Chapter XXXII. God and the Intermediary Powers

1. In addition to the angels who carried out God’s will in the universe,

the Biblical and post-Biblical literature recognizes other divine powers

which mediate between Him and the world of man. The more a seer or thinker

became conscious of the spirituality and transcendency of God, the more he

felt the gulf between the infinite Spirit and the world of the senses. In

order to bridge this gap, the Deity was replaced by one of His

manifestations which could appear and act in a world circumscribed by

space and time.(590) As we found in prophecy the direct revelation of God

giving way to a mediating angel, so either “the Glory” or “the Name” of

JHVH takes the place of God himself. That is, instead of God’s own being,

His reflected radiance or the power invested in His name descends from on

high. The rabbis kept the direct revelation of God for the hallowed past

or the desired future, but at the same time they needed a suitable term

for the presence of God; they therefore coined the word _Shekinah_—“the

divine Condescension” or “Presence”—to be used instead of the Deity

himself. Thus the verse of the Psalm:(591) “God standeth in the

congregation of God,” is translated by the Targum, “The divine Presence

(_Shekinah_) resteth upon the congregation of the godly.” Instead of the

conclusion of the speech to Moses, “Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I

may dwell among them,”(592) the Targum has, “And I shall let My Presence

(_Shekinah_) dwell among them.” Thus in the view of the rabbis _Shekinah_

represents the visible part of the divine majesty, which descends from

heaven to earth, and on the radiance of which are fed the spiritual

beings, both angels and the souls of the saints.(593) God himself was

wrapped in light, whose brilliancy no living being, however lofty, could

endure; but the _Shekinah_ or reflection of the divine glory might be

beheld by the elect either in their lifetime or in the hereafter. In this

way the rabbis solved many contradictory passages of Scripture, some of

which speak of God as invisible, while others describe man as beholding

Him.(594)

2. Just as the references to God’s appearing to man suggested luminous

powers mediating the vision of God, so the passages which represent God as

speaking suggest powers mediating the voice. Hence arose the conception of

the divine _Word_, invested with divine powers both physical and

spiritual. The first act of God in the Bible is that He spoke, and by this

word the world came into being. The _Word_ was thus conceived of as the

first created being, an intermediary power between the Spirit of the world

and the created world order. The word of God, important in the cosmic

order, is still more so in the moral and spiritual worlds. The Word is at

times a synonym of divine revelation to the men of the early generations

or to Israel, the bearer of the Law. Hence the older Haggadah places

beside the _Shekinah_ the divine _Word_ (Hebrew, _Maamar_; Aramaic,

_Memra_; Greek, _Logos_) as the intermediary force of revelation.

Contact with the Platonic and Stoic philosophies led gradually to a new

development which appears in Philo. The Word or Logos becomes “the

first-created Son of God,” having a personality independent from God; in

fact he is a kind of vice regent of God himself. From this it was but a

short step toward considering him a partner and peer of the Almighty, as

was done by the Church with its doctrine that the Word became flesh in

Christ, the son of God.(595) In view of this the rabbinical schools gave

up the idea of the personified Word, replacing it with the _Torah_ or the

_Spirit of God_. The older term was retained only in liturgical formulas,

such as: “Who created the heavens by His Word,” or, “Who by His Word

created the twilight and by Wisdom openeth the gates of heaven.”(596)

3. As has been shown above,(597) Wisdom is described in the Bible as the

first of all created beings, the assistant and counselor of God in the

work of creation. Then we see that Ben Sira identifies Wisdom with the

Torah.(598) Thus the Torah, too, was raised to a cosmic power, the sum and

substance of all wisdom. In fact, the Torah, like the Logos of Plato, was

regarded as comprising the ideas or prototypes of all things as in a

universal plan. The Torah is the divine pattern for the world. In such a

connection _Torah_ is far from meaning the Law, as Weber asserts.(599) It

means rather the heavenly book of instruction which contains all the

wisdom of the ages, and which God himself used as guide at the Creation.

God is depicted as an architect with His plan drafted before He began the

erection of the edifice,—a conception which avoids all danger of deifying

the Logos.

4. Several other conceptions, however, do not belong at all to the

intermediary powers, where Weber places them.(600) This applies to

_Metatron_ (identical with the Persian Mithras),(601) whom the mystic lore

calls the charioteer of the heavenly throne-chariot, represented by the

rabbis as the highest of the angels, leader of the heavenly hosts, and

vice-regent of God. That no cosmic power was ascribed to him is proved by

the very fact of his identification with Enoch, whom the pre-Talmudic

Haggadah describes as taken up into heaven and changed into an angel of

the highest rank, standing near God’s throne.(602)

5. The only real mediator between God and man is the _Spirit of God_,

which is mentioned in connection with both the creation and divine

revelation. In the first chapter of Genesis the Spirit of God is described

as hovering over the gloom of chaos like the mother bird over the egg,

ready to hatch out the nascent world.(603) God breathed His spirit into

the body of man, to make him also god-like.(604) The prophet likewise is

inspired by the spirit of God to see visions and to hear the divine

message.(605) Thus the spirit of God has two aspects; it is the cosmic

principle which imbues primal matter with life; it is a link between the

soul of man and God on high. The view of Ezekiel was but one step from

this, to conceive the spirit as a personal being, and place him beside God

as an angel.

The prophets and psalmists, feeling the spirit of God upon them,

considered it an emanation of the Deity. Still, a profounder insight soon

disapproved the severance of the Spirit of God from God himself, as if He

were not altogether _spirit_. Therefore the accepted term came to be the

_Holy Spirit_.(606) In this form, however, his personality became more

distinct and his separate existence more defined. Henceforth he is the

messenger of God, performing miracles or causing them, speaking in the

place of God, or defending His people Israel. Nay, more, the Holy Spirit

is supposed to have dictated the words of Scripture to the sacred writers,

and to have inspired the Men of the Great Synagogue in collecting the

sacred writings into a canon.(607)

Moreover, the workings of the Holy Spirit continued long after the

completion of the Biblical canon. All the chief institutions of the

Synagogue originally claimed that they were prompted by the Holy Spirit,

resting upon the leaders of the community. This claim was basic to the

authority of tradition and the continuity of the authority of Jewish lore.

It seems, however, that certain abuses were caused by miracle-workers who

disseminated false doctrines under the alleged inspiration of the Holy

Spirit. Therefore the rabbis restricted such claims to ancient times and

insisted more strongly than ever upon the preservation of the traditional

lore. For a time a substitute was found in the _Bath Kol_ (“Echo” or

“Whisper of a heavenly voice”), but this also was soon discredited by the

schools.(608) Obviously the rabbis desired to avert the deification of

either the Holy Spirit or the Word. Sound common sense was their norm for

interpreting the truth of the divine revelation. In other words, they

relied on God alone as the living force in the development of Judaism.

6. But some sort of mediation was ascribed to several other spiritual

forces. First, the _Name_ of God often takes the place of God

himself.(609) When the name of the Deity was called over some hallowed

spot, the worshipers felt that the presence of God also was bound up with

the sacred place.(610)

“My name is in him,” says God of the angel whom He sends to lead the

people.(611) The invocation of the name was believed to have an actual

influence upon the Deity. Furthermore, since God is frequently represented

as swearing by His own name,(612) this ineffable name was invested with

magic powers, as if God himself dwelt therein.(613) Thus it came to be

used as a talisman by the popular saints.(614) Indeed, God is described as

conjuring the depths of the abyss by His holy name, lest they overflow

their boundaries.(615) Moreover, the Name, like the Word, or Logos, was

regarded as a creative power, so that we are told that before the world

was created there were only God and His holy Name.(616) Owing to the

introduction of _Adonai_ (the Lord) for JHVH, the pronunciation of the

Name fell into oblivion and the Name itself became a mystery; therefore

its cosmic element also was lost and it dropped into the sphere of mystic

and philosophical speculation.

7. Another attribute of God which received some attention, owing to the

frequent mention of the omnipotence of God in the Bible, was _ha Geburah_

(the Power). A familiar rabbinic expression is: “We have heard from the

mouth of the Power,” that is, from the divine omnipotence.(617) Two

fundamental principles were early perceived in the moral order of the

world: the punitive justice and compassion of God. These were taken as the

meanings of the two most common Biblical names of God, _JHVH_ and

_Elohim_. Elohim, being occasionally used in dispensing justice,(618) was

thought to signify God in His capacity as Judge of the whole earth, and

hence as the divine Justice. JHVH, on the other hand, meant the divine

mercy, as it was used in the revelation of the long-suffering and merciful

God to Moses after the sin of Israel before the golden calf.(619) Thus

both the rabbis and Philo(620) often speak of these two attributes,

justice and mercy, as though they constituted independent beings,

deliberating with God as to what He should do. The Midrash tells in a

parable how before the creation of man, Justice, Mercy, Truth, and Peace

were called in by God as His counselors to deliberate whether or no man

should be created.(621)

8. One Haggadah concludes from the passage about Creation in Proverbs,

that there are three creative powers, Wisdom, Understanding, and

Knowledge.(622) Another derives from Scripture seven creative principles:

Knowledge, Understanding, Might, Grace and Mercy, Justice and Rebuke;(623)

and seven attributes which do service before God’s throne: Wisdom,

Judgment and Justice, Grace and Mercy, Truth and Peace.(624) By combining

these lists of three and seven this was finally enlarged to ten, which

became the basis for the entire mystic lore. Thus the Babylonian master

Rab enumerates ten creative principles: Wisdom, Understanding, and

Knowledge, Might and Power, Rebuke, Justice and Righteousness, Love and

Mercy.(625) It is hard to say whether the ten attributes of the Haggadah

are at all connected with the ten _Sefiroth_ (cosmic forces or circles) of

the Cabbalah. These last are hardly the creation of pure monotheism, but

rather emanations from the infinite, conceived after the pattern of

heathen ideas.(626)

9. The assumption of all these intermediaries aimed chiefly to

spiritualize the conception of God and to elevate Him above all

child-like, anthropomorphic views, so that He becomes a free Mind ruling

the whole universe. At the same time, it became natural to ascribe

material substance to these intermediaries. As they filled the chasm

between the supermundane Deity and the world of the senses, they had to

share the nature of both matter and mind. Hence the Shekinah and the Holy

Spirit are described by both the rabbis and the medieval philosophers as a

fine, luminous, or ethereal substance.(627) The entire ancient and

medieval systems were modeled after the idea of a ladder leading up, step

by step, from the lowest to the highest sphere; God, the Most High, being

at the same time above the highest rung of the ladder and yet also a part

of the whole.

10. Our modern system of thought holds the relation of God to nature and

man to be quite different from all this. To our mind God is the only moral

and spiritual power of life. He is mirrored in the moral and spiritual as

well as intellectual nature of man, and therefore is near to the human

conscience, owing to the divine forces within man himself. Not the world

without, but the world within leads us to God and tells us what God is.

Hence we need no intermediary beings, and they all evaporate before our

mental horizon like mist, pictures of the imagination without objective

reality. Ibn Ezra says in the introduction to his commentary on the Bible

that the human reason is the true intermediating angel between God and

man, and we hold this to be true of both the intellect and the conscience.

For the theologian and the student of religion to-day the center of

gravity of religion is to be sought in psychology and anthropology. In all

his upward striving, his craving and yearning for the highest and the

best, in his loftiest aspirations and ideals, man, like Isaiah the

prophet, can behold only the hem of God’s garment; he seeks God above him,

because he feels Him within himself. He must pass, however, through the

various stages of growth, until his self-knowledge leads to the knowledge

of the God before whom he kneels in awe. Then finally he feels Him as his

Father, his Educator in the school of life, the Master of the universal

plan in which the individual also has a place in building up the divine

kingdom of truth, justice, and holiness on earth. For centuries he groped

for God, until he received a Book to serve as “a lamp to his feet and a

light to his path,” to interpret to him his longing and his craving.

Israel’s Book of Books must ever be re-read and re-interpreted by Israel,

the keeper of the book, through ages yet to come. Well may we say: the

mediator between God and the world is _man_, the son of God; the mediator

between God and humanity is _Israel_, the people of God.

PART II. MAN

Chapter XXXIII. Man’s Place in Creation

1. The doctrine concerning man is inseparably connected with that about

God. Heathenism formed its deities after the image of man; they were

merely human beings of a larger growth. Judaism, on the contrary, asserts

that God is beyond comparison with mankind; He is a purely spiritual being

without form or image, and therefore utterly unlike man. On the other

hand, man has a divine nature, as he was made in the image of God,

fashioned after His likeness. The highest and deepest in man, his mental,

moral, and spiritual life, is the reflection of the divine nature

implanted within him, a force capable of ever greater development toward

perfection. This unique distinction among all creatures gives man the

highest place in all creation.

2. The superiority of the human race is expressed differently in various

passages in Scripture. According to the first chapter of Genesis the whole

work of creation finds its culmination in man, whose making is introduced

by a solemn appeal of God to the hosts of heaven: “Let us make man in our

image, after our likeness.”(628) This declaration proclaimed that man was

the completion and the climax of the physical creation, as well as the

beginning of a new order of creation, a world of moral aims and purposes,

of self-perfection and self-control. In the world of man all life is

placed at the service of a higher ideal, after the divine pattern.

The second chapter of Genesis depicts man’s creation differently. Here he

appears as the first of created beings, leading a life of perfect

innocence in the garden of divine bliss. Before him God brings all the

newly created beings that he may give them a name and a purpose. But the

Serpent enters Paradise as tempter, casting the seed of discord into the

hearts of the man and the woman. As they prove too feeble to resist

temptation, they can no longer remain in the heavenly garden in their

former happy state. Only the memory of Paradise remains, a golden dream to

cast hope over the life of struggle and labor into which they enter. The

idea of the legend is that man’s proper place is not among beings of the

earth, but he can reach his lofty destiny only by arduous struggle with

the world of the senses and a constant striving toward the divine. The

same idea is expressed more directly in the eighth Psalm:

“What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?

And the son of man, that Thou thinkest of him?

Yet Thou hast made him but little lower than the godly beings

(Elohim)

And hast crowned him with glory and honor.

Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands;

Thou hast put all things under his feet.”

3. According to the Haggadists,(629) before the fall man excelled even the

angels in appearance and wisdom, so that they were ready to prostrate

themselves before him. Only when God caused a deep sleep to fall upon man,

they recognized his frailty and kinship with other beings of the earth.

The idea expressed in this legend resembles the one implied in the legend

of Paradise, viz. man has a twofold nature. With his heavenly spirit he

can soar freely to the highest realm of thought, above the station of the

angels; yet his earthly frame holds him ever near the dust. It is this

very contrast that constitutes his greatness, for it makes him a citizen

of two worlds, one perishable, the other eternal. He is the highest result

of Creation, the pride of the Creator.(630) Thus he was appointed God’s

vice-regent on earth by the words spoken to the first man and woman: “Be

fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have

dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over

every living thing that creepeth upon the earth.”(631) The rabbis add a

striking comment upon the word _R’du_, which is used here for “have

dominion” but which may also mean, “go down.” They say: “The choice is

left in man’s own hand. If you maintain your heaven-born dignity, you will

have dominion over all things; if not, you will descend to the level of

the brute creation.”(632)

4. An ancient Mishnah derives a significant lesson from the story of the

creation of man(633): “Both the vegetable and animal worlds were created

in multitudes. Man alone was created as a single individual in order that

he may realize that he constitutes a world in himself, and carries within

him the true value of life. Hence each human being is entitled to say:

‘The whole world was created for my sake.’ He who saves a single human

life is as one who saves a whole world, and he who destroys a single human

life is as one who destroys a whole world.”

5. While it is man’s spiritual side which is the image of God, yet he

derives all his powers and faculties from earthly life, just as a tree

draws its strength from the soil in which it is rooted. Judaism does not

consider the soul the exclusive seat of the divine, as opposed to the

body. In fact, Judaism admits no complete dualism of spirit and matter,

however striking some aspects of their contrast may be. The whole human

personality is divine, just so far as it asserts its freedom and molds its

motives toward a divine end. In recognition of this fact Hillel claimed

reverence for the human body as well as mind, comparing it to the homage

rendered to the statue of a king, for man is made in the image of God, the

King of all the world.(634) Thus the Greek idea that man is a _microcosm_,

a world in miniature, reflecting the cosmos on a smaller scale, was

expressed in the Tannaitic schools as well.(635) The stamp of divinity is

borne by man in his entire heaven-aspiring nature, as he strives to

elevate the very realm of the senses into the sphere of morality and

holiness.

6. In this respect the Jewish view parts from that of Plato and the Hindu

philosophers. These divide man into a pure celestial soul and an impure

earthly body and hold that the physical life is tainted by sin, while the

spirit is divine only in so far as it frees itself from its prison house

of flesh. Judaism, on the other hand, emphasizes the unified character of

man, by which he can bend all his faculties and functions to a godlike

mastery over the material world. This appears first in his upright posture

and heavenward glance, which proclaim him master over the whole animal

world cowering before him in lowly dread. His whole bodily structure

corresponds to this, with its constant growth, its wondrous symmetry, and

the unique flexibility of the hands, with which he can perform ever new

and greater achievements. Above all, we see the nobility of man in his

high forehead and receding jaw, which contrast so strikingly with the

structure of most animals and even with many of the lower races. Indeed,

primitive man could scarcely imagine a nobler pattern by which to model

his deity than the figure of a man.

7. In fact, the Biblical verse, “God created man after the image of the

divine beings” (_elohim_), was originally taken literally, in the sense

that angels posed as models for the creation of man.(636) The phrase was

referred to the spiritual, god-like nature of man only when the difference

between material and spiritual things became better understood, and man

obtained a clearer knowledge of himself. Man grew to feel that his craving

for the perfect, whether in the field of truth and right, or of beauty, is

the force which lifts him, in spite of all his limitations, into the realm

of the divine. His soaring imagination and ceaseless longing for

perfection disclose before his eyes a partial vista of the infinite. The

human spirit carries mortal man above the confines of time and space into

those boundless realms where God resides in lonely majesty.(637)

Man did not emanate perfect from the hand of the Creator, but ready for an

ever greater perfection. Being the last of all created beings, as the

Midrash says, he can be put to shame by the smallest insect, which is

prior to him. Yet before the beginning of creation a light shone upon his

spirit that has illumined his achievements through untold

generations.(638)

8. The resemblance of man to God is attributed also to his free will and

self-consciousness, by which he claims moral dignity and mastery over all

things.(639) Still, all these superior qualities which we call human are

not ready-made endowments, free gifts bestowed by God; they are simply

potentialities which may be gradually developed. Man must strive to attain

the place destined for him in the scheme of creation by the exertion of

his own will and the unfolding of the powers that lie within him. The

impulse toward self-perfection, which is constantly stimulated by the

desire to overcome obstacles and to extend one’s power, knowledge, and

possessions, forms the kernel of the divine in man. This is the “spirit in

man, and the breath of the Almighty, that giveth them understanding.”(640)

Thus the teaching of modern science, of the gradual ascent of man through

all the stages of animal life, does not impair the lofty position in

creation which Judaism has assigned him. Plant and animal are what they

have always been, children of the earth; man with his heaven-aspiring soul

is the image of his Creator, a child of God. Giver of name and purpose to

all things about him, he ranks above the angels; he “marches on while all

the rest stand still.”(641)

Chapter XXXIV. The Dual Nature of Man

1. According to Jewish doctrines, man is formed by a union of two natures:

the flesh, which he shares with all the animals, and the spirit, which

renders him a child of God. The former is rooted in the earth and is

earthward bent; the latter is a “breath from God” and strives to unfold

the divine in man until he attains the divine image. This discord brings a

tremendous internal conflict, leading from one historic stage to another,

achieving ever higher things, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, until at

last the whole earth is to be a divine kingdom, the dwelling-place of

truth, goodness, and holiness.

2. According to the Biblical view man consists of flesh (_basar_) and

spirit (_ruah_). The term flesh is used impartially of all animals, hence

the Biblical term “all flesh”(642) includes both man and beast. The body

becomes a living being by being penetrated with the “breath of life”

(_ruah hayim_), at whose departure the living body turns at once into a

lifeless clod. This breath of life is possessed by the animal as well as

by man, as both of them breathe the air. Hence in ancient tongues “breath”

and “soul” are used as synonyms, as the Hebrew _nefesh_ and _neshamah_,

the Latin _anima_ and _spiritus_, the Greek _pneuma_ and _psyche_. A

different primitive belief connected the soul with the blood, noting that

man or beast dies when the hot life-blood flows out of the body, so that

we read in the Bible, “the blood is the soul.”(643) In this the soul is

identified with the life, while the word _ruah_, denoting the moving force

of the air, is used more in the sense of spirit or soul as distinct from

the body.

Thus both man and beast possess a soul, _nefesh_. The soul of man is

merely distinguished by its richer endowment, its manifold faculties by

which it is enabled to move forward to higher things. Thus the animal soul

is bound for all time to its destined place, while the divine spirit in

man makes him a free creative personality, self-conscious and god-like.

For this reason the creation of man forms a special act in the account in

Genesis. Both the plant and animal worlds rose at God’s bidding from the

soil of mother earth, and the soul of the animal is limited in origin and

goal by the earthly sphere. The creation of man inaugurates a new world.

God is described as forming the body of man from the dust of the earth and

then breathing His spirit into the lifeless frame, endowing it with both

life and personality. The whole man, both body and soul, has thus the

potentiality of a higher and nobler life.

3. Accordingly Scripture does not have a thorough-going dualism, of a

carnal nature which is sinful and a spiritual nature which is pure. We are

not told that man is composed of an impure earthly body and a pure

heavenly soul, but instead that the whole of man is permeated by the

spirit of God. Both body and soul are endowed with the power of continuous

self-improvement. In order to see the great superiority of the Jewish view

over the heathen one, we need only study the old Babylonian legend

preserved by Berosus. In this the deity made man by mixing earth with some

of its own life-blood, thus endowing the human soul with higher powers. In

the Bible the difference between man and beast does not lie in the blood,

although the blood is still thought to be the life. The distinction of man

is in the spirit, _ruah_, which emanates from God and penetrates both body

and soul, lifting the whole man into a higher realm and making him a free

moral personality.

Still the Bible makes no clear distinction between the three terms,

_nefesh_, _neshamah_, and _ruah_.(644) Philo first distinguished between

three different substances of the soul, but his theory was the Platonic

one, for which he simply used the three Biblical names.(645) The Jewish

philosophers of the Middle Ages, beginning with Saadia, took the same

attitude, even though they realized more or less that the division of the

soul into three substances has no Scriptural warrant.(646) In rabbinical

literature this division is scarcely known, and there is little mention of

either the animal soul, _nefesh_, or the vital spark, _ruah_. Instead the

word _neshamah_ is used for the human _psyche_ as the higher spiritual

substance, and the contrast to it is not the Biblical _basar_, flesh, but

the Aramaic _guph_, body.(647) This bears a trace of Persian dualism, with

its strong contrast between the earthly body and the heavenly soul.

4. In fact, rabbinical Judaism does not recognize any relationship between

the soul of the animal and that of man, but claims that man has a special

type of existence. The Midrash tells(648) that God formed Adam’s body so

as to reach from earth to heaven, and then caused the soul to enter it. In

the same way God implants the soul into the embryo before its birth and

while in the womb. Before this the soul had a bird-like existence in an

immense celestial cage (_guph_ = _columbarium_), and when it leaves the

body in death, it again takes its flight toward heaven. There its conduct

on earth will reap a reward in the garden of eternal bliss or a punishment

in the infernal regions. The belief in the preëxistence of the soul was

shared by the rabbis with the apocryphal authors and Philo.(649)

However, rabbinical Judaism never followed Philo so far in the footsteps

of Plato as to consider the body or the flesh the source of impurity and

sin, or “the prison house of the soul.” This view is fundamental in the

Paulinian system of other-worldliness. For the rabbis the sensuous desire

of the body (_yezer_) is a tendency toward sin, but never a compulsion.

The weakness of the flesh may cause a straying from the right path, but

man can turn the desires of the flesh into the service of the good. He can

always assert his divine power of freedom by opposing the evil inclination

(_yezer ha ra_) with the good inclination (_yezer ha tob_) to overcome

it.(650) In fact, the rabbis are so far from acknowledging the existence

of a compulsion of evil in the flesh, that they point to the history of

great men as proof that the highest characters have the mightiest passions

in their souls, and that their greatness consists in the will by which

they have learned to control themselves.(651)

5. In the light of modern science the whole theory separating body and

soul falls to the ground, and the one connecting man more closely with the

animal world is revived. In this connection we think of the idea which

medieval thinkers adopted from Plato and Aristotle, that there is a

substance of souls—_nefesh hahiyonith_—which forms the basic life-force of

men and animals. Physiology and psychology reveal the interaction and

dependence of body and soul in the lowest forms of animal life as well as

in the higher forms, including man. The beginnings of the human mind must

be sought once for all in the animal, just as the origin of the animal

reaches back into the plant world. Indeed, Aristotle anticipates the

discoveries of modern science, placing the vegetative and animal souls

beside the spirit of man. Thus motion and sensibility form the lower

boundary-line of the animal kingdom, and self-consciousness and

self-determination are the criteria of humanity.

Yet this very self-conscious freedom which forms man’s personality, his

_ego_, lifts him into a realm of free action under higher motives,

transcending nature’s law of necessity, and therefore not falling within

the domain of natural science. Dust-born man, notwithstanding his earthly

limitations, in spite of his kinship to mollusk and mammal, enters the

realm of the divine spirit. In the Midrash the rabbis remark that man

shares the nature of both animals and angels.(652) Admitting this, we feel

that he is tied neither to heaven nor to the earth, but free to lift

himself above all creatures or sink below them all.

6. Endowed with this dual nature, man stands in the very center of the

universe, and God esteems him “equal in value to the entire creation,” as

Rabbi Nehemiah says of a single human soul.(653) Rabbi Akiba stresses the

image of God in humanity when he says: “Beloved is man, for he is created

in God’s image, and it was a special token of love that he became

conscious of it. Beloved is Israel, for they are called the children of

God, and it was a special token of love that they became conscious of

it.”(654) The Midrash compares man to God in exquisite manner: “Just as

God permeates the world and carries it, unseen yet seeing all, enthroned

within as the Only One, the Perfect, and the Pure, yet never to be reached

or found out; so the soul penetrates and carries the body, as the _one_

pure and luminous being which sees and holds all things, while itself

unseen and unreached.”(655) The conception of the soul is here divested of

every sensory attribute, and portrayed as a divine force within the body.

This conception, which was accepted by the medieval philosophers, is

thoroughly consistent with our view of the world. The soul it is which

mirrors both the material and spiritual worlds and holds them in mutual

relation through its own power. It is at the same time swayed upward and

downward by its various cravings, heavenly and earthly, and this very

tension constitutes the dual nature of the human soul.

Chapter XXXV. The Origin and Destiny of Man

1. Of all created beings man alone possesses the power of

self-determination; he assigns his destiny to himself. While he endeavors

to find the object of all other things and even of his own existence in

the world, he finds his own purpose within himself. Star and stone, plant

and beast fulfill their purpose in the whole plan of creation by their

existence and varied natures, and are accordingly called “good” as they

are. Man, however, realizes that he must accomplish his purpose by his

manner of life and the voluntary exertion of his own powers. He is “good”

only as far as he fulfills his destiny on earth. He is not good by mere

existence, but by his conduct. Not what he is, but what he ought to be

gives value to his being. He is good or bad according to the direction of

his will and acts by the imperative: “I ought” or “I ought not,” which

comes to him in his conscience, the voice of God calling to his soul.

2. The problem of human destiny is answered by Judaism with the idea that

God is the ideal and pattern of all morality. The answer given, then, is

“To walk in the ways of God, to be righteous and just,” as He is.(656) The

prophet Micah expressed it in the familiar words: “It has been told thee,

O man, what is good, and what the Lord doth require of thee: Only to do

justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.”(657)

Accordingly the Bible considers men of the older generations the

prototypes of moral conduct, “righteous men who walked with God.” Such men

were Enoch, Noah, and above all Abraham, to whom God said: “I am God

Almighty; walk before Me, and be thou whole-hearted. And I will make My

covenant between thee and Me.”(658) The rabbis singled out Abraham as the

type of a perfect man on account of his love of righteousness and peace;

contrasting him with Adam who sinned, they beheld him as “the great man

among the heroes of the ancient times.” They even considered him the type

of true humanity, in whom the object of creation was attained.(659)

3. This moral consciousness, however, which tells man to walk in the ways

of God and be perfect, is also the source of shame and remorse. With such

an ideal man must feel constantly that he falls short, that he is not what

he ought to be. Only the little child, who knows nothing as yet of good

and evil, can preserve the joy of life unmarred. Similarly, primitive man,

being ignorant of guilt, could pass his days without care or fear. But as

soon as he becomes conscious of guilt, discord enters his soul, and he

feels as if he had been driven from the presence of God.

This feeling is allegorized in the Paradise legend. The garden of bliss,

half earthly, half heavenly, which is elsewhere called the “mountain of

God,”(660) a place of wondrous trees, beasts, and precious stones, whence

the four great rivers flow, is the abode of divine beings. The first man

and woman could dwell in it only so long as they lived in harmony with God

and His commandments. As soon as the tempter in the shape of the serpent

called forth a discord between the divine will and human desire, man could

no longer enjoy celestial bliss, but must begin the dreary earthly life,

with its burdens and trials.

4. This story of the fall of the first man is an allegorical description

of the state of childlike innocence which man must leave behind in order

to attain true strength of character. It is based upon a view common to

all antiquity of a descent of the race; that is: first came the golden

age, when man led a life of ease and pleasure in company with the gods;

then an age of silver, another of brass, and finally the iron age, with

its toil and bitter woe. Thus did evil deeds and wild passions increase

among men. This view fails utterly to recognize the value of labor as a

civilizing force making for progress, and it contradicts the modern

historical view. The prophets of Israel placed the golden age at the end,

not the beginning of history, so that the purpose of mankind was to

establish a heavenly kingdom upon the earth. In fact, the fall of man is

not referred to anywhere in Scripture and never became a doctrine, or

belief, of Judaism. On the contrary, the Hellenistic expounders of the

Bible take it for granted that the story is an allegory, and the book of

Proverbs understands the tree of life symbolically, in the verse: “She

(the Torah) is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her.”(661)

5. Still the rabbis in Talmud and Midrash accepted the legend in good

faith as historical(662) and took it literally as did the great English

poet:

“The fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden.”

In fact, they even followed the Persian dualism with its evil principle,

the primeval serpent, or the Babylonian legend of the sea-monster Tiamat,

and regarded the serpent in Paradise as a demon. He was identified with

Satan, the arch-fiend, and later with evil in general, the _yezer ha

ra_.(663) Thus the belief arose that the poisonous breath of the serpent

infected all generations, causing death even of the sinless.(664) The

apocrypha also held that the envy of Satan brought death into the

world.(665) This prepared for the dismal church doctrine of original sin,

the basis of Paul’s teachings, which demanded a blood atonement for

curse-laden humanity, and found it after the pagan pattern in the

vicarious sacrifice of a dying god.(666)

Against such perversion of the simple Paradise story the sound common

sense of the Jewish people rebelled. While the early Talmudists

occasionally mention the poisoning of the human race by the serpent, they

find an antidote for the Jewish people in the covenant with Abraham or

that of Sinai.(667) One cannot, however, discern the least indication of

belief in original sin, either as inherent in the human race or inherited

by them. Nor does the liturgy express any such idea, especially for the

Day of Penitence, when it would certainly be mentioned if the conception

found any place in Jewish doctrine. On the contrary, the prevailing

thought of Judaism is that of Deuteronomy and Ezekiel,(668) that “Each man

dies by his own sin,” that every soul must bear only the consequences of

his own deeds. The rabbis even state that no man dies unless he has

brought it upon himself by his own sin, and mention especially certain

exceptions to this rule, such as the four saintly men who died without

sin,(669) or certain children whose death was due to the sin of their

parents.(670) They could never admit that the whole human race was so

corrupted by the sin of the first man that it is still in a state of

sinfulness.

6. Of course, the rabbinical schools took literally the Biblical story of

the fall of man and laid the chief blame upon woman, who fell a prey to

the wiles of the serpent. This is done even by Ben Sira, who says: “With

woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all must die.”(671) So

the Talmud says that due to woman, man, the crown, light, and life of

creation, lost his purity, his luster, and his immortality.(672) The

Biblical verse, “They did eat, and the eyes of them both were opened,” is

interpreted by Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai and Rabbi Akiba as “They saw the

dire consequences of their sin upon all coming generations.”(673) The fall

of man is treated most elaborately in the same spirit in the two

apocalyptic books written after the destruction of the Second Temple, the

Apocalypse of Baruch and the IV Book of Esdras.(674) The incompatibility

of divine love with the sufferings of man and of the Jewish people on

account of the sin of the first man is solved by an appeal to the final

Day of Judgment, and the striking remark is added that, after all, “each

is his own Adam and is held responsible for his own sin.” We cannot deny

that these two books contain much that is near the Paulinian view of

original sin. It seems, however, that the Jewish teachers were put on

their guard by the emphasis of this pessimistic dogma by the nascent

Church, and did their best to give a different aspect to the story of the

first sin. Thus they say: “If Adam had but shown repentance, and done

penance after he committed his sin, he would have been spared the death

penalty.”(675) Moreover, they actually represent Adam and Eve as patterns

of repentant sinners, who underwent severe penance and thus obtained the

promise of divine mercy and also of final resurrection.(676) Instead of

transmitting the heritage of sin to coming generations, the first man is

for them an example of repentance. So do the Haggadists tell us quite

characteristically that God merely wanted to test the first man by an

insignificant command, so that the first representative of the human race

should show whether he was worthy to enter eternal life in his mortal

garb, as did Enoch and Elijah. As he could not stand the test, he

forfeited the marks of divine rank, his celestial radiance, his gigantic

size, and his power to overcome death.(677) Obviously the Biblical story

was embellished with material from the Persian legend of the fall of Yima

or Djemshid, the first man, from superhuman greatness because of his

sin,(678) but it was always related frankly as a legend, and could never

influence the Jewish conception of the fall of man.

7. Judaism rejects completely the belief in hereditary sin and the

corruption of the flesh. The Biblical verse, “God made man upright; but

they have sought out many inventions,”(679) is explained in the Midrash:

“Upright and just as is God, He made man after His likeness in order that

he might strive after righteousness, and unfold ever more his god-like

nature, but men in their dissensions have marred the divine image.”(680)

With reference to another verse in Ecclesiastes:(681) “The dust returneth

unto the earth as it was, and the spirit returneth unto God who gave it,”

the rabbis teach “Pure as the soul is when entering upon its earthly

career, so can man return it to his Maker.”(682) Therefore the pious Jew

begins his daily prayers with the words: “My God, the soul which Thou hast

given me is pure.”(683) The life-long battle with sin begins only at the

age when sensual desire, “the evil inclination,” awakens in youth; then

the state of primitive innocence makes way for the sterner contest for

manly virtue and strength of character.

8. In fact, the whole Paradise story could never be made the basis for a

dogma. The historicity of the serpent is denied by Saadia;(684) the rabbis

transfer Paradise with the tree of life to heaven as a reward for the

future;(685) and both Nahmanides the mystic and Maimonides the philosopher

give it an allegorical meaning.(686) On the other hand, the Haggadic

teachers perceived the simple truth that a life of indolence in Paradise

would incapacitate man for his cultural task, and that the toils and

struggles inflicted on man as a curse are in reality a blessing. Therefore

they laid special stress on the Biblical statement: “He put man into the

garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.”(687) The following parable is

especially suggestive: “When Adam heard the stern sentence passed: ‘Thou

shalt eat the herb of the field,’ he burst into tears, and said: ‘Am I and

my ass to eat out of the same manger?’ Then came another sentence from God

to reassure him, ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,’ and

forthwith he became aware that man shall attain a higher dignity by dint

of labor.”(688) Indeed, labor transforms the wilderness into a garden and

the earth into a habitation worthy of the son of God. The “book of the

generations of man” which begins with Adam is accordingly not the history

of man’s descent, but of his continuous ascent, of ever higher

achievements and aspirations; it is not a record of the fall of man, but

of his rise from age to age. According to the Midrash(689) God opened

before Adam the book with the deeds and names of the leading spirits of

all the coming generations, showing him the latent powers of the human

intellect and soul. The phrase, “the fall of man,” can mean, in fact, only

the inner experience of the individual, who does fall from his original

idea of purity and divine nobility into transgression and sin. It cannot

refer to mankind as a whole, for the human race has never experienced a

fall, nor is it affected by original or hereditary sin.

Chapter XXXVI. God’s Spirit in Man

1. Man is placed in an animal world of dull feelings, of blind and crude

cravings. Yet his clear understanding, his self-conscious will and his

aspirations forward and upward lead him into a higher world where he

obtains insight into the order and unity of all things. By the spirit of

God he is able to understand material things and grasp them in their

relations; thus he can apply all his knowledge and creative imagination to

construct a world of ideals. But this world, in all its truth, beauty and

goodness, is still limited and finite, a feeble shadow of the infinite

world of God. As the Bible says: “The spirit of man is the lamp of the

Lord, searching all the inward parts.”(690) “It is a spirit in man, and

the breath of the Almighty, that giveth them understanding.”(691)

2. According to the Biblical conception, the spirit of God endows men with

all their differing capacities; it gives to one man wisdom by which he

penetrates into the causes of existence and orders facts into a scientific

system; to another the seeing eye by which he captures the secret of

beauty and creates works of art; and to a third the genius to perceive the

ways of God, the laws of virtue, that he may become a teacher of ethical

truth. In other words, the spirit of God is “the spirit of wisdom and

understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge

and the fear of the Lord.”(692) It works upon the scientific interest of

the investigator, the imagination of the artist and poet, the ethical and

social sense of the prophet, teacher, statesman, and lawgiver. Thus their

high and holy vision of the divine is brought home to the people and

implanted within them under the inspiration of God. In commenting upon the

Biblical verse, “Wisdom and might are His ... He giveth wisdom to the

wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding,”(693) the sages

wisely remark, “God carefully selects those who possess wisdom for His

gift of wisdom.” Even as a musical instrument must be attuned for the

finer notes that it may have a clear, resonant tone, so the human soul

must be made especially susceptible to the gifts of the spirit in order to

be capable of unfolding them. Thus the Talmud records an interesting

dialogue on this very passage between a Roman matron familiar with the

Scripture, and Rabbi Jose ben Halafta. She asked sarcastically, “Would it

not have been more generous of your God to have given wisdom to those that

are unwise than to those that already possess it?” Thereupon the Jewish

master replied, “If you were to lend a precious ornament, would you not

lend it to one who was able to make use of it? So God gives the treasure

of wisdom to the wise, who know how to appreciate and develop it, not to

the unwise, who do not know its value.”(694)

3. Thus the diverse gifts of the divine spirit are distributed differently

among the various classes and tribes of men, according to their capacity

and the corresponding task which is assigned them by Providence. The

divine spark is set aglow in each human soul, sometimes feebly, sometimes

brightly, but it blazes high only in the privileged personality or group.

The mutual relationship between God and man is recognized by the Synagogue

in the Eighteen Benedictions, where the one directly following the three

praises of God is devoted to wisdom and knowledge: “Thou favorest man with

knowledge, and teachest mortals understanding. So favor us with knowledge,

understanding, and discernment from Thee. Blessed art Thou, O Lord,

gracious Giver of knowledge.”(695) This petition, remarks Jehuda ha

Levi,(696) deserves its position as first among these prayers, because

wisdom brings us nearer to God. It is also noteworthy that the Synagogue

prescribes a special benediction at the sight of a renowned sage, even if

he is not a Jew, reading, “Praised be He who has imparted of His wisdom to

flesh and blood.”(697)

4. Maimonides holds that in the same degree as a man studies the works of

God in nature, he will be filled with longing for direct knowledge of God

and true love of Him.(698) “Not only religion, but also the sciences

emanate from God, both being the outcome of the wisdom which God imparts

to all nations,”—thus wrote a sixteenth-century rabbi, Loewe ben Bezalel

of Prague, known usually as “the eminent Rabbi Loewe.”(699) The men of the

Talmud also accord the palm in certain types of knowledge to heathen

sages, and did not hesitate to ascribe to some heathens the highest

knowledge of God in their time.(700) As a mystic of the thirteenth

century, Isaac ben Latif, says: “That faith is the most perfect which

perceives truth most fully, since God is the source of all truth.”(701) Of

the two heads of the Babylonian academies, Rab and Samuel, one asserted

that Moses through his prophetic genius reached forty-nine of the fifty

degrees of the divine understanding (as the fiftieth is reserved for God

alone), while the other claimed the same distinction for King Solomon as

the result of his wisdom.(702)

5. Thus the spirit of God creates in man both consciously and

unconsciously a world of ideas, which proves him a being of a higher order

in creation. This impulse may work actively, searching, investigating, and

creating, or passively as an instrument of a higher power. At first it is

a dim, uncertain groping of the spirit; then the mind acquires greater

lucidity by which it illumines the dark world; and, as one question calls

for the other and one thought suggests another, the world of ideas opens

up as a well-connected whole. Thus man creates by slow steps his

languages, the arts and sciences, ethics, law and all the religions with

their varying practices and doctrines. At times this spirit bursts forth

with greater vehemence in great men, geniuses who lift the race with one

stroke to a higher level. Such men may say, in the words of David, the

holy singer: “The spirit of the Lord spoke by me, and His word was upon my

tongue.”(703) They may repeat the experience of Eliphaz the friend of Job:

“Now a word was secretly brought to me,

And mine ear received a whisper thereof.

In thoughts from the visions of the night,

When deep sleep falleth on men,

Fear came upon me, and trembling,

And all my bones were made to shake.

Then a spirit passed before my face,

That made the hair of my flesh to stand up.

It stood still, but I could not discern the appearance thereof;

A form was before mine eyes;

I heard a still voice.”(704)

In such manner men of former ages received a religious revelation, a

divine message.

6. The divine spirit always selects as its instruments individuals with

special endowments. Still, insight into history shows that these men must

needs have grown from the very heart of their own people and their own

age, in order that they might hold a lofty position among them and command

attention for their message. However far the people or the age may be from

the man chosen by God, the multitude must feel at least that the divine

spirit speaks through him, or works within him. Or, if not his own time,

then a later generation must respond to his message, lest it be lost

entirely to the world.

The rabbis, who knew nothing of laws of development for the human mind,

assumed that the first man, made by God Himself, must have known every

branch of knowledge and skill, that the spirit of God must have been most

vigorous in him.(705) They therefore believed in a primeval revelation,

coeval with the first man. Our age, with its tremendous emphasis on the

historical view, sees the divine spirit manifested most clearly in the

very development and growth of all life, social, intellectual, moral and

spiritual, proceeding steadily toward the highest of all goals. With this

emphasis, however, on process, we must lay stress equally on the origin,

on the divine impulse or initiative in this historical development, the

spirit which gives direction and value to the whole.

Chapter XXXVII. Free Will and Moral Responsibility

1. Judaism has ever emphasized the freedom of the will as one of its chief

doctrines. The dignity and greatness of man depends largely upon his

freedom, his power of self-determination. He differs from the lower

animals in his independence of instinct as the dictator of his actions. He

acts from free choice and conscious design, and is able to change his mind

at any moment, at any new evidence or even through whim. He is therefore

responsible for his every act or omission, even for his every intention.

This alone renders him a moral being, a child of God; thus the moral sense

rests upon freedom of the will.(706)

2. The idea of moral freedom is expressed as early as the first pages of

the Bible, in the words which God spoke to Cain while he was planning the

murder of his brother Abel: “Whether or not, thou offerest an acceptable

gift,” (New Bible translation: “If thou doest well, shall it not be lifted

up? and if thou doest not well,”) “sin coucheth at the door; and unto thee

is its desire, but thou mayest rule over it.”(707) Here, without any

reference to the sin of Adam in the first generation, the man of the

second generation is told that he is free to choose between good and evil,

that he alone is responsible before God for what he does or omits to do.

This certainly indicates that the moral freedom of man is not impaired by

hereditary sin, or by any evil power outside of man himself. This

principle is established in the words of Moses spoken in the name of God:

“I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse;

therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed.”(708) In

like manner Jeremiah proclaims in God’s name: “Behold I set before you the

way of life and the way of death.”(709)

3. From these passages and many similar ones the sages derived their

oft-repeated idea that man stands ever at the parting of the ways, to

choose either the good or the evil path.(710) Thus the words spoken by God

to the angels when Adam and Eve were to be expelled from Paradise:

“Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil,” are

interpreted by R. Akiba: “He was given the choice to go the way of life or

the way of death, but he chose the way of death by eating of the forbidden

fruit.”(711) R. Akiba emphasizes the principle of the freedom of the will

again in the terse saying: “All things are foreseen (by God), but free

will is granted (to man).”(712)

4. At the first encounter of Judaism with those philosophical schools of

Hellas which denied the freedom of the human will, the Jewish teachers

insisted strongly on this principle. The first reference is found in Ben

Sira, who refutes the arguments of the Determinists that God could make

man sin, and then goes on: “God created man at the beginning, endowing him

with the power of self-determination, saying to him: If thou but willest,

thou canst observe My commandments; to practice faithfulness is a matter

of free will.... As when fire and water are put before thee, so that thou

mayest reach forth thy hand to that which thou desirest, so are life and

death placed before man, and whatever he chooses of his own desire will be

given to him.”(713) The Book of Enoch voices this truth also in the

forceful sentences: “Sin has not been sent upon the earth (from above),

but men have produced it out of themselves; therefore they who commit sin

are condemned.”(714) We read similar sentiments in the Psalms of Solomon,

a Pharisean work of the first pre-Christian century:(715) “Our actions are

the outcome of the free choice and power of our own soul; to practice

justice or injustice lies in the work of our own hands.”

The Apocalypse of Ezra is especially instructive in the great stress which

it lays on freedom, in connection with its chief theme, the sinfulness of

the children of Adam. “This is the condition of the contest which man who

is born on earth must wage, that, if he be conquered by the evil

inclination, he must suffer that of which thou hast spoken (the tortures

of hell), but if he be victorious, he shall receive (the reward) which I

(the angel) have mentioned. For this is the way whereof Moses spoke when

he lived, saying unto the people, ‘Choose life, that thou mayest live!’...

For all who knew Me not in life when they received My benefits, who

despised My law when they yet had freedom, and did not heed the door of

repentance while it was still open before them, but disregarded it, after

death they shall come to know it!”(716)

5. Hellenistic Judaism also, particularly Philo,(717) considered the truly

divine in man to be his free will, which distinguishes him from the beast.

Yet Hellenistic naturalism could not grasp the fact that man’s power to do

evil in opposition to God, the Source of the good, is the greatest

reminder of his moral responsibility. Josephus likewise mentions

frequently as a characteristic teaching of the Pharisees that man’s free

will determines his acts without any compulsion of destiny.(718) Only we

must not accept too easily the words of this Jewish historian, who wrote

for his Roman masters and, therefore, represented the Jewish parties as so

many philosophical schools after the Greek pattern. The Pharisean doctrine

is presented most tersely in the Talmudic maxim: “Everything is in the

hands of God except the fear of God.”(719) Like the quotation from R.

Akiba above, this contains the great truth that man’s destiny is

determined by Providence, but his character depends upon his own free

decision. This idea recurs frequently in such Talmudic sayings as these:

“The wicked are in the power of their desires; the righteous have their

desires in their own power;”(720) “The eye, the ear, and the nostrils are

not in man’s power, but the mouth, the hand, and the feet are.”(721) That

is, the impressions we receive from the world without us come

involuntarily, but our acts, our steps, and our words arise from our own

volition.

6. A deeper insight into the problem of free will is offered in two other

Talmudic sayings; the one is: “Whosoever desires to pollute himself with

sin will find all the gates open before him, and whosoever desires to

attain the highest purity will find all the forces of goodness ready to

help him.”(722) The other reads: “It can be proved by the Torah, the

Prophets, and the other sacred writings that man is led along the road

which he wishes to follow.”(723)

As a matter of fact, no person is absolutely free, for innumerable

influences affect his decisions, consciously and unconsciously. For this

reason many thinkers, both ancient and modern, consider freedom a delusion

and hold to determinism, the doctrine that man acts always under the

compulsion of external and internal forces. In opposition to this theory

is one incontestable fact, our own inner sense of freedom which tells us

at every step that _we_ have acted, and at every decision that we have

decided. Man can maintain his own power of self-determination against all

influences from without and within; his will is the final arbiter over

every impulse and every pressure. Moreover, as we penetrate more deeply

into the working of the mind, we see that a long series of our own

voluntary acts has occasioned much that we consider external, that the

very pressure of the past on our thoughts, feelings and habits, which

leaves so little weight for the decision of the moment, is really only our

past will influencing our present will. That is, the will may determine

itself, but it does not do so arbitrarily; its action is along the lines

of its own character. We have the power to receive the influence of either

the noble or the ignoble series of impressions, and thus to yield either

to the lofty or the low impulses of the soul.

In this way the rabbis interpret various expressions of Scripture which

would seem to limit man’s freedom, as where God induces man to good or

evil acts, or hardens the heart of Pharaoh so that he will not let the

Israelites go, until the plagues had been fulfilled upon him and his

people.(724) They understand in such an instance that a man’s heart has a

prevailing inclination toward right or wrong, the expression of his

character, and that God encouraged this inclination along the evil course;

thus the freedom of the human will was kept intact.

7. The doctrine of man’s free will presents another difficulty from the

side of divine omniscience. For if God knows in advance what is to happen,

then man’s acts are determined by this very foreknowledge; he is no longer

free, and his moral responsibility becomes an idle dream. In order to

escape this dilemma, the Mohammedan theologians were compelled to limit

either the divine omniscience or human freedom, and most of them resorted

to the latter method. It is characteristic of Judaism that its great

thinkers, from Saadia to Maimonides and Gersonides,(725) dared not alter

the doctrine of man’s free will and moral responsibility, but even

preferred to limit the divine omniscience. Hisdai Crescas is the only one

to restrict human freedom in favor of the foreknowledge of God.(726)

8. The insistence of Judaism on unrestricted freedom of will for each

individual entirely excludes hereditary sin. This is shown in the

traditional explanation of the verse of the Decalogue: “Visiting the

iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth

generation of them that hate Me.”(727) According to the rabbis the words

“of them that hate Me” do not refer to the fathers, according to the plain

meaning of the passage, but to the children and children’s children. These

are to be punished only when they hate God and follow the evil example of

their fathers.(728) Despite example and hereditary disposition, the

descendants of evildoers can lead a virtuous life, and their punishment

comes only when they fail to resist the evil influences of their parental

household. To illustrate the Biblical words, “Who can bring a clean thing

out of an unclean?”(729) the rabbis single out Abraham, the son of Terah,

Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, and Josiah, the son of Manasseh.(730) Man,

being made in God’s image, determines his own character by his own free

choice; by his will he can raise or lower himself in the scale of being.

9. The fundamental character of the doctrine of free will for Judaism is

shown by Maimonides, who devotes a special chapter of his Code to it,(731)

and calls it the pillar of Israel’s faith and morality, since through it

alone man manifests his god-like sovereignty. For should his freedom be

limited by any kind of predestination, he would be deprived of his moral

responsibility, which constitutes his real greatness. In endeavoring to

reconcile God’s omnipotence and omniscience with man’s freedom, Maimonides

says that God wants man to erect a kingdom of morality without

interference from above; moreover, God’s knowledge is different in kind

from that of man, and thus is not an infringement upon man’s freedom, as

the human type of knowledge would be. However, Abraham ben David of

Posquieres blames Maimonides for proposing questions which he could not

answer satisfactorily in the Code, which is intended for non-philosophical

readers. The fact is that this is only another of the problems insoluble

to human reasoning; the freedom of the will must remain for all time a

postulate of moral responsibility, and therefore of religion.

Chapter XXXVIII. The Meaning of Sin

1. Sin is a religious conception. It does not signify a breach of law or

morality, or of popular custom and sacred usage, but an offense against

God, provoking His punishment. As long as the deity is merely dreaded as

an external power, not adored as a moral power ruling life from within for

a holy purpose, sin, too, is considered a purely formal offense. The deity

demands to be worshiped by certain rites and may be propitiated by other

formal acts.(732) For Judaism, however, sin is a straying from the path of

God, an offense against the divine order of holiness. Thus it signifies an

abuse of the freedom granted man as his most precious boon. Therefore sin

has a twofold character; formally it is an offense against the majesty of

God, whose laws are broken; essentially it is a severance of the soul’s

inner relations to God, an estrangement from Him.

2. Scripture has three different terms for sin, which do not differ

greatly in point of language, but indicate three stages of thought. First

is _het_ or _hataah_, which connotes any straying from the right path,

whether caused by levity, carelessness, or design, and may even include

wrongs committed unwittingly, _shegagah_. Second is _avon_, a crookedness

or perversion of the straight order of the law. Third is _pesha_, a wicked

act committed presumptuously in defiance of God and His law. As a matter

of course, the conception of sin was deepened by degrees, as the prophets,

psalmists and moralists grew to think of God as the pattern of the highest

moral perfection, as the Holy One before whom an evil act or thought

cannot abide.

The rabbis usually employed the term _aberah_, that is, a transgression of

a divine commandment. In contrast to this they used _mitzwah_, a divine

command, which denotes also the whole range of duty, including the desire

and intention of the human soul. From this point of view every evil design

or impulse, every thought and act contrary to God’s law, becomes a sin.

3. Sin arises from the weakness of the flesh, the desire of the heart, and

accordingly in the first instance from an error of judgment. The Bible

frequently speaks of sin as “folly.”(733) A rabbinical saying brings out

this same idea: “No one sins unless the spirit of folly has entered into

him to deceive him.”(734) A sinful imagination lures one to sin; the

repetition of the forbidden act lowers the barrier of the commandment,

until the trespass is hardened into “callous” and “stubborn” disregard,

and finally into “reckless defiance” and “insolent godlessness.” Such a

process is graphically expressed by the various terms used in the Bible.

According to the rabbinical figure, “sin appears at first as thin as a

spider’s web, but grows stronger and stronger, until it becomes like a

wagon-rope to bind a man.” Or, “sin comes at first as a passer-by to tarry

for a moment, then as a visitor to stay, finally as the master of the

house to claim possession.” Therefore it is incumbent upon us to “guard”

the heart, and not “to go astray following after our eyes and our

heart.”(735)

4. According to the doctrine of Judaism no one is sinful by nature. No

person sins by an inner compulsion. But as man has a nature of flesh,

which is sensuous and selfish, each person is inclined to sin and none is

perfectly free from it. “Who can say: I have made my heart clean, I am

pure from any sin?”(736) This is the voice of the Bible and of all human

experience; “For there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good,

and sinneth not.”(737) The expression occurs repeatedly in Job: “Shall

mortal man be just before God? Shall a man be pure before his Maker?”(738)

Even Moses is represented in numerous passages as showing human foibles

and failings.(739) In fact, “the greater the personality, the more

severely will God call him to account for the smallest trespass, for God

desires to be ‘sanctified’ by His righteous ones.”(740) The Midrash tells

us that no one is to be called holy, until death has put an end to his

struggle with the ever-lurking tempter within, and he lies in the earth

with the victor’s crown of peace upon his brow.(741) When we read the

stern sentence: “Behold, He putteth no trust in His holy ones,”(742) the

rabbis refer us to the patriarchs, each of whom had his faults.(743)

Measured by the Pattern of all holiness, no human being is free from

blemish.

5. In connection with the God-idea, the conception of sin grew from crude

beginnings to the higher meaning given it by Judaism. The ancient

Babylonians used the same terminology as the Bible for sin and

sin-offering, but their view, like that of other Semites, was far more

external.(744) If one was afflicted with disease or misfortune, the

inference was that he had neglected the ritual of some deity and must

appease the angered one with a sacrificial offering. Any irregularity in

the cult was an offense against the deity. This became more moralized with

the higher God-idea; the god became the guardian of moral principles; and

the calamities, even of the nation, were then ascribed to the divine wrath

on account of moral lapses. The same process may be observed in the views

of ancient Israel. Here, too, during the dominance of the priestly view

the gravest possible offense was one against the cult, a culpable act

entailing the death penalty—_asham_, or “doom” of the offender. We shudder

at the thought that the least violation of the hierarchical rules for the

sanctuary or even for the burning of incense should meet the penalty of

death. Yet such is the plain statement of the Mosaic law and such was the

actual practice of the people.(745)

The more the prophetic conception of the moral nature of the Deity

permeated the Jewish religion, the more the term sin came to mean an

offense against the holiness of God, the Guardian of morality. Hence the

great prophets upbraided the people for their moral, not their ceremonial

failings. They attacked scathingly transgressions of the laws of

righteousness and purity, the true sins against God, because these

originate in dullness of heart, unbridled passion, and overbearing pride,

all so hateful to Him. The only ritual offenses emphasized as sins against

God are idolatry, violation of the name of God and of the Sabbath, for

these express the sanctity of life.(746) Except for these points, the

prophets and psalmists insisted only on righteous conduct and integrity of

soul, and repudiated entirely the ritualism of the priesthood and the

formalism of the cult.(747) This view is anticipated by Samuel, the master

of the prophetic schools, when he says:

“Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,

And to hearken than the fat of rams.

For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft,

And stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim.”(748)

As soon as we realize that obedience to God’s will means right conduct and

purity of soul, we see in sin the desecration of the divine image in man,

the violation of his heavenly patent of nobility.

6. Sin, then, is in its essence unfaithfulness to God and to our own

god-like nature. We see this thought expressed in Job:(749)

“If thou hast sinned, what doest thou against Him?

And if thy transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto Him?

If thou be righteous, what givest thou unto Him?

Or what receiveth He of thy hand?

Thy wickedness concerneth a man as thou art;

And thy righteousness a son of man.”

Thus the source of sin is the human heart, the origin of all our thinking

and planning. We know sin chiefly as consciousness of guilt. Man’s

conscience accuses him and compels him to confess, “Against Thee, Thee

only, have I sinned.”(750) Not only the deed itself, but even more the

will which caused it, is condemned by conscience. Such self-accusation

constantly proves anew that there is no place for original sin through the

fall of Adam. “I could have controlled my evil desire, if I had but

earnestly willed it,” said King David, according to the Talmud.(751)

7. Sin engenders a feeling of disunion with God through the consciousness

of guilt which accompanies it. It erects a “wall of separation” between

man and his Maker, depriving him of peace and security.(752) Guilt causes

pain, which overwhelms him, until he has made atonement and obtained

pardon before God. This is no imaginary feeling, easily overcome and

capable of being suppressed by the sinner with impunity. Instead, he must

pay the full penalty for his sin, lest it lead him to the very abyss of

evil, to physical and moral death. Sin in the individual becomes a sense

of self-condemnation, the consciousness of the divine anger. Hence the

Hebrew term _avon_, sin, is often synonymous with punishment,(753) and

_asham_, guilt, often signifies the atonement for the guilt, and sometimes

doom and perdition as a consequence of guilt.(754) Undoubtedly this still

contains a remnant of the old Semitic idea that an awful divine visitation

may come upon an entire household or community because of a criminal or

sacrilegious act committed, consciously or unconsciously, by one of its

members. Such a fate can be averted only by an atoning sacrifice. This

accords with the rather strange fact that the Priestly Code prescribes

certain guilt offerings for sins committed unwittingly, which are called

_asham_.(755)

8. But even these unintentional sins can be avoided by the constant

exercise of caution, so that their commission implies a certain degree of

guilt, which demands a measure of repentance. Thus the Psalmist says: “Who

can discern errors? Clear Thou me from hidden faults.”(756) He thus

implies that we feel responsible in a certain sense for all our sins,

including those which we commit unknowingly. The rabbis dwell especially

on the idea that we are never altogether free from sinful thoughts. For

this reason, they tell us, the two burnt offerings were brought to the

altar each morning and evening, to atone for the sinful thoughts of the

people during the preceding day or night.(757)

9. At any rate, Judaism recognizes no sin which does not arise from the

individual conscience or moral personality. The condemnation of a whole

generation or race in consequence of the sin of a single individual is an

essentially heathen idea, which was overcome by Judaism in the course of

time through the prophetic teaching of the divine justice and man’s moral

responsibility. This sentiment was voiced by Moses and Aaron after the

rebellion of Korah in the words: “O God, the God of the spirits of all

flesh, shall one man sin, and wilt Thou be wroth with all the

congregation?”(758) In commenting upon this, the Midrash says: “A human

king may make war upon a whole province, because it contains rebels who

have caused sedition, and so the innocent must suffer together with the

guilty; but it does not behoove God, the Ruler of the spirits, who looks

into the hearts of men, to punish the guiltless together with the

guilty.”(759) The Christian view of universal guilt as a consequence of

Adam’s sin, the dogma of original sin, is actually a relapse from the

Jewish stage to the heathen doctrine from which the Jewish religion freed

itself.

10. According to the Biblical view sin contaminates man, so that he cannot

stand in the presence of God. The holiness of Him who is “of eyes too pure

to behold evil”(760) becomes to the sinner “a devouring fire.”(761) Even

the lofty prophet Isaiah realizes his own human limitations at the sublime

vision of the God of holiness enthroned on high, while the angelic

choruses chant their thrice holy. In humility and contrition he cries out:

“Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I

dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For mine eyes have seen

the King, the Lord of hosts.”(762) The prophet must undergo atonement in

order to be prepared for his high prophetic task. One of the Seraphs

purges him of his sins by touching his lips with a live coal taken from

the altar of God.

Under the influence of Persian dualism, rabbinical Judaism considers sin a

pollution which puts man under the power of unclean spirits.(763) In the

later Cabbalah this idea is elaborated until the world of sin is

considered a cosmic power of impurity, opposed to the realm of right,

working evil ever since the fall of Adam.(764) Still, however close this

may come to the Christian dogma, it never becomes identical with it; the

recognition is always preserved of man’s power to extricate himself from

the realm of impurity and to elevate himself into the realm of purity by

his own repentance. Sin never becomes a demoniacal power depriving man of

his divine dignity of self-determination and condemning him to eternal

damnation. It ever remains merely a going astray from the right path, a

stumbling from which man may rise again to his heavenly height, exerting

his own powers as the son of God.

Chapter XXXIX. Repentance Or the Return To God

1. The brightest gem among the teachings of Judaism is its doctrine of

repentance or, in its own characteristic term, the return of the wayward

sinner to God.(765) Man, full of remorse at having fallen away from the

divine Fountainhead of purity, conscious of deserving a sentence of

condemnation from the eternal Judge, would be less happy than the

unreasoning brute which cannot sin at all. Religion restores him by the

power to rise from his shame and guilt, to return to God in repentance, as

the penitent son returns to his father. Whether we regard sin as

estrangement from God or as a disturbance of the divine order, it has a

detrimental effect on both body and soul, and leads inevitably to death.

On this point the Bible affords many historical illustrations and

doctrinal teachings.(766) If man had no way to escape from sin, then he

would be the most unfortunate of creatures, in spite of his god-like

nature. Therefore the merciful God opens the gate of repentance for the

sinner, saying as through His prophets of old: “I have no pleasure in the

death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.”(767)

2. The great value of the gift of divine grace, by which the sinner may

repent and return to God with a new spirit, appears in the following

rabbinical saying: “Wisdom was asked, ‘What shall be the sinner’s

punishment?’ and answered, ‘Evil pursues sinners’;(768) then Prophecy was

asked, and answered, ‘The soul that sinneth, it shall die’;(769) the

Torah, or legal code, was consulted, and its answer was: ‘He shall bring a

sin-offering, and the priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be

forgiven.’(770) Finally God Himself was asked, and He answered:(771) ‘Good

and upright is the Lord; therefore doth He instruct sinners in the

way.’ ”(772) The Jewish idea of atonement by the sinner’s return to God

excludes every kind of mediatorship. Neither the priesthood nor sacrifice

is necessary to secure the divine grace; man need only find the way to God

by his own efforts. “Seek ye Me, and live,”(773) says God to His erring

children.

3. _Teshubah_, which means return, is an idea peculiar to Judaism, created

by the prophets of Israel, and arising directly from the simple Jewish

conception of sin. Since sin is a deviation from the path of salvation, a

“straying” into the road of perdition and death, the erring can return

with heart and soul, end his ways, and thus change his entire being. This

is not properly expressed by the term repentance, which denotes only

regret for the wrong, but not the inner transformation. Nor is _Teshubah_

to be rendered by either penitence or penance. The former indicates a sort

of bodily self-castigation, the latter some other kind of penalty

undergone in order to expiate sin. Such external forms of asceticism were

prescribed and practiced by many tribes and some of the historical

religions. The Jewish prophets, however, opposed them bitterly, demanding

an inner change, a transformation of soul, renewing both heart and spirit.

“Let the wicked forsake his way,

And the man of iniquity his thoughts;

And let him return unto the Lord, and He will have compassion upon

him,

And to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.”(774)

Judaism considers sin merely moral aberration, not utter corruption, and

believes in the capability of the very worst of sinners to improve his

ways; therefore it waits ever for his regeneration. This is truly a return

to God, the restoration of the divine image which has been disfigured and

corrupted by sin.

4. The doctrine of _Teshubah_, or the return of the sinner, has a

specially instructive history, as this most precious and unique conception

of Judaism is little understood or appreciated by Christian theologians.

Often without intentional bias, these are so under the influence of the

Paulinian dogma that they see no redemption for man corrupted by sin,

except by his belief in a superhuman act of atonement. It is certainly

significant that the legal code, which is of priestly origin, does not

mention repentance or the sinner’s return. It prescribes various types of

sin-offerings, speaks of reparation for wrong inflicted, of penalties for

crime, and of confession for sins, but it does not state how the soul can

be purged of sin, so that man can regain his former state of purity. This

great gap is filled by the prophetic books and the Psalms. The book of

Deuteronomy alone, written under prophetic influence, alludes to

repentance, in connection with the time when Israel would be taken captive

from its land as punishment for its violation of the law. There we read:

“Thou shalt return unto the Lord thy God, ... with all thy heart, and all

thy soul, then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have

compassion upon thee.”(775)

Amos, the prophet of stern justice, has not yet reached the idea of

averting the divine wrath by the return of the sinner.(776) Hosea, the

prophet of divine mercy and loving-kindness, in his deep compassion for

the unfaithful and backsliding people, became the preacher of repentance

as the condition for attaining the divine pardon.

“Return, O Israel, unto the Lord thy God;

For thou hast stumbled in thine iniquity.

Take with you words (of repentance),

And return unto the Lord;

Say unto Him, “Forgive all iniquity,

And accept that which is good;

So will we render for bullocks the offering of our lips.’ ”(777)

The appeal of Jeremiah is still more vigorous:

“Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the Lord....

Only acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed

against the Lord thy God....

Break up for you a fallow ground, and sow not among thorns....

O Jerusalem, wash thy heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be

saved;

How long shall thy baleful thoughts lodge within thee?...

Return ye now every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and

your doings.”(778)

Ezekiel, while emphasizing the guilt of the individual, preached

repentance still more insistently. “Return ye, and turn yourselves from

all your transgressions; so shall they not be a stumbling-block of

iniquity to you. Cast away from you all your transgressions, wherein ye

have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit; for why will

ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that

dieth, saith the Lord God; wherefore turn yourselves, and live.”(779) The

same appeal recurs after the exile in the last prophets, Zechariah(780)

and Malachi.(781) The latter says: “Return unto Me, and I shall return

unto you.” Likewise the penitential sermon written in a time of great

distress, which is ascribed to the prophet Joel, contains the appeal:

“Turn ye unto Me with all your heart,

And with fasting, and with weeping, and with lamentation;

And rend your heart, and not your garments,

And turn unto the Lord your God;

For He is gracious and compassionate,

Long-suffering, and abundant in mercy,

And repenteth Him of the evil.”(782)

This prophetic view, which demands contrition and craving for God instead

of external modes of atonement, is expressed in the penitential Psalms as

well,(783) especially in Psalm LI. The idea is expanded further in the

parable of the prophet Jonah, which conveys the lesson that even a heathen

nation like the people of Nineveh can avert the impending judgment of God

by true repentance.(784) From this point of view the whole conception took

on a larger aspect, and the entire history of mankind was seen in a new

light. The Jewish sages realized that God punishes man only when the

expected change of mind and heart fails to come.(785)

5. The Jewish plan of divine salvation presents a striking contrast to

that of the Church, for it is built upon the presumption that all sinners

can find their way back to God and godliness, if they but earnestly so

desire. Even before God created the world, He determined to offer man the

possibility of _Teshubah_, so that, in the midst of the continual struggle

with the allurements of the senses, the repentant sinner can ever change

heart and mind and return to God.(786) Without such a possibility the

world of man could not endure; thus, because no man can stand before the

divine tribunal of stern justice, the paternal arm of a merciful God is

extended to receive the penitent. This sublime truth is constantly

reiterated in the Talmud and in the liturgy, especially of the great Day

of Atonement.(787) Not only does God’s long-suffering give the sinner time

to repent; His paternal love urges him to return. Thus the Haggadists

purposely represent almost all the sinners mentioned in the Bible as

models of sincere repentance. First of all comes King David, who is

considered such a pattern of repentance, as the author of the fifty-first

Psalm, that he would not have been allowed to sin so grievously, if he had

not been providentially appointed as the shining example of the penitent’s

return to God.(788) Then there is King Manasseh, the most wicked among all

the kings of Judah and Israel, who had committed the most abominable sins

of idolatrous worship. Referring to the story told of him in Chronicles,

it is said that God responded to his tearful prayers and incessant

supplications by opening a rift under His throne of mercy and receiving

his petition for pardon. Thus all mankind might see that none can be so

wicked that he will not find the door of repentance open, if he but seek

it sincerely and persistently.(789) Likewise Adam and Cain, Reuben and

Judah, Korah, Jeroboam, Ahab, Josiah, and Jechoniah are described in

Talmud, Midrash, and the apocalyptic literature as penitent sinners who

obtained at last the coveted pardon.(790) The optimistic spirit of Judaism

cannot tolerate the idea that mortal man is hopelessly lost under the

burden of his sins, or that he need ever lose faith in himself. No one can

sink so low that he cannot find his way back to his heavenly Father by

untiring self-discipline. As the Talmud says, nothing can finally

withstand the power of sincere repentance: “It reaches up to the very seat

of God;” “upon it rests the welfare of the world.”(791)

6. The rabbis follow up the idea first announced in the book of Jonah,

that the saving power of repentance applies to the heathen world as well.

Thus they show how God constantly offered time and opportunity to the

heathens for repentance. For example, when the generation of the flood,

the builders of the Tower of Babel, and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah

were to be punished, God waited to give them time for Repentance and

improvement of their ways.(792) Noah, Enoch, and Abraham are represented

as monitors of their contemporaries, warning them, like the prophets, to

repent in time lest they meet their doom.(793) Thus the whole Hellenistic

literature of propaganda, especially the Sibylline books, echoes the

warning and the hope that the heathen should repent of their grievous sins

and return to God, whom they had deserted in idolatry, so that they might

escape the impending doom of the last judgment day. According to one

Haggadist,(794) even the Messiah will appear first as a preacher of

repentance, admonishing the heathen nations to be converted to the true

God and repent before Him, lest they fall into perdition. Indeed, it is

said that even Pharaoh and the Egyptians were warned and given time for

repentance before their fate overtook them.

7. Accordingly, the principle of repentance is a universal human one, and

by no means exclusively national, as the Christian theologians represent

it.(795) The sages thus describe Adam as the type of the penitent sinner,

who is granted pardon by God. The “sign” of Cain also was to be a sign for

all sinners, assuring them they might all obtain forgiveness and

salvation, if they would but return to God.(796) In fact, the prophetic

appeal to Israel for repentance, vain at the time, effected the

regeneration of the people during the Exile and gave rise to Judaism and

its institutions. In the same way, the appeal to the heathen world by the

Hellenistic propaganda and the Essene preachers of repentance did not

induce the nations at once to prepare for the coming of the Messianic

kingdom, but finally led to the rise of the Christian religion, and,

through certain intermediaries, of the Mohammedan as well.

However, the long-cherished hope for a universal conversion of the heathen

world, voiced in the preachments and the prayers of the “pious ones,” gave

way to a reaction. The rise of antinomian sects in Judaism occasioned the

dropping of this pious hope, and only certain individual conversions were

dwelt on as shining exceptions.(797) The heathen world in general was not

regarded as disposed to repent, and so its ultimate fate was the doom of

Gehenna. Experience seemed to confirm the stern view, which rabbinical

interpretation could find in Scripture also, that “Even at the very gate

of the nether world wicked men shall not return.”(798) The growing

violence of the oppressors and the increasing number of the maligners of

Judaism darkened the hope for a universal conversion of humanity to the

pure faith of Israel and its law of righteousness. On the contrary, a

certain satisfaction was felt by the Jew in the thought that these enemies

of Judaism should not be allowed to repent and obtain salvation in the

hereafter.(799)

8. The idea of repentance was applied all the more intensely in Jewish

life, and a still more prominent place was accorded it in Jewish

literature. The rabbis have numberless sayings(800) in the Talmud and also

in the Haggadic and ethical writings concerning the power and value of

repentance. In passages such as these we see how profoundly Judaism dealt

with the failings and shortcomings of man. The term _asa teshubah_, do

repentance, implies no mere external act of penitence, as Christian

theologians often assert. On the contrary, the chief stress is always laid

on the feeling of remorse and on the change of heart which contrition and

self-accusation bring. Yet even these would not be sufficient to cast off

the oppressive consciousness of guilt, unless the contrite heart were

reassured by God that He forgives the penitent son of man with paternal

grace and love. In other words, religion demands a special means of

atonement, that is, _at-one-ment_ with God, to restore the broken relation

of man to his Maker. The true spiritual power of Judaism appears in this,

that it gradually liberates the kernel of the atonement idea from its

priestly shell. The Jew realizes, as does the adherent of no other

religion, that even in sin he is a child of God and certain of His

paternal love. This is brought home especially on the Day of Atonement,

which will be treated in a later chapter.

9. At all events, the blotting out of man’s sins with their punishment

remains ever an act of grace by God.(801) In compassion for man’s frailty

He has ordained repentance as the means of salvation, and promised pardon

to the penitent. This truth is brought out in the liturgy for the Day of

Atonement, as well as in the Apocalyptic Prayer of Manasseh. At the same

time, Judaism awards the palm of victory to him who has wrestled with sin

and conquered it by his own will. Thus the rabbis boldly assert: “Those

who have sinned and repented rank higher in the world to come than the

righteous who have never sinned,” which is paralleled in the New

Testament: “There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repenteth than

over ninety and nine righteous persons, who need no repentance.”(802) No

intermediary power from without secures the divine grace and pardon for

the repentant sinner, but his own inner transformation alone.

Chapter XL. Man, the Child of God

1. The belief that God hears our prayers and pardons our sins rests upon

the assumption of a mutual relation between man and God. This belief is

insusceptible of proof, but rests entirely upon our religious feelings and

is rooted purely in our emotional life. We apply to the relation between

man and God the finest feelings known in human life, the devotion and love

of parents for their children and the affection and trust the child

entertains for its parents. Thus we are led to the conviction that

earth-born man has a Helper enthroned in the heavens above, who hearkens

when he implores Him for aid. In his innermost heart man feels that he has

a special claim on the divine protection. In the words of Job,(803) he

knows that his Redeemer liveth. He need not perish in misery. Unlike the

brute creation and the hosts of stars, which know nothing of their Maker,

man feels akin to the God who lives within him; he is His image, His

child. He cannot be deprived of His paternal love and favor. This truly

human emotion is nowhere expressed so clearly as in Judaism. “Ye are the

children of the Lord your God.”(804) “Have we not all one Father? Hath not

one God created us?”(805) “Like as a father hath compassion on his

children, so hath the Lord compassion upon them that fear Him.”(806)

2. Still, this simple idea of man’s filial relation to God and God’s

paternal love for man did not begin in its beautiful final form. For a

long time the Jew seems to have avoided the term “Father” for God, because

it was used by the heathen for their deities as physical progenitors, and

did not refer to the moral relation between the Deity and mankind. Thus

worshipers of wooden idols would, according to Scripture, “say to a stock,

Thou art my father.”(807) Hosea was the first to call the people of Israel

“children of the living God,”(808) if they would but improve their ways

and enter into right relations with Him. Jeremiah also hopes for the time

when Israel would invoke the Lord, saying, “Thou art my Father,” and in

return God would prove a true father to him.(809) However, Scripture calls

God a Father only in referring to the people as a whole.(810) The “pious

ones” established a closer relation between God and the individual by

means of prayer, so that through them the epithets, “Father,” “Our

Father,” and “Our Father in heaven” came into general use. Hence, the

liturgy frequently uses the invocation, “Our Father, Our King!” We owe to

Rabbi Akiba the significant saying, in opposition to the Paulinian dogma,

“Blessed are ye, O Israelites! Before whom do you purify yourselves (from

your sins)? And who is it that purifies you? Your Father in heaven.”(811)

Previously Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanos dwelt on the moral degeneration of

his age, which betokened the end of time, and exclaimed: “In whom, then,

shall we find support? In our Father who is in heaven.”(812) The

appellative “Father in heaven” was the stereotyped term used by the “pious

ones” during the century preceding and the one following the rise of

Christianity, as a glance at the literature of the period indicates.(813)

3. It is instructive to follow the history of this term. In Scripture God

is represented as speaking to David, “I will be to him for a father, and

he shall be to Me for a son,”(814) or “He shall call unto Me: Thou art my

Father, ... I also will appoint him first-born.”(815) So in the apocryphal

writings God speaks both to Israel and to individual saints: “I shall be

to them a Father, and they shall be My children.”(816) Elsewhere it is

said of the righteous, “He calls God his Father,” and “he shall be counted

among the sons of God.”(817) We read concerning the Messiah: “When all

wrongdoing will be removed from the midst of the people, he shall know

that all are sons of God.”(818) Obviously only righteousness or personal

merit entitles a man to be called a son of God. In fact, we are expressly

told of Onias, the great Essene saint, that his intimate relation with God

emboldened him to converse with the Master of the Universe as a son would

speak with his father.(819) According to the Mishnah the older generation

of “pious ones” used to spend “an hour in silent devotion before offering

their daily prayer, in order to concentrate heart and soul upon their

communion with their Father in heaven.”(820) Thus it is said of

congregational prayer that through it “Israel lifts his eyes to his Father

in heaven.”(821) In this way prayer took the place of the altar, of which

R. Johanan ben Zakkai said that it established peace between Israel and

his Father in heaven.(822) Afterwards the question was discussed by Rabbi

Meir and Rabbi Jehuda whether even sin-laden Israel had a right to be

called “children of God.” Rabbi Meir pointed to Hosea as proof that the

backsliders also remain “children of the living God.”(823)

4. In the Hellenistic literature, with its dominating idea of universal

monotheism, God is frequently invoked or spoken of as the Father of

mankind. The implication is that each person who invokes God as Father

enters into filial relation with Him. Thus what was first applied to

Israel in particular was now broadened to include mankind in general, and

consequently all men were considered “children of the living God.” The

words of God to Pharaoh, speaking of Israel as His “first-born son,”(824)

were taken as proof that all the nations of the earth are sons of God and

He the universal Father. Israel is the first-born among the sons of God,

because his patriarchs, prophets, and psalmists first recognized Him as

the universal Father and Ruler. From this point of view Judaism declared

love for fellow-men and regard for the dignity of humanity to be

fundamental principles of ethics. “As God is kind and merciful toward His

creation, be thou also kind and merciful toward all fellow-creatures,” is

the oft-repeated teaching of the rabbis.(825) Likewise, “Whoever takes

pity on his fellow-beings, on him God in heaven will also take pity.”(826)

Love of humanity has so permeated the nature of the Jew that the rabbis

assert: “He who has pity on his fellow-men has the blood of Abraham in his

veins.”(827) This bold remark casts light upon the strange dictum: “Ye

Israelites are called by the name of man, but the heathen are not.”(828)

The Jewish teachers were so deeply impressed with man’s inhumanity to man,

so common among the heathen nations, and the immorality of the lives by

which these desecrated God’s image, that they insisted that the laws of

humanity alone make for divine dignity in man.

5. Rabbi Akiba probably referred to the Paulinian dogma that Jesus, the

crucified Messiah, is the only son of God, in his well-known saying:

“Beloved is man, for he is created in God’s image, and it was a special

token of love that he became conscious of it. Beloved is Israel, for they

are called the children of God, and it was a special token of love that

they became conscious of it.”(829) Here he claims the glory of being a son

of God for Israel, but not for all men. Still, as soon as the likeness of

man to God is taken in a spiritual sense, then it is implied that all men

have the same capacity for being a son of God which is claimed for Israel.

This is unquestionably the view of Judaism when it considers the Torah as

entrusted to Israel to bring light and blessing to all the families of

men. Rabbi Meir, the disciple of Rabbi Akiba, said: “The Scriptural words,

‘The statutes and ordinances which _man_ shall do and live thereby,’ and

similar expressions indicate that the final aim of Judaism is not attained

by the Aaronide, nor the Levite, nor even the Israelite, but by

mankind.”(830) Such a saying expresses clearly and emphatically that God’s

fatherly love extends to all men as His children.

6. According to the religious consciousness of modern Israel man is made

in God’s image, and is thus a child of God. Consequently Jew and non-Jew,

saint and sinner have the same claim upon God’s paternal love and mercy.

There is no distinction in favor of Israel except as he lives a higher and

more god-like life. Even those who have fallen away from God and have

committed crime and sin remain God’s children. If they send up their

penitent cry to the throne of God, “Pardon us, O Father, for we have

sinned! Forgive us, O King, for we have done evil!”; their prayer is heard

by the heavenly Father exactly like that of the pious son of Israel.

Chapter XLI. Prayer and Sacrifice

1. The gap between man and the sublime Master of the universe is vast, but

not absolute. The thoughts of God are high above our thoughts, and the

ways of God above our ways, baffling our reason when we endeavor to solve

the vexatious problems of destiny, of merit and demerit, of retribution

and atonement. Yet religion offers a wondrous medium to bring the heart of

man into close communion with Him who is enthroned above the heavens, one

that overleaps all distances, removes all barriers, and blends all

dissonances into one great harmony, and that is—Prayer. As the child must

relieve itself of its troubles and sorrows upon the bosom of its mother or

father in order to turn its pain into gladness, so men at all times seek

to approach the Deity, confiding to Him all their fears and longings in

order to obtain peace of heart. Prayer, communion between the human soul

and the Creator, is the glorious privilege enjoyed by man alone among all

creatures, as he alone is the child of God. It voices the longing of the

human heart for its Father in heaven. As the Psalmist has it, “My soul

thirsteth for God, for the living God.”(831)

2. However, both language, the means of intercourse between man and man,

and prayer, the means of intercourse between man and God, show traces of a

slow development lasting for thousands of years, until the loftiest

thoughts and sublimest emotions could be expressed. The real efficacy of

prayer could not be truly appreciated, until the prophetic spirit

triumphed over the priestly element in Judaism. In the history of speech

the language of signs preceded that of sounds, and images gradually

ripened into abstract thoughts. Similarly, primitive man approaches his

God with many kinds of gifts and sacrificial rites to express his

sentiments. He acts out or depicts what he expects from the Deity, whether

rain, fertility of the soil, or the extermination of his foes. He shares

with his God his food and drink, to obtain His friendship and protection

in time of trouble, and sacrifices the dearest of his possessions to

assuage His wrath or obtain His favor.

3. In the lowest stage of culture man needed no mediator in his

intercourse with the Deity, who appeared to him in the phenomena of nature

as well as in the fetish, totem, and the like. But soon he rose to a

higher stage of thought, and the Deity withdrew before him to the

celestial heights, filling him with awe and fear; then rose a class of men

who claimed the privilege to approach the Deity and influence Him by

certain secret practices. Henceforth these acted as mediators between the

mass of the people and the Deity. In the first place, these were the

magicians, medicine-men, and similar persons, who were credited with the

power to conjure up the hidden forces of nature, considered either divine

or demoniac. After these arose the priests, distinguished from the people

by special dress and diet, who established in the various tribes temples,

altars, and cults, under their own control. Then there were the saints,

pious penitents or Nazarites, who led an ascetic life secluded from the

masses, hoping thus to obtain higher powers over the will of the Deity.

All these entertained more or less clearly the notion that they stood in

closer relation to the Deity than the common people, whom they then

excluded from the sanctuary and all access to the Deity.

The Mosaic cult, in the so-called Priestly Code, was founded upon this

stage of religious life, forming a hierarchical institution like those of

other ancient nations. It differed from them, however, in one essential

point. The prime element in the cult of other nations was magic,

consisting of oracle, incantation and divination, but this was entirely

contrary to the principles of the Jewish faith. On the other hand, all the

rites and ceremonies handed down from remote antiquity were placed in the

service of Israel’s holy God, in order to train His people into the

highest moral purity. The patriarchs and prophets, who are depicted in

Scripture as approaching God in prayer and hearing His voice in reply,

come under the category of saints or elect ones, above the mass of the

people.

4. Foreign as the entire idea of sacrifice is to our mode of religious

thought, to antiquity it appeared as the only means of intercourse with

the Deity. “In every place offerings are presented unto My name, even pure

oblations,”(832) says the prophet Malachi in the name of Israel’s God.

Even from a higher point of view the underlying idea seems to be of a

simple offering laid upon the altar. Such were the meal-offering

(_minha_);(833) the burnt offering (_olah_), which sends its pillar of

smoke up toward heaven, symbolizing the idea of self-sacrifice; while the

various sin-offerings (_hattath_ or _asham_) expressed the desire to

propitiate an offended Deity. However, since the sacrificial cult was

always dominated by the priesthood in Israel as well as other nations, the

lawgiver made no essential changes in the traditional practice and

terminology. Thus it was left to the consciousness of the people to find a

deeper spiritual meaning in the sacrifices instead of stating one

directly. The want was supplied only by the later Haggadists who tried to

create a symbolism of the sacrificial cult. The laying on of hands by the

individual who brought the offering, seems to have been a genuine symbolic

expression of self-surrender. In the case of sin-offerings the Mosaic cult

added a higher meaning by ordering a preceding confession of sin. Here,

indeed, the individual entered into personal communion with God through

his prayer for pardon, even though the priest performed the act of

expiation for him.

5. The great prophets of Israel alone recognized that the entire

sacrificial system was out of harmony with the true spirit of Judaism and

led to all sorts of abuses, above all to a misconception of the worship of

God, which requires the uplifting of the heart. In impassioned language,

therefore, they hurled words of scathing denunciation against the practice

and principle of ritualism: “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will

take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

Yea, though ye offer Me burnt-offerings and your meal-offerings, I will

not accept them; Neither will I regard the peace-offerings of your fat

beasts.

Take thou away from Me the noise of thy songs; and let Me not hear the

melody of thy psalteries.

But let justice well up as waters, and righteousness as a mighty

stream.”(834)

Thus speaks Amos in the name of the Lord. And Hosea:

“For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God

rather than burnt-offerings.”(835)

Isaiah spoke in a similar vein:

“To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me?

saith the Lord; I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the

fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or

of lambs, or of he-goats....

Bring me no more vain oblations; it is an offering of abomination

unto Me; new moon and sabbath, the holding of convocations—I

cannot endure iniquity along with the solemn assembly....

And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes from

you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear; your hands

are full of blood.

Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings From

before Mine eyes, cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek

justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for

the widow.”(836)

Most striking of all are the words of Jeremiah, spoken in the name of the

Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt-offerings unto your

sacrifices, and eat ye flesh. For I spoke not unto your fathers, nor

commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt,

concerning burnt-offerings and sacrifices, but this thing I commanded

them, saying; ‘Hearken unto My voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall

be My people; and walk ye in all the way that I command you, that it may

be well with you.’ ”(837)

6. However, the mere rejection of the sacrificial cult was quite negative,

and did not satisfy the normal need for communion with God. Therefore the

various codes established a sort of compromise between the prophetic ideal

and the priestly practice, in which the ideal was by no means supreme.

Sometimes the prophetic spirit stirred the soul of inspired psalmists, and

their lips echoed forth again the divine revelation:

“Hear, O My people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify against

thee: God, thy God, am I. I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices; and

thy burnt-offerings are continually before Me. I will take no bullock out

of thy house, nor he-goats out of thy folds. For every beast of the forest

is Mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.... Do I eat the flesh of

bulls, or drink the blood of goats?”(838) Another psalmist says:

“Sacrifice and meal-offering thou hast no delight in; Mine ears hast Thou

opened; burnt-offering and sin-offering hast Thou not required.”(839)

Still, the sacrificial cult was too deeply rooted in the life of the

people to be disturbed by the voice of the prophets or the words of a few

psalmists. It was connected with the Temple, and the Temple was the center

of the social life of the nation. The few faint voices of protest went

practically unheeded. The priestly pomp of sacrifice could only be

displaced by the more elevating and more spiritual devotion of the entire

congregation in prayer, and this process demanded a new environment, and a

group of men with entirely new ideas.

7. The need of a deeper devotion through prayer was not felt until the

Exile. There altar and priesthood were no more, but the words of the

prophets and the songs of the Levites remained to kindle the people’s

longing for God with a new zeal. Until then prayer was rare and for

special occasions. Hannah’s prayer at Shiloh filled even the high priest

with amazement.(840) The prophets alone interceded in behalf of the

people, because the ordinary man was not considered sufficiently clean

from sin to approach the Deity in prayer. But on foreign soil, where

sacrifices could not be offered to the God of Israel, the harp of David

resounded with solemn songs expressing the national longing toward God.

The most touching psalms of penitence and thanksgiving date from the

exile. A select class of devout men, called the godly or pious ones,

_Hasidim_ or _Anavim_,(841) assembled by the rivers of Babylon for regular

prayer, turning their faces toward Jerusalem, that the God of Israel might

answer them from His ancient seat.(842) Thus the great seer of the exile

voiced the hope for “a house of prayer for all peoples” to stand in the

very place where the sacrifices were offered to God.(843) The congregation

of Hasidim elaborated a liturgy under the Persian influence, in which

prayer was the chief element, and the secondary part, the instruction from

the Torah and the monitions of the prophets. The Synagogue, the house of

meeting for the people, spread all over the world, and by its light of

truth and glow of fervor it soon eclipsed the Temple, with all its worldly

pomp. In fact, the priesthood of the Temple were finally compelled to make

concessions to the lay movement of the Hasidim. They added a prayer

service, morning and evening, to the daily sacrifices, and opened the Hall

of Hewn Stones, the meeting place of the High Court of Justice, as a

Synagogue in charge of the priests.(844)

8. In this manner the ancient sacrificial cult, thus long monopolized by

the priesthood, was gradually superseded by congregational prayer which

was no longer confined to a certain time or class, and justly called by

the rabbis “a service of the heart.”(845) Moreover, the Temple itself lost

much of its hold upon the hearts of the people, owing to the more

spiritual character of the Synagogue. Thus the torch of the Roman soldiery

which turned the Temple into a heap of ashes broke only the national bond,

but left the religious bond of the Synagogue unbroken. True, the hope for

the restoration of the Temple with the priestly sacrifices was not

relinquished, and officially the daily prayers were considered only a

“temporary substitute” for the divinely ordained sacrificial cult.(846)

Nevertheless, the deeper religious consciousness of the people felt that

the celestial gate of divine mercy opens only to prayer, which emanates

from the innermost depths of the soul. Accordingly, some of the Haggadists

try to prove from Scripture that prayer ranks above sacrifice,(847) while

others even identify worship with prayer.(848) They represent God as

appearing to Moses in the guise of one who leads the congregation in

prayer, His face covered by the prayer-shawl (_tallith_), in order to

teach man for all time the mode and power of prayer.(849) Still these

remain isolated expressions of an underlying sentiment; on the whole, the

rabbis regarded the Mosaic legislation, with its emphasis on sacrifice,

far too highly to accord prayer any but a secondary place, either

accompanying sacrifice or as its substitute.(850)

9. Through many centuries, then, the belief in the divine origin of the

sacrificial cult remained, even though it could no longer be carried out.

The liturgy contained prayers for the speedy restoration of the Temple and

the sacrifices, which were preserved by tradition, and nowhere was even an

echo heard of the bold words of Jeremiah denying the divine character of

the sacrifices,(851) even though the idea of the restoration of the old

cult must have been repugnant to thinkers. The sages of former ages could

only resort to a compromise or an allegorical interpretation. It is

noteworthy that the Haggadist Rabbi Levi considered the sacrifices a

concession of God to the people, who were disposed to idolatry, in order

to win them gradually for the pure monotheistic ideal.(852) This view was

adopted by the Church Fathers, and later by Maimonides and other medieval

thinkers. On the other hand, an allegorical meaning was assigned to the

sacrifices by Philo and Jehuda ha Levi, as well as by Samson Raphael

Hirsch in modern times.(853)

Reform Judaism, recognizing the results of Biblical research and the law

of religious progress, adopted the prophetic view of the sacrifices.

Accordingly, the sacrificial cult of the Mosaic code has no validity for

the liberal movement, and all reference to it has been eliminated from the

reform liturgy. In this, however, the connection with the past was by no

means severed. The main part of the service remains the same, although

much of the character and many of the details have been changed.(854) Only

the allusions to the Temple worship and the sacrifices were eliminated,

and the entire form of the service was made more solemn and inspiring “by

combining ancient time-honored formulas with modern prayers and

meditations in the vernacular and in the spirit of the age.” The morning

and evening services retained their places, while the additional festal

service (_mussaf_) was abrogated, because it stood for the additional

festal sacrifice. As to the voluntary element in the old sacrificial

system, the peace, sin, and thank-offerings, this is replaced in the

reform ritual, as in the traditional practice, by private devotions for

special occasions, to be selected by the individual.

The traditional Jewish prayer has certainly a wondrous force. It remains a

source of inspiration from which the religious consciousness will ever

draw new strength and vitality. It echoes the voice of Israel singing the

song of redemption by the Red Sea: “This is My God, and I will glorify

Him; My father’s God, and I will exalt Him.”(855) Consequently our liturgy

must ever respond to a double demand; it must throb with the spirit of

continuity with our great past, to make us feel one with our fathers of

yore; and it must express clearly and fully our own views and needs, our

convictions and our hopes.

Chapter XLII. The Nature and Purpose of Prayer

1. Prayer is the expression of man’s longing and yearning for God in times

of dire need and of overflowing joy, an outflow of the emotions of the

soul in its dependence on God, the ever-present Helper, the eternal Source

of its existence. Springing from the deepest necessity of human weakness,

the expression of a momentary wish, prayer is felt to be the proud

prerogative of man as the child of God, and at last it becomes adoration

of the Most High, whose wisdom and whose paternal love and goodness

inspire man with confidence and love.

2. Every prayer is offered on the presumption that it will be heard by God

on high. “O Thou that hearest prayer, unto Thee doth all flesh come,”

sings the Psalmist.(856) No doubt of the efficacy of prayer can arise in

the devout spirit. There can be only the question whether, and how far,

the Deity can allow its decrees to be influenced by human wishes.

Childlike faith anticipates divine interference in the natural order at

any time, because it has not yet attained the conception of a moral order

in the universe and, therefore, expects from prayer also miraculous

effects on life. As the Deity can suddenly send or withhold rain or

drought, barrenness or birth, life or death, so the inference is that the

man of God can do the same with his prayer. This is the point of view of

the Biblical and Talmudic periods, as well as of the entire ancient world.

It seems almost childish to our religious consciousness when, according to

Talmudic tradition, the high priest petitioned God in the Sanctuary on the

Day of Atonement for a year rich in rain and blessed with sunshine and

with dew, and at the same time expressed the entreaty that the prayers of

travelers for dry or cool weather should find no hearing.(857) That the

prayers of the pious may alter God’s decree is not doubted for a moment by

the rabbis; only they insist that God has taken into account beforehand

the efficacy of this prayer in deciding the fate of the pious, in order

that they may petition for that which He actually plans to do. “God longs

for the prayer of the pious”; for that reason, they say, the Mothers of

Israel were afflicted with barrenness, until the prayers of the Patriarchs

had accomplished the transformation in their constitutions.(858) On the

other hand, the rabbis warn against excessive pondering over prayer and

its efficacy, as through it that childlike faith would be weakened, which

is the basis of all prayer.(859)

3. According to the rabbinic viewpoint, prayer has the power to reverse

every heavenly decree, inasmuch as it appeals from the punitive justice of

God, which has decided thus, to His attributes of grace and mercy, which

can at any time effect a change. When the prophet Isaiah came to King

Hezekiah with the message: “Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die,”

he replied, “Finish thy message and go; I have received the tradition from

my royal ancestor David that, even when the sword already touches the

neck, man shall not desist from an appeal to the divine mercy.”(860) Nay

more, the rabbis believed that God Himself prays, saying, “Oh, that My

mercy shall prevail over My justice!”(861) Only after the divine judgment

has been executed prayer becomes vain. In general, the entire Talmudic

period ascribed miraculous power to prayer, especially the prayers of the

pious, like the popular saint Onias or Hanina ben Dosa.(862) In many such

cases the invocation of God was combined with the use of the sacred name,

the tetragrammaton, to which magical powers were ascribed.(863)

4. The two attributes of God, Justice and Mercy, correspond to the double

nature of mankind, as the sinful man, who deserves punishment, is called

to account by the former, while the righteous man may appeal to the

latter. Accordingly, the efficacy of prayer could be so explained that,

before it can influence the decision of God, it demands the reformation of

man. While the unregenerate man meets an evil destiny, the reformed man

has become a different being, and hence instead of justice mercy will

control his fate. Albo pleads for this view of prayer, when he cites the

Talmudic incident about R. Meir. It is said that R. Meir interceded for

the people of Mimla, who all seemed to have been doomed to die on

attaining manhood because they inherited the curse of the priestly family

of Eli.(864) But he also recommended to them that they should devote their

lives to worthy deeds, as it is said in the Proverbs:(865) “The hoary head

is a crown of glory, it is found in the way of righteousness.”(866)

Other thinkers ascribe to prayer the power to change the fate determined

by the stars, because it exalts man into a higher sphere of godliness,

exactly like the spirit of prophecy. Of course, this conception is

connected with the belief in astrology, which swayed even clear thinkers

like Ibn Ezra.(867)

5. According to our modern thinking there can be no question of any

influence upon a Deity exalted above time and space, omniscient,

unchangeable in will and action, by the prayer of mortals. Prayer can

exert power only over the relation of man to God, not over God Himself.

This indicates the nature and purpose of prayer. Man often feels lonely

and forlorn in a world which overpowers him, to which he feels superior,

and yet which he cannot master. Therefore he longs for that unseen Spirit

of the universe, with whom alone he feels himself akin, and in whom alone

he finds peace and bliss amid life’s struggle and unrest. This longing is

both expressed and satisfied in prayer. Following the natural impulse of

his soul, man must pour out before his God all his desires and sighs, all

the emotions of grief and delight which sway his heart, in order that he

may find rest, like a child at its mother’s bosom. Therefore the childlike

mind believes that God can be induced to come down from His heavenly

heights to offer help, and that He can be moved and influenced in human

fashion. The truth is that every genuine prayer lifts man up toward God,

satisfies the desire for His hallowing presence, unlocks the heavenly gate

of mercy and bliss, and bestows upon man the beatific and liberating sense

of being a child of God. The intellect may question the effect of prayer

upon the physical, mental, or social constitution of man, or may declare

prayer to be pious self-deception. The religious spirit experiences in

prayer the soaring up of the soul toward union with God in consecrated

moments of our mortal pilgrimage. This is no deception. The man who prays

receives from the Godhead, toward whom he fervently lifts himself, the

power to defy fate, to conquer sin, misery, and death. “The Lord is nigh

to all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth.”(868)

6. To pray, then, is to look up to God and to pour out before Him one’s

wishes, thoughts, sorrows, and joys. Certainly the All-knowing does not

require to be told by us what we desire or what we need. “For there is not

a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether.”(869) But

we mortals merely aspire toward Him who bears the world on His eternal

arms, to express in His presence our agony and our jubilation, because we

are certain of His paternal sympathy. When we praise and extol Him for the

happiness and the many pleasures which He has granted us, He becomes the

Partaker and Protector of our fortune, just as He is our sympathetic

Helper when we cry out to Him under the burden of sin or grief, in the

anxiety of danger or of guilt. Every genuine prayer realizes deeply the

truth of the words, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He will sustain

thee.”(870)

7. Self-expression before God in prayer has thus a double effect; it

strengthens faith in God’s love and kindness, as well as in His all-wise

and all-bountiful prescience. But it also chastens the desires and

feelings of man, teaching him to banish from his heart all thoughts of

self-seeking and sin, and to raise himself toward the purity and the

freedom of the divine will and demand. The essence of every prayer of

supplication is that one should be in unison with the divine will, to sum

up all the wishes of the heart in the one phrase, “Do that which is good

in Thine own eyes, O Lord.”(871) On the other hand, only the prayer which

avoids impure thoughts and motives can venture to approach a holy God, as

the sages infer from the words of Job, “There is no violence in my hands,

and my prayer is pure.”(872)

8. Every prayer, teach the sages, should begin with the praise of God’s

greatness, wisdom, and goodness, in order that man should learn submission

and implicit confidence before he proffers his requests.(873) While

looking up to the divine Ideal of holiness and perfection, he will strive

to emulate Him, and seek to grow ever nearer to the holy and the perfect.

But only when he prays with and for others, that is, in public worship,

will he realize that he is a member of a greater whole, for then he prays

only for that which advances the welfare of all. “He who prays with the

community,” say the rabbis, “will have his prayer granted.”(874)

Another saying of theirs is that he who prays should have his face

directed to the sanctuary, and when he stands on its sacred precincts, he

should turn his face toward the Holy of Holies.(875) By this they meant

that the attitude of the suppliant should ever be toward the highest,

making the soul soar up to the Highest and Holiest in reverent awe and

adoration, transforming the worshiper into a new character, pure from all

dross.

9. Therefore prayer offered with the community upon the sanctified ground

of the house of God exerts a specially powerful influence upon the

individual. In the silent chamber the oppressed spirit may find calm and

composure in prayer; but the pure atmosphere of heavenly freedom and bliss

is attained with overwhelming might only by the united worship of hundreds

of devout adorers, which rings out like the roaring of majestic billows:

“The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before

Him.”(876) The familiar strains from days of yore touch the deep,

long-silent chords of the heart, and awaken dormant sentiments and

repressed thoughts, endowing the soul with new wings, to lift itself up

toward God, the Father, from whom it had felt itself alienated. In the

ardor of communal worship the traditional words of the prayer-book obtain

invigorating power; the heart is newly strengthened; the covenant with

heaven sealed anew. To such communal prayer, which springs from the heart,

the rabbis refer the Biblical words, “to serve Him with the whole

heart.”(877) The synagogal worship exerts an ennobling influence upon the

spirit of the individual as well as that of the community. For after all

the main object is that the soul which aspires toward God may learn to

find God. “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found; call ye upon Him while

He is near.”(878) No man is so poor as he who calls in agony: “O God!” and

to whom neither the heaven above nor the heart within answers, “Behold,

God is here.” Nor is any man so rich with all his possessions as he who

realizes, like the Psalmist, that “the nearness of God is the true good,”

and imbued with this thought exclaims, “Whom have I in heaven but Thee?

And beside Thee I desire none upon earth.”(879)

Chapter XLIII. Death and the Future Life

1. The vision of man is directed upwards and forwards; he will not resign

himself to decay in the dust like the beast. As he bears in his breast the

consciousness of a higher divine world, he is equally confident of his own

continuity after death. He cannot and will not believe that with the

giving up of his last living breath his being would become dust like that

of the animal; or that his soul, which has hitherto accomplished and

planned so much, should now suddenly cease altogether to exist. The

longing for a future life, however expressed, has filled him and buoyed

him up since the very beginning of history. Even the most primitive tribe

does not allow its dead to lie and rot like the carcasses of the beast,

but lays them to rest in the grave with all their possessions, in the

expectation that somewhere and somehow, under, over or beyond the earth,

they will continue their lives, even in a better form than before.

This longing for immortality implanted in the human soul is so represented

in the legend of Paradise that the tree whose fruit bestowed upon the

celestial beings the gift of eternal life—like the Greek ambrosia, “the

food of the gods”—was originally intended for mankind also in the divine

“Garden of Bliss.” But after man fell through sin, all access to it was

denied him, in order that he might not stretch out his hand for it and

thereby attain that immortality which was vouchsafed only to divine

beings.(880) According to his original destiny, therefore, man should live

forever; and, just as legend allows those divinely elected, like Enoch and

Elijah,(881) to ascend to heaven alive, so at a later period prophecy

predicts a time when God will annihilate death forever.(882) Accordingly,

through the power of his divine soul man possesses a claim to immortality,

to eternal life with God, the “Fountain of life.”

2. It was just this keen longing for an energetic life on earth, this

mighty yearning to “walk before God in the land of the living,”(883) which

made it more difficult for Judaism to brighten the “valley of the shadow

of death” and to elevate the vague notion of a shadowy existence in the

hereafter into a special religious teaching. Until long after the Exile

the Jewish people shared the view of the entire ancient world,—both the

Semitic nations, such as the Babylonians and Phœnicians, and the Aryans,

such as the Greeks and Romans,—that the dead continue to exist in the

shadowy realm of the nether world (_Sheol_), the land of no return

(_Beliyaal_),(884) of eternal silence (_Dumah_), and oblivion

(_Neshiyah_),(885) a dull, ghostly existence without clear consciousness

and without any awakening to a better life. We must, however, not overlook

the fact that even in these most primitive conceptions a certain

imperishability is ascribed to man as marking his superiority over the

animal world, which is altogether abandoned to decay. Hence the belief in

the existence of the shades, the _Refaim_ in Sheol.(886) But throughout

the Biblical period no ethical idea yet permeated this conception, and no

attempt was made to transform the nether world into a place of divine

judgment, of recompense for the good and evil deeds accomplished on

earth,(887) as did the Babylonians and Egyptians. Both the prophets and

the Mosaic code persist in applying their promises and threats, in fact,

their entire view of retribution, to this world, nor do they indicate by a

single word the belief in a judgment or a weighing of actions in the world

to come.

3. Whether the Mosaic-prophetic writings be regarded from the standpoint

of traditional faith or of historical criticism, the limitation of their

teaching and exhortation to the present life can be considered narrowness

only by biased expounders of the “Old Testament.” The Israelitish lawgiver

could not have been altogether ignorant of the Egyptian or the Babylonian

conceptions of the future world. Obviously Israel’s prophets and lawgivers

deliberately avoided giving any definite expression to the common belief

in a future life after death, especially as the Canaanitish magicians and

necromancers used this popular belief to carry on their superstitious

practices, so dangerous to all moral progress.(888) The great task which

prophetic Judaism set itself was to place the entire life of men and

nations in the service of the God of justice and holiness; there was thus

no motive to extend the dominion of JHVH, the God of life, to the

underworld, the playground of the forces of fear and superstition. As late

as the author of the book of Job and of the earlier Psalms, Sheol was

known as the despot of the nether world with its demoniacal forms, as the

“king of terrors” who extends his scepter over the dead.(889) Only

gradually does the thought find expression in the Psalms that the

Omnipotent Ruler of heaven could also rescue the soul out of the power of

Sheol,(890) and that His omnipresence included likewise the nether

world.(891) In this trustful spirit the Hasidic Psalmist expressed the

hope: “Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Sheol, neither wilt Thou suffer

Thy godly one to see the pit. Thou makest me to know the path of life; in

Thy presence is fulness of joy; in Thy right hand bliss forevermore.”(892)

4. Biblical Judaism evinced such a powerful impetus toward a complete and

blissful life with God, that the center and purpose of existence could not

be transferred to the hereafter, as in other systems of belief, but was

found in the desire to work out the life here on earth to its fullest

possible development. Virtue and wisdom, righteousness and piety, signify

and secure true life; vice and folly, iniquity and sin, lead to death and

annihilation. This is the ever recurring burden of the popular as well as

of the prophetic and priestly wisdom of Israel.(893) In the song of thanks

of King Hezekiah after his recovery, the Jewish soul expresses itself,

when he says:(894) “I said, I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord in the

land of the living.... But Thou hast delivered my soul from the pit of

corruption. For the nether world cannot praise Thee; death cannot

celebrate Thee. The living, the living, he shall praise Thee, as I do this

day. The father to the children shall make known Thy truth.” Therefore the

author of the seventy-third Psalm, ennobled by trials, finds sufficient

comfort and happiness in the presence of God that he can spurn all earthly

treasures.(895) Job, too, in his affliction longed for death as release

from all earthly pain and sorrow, but not to bring him a state of rest and

peace like the Nirvana of the Indian beggar-monk, or an outlook into a

better world to come. Such an awakening to a new life seems to him

unthinkable,—although many commentators have often endeavored to read such

a hope into certain of his expressions.(896) Instead, his belief in God as

the Ruler of the infinite world, with His lofty moral purpose far

outreaching all human wisdom, lent him courage and power for further

effort and persistent striving on earth. Since to this suffering hero,

impelled to deeds by his own energy, life is a continuous battle, a

hereafter as a “world of reward and punishment” can hardly solve the great

enigma of human existence in a satisfactory manner for him. The wise

ones—says a Talmudic maxim—find rest neither in this world nor in the

world to come, but “they shall ascend from strength to strength, until

they appear before God on Zion.”(897)

5. In the course of time, however, the question of existence after death

demanded more and more a satisfactory answer. Under the severe political

and social oppression that came upon the Jewish people, the pious ones

failed to see a just equation of man’s doings and his destiny in this

life. The bitter disappointment which they experienced made them look to

the God of justice for a future, when virtue would receive its due reward

and vice its befitting punishment. The community of the pious especially

awaited in vain the realization of the great messianic hope with which the

prophetic words of comfort had filled their hearts. They had willingly

offered up their lives for the truth of Judaism, and the God of

faithfulness could not deceive them. Surely the shadowy realm of the

nether world could not be the end of all. So the voice of promise came to

them from the book of Isaiah, where these encouraging and comforting words

were inserted by a later hand: “Thy dead shall live; thy (My) dead bodies

shall arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust, for Thy dew is as

the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth the shades.”(898) Even

before this time the God of Israel had been praised as “He who killeth and

maketh alive, who bringeth down to Sheol, and bringeth up.”(899) So was

also the miraculous power of restoring the dead to life ascribed to the

prophets.(900) Furthermore, the vision of the prophet Ezekiel concerning

the dry bones which arose to new life, in which he beheld the divine

revelation of the approaching event of the restoration of the Jewish

nation,(901) shows how familiar the idea of resurrection must have been to

the people. Hence the minds of the Jewish people were sufficiently

prepared to adopt the Persian belief in the resurrection of the dead.