[Illustration: _MAX L. MARGOLIS (born in Merecz, Russia, in 1866), one
of the leading Biblical scholars of America, received his education in
Russia, Germany, and the United States (Columbia Ph.D. 1891). He has
held important professorships of Semitics and Biblical Exegesis at the
Hebrew Union College and the University of California,--and since 1909
has filled the chair of Biblical Philology in The Dropsie College for
Hebrew and Cognate learning. He has been engaged also, as
Editor-in-Chief, in the monumental task of the new English translation
of the Bible by American Jewish scholars. He is the author of numerous
learned papers and books on Biblical lore and theology._]
SO long as Jewish psalms are sung in the cathedrals of Christendom and
Jewish visions are rehearsed by Christian catechumens, the Synagogue
will continue to hold in veneration the chest where reposes its
chiefest glory. Surely a book which thrills the religious emotions of
civilized mankind cannot but be an object of pride to the people that
produced it. Stupendous as the literary output of the Jewish people
has been in post-biblical times, the Scriptures stand on a footing of
their own. Throughout the era of the dispersion they have held their
unique position and have exercised a most potent influence on the
Jewish soul. And the modern man taught by Lowth and Herder, and the
modern Jew under the spell of Mendelssohn and the Haskalah, have their
minds open to the æsthetic side of the "Bible as literature."
To the Jew, however, the Scriptures are possessed of an interest
beyond the religious and literary. They are the record of his
achievements in the past when his foot rested firm and steady on
native soil, of a long history full of vicissitudes from the time when
the invaders battled against the kings of Canaan to the days when the
last visionary steeled the nation's endurance in its struggle with the
heathen. They are the charter of Jewish nobility, linking those of the
present to the wanderer from Ur of the Chaldees.
As a finished product the Hebrew Scriptures came after the period of
national independence. When canon-making was in its last stage,
Jerusalem was a heap of ruins. The canon was the supreme effort of
Judæa--throttled by the legions of Rome--withdrawing to its inner
defences. The sword was sheathed and deliverance was looked for from
the clouds. The Scriptures were to teach the Jew conduct and prayer,
and the chidings of the prophets were listened to in a penitential
mood, but also joyfully because of the consolations to which they led.
The canon-makers had an eye to the steadying of a vanquished people
against the enemy without and the foe within. For there arose teachers
who proclaimed that the mission of the Jew was fulfilled: free from
the fetters of a narrow nationalism, of a religion bound up with the
soil, he was now ready to merge his individuality with the large world
when once it accepted that measure of his teaching suited to a wider
humanity. The temple that was made with hands was destroyed, and
another made without hands was building where men might worship in
spirit and truth. The dream was fascinating, the danger of absorption
was acute, because it was dressed up with the trappings of an ideal to
which many believed the Scriptures themselves pointed.
There was a much larger range of writings in Palestine and a still
larger in Egypt. The list included historical works carrying on the
story of the people's fortunes beyond Alexander the Great; novelistic
tales like that of the heroic Judith luring the enemy of her people to
destruction, or that exquisite tale of Jewish family life as
exemplified by the pious Israelite captive Tobit; books like the wise
sayings of Jesus, son of Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon, or the Psalms
of Solomon, all modelled after patterns in the canon; midrashic
expositions of the law, like the Little Genesis; apocalyptic visions
going by the name of Enoch and the Twelve Patriarchs and Moses and
Isaiah and Esdras, whose prototype may be sought in the canonical
Daniel. Over and above the three parts which the Synagogue accepted
there were a fourth and fifth; but by an act of exclusion the canon
was concentrated upon the three and the others were cast overboard.
The canon was the creation of the Pharisaic doctors, who drew a line
at a point of their own choosing, and decreed that writings "from that
time onward" did not defile the hands.
_The Making of the Canon by the Pharisees_
THE Pharisee held the ground when the nation had politically
abdicated. The war with Rome had been brought on by the intransigent
hotspurs of Galilee and the commune of Jerusalem. John, son of Zakkai,
parleyed with the enemy that Jamnia with its House of Study might go
unscathed. There the process began which culminated in the gigantic
storehouse of legal lore which was to dominate Jewish life and Jewish
literature for centuries, commentary being piled upon commentary and
code upon code. For in the sum total of Scriptures the Torah was
admittedly to be the chief corner-stone, albeit prophecy and wisdom
had not lost their appeal; and in moments of relaxation or when
addressing their congregations worn out with the strife of the
present, the scholars of the wise brought out of the ancient stock
many a legend and quaint saying and even apocalyptic vision,
transporting the mourners for Zion into the ecstasies of the future
redemption. While official Judaism was committed to the dialectics of
the Halakah, in the unofficial Haggadah mysticism exercised a potent
influence by underground channels, as it were, issuing in later days
in Kabbalah and offsetting the rational philosophies borrowed from
Hellas. For the time being, however, the dominant note was legistic,
Pharisean.
The Pharisees had been lifted by the national catastrophe into the
leading position. They had previously been a party among many parties,
and their Judaism one of the many varieties. The Sadducees, their
chief opponents, had a literature of their own: the day upon which
their "Book of Decrees" was consigned to destruction was made a legal
holiday upon which fasting was prohibited. But even writings which
were lightly touched by the Sadduccee spirit were frowned upon: the
Siracide was barely tolerated on the outside because he made light of
individual immortality, and believed in the eternity of Israel and the
Zadokite priesthood. The Pharisees had been on the opposition during
the latter period of the Maccabeans: so with partisan ruthlessness
they excluded from the canon the writings commemorative of the
valorous deeds of those priest-warriors who freed the people from
foreign overlordship and restored the Davidic boundaries of the realm.
Because the apocalyptic visions inclined to teachings not acceptable
to the dominant opinion, they were declared not only heterodox,
heretical, but worthy of destruction. Had the stricter view prevailed,
the sceptical Preacher--now, to quote Renan, lost in the canon like a
volume of Voltaire among the folios of a theological library--would
have shared the fate of Sirach and Wisdom and the other writings which
Egypt cherished after Palestine had discarded them. And there were
mutterings heard even against the Song, that beautiful remnant of the
Anacreontic muse of Judæa. It was then that Akiba stepped into the
breach and by bold allegory saved that precious piece of what may be
called the secular literature of the ancient Hebrews.
The process concluded by the Pharisees had begun long before. The
Pharisee consummated what the scribe before him had commenced, and the
scribe in turn had carried to fruition the work inaugurated by the
prophet. Just as the Pharisee decreed what limits were to be imposed
upon the third part of the Scriptures, the scribe in his day gave
sanction to the second, and at a still earlier period the prophet to
the wide range of literature current in his days. Sobered by national
disaster, the scribe addressed himself to the task of safeguarding the
remnant of Judæa in the land of the fathers. There were schisms in the
ranks, and all kinds of heresies, chief among which stood the
Samaritan. The nation's history was recast in a spirit showing how
through the entire past faithful adherence to Mosaism brought in its
wake national stability, and conversely a swaying from legitimacy and
law was responsible for disaster. With the Torah as a guide, prophecy
was forced into the channels of orthodoxy. Heterodox prophets, the
"false prophets," were consigned to oblivion. Their opponents alone
were given a hearing. Secular history there was to be none; there was
room only for the sacred. We may take it for granted that the
"prophets of Baal," as their adversaries triumphantly nicknamed them,
had their disciples who collected their writings and recorded the
deeds of _their_ spirit. But they were one and all suppressed. The
political achievements of mighty dynasts had been recorded by
annalists; the pious narrators in the so-called historical books of
the canon brush them aside, gloss over them with a scant hint or
reference; what is of absorbing interest to them is the activity of an
Elijah or an Elisha, or the particular pattern of the altar in the
Jerusalem sanctuary. In their iconoclastic warfare upon the
abomination of Samaria, the prophets gave a partisanly distorted view
of conditions in the North which for a long time had been the scene of
Hebrew tradition and Hebrew life.
_The Death-blow to the Old Hebraic Culture_
WHAT these upheavals meant in the history of Hebrew literature and
culture can only approximately be gauged. One thing is certain: they
all and one dealt the death-blow to the old Hebraic culture. When the
excavator sinks his spade beneath the ground of a sleepy Palestinian
village, he lays bare to view from under the overlaid strata, Roman
and Greek and Jewish and Israelitish, the Canaanite foundation with
its mighty walls and marvellous tunnels, its stelæ and statuettes, its
entombed infants sacrificed to the abominable Moloch. Similarly if we
dig below the surface of the Scriptures, we uncover glimpses of the
civilization of the Amorite strong and mighty, which generations of
prophets and lawmakers succeeded in destroying root and branch. On the
ruins of the Canaanite-Amorite culture rose in the latter days Judaism
triumphant; the struggle--prolonged and of varying success--marked the
ascendancy of the Hebraic culture which was a midway station between
the indigenous Canaanite civilization on the one hand and that mighty
spiritual leaven, Mosaism in its beginnings and Judaism in its
consummation, on the other. The Hebraic culture was a compromise. It
began by absorbing the native civilization. The danger of succumbing
to it was there, but it was averted by those whom their adversaries
called the disturbers of Israel. And even to the last, when the sway
of Judaism was undisputed, the Hebraic culture could not be severed
from the soil in which it was rooted. It was part of a world-culture
just as it contributed itself thereto.
Whether living in amity or in warfare, nations influence each other to
a marked degree. They exchange the products of their soils and their
industry--they also give and take spiritual possessions. Culture is a
compound product. The factors that are contributory to its make-up are
the soil and the racial endowment recoiling against the domination
from without which, though not wholly overcome, is resisted with might
and main. Cultures are national amidst an international culture. They
express themselves in a variety of ways, chiefly in language and
literature. For while blood is thicker than water, the pen is mightier
than the sword. Out of a mass of myth and legend and worldly wisdom
the Hebrews constructed, in accordance with their own bent of mind,
their cosmogonies and ballads and collections of proverbs. At every
shrine the priests narrated to the throngs of worshippers the
marvelous stories of local or national interest.
_The Difference Between Hebraic Culture and Judaism_
THE chief feature of the Hebraic culture was that it was joyous. The
somber seriousness of latter-day Judaism had not yet penetrated it.
Israel rejoiced like the nations. The young men and maidens danced and
wooed in the precincts of the sanctuaries which dotted the country
from Dan to Beersheba. The festivals were seasons of joy, the
festivals of the harvest and of the vintage. The prophets called them
carousals and dubbed the gentlemen of Samaria drunkards. Probably
there were excesses. But life was enjoyed so long as the heavens
withdrew not the moisture which the husbandman was in need of. The
wars which the Kings waged were the wars of the Lord, and the exploits
of the warriors were rehearsed throughout the land--they were spoken
of as the Lord's righteous acts. National victories strengthened the
national consciousness. Taunt songs were scattered on broadsides. The
enemy was lampooned. At the height of national prosperity, when Israel
dwelt in safety in a land of corn and wine moistened with the dew of
the heavens, the pride of the nation expressed itself in the pæan,
"Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, a people victorious
through the Lord, the shield of thy help, and that is the Sword of thy
excellency!" Excellency then meant national independence and welfare.
It was the period of the Omrides whose exploits are merely hinted at
in our sources, whose sway marked the nascent struggle between
Hebraism and Judaism. For the time being, Hebraic culture was on the
ascendant, successor to the indigenous Canaanite civilization which it
had absorbed, remodelled, developed.
The chief difference between the Hebraic culture and Judaism which
supplanted it consists in the fact that, whereas the latter was
bookish, transforming its votaries into the "people of the book," the
former was the sum total of all that goes to make up the concern of a
nation living upon its own soil. Bookishness, literature, has a place
in the affairs of a nation, but it contributes only a side in its
manifold activities. The spoken word precedes the written. The writer
has an eye to aftertimes. He lives in the future. The speaking voice
addresses itself to the present and its varied needs. Saints are
canonized after death. The act of canonization means the verdict of
the survivors who from a distance are able to gauge the merits of past
deeds. When a literature is pronounced canonical or classical, it is
no more. In its dying moments it is reduced to rule, and its range
becomes norm. But normalization is an act of choosing, of accepting
and excising. A living literature is far from being normalized. Much
that is written serves a temporary purpose, but is none the less
effective while it has vogue. However, it is only a part of the
national activities, mirroring them and commenting upon them. So is
religion another part of the national life. Government policy and
legal procedure and the arts and the crafts occupy a nation's living
interests. The Hebraic culture meant all that. It is now a thing of
the distant past. It speaks to us from beneath the Hebrew Scriptures
by which it is overlaid, themselves the remnant of what in times gone
by stirred the nation's spirit. A revival of that culture may come,
but when it comes it will be tempered by Judaism. And the Hebrew
Scriptures which constitute the bridge between them both will act as
the peacemaker.
[Illustration: Signature: Max L. Margolis]
_JEWISH knowledge to me is valuable in the sense in
which the word "knowledge" is employed in Hebrew. For
"to know" in Hebrew_ (yada) _does not merely mean to
conceive intellectually, but expresses at the same
time the deepest emotions of the human soul; it also
means to care, to cherish, to love. It is remarkable
indeed that the only Hebrew expression which in any
way approaches what in modern languages we call
religion is_ daath elohim, the knowledge of God. _It
is no less remarkable that the fundamental concept
formulated by one of the greatest thinkers who
proceeded from Jewish loins, by Baruch Spinoza, is_
amor Dei intellectualis, _"the intellectual love of
God," that is, the mental and yet emotional conception
of the Supreme Power that rules the universe. If I
were to wish for anything, it would be for an_ amor
Judaismus intellectualis, "_an intellectual love of
Judaism," not shallow love and hollow self-complacency
that cover every sin. We want to be frank about our
Judaism, we want to be clear about our faults, we want
to remedy our faults whenever we can, but at the same
time we want to have the sympathy that goes with
knowledge._--_From a Menorah Address by Professor Israel
Friedlaender._