THE HEBRAIC TRADITION
[Sidenote: Phases of Hebraism.]
As the Vedas offer a glimpse into the antecedents of Greek mythology, so
Hebrew studies open up vistas into the antecedents of Christian dogma.
Christianity in its Patristic form was an adaptation of Hebrew religion
to the Græco-Roman world, and later, in the Protestant movement, a
readaptation of the same to what we may call the Teutonic spirit. In the
first adaptation, Hebrew positivism was wonderfully refined, transformed
into a religion of redemption, and endowed with a semi-pagan mythology,
a pseudo-Platonic metaphysics, and a quasi-Roman organisation. In the
second adaptation, Christianity received a new basis and standard in the
spontaneous faith of the individual; and, as the traditions thus
undermined in principle gradually dropped away, it was reduced by the
German theologians to a romantic and mystical pantheism. Throughout its
transformations, however, Christianity remains indebted to the Jews not
only for its founder, but for the nucleus of its dogma, cult, and
ethical doctrine. If the religion of the Jews, therefore, should
disclose its origin, the origin of Christianity would also be manifest.
Now the Bible, when critically studied, clearly reveals the source, if
not of the earliest religion of Israel, at least of those elements in
later Jewish faith which have descended to us and formed the kernel of
Christian revelation. The earlier Hebrews, as their own records depict
them, had a mythology and cultus extremely like that of other Semitic
peoples. It was natural religion—I mean that religion which naturally
expresses the imaginative life of a nation according to the conceptions
there current about the natural world and to the interest then uppermost
in men’s hearts. It was a religion without a creed or scripture or
founder or clergy. It consisted in local rites, in lunar feasts, in
soothsayings and oracles, in legends about divine apparitions
commemorated in the spots they had made holy. These spots, as in all the
rest of the world, were tombs, wells, great trees, and, above all, the
tops of mountains.
[Sidenote: Israel’s tribal monotheism.]
A wandering tribe, at once oppressed and aggressive, as Israel evidently
was from the beginning is conscious of nothing so much as of its tribal
unity. To protect the tribe is accordingly the chief function of its
god. Whatever character Jehovah may originally have had, whether a
storm-god of Sinai or of Ararat, or a sacred bull, or each of these by
affinity and confusion with the other, when the Israelites had once
adopted him as their god they could see nothing essential in him but his
power to protect them in the lands they had conquered. To this
exclusive devotion of Jehovah to Israel, Israel responded by a devotion
to Jehovah no less exclusive. They neglected, when at home, the worship
of every other divinity, and later even while travelling abroad; and
they tended to deny altogether, first the comparable power and finally
even the existence of other gods.
[Sidenote: Problems involved.]
Israel was a small people overshadowed by great empires, and its
political situation was always highly precarious. After a brief period
of comparative vigour under David and Solomon (a period afterward
idealised with that oriental imagination which, creating so few glories,
dreams of so many) they declined visibly toward an inevitable absorption
by their neighbours. But, according to the significance which religion
then had in Israel, the ruin of the state would have put Jehovah’s
honour and power in jeopardy. The nation and its god were like body and
soul; it occurred to no one as yet to imagine that the one could survive
the other. A few sceptical and unpatriotic minds, despairing of the
republic, might turn to the worship of Baal or of the stars invoked by
the Assyrians, hoping thus to save themselves and their private fortunes
by a timely change of allegiance. But the true Jew had a vehement and
unshakable spirit. He could not allow the waywardness of events to upset
his convictions or the cherished habits of his soul. Accordingly he
bethought himself of a new way of explaining and meeting the imminent
catastrophe.
The prophets, for to them the revolution in question was due, conceived
that the cause of Israel’s misfortunes might be not Jehovah’s weakness
but his wrath—a wrath kindled against the immorality, lukewarmness, and
infidelity of the people. Repentance and a change of life, together with
a purification of the cultus, would bring back prosperity. It was too
late, perhaps, to rescue the whole state. But a remnant might be saved
like a brand from the burning, to be the nucleus of a great restoration,
the seed of a mighty people that should live for ever in godliness and
plenty. Jehovah’s power would thus be vindicated, even if Israel were
ruined; nay, his power would be magnified beyond anything formerly
conceived, since now the great powers of Asia would be represented as
his instruments in the chastisement of his people.
[Sidenote: The prophets put new wine in old bottles.]
These views, if we regarded them from the standpoint common in theology
as attempts to re-express the primitive faith, would have to be
condemned as absolutely heretical and spurious. But the prophets were
not interpreting documents or traditions; they were publishing their own
political experience. They were themselves inspired. They saw the
identity of virtue and happiness, the dependence of success upon
conduct. This new truth they announced in traditional language by saying
that Jehovah’s favour was to be won only by righteousness and that vice
and folly alienated his goodwill. Their moral insight was genuine; yet
by virtue of the mythical expression they could not well avoid and in
respect to the old orthodoxy, their doctrine was a subterfuge, the first
of those after-thoughts and ingenious reinterpretations by which faith
is continually forced to cover up its initial blunders. For the Jews had
believed that with such a God they were safe in any case; but now they
were told that, to retain his protection, they must practice just those
virtues by which the heathen also might have been made prosperous and
great. It was a true doctrine, and highly salutary, but we need not
wonder that before being venerated the prophets were stoned.
The ideal of this new prophetic religion was still wholly material and
political. The virtues, emphasised and made the chief mark of a
religious life, were recommended merely as magic means to propitiate the
deity, and consequently to insure public prosperity. The thought that
virtue is a natural excellence, the ideal expression of human life,
could not be expected to impress those vehement barbarians any more than
it has impressed their myriad descendants and disciples, Jewish,
Christian, or Moslem. Yet superstitious as the new faith still remained,
and magical as was the efficacy it attributed to virtue, the fact that
virtue rather than burnt offerings was now endowed with miraculous
influence and declared to win the favour of heaven, proved two things
most creditable to the prophets: in the first place, they themselves
loved virtue, else they would hardly have imagined that Jehovah loved
it, or have believed it to be the only path to happiness; and in the
second place, they saw that public events depend on men’s character and
conduct, not on omens, sacrifices, or intercessions. There was
accordingly a sense for both moral and political philosophy in these
inspired orators. By assigning a magic value to morality they gave a
moral value to religion. The immediate aim of this morality—to
propitiate Jehovah—was indeed imaginary, and its ultimate aim—to
restore the kingdom of Israel—was worldly; yet that imaginary aim
covered, in the form of a myth, a sincere consecration to the ideal,
while the worldly purpose led to an almost scientific conception of the
principles and movement of earthly things.
[Sidenote: Inspiration and authority.]
To this transformation in the spirit of the law, another almost as
important corresponded in the letter. Scripture was codified,
proclaimed, and given out formally to be inspired by Jehovah and written
by Moses. That all traditions, legends, and rites were inspired and
sacred was a matter of course in antiquity. Nature was full of gods, and
the mind, with its unaccountable dreams and powers, could not be without
them. Its inventions could not be less oracular than the thunder or the
flight of birds. Israel, like every other nation, thought its traditions
divine. These traditions, however, had always been living and elastic;
the prophets themselves gave proof that inspiration was still a vital
and human thing. It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that while
the prophets were preparing their campaign, under pressure of the same
threatened annihilation, the same puritanical party should have edited a
new code of laws and attributed it retroactively to Moses. While the
prophet’s lips were being touched by the coal of fire, the priests and
king in their conclave were establishing the Bible and the Church. It is
easy to suspect, from the accounts we have, that a pious fraud was
perpetrated on this occasion; but perhaps the finding of a forgotten
book of the Law and its proclamation by Josiah, after consulting a
certain prophetess, were not so remote in essence from prophetic
sincerity. In an age when every prophet, seeing what was needful
politically, could cry, “So saith the Lord,” it could hardly be
illegitimate for the priests, seeing what was expedient legally, to
declare, “So said Moses.” Conscience, in a primitive and impetuous
people, may express itself in an apocryphal manner which in a critical
age conscience would altogether exclude. It would have been hardly
conceivable that what was obviously right and necessary should not be
the will of Jehovah, manifested of old to the fathers in the desert and
now again whispered in their children’s hearts. To contrive a stricter
observance was an act at once of experimental prudence—a means of
making destiny, perhaps, less unfavourable—and an act of more fervent
worship—a renewal of faith in Jehovah, to whose hands the nation was
intrusted more solemnly and irrevocably than ever.
[Sidenote: Beginnings of the Church.]
This pious experiment failed most signally. Jerusalem was taken, the
Temple destroyed, and the flower of the people carried into exile. The
effect of failure, however, was not to discredit the Law and the
Covenant, now once for all adopted by the unshakable Jews. On the
contrary, when they returned from exile they re-established the
theocracy with greater rigour than ever, adding all the minute
observances, ritualistic and social, enshrined in Leviticus. Israel
became an ecclesiastical community. The Temple, half fortress, half
sanctuary, resounded with perpetual psalms. Piety was fed on a sense at
once of consecration and of guidance. All was prescribed, and to fulfil
the Law, precisely because it involved so complete and, as the world
might say, so arbitrary a regimen, became a precious sacrifice, a
continual act of religion.
[Sidenote: Bigotry turned into a principle.]
Dogmas are at their best when nobody denies them, for then their
falsehood sleeps, like that of an unconscious metaphor, and their moral
function is discharged instinctively. They count and are not defined,
and the side of them that is not deceptive is the one that comes
forward. What was condemnable in the Jews was not that they asserted the
divinity of their law, for that they did with substantial sincerity and
truth. Their crime is to have denied the equal prerogative of other
nations’ laws and deities, for this they did, not from critical insight
or intellectual scruples, but out of pure bigotry, conceit, and
stupidity. They did not want other nations also to have a god. The moral
government of the world, which the Jews are praised for having first
asserted, did not mean for them that nature shows a generic benevolence
toward life and reason wherever these arise. Such a moral government
might have been conceived by a pagan philosopher and was not taught in
Israel until, selfishness having been outgrown, the birds and the
heathen were also placed under divine protection. What the moral
government of things meant when it was first asserted was that Jehovah
expressly directed the destinies of heathen nations and the course of
nature itself for the final glorification of the Jews.
No civilised people had ever had such pretensions before. They all
recognised one another’s religions, if not as literally true (for some
familiarity is needed to foster that illusion), certainly as more or
less sacred and significant. Had the Jews not rendered themselves odious
to mankind by this arrogance, and taught Christians and Moslems the same
fanaticism, the nature of religion would not have been falsified among
us and we should not now have so much to apologise for and to retract.
[Sidenote: Penance accepted.]
Israel’s calamities, of which the prophets saw only the beginning,
worked a notable spiritualisation in its religion. The happy thought of
attributing misfortune to wickedness remained a permanent element in the
creed; but as no scrupulous administration of rites, no puritanism, no
good conscience, could avail to improve the political situation, it
became needful for the faithful to reconsider their idea of happiness.
Since holiness must win divine favour, and Israel was undoubtedly holy,
the marks of divine favour must be looked for in Israel’s history. To
have been brought in legendary antiquity out of Egypt was something; to
have been delivered from captivity in Babylon was more; yet these signs
of favour could not suffice unless they were at the same time emblems of
hope. But Jewish life had meantime passed into a new phase: it had
become pietistic, priestly, almost ascetic. Such is the might of
suffering, that a race whose nature and traditions were alike
positivistic could for the time being find it sweet to wash its hands
among the innocent, to love the beauty of the Lord’s house, and to
praise him for ever and ever. It was agreed and settled beyond cavil
that God loved his people and continually blessed them, and yet in the
world of men tribulation after tribulation did not cease to fall upon
them. There was no issue but to assert (what so chastened a spirit could
now understand) that tribulation endured for the Lord was itself
blessedness, and the sign of some mystical election. Whom the Lord
loveth he chasteneth; so the chosen children of God were, without
paradox, to be looked for among the most unfortunate of earth’s
children.
[Sidenote: Christianity combines optimism and asceticism.]
The prophets and psalmists had already shown some beginnings of this
asceticism or inverted worldliness. The Essenes and the early Christians
made an explicit reversal of ancient Jewish conceptions on this point
the corner-stone of their morality. True, the old positivism remained in
the background. Tribulation was to be short-lived. Very soon the kingdom
of God would be established and a dramatic exchange of places would
ensue between the proud and the humble. The mighty would be hurled from
their seat, the lowly filled with good things. Yet insensibly the
conception of a kingdom of God, of a theocracy, receded or became
spiritualised. The joys of it were finally conceived as immaterial
altogether, contemplative, and reserved for a life after death. Although
the official and literal creed still spoke of a day of judgment, a
resurrection of the body, and a New Jerusalem, these things were
instinctively taken by Christian piety in a more or less symbolic sense.
A longing for gross spectacular greatness, prolonged life, and many
children, after the good old Hebraic fashion, had really nothing to do
with the Christian notion of salvation. Salvation consisted rather in
having surrendered all desire for such things, and all expectation of
happiness to be derived from them. Thus the prophet’s doctrine that not
prosperity absolutely and unconditionally, but prosperity merited by
virtue, was the portion of God’s people changed by insensible gradations
to an ascetic belief that prosperity was altogether alien to virtue and
that a believer’s true happiness would be such as Saint Francis paints
it: upon some blustering winter’s night, after a long journey, to have
the convent door shut in one’s face with many muttered threats and
curses.
[Sidenote: Reason smothered between the two.]
In the history of Jewish and Christian ethics the pendulum has swung
between irrational extremes, without ever stopping at that point of
equilibrium at which alone rest is possible. Yet this point was
sometimes traversed and included in the gyrations of our tormented
ancestral conscience. It was passed, for example, at the moment when the
prophets saw that it was human interest that governed right and wrong
and conduct that created destiny. But the mythical form in which this
novel principle naturally presented itself to the prophets’ minds, and
the mixture of superstition and national bigotry which remained in their
philosophy, contaminated its truth and were more prolific and contagious
than its rational elements. Hence the incapacity of so much subsequent
thinking to reach clear ideas, and the failure of Christianity, with its
prolonged discipline and opportunities, to establish a serious moral
education. The perpetual painful readjustments of the last twenty
centuries have been adjustments to false facts and imaginary laws; so
that neither could a worthy conception of prosperity and of the good be
substituted for heathen and Hebrew crudities on that subject, nor could
the natural goals of human endeavour come to be recognised and
formulated, but all was left to blind impulse or chance tradition.
[Sidenote: Religion made an institution.]
These defeats of reason are not to be wondered at, if we may indeed
speak of the defeat of what never has led an army. The primitive
naturalism of the Hebrews was not yet superseded by prophetic doctrines
when a new form of materialism arose to stifle and denaturalise what was
rational in those doctrines. Even before hope of earthly empire to be
secured by Jehovah’s favour had quite vanished, claims had arisen to
supernatural knowledge founded on revelation. Mythology took a wholly
new shape and alliance with God acquired a new meaning and implication.
For mythology grew, so to speak, double; moral or naturalistic myths
were now reinforced by others of a historical character, to the effect
that the former myths had been revealed supernaturally. At the same time
the sign of divine protection and favour ceased to be primarily
political. Religion now chiefly boasted to possess the Truth, and with
the Truth to possess the secret of a perfectly metaphysical and
posthumous happiness. Revelation, enigmatically contained in Scripture,
found its necessary explication in theology, while the priests, now
guardians of the keys of heaven, naturally enlarged their authority over
the earth. In fine, the poetic legends and patriarchal worship that had
formerly made up the religion of Israel were transformed into two
concrete and formidable engines—the Bible and the Church.