groups closely related to Edomite and kindred peoples of South Palestine and Northern Arabia. The immigrants, like the new occupants of Samaria, gradually assimilated themselves to the new soil; but the circumstances can hardly be recovered, and even the relations between Judah and Samaria can only be inferred. In the latter part of the 6th century we find some restoration, some revival of the old monarchy in the person of Zerubbabel (520 B.C.); but again the course of events is problematical (Jews, § 20).[4] Not until the middle of the 5th century do the biblical records (book of Nehemiah) furnish a foundation for any reconstruction. Here Jerusalem is in sore distress and in urgent need of reorganization. Zerubbabel’s age is of the past, and any attempt to revive political aspirations is considered detrimental to the interests of the surrounding peoples and of the Persian Empire. Scattered evidence suggests that the Edomites were responsible for a new catastrophe. Amid internal and external difficulties Nehemiah proceeds to repair religious and social abuses, and there is an important return of exiles from Babylonia. The ruling classes are related partly to the southern groups already mentioned and partly to Samaria; but the kingship of old is replaced by a high-priest, and, under the influence of Babylonian Jews of the strictest principles, a breach was made between Judah and Samaria which has never been healed (Jews: § 21 seq.). Biblical history itself recognizes in the times of Artaxerxes, Nehemiah and Ezra the commencement of a new era, and although only too much remains obscure we have in these centuries a series of vicissitudes which separate the old Palestine of Egyptian, Hittite, Babylonian and Assyrian supremacy from the land which was about to enter the circle of Greek and Roman civilization. This division, it may be added, also seems to leave its mark upon the lengthy archaeological history of Palestine from the earliest times to the Byzantine age. There is a certain poverty and decadence of art, a certain simplicity of civilization and a decline in the shape and decoration of pottery which seems to exhibit signs of derivation from skin prototypes elsewhere associated with desert peoples. This phase comes at a stage which severs the earlier phases (including the “Amarna” age) from those which are very closely connected with Seleucid and later times. Its appearance has been associated with the invasion of the Israelites or with the establishment of the independent monarchy, but on very inadequate grounds; and since it has been independently placed at the latter part of the monarchy, its historical explanation may presumably be found in that break in the career of Palestine when peoples were changed and new organizations slowly grew up.[5] The great significance of these vicissitudes for the course of internal conditions in Palestine is evident when it is observed that the subsequent cleavage between Judah and Samaria, not earlier than the 5th century, presupposes an antecedent common foundation which, in view of the history of the monarchies, can hardly be earlier than the 7th century. These centuries represent an age which the Jewish historians have partly ignored (as regards Samaria) and partly obscured (as regards the return from exile and the reconstruction of Judah); but since this age stands at the head of an historical development which leads on to Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism, it is necessary to turn from Palestine as a land in order to notice more particularly certain features of the Old Testament upon which the foregoing evidence directly bears.
The Old Testament is essentially a Palestinian, an Oriental, work and is entirely in accord with Oriental thought and custom.[6] Yet, in its characteristic religion and legislation there are essential spiritual and ethical peculiarities which give it a uniqueness and a permanent value, the reality of which becomes more impressive when Biblical Religion. the Old Testament is viewed, not merely from a Christian or a Jewish teleology, but in the light of ancient, medieval and modern Palestine. The ideas which characterize the Old Testament are planted upon lower levels of thought, and they appear in different aspects (legal, prophetical, historical) and with certain developments both within its pages and in subsequent literature. To ignore or to obscure the features which are opposed to these ideas would be to ignore the witness of external evidence and to obscure the old Testament itself. The books were compiled and preserved for definite aims, and their teaching is directed now to the needs of the people as a whole—as in the ever popular stories of Genesis—now to the inculcation of the lessons of the past, and now to matters of ritual. They are addressed to a people whose mental processes and philosophy were primitive; and since teaching, in order to be communicable, must adapt itself to current beliefs of God, man and nature—and the inveterate conservatism of man must be born in mind—the trend of ideas must not be confused with the average standard of thought.[7] The teaching was not necessarily presented in the form of an over-elaborated moral lesson, but was associated with conceptions familiar to the land; and when these conceptions are examined from the anthropological standpoint, they are found to contain much that is strange and even abhorrent to modern convictions of a purely spiritual deity. There are moreover many traces of conflicting ideas and ideals, of cruder beliefs and customs, and of attempts to remove or elevate them. In Genesis and elsewhere there are examples of popular thought which have not the characteristic spirit of the prophets, and which, it is clear, could only gradually be purified. The notion of a Yahweh scarcely less limited in power than man, the naïve views of supernatural beings and their nearness to man, and the persistence of features which stand relatively low in the scale of mental culture, only serve to enhance the reality of the spirit which inspired the endeavour to reform. There were rites and customs which only after lapse of time were considered iniquitous. Magical practices and forms of sacred prostitution and human sacrifice were familiar, and the denunciations of the prophets and the
- ↑ See G. A. Smith, Jerusalem, ii. 160, 196 seq.
- ↑ See L. B. Paton, Early Hist. of Syria and Pal. (London, 1902), p. 269; Winckler, Keilinschr. u. das A.T., p. 151.
- ↑ G. A. Smith, Jerusalem, ii. 269.
- ↑ On ordinary historical grounds it is probable that there was a political reorganization and a welding of the diverse elements throughout the land (J. A. Montgomery, The Samaritans, Philadelphia, 1907; p. 62 seq.). There is internal literary support for this in the criticism of Deuteronomy (which appears to have in view a comprehensive Israel and Judah at this period), and of various passages evidently earlier than Nehemiah’s time (see R. H. Kennett, Journ. of Theol. Stud., 1905, pp. 175–181; 1906, pp. 486, 498).
- ↑ For the late date, see F. Petrie, Tell-el-Hesy (1891), p. 47 seq., and Bliss and Macalister, Excavations in Palestine (1902), pp. 72, 74, 101, 124; and, for the suggestion in the text, S. A. Cook, Expositor, (Aug. 1909), pp. 104–114.
- ↑ See, e.g., E. Sellin, Alttest. Relig. im Rahmen der andern altorientalischen (Leipzig, 1908).
- ↑ On the characteristics of primitive thought, see G. F. Stout, Manual of Psychology (London, 1907), Bk. IV., especially pp. 574–579.
