HISTORY OF ISRAEL LIBRARY

THE PERSIAN SUPREMACY.

C.THE NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE PERSIAN AGE.

I.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE HAGIOCRACY.

Before it reached its final goal, it was, we may say, the destiny of the community of the true God once more to raise itself to the status of a nation, and to establish itself in this position in the ancient fatherland, rigorously shutting itself off from other peoples and communities. This work had been so powerfully initiated and already to so large an extent accomplished by Ezra and Nehemiah, that it could never stand still again until its whole course had been run. The rigidness of the ancient religious discipline which, as the former portions of this work have shown, determined the original form of Israel’s development, had under Ezra’s influence once more attained sufficient vital energy to restore the people to a more steady life, even from the depths to which, in later times, they had sunk. The ancient kingdom of Israel was now reestablished provisionally, within the somewhat contracted limits of the ancient Judah. This was indeed effected only so far as was compatible with foreign supremacy, but, in the hope of better times to come, it strove to recover its outward power by the most faithful adhesion to the ancient consecrated law, and obedience to the written word of God contained in it. Holiness, as it was conceived on the basis of the elevating tradition of its ancient history and the great book of its ancient law, had now become supreme; and though all the host of special commandments which were found in the book of the law was so difficult to comprehend and coordinate practically, yet even these were more and more fully worked into the new life of the nation, and, with their remoter consequences, penetrated deeper and deeper. The task was in many respects a hard one, and long periods often elapsed before the efforts which strong and conscientious men devoted to it reaped their reward, yet prosperous moments also appeared from time to time, in which.what had been long in preparation suddenly took shape in the decision and resolution of the whole community, and was voluntarily embraced by them.

The Chronicler mentions one such moment, of very critical importance, which occurred in the times of Ezra and Nehemiah, and seemed to bring all their long years of toil to an enduring result, such as all desired. On one of the yearly fast-days, after Ezra had delivered a moving exhortation to penitence, the whole assembled people, the commons faithfully following their brethren in authority, vowed with all the solemnities of concluding a covenant carefully to observe all the taws of the holy book of Moses in general, but specially (1) to avoid all mixed marriages; (2) to keep the days of rest and feasts, together with the year of rest; (3) every seventh year, at any rate, to remit all the debts of their co-religionists; (4) to pay a yearly poll-tax to the Temple. Of this last regulation it may be said that the tax was very ancient, but it had, no doubt, been paid but very irregularly hitherto, during the depressed period which followed the destruction of the first Temple, and it was now reduced to a third of the ancient pound (shekel) of silver. They further determined (5) to deliver at Jerusalem every year the wood required for the numerous public burnt-offerings. Moreover, it was to be done in a certain order, apparently so that each of the twelve circuits of the country had to provide it in turn. No service of this kind is mentioned in the ancient law, and this new tribute was perhaps an additional reason for reducing the poll-tax. Nehemiah, however, on account of the continued deficiency of the resources of the Temple, carried out this regulation with especial zeal. Finally (6) the firstlings and the tithes, in their full legal extent and definition, were to be conscientiously paid, preserved, and administered, for in this respect great abuses had crept in, and numbers of Levites had been compelled to leave Jerusalem for want of support. In this point also Nehemiah rendered valuable aid. Indeed, all these newly-established legal regulations remained in force from this time forward essentially unchanged. We may mention, in particular, the year of Jubilee. This was never introduced again, because it seemed impossible to observe it under the completely altered monetary and imperial relations; yet the simple year of rest, reduced to letting the corn-land lie fallow, was observed in all the following centuries, wherever possible. But since the people in these times must have desired immunity from taxation every seventh year, in order to be able to observe it as sabbatical, we may well imagine what great difficulties were connected with its introduction.

Many institutions, which only rose to importance in later times under totally different circumstances, and which are rarely mentioned in the histories till then, may have arisen in the period of which we are speaking, without our finding any allusion to them in the accounts, in general so scanty, which have come down to us from the Persian times. This remark is especially applicable to the supreme Council of the Seventy. It was certainly not till the rise of the outward freedom and power of the nation in the Greek period that this body gained a higher position, and extended its functions over a wider sphere, and, in the last centuries before the second destruction of Jerusalem, became so generally celebrated under the Greek name of Synedrion that it is known by no other even in the Mishnah, the name having been ultimately corrupted into the form Sanhedrin. At this time it consisted of seventy-one members, as the original number of seventy-two or seventy had already been changed for seventy-one, to avoid the possibility of equal divisions. It seems to have been composed of equal numbers of the three orders most important in those times, and best adapted to constitute a tribunal—the priests, the elders (of communities), and the scribes. To it belonged the supreme judicial power in cases which, by their nature, could not be properly settled by inferior courts, for example, the accusation of a false prophet or a high-priest; and, besides these, many questions of the higher administration fell under its jurisdiction, so far as the prince himself did not assume the power of deciding them alone. In the Persian period, no doubt, when all superior authority was rigorously concentrated in the hands of the governor, the independent jurisdiction of a body like this could only be very limited, but still we have every reason to suppose that it was instituted as early as the time of Ezra. In the first place, when we reach the Greek period, we find it in constant activity already, and can see no opportunity for it to have originated then; and, in the second place, Ezra had too true a reverence for the law not to have endeavored to call this organization also into fresh life, since it was there prescribed. Though the sphere of its duties must at first have been very narrow, there were certainly even then a great many questions which it could settle more suitably than the popular assembly, e.g. the arrangements of public worship, and the manner and order of reading the law aloud on the sabbaths and feast days. This was all the more needful because the power of supreme judge, which appertained to the high-priest under the ancient theocracy, could not be fully restored at present, and the high-priest had to content himself with the Temple service and the presidency in this council.

But, at any rate, an obscure reminiscence of a tribunal of this kind, which might have existed ever since Ezra’s time, has been preserved in the representation of the Great Assembly (Synagogue). It certainly cannot be denied that the greater number of the statements about this body found in Talmudic and still later writings simply flow from the increasing want of the historical spirit which characterized the Judeans in the Middle Ages. The details must be admitted to rest on conjecture and imagination, rather than on fact, just as we saw to be the case with the later representations of Ezra himself, who was always considered as the head of this council; but if we confine ourselves strictly to the oldest traditions of its origin, which are very scanty, we cannot imagine that it is all a pure invention. After the age of the prophets, their doctrine descended by a sort of inheritance to the men of the Great Assembly. One of the last of these was Simon the Just, who lived in the early times of the Ptolemies.

These men were then succeeded by individual teachers of the law, whose various opinions it was afterwards attempted to work up and complete into a system in the Mishnah. This really only amounts to an obscure tradition that in the Persian times, and especially from Ezra downwards, when living prophecy had been extinguished, a general council of distinguished men existed to watch over the purity of doctrine and of sacred usages, to define them more accurately, and pronounce judicial decisions in matters affecting them; and, certainly, these are just the limits beyond which no tribunal instituted by Ezra could extend its activity. We can easily understand how, after the Greek period, this body gained a more general judicial and administrative supremacy, how doctrine became more an affair of the different schools, and how everything was thus altered so entirely that the council which had existed in the Persian age came to be regarded afterwards as a venerable society of quite a special nature; but we can also readily see how Josephus might pass over in absolute silence a representation which, even if it had come into existence in his time, was exceedingly obscure, and only gradually found its way into historical narrative. Even the more fully developed representations of the later Talmudists, in spite of all the arbitrary elements which they introduce, may be reduced essentially to the ascription to this body of a manifold activity in arranging the sacred usages and the holy books.

Thus these later scholars, who were so deficient in the historical spirit, indulged in all kinds of groundless fancies about details, which they put down as his­tory; but the obscure representation which lay at the root of it all was not itself a mere invention. After all, then, we may leave Ezra the fame of having also established a high council, which, in spite of weakness and neglect at first, nevertheless transmitted its spirit with increasing strength, and became a powerful additional support of the new community, until, under the altered conditions of the Greek period, it assumed quite a different character. This was, no doubt, the body of elders, whose traditions stood so high in the time of Christ that the later teachers of the law were always glad to attach their own opinions to them. These are they of old who had left behind for the people a short sketch of the virtues and duties of a true Israelite, which was afterwards so highly reverenced, just as the Talmud attributes to the men of the Great Assembly the consecration of eighteen forms of blessing which subsequently came into frequent use. The Council of Twelve, constituted in the early days of the new Jerusalem, must certainly have lost its chief importance in the presence of this larger body; but our previous observations warrant us in inferring that Ezra still retained it for certain solemn occasions.

DEFICIENCIES UNDER THE HAGIOCRACY.

In spite, however, of all the zeal to restore the ancient organization according to the description of it found in the sacred book it was impossible to restore everything. This has, indeed, been already shown in the case of the year of Jubilee. Nothing is more indispensable to a hagiocracy than the heavy penalty of excommunication against recalcitrant members of the community; but, although this was revived, the full severity of former times could hardly be restored to it now. The same difficulty was experienced with regard to sacred objects of the highest nature and significance. No one ventured to restore, after the description in the Pentateuch, the Ark of the Covenant, of whose ultimate fate in the former Temple we have already spoken. This sacred object seemed to the men of a later period too august and sublime for any priest to dare to reproduce the Mosaic type.

Thus the Holy of Holies in Zerubbabel’s Temple remained quite empty, and the wildest ideas gradually arose among the people about the Mosaic ark, which had long vanished entirely out of sight. In the same way the sacred ornament of the high-priest, employed in the consultation of the oracle, had been lost in the great overthrow in the sixth century, when it probably fell into the hands of the Chaldeans as booty. When the new Jerusalem was founded, the first high-priest, Joshua, had to go without it, so that the whole of the new kingdom seemed to labor under a great defect, which it was hoped the future would make good. Yet even at a later date no one ventured to prepare another with his own hands, at any rate in its complete and ancient form, and its absence was the less acutely felt because the oracle of the high-priest had already lost its former high importance long before the first destruction of Jerusalem, and was by no means in a position to regain it now under a foreign supremacy. These deficiencies, therefore, which it was no longer possible to supply, in carrying out the sacred ordinances of the Holy Book, served to bring all the more powerfully to mind the fact that the ancient order of things could never return in the fullness of its glory, and that all the present labored under deep and mysterious wants. We shall see further on what important thoughts and conceptions gradually united themselves to this feeling. Nevertheless, wherever any portion of the great book of the law could possibly be carried out in practice, ample devotion, integrity, and self-sacrifice, were lavished upon its execution, the purest zeal was kindled, and the most earnest effort made in every direction.

The new community threw itself with growing ardor and completeness into this ‘service’ of its God, whenever the sacred book and its interpretation placed it before them in any way as a clear obligation; and while the sense of this duty gained constant strength, the confidence in such men as Ezra grew daily greater. Thus was a people being trained in respect of willingness of spirit and tender faith in the truth revealed of old into more and more complete conformity to the type which had often been longed for in earlier times by the prophets, but had never yet appeared. It was as though since the days of Moses the law had never found a nation to listen to its claims and its decisions so readily as now.

This tone and tendency of life, directed so earnestly and so perseveringly by the great majority of the new people to sacred things and their more and more complete appropriation, was accompanied far down into the middle of the Persian epoch by that genuineness and warmth of feeling which we have seen springing up afresh at its commencement. To this, again, was now added the quiet domestic peace and cheerful content which could not be diffused until the people had found the full satis­faction of their aspiration in the authority exercised by their venerable faith and law, in their new sanctuary, and in the honor which their country was once more acquiring. Many of the latest Psalms still breathe this lofty rest and joy in God, which, it was thought, would henceforth spread through the whole community, since by it each member could feel himself raised, individually no less than collectively, above all the limits of time. How earnestly the venerable law of Israel in its written form might be embraced by the human mind, and what infinite exultation, what certain hope, and what bold confidence towards princes and kings might be derived from it, since it is not only a legal work, but at the same time a short epitome of all the true religion, may be seen with peculiar clearness in Ps. 119. This poem is one of the latest of all the Psalms. It shows little of the higher art in its composition, yet it is penetrated by a tranquil warmth of feeling, and animated, in spite of its wearisome length, by flashes of the most vivid spiritual life; and thus forms a fine memorial of the purer aspirations and elevating feelings characteristic of this period of mingled age and youth.

DIFFUSION OF GENERAL TRANQUILLITY.       

Indeed, all the comparatively prosperous and peaceful tranquility which enabled the new kingdom to settle down round Jerusalem, and gain strength for new and mightier efforts, was itself in the main nothing but the fruit of the resolution with which it had addressed itself to the sacred things which remained the one great blessing of its life, and in which it could find an abundance of elevated contentment and calm. So now, whenever any one of the great feasts brought all who confessed the true religion together from all quarters round the new sanctuary, the inhabitants of the ancient holy land with the hosts of pilgrims whose active participation in commerce in every direction had scattered them further and further in distant countries—what an elevating spectacle must even then have been unfolded! Through the continued spread (in spite of the new settlement at Jerusalem) of these offshoots of the ancient people, the true religion became better and better known among the heathen, and, moreover, by the residence at foreign courts of such Judeans as Ezra and Nehemiah, more and more highly honored, as the inhabitants of Jerusalem itself perceived with joy. We cannot specify exactly when a third or outer court was added to the two older courts of the Temple. It was open for heathens also to sacrifice in it, and we know that in the Greek period generals, kings, and other potentates, often brought the most magnificent offerings there to the most great God. But this kind of half toleration of the heathen was quite in accordance with the spirit and the external necessities of the times; and this court of the heathen was probably established from the very first.

In these centuries of the triumphant glorification of the venerable law, the priests answered on the whole, as we have observed, to the special call made upon them by the age, and displayed a far more zealous and enlightened activity. This in turn concentrated the brightest beams of the honor and glory of the times on them, especially after the fire of Ezra’s zeal had kindled and illuminated them afresh. We have indeed seen already that Nehemiah sternly recalled to his duty the high-priest of his time, Eliashib, grandson of the well-known Joshua. Malachi had to reproach the priests in his day with all kinds of irreverence in their sacrifices and teaching, and with quarrel­some, overbearing, and selfish conduct. But these were only the first feeble and scattered germs of future degeneracy, such as invariably appear in any hagiocracy, especially one in which the ruling house is hereditary as well as the ruling order of priests.

On the whole the priestly order did not fulfill its function badly during these centuries. Nothing now remained to the people wholly unimpaired except the pure and eternal contents of its religion; and the priests, consequently, especially such as were skilled in literature, became of necessity its most powerful leaders and its ablest representatives externally. Submission to their judgment and regulations inevitably assumed in the minds of all the more conscientious individuals the aspect of one of the highest duties of life, and their honor and welfare seemed to be the foundation and an important part of the honor and welfare of the whole people. This was an internal necessity, as is strikingly exemplified by the powerful and energetic layman Nehemiah; and as we should expect from the new Jerusalem, in virtue of its ancient associations and the circumstances of its foundation, it was met in a spirit of laborious but fruitful toil by the corresponding depth of individual conscientiousness and reverence for sacred things which characterized such great priests as Ezra. In more exalted style, the priest now very often bears the honorable designation of a ‘mediator’ or ‘messenger of God’,—the most beautiful that can be given him; and it seems as if the thrill of the rich blessings which immediately resulted from the labors of Ezra was still felt when Malachi sketched his noble picture of a true priest—the same Malachi who was in other respects the last man to spare the priests with his stern word of God.

II.

THE EXTINCTION OP PROPHETISM.—THE LAST PROPHET.

The hagiocracy, then, was now fully started. It is true that it had no new and powerful supports at first, except the sacred book of the law and the power of the priesthood in its three gradations, which had been hereditary from the times of antiquity. All else was as yet undeveloped, but everything was favorable to its growth and independent strength, especially after Ezra’s labors.

But at the same time the disadvantages and drawbacks which must arise in every hagiocracy, merely assuming different forms in different times and places, began at once to appear. The hagiocracy was something new in Israel. Such an organization had never existed there before; and in the presence of its fresh power the old order, in spite of the scrupulous endeavors which were made at this very time to preserve it, underwent of necessity a complete revolution in its most important features. Externally the ancient religion was more highly reverenced now than ever, and even internally there was nothing at first to stand in the way of its sinking more and more deeply into the hearts of individuals, since its essence now shone inextinguishably in the sacred books, which lay open to all; but since it was only protected by the hagiocracy in so far as it had been once for all received as sacred, its living continuation was at an end.

In the position then occupied by Israel, one of the first and most significant consequences of the establishment of the hagiocracy was the final extinction of all the better prophecy. We have indeed already seen that even before the destruction of Jerusalem prophecy had attained the highest point within its reach in the course of the history of this people; for it was one of those elements of the life of Israel which could not rest until they had realized their own inner perfection. Nevertheless, the exceptional nature of the days of Israel’s great trial, followed by its approaching release, roused it once again to powerful expression, as we have previously described; and then in the new Jerusalem prophecy strove to rise again quite after the ancient type, and on the sacred hearth of Zion itself its lightning flashed forth with considerable power yet once again in Haggai and Zechariah. But it could no longer flourish in its purest sphere of action as the creative source of the life and spirit of revealed religion where a sacred book already contained this revelation with sufficient detail and precision, and was regarded as the final authority.

By the side of this it must either remain superfluous, in which case it would gradually lose itself in weakness and impotence, or else it must advance beyond what it had so far revealed. This latter task required more strength than it was conscious of possessing. It was, in fact, quite an impossibility in these centuries, which were concerned only with the simple appropriation of the lofty revelation made already. Hence, soon after the last efforts of prophecy, its power in Israel succumbed to a natural and complete decay; and in its place, by the side of the sacred book, wherever any important decision or regulation for the present had to be made, at any rate in purely religious matters, the priests stood forth alone, and especially those of them who were skilful scribes, until at last the scribes also became an important power independent of the priesthood. This change came about only by degrees, but in such a way that the revolution soon became perceptible enough. In gloom and darkness the ancient prophecy long strove to maintain a continued existence; but the depth of moral degradation to which it soon fell in the midst of the revival of the hallowed usages of old, has been already pointed out in the life of Nehemiah.

It is true that the age of Ezra, the last pure glow of the long day of the Old Testament sun, produced one more prophetic work, the brief composition of Malachi. With its clear insight into the real wants of the time, its stern reproof even of the priests themselves, and its bold exposition of the eternal truths and the certainty of a last judgment, this book closes the series of prophetic writings contained in the canon in a manner not unworthy of such lofty predecessors. And, indeed, it is no less important than consistent in itself that even the setting sun of the Old Testament day should still be reflected in a true prophet, and that the fair clays of Ezra and Nehemiah should in him be glorified more nobly still.

But in spite of all this, the last of the prophets, as Malachi really was, proves already of a very different stamp, so far as he gives ground for the confident expectation that the inevitable extinction of all true prophecy in Israel is very near. For on the one hand, though Haggai and Zechariah, when first the kingdom of Jahveh rose afresh, had labored again in public, just like the ancient prophets, yet the fearful blow which every free movement and hope of the new Israel soon afterwards experienced, made the free and public ministry of any prophet no longer possible. On the other hand, the hagiocracy, the only power which still developed itself with increasing freedom under the pressure of the times, was constantly working unperceived towards the same result. Thus, then, the prophet whom we now call Malachi, on the authority only of the superscription of his book, which is not by his own hand, sends forth to the public his lofty words, not indeed under the name of any other mall, but yet not under his own, as if it had become a recognised principle that no prophet any longer wrote under his own name. How utterly impossible the ancient style of public prophetic address had now become, the book of Malachi shows with a clearness beyond dispute in the almost exclusively didactic style of its discourse and its attempt to confute the current objections. But further, the prophet concludes with the unprecedented and highly significant reference to the law of Moses as the absolutely holy rule of life, and (as if the true prophetic spirit taught him that this alone would not suffice) with the yet more emphatic reference to the certain return of the great prophet Elijah. His book thus bears involuntary witness that the last remains of pure prophetic power were already in complete decline.

Prophecy, in fact, resigns its own power in pointing so clearly and with such faith to the certain return of a far mightier prophet of old,—one whose reappearance would naturally be desired in times which had not the advantage of the labors of any vigorous prophets; but we ought to add that it could not come to a close in any manner more striking or more worthy of itself. As years went on, a firmer and firmer hold was gained by the belief that for the settlement of the great questions of the kingdom, of universal and decisive importance, they must wait for the great prophet of the future, whether he was thought of as an Elijah or even as a Moses, or under any other form; and this belief naturally bordered closely on the Messianic hope, which in its strict sense now manifested a growing tendency to recede. But when the public ministrations of the prophets had gradually ceased entirely, whatever prophetic thoughts and efforts might arise had no means of acquiring general influence save through the medium of literary composition; so that a weak and artificial after-crop, but nothing, more, began to germinate on the ground of the writings of the ancient prophets. As no one would believe any longer in the eminence of a living prophet, the result was that prophecy leaned for support upon the ancient works, in the shape of productions of anonymous authors and editors; but the soil of the prophetic literature of the past was so fruitful and generous, and the spirit which it had left behind exercised so healthy an influence in various directions, that many a shoot full of sap must have sprung up even among the dry twigs of these later times.

The complete and generally recognised cessation of prophetic activity, however, had more serious consequences for the people of Israel than for any other. In the advance of the public life of the community that voice was now stilled, by the divine power of which it had at first been founded, and by which it had ever since been led most effectively through every time of trial. With this perished the loftiest and most characteristic activity and force which the law had permitted in its midst from primeval times. It was not, indeed, regarded as eternally and necessarily extinguished; for the community was still distinctly conscious that it had not yet reached its own perfection, and it still felt that when it really did so the voice by which it had been established would make itself heard again with greater power than ever. But in the present, with its sluggish crawl, it was completely silenced; so that any true inward development of the ancient revelation and religion, and any successful remedy of the defects which still remained, were for the time rendered impossible. And since the ancient revelation already contained in the sacred books required first to be inwardly and thoroughly appropriated, the joy of possessing it for the moment prevented men from feeling very keenly the absence of any living continuation of the great prophetic work; but, in the long run, the deficiency inevitably became all the more prominent, and the substitute which rested on the sacred books proved less and less satisfactory.

III.

THE INFLUX OF FOREIGN ELEMENTS.

The hagiocracy only protects old institutions in virtue of their sanctity, and is therefore incapacitated by its intrinsic impulse and the character of its power from removing the graver defects which still cleave to them. In spite, therefore, of any transient appearance of satisfaction, it necessarily leaves a barren void, which may perhaps be long concealed by its other labors and its external grandeur, but which must make itself more acutely felt with the progress of time. Indications of this now began to appear in Israel. While the old sacred order was now for the first time able to attain complete supremacy, and was really working its way more and more deeply into the spirit of all the remainder of the people, nothing new could rise to give entire completion and exaltation to the present by filling up the gaps still left open from the past. Thus, by the side of this powerful grasp of all that had been holy in antiquity, there still remained a growing uncertainty and weakness with regard to the immediate present, which increased the scrupulousness with which the ancient sanctity was maintained, and intensified the tendency to return to it whenever it seemed necessary—a phenomenon which some striking instances have already made clear to us.

The void created in this way rendered it all the easier for foreign influences at once to force themselves back again, even where it was supposed that they had been entirely expelled. At no time were the national and sacred institutions of the past the objects of a fresher enthusiasm and a more universal sympathy than in the Persian centuries; but, even in this period, the prevailing influx of foreign elements, which had begun to be injurious when the gradual decline of the national energy of Israel set in, long before the destruction of Jerusalem, never ceased.

That heathenism in the strictest sense should force its way in was now, indeed, utterly impossible. But foreign languages and words, especially Aramaic, and step by step a few pure Persian terms as well, could hardly be kept out. This was the consequence, partly of the foreign supremacy, and partly of a variety of causes operating in the same direction, which it would be difficult for us to trace out at the present day, but which become very conspicuous from the importance of their results. It is impossible to deny that henceforth we find those same linguistic phenomena appearing quite fresh among the people, which only became more and more strongly marked in after times; so certain is it that any violent convulsion, dispersion, transplanting, or restoration of a people may produce the most marked alterations in its speech, even if it has already long ago reached the stage of a highly developed literary language.

The exiles in the Assyrio-Babylonian countries learned the popular Aramaic language there, and those who were deported from Jerusalem did so all the more easily on account of their many points of contact with the exiles of the Ten Tribes, who had preceded them much earlier; but, no doubt, the high state of perfection which the Aramean genius itself had at this time reached in culture, in literature, and in scholarship, contributed powerfully to the same result. But, meanwhile, even in the ancient holy land itself, the power of the government and the fresh Aramean settlers had already given Aramaic such an ascendant that it was in general use both in the north and south, while the Phoenician alone held its own in the free maritime cities. Thus, by the time of the destruction of the Aramean kingdoms, the genuine old Hebrew had received a blow from which it was not destined ever again completely to recover.

The earliest settlers who returned to Jerusalem from the exile, and gradually colonized Judah once more, evidently continued Aramaic in common use. Even in the house of the high-priest, Aramaic expressions were retained, and Hebrew was thrown into an Aramaic dress; and local names, also, were now given in Aramaic. At a distance from Jerusalem, in Galilee, Aramaic was always spoken. No doubt the release of the people and the restoration of its religion and nationality to public recognition exercised a powerful influence in the other direction. Hebrew was again honored as in former times : it had to be preserved in active use by church and school, and the learned once more addressed each other in the sacred language of antiquity.

These counter influences could not, however, put an end to the ascendant which Aramaic had already gained, and the new Israel in Palestine consequently became in fact bilingual, for every man of culture spoke and wrote Hebrew as well. But when the Hebrew language was thus renovated and developed by the learned intercourse of a new generation, many fresh elements found their way in. These took the shape, first, of such new words as the requirements of the age demanded; next, of dialectic variations, which had been previously excluded from the language of literature, but now acquired a freer movement and were able to recommend themselves by their convenience; and, again, of a genuine development in accordance with the genius of the ancient language, although under a fresh impulse and by a sort of leap of bold originality. Thus, the new-Hebrew, as it might properly be designated, the formation of which commenced in the period immediately preceding the destruction of Jerusalem, now entered upon a course of rapid advance.

But this new-Hebrew did not enter into the language of literature in its complete form either very rapidly, or, in the first instance, very generally. On the contrary, it is in the highest degree remarkable how powerfully the old-Hebrew shook off the foreign yoke in the period of promise immediately after the liberation, and in how pure a form it strove to maintain itself, and even to regain its pristine beauty, in the hands of the best poets and writers.

An imperceptible introduction of Aramaic idioms and a gradual decline of Hebrew could not, of course, be prevented, and had already begun in the times of Jeremiah and Ezekiel; but no stronger infusion is to be discovered, except, on the one hand, in certain poems of the age immediately following the return from the captivity, and, on the other hand, in the later Persian times, in the book of Koheleth [Ecclesiastes], the author of which, in dealing with entirely new subject matter, did not hesitate to make use of the modern language of his day. It is elevating to see how forcible and how beautiful the Hebrew idiom still appears for general purposes in the memoirs of Ezra and Nehemiah; and we also knows that Nehemiah was not disposed to tolerate corruption of the language. Malachi, too, still writes with great purity. But, with the book of Koheleth, certainly not much later, the whole of the important element thus recently introduced suddenly breaks in; and it is only resisted by the still later authors of the books of Chronicles, Esther, and Daniel, by an effort of self-restraint.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, however, we are quite justified in saying that the way is being paved for a completely new-Hebrew language. This was a special formation of this period, drawn together from native and foreign, old and new materials, and particularly from the language of philosophy, and it reappears long afterwards, in times which were still more favorable to new developments of this kind, in the shape of the Rabbinical Hebrew. The penultimate division of the Chronicles, which is now reckoned as the book of Ezra, gives the first example, on an extended scale, of a Hebrew book composed in part of entirely Aramaic sections; and it admits of no doubt on other grounds that Aramaic books, even on the higher subjects of faith, proceeded at a very early period from the hands of Israelites.—Besides this, Hebrew was only preserved in tolerable purity by the best writers in and about Jerusalem. In Samaria, the fusion of widely different elements in the population produced a regularly mongrel language. Its spirit and chief constituents were doubtless Aramaic, but it included a great deal of Phoenician, old Canaanite, and other foreign materials, and thus formed a tolerably distinct dialect. In Galilee, too, where the faithful were now only connected with Jerusalem by community of religion, a similarly corrupt form of Aramaic had been constantly making its way undisturbed since the Assyrian period. By this time it had, no doubt, acquired much the same form as we observe in the New Testament.

One practice which now permanently established itself was the calculation of years by the reigns of the Persian kings; in designating the months, however, the Chaldean names were employed, a usage which need not surprise us after the remarks already made. This innovation was all the more easily introduced, and took all the deeper hold, because the nation had done so little in the previous thousand years of its independent existence towards bringing a chronology of its own into general use. But it is remarkable that some writers still preserve the old-Hebrew method of reckoning the months from the beginning of spring.

But this linguistic fusion, which could not maintain its progress without difficulty, was far less important than the growing prevalence and vigor of freer modes of speaking of the Divine under the fixed images and names of imaginative forms. This kind of mythology is an essential characteristic of heathen religions, and even of Zarathustrianism.

The ancient severity and even rigidity with which the original Jahveism allowed the Divine to be conceived under fixed images, had already been struggling after greater freedom for a long time, in proportion to the increasing wealth of its historical experience, and to the growing variety of movement with which thought, poetry, and art, together with the general spiritual life of the people, had striven after further development and transformation. The whole series of these thousand years was thus, it may be said, one long struggle to break through the first narrow limits of Jahveism in this direction also, to correspond with the expansion which it had sustained in so many others. But nothing was more calculated to excite and stimulate these efforts and the wants in which they originated, than the closer intermixture of Israel with other nations, especially in the east, which gradually set in from the tenth and still more from the eighth century onward. Here it was brought face to face with highly-developed mythologies, and that, too, in religions like the Zarathustrian, which revealed a more earnest spirit, and had no share in the general worship of idols.

Two special peculiarities distinguished the Zarathustrian religion : (1) the sharp distinction between evil and good, even in each individual object of thought, in the invisible and the visible, in the abstract powers and tendencies as well as in the various created things; (2) the attempt to include all the infinite variety of separate eras, powers, tendencies, creatures, and essences within fixed series, numbers, and limits, so that number itself acquired in this system a certain sanctity. The union of these two elements to a greater extent than had ever before been realized, constitutes the great charm which the genius of Zarathustrianism undoubtedly exercised for so long a period and over so wide an area. Touched by this system, and fascinated, at any rate, by the external beauty of its forms and numbers, the spirit of the ancient religion of Israel, or rather, in the first instance only, its poetic and artistic faculty, burst with the greater case through the rigorous limitations which had hitherto confined it, and appropriated a set of images, representations, and names, which were unknown to the primitive Jahveism. In particular, the spiritual power of evil, which was now far more deeply recognised in general, was conceived as more independent, was thought of under fixed images and forms, and so put in sharp contrast to the pure, good God.

Thus the opposition was no longer confined solely to Jahveh on the one side, and the heathen deities on the other; but an idea which might lead to far more profound and significant consequences was also adopted and pursued with growing freedom, viz. that of the antagonism between evil and good in all spiritual matters; and, under these circumstances, the attempt was made in both quarters simultaneously to represent under definite forms and images the countless host of spiritual powers individually conceivable. The whole of this freer movement of thought and imagination served, in the first place, none but poetical and prophetic purposes, and it was not till much later that it furnished material for real reflexion and speculation. These images were at first by no means simply borrowed from the foreign religions; on the contrary, they really shaped themselves with a fresh creative originality, in accordance with the inner tendencies and spirit of the true religion, worked themselves into exact accord with it, and even took their names from the circle into which they were thus introduced.

At first, therefore, they scarcely appear except among certain special poets and prophets; Ezekiel, for example, delights in all kinds of images, however far-fetched, of divine things (widely differing in this respect from the simplicity of Jeremiah), yet he never speaks of evil spirits. But the influence of Zarathustrian imagery is distinctly visible in the new Jerusalem in Zechariah, when he makes the seven Amshaspands (who stand round the throne of the supreme God, like the seven chief nobles round that of the king) into the seven eyes of God, and with his sacred numbers and series is the first to prepare the way for the Gnostics and Kabbalists. These representations, however, underwent continual development, and subsequently sank so deeply into the whole thought and language of Israel that the Chronicler speaks of the actions of evil spirits even in perfectly simple narrative. To what extreme this tendency naturally led, and how it finally contributed to the ruin of the national spirit, will appear further on.

IV.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF LITERATURE.

As a general rule the higher spiritual condition of any nation is most readily perceptible in its poetry and literature, and it is precisely in this department that we see most clearly how hard it was for the higher spirit characteristic of Israel to rise once more to its former energy and creative independence, and how easily the grander flight which it seemed about to take at the beginning of this period might ere long again be impeded and its course checked by unforeseen and powerful obstacles. Even in the noblest efforts and hopes of its first attempts, we have seen how completely and how painfully the people soon found itself checked, and even thrown back again into its ancient sorrows and misfortunes; and this sad experience stifled and maimed even the spirit which was striving after freer action in the forces of poetry and the forms of art. The hagiocracy which, as the only possible power among the people, now acquired an ascendancy overshadowing everything else, bound down the mind to what had once been adopted as absolutely above criticism, and with each successive stage in its development took from it the more completely all liberty to soar freely in any direction and to seek the truth solely for its own sake. In the form under which it now rose in Israel, resting upon a book of sacred law and a body of customs sanctioned by antiquity, as its firmest foundation, the hagiocracy was certainly effective in promoting the careful preservation, interpretation, and application of the law and other ancient books which seemed to be of high importance. In fact, the increased attention and labor bestowed on the venerable book of the law, and then, by an easy transition, on antiquity generally, constituted its greatest permanent service; but that in other respects it hampered and broke the upward course of the spirit, instead of stimulating or guiding it, was proved even in this period of its primitive purity. The complete silence which gradually fell upon the highest form of spiritual activity in Israel, viz. prophecy, the preponderance of an exclusively backward flight towards the past, the unyielding pressure of foreign supremacy, and the increasing influx of foreign elements of thought, which there was no longer any greater power of spiritual life to oppose, united to complete the decline of poetry and literature. This gradual deterioration had already set in, as we have seen, before the destruction of Jerusalem; but now that the fresh flight essayed by general literature as well as prophecy towards the end of the exile was so soon checked again, it advanced with increasing rapidity. It is true that great numbers of books continued to be written, and indeed they gradually became more numerous than ever, so that Koheleth could found an entirely novel complaint on their perplexing and wearisome multiplication; but the intrinsic value of this literature corresponded less and less to its increasing fertility.

It is only in the poetry of song, of all kinds of poetry the simplest, and therefore in all ages the most indestructible and ever fresh, that we still find certain fragments quite worthy of comparison with the ancient models in depth of thought, in power, and almost in beauty of expression. The true religion came now to be grasped individually with a deep earnestness as the highest blessing of life; it had often been lost already, and might easily be lost again, but this only made it necessary to grasp it the more firmly; it sank into the mind with a marvelous glow, penetrating and warming it throughout, and filling it with infinite blessedness. These feelings receive the most perfect expression in many of these later songs, and nowhere else have we so clear a proof of the pure truth and the irrefragable certainty with which the ancient religion laid hold of men, with no further protection or privilege than it could secure for itself, and independently of all national interest or of the position of the individual in the community. Here we find hardly a trace remaining of any contest with the world, or of any severe struggle to avoid losing hold of the true God in the midst of its conflicts and dangers. Transfigured already in pure blessedness, the spirit feels itself in possession of the highest good, and only takes delight in pondering over it and in grasping it with growing earnestness. These songs are thus the most eloquent and beautiful witnesses to the glorified faith in the true God which now poured forth into the world from the heart of the individual, feeble as he might be in himself, and to the victory which this faith was even now to win over the whole world; but by their side there gush forth at the same time the noblest hymns of the community, in such a stream as never flowed before, and many of them breathe an earnestness and an intense glow which can only inspire such compositions when they have first entered in equal strength into the song of the individual soul. This rich stream of public hymns proves most forcibly that this reborn community of the new Jerusalem had already, in the possession of the ancient and eternal truths, gained imperishable life, which would endure through all the vicissitudes of time; and it forms the second original species of songs which this period continued to produce.—But by the side of such songs as these, in which the creative power of the old religion still rises in full strength, and which are still adequate to supply even essential wants, many others now spring up which are simply put together in whole or in part from the most beautiful passages of older songs; and this process affords the strongest possible evidence which any period can give of the decline of its own power, just because song is the most primitive and spontaneous of all forms of poetry. Besides this, the artificial alphabetical arrangement of the verses now becomes far more frequent and elaborate than it had formerly been; and the want of cohesion, compactness, and elevation of style, which had already become manifest in several earlier poems, now returned in many instances, forming a direct contrast in this respect to the numerous poems produced during the short but lofty spiritual flight which marked this period, and distinguished for their brevity and point.

The alternation of a diffuse and concentrated style, which had already been introduced at an earlier period, was now carried further, even in prophetic books. The style of Haggai and Zechariah is by no means concentrated, having a tendency to run off into long periods; but in the loftier representation by means of a series of connected images, upon which Zechariah on one occasion ventures, it becomes compressed in the highest degree, and supplies hints rather than details.—But the best example of a poetical style degenerating rapidly into prose is furnished by the book of Koheleth, in which the purity of the strictly poetic form is sustained only in isolated passages.

Literary artifices and devices are now applied with increasing frequency and boldness. In the first place, the freedom of figurative treatment and artistic design was enlarged by the growing influx of Zarathustrian images and numbers. This freedom now passes into many of the best portions of the prophetic literature which was still produced, and what grand passages might thus be designed is shown by a great part of the book of Ezekiel, and again in a different and newer form in the main division of Zechariah. In the second place, a corresponding liberty came into vogue of writing in the name of some great prophet or poet of an earlier time, a practice of which we have seen the first example in a prophet who wrote in the name of Jeremiah, and in accordance with which towards the end of the Persian supremacy the sage Solomon was introduced, discoursing as Koheleth, in the book of sayings called by that name. But owing to the rapid decline of every branch of literature, but little use was made of the possibilities thus afforded for compositions on a grand scale. No such product as the book of Job ever sprang from this soil again; but, on the contrary, the supplementary portions of it, which come from one or two younger poets who seem to have lived in Egypt during the exile, show that the perfect art of so lofty a work was gradually less and less comprehended, and that attention was paid only to individual portions of it. Thus even in this direction art became more and more concerned with mere externalities, as is indicated by the growing fondness for the introduction of artificial names into poetry. Even the intermingling of different kinds of style and poetic art increases. For instance, the long 119th Psalm embraces, generally speaking, contemplation, instruction, and prayer. Proverbial poetry passes to a far greater extent than was formerly the case, on the one hand into mere descriptive poetry, and on the other into highly artificial designs. This last phenomenon is strikingly exemplified by the book of Koheleth at the end of the fifth or the beginning of the fourth century.

Meanwhile the value which was always attached to the great sacred Book might stimulate research in many directions. The first steps in philosophy had long been made in Israel, and had already ripened into glorious fruit; and a host of extraneous opinions and questions was now streaming in from without as well, as for example through the Zarathustrian religion. In spite, therefore, of the blow which everything Israelite had suffered in the exile, the spirit of philosophic inquiry was once more aroused; and this was effected all the more easily because the nation had now more leisure for quiet introspection, and the opportunity was consequently favorable for ample discussion. The gradual revival, under these influences, of the ancient schools of wisdom, and the consequent formation of a new scholastic language of research and philosophy, are set in the clearest light by the book of Koheleth and another adage book of but little later date, which passed over in the Greek period almost word for word into the book of the Son of Sirach. The national spirit was not at rest in this direction either, and nothing but the gloomy depression of the age held back this effort for any length of time.—But ever since the great dispersion of the people and the destruction of Jerusalem, foreign culture and art had endeavored to make their way in under a thousand forms, and to amalgamate with the still living treasure of the ancient spiritual powers of Israel; and accordingly the art of playing upon the letters of the alphabet, which had doubtless been familiar from an earlier period to the learned men of the ancient Babylonian-Assyrian schools, now became more and more prevalent.

It is true that we no longer possess any precise knowledge of the history of the learning of the old Babylonian scribes; but it is indubitable that it was extremely ancient and that it might therefore soon have lost itself, in accordance with the whole spirit of the religion and philosophy developed there, in all manner of artificial devices, and have have already demonstrated the power of its general influence on the old-Hebrew school of this period. When, therefore, we find that the device of the Atbash first appears towards the end of the exile in a Babylonian-Hebrew writer, and then, together with other similar arts, only obtains more and more favor, like every pleasing novelty, during all the succeeding centuries of this history, we are compelled to conclude that Israel received from the Babylonians these elements of the later so-called Kabbala (i.e. scholastic lore, erudition). In this case, too, the first steps were very simple and the oppression of the age might be pleaded in excuse, but when in after times the ancient simplicity and straightforwardness failed to return, these ingenious efforts came more and more into vogue, as we shall have to explain more fully by-and-by.

The art of historical composition received further development from the new species of personal memoirs of which the records of Ezra and Nehemiah furnish striking examples. At the same time the practice also grew up, in accordance with a powerful impulse, of introducing as nearly as possible in their original form the royal decrees and similar documents, for in its foreign servitude the nation felt more and more strongly the profound influence and benefit of the letters of clemency issued by the great king. In other respects, however, the art of history was making no advance to any higher perfection, and the details of the more remote antiquity became increasingly obscure to it. This is, indeed, perceptible enough towards the end of this period in the books of Chronicles, and is in some respects still more clearly disclosed in the book of Esther, which we shall have to discuss hereafter.

But one of the chief efforts of this whole period hinges on the collection and frequent reissue of the best writings of the past, the high value of which, together with all the national antiquity, had at length gained general recognition. These collections and scholastic labors had already begun long before the destruction of Jerusalem, but they were now resumed and pursued with a zeal quite new. We can also clearly perceive that these collections were now no longer taken in hand so arbitrarily by incompetent persons. Many of the latest prophets, on the contrary, who may be called disciples of the prophets to distinguish them from the prophets themselves, were the collectors of prophetic books, and often added something of their own here and there in their editorial capacity; and in the same way many of the latest Psalms show signs of having been composed by the last collectors and editors.

Finally, the frequent reading and the more earnest contem­plation of the ancient writings, which were now to become the regular custom, reacted powerfully upon the contents of this later literature in many ways; and instead of the mere involuntary repetition of single words or even sentences from the more ancient writings, we now find echoes of their subjects in a great portion of the productions of this period. Even poets were fond of topics from ancient history, and employed them at some length in songs for every kind of instruction and exhortation. Even in the midst of the outpouring of the poet’s own feelings, his song often passes involuntarily into the commemoration of sublime events of the past, and first finds satisfaction there; and in other books, also, elaborate discourses on the past, or long and minute references to it, present themselves naturally on every occasion. This tendency supplies further proof that the noblest elements of the spirit of the age were nurtured on the past alone.

V.

THE GERMS OF FURTHER DISSOLUTION AND WEAKNESS
WITHIN AND WITHOUT.

In other respects no doubt the ancient customs of the people remained on the whole but little changed during the Persian epoch, and the renewed strictness of the old religion of the fatherland was their protecting shield. During these centuries the nation had first of all to gather its powers together, and start afresh on a life of its own. For this end this scrupulous return to the usages of the past, and even to a more rigorous observance of them, was highly beneficial; while the dis­advantages of this tendency towards an absolute hagiocracy, though they must soon have revealed themselves in the higher departments of life, exercised as yet but little influence over the lower, where the prescriptions of antiquity were firmly established.

Nevertheless certain germs of the dissolution of this new order of the hagiocracy show themselves without delay. Nothing but absolutely pure conceptions and actions can supply a basis for a supremacy which shall from the first be indestructible; nothing else, from the moment of its coming into general view, can help giving unmistakable signs of its inevitable dissolution at some future period. At certain epochs the hagiocracy may perhaps have become a necessity; it is this cause which raises it to power and secures its temporary advantages; but since it only springs from temporary exigencies, it cannot avoid soon disclosing its deficiencies by clear indications of its internal and external weakness and its final dissolution. And if even the original pure Theocracy, in the form under which it had entered the world a thousand years before, had speedily given premonitions of its future dissolution, this was much more likely to be the case with the hagiocracy, which did not even attempt anything more than to maintain and renew the ancient type to the utmost possible extent. The defects inherent in the former would now reappear, so far as the altered circumstances of the age did not restrain them, and those peculiar to the latter would be added to them. It was this combination which rendered the dissolution of this new power inevitable, the preliminary indications of which could not long be concealed. Those which present themselves in the Persian period are at first only remote; but of their appearance there can be no doubt.

The hagiocracy is indeed capable of scrupulously preserving and protecting whatever sanctity comes into its hands; but to let this element have free scope for action without suffering it to evaporate, and to employ it to penetrate and reform the world without losing its own hold of it, is beyond its power. It has a burning desire to subject every element of humanity to its judgment and its law, and to control and guide the life of the individual, down to the minutest details, because it is obscurely conscious that the holy, in so far as it is the really divine, ought to pervade every department of human existence; but, since it possesses nothing but the reflexion of what was once divine, it is in fact destitute of the strength actually to attain that towards which it feels itself impelled. This is most immediately apparent in the sphere of philosophical inquiry and skepticism. The force and rapidity with which these tendencies gather strength are directly proportioned to the degree in which the hagiocracy supposes itself already to possess and to understand everything, whereas in reality it has not even desire and energy to look deep enough into its own immediate property, and consequently allows even the truths confided to it to become gradually obscured. Hence it is that philosophy, with its unwearied questionings and investigations, gradually rises up over against it, and readily assumes a hostile attitude towards the truths which the hagiocracy has failed to protect; and while the world learns in this contest to doubt the truths which it sees so badly defended, the whole strength of skepticism lies concealed in the hagiocracy itself, in the fact that it supposes itself to understand its own truths, but really comprehends them less and less. In this way doubt grew powerful around and even within it, developed itself in schools of philosophy, and embraced in its magic circle every one of an inquiring mind or from any other causes morally desponding; and freedom at last thought itself obliged to enter into an alliance with it to resist the claims and compulsions of the hagiocracy, and nothing was so powerful a solvent as the skepticism which came in contact with sacred things and was yet not really conquered. This is always one of the prime causes of the dissolution of a hagiocracy; and in the Persian age we already see the first movements of this philosophy, which gradually passed more and more decidedly into simple skepticism. How completely the spirit of questioning and inquiry had gained the upper hand, is shown by the whole tenor of the discourse of the last prophet, Malachi. But the full power of skepticism is already seen developed in the book of Koheleth. Koheleth examines and searches through everything, all the vanity and all the blessings of the human lot, and even the vanity of philosophy and the spirit of inquiry themselves, and it is only with an effort that he at last hushes up his doubts as to the immortality of the soul and a last judgment of God upon it. It is true that he really does overcome even these doubts in so far as they might prove injurious, and thereby shows how much of the great treasure of the ancient faith was still retained by this age for its support in spite of the complete change which had gradually passed over it. But the sequel of this history will soon demonstrate with what irresistible strength this same power of skepticism might return under conditions favorable to its own genius, and how it might suddenly seethe over and commit the most dreadful devastations. The hagiocracy inevitably fosters weak faith and groundless doubt, and generates no desire to emerge out of this condition, as the Papal Hagio­cracy of our own day is ever teaching us afresh.

But the hagiocracy could not really satisfy even those who desired to remain absolutely faithful to the holy, because it had thrust itself in between the intrinsically holy and the individual mind, and erected a kind of partition wall between the two. It is possible, however, for the individual, whether a member of one of the spiritual orders or not, to force his way behind the growing density of this partition to the inner sanctuary itself; and what fruits of purest religion have we not already seen ripening in this period. But the wall was becoming more and more difficult to break through. The rule of life was more and more exclusively laid down by the priests for the laity, and by the sacred book and sacred letter for priest and layman alike, and behind this protecting wall the purely divine element, even in the very light in which it had once shone forth so clearly, retreated further and further into obscurity. The result was that the prescriptions of the ancient religion assumed the aspect of mere laws of outer life, which had to be obeyed simply because they had once been enjoined, because the priest or the sacred book so determined, and because divine salvation was not to be expected on any other conditions. Thus the individual might well submit to them in their strictest form, and even prefer to do too much rather than too little; nor could he ever carry far enough to satisfy himself the scrupulous observance of the host of minute injunctions which he conceived to be founded on the letter of scripture. In this direction, too, he was inevitably confronted by that defect which we have seen to be inherent in the original limits imposed upon the whole ancient Covenant; and we have already observed in a conspicuous instance to what an extent this might be carried even in Ezra’s time.

The only leading tenets and mottoes of the Great Assembly already described which have been preserved, are the three following : “be circumspect in judgment”; “train up many scholars”; “and make a hedge around the law!” But what an amount of torturing scrupulousness and useless law-making is already implied in this third dictum, which treats all mankind as infants! The effort to provide against the possibility of the smallest letter of an old or new law being transgressed, and so to heap law upon law, and, instead of steadily accustoming man to the faithful observance of the few great laws of God, to surround him with an endless network of the minutest injunctions, and always keep him in leading-strings, though only to be seen in the fullness of all its separate results in the Mishnah and the Talmud, nevertheless essentially dates its exis­tence from this period, and only develops itself more and more irresistibly in the succeeding centuries. It is not to be supposed that this tendency had only then sprung up in the world, and that otherwise it could have been neither possible nor actual. The fact is forced strongly upon our observation, that Ezra, whose spirit so powerfully stimulated and controlled it all, was in the first instance only a judge, and could only regard and direct affairs from a lawyer’s point of view; so that the spirit which now became predominant by the side of the hagiocracy may rightly be designated in brief as the legal, or more exactly, that of instruction in the law (the juristic). But when a supreme law of life has been already given, and, without seriously troubling themselves about its ultimate foundations, men are only desirous to work it out into detail, and, if neces­sary, to bring it into actual life by means of a countless multitude of new regulations, and to keep it alive and valid by all the compulsory power of ever new penal laws, similar condi­tions everywhere produce similar results. The scholastic labors of the Middle Ages, and those of the papal jurists, or of the majority of their fellow-workers in Germany, are essentially the same. The difference between the legal movement over which Ezra presided and its modern parallels lies chiefly in this simple fact, that the former found in every ancient law which it worked up the immediate presence of the holy itself, and therefore treated it with the utmost awe and the most scrupulous care, and with admirable patience made the most strenuous efforts possible to secure the legal obedience, and, by that path, the outward sanctity of man. What the learned of today would so hypocritically worship and appro­priate as the Positive, that, at least, if not more, was then furnished by the Holy, and, in the eyes of believers, flowed from the purest conceivable source.

In fact, it seemed both useful and suitable to the nature of man that he should have before him all his duties toward God (i.e. those that were indispensable) accurately defined and arranged in a perfectly authentic code, so that he might be able to order his whole life in accordance with them, in the tranquillizing hope that in doing this he did all that was possible, and satisfied every claim of virtue. It all looks so comprehensible, so easy and convenient. The learned elaboration of the letter of the law seldom leads, it is true, to a mitigation of its requirements; yet, in the case of the forty stripes permitted by the law as the limit of that kind of punishment, the Rabbinical regulation, to prevent one extra stroke being given by an oversight, permanently reduced the number to thirty-nine.

On the other hand, the prevailing tendency to narrow and rigid interpretations led to further extensions and increase of the power of the law in many ways. The tithes, the purifications which were enforced with special rigor as closely affecting the holy, and most of, all of the Sabbath, as the great central point of the original law, came under this treatment. No doubt the number and the burden of the laws which were arrived at by a simple process of interpretation became in this manner frightfully heavy; but then there was no lack of all manner of devices and subterfuges for lightening this yoke, especially as many oversights could be made good by sacrifices and money. At any rate, this nation seemed to have the advantage over all others in the fact that its exceedingly precise, but, at the same time, supremely holy laws, enabled it to feel itself at every step in life, in all it did and in all it left undone, guided by a firm hand and protected from on high. It is on this element that Josephus seizes to exalt the law and religion of his people above all others, and it was by this that, during succeeding centuries, so many thousands moved in its combination of the old and new with security and joy. It was only necessary for the believer to regulate his actions as prescribed, and he was counted a true and perfect member of the community of God, a disciple of the kingdom of heaven, as it was afterwards called.

But when all the claims of holiness in general can be settled with such ease, however difficult certain details may be, it really disappears without our knowing it at the very moment when its possession is supposed to be completely secured. As a real and inexhaustible power in life, and as the moving energy of the soul, it vanishes, and is retained only in appearance and in fancy. And when men imagine themselves to have got hold of the true God entirely in their Scrip­ture and their external law, he is really withdrawing further and further from man, in his incomprehensible exaltation and the mysterious impulses of his presence, while an empty void and waste is formed where all seems full and bright. This very vacuity of life and spirit, this absence of all deep enduring power and inexhaustible security in the divine presence, is ever threatening, throughout the succeeding centuries, in spite of numerous brilliant cases of individual elevation, to gain the ascendant.

It seemed as though the youth of the nation, in spite of all the efforts made from time to time to call it back, would never permanently return; and as though its form, which had now grown old, could never be restored to health without being completely regenerated, by starting afresh from an entirely new beginning. There are, moreover, certain signs which never fail to reveal, even involuntarily, the real condition of an individual or of a nation, though no eye may see it: thus the whole of the internal weakness and perversity of the hagiocracy already betrays itself in the one small but significant circumstance of its treatment of the name of God. Desirous to maintain the infinite sanctity of the venerable name Jahveh, and fearful of desecrating it, it ordained that it should never be pronounced at all, and so allowed this glorious ancient name to lie in absolute obscurity behind a perpetual veil. No doubt, this practice was only introduced very gradually at first; and unless the name had always been treated with a reverence quite peculiar to itself ever since the formation of the community, no such custom of abstaining out of reverence from pronouncing it at all could ever have arisen. But it was only the growing scrupulousness of later days which could conclude from the third injunction of the Decalogue that for fear of running the risk of misusing the name when taking an oath, or on any other occasion, and thereby exciting the wrath as it were of an avenging Lord, it would be better never to utter it at all.

It now became common to use instead the general name Elohim, i.e. God; until at last the custom was established of reading the next highest name of Adonai, which corresponded to it most nearly, even in those passages of Scripture where it was found written, or where, as in the books of history, it had to be written then; and, in the same way, men afterwards came to prefer saying Heaven instead of God, in ordinary speech. The substitution of Adonai, was already customary towards the end of the Persian era, as we see from many indications; and from that time it maintained itself amongst the Judeans for all succeeding ages, through a constant succession of departures from the flee and straightforward course. The Samaritans alone never gave in to the practice. The name of the true God was now suspended at an infinite distance, high above all the present scene of existence; and the further notion was soon conceived that it would only be revealed again in the whole of its wondrous significance and power in the fullness of things, at the end of all time. In the same way, the heathen had their mysterious names of deities, and the Chinese emperor’s ori­ginal name is suspended over all his subjects, inviolable and unapproachable during his reign, while he is designated by some other appellation. But this God of the ancient community, though men feared his name above all things, and desired utterly to surrender themselves to him in deepest awe, was in reality ever retiring further and further from them, into a mysterious distance; and while they were restrained by their scruples from looking into his face or calling upon himt by his true name, they were really losing him more and more, so undesigned was this most significant of all the signs of Israel’s last great era! As the name of the people changes with each of the three great stages of its history, and each name may serve as a brief symbol of the whole essence of the special era to which it belongs, so it is to a still greater extent with the name of God; and nothing is more significant than that the simple but sublime Jahveh should be succeeded by the splendid Jahveh of Host, together with the very free use of Jahveh, and this, again, finally by a blank. But this practice of avoiding the highest conceivable name of the true religion, when it had acquired the force of law, gradually fostered the most artificial ways of thinking and speaking of God, as though it were impossible, at least for human language, to find any name fully worthy of being used as an adequate designation of the Unspeakable. Nor was this all, it also produced many kinds of superstition, especially the prevalent belief that it was possible to work miracles by the bold utterance of the mysterious heavenly name, the probable sound of which it would still be easy to imitate. These tendencies, no doubt, only reached their further development in the following centuries, but their ultimate source lies hidden here.

Now, when the believer thus endeavors himself to fulfill the whole of the sacred law, and yet sees the less conscientious, or even those who are absolutely hostile to it, prospering, it would naturally depend entirely upon his disposition and circumstances whether he burst into indignant wrath against them and cursed or chastised them severely, according as they were beyond or within his power, as we have seen Nehemiah doing, or whether, on the other hand, he was led to entertain doubts of his own conduct and to fall into a sullen, or even, as far as the distinction between good and evil is concerned, into an indifferent state of judgment and action. Indeed, we see this half sullen, half indifferent life increase to a dangerous extent among the members of the new community before the Persian age is over, so that Malachi cannot raise his prophetic voice high enough in denunciation of it; and Koheleth wrote his book of sayings with the special object of rather reminding a generation growing in discontent and sullenness of the joys of life, as well as of the duty, in all fear of God, of thankfully enjoying life itself as a divine gift. In this respect, also, the book of Koheleth is the first of its kind, and the inference suggests itself that the people which has to be thus admonished on the enjoyment of life must be growing old already, or that, at least, in spite of its last great change, it cannot completely renew its youth again.

Finally, this same obscure feeling of discontent might receive the most formidable accretion from an entirely new and unexpected source. The hagiocracy arose on the basis of the great book of the law, and it was, in consequence, logically driven buck towards the primitive condition of the ancient community. Indeed, the renovation of the true religion, which is the last and highest special effort of this third era, could not fail, if it were but profound enough, to involve a return to those fundamental truths which had been enunciated in the first instance, and to the spirit which had once been revealed in all its power through them. But since the hagiocracy laid down as its special foundation the book of the law alone, and did so because there were no old sacred laws and ordinances expressly prescribed anywhere else, it was ever more and more inclined to leap over the whole intermediate development of the second era, which we may call the prophetic, on account of the great prophets who then stood by the side of the kings. This great movement had certainly not yet been brought to a full and clear conclusion, or had it made way for an entirely new basis of life, simply because it had been violently broken off by the destruction of Jerusalem. In many respects, however, it towered far above the primitive condition of the community in the first era; and many golden grains had already found their way from its spiritual treasures into the great book of the law itself, though not to such an extent as completely to remove the defects of the ancient order.

The fact, therefore, that the hagiocracy depended immediately on this great book of the law alone, rendered it easy for it to take a reactionary direction, the consequences of which might be very dangerous. It concealed behind it nothing less than the ancient theocracy, in the form under which it was described and aspired after as a national blessing in the great book of the law, the very letter of which was now considered sacred. Thus, in proportion to the logical consistency with which it developed and confirmed itself, it must constantly feel impelled to return to the primitive national constitution; and indeed, in all imperial and national relations, the community strove in its latest period to recur to its earliest state, as it found it set forth in the sacred law. Thus it followed the lead of the ancient theocracy in endeavoring more effectually to close its ranks externally against the heathens and semi-heathens, a principle which also harmonized completely with the scrupulous character which was becoming prominent in it, and of which we have already seen an instance, immediately after the foundation of the new Jerusalem, in the treatment of the Samaritans. This was one of the first important events of the new community; it made a great rent in the religious and national relations of the holy land itself, and so became a precedent for all the future. The result was seen in the constant imposition of fresh national limitations upon religion at a time when it ought, on the contrary, to be throwing them off more and more, rising above all lower difficulties and doubts, and victoriously extending itself through the whole wide world. Indeed the ancient theocracy which lay here concealed, endured the foreign supremacy as long as it was inevitable, but could by no means be reconciled with it, since the Messianic hopes could never again be quite extinguished, but necessarily tended to break out into more abundant blossom at every time of external oppression.

The first disturbances which sprang from these causes were speedily followed, it is true, by a long period of tranquility under the Persian Supremacy; but though Ezra genuinely submitted himself to it and exhorted all his contemporaries to acknowledge its benefits, yet, at the same time, he considered it due alone to the sins of the people that they had been made the slaves of the stranger; and he therefore hoped from the bottom of his heart that by-and-by the relation might be again reversed. And so, in the times which succeeded Ezra’s, when the Persian empire kept losing in prestige and internal strength, when the rule of the satraps became more and more arbitrary and pernicious, and Palestine especially had much to suffer from the protracted and devastating wars between the Persians and the Egyptians whose craving for independence could never be stilled, we find in the book of Koheleth expressions of profound dissatisfaction with the external supremacy, which the sage author can only attempt laboriously to smooth down. The events and the religion of its primitive history had strengthened the nation in a hatred of arbitrary despotism; and at this very moment the hagiocracy was endeavoring to restore it to that position which it had occupied a thousand years before.

In all this lay just so many germs of dissolution, threatening this form of constitution and government also, as soon as it should begin to rise in power and to unfold its specific genius. It is true indeed that the propitious tendencies and germs of the hagiocracy were far more powerful, and that this whole stage of the history is occupied with their growing ascendancy, but still we shall see the others constantly returning under more and more highly developed forms. We are now sufficiently prepared to form at once a correct estimate of the general results of this period.

D.

THE ISSUE OF THE PERSIAN EPOCH.