Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/435

 ISRAEL 419 racter lie stly isacl itages ( ad- iges &amp;gt;se- tnt lev. n I rah. amendments and very considerable additions may have been made at a later date. The character of the post-Deuteronomic legislation (priestly code) is chiefly marked, in its external aspects, by the immense extension of the clues payable to the priests, and by the sharp distinction made between the descendants of Aaron and the common Levites ; this last feature is to be traced historically to the circumstance that after the Deuteronomic reformation the legal equality between the Levites who until then had ministered at the &quot; high places &quot; and the priests of the temple at Jerusalem was not de facto recognized. Internally, it is mainly characterized by its ideal of Levitical holiness, the way in which it everywhere surrounds life with purificatory and propitiatory ceremonies, and its prevailing reference of sacrifice to sin. Noteworthy also is the manner in which everything is regarded from the point of view of Jerusalem, a feature which comes much more boldly into prominence here than in Deu teronomy ; the nation and the temple are strictly speaking identified. That externalization towards which the prq- phetical movement, in order to become practical, had already been tending in Deuteronomy finally achieved its acme in the legislation of Ezra ; a new artificial Israel was the result ; but, after all, the old would have pleased an . Amos better. At the same time it must be remembered that the kernel needed a shell. It was a necessity that Judaism should incrust itself in this manner; without those hard and ossified forms the preservation of its essential elements would have proved impossible. At a time when all nationalities, and at the same time all bonds of religion and national customs, were beginning to be broken up in the seeming cosmos and real chaos of the Grseco-Roman empire the Jews stood out like a rock in the midst of the ocean. When the natural conditions of independent nationality all failed them, they nevertheless artificially maintained it with an energy truly marvellous, and thereby preserved for themselves and at the same time for the whole world an eternal good. 1 As regards the subsequent history of the Jewish com munity under the Persian domination, we have almost no information. The high priest in Nehemiah s time was Eliashib, son of Joiakim and grandson of Joshua, the patriarchal head of the sons of Zadok, who had returned from Babylon ; he was succeeded in the direct line by Joiada, Johanan, and Jaddua (Neh. xii. 10, 11, 22); the last-named was in office at the time of Alexander the Great (Joseph., Ant., xi. 8). Palestine was the province which suffered most severely of all from the storms which marked the last days of the sinking Persian empire, and it is hardly likely that the Jews escaped their force ; we know definitely, however, of only one episode, in which the Persian general Bagoses interfered in a disagreeable controversy about the high-priesthood (dr. 375). To this period also (and not, as Josephus states, to the time of Alexander) belongs the constitution of the Samaritan community on an independent footing by Manasseh, a Jewish priest of rank. He was expelled from Jerusalem by Nehemiah in 432, for refusing to separate from his alien wife. He took shelter with his father-in-law Sanballat the 1 On the age of the priestly legislation of the Pentateuch compare De Wette, Beitriige zur Einleituny ins A. T., 1806-7 ; George, Die j Adischen Feste, 1835 ; Vatke, Die UUische Theologie, 1835 ; Graf, Die Gcschichtlichen Biicher des A.T., 1866 ; Kuenen, Godsdienst van Israel, vol. ii., 1870. Great concessions to the view that the priestly code is of post-exilian origin are made by Delitzsch in the Zeitschrift fllr kirchliche Wissenschaft, p. 620, Leipsic, 1880: &quot;I am now convinced that the processes which in their origin and progress have resulted in the final form of the Torah, as we now possess it, continued into the post-exile period, and perhaps had not ceased their activity even at the time of the formation of the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint translation.&quot; Samaritan prince, who built him a temple on Mount Gerizim near Shechem, where he organized a Samaritan church and a Samaritan worship, on the Jerusalem model, and on the basis of a but slightly modified Jerusalem Pentateuch. If the Samaritans had hitherto exerted them selves to the utmost to obtain admission into the fellowship of the Jews, they henceforward were as averse to have anything to do with these as these were to have any dealings with them ; the temple on Mount Gerizim was now the symbol of their independence as a distinct religious sect. For the Jews this was a great advantage, as they had no longer to dread the danger of syncretism. They could now quite confidently admit the Am me haarec. into their communion, in the assurance of assimilating them without any risk of the opposite process taking place. The Judaizing process began first with the country districts immediately surrounding Jerusalem, and then extended to Galilee and many portions of Perrea. In connexion with it, the Hebrew language, which hitherto had been firmly retained by the Bne haggola, now began to yield to the Aramaic, and to hold its own only as a sacred speech. In all probability the internal development of the Jewish internal community throughout this period stood in inverse propor- dcvelop- tion to the eventlessness of its external history. After roent of the Torah had been introduced as the law for the com munity, the next business was to give it practical effect and secure that all the relations of life should be pervaded by it. The place for doing this was the synagogue, where Syna- it was read every Sabbath day, and illustrated from the gogue. historical and prophetical books 2 ; from this point of view a new light was shed upon the whole of antiquity (Midrash, Chronicles). The Torah was most largely indebted to the Scribes, scribes, They had codified it, and moreover the founda tion of a supplementary and correcting tradition, advancing with the progressive requirements of life, was laid by them. A.t a very early period they formed a numerous social class, the moral influence of which exceeded that of the priests. For the public cultus, and the public affairs generally speaking presided over by the priests, were not nearly so interesting to that age as was the regulation of the concerns of private life by religious law and ceremony. But here the scribes had the lead ; their avowed object was to make /3iWis (the expressive active noun of the prologue to Ecclesiasticus) increasingly 4Wo/xo?. Their constantly in creasing prescriptions were felt not as burdens but as reliefs. Never before had the individual so keenly felt his responsibility for all that he did or left undone ; but this responsibility oppressed him, and what he longed for was to be able at every moment of his life to fulfil some positive command which should raise him above all risk of mistake. 3 In its individualism this tendency has relations with a Personal deeper and freer type of piety by which to some extent religion, prophecy was continued under the domination of the law, and which connected itself especially with Jeremiah. In the finest Psalms there has grown out of the relation of Jehovah to Israel a relation between God and the pious * soul; the pure subjective sense of fellowship with God (Ps. Ixxiii. 28) is the highest good, in it a man has enough even when flesh and heart fail. So intensely was the 2 On the history of the canon see Bleek, Einl. ins A. T., sees. 269^ 274 (4th ed. ). That the men of the Great Synagogue, who are alleged to have formed the canon, are merely an exegetical my thus having its foundation on the narrative of Neh. viii.-x. has been shown by Kuenen (&quot; Over de Manncn cler Groote Synagoge,&quot; in the Proceedings of the Royal Netherl. Acad., 1876). 3 Aristeas (Schmidt) 39, 1 : iravrodev wepie&amp;lt;f&amp;gt;paev rj^as ayveiais Kal Sia Ppcarwi Kal -iroTUf Kal a&amp;lt;f&amp;gt;&amp;gt;v Kal aKor/s Kal 6pdfffcas VOJJ.IKUIV. Ecclus. vi. 29: Kal fffovral ffoi al ireSai els &amp;lt;TKfirt)v iVx^os Kal ol Kowl avrris els ffroXyv 5o ?jy. The aim was not to do good, but to avoid sin (Joseph., Ant., xvi. 2, 4).
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