THE MESSIANIC FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIANITY.
By the time of the prophets Jahvism had grown into Judaism. Their
religion, with the examination of which we shall be mainly occupied
in this chapter, in all cases was a pure monotheism; they worshipped
Jahveh as God, sole maker and ruler of heaven and earth. It was
Judaism, too, in the sense that it was universally recognized as the
national religion. That Jahveh was properly the god of Israel was now
admitted by all. And this the prophets unhesitatingly assumed. They did
not regard themselves as preachers of a religion who sought to persuade
others of its truth; they were rather, in their own eyes, champions
of loyalty against rebels and traitors false to their parent Israel.
For while they believed that Jahveh was God, the creator of all the
world, he was still much more to them the god of Israel “his servant,
the seed of Abraham his friend.”[24] Patriotism was the essence of
their religion. Even when the later prophets reached their highest
exaltation in dreaming of the return of all men to the knowledge of
God, they were thinking of the welfare of the Gentiles far less than of
the glory of Israel. And this, too, inspired their passionate hatred
of sin. They hated it not merely for its own sake, but as an act of
civil revolt against Jahveh, which called down his vengeance on their
country. As Jahveh was head of the state, sin was a political offence,
and they condemned it accordingly with the fervour of condemnation
so rare in moral, so common in political questions. The grand poetry
of denunciation with which they enriched the literature of the world
sprang from local feeling based on local requirements.
Previous to this period no prophetical writings are found. And yet
there must have been prophets of Jahveh before; indeed, many such are
mentioned in the Jewish historical books. Evidently prophetic activity
was less needed before. Jahvism had prospered with the prosperity of
the nation; but when the national fortunes declined, and the great
Assyrian empire threatened Judæa, it began to lose its hold on the
people. To save itself, it rallied all its strength, and the splendid
period of prophetic energy, which has handed down to us so many noble
works, was the result. The prophets saved Judaism. We owe to them an
inestimable debt of gratitude, for they were the channel through which
flowed the higher religious forces of the world. It was well that the
crisis came no earlier, or perhaps their religion would not have been
sufficiently developed to call forth such magnificent powers in its
defence.
Intensely patriotic as the prophets were, the chief object that engaged
their attention was the depression of Israel’s fortunes. However weak
the allegiance of the Israelites in general to him had been, still they
were Jahveh’s people, his representatives on earth.[25] In spite of
much back-sliding, he had given them prosperity, and under the first
kings had made them a powerful nation. In their own time, on the other
hand, the early prophets saw Israel divided and weak, and threatened
with utter destruction; and the later prophets saw this destruction
fall on one kingdom after the other, until the national existence
ceased. Believing that all events were under the control of Jahveh,
and that he had made the covenant with Israel mentioned in the last
chapter, they could accept only one explanation of their country’s
calamities. They could not imagine Jahveh false to his promise, and so
the alternatives would be presented to them as the second Isaiah puts
them before his countrymen: “Behold, Jahveh’s hand is not shortened,
that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: but
your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins
have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.”[26] This is
the burden of all the preaching of the prophets. They were ever saying
to their countrymen, “You have broken your covenant; you have deserted
Jahveh; and now he has deserted you.”[27] The almost invariable image
under which they describe Israel is that of an adulterous woman who
has forsaken her husband. By their violation of the covenant, the
Israelites had provoked Jahveh’s wrath, and all their misfortunes were
sent as a punishment by him.[28]
Compelled professionally thus to believe that Israel had been false
to Jahveh, the prophets were not good judges of the actual extent of
this falsehood. They denounced the wickedness of the people, not so
much because they saw it as because they felt it must be there as the
explanation of Jahveh’s harshness. Hence it is very likely that their
reports of the evil doings of their countrymen are exaggerated. If we
did not know from internal probability that the religion of Jahveh
was then in danger, we might suspect that the prophets were fighting
imaginary foes. Knowing, however, that they must have had great forces
opposed to them, we can allow for the exaggeration, and yet admit the
general truth of their statements.
The people they addressed could hardly have been in a position to
defend themselves against the strictures of the prophets by even to
this extent taking exception to their denunciations. With the decline
of Israel, Jahvism had also declined, and the Israelites must have
felt instinctively that the second phenomenon was the cause of the
first, and that their own exceptional sinfulness had produced the
national disasters. They might, indeed, so far as they knew the past
history of their country, complain that the people of Israel had before
transgressed as heavily without receiving such a severe punishment
from Jahveh. But here the prophets met them fully on their own ground,
by denouncing their past as well as their present wickedness, and by
asserting that, his long-suffering patience having at length given way,
Jahveh was then punishing them for the whole course of their national
sins. Only once in the prophetical books is there any sign that the
people ever ventured to question the premisses of the prophets. On one
occasion they are said to have replied to Jeremiah’s denunciations
by asserting that their misfortunes were really due to their having
forsaken other gods for Jahveh, and by announcing that they would
return to these divinities, the worship of whom had been accompanied
by prosperity.[29] It was a dangerously strong argument to use against
the prophets, and it naturally stirred Jeremiah to a fiercer fury of
malediction. But, in general, the people could not have had either the
critical power or the knowledge of their own history needed for the
adoption of such a line of defence. The steady darkening of Israel’s
prospects must have seemed to them grim confirmation of the prophetic
statements. As prophet after prophet arose screaming against their
wickedness, pointing to their misfortunes as the punishment inflicted
by Jahveh, and announcing that worse calamities would come before the
completion of it, they must have seen in every national disaster a
proof that the prophets were divine envoys, and a chill of fear must
have driven them to Jahveh’s feet.
Prophets and people stood on common ground in their patriotism. The
attention of all the Israelites must have been absorbed in watching
the national prospects. The prophets, necessarily including in their
number the best and wisest minds, of course saw more clearly than the
rest. Probably most of them had the acuteness to see how inevitable
was the destruction of Israel. Once the group of small kingdoms
fringing the eastern side of the Mediterranean was threatened by the
vast power of inland Asia, it was not difficult to foresee the ultimate
issue. Still the prophets, in their own way, did their best to avert
their country’s ruin. Every prophetic declaration was a political
pamphlet giving political advice. All their counsel was simply the
development of a single precept—Rely on Jahveh only. In home matters
this principle of action could do no harm, but it had a bad effect on
foreign policy. When the great Assyrian empire was overshadowing Israel
and all the kingdoms around, it did not require much wisdom to perceive
the advantage of an alliance against the common danger. Nevertheless,
the whole prophetic influence was used to prevent it; the states were
separately attacked, and perished one by one. Egypt was far the most
powerful of the countries near Palestine opposed to Assyria, and its
protection would have been of enormous value to Israel. And yet at a
time when both were threatened, Isaiah thundered against an alliance
with Egypt;[30] and probably prophetic advice was the cause of the
almost inconceivable folly of the religious Josiah’s attack on an
Egyptian army actually invading Assyria.[31] So far as the prophets
thus contributed to the political overthrow of Israel, they served the
higher interests of their religion; but evidently a foolish fanaticism
dictated their action, a belief that Jahveh would be dishonoured if his
people allied themselves with strangers, and that, if they trusted to
him alone, he would finally deliver them from their enemies.
As the national ruin of the surviving kingdom of Israel drew nearer,
the prophets had to fight more fiercely on behalf of their religion.
The people must have been as angry with Jahveh as he was said to be
with them. The prophets met their anger with more savage denunciations
of their wickedness, and more severe predictions of calamity. The
division between prophets and people became then most strongly marked,
and the struggle between them resembled a civil war. The life of
Jeremiah, the most national of all the prophets, was one long battle.
The evil doings of his countrymen he held to be the cause of all
Israel’s misfortunes, and he hated them with a bitter hatred. This
hatred they fully reciprocated; he was imprisoned and almost put to
death. When the chief prophet of the religion of Jahveh received such
treatment at the hands of the people, the religion itself must have
been in terrible danger. If this period had been prolonged, perhaps
Judaism would have preceded the kingdom of Judah in its fall.
But the destruction of the national polity of Israel came in time to
save the national religion. When Judæa was merely a province of a great
empire, the nationality of the Jews could survive only in the religion
of which Jahveh was the head. The very manner in which the change
took place was exceptionally favourable to Judaism. The captivity,
the carrying away of the best families of the Jews into an inland
district of the empire, was admirably calculated to destroy Jahveh’s
rivals. The nucleus of the nation, placed in such close contact with
foreign religions, by patriotism alone would have been made sincere
worshippers of Jahveh. Far away from the local idolatries of Judæa,
the exiles accepted the pure religion of the prophets. The most
imaginative and the most spiritual of the greater prophets, Ezekiel
and the second Isaiah, sprang from their ranks. And thus at last the
prophetic became the popular religion, and Jahveh as God reigned over
Israel. When the exiles returned to Judæa, they carried with them a
pure and moral monotheism. The remainder of the people readily adopted
their principles. Judaism from this time was the sole religion of the
Jews, the expression of their national patriotism. Consolidated now
finally into the rigid system of the law, with a multitude of minute
observances that kept it constantly before their eyes, it was placed
beyond reach of attack. Henceforth all Jahveh’s people worshipped
Jahveh only, professed obedience to his precepts, and knew him as the
one true God.[32]
Thus, in outward semblance, the prophets won their battle. They won
it in consequence of the events they most bitterly deplored. With
their religion the only security of their nationality, the Jews never
afterwards wavered in their allegiance to it. Persecution made them
cling to it more firmly; it inspired them in the noblest period of
their history, the crisis which produced the Maccabees. Even when
an empire greater than the Chaldean conquered them, and a severer
sentence exiled them from Judæa, dispersed over the world, they held
to their religion. The moral monotheism which Jahvism had developed
was now unalterably settled. New doctrines were added to it, some
of which became of the first importance, but its primary principles
were fixed for ever. And yet, at the very moment at which Judaism was
thus established, there was sown the seed of a new religion, destined
ultimately to spring from it in defiance of its spirit of privilege.
The nobler prophets sought to make their religion the national glory of
Israel, a blessing to be taken by all the world meekly from Israel’s
hands; and their efforts long afterwards produced a religion which
ignored national distinctions. For at the time of the full development
of Judaism the movement towards Christianity began.
The expectation of a Messiah was the most peculiar feature of the
Jewish religion. It was a fundamental principle of the community of
Israel, says Ewald, “that every real divine deliverance could be
attained only by the instrumentality of a true prophet.”[33] The cause
of this reliance on divine envoys was probably the rigid theocratic
character of their Jahvist constitution, which discouraged general
enterprise. The belief that a covenant had been originally concluded
with Jahveh tended to produce dependence on him; his worshippers looked
for help to him, and not to themselves. Any great man who felt himself
impelled to lead the people in times of national peril, was sure to
consider himself Jahveh’s representative, commissioned by him for the
purpose; and, of course, all Jahvists would naturally be of the same
opinion. In time this reliance on individuals became fixed, and gave
the Messianic colour to the national hopes.
The hopes themselves were encouraged by the want of enterprise which
invested them with their personal character. Hope is but a form of
dreaming, and the worst men of action are the best dreamers. Jews
who believed in the power of Jahveh were naturally hopeful. As the
national fortunes sank lower and lower during the prophetic period, it
was impossible for such a people not to expect an ultimate restoration
of Israel’s greatness. The prophets, in particular, were impelled in
this direction. Being men of imagination rather than action, whose
intense patriotism was blended indissolubly with trust in Jahveh, they
were strongly urged to hope for Messianic deliverance. Israel, after
all, was Jahveh’s people, and Jahveh could never forsake his people,
or allow them to be utterly destroyed. For their sins they were being
punished, but the punishment could not last for ever. Jeremiah even
expostulates with Jahveh for permitting his people to be so degraded,
and “the vanities of the Gentiles” to seem superior to him.[34] Sooner
or later Jahveh would assert his power, and vindicate his glory as
ruler of the world. Though the prophets might predict immediate
misfortunes, they all believed that ultimately the deliverer would be
sent to Israel.
In the dreams of the prophets, the work to be accomplished by this
inspired envoy of Jahveh had important variations. The first and most
natural character he assumed was that of a king and conqueror, who
should lead Israel to victory and restore the national empire. To the
Israelites of the prophetic age who looked back on the history of
their country, the period of David’s reign seemed the brightest it had
known. Israel had then been united, internally at peace, and lord of
the peoples around. These blessings were believed to have been obtained
specially by the skill and power of David himself; and so, by a
familiar process of thought, the Messiah became a second David, coming
to do the work of the first by reviving the old prosperity.[35] With
the earlier prophets this was almost the sole kind of Messianic dream.
When the punishment of Israel should be complete, the Messiah was to
come as a prince and warrior, and make the nation greater than it ever
had previously been.[36]
After the overthrow of the northern kingdom, this national Messianic
ideal naturally included the restoration of its scattered captives to
their native land. The Samaritan captivity seemed to the prophets to
be designed by Jahveh as a destruction of the fatal system of dualism
which had undermined Israel’s strength. Henceforth the Israelites were
to be one people, with Jerusalem as their centre and capital. When
the kingdom of Judah, too, was conquered, and its chief classes also
carried away into captivity, of course the restoration of exiles
became the most important part of the Messiah’s mission. But even
before this, the prophets of Judah, warned by the fate of Samaria, and
aware of the customs of the Assyrian and Chaldean empires, foresaw
and predicted the great captivity, and, in consequence, included a
subsequent restoration in their Messianic dreams. Thus by nearly all
the prophets the restoration of the captives to their country was
regarded as the prelude to the events of the Messianic period, either
to be accomplished by the Messiah personally, or to be immediately
followed by his appearance. In so confidently predicting the
restoration, the prophets were only giving expression to the national
hopefulness, but they might have based their expectation on stronger
grounds. The cohesive influence of their religion was sure to prevent
the Jewish exiles from being lost in the peoples among whom they were
placed; and if they managed to preserve their nationality, it was
likely that, sooner or later, they would be restored to Judæa. The
absence of this influence was probably the reason why no restoration
followed the captivity of the kingdom of Samaria. The religion of
Jahveh was never so strong in it as in the kingdom of Judah, and must
have been then too weak to serve as a national support. When the
second captivity occurred, Judaism was able to meet it and to save the
nationality it was designed to destroy.
After the restoration had taken place, fulfilling the predictions of
the prophets under circumstances very different from those which they
had expected, the Messianic ideal had, of course, to be disconnected
from it. Sufficient ground still existed for looking forward to the
coming of the Messiah. Israel was only semi-independent, a small
state at the mercy of Gentile masters. But the disappointment of the
Messianic expectations which had been connected with the restoration
must have given a blow to the spirit of prediction. During the
rebuilding of Jerusalem, the voices of the prophets grew faint and
feeble; and after the restoration was complete, only one broke the
silence. The Jews had to fall back on faith in the ultimate fulfilment
of earlier prophecies, regarding the establishment of Judaism as the
religion of all Israel, as the beginning of the reconciliation of
Jahveh and his people which should finally secure their prosperity.
So far as the Messianic ideal of the prophets took this national form,
it greatly helped to effect their union with the people. All the people
were thoroughly at one with them in wishing for the national glory of
Israel. If, by proclaiming Jahveh’s anger and predicting misfortunes,
they excited popular displeasure and dislike, equally, by promising
his favour and predicting prosperity, they excited popular feelings of
pleasure and good-will. In fact, this part of their preaching sugared
the pill of their denunciations, and probably had a large share in
giving them their final success. As the condition of Israel grew more
desperate, their confidence in an ultimate revival of good fortune
must have seemed a tower of strength to desponding minds. During the
captivity, when their store of malediction had become exhausted, and
only that of blessing remained, they promised nothing but happiness.
This, of course, would render the prophetic religion agreeable to the
people, and so must have contributed to make it the religion of Israel.
Though most of the prophets included in their Messianic dreams the
material greatness of Israel, they were far too highly developed to
look for this alone. The noble morality, the noble conception of God,
which formed the essence of their religion, made social and political
prosperity seem to them of only secondary value. In their ideas, the
chief result of the Messiah’s coming was to be the reconciliation of
Jahveh and his people through their abandonment of sin. They expected
the establishment of a new covenant, that could not be broken like
the old, when the law of Jahveh should be written in the hearts of
Israel.[37] The grandest religious language the world has ever known
is the expression of this dream of a people wholly free from sin; the
heavenly new Jerusalem of Christianity is only a vague copy of the
ideal Jerusalem which the prophets imagined for earth.
This vision of a sinless age was present to all the prophets, and is
the chief feature of their prophecies. It was preserved in the sacred
literature of the Jews; and, after forming for centuries a perpetual
incentive to religious purity, it finally produced all that is best in
Christianity. Back to it are traceable the forces which moulded the
personal character of Christ, and stamped upon Christianity its noble
morality. The first Christians not only believed in the coming of this
ideal age, but struggled actually to realize it, and made the nearest
possible approach to success. In the hopes of most of the prophets it
was closely connected with the national Messianic ideal, the vision of
Israel as a prosperous and powerful state. But it was also connected,
in the minds of the noblest prophets, with another Messianic ideal,
which I will call the spiritual Messianic ideal—the vision of the whole
world reconciled to God, which produced Christianity itself.
As pure monotheists, the prophets believed that Jahveh was not merely
god of Israel, but God, the creator and ruler of the world. Naturally,
this belief that the God of the universe was their national god was
to them a source of intense spiritual pride. Amos makes Jahveh say to
Israel, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth,”[38]
and give this fact as a reason for his severity, as Israel, being
so highly favoured, had sinned doubly in disobedience to him. Such
intense spiritual pride, of course, tended to diminish their purely
political pride. Their race, so greatly distinguished in religion,
could afford to dispense with material glory. While, viewed thus from a
patriotic standpoint, the belief that the God of the world was Israel’s
Jahveh was a source of national pride, it also suggested a means of
gratifying national vanity. The homage of subject peoples constituted
the chief attraction of material empire. Here, however, was a chance of
receiving the homage, not merely of a few nations around them, but of
all mankind. Knowing the universal God, the Israelites might become a
nation of priests by leading all men to a knowledge of him their maker,
and so have a glory and authority far greater than any that could be
given by political power.
It would not be fair to say that the prophets, in the formation of this
ideal, were influenced only by patriotism. Spiritually they were too
great not to feel the need of a reconciliation between the world and
its God. In the mind of the noblest of them, Israel was the servant
of the Gentiles, a messenger of God bringing glad tidings of peace to
men. Still, on the whole, the glory of Israel was the object of their
zeal for the conversion of the Gentiles. They dreamed of all the world
coming to take the truth meekly from Israel’s hands.[39] Jerusalem was
to be the sacred city of the earth, and Judæa, as afterwards during the
Crusades, the Holy Land. The second Isaiah gives the highest expression
to this dream. “Nations shall come to thy light,” Jahveh promises
Jerusalem, “and kings to the brightness of thy rising. Strangers shall
build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee. Thy gates
also shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night;
that men may bring unto thee the riches of the nations. The sons of
them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee, and they shall
call thee the city of Jahveh, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel.
I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations.
Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, desolation nor destruction
within thy borders; but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy
gates Praise.”[40] As spiritual guides and teachers, the Israelites
thus would be the Levites of mankind, a sacred people intermediate
between the world and God.[41]
The spiritual Messianic ideal of the second Isaiah was both nobler
and more vividly conceived than that of any other of the prophets.
But nearly all of them have given some expression to it. Even the
fiercely national Jeremiah, who hated the Gentiles so bitterly that,
though he believed them to be Jahveh’s instruments for the chastisement
of Israel, he prayed that they might be punished for their assaults
on the sacred city, had a vision of their coming to Jahveh.[42] And,
indeed, there was an inevitable pressure on the prophets which forced
them in this direction. In proportion as the spiritual greatness of
their religion was understood by them, they were driven to adopt the
spiritual Messianic ideal. The experiences of the prophetic period,
besides, must have shown them how impossible it was that the small
people of Israel should ever equal or surpass in material power the
mighty Gentile empires which then first came in contact with them.
So everything tended to make them seek the satisfaction of their
patriotism in the extension of their religion.
So far as this ideal entered into it, an inversion in the relations of
political and religious feeling now occurred in Judaism. Previously,
as pointed out in the last chapter, Jahveh being the national god
of Israel, religious feeling flowed in a patriotic channel. In the
prophetic age, on the other hand, patriotic feeling began to flow in
a religious channel. Jahveh before had been subordinate to Israel;
then Israel became subordinate to Jahveh. It is obvious that there
was nothing exceptional in this change, and that the circumstances of
Jewish history amply explain its occurrence.
Here, accordingly, we have the historical explanation of the production
of Christianity. From the beginning Jahvism was bound to develop into a
noble monotheism. Also from the beginning it was a national religion.
Being a national religion, in it patriotic was blended with religious
feeling. Under these circumstances, if, after its full development, a
permanent decay took hold of the state with which it was connected,
it had, as an exceptionally pure religion, to become the basis of
national pride, to make proselytism its end. But the history of the
world during this central period of Judaism is the history of the great
empires of western Asia. The small people of Israel could offer no
effective resistance to their power, and so, under pressure from them,
the magnificent national religion of Israel was compelled to become the
expression of patriotism, and to aim at the conversion of the world. So
far, then, as Christianity was a movement towards the establishment of
the Jewish religion as the religion of the world—and at first it was
nothing else—it was inevitable. The conditions of Israel’s history made
an expansion of Judaism—or rather, an attempt to expand Judaism, its
success depending on external circumstances—a necessary occurrence.
A tendency to remodel the form of Judaism was a consequence of the
spiritual Messianic ideal. When struggling against rival religions,
Jahvism, as we saw in the last chapter, was forced to become strongly
exclusive. To keep itself pure from corruption, and also to assert its
own high dignity, it had to enclose itself in a hard shell of formal
observance. But when it developed into Judaism, and sought to become
a world-conquering religion, this formalism was a hindrance to its
purpose. The barriers that were so useful for defence interfered with
offensive movements. Accordingly, the prophets who recognized the
higher ideal of Judaism revolted against its formalism. Its initial
rite, circumcision, was the chief mark of separation between the Jews
and the mass of the Gentiles. But the whole sacrificial system was
also, in its way, an expression of exclusive tendencies. Sacrificing in
one manner distinguished the Jew from the Gentile, who sacrificed in
another manner. Moreover, circumstances at this time were accentuating
the exclusiveness of Judaism. As Israel fell more and more into the
power of strangers, of course the people’s hatred of strangers grew
stronger. This feeling, which, by throwing the people back on the
national religion, was in one respect of service to the prophets,
naturally expressed itself in Judaism by increasing its exclusiveness.
So Judaism was tending to be narrowed just when the prophets wished it
to be enlarged.
The prophets met this tendency with a crusade against formalism.
Circumcision they declared to be only a symbol of obedience. A
people “uncircumcised in heart” Jeremiah called his countrymen. They
pronounced sacrifices of small importance in comparison with personal
righteousness. “Wherewith shall I come before Jahveh and bow myself
before the high God?” said Micah. “Shall I come before him with
burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will Jahveh be pleased with
thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give
my firstborn for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin
of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth
Jahveh require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to
walk humbly with thy God?”[43] Here the regular sacrifices of orthodox
Jahvism are actually compared with the human sacrifices of corrupted
Jahvism, and are subjected to the same condemnation. The second Isaiah
even goes so far as to assert that sacrifices are offensive to Jahveh,
as it is degrading him to suppose that such offerings can please
him.[44] Of course the high development of their religion had also some
effect in making the prophets adopt this principle. A system of animal
sacrifices did not accord well with their noble theism. A righteous
life, besides, they felt to be the best offering to God, and they knew
that formal observances distracted attention from morality. But still
they assailed the formalism of Judaism mainly because it imprisoned the
religion of Jahveh in nationality; they wished Judaism to be a purely
spiritual religion to which all national customs would be equally
foreign.
Of course they expressed their desires in their Messianic dreams. They
dwell upon the glories of the spiritual religion of which Jerusalem
was to be the centre, when Jahveh would speak face to face with all
his people, with no barrier of priestly formalism between. From the
time of the prophets, all who clung to the spiritual Messianic ideal
must have shared their feelings; and when Christianity afterwards broke
through the fetters of Jewish ceremonialism, its action was strictly in
accordance with the principles of those who originated and continued
the movement in Judaism of which it was finally the issue.
The spiritual Messianic ideal from the prophetic age necessarily
formed the ideal of the best and purest Jews. In the writings of the
prophets, especially in those of the second Isaiah, it remained before
the people, a constant incentive to all who grasped the true principles
of their pure religion. It was easily blended with the additions then
beginning to be made to Judaism, the supernaturalism which rendered
Judaism less cold and unattractive. But though this ideal was sure
to continue as the expression of the noblest aspirations of Israel,
and though endeavours were certain to be made to realize it, in its
completeness it was destined to inevitable failure. So far as the
prophets dreamed of Israel’s glory being found in sharing the religion
of the one God with the Gentiles, they dreamed an unrealizable dream.
From the time of the prophets down to the destruction of Jerusalem, the
great mass of the Jews, as the years went by, hated all Gentiles with a
bitterer hatred. Their religion became more confined within the limits
of their nationality, and Jahveh more peculiarly the God worshipped by
Jews alone. It is easy to see that Judaism as Israel’s religion could
not have expanded itself, and that the national pride of Israel could
not thus have been gratified. Only by leaving nationality behind, by a
movement outward from Judaism of the most spiritual Jews, could the God
of Israel become the God of the world.[45]
In this Messianic ideal the conception of the Messiah personally was
vague and undefined. The second Isaiah expected that the Messiah would
simply bring the captivity to a close, and that the Messianic glories
would then follow spontaneously as a result of the exhibition of
Jahveh’s power. This more indistinct picture of the spiritual Messiah
was of great service to Christianity.
The belief in atonement by vicarious suffering mentioned in the last
chapter was connected in a special manner with the spiritual Messianic
ideal. All the prophets believed in atonement by suffering; they all
thought that Jahveh was punishing his people for their sins, and that
the punishment was the necessary antecedent to the restoration of
his favour. But to those who accepted this Messianic ideal Israel’s
suffering plainly seemed to be a means of realizing it. The great
preacher of it, the second Isaiah, writing towards the close of the
captivity, saw an obvious connection between it and the crowning
misfortune of his country. Dispersed among the heathen, the worshippers
of Jahveh appeared to him missionaries of the true religion, revealers
to the world of its God. He believed that the restoration would be
accomplished by the return of the Israelites under the guardianship
of the converted Gentiles, to be their priests in the Holy Land.[46]
But when the captivity was recognized as an instrument of Gentile
conversion, it was of course regarded as a blessing to the Gentiles.
Beneficial to the Gentile world, it was not the less harmful to Israel,
whose nationality it almost destroyed. Thus the hurt of Israel was a
blessing to the Gentiles. It would follow from this, in a mind nursed
in the ideas of the Jewish sacrificial system, that the suffering of
Israel was an atonement for Gentile sins. The Gentiles clearly had
sinned against God, their ignorance of him was a sin; but in revealing
himself to them he was blessing them, and in blessing them he was of
course forgiving their sins. But this forgiveness was shown by means of
Israel’s suffering; therefore Israel’s suffering was an atonement for
Gentile sins accepted by God.
We find the results of this train of reasoning clearly expressed
by the second Isaiah. In the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, which
is the great Messianic chapter of orthodox Christians, and which
probably exercised an important influence over the mind of Christ,
three kinds of atonement are described. Partly Israel’s sufferings
are represented as an atonement offered for Israel’s own sins; partly
Israel’s sins are regarded as atoned for by the undeserved suffering
of the few righteous Israelites, faithful adherents of Jahveh, on whom
the national misfortunes fell as well as on the rest of the people;
while put more strongly, and running through the whole chapter, is the
idea that Israel’s sufferings atoned for Gentile sins. The beautiful
phrase at the end, “He made intercession for the transgressors,” means
that Israel, though oppressed and bruised by the Gentiles, was still
ready to be a mediator leading them to God. In the previous chapter
the astonishment of the Gentiles at the fact that so insignificant
a people possessed so great a revelation, is described by the
same method of personal illustration, universally adopted by the
prophets.[47] Interpreted Messianically, in a literal sense, these
passages were afterwards of importance to Christianity.
The prophetic age, as a whole, was thus essentially a period of
transition. In it Judaism was established, and the movement towards
Christianity begun. Throughout the whole course of Israel’s history
we see a gradual development of religion, religious forces steadily
tending upwards and evolving higher ideas of God. Before the time
of the prophets, these forces were working out a pure and moral
monotheism; during and after it, they were working out the release
of this monotheism from the fetters of nationalism, and preparing a
religion for the civilised world.
The circumstances which at this time were tending to make Judaism
a proselytizing religion were also preparing it for success in its
mission. The religion of the prophets was too pure to become popular.
The absence of supernaturalism, the freedom from dogma, which made it
in essence so superior to Christianity, rendered it fit only for the
highest minds. Afterwards, when impressed on Israel in general, it was
identified with a rigid ceremonialism. That such a religion, deriving
no strength from formalism or from national feeling, could conquer
the Gentile world, far lower than the Jewish people in religious
development, was of course impossible. But just at this moment it began
to receive additions from foreign sources which ultimately bridged
the chasm between it and the ideas of ordinary men. The dispersion
of the Jews, which completed the victory of Judaism, alloyed it with
baser elements. So far as its adherents were placed in contact with
idolatrous religions like the Chaldean, it was rather secured against
corruption. In the Persian religion, however, which it encountered
towards the close of the captivity, it found an enemy disguised as a
friend. This religion, which was as anti-idolatrous as the Jewish, and
which had a nominal monotheism underlying its dualism, was marked by a
supernaturalism very different from the simplicity of the religion of
the prophets. A large part of this supernaturalism was now transferred
to Judaism. The Persian deity of evil became the Jewish Satan,
with a multitude of demons under him that made man their sport and
prey.[48] A hierarchy of angels was constructed, completely foreign
to the prophetic belief in the immediate agency of God. But the most
important doctrine at this time introduced into Judaism, whether from
the Persian religion or not is a matter of dispute, was the doctrine of
the resurrection of the dead, which soon became the chief dogma of the
Jewish creed. How far it tended to suit Judaism to Gentile requirements
is shown by a curious passage of the Apocrypha, which reads like a
description of the doctrine of Pagan Christianity respecting purgatory
and masses for the dead.[49] The more philosophical Jews afterwards
formed themselves into a party to resist these innovations, but the
majority of the people eagerly adopted them. With the spiritual
Messianic ideal they were readily connected, as they formed the
popular elements needed for proselytism, and as they tended to place
religion on a personal rather than on a national basis. We find them
the chief strength of Christianity, which, as the successful embodiment
of the outward forces of Judaism, naturally laid aside the portions
of it unfavourable, and took up the portions of it favourable, to
denationalisation and expansion.
Of course these corruptions of Judaism were the result of its becoming
a popular religion. No longer confined to the best part of the people,
it paid the penalty of diffusion. The rigid ceremonialism, which
henceforth was its leading feature, was another consequence of its
success. Utterly obnoxious as such ceremonialism was to the instincts
of the prophets, it was still inevitable if Judaism was to be the
religion of all the Jews. As Jewish political independence faded more
and more into a memory of a distant past, the people clung more
tenaciously to their religion, more based their nationality upon it,
and made it the object of their patriotism. This, as it continued,
rendered impossible a religious union of Jew and Gentile. A religion
professed by Gentiles by that fact alone would have seemed to the vast
majority of Jews to be sufficiently condemned. It became steadily more
apparent that, in order to convert the Gentile, Judaism had to leave
the Jew.
Throughout all this period the expectation of the Messiah’s coming
remained the sole consolation of the Jewish people. The expectation
entered into every part of their action.[50] All Jews believed that,
to obtain the Messiah, they needed to be reconciled to God, that their
sins kept alive his anger, and delayed the sending of the deliverer.
Many an obscure preacher probably cried in their ears, “Repent, repent,
that the kingdom of heaven may come,” before John the Baptist, by
synchronizing with Christ, gained a prophetic celebrity. Indeed, we
may be sure that during this long time of calamity many attempts were
made to realize the Messianic ideals, that many who claimed to be the
Messiah appeared among the Jews, and earned oblivion by their failure.
When the empire of Rome began to overshadow them with its massive and
enduring power, so unlike that of their previous masters, a conviction
spread through the Jews that the last days were at hand.[51] The
expectation of the Messiah grew stronger, and the passionate longing of
the people tended more and more to secure, as far as was possible, its
own gratification. Into an age of dreams and hopes, which seethed with
restlessness and discontent, Christ was born.