religious thought (cf. especially Isaiah), the character of the reforms ascribed to Josiah (2 Kings xxiii.), the pictures drawn by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and the latter’s condemnation of the half-Hittite, half-Amorite capital, combine with the events of later history to prove that the religion of the national sanctuary must not be too narrowly estimated from the denunciations of more spiritual minds or from a priori views of the inevitable concomitants of either henotheism or monotheism or of a lofty ethical teaching.
There is indeed a development, but it is none the less noteworthy that the post-exilic priestly ritual preserves in the worship of the universal and only God Yahweh, rites, practices and ideas which can be understood only in the light of other nature-religions, especially that of Babylonia, with which there are striking Post-exilic Developments. parallels.[1] For example, the ephod, an object of divination, is still retained, but it is now restricted to the high-priest; and his position as head of a theocratic state, and his ceremonial dress with its heathenish associations presuppose a past monarchy.[2] Clad in almost barbaric splendour (cf. Ecclus. xlv., l., and Jos. Ant. iii. 7, &c.) he embodies the glory of the worshipping body like the kings of old, and sometimes plays as important a part in the later political history. The priestly system, as represented in the Pentateuch, is not fitted for the desert, where its initiation is ascribed, but on independent internal critical grounds belongs to the post-exilic age, where it stands at the head of further developments. It is the adaptation of the prophets’ conceptions of Yahweh to old religious ideas, the building up of new conceptions upon an old basis, a fusion “between old heathen notions and prophetic ideas,” and “this fusion is characteristic of the entire priestly law.”[3] The priestly religion bound together the community in a way that alone preserved Jewish monotheism; it stands at the head of a long, unintermittent history, and it is to be viewed, not so much as the climax of Old Testament religion, but as one of a series of inseparable stages. In concentrating the religious observances of the people upon Jerusalem, its Temple and its priesthood, it became less spontaneous, and its services more remote from ordinary life. It left room for rival schools and sects, both within and without the priestly circles, and for continued development of the older and non-priestly thought. These reacted upon this institutional religion, which readapted and reinterpreted itself from time to time, and when they did not help to build up another theology (as in Christianity), they ended by assuming too rigid and unprogressive a shape (see Qaraites), or, breaking away from long-tried convention, became a mysticism with mixed results (see Kabbalah). While these vicissitudes take us away from Palestine, the course of native religious thought is very significant for its relation to the earlier stages. Although the national God was at once a transcendent ruler of the universe and also near at hand to man, the unconscious religious feeling found an outlet, not only in the splendid worship at Jerusalem, but in the more immediate intercessors, divine agencies, and the like; and when Judaism left its native soil the local supernatural beings revived—as characteristically as when the old place-names threw off their Greek dress—and they still survive, under a veneer of Mahommedanism, as the modern representatives of the Baals of the distant past.[4]
The uniqueness of the Old Testament religion is stamped upon the Mosaic legislation, which combines in archaic manner ritual, ethical and civil enactments. As a whole, the economic conditions implied are pastoral and agricultural, and are relatively primitive; and the general rudimentary character of the legal ideas appears in the Biblical Law. death penalty for the goring ox (Exod. xxi. 28), resort to ordeal (Num. v. 11–31), and in the treatment of murder, family, marriage, slaves and property. The use of writing is once contemplated (the “bill of divorce,” Deut. xxiv. 3), but not in ordinary business; oaths and symbols are used instead of written contracts, and the commercial law is notably scanty. The simplicity of the legislation is also manifest in the land-system in Lev. xxv., which implies a fresh beginning and not a readjustment of earlier laws. In property succession there Social Evolution. is a feeling of tribal aloofness which would not be favourable to a central authority; and in fact the legal machinery is rude, and the carrying out of the law depends not so much upon courts and officials as upon religious considerations. If there is a supreme court, it is priestly (Deut. xvii. 8–13), and the legislation is bound up with the worship of Yahweh, who avenges wrong. This legislation appears as that of the Israelites, newly escaped from bondage in Egypt, joined by an ethical covenant-relation with Yahweh, and waiting in the desert to enter and conquer the land of their ancestors. But it is remarkable that, although within the Old Testament itself there are certain different backgrounds, important variations and developments of law, these are relatively insignificant when we consider the profound changes from the 15th–13th centuries (apparent by the period of the conquest) to the close of Old Testament history. Yet, the conditions in Palestine during the monarchies reveal grave and complex social problems, marked class distinctions, and constant intercourse and commercial enterprise. There was no place for tribal exclusiveness, and the upkeep of a monarchy (including the Temple) and the occasional payment of tribute would require duly appointed officials and a central body. The pentateuchal laws relating to women belong to the country rather than to town life (note the picture of feminine luxury in Isa. iii. 16 sqq.; cf. Amos iv. 1–3). In general the pentateuchal legislation as a whole presupposes an undeveloped state of society, and would have been inadequate if not partly obsolete or unintelligible during the monarchies.[5] But more elaborate legal usages had long been known outside Palestine, and, to judge from the Talmud and the Syrian law-code (c. 5th century A.D.), long prevailed. Oriental law is primitive or advanced according to the social conditions, with the result that antiquity of ideas is no criterion of date, and Babylonian Law. modern desert custom is more archaic than the great code of the Babylonian king Khammurabi (c. 2000 B.C.). Common law is merely part of the national life, and where it is implicated with religion there is no uniformity over an area comprising different groups of people. In such a case there is resort to a controlling authority, whether self-imposed (like the divine Pharaoh of the Amarna age), or mutually agreed (as Mahomet and the Arabian clans).[6] It cannot be definitely said that the old Babylonian code was in force in Palestine. On the other hand, it is known that it was being diligently copied by Assur-bani-pal’s scribes (7th century B.C.), and in view of the circumstances of the Assyrian domination, it is probable that, so far as Palestinian economic conditions permitted, a legislation more progressive than the Pentateuch
- ↑ The presence of parallels also in South Arabian and Phoenician cults suggests that the old Palestinian ritual was in general agreement with the Oriental religions. Specific influence on the part of Babylonia is not excluded; but the absence of striking points of agreement in other portions of the Old Testament may not be due to anything else than the particular character of the circles to which they belonged.
- ↑ See C. Westphal, Jahwes Wohnstätten (Giessen, 1908), pp. 137 sqq. A. Jeremias, Hilprecht Anniversary Volume (1910), pp. 223–242, and art. Costume: Oriental.
- ↑ C. G. Montefiore, in the Hibbert Lectures, 1892, p. 320, cf. p. 322 (“[the] marriage of heathen practice and monotheistic use is one of the oddest and saddest features of the whole priestly code”), cf. also p. 411, and, in general, Lectures vi.–ix.
- ↑ See Clermont-Canneau, Pal. Explor. Fund, Quart. Statem. (1875), pp. 209 sqq.; C. R. Conder, Tent Work in Palestine (London, 1878), ii. 218 sqq.; J. G. Frazer, op. cit., p. 71, &c.; H. Gressmann, Palästinas Erdgeruch in der israel. Relig. (Berlin, 1909), pp. 16 sqq. In the above, and in other respects also, a survey of the history of Palestine suggests the necessity of modifying that “biological” treatment of the development of thought which pays insufficient attention to the persistence of the representatives of different stages by the side of or after the disappearance of the higher stages; see I. King, op. cit., pp. 204 sqq.
- ↑ Cf. J.-M. Lagrange, Hist. Crit. and the O. T. (London, 1905), p. 176; H. M. Wiener, The Churchman (1908), p. 23.
- ↑ See W. R. Smith, Rel. of Semites, p. 70, who compares the judicial authority of Moses. Note also the British Indian legislation imposed upon the various castes and creeds each with their peculiar rites and customs.
