The pre-Christian World preparing the way
of the Christian Church.
§ 6. THE STANDPOINT OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY.
The middle point of the epochs and developments of the human race is
the incarnation of God in Christ. With it begins, upon it rests, the
fulness of the time (Gal. iv. 4), and toward it the whole pre-Christian
history is directed as anticipatory or progressive. This preparation has
its beginning in the very cradle of humanity, and is soon parted in the
two directions of Heathenism and Judaism. In the former case we have the
development of merely human powers and capacities; in the latter case
this development is carried on by continuous divine revelation. Both
courses of development, distinguished not only by the means, but also by
the task undertaken and the end aimed at, run alongside of one another,
until in the fulness of the time they are united in Christianity and
contribute thereto the fruits and results of what was essential and
characteristic in their several separate developments.
§ 7. HEATHENISM.
The primitive race of man, surrounded by rich and luxuriant forms
of nature, put this abundance of primeval power in the place of the
personal and supramundane God. Surrounded by such an inexhaustible
fulness of life and pleasures, man came to look upon nature as more
worthy of sacrifice and reverence than a personal God removed far off
into supramundane heights. Thus arose heathenism as to its general
features: a self-absorption into the depths of the life of nature,
a deification of nature, a worshipping of nature (Rom. i. 21 ff.),
therefore, the religion of nature, in accordance with which, too,
its moral character is determined. Most conspicuously by means of its
intellectual culture has heathenism given preliminary aid to the church
for the performing of her intellectual task. And even the pagan empire,
with its striving after universal dominion, as well as the active
commercial intercourse in the old heathen world, contributed in
preparing the way of the church.
§ 7.1. =The Religious Character of Heathenism.=--The hidden
powers of the life of nature and the soul, not intellectually
apprehended in the form of abstract knowledge, but laid hold of
in immediate practice, and developed in speculation and mysticism,
in natural magic and soothsaying, and applied to all the
relations of human life, seemed revelations of the eternal spirit
of nature, and, mostly by means of the intervention of prominent
personalities and under the influence of various geographical
and ethnographical peculiarities, produced manifold systems of
the religion of nature. Common to all, and deeply rooted in the
nature of heathenism, is the distinction between the _esoteric_
religion of the priests, and the _exoteric_ religion of the
people. The former is essentially a speculative ideal pantheism;
the latter is for the most part a mythical and ceremonial
polytheism. The religious development of heathenism has
nevertheless been by no means stripped of all elements of truth.
Apart from casual remnants of the primitive divine revelation,
which, variously contorted on their transmission through heathen
channels, may lie at the foundation or be inwrought into its
religious systems, the hothouse-like development of the religion
of nature has anticipated many a religious truth which, in the
way of divine revelation, could only slowly and at a late period
come to maturity, but has perverted and distorted it to such a
degree that it was little better than a caricature. To this class
belong, for example, the pantheistic theories of the Trinity and
the Incarnation, the dualistic acknowledgment of the reality of
evil, etc. To this also especially belongs the offering of human
victims which has been practised in all religions of nature
without exception,--a terrible and to some extent prophetic cry
of agony from God-forsaken men, which is first toned down on
Golgotha into hymns of joy and thanksgiving. Witness is given to
the power and energy, with which the religions of nature in the
time of their bloom took possession of and ruled over the minds
and emotions of men, by the otherwise unexampled sacrifices
and self-inflictions, such as hecatombs, offerings of children,
mutilation, prostitution, etc., to which its votaries submitted,
and not less the almost irresistible charm which it exercised
again and again upon the people of Israel during the whole course
of their earlier history. It also follows from this that the
religion of heathenism does not consist in naked lies and pure
illusions. There are elements of truth in the lies, which gave
this power to the religion of nature. There are anticipations
of redemption, though these were demoniacally perverted, which
imparted to it this charm. There are mysterious phenomena of
natural magic and soothsaying which seemed to establish their
divine character. But the worship of nature had the fate of all
unnatural, precocious development. The truth was soon swallowed
up by the lies, the power of development and life, of which more
than could possibly be given was demanded, was soon consumed and
used up. The blossoms fell before the fruit had set. Mysteries
and oracles, magic and soothsaying, became empty forms, or organs
of intentional fraud and common roguery. And so it came to pass
that one harauspex could not look upon another without laughing.
Unbelief mocked everything, superstition assumed its most absurd
and utterly senseless forms, and religions of an irrational
mongrel type sought in vain to quicken again a nerveless and
soulless heathenism.
§ 7.2. =The Moral Character of Heathenism.=--Religious character
and moral character go always hand in hand. Thus, too, the moral
life among heathen peoples was earnest, powerful, and true,
or lax, defective, and perverse, in the same proportion as was
the religious life of that same period. The moral faults of
heathenism flow from its religious faults. It was a religion of
the present, to whose gods therefore were also unhesitatingly
ascribed all the imperfections of the present. In this way
religion lost all its power for raising men out of the mire and
dust surrounding them. The partly immoral myths sanctioned or
excused by the example of the gods the grossest immoralities. As
the type and pattern of reproductive power in the deified life
of nature, the gratification of lust was often made the central
and main point in divine service. The idea of pure humanity was
wholly wanting in heathenism. It could only reach the conception
of nationality, and its virtues were only the virtues of citizens.
In the East despotism crushed, and in the West fierce national
antipathies stifled the acknowledgment of, universal human rights
and the common rank of men, so that the foreigner and the slave
were not admitted to have any claims. As the worth of man was
measured only by his political position, the significance of
woman was wholly overlooked and repudiated. Her position was at
most only that of the maid of the man, and was degraded to the
lowest depths in the East by reason of the prevalent polygamy.
Notwithstanding all these great and far-reaching moral faults,
heathenism, in the days of its bloom and power, at least in those
departments of the moral life, such as politics and municipal
matters, in which pantheism and polytheism did not exert
their relaxing influence, had still preserved much high moral
earnestness and an astonishing energy. But when the religion of
their fathers, reduced to emptiness and powerlessness, ceased to
be the soul and bearer of those departments of life, all moral
power was also withdrawn from them. The moral deterioration
reached its culminating point in the dissolute age of the Roman
Emperors. In this indescribable state of moral degeneration, the
church found heathenism, when it began its spiritual regeneration
of the world.
§ 7.3. =The Intellectual Culture in Heathenism.=--The
intellectual culture of heathenism has won in regard to the
church a twofold significance. On the one hand it affords a
pattern, and on the other it presents a warning beacon. Pagan
science and art, in so far as they possess a generally culturing
influence and present to the Christian church a special type
for imitation, are but the ultimate results of the intellectual
activity which manifested itself among the Greeks and Romans
in philosophy, poetry and historical writing, which have in two
directions, as to form and as to contents, become the model for
the Christian church, preparing and breaking up its way. On the
one side they produced forms for the exercise of the intellectual
life, which by their exactness and clearness, by their variety
and many-sidedness, afforded to the new intellectual contents of
Christianity a means for its formal exposition and expression.
But, on the other side, they also produced, from profound
consideration of and research into nature and spirit, history
and life, ideas and reflections which variously formed an
anticipation of the ideas of redemption and prepared the soil
for their reception. The influence, however, on the other hand,
which oriental forms of culture had upon the development and
construction of the history of redemption, had already exhausted
itself upon Judaism. What the symbolism of orientalism had
contributed to Judaism, namely the form in which the divine
contents communicated by Old Testament prophesy should be
presented and unfolded, the dialectic of classical heathenism was
to Christianity, in which the symbolic covering of Judaism was to
be torn off and the thought of divine redemption to be manifested
and to be laid hold of in its purely intellectual form. The
influence of heathenism upon the advancing church in the other
direction as affording a picture of what was to be avoided, was
represented not less by Eastern culture than by the classical
culture of the Greeks and Romans. Here it was exclusively the
contents, and indeed the ungodly anti-Christian contents, the
specifically heathen substance of the pagan philosophy, theosophy,
and mysteriosophy, which by means of tolerated forms of culture
sought to penetrate and completely paganize Christianity. To
heathenism, highly cultured but pluming itself in the arrogance
of its sublime wisdom, Christianity, by whose suggestive
profundity it had been at first attracted, appeared altogether
too simple, unphilosophical, unspeculative, to satisfy the
supposed requirements of the culture of the age. There was needed,
it was thought, fructification and enriching by the collective
wisdom of the East and the West before religion could in truth
present itself as absolute and perfect.
§ 7.4. =The Hellenic Philosophy.=--What is true of Greek-Roman
culture generally on its material and formal sides, that it
powerfully influenced Christianity now budding into flower,
is preeminently true of the Greek Philosophy. Regarded as
a prefiguration of Christianity, Greek philosophy presents
a negative side in so far as it led to the dissolution of
heathenism, and a positive side in so far as it, by furnishing
form and contents, contributed to the construction of
Christianity. From its very origin Hellenic philosophy
contributed to the negative process by undermining the people’s
faith in heathenism, preparing for the overthrow of idolatry, and
leading heathenism to take a despondent view of its own future.
It is with =Socrates=, who died in B.C. 399, that the positive
prefiguring of Christianity on the part of Greek philosophy comes
first decidedly into view. His humble confession of ignorance,
his founding of the claim to wisdom on the Γνῶθι σεαυτόν,
the tracing of his deepest thoughts and yearnings back to
divine suggestions (his Δαιμόνιον), his grave resignation to
circumstances, and his joyful hope in a more blessed future,
may certainly be regarded as faint anticipations and prophetic
adumbrations of the phenomena of Christian faith and life.
=Plato=, who died B.C. 348, with independent speculative and
poetic power, wrought the scattered hints of his teacher’s wisdom
into an organically articulated theory of the universe, which
in its anticipatory profundity approached more nearly to the
Christian theory of the universe than any other outside the range
of revelation. His philosophy leads men to an appreciation of his
God-related nature, takes him past the visible and sensible to
the eternal prototypes of all beauty, truth and goodness, from
which he has fallen away, and awakens in him a profound longing
after his lost possessions. In regard to matter =Aristotle=, who
died B.C. 322, does not stand so closely related to Christianity
as Plato, but in regard to form, he has much more decidedly
influenced the logical thinking and systematizing of later
Christian sciences. In these two, however, are reached the
highest elevation of the philosophical thinking of the Greeks,
viewed in itself as well as in its positive and constructive
influence upon the church. As philosophy down to that time,
consciously or unconsciously, had wrought for the dissolution
of the religion of the people, it now proceeded to work its own
overthrow, and brought into ever deeper, fuller and clearer
consciousness the despairing estimate of the world regarding
itself. This is shown most significantly in the three schools
of philosophy which were most widely spread at the entrance of
the church into the Græco-Roman world, Epicureanism, Stoicism,
and Scepticism. =Epicurus=, who died B.C. 271, in his philosophy
seeks the highest good in pleasure, recognises in the world only
a play of fortune, regards the soul as mortal, and supposes that
the gods in their blissful retirement no longer take any thought
about the world. =Stoicism=, founded by Zeno, who died in B.C.
260, over against the Epicurean deism set up a hylozoistic
pantheism, made the development of the world dependent upon the
unalterable necessity of fate, which brings about a universal
conflagration, out of which again a new world springs to follow
a similar course. To look on pleasure with contempt, to scorn
pain, and in case of necessity to end a fruitless life by
suicide--these constitute the core of all wisdom. When he has
reached such a height in the mastery of self and of the world the
wise man is his own god, finding in himself all that he needs.
Finally, in conflict with Stoicism arose the =Scepticism= of the
_New Academy_, at the head of which were Arcesilaus who died B.C.
240 and Carneades who died B.C. 128. This school renounced all
knowledge of truth as something really unattainable, and in the
moderation (ἐποχή) of every opinion placed the sum of theoretic
wisdom, while it regarded the sum of all practical wisdom to
consist in the evidence of every passionate or exciting effort.
§ 7.5. =The Heathen State.=--In the grand endeavour of heathenism
to redeem itself by its own resources and according to its own
pleasure, the attempt was finally made by the concentration of
all forces into one colossal might. To gather into one point all
the mental and bodily powers of the whole human race, and through
them also all powers of nature and the products of all zones
and lands, and to put them under one will, and then in this
will to recognise the personal and visible representation of the
godhead--to this was heathenism driven by an inner necessity.
Hence arose a struggle, and in consequence of the pertinacity
with which it was carried on, one kingdom after another was
overthrown, until the climax was reached in the Roman empire.
Yet even this empire was broken and dissolved when opposed by the
spiritual power of the kingdom of God. Like all the endeavours
of heathenism, this struggle for =absolute sovereignty= had a
twofold aspect; there are thereby made prominent men’s own ways
and God’s ways, the undivine aims of men, and the blessed results
which God’s government of the world could secure for them. We
have here to do first of all simply with the Roman universal
empire, but the powers that rose in succession after it are only
rejuvenations and powerful continuations of the endeavour of the
earlier power, and so that is true of every state which is true
of the Roman. Its significance as a preparer of the way for the
church is just this, that in consequence of the articulation of
the world into one great state organisation, the various stages
and elements of culture found among the several civilized races
hitherto isolated, contributed now to one universal civilization,
and a rapid circulation of the new life-blood driven by the
church through the veins of the nations was made possible and
easy. With special power and universal success had the exploits
of Alexander the Great in this direction made a beginning, which
reached perfection under the Roman empire. The ever advancing
prevalence of one language, the Greek, which at the time of the
beginning of the church was spoken and understood in all quarters
of the Roman empire, which seemed, like a temporary suspension
of the doom of the confusion of languages which accompanied the
rise of heathenism (Gen. xi.), to celebrate its return to the
divine favour, belongs also pre-eminently to those preparatory
influences. And as the heathen state sought after the
concentration of all might, =Industry= and =Trade=, moved by
the same principle, sought after the concentration of wealth and
profit. But as worldly enterprise for its own ends made paths for
universal commerce over wastes and seas, and visited for purposes
of trade the remotest countries and climes, it served unwittingly
and unintentionally the higher purposes of divine grace by
opening a way for the spread of the message of the gospel.
§ 8. JUDAISM.
In a land which, like the people themselves, combined the character
of insular exclusiveness with that of a central position in the ancient
world, Israel, on account of the part which it was called to play in
universal history, had to be the receiver and communicator of God’s
revelations of His salvation, had to live quiet and apart, taking
little to do with the world’s business; having, on the other hand, the
assurance from God’s promise that disasters threatened by heathenish
love of conquest and oppression would be averted. This position and
this task were, indeed, only too often forgotten. Only too often did
the Israelites mix themselves up in worldly affairs, with which they
had no concern. Only too often by their departure from their God did
they make themselves like the heathen nations in religion, worship,
and conversation, so that for correction and punishment they had
often to be put under a heavy yoke. Yet the remnant of the holy seed
(Isa. iv. 3; vi. 13) which was never wholly wanting even in times of
general apostasy, as well as the long-suffering and faithfulness of
their God, ensured the complete realisation of Israel’s vocation, even
though the unspiritual mass of the people finally rejected the offered
redemption.
§ 8.1. =Judaism under special Training of God through the Law and
Prophecy.=--Abraham was chosen as a single individual (Isa. li. 2),
and, as the creator of something new, God called forth from an
unfruitful womb the seed of promise. As saviour and redeemer
from existing misery He delivered the people of promise from the
oppression of Egyptian slavery. In the Holy Land the family must
work out its own development, but in order that the family might
be able unrestrainedly to expand into a great nation, it was
necessary that it should first go down into Egypt. Moses led the
people thus disciplined out of the foreign land, and gave them
a theocratic constitution, law, and worship as means for the
accomplishment of their calling, as a model and a schoolmaster
leading on to future perfection (Gal. iii. 24; Heb. x. 1). The
going out of Egypt was the birth of the nation, the giving of
the law at Sinai was its consecration as a holy nation. Joshua
set forth the last condition for an independent people, the
possession of a country commensurate with the task of the nation,
a land of their own that would awaken patriotic feelings. Now the
theocracy under the form of a purely popular institution under
the fostering care of the priesthood could and should have borne
fruit, but the period of the Judges proves that those two factors
of development were not sufficient, and so now two new agencies
make their appearance; the Prophetic order as a distinct and
regular office, constituted for the purpose of being a mouth
to God and a conscience to the state, and the Kingly order for
the protecting of the theocracy against hurt from without and
for the establishment of peace within her borders. By David’s
successes the theocracy attained unto a high degree of political
significance, and by Solomon’s building of the temple the typical
form of worship reached the highest point of its development.
In spite, however, of prophecy and royalty, the people, ever
withdrawing themselves more and more from their true vocation,
were not able outwardly and inwardly to maintain the high level.
The division of the kingdom, internal feuds and conflicts,
their untheocratic entanglement in the affairs of the world, the
growing tendency to fall away from the worship of Jehovah and
to engage in the worship of high places, and calves, and nature,
called down incessantly the divine judgments, in consequence of
which they fell a prey to the heathen. Yet this discipline was
not in vain. Cyrus decreed their return and their independent
organization, and even prophecy was granted for a time to the
restored community for its establishment and consolidation. Under
these political developments has prophecy, in addition to its
immediate concern with its own times in respect of teaching,
discipline, and exhortation, given to the promise of future
salvation its fullest expression, bringing a bright ray of
comfort and hope to light up the darkness of a gloomy present.
The fading memories of the happy times of the brilliant victories
of David and the glorious peaceful reign of Solomon formed the
bases of the delineations of the future Messianic kingdom, while
the disasters, the suffering and the humiliation of the people
during the period of their decay gave an impulse to Messianic
longings for a Messiah suffering for the sins of the people
and taking on Himself all their misery. And now, after it
had effected its main purpose, prophecy was silenced, to be
reawakened only in a complete and final form when the fulness
of time had come.
§ 8.2. =Judaism after the Cessation of Prophecy.=--The time had
now come when the chosen people, emancipated from the immediate
discipline of divine revelation, but furnished with the results
and experiences of a rich course of instruction, and accompanied
by the law as a schoolmaster and by the light of the prophetic
word, should themselves work out the purpose of their calling.
The war of extermination which Antiochus Epiphanes in his heathen
fanaticism waged against Judaism, was happily and victoriously
repelled, and once more the nation won its political independence
under the Maccabees. At last, however, owing to the increasing
corruption of the ruling Maccabean family, they were ensnared by
the craft of the Roman empire. The Syrian religious persecution
and the subsequent oppression of the Romans roused the national
spirit and the attachment to the religion of their fathers to the
most extreme exclusiveness, fanatical hatred, and proud scorn of
everything foreign, and converted the Messianic hope into a mere
political and frantically carnal expectation. True piety more
and more disappeared in a punctilious legalism and ceremonialism,
in a conceited self-righteousness and boastful confidence in
their own good works. Priests and scribes were eagerly bent
on fostering this tendency and increasing the unsusceptibility
of the masses for the spirituality of the redemption that was
drawing nigh, by multiplying and exaggerating external rules
and by perverse interpretation of scripture. But in spite of all
these perverting and far-reaching tendencies, there was yet in
quiet obscurity a sacred plantation of the true Israel (John i. 47;
Luke i. 6; ii. 25, 38, etc.), as a garden of God for the first
reception of salvation in Christ.
§ 8.3. =The Synagogues.=--The institution of the =Synagogues=
was of the greatest importance for the spread and development of
post-exilian Judaism. They had their origin in the consciousness
that, besides the continuance of the symbolical worship of the
temple, a ministry of the word for edification by means of the
revelation of God in the law and the prophets was, after the
withdrawal of prophecy, all the more a pressing need and duty.
But they also afforded a nursery for the endeavour to widen and
contract the law of Moses by Rabbinical rules, for the tendency
to external legalism and hypocrisy, for the national arrogance
and the carnal Messianic expectations, which from them passed
over into the life of the people. On the other hand, the
synagogues, especially outside of Palestine, among the dispersion,
won a far-reaching significance for the church by reason of
their missionary tendency. For here where every Sabbath the holy
scripture of the Old Testament was read in the Greek translation
of the Septuagint and expounded, a convenient opportunity was
given to heathens longing for salvation to gain acquaintance with
the revelations and promises of God in the Old Covenant, and here
there was already a place for the first ministers of the gospel,
from which they could deliver their message to an assembled
multitude of people from among the Jews and Gentiles. (Schürer,
“Hist. of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ.” Div. ii.,
vol. 2., “The School and Synagogue.” pp. 44-89, Edin., 1885.)
§ 8.4. =Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes.=--The strict,
traditionally legalistic, carnally particularistic tendency
of Post-Exilian Judaism had its representatives and supporters
in the sect of the =Pharisees= (פְרוּשִׁים, ἀφωρισμένοι), so called
because their main endeavour was to maintain the strictest
separation from everything heathenish, foreign, and ceremonially
unclean. By their ostentatious display of zeal for the law, their
contempt for everything not Jewish, their democratic principles
and their arrogant patriotism, they won most completely the
favour of the people; they shared the evil fortunes of the
Maccabean princes, and became the bitterest enemies of the
Herodians, and entertained a burning fanatical hatred to the
Romans. They held sway in the synagogues to such an extent
that the names Scribes and Pharisees were regarded as almost
synonymous, and even in the Sanhedrim they secured many seats.
In the times of Jesus the schools of Hillel and Shammai contended
with one another, the former pleading for somewhat lax views,
especially in reference to divorce and the obligation of oaths,
while the latter insisted upon the most rigorous interpretation
of the law. Both, however, were agreed in the recognition of oral
tradition, the παραδόσεις τῶν πατέρων, as a binding authority and
an essential supplement to the law of Moses. In direct opposition
to them stand the =Sadducees=, out of sympathy with the
aspirations of the people, and abandoning wholly the sacred
traditions, and joining themselves in league with the Herodians
and Romans. The name originally designated them as descendants of
the old temple aristocracy represented by the family of the high
priest Zadok, and, in consequence of the similarity in sound
between צַדּוּקיִם and צַדּיִקיִם, gave expression to their claim to be
regarded as essentially and truly righteous because of their
outward adherence to the Mosaic law. Proceeding on the principle
that virtue as a free act of man has in it its own worth and
reward, just as vice has in it its own punishment, they rejected
the doctrine of a future judgment, denied the doctrine of a
resurrection, the existence of angels and spirits, and the
doctrine of the divine foreknowledge.[2] The =Essenes=, not
mentioned in the Bible, but named by Philo, Josephus, and the
elder Pliny, form a third sect. Their name was probably derived
from חֲסֵא, pious. The original germ of their society is found
in distinct colonies on the banks of the Dead Sea, which kept
apart from the other Jews, and recognised even among themselves
four different grades of initiation, each order being strictly
separated from the others. A member was received only after
a three years’ novitiate, and undertook to keep secret the
mysteries of the order. Community of goods in the several
communities and clans, meals in common accompanied by religious
ceremonies, frequent prayers in the early morning with the face
directed to the rising sun, oft repeated washings and cleansings,
diligent application to agriculture and other peaceful
occupations, abstaining from the use of flesh and wine, from
trade and every warlike pursuit, from slavery and taking of
oaths, perhaps also abstinence from marriage in the higher orders,
were the main conditions of membership in their association.
The Sabbath was observed with great strictness, but sacrifices
of blood were abolished, and all anointing with oil was regarded
as polluting. They still, however, maintained connection with
Judaism by sending gifts to the temple. So far the order may
fairly be regarded, as it is by Ritschl, as a spiritualizing
exaggeration of the Mosaic idea of the priestly character that
had independently grown up on Jewish soil, and indeed especially
as an attempt to realize the calling set forth in Exod. xix. 5, 6,
and repudiated in Exod. xx. 19, 20, unto all Israelites to be a
spiritual priesthood. But when, on the other hand, the Essenes,
according to Josephus, considered the body as a prison in which
the soul falling from its ethereal existence is to be confined
until freed from its fetters by death it returns again to heaven,
this can scarcely be explained as originating from any other than
a heathen source, especially from the widely spread influences
of Neo-Pythagoreanism (§ 24). Lucius (1881) derives the name
and seeks their origin from the Asidæans, Chasidim, or Pious,
in 1 Macc. ii. 42; vii. 13; and 2 Macc. xiv. 6. Very striking
too is Hilgenfeld’s carefully weighed and ably sustained theory
(_Ketzergesch._, pp. 87-149), that their descent is to be traced
from the Kenite Rechabites (Jer. xxxv.; Judg. i. 16), and their
name from the city Gerasa, west of the Dead Sea, called in
Josephus also Essa, where the Rechabites, abandoning their tent
life, formed a settlement. In the time of Josephus the Essenes
numbered about four thousand. In consequence of the Jewish war,
which brought distress upon them, as well as upon the Christians,
they were led into friendly relations with Christianity; but even
when adopting the Christian doctrines, they still carried with
them many of their earlier tenets (§ 28, 2, 3).[3]
§ 9. SAMARITANISM.
The Samaritans, who came into existence at the time of the overthrow
of the kingdom of Israel, from the blending of Israelitish and
heathenish elements, desired fellowship with the Jewish colony that
returned from the Babylonish captivity, but were repelled on account
of their manifold compromises with pagan practice. And although an
expelled Jew named Manasseh purified their religion as far as possible
of heathenish elements, and gave them a temple and order of worship on
Mount Gerizim, this only increased the hatred of the Jews against them.
Holding fast to the Judaism taught them by Manasseh, the Samaritans
never adopted the refinements and perversions of later Judaism. Their
Messianic expectations remained purer, their particularism less severe.
While thus rendered capable of forming a more impartial estimate of
Christianity, they were also inclined upon the whole, because of the
hatred and contempt which they had to endure from Pharisaic Judaism,
to look with favour upon Christianity despised and persecuted as they
themselves had been (John iv. 41; Acts viii. 5 ff.). On the other hand,
the syncretic-heathen element, which still flourished in Samaritanism,
showed its opposition to Christianity by positive reactionary attempts
(§ 25, 2).[4]
§ 10. INTERCOURSE BETWEEN JUDAISM AND HEATHENISM.
Alexander the Great’s conquest of the world brought into connection
with one another the most diverse elements of culture in antiquity.
Least of all could Judaism outside of Palestine, the _diaspora_, living
amid the influences of heathen or Hellenic culture and ways of viewing
things, withdraw itself from the syncretic current of the age. The Jews
of Eastern Asia maintained a closer connection and spiritual affinity
with the exclusive Palestinian Rabbinism, and the heathen element,
which here penetrated into their religious conceptions, became, chiefly
through the Talmud, the common property of post-Christian Judaism. But
heathenism also, contemptible as Judaism appeared to it, was susceptible
to Jewish influences, impressed by the deeper religious contents of
Judaism, and though only sporadic, instances of such influence were by
no means rare.
§ 10.1. =Influence of Heathenism upon Judaism.=--This reached
its greatest strength in Egypt, the special centre and source of
the syncretic tendencies of the age. Forming for itself by means
of the adoption of Greek culture and especially of the Platonic
philosophy a more universal basis of culture, Jewish Hellenism
flourished in Alexandria. After Aristobulus, who wrote Ἐξηγήσεις
τῆς Μωυσέως, about B.C. 170, now only found in a fragment
of doubtful authority, and the author of the Book of Wisdom,
the chief representative of this tendency was the Alexandrian
Jew Philo, a contemporary of Christ. His Platonism enriched
by elements drawn from Old Testament revelation and from
the doctrines of the Essenes has on many points carried its
speculation to the very borders of Christianity, and has formed
a scaffolding for the Christian philosophy of the Church Fathers.
He taught that all nations have received a share of divine truth,
but that the actual founder and father of all true philosophy
was Moses, whose legislation and teaching formed the source of
information for even the Greek Philosophy and Mysteriosophy.
But it is only by means of allegorical interpretation that such
depths can be discovered. God is τὸ ὄν, matter τὸ μὴ ὄν. An
intermediate world, corresponding to the Platonic world of ideas,
is the κόσμος νοητός, consisting of innumerable spirits and
powers, angels and souls of men, but bound together into a unity
in and issuing from the Word of God, who as the λόγος ἐνδιαθετός
was embraced in God from eternity, coming forth from God as the
λόγος προφορικός for the creation of the world (thought and word).
The visible world, on account of the physical impotence of matter,
is an imperfect representation of the κόσμος νοητός, etc. On the
ground of the writing _De vita contemplativa_ attributed to Philo,
the =Therapeutæ=, or worshippers of God, mentioned therein, had
been regarded as a contemplative ascetic sect related to the
Essenes, affected by an Alexandrian philosophical spirit, living
a sort of monastic life in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, until
Lucius (Strassb., 1879) withdrew them from the domain of history
to that of Utopian romance conceived in support of a special
theory. This scholar has proved that the writing referred to
cannot possibly be assigned to Philo, but must have been composed
about the end of the third century in the interest of Christian
monasticism, for which it presented an idealizing apology. This,
however, has been contested by Weingarten, in Herzog, x. 761, on
good grounds, and the origin of the book has been assigned to a
period soon after Philo, when Hellenistic Judaism was subjected
to a great variety of religious and philosophical influences.[5]
§ 10.2. =Influence of Judaism upon Heathenism.=--The heathen
state showed itself generally tolerant toward Judaism. Alexander
the Great and his successors, the Ptolemies, to some extent
also the Seleucidæ, allowed the Jews the free exercise of
their religion and various privileges, while the Romans allowed
Judaism to rank as a _religio licita_. Nevertheless the Jews were
universally despised and hated. Tacitus calls them _despectissima
pars servientium, teterrima gens_; and even the better class of
writers, such as Manetho, Justin, Tacitus, gave currency to the
most absurd stories and malicious calumnies against them. In
opposition to these the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus took
pains to overcome the prejudices of Greeks and Romans against
his nation, by presenting to them its history and institutions
in the most favourable light. But on the other side, the Greek
translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, as well
as the multitude of Jewish synagogues, which during the Roman
period were scattered over the whole world, afforded to every
heathen interested therein the opportunity of discovering by
personal examination and inquiry the characteristic principles
of Judaism. When, therefore, we consider the utterly corrupt
condition of heathenism, we cannot wonder that Judaism, in spite
of all the contempt that was thrown upon it, would attract,
by reason of its hoary antiquity and the sublime simplicity of
its creed, the significance of its worship, and its Messianic
promises, many of the better aspiring heathens, who were no
longer satisfied with their sorely degraded forms of religion.
And though indeed only a few enrolled themselves as “_Proselytes
of Righteousness_,” entering the Jewish community by submitting
to the rite of circumcision, the number of the “_Proselytes of
the Gate_” who without observing the whole of the ceremonial law
undertook to abandon their idols and to worship Jehovah, in all
ranks of society, mostly women, was very considerable, and it
was just among them that Christianity found the most hearty and
friendly acceptance.
§ 11. THE FULNESS OF TIME.
The fulness of the olden time had come when the dawn of a new era
burst forth over the mountains of Judea. All that Judaism and heathenism
had been able to do in preparing the way for this new era had now been
done. Heathenism was itself conscious of its impotence and unfitness
for satisfying the religious needs of the human spirit, and wherever it
had not fallen into dreary unbelief or wild superstition, it struggled
and agonized, aspiring after something better. In this way negatively
a path was prepared for the church. In science and art, as well as in
general intellectual culture, heathenism had produced something great
and imperishable; and ineffectual as these in themselves had proved to
restore again to man the peace which he had lost and now sought after,
they might become effectually helpful for such purposes when made
subservient to the true salvation. And so far heathenism was a positive
helper to the church. The impression that a crisis in the world’s
history was near at hand was universal among Jews and Gentiles. The
profound realization of the need was a presage of the time of fulfilment.
All true Israelites waited for the promised Messiah, and even in
heathenism the ancient hope of the return of the Golden Age was again
brought to the front, and had, from the sacred scriptures and synagogues
of the Jews, obtained a new holding ground and a definite direction.
The heathen state, too, made its own contribution toward preparing the
way of the church. One sceptre and one language united the whole world,
a universal peace prevailed, and the most widely extended commercial
intercourse gave opportunity for the easy and rapid spread of saving
truth.