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Title: Jewish Theology, Systematically and Historically Considered

Author: Kaufmann Kohler

Release date: June 6, 2010 [eBook #32722]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JEWISH
THEOLOGY, SYSTEMATICALLY AND HISTORICALLY
CONSIDERED ***

Jewish Theology
Systematically and Historically Considered

By

Dr. K. Kohler
President

Hebrew Union College

New York

The Macmillan Company

1918

Contents

Dedication
Preface
Introductory
Chapter I. The Meaning of Theology
Chapter II. What is Judaism?
Chapter III. The Essence of the Religion of Judaism
Chapter IV. The Jewish Articles of Faith
Part I. God
A. God As He Makes Himself Known To Man
Chapter V. Man's Consciousness of God and Belief in God
Chapter VI. Revelation, Prophecy, and Inspiration
Chapter VII. The Torah—the Divine Instruction
Chapter VIII. God's Covenant
B. The Idea Of God In Judaism
Chapter IX. God and the Gods
Chapter X. The Name of God
Chapter XI. The Existence of God
Chapter XII. The Essence of God
Chapter XIII. The One and Only God
Chapter XIV. God's Omnipotence and Omniscience
Chapter XV. God's Omnipresence and Eternity
Chapter XVI. God's Holiness
Chapter XVII. God's Wrath and Punishment
Chapter XVIII. God's Long-suffering and Mercy
Chapter XIX. God's Justice
Chapter XX. God's Love and Compassion
Chapter XXI. God's Truth and Faithfulness
Chapter XXII. God's Knowledge and Wisdom
Chapter XXIII. God's Condescension
C. God In Relation To The World
Chapter XXIV. The World and its Master
Chapter XXV. Creation As the Act of God

Chapter XXVI. The Maintenance and Government of the World
Chapter XXVII. Miracles and the Cosmic Order
Chapter XXVIII. Providence and the Moral Government of the
World
Chapter XXIX. God and the Existence of Evil
Chapter XXX. God and the Angels
Chapter XXXI. Satan and the Spirits of Evil
Chapter XXXII. God and the Intermediary Powers
Part II. Man
Chapter XXXIII. Man's Place in Creation
Chapter XXXIV. The Dual Nature of Man
Chapter XXXV. The Origin and Destiny of Man
Chapter XXXVI. God's Spirit in Man
Chapter XXXVII. Free Will and Moral Responsibility
Chapter XXXVIII. The Meaning of Sin
Chapter XXXIX. Repentance Or the Return To God
Chapter XL. Man, the Child of God
Chapter XLI. Prayer and Sacrifice
Chapter XLII. The Nature and Purpose of Prayer
Chapter XLIII. Death and the Future Life
Chapter XLIV. The Immortal Soul of Man
Chapter XLV. Divine Retribution: Reward and Punishment.
Chapter XLVI. The Individual and the Race
Chapter XLVII. The Moral Elements of Civilization
Part III. Israel And The Kingdom Of God
Chapter XLVIII. The Election of Israel
Chapter XLIX. The Kingdom of God and the Mission of Israel
Chapter L. The Priest-people and its Law of Holiness
Chapter LI. Israel, the People of the Law, and its World Mission
Chapter LII. Israel, the Servant of the Lord, Martyr and Messiah Of the
Nations
Chapter LIII. The Messianic Hope
Chapter LIV. Resurrection, a National Hope
Chapter LV. Israel and the Heathen Nations
Chapter LVI. The Stranger and the Proselyte
Chapter LVII. Christianity and Mohammedanism, the Daughter-
Religions Of Judaism

Chapter LVIII. The Synagogue and its Institutions
Chapter LIX. The Ethics of Judaism and the Kingdom of God
List Of Abbreviations
Index
Footnotes

[pg v]

Dedication

To The Memory

Of

Edward L. Heinsheimer

The Lamented President of the Board of Governors of

The Hebrew Union College

In Whom Zeal for the High Ideals
of Judaism and Patriotic Devotion
to Our Blessed Country Were
Nobly Embodied

In Friendship And
Affection

[pg vii]

Preface

In offering herewith to the English-reading public the present work on
Jewish Theology, the result of many years of research and of years of
activity as President and teacher at the Hebrew Union College of
Cincinnati, I bespeak for it that fairness of judgment to which every pioneer
work is entitled. It may seem rather strange that no such work has hitherto
been written by any of the leading Jewish scholars of either the
conservative or the progressive school. This can only be accounted for by
the fact that up to modern times the Rabbinical and philosophical literature
of the Middle Ages sufficed for the needs of the student, and a systematic
exposition of the Jewish faith seemed to be unnecessary. Besides, a real
demand for the specific study of Jewish theology was scarcely felt,
inasmuch as Judaism never assigned to a creed the prominent position
which it holds in the Christian Church. This very fact induced Moses
Mendelssohn at the beginning of the new era to declare that Judaism
“contained only truths dictated by reason and no dogmatic beliefs at all.”
Moreover, as he was rather a deist than a theist, he stated boldly that
Judaism “is not a revealed religion but a revealed law intended solely for
the Jewish people as the vanguard of universal monotheism.” By taking this
legalistic view of Judaism in common with the former opponents of the
Maimonidean articles of faith—which, by the way, he had himself
translated for the religious instruction of the Jewish youth—he exerted a
deteriorating influence upon the normal development of the Jewish faith
under the new social conditions. The fact is that Mendelssohn emancipated

the modern Jew [pg viii] from the thraldom of the Ghetto, but not Judaism.
In the Mendelssohnian circle the impression prevailed, as we are told, that
Judaism consists of a system of forms, but is substantially no religion at all.
The entire Jewish renaissance period which followed, characteristically
enough, made the cultivation of the so-called science of Judaism its object,
but it neglected altogether the whole field of Jewish theology. Hence we
look in vain among the writings of Rappaport, Zunz, Jost and their
followers, the entire Breslau school, for any attempt at presenting the
contents of Judaism as a system of faith. Only the pioneers of Reform
Judaism, Geiger, Holdheim, Samuel Hirsch, Formstecher, Ludwig
Philippson, Leopold Stein, Leopold Loew, and the Reform theologian par
excellence David Einhorn, and likewise, Isaac M. Wise in America, made
great efforts in that direction. Still a system of Jewish theology was
wanting. Accordingly when, at the suggestion of my dear departed friend,
Dr. Gustav Karpeles, President of the Society for the Promotion of the
Science of Judaism in Berlin, I undertook to write a compendium
(Grundriss) of Systematic Jewish Theology, which appeared in 1910 as Vol.
IV in a series of works on Systematic Jewish Lore (Grundriss der
Gesammtwissenschaft des Judenthums), I had no work before me that
might have served me as pattern or guide. Solomon Schechter's valuable
studies were in the main confined to Rabbinical Theology. As a matter of
fact I accepted the task only with the understanding that it should be written
from the view-point of historical research, instead of a mere dogmatic or
doctrinal system. For in my opinion the Jewish religion has never been
static, fixed for all time by an ecclesiastical authority, but has ever been and
still is the result of a dynamic process of growth and development. At the
same time I felt that I could not omit the mystical element which pervades
the Jewish religion in common with all others. As our prophets were seers
and not philosophers or moralists, [pg ix] so divine inspiration in varying
degrees constituted a factor of Synagogal as well as Scriptural Judaism.
Revelation, therefore, is to be considered as a continuous force in shaping
and reshaping the Jewish faith. The religious genius of the Jew falls within
the domain of ethnic psychology concerning which science still gropes in
the dark, but which progressive Judaism is bound to recognize in its effects
throughout the ages.

It is from this standpoint, taken also by the sainted founder of the Hebrew
Union College, Isaac M. Wise, that I have written this book. At the same
time I endeavored to be, as it behooves the historian, just and fair to
Conservative Judaism, which will ever claim the reverence we owe to our
cherished past, the mother that raised and nurtured us.

While a work of this nature cannot lay claim to completeness, I have
attempted to cover the whole field of Jewish belief, including also such
subjects as no longer form parts of the religious consciousness of the
modern Jew. I felt especially called upon to elucidate the historical relations
of Judaism to the Christian and Mohammedan religions and dwell on the
essential points of divergence from them. If my language at times has been
rather vigorous in defense of the Jewish faith, it was because I was forced to
correct and refute the prevailing view of the Christian world, of both
theologians and others, that Judaism is an inferior religion, clannish and
exclusive, that it is, in fact, a cult of the Old Testament Law.

It was a matter of great personal satisfaction to me that the German work on
its appearance met with warm appreciation in the various theological
journals of America, England, and France, as well as of Germany, including
both Jewish and Christian. I was encouraged and urged by many “soon to
make the book accessible to wider circles in an English translation.” My
friend, Dr. Israel Abrahams of Cambridge, England, took such interest in
the book that he induced a young friend of his to prepare an English
version. While this did not answer the [pg x] purpose, it was helpful to me
in making me feel that, instead of a literal translation, a thorough revision
and remolding of the book was necessary in order to present it in an
acceptable English garb. In pursuing this course, I also enlarged the book in
many ways, especially adding a new chapter on Jewish Ethics, which, in
connection with the idea of the Kingdom of God, appeared to me to form a
fitting culmination of Jewish theology. I have thus rendered it practically a
new work. And here I wish to acknowledge my great indebtedness to my
young friend and able pupil, Rabbi Lee J. Levinger, for the valuable aid he
has rendered me and the painstaking labor he has kindly and unselfishly
performed in going over my manuscript from beginning to end, with a view
to revising the diction and also suggesting references to more recent
publications in the notes so as to bring it up to date.

I trust that the work will prove a source of information and inspiration for
both student and layman, Jew and non-Jew, and induce such as have
become indifferent to, or prejudiced against, the teachings of the
Synagogue, or of Reform Judaism in particular, to take a deeper insight
into, and look up with a higher regard to the sublime and eternal verities of
Judaism.

“Give to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser; teach a righteous man, and
he will increase in learning.”

Cincinnati, November, 1917.

[pg 001]

Introductory

Chapter I. The Meaning of Theology

1. The name Theology, “the teaching concerning God,” is taken from Greek
philosophy. It was used by Plato and Aristotle to denote the knowledge
concerning God and things godly, by which they meant the branch of
Philosophy later called Metaphysics, after Aristotle. In the Christian Church
the term gradually assumed the meaning of systematic exposition of the
creed, a distinction being made between Rational, or Natural Theology, on
the one hand, and Dogmatic Theology, on the other.1 In common usage
Theology is understood to be the presentation of one specific system of
faith after some logical method, and a distinction is made between
Historical and Systematic Theology. The former traces the various doctrines
of the faith in question through the different epochs and stages of culture,
showing their historical process of growth and development; the latter
presents these same doctrines in comprehensive form as a fixed system, as
they have finally been elaborated and accepted upon the basis of the sacred
scriptures and their authoritative interpretation.

2. Theology and Philosophy of Religion differ widely in their character.
Theology deals exclusively with a specific religion; in expounding one
doctrinal system, it starts from [pg 002] a positive belief in a divine
revelation and in the continued working of the divine spirit, affecting also
the interpretation and further development of the sacred books. Philosophy
of Religion, on the other hand, while dealing with the same subject matter
as Theology, treats religion from a general point of view as a matter of
experience, and, as every philosophy must, without any foregone
conclusion. Consequently it submits the beliefs and doctrines of religion in
general to an impartial investigation, recognizing neither a divine revelation
nor the superior claims of any one religion above any other, its main object
being to ascertain how far the universal laws of human reason agree or
disagree with the assertions of faith.2

3. It is therefore incorrect to speak of a Jewish religious philosophy. This
has no better right to exist than has Jewish metaphysics or Jewish
mathematics.3 The Jewish thinkers of the Spanish-Arabic period who
endeavored to harmonize revelation and reason, utilizing the Neo-Platonic
philosophy or the Aristotelian with a Neo-Platonic coloring, betray by their
very conceptions of revelation and prophecy the influence of Mohammedan
theology; this was really a graft of metaphysics on theology and called itself
the “divine science,” a term corresponding exactly with the Greek
“theology.” The so-called Jewish religious philosophers adopted both the
methods and terminology of the Mohammedan theologians, attempting to
present the doctrines of the Jewish faith in the light of philosophy, as truth
based on reason. Thus they claimed to construct a Jewish theology upon the
foundation of a philosophy of religion.

[pg 003]
But neither they nor their Mohammedan predecessors succeeded in working
out a complete system of theology. They left untouched essential elements
of religion which do not come within the sphere of rational verities, and did
not give proper appreciation to the rich treasures of faith deposited in the
Biblical and Rabbinical literature. Nor does the comprehensive theological
system of Maimonides, which for centuries largely shaped the intellectual
life of the Jew, form an exception. Only the mystics, Bahya at their head,
paid attention to the spiritual side of Judaism, dwelling at length on such
themes as prayer and repentance, divine forgiveness and holiness.

4. Closer acquaintance with the religious and philosophical systems of
modern times has created a new demand for a Jewish theology by which the
Jew can comprehend his own religious truths in the light of modern
thought, and at the same time defend them against the aggressive attitude of
the ruling religious sects. Thus far, however, the attempts made in this
direction are but feeble and sporadic; if the structure is not to stand
altogether in the air, the necessary material must be brought together from
its many sources with painstaking labor.4 The special difficulty in the task
lies in the radical difference which exists between our view of the past and
that of the Biblical and medieval writers. All those things which have
heretofore been taken as facts because related in the sacred books or other
traditional sources, are viewed to-day with critical eyes, and are now

regarded as more or less colored by human impression or conditioned by
human judgment. In other words, we have learned to distinguish between
subjective and objective truths,5 whereas theology by [pg 004] its very
nature deals with truth as absolute. This makes it imperative for us to
investigate historically the leading idea or fundamental principle underlying
a doctrine, to note the different conceptions formed at various stages, and
trace its process of growth. At times, indeed, we may find that the views of
one age have rather taken a backward step and fallen below the original
standard. The progress need not be uniform, but we must still trace its
course.

5. We must recognize at the outset that Jewish theology cannot assume the
character of apologetics, if it is to accomplish its great task of formulating
religious truth as it exists in our consciousness to-day. It can no more afford
to ignore the established results of modern linguistic, ethnological, and
historical research, of Biblical criticism and comparative religion, than it
can the undisputed facts of natural science, however much any of these may
conflict with the Biblical view of the cosmos. Apologetics has its legitimate
place to prove and defend the truths of Jewish theology against other
systems of belief and thought, but cannot properly defend either Biblical or
Talmudic statements by methods incompatible with scientific investigation.
Judaism is a religion of historical growth, which, far from claiming to be
the final truth, is ever regenerated anew at each turning point of history. The
fall of the leaves at autumn requires no apology, for each successive spring
testifies anew to nature's power of resurrection.

The object of a systematic theology of Judaism, accordingly, is to single out
the essential forces of the faith. It then will become evident how these
fundamental doctrines possess a vitality, a strength of conviction, as well as
an adaptability to varying conditions, which make them potent factors
amidst all changes of time and circumstance. According to Rabbinical
tradition, the broken tablets of the covenant were deposited in the ark beside
the new. In like [pg 005] manner the truths held sacred by the past, but
found inadequate in their expression for a new generation, must be placed
side by side with the deeper and more clarified truths of an advanced age,
that they may appear together as the one divine truth reflected in different
rays of light.

6. Jewish theology differs radically from Christian theology in the
following three points:

A. The theology of Christianity deals with articles of faith formulated by the
founders and heads of the Church as conditions of salvation, so that any
alteration in favor of free thought threatens to undermine the very plan of
salvation upon which the Church was founded. Judaism recognizes only
such articles of faith as were adopted by the people voluntarily as
expressions of their religious consciousness, both without external
compulsion and without doing violence to the dictates of reason. Judaism
does not know salvation by faith in the sense of Paul, the real founder of the
Church, who declared the blind acceptance of belief to be in itself
meritorious. It denies the existence of any irreconcilable opposition
between faith and reason.

B. Christian theology rests upon a formula of confession, the so-called
Symbolum of the Apostolic Church,6 which alone makes one a Christian.
Judaism has no such formula of confession which renders a Jew a Jew. No
ecclesiastical authority ever dictated or regulated the belief of the Jew; his
faith has been voiced in the solemn liturgical form of prayer, and has ever
retained its freshness and vigor of thought in the consciousness of the
people. This partly accounts for the antipathy toward any kind of dogma or
creed among Jews.

C. The creed is a conditio sine qua non of the Christian Church. To
disbelieve its dogmas is to cut oneself loose from membership. Judaism is
quite different. The Jew is [pg 006] born into it and cannot extricate himself
from it even by the renunciation of his faith, which would but render him an
apostate Jew. This condition exists, because the racial community formed,
and still forms, the basis of the religious community. It is birth, not
confession, that imposes on the Jew the obligation to work and strive for the
eternal verities of Israel, for the preservation and propagation of which he
has been chosen by the God of history.

7. The truth of the matter is that the aim and end of Judaism is not so much
the salvation of the soul in the hereafter as the salvation of humanity in
history. Its theology, therefore, must recognize the history of human
progress, with which it is so closely interwoven. It does not, therefore,

claim to offer the final or absolute truth, as does Christian theology, whether
orthodox or liberal. It simply points out the way leading to the highest
obtainable truth. Final and perfect truth is held forth as the ideal of all
human searching and striving, together with perfect justice, righteousness,
and peace, to be attained as the very end of history.

A systematic theology of Judaism must, accordingly, content itself with
presenting Jewish doctrine and belief in relation to the most advanced
scientific and philosophical ideas of the age, so as to offer a comprehensive
view of life and the world (“Lebens- und Weltanschauung”); but it by no
means claims for them the character of finality. The unfolding of Judaism's
truths will be completed only when all mankind has attained the heights of
Zion's mount of vision, as beheld by the prophets of Israel.7

[pg 007]

Chapter II. What is Judaism?

1. It is very difficult to give an exact definition of Judaism because of its
peculiarly complex character.8 It combines two widely differing elements,
and when they are brought out separately, the aspect of the whole is not
taken sufficiently into account. Religion and race form an inseparable
whole in Judaism. The Jewish people stand in the same relation to Judaism
as the body to the soul. The national or racial body of Judaism consists of
the remnant of the tribe of Judah which succeeded in establishing a new
commonwealth in Judæa in place of the ancient Israelitish kingdom, and
which survived the downfall of state and temple to continue its existence as
a separate people during a dispersion over the globe for thousands of years,
forming ever a cosmopolitan element among all the nations in whose lands
it dwelt. Judaism, on the other hand, is the religious system itself, the vital
element which united the Jewish people, preserving it and regenerating it
ever anew. It is the spirit which endowed the handful of Jews with a power
of resistance and a fervor of faith unparalleled in history, enabling them to
persevere [pg 008] in the mighty contest with heathenism and Christianity.
It made of them a nation of martyrs and thinkers, suffering and struggling
for the cause of truth and justice, yet forming, consciously or
unconsciously, a potent factor in all the great intellectual movements which
are ultimately to win the entire gentile world for the purest and loftiest
truths concerning God and man.

2. Judaism, accordingly, does not denote the Jewish nationality, with its
political and cultural achievements and aspirations, as those who have lost
faith in the religious mission of Israel would have it. On the other hand, it is
not a nomistic or legalistic religion confined to the Jewish people, as is
maintained by Christian writers, who, lacking a full appreciation of its lofty
world-wide purpose and its cosmopolitan and humanitarian character, claim
that it has surrendered its universal prophetic truths to Christianity. Nor
should it be presented as a religion of pure Theism, aiming to unite all
believers in one God into a Church Universal, of which certain visionaries

dream. Judaism is nothing less than a message concerning the One and holy
God and one, undivided humanity with a world-uniting Messianic goal, a
message intrusted by divine revelation to the Jewish people. Thus Israel is
its prophetic harbinger and priestly guardian, its witness and defender
throughout the ages, who is never to falter in the task of upholding and
unfolding its truths until they have become the possession of the whole
human race.

3. Owing to this twofold nature of a universal religious truth and at the
same time a mission intrusted to a specially selected nation or race, Judaism
offers in a sense the sharpest contrasts imaginable, which render it an
enigma to the student of religion and history, and make him often incapable
of impartial judgment. On the one hand, it shows the most tenacious
adherence to forms originally intended to preserve the Jewish people in its
priestly sanctity and separateness, [pg 009] and thereby also to keep its
religious truths pure and free from encroachments. On the other hand, it
manifests a mighty impulse to come into close touch with the various
civilized nations, partly in order to disseminate among them its sublime
truths, appealing alike to mind and heart, partly to clarify and deepen those
truths by assimilating the wisdom and culture of these very nations. Thus
the spirit of separatism and of universalism work in opposite directions.
Still, however hostile the two elements may appear, they emanate from the
same source. For the Jewish people, unlike any other civilization of
antiquity, entered history with the proud claim that it possessed a truth
destined to become some day the property of mankind, and its three
thousand years of history have verified this claim.

Israel's relation to the world thus became a double one. Its priestly world-
mission gave rise to all those laws and customs which were to separate it
from its idolatrous surroundings, and this occasioned the charge of hostility
to the nations. The accusation of Jewish misanthropy occurred as early as
the Balaam and Haman stories. As the separation continued through the
centuries, a deep-seated Jew-hatred sprang up, first in Alexandria and
Rome, then becoming a consuming fire throughout Christendom,
unquenched through the ages and bursting forth anew, even from the midst
of would-be liberals. In contrast to this, Israel's prophetic ideal of a
humanity united in justice and peace gave to history a new meaning and a

larger outlook, kindling in the souls of all truly great leaders and teachers,
seers and sages of mankind a love and longing for the broadening of
humanity which opened new avenues of progress and liberty. Moreover, by
its conception of man as the image of God and its teaching of righteousness
as the true path of life, Israel's Law established a new standard of human
worth and put the imprint of Jewish idealism upon the entire Aryan
civilization.

[pg 010]
Owing to these two opposing forces, the one centripetal, the other
centrifugal, Judaism tended now inward, away from world-culture, now
outward toward the learning and the thought of all nations; and this makes it
doubly difficult to obtain a true estimate of its character. But, after all, these
very currents and counter-currents at the different eras of history kept
Judaism in continuous tension and fluctuation, preventing its stagnation by
dogmatic formulas and its division by ecclesiastical dissensions. “Both
words are the words of the living God” became the maxim of the
contending schools.9

4. If we now ask what period we may fix as the beginning of Judaism, we
must by no means single out the decisive moment when Ezra the Scribe
established the new commonwealth of Judæa, based upon the Mosaic book
of Law, and excluding the Samaritans who claimed to be the heirs of
ancient Israel. This important step was but the climax, the fruitage of that
religious spirit engendered by the Judaism of the Babylonian exile. The
Captivity had become a refining furnace for the people, making them cling
with a zeal unknown before to the teachings of the prophets, now offered by
their disciples, and to the laws, as preserved by the priestly guilds; so the
religious treasures of the few became the common property of the many,
and were soon regarded as “the inheritance of the whole congregation of
Jacob.” As a matter of fact, Ezra represents the culmination rather than the
starting point of the great spiritual reawakening, when he came from
Babylon with a complete Code of Law, and promulgated it in the Holy City
to a worshipful congregation.10 It was Judaism, winged with a new spirit,
which carried the great unknown seer of the Exile to the very pinnacle of
prophetic vision, and made the Psalmists ring forth from the harp of David
the deepest soul-stirring notes of religious [pg 011] devotion and aspiration

that ever moved the hearts of men. Moreover, all the great truths of
prophetic revelation, of legislative and popular wisdom, were then collected
and focused, creating a sacred literature which was to serve the whole
community as the source of instruction, consolation, and edification. The
powerful and unique institutions of the Synagogue, intended for common
instruction and devotion, are altogether creations of the Exile, and replaced
the former priestly Torah by the Torah for the people. More wonderful still,
the priestly lore of ancient Babylon was transformed by sublime
monotheistic truths and utilized in the formation of a sacred literature; it
was placed before the history of the Hebrew patriarchs, to form, as it were,
an introduction to the Bible of humanity.

Judaism, then, far from being the late product of the Torah and tradition, as
it is often considered, was actually the creator of the Law. Transformed and
unfolded in Babylonia, it created its own sacred literature and shaped it ever
anew, filling it always with its own spirit and with new thoughts. It is by no
means the petrifaction of the Mosaic law and the prophetic teachings, as we
are so often told, but a continuous process of unfolding and regeneration of
its great religious truth.

5. True enough, traditional or orthodox Judaism does not share this view.
The idea of gradual development is precluded by its conception of divine
revelation, by its doctrine that both the oral and the written Torah were
given at Sinai complete and unchangeable for all time. It makes allowance
only for special institutions begun either by the prophets, by Ezra and the
Men of the Great Synagogue, his associates, or by the masters of the Law in
succeeding centuries. Nevertheless, tradition says that the Men of the Great
Synagogue themselves collected and partly completed the sacred books,
except the five books of Moses, and that the canon was made under the
influence of the holy spirit. This holy spirit remained in force also during
the creative period of Talmudism, [pg 012] sanctioning innovations or
alterations of many kinds.11 Modern critical and historical research has
taught us to distinguish the products of different periods and stages of
development in both the Biblical and Rabbinical sources, and therefore
compels us to reject the idea of a uniform origin of the Law, and also of an
uninterrupted chain of tradition reaching back to Moses on Sinai. Therefore

we must attach still more importance to the process of transformation which
Judaism had to undergo through the centuries.12

Judaism manifested its wondrous power of assimilation by renewing itself
to meet the demands of the time, first under the influence of the ancient
civilizations, Babylonia and Persia, then of Greece and Rome, finally of the
Occidental powers, molding its religious truths and customs in ever new
forms, but all in consonance with its own genius. It adopted the Babylonian
and Persian views of the hereafter, of the upper and the nether world with
their angels and demons; so later on it incorporated into its religious and
legal system elements of Greek and Egyptian gnosticism, Greek philosophy,
and methods of jurisprudence from Egypt, Babylon, and Rome. In fact, the
various parties which arose during the second Temple beside each other or
successively—Sadducees and Pharisees, Essenes and Zealots—represent,
on closer observation, the different stages in the process of assimilation
which Judaism had to undergo. In like manner, the Hellenistic, Apocryphal
and Apocalyptic literature, which was rejected and lost to sight by
traditional Judaism, and which partly fills the gap between the Bible and the
Talmudic writings, casts a flood of light upon the development of the
Halakah [pg 013] and the Haggadah. Just as the book of Ezekiel, which was
almost excluded from the Canon on account of its divergence from the
Mosaic Law, has been helpful in tracing the development of the Priestly
Code,13 so the Sadduceean book of Ben Sira14 and the Zealotic book of
Jubilees15—not to mention the various Apocalyptic works—throw their
searchlight upon pre-Talmudic Judaism.

6. Instead of representing Judaism—as the Christian theologians do under
the guise of scientific methods—as a nomistic religion, caring only for the
external observance of the Law, it is necessary to distinguish two opposite
fundamental tendencies; the one expressing the spirit of legalistic
nationalism, the other that of ethical or prophetic universalism. These two
work by turn, directing the general trend in the one or the other direction
according to circumstances. At one time the center and focus of Israel's
religion is the Mosaic Law, with its sacrificial cult in charge of the
priesthood of Jerusalem's Temple; at another time it is the Synagogue, with
its congregational devotion and public instruction, its inspiring song of the
Psalmist and its prophetic consolation and hope confined to no narrow

territory, but opened wide for a listening world. Here it is the reign of the
Halakah holding fast to the form of tradition, and there the free and fanciful
Haggadah, with its appeal to the sentiments and views of the people. Here
it is the spirit of ritualism, bent on separating the Jews from the influence of
foreign elements, and there again the spirit of rationalism, eager to take part
in general culture and in the progress of the outside world.

The liberal views of Maimonides and Gersonides concerning [pg 014]
miracle and revelation, God and immortality were scarcely shared by the
majority of Jews, who, no doubt, sided rather with the mystics, and found
their mouthpiece in Abraham ben David of Posquieres, the fierce opponent
of Maimonides. An impartial Jewish theology must therefore take
cognizance of both sides; it must include the mysticism of Isaac Luria and
Sabbathai Horwitz as well as the rationalism of Albo and Leo da Modena.
Wherever is voiced a new doctrine or a new view of life and life's duty,
which yet bears the imprint of the Jewish consciousness, there the well-
spring of divine inspiration is seen pouring forth its living waters.

7. Even the latest interpretation of the Law, offered by a disciple who is
recognized for true conscientiousness in religion, was revealed to Moses on
Sinai, according to a Rabbinical dictum.16 Thus is exquisitely expressed the
idea of a continuous development of Israel's religious truth. As a safeguard
against arbitrary individualism, there was the principle of loyalty and proper
regard for tradition, which is aptly termed by Professor Lazarus a
“historical continuity.”17 The Midrashic statement is quite significant that
other creeds founded on our Bible can only adhere to the letter, but the
Jewish religion possesses the key to the deeper meaning hidden and
presented in the traditional interpretation of the Scriptures.18 That is, for
Judaism Holy Scripture in its literal sense is not the final word of God; the
Bible is rather a living spring of divine revelation, to be kept ever fresh and
flowing by the active force of the spirit. To sum up: Judaism, far from
offering a system of beliefs and ceremonies fixed for all time, is as
multifarious and manifold in its aspects as is life itself. It comprises all
phases and characteristics of both a national and a world religion.

[pg 015]

Chapter III. The Essence of the Religion of Judaism

1. We have seen how difficult it is to define Judaism clearly and adequately,
including its manifold tendencies and institutions. Still it is necessary that
we reach a full understanding of the essence of Judaism as it manifested
itself in all periods of its history,19 and that we single out the fundamental
idea which underlies its various forms of existence and its different
movements, both intellectual and spiritual. There can be no disputing the
fact that the central idea of Judaism and its life purpose is the doctrine of
the One Only and Holy God, whose kingdom of truth, justice and peace is
to be universally established at the end of time. This is the main teaching of
Scripture and the hope voiced in the liturgy; while Israel's mission to
defend, to unfold and to propagate this truth is a corollary of the doctrine
itself and cannot be separated from it. Whether we regard it as Law or a
system of doctrine, as religious truth or world-mission, this belief pledged
the little tribe of Judah to a warfare of many thousands of years against the
hordes of heathendom with all their idolatry and brutality, their deification
of man and their degradation of deity to human rank. It betokened a battle
for the pure idea of God and man, which is not to end until the principle of
divine holiness has done away with every form of life that tends to degrade
and to disunite mankind, and until Israel's Only One has become the
unifying power and the highest ideal of all humanity.

[pg 016]
2. Of this great world-duty of Israel only the few will ever become fully
conscious. As in the days of the prophets, so in later periods, only a “small
remnant” was fully imbued with the lofty ideal. In times of oppression the
great multitude of the people persisted in a conscientious observance of the
Law and underwent suffering without a murmur. Yet in times of liberty and
enlightenment this same majority often neglects to assimilate the new
culture to its own superior spirit, but instead eagerly assimilates itself to the
surrounding world, and thereby loses much of its intrinsic strength and self-
respect. The pendulum of thought and sentiment swings to and fro between

the national and the universal ideals, while only a few maturer minds have a
clear vision of the goal as it is to be reached along both lines of
development. Nevertheless, Judaism is in a true sense a religion of the
people. It is free from all priestly tutelage and hierarchical interference. It
has no ecclesiastical system of belief, guarded and supervised by men
invested with superior powers. Its teachers and leaders have always been
men from among the people, like the prophets of yore, with no sacerdotal
privilege or title; in fact, in his own household each father is the God-
appointed teacher of his children.20

3. Neither is Judaism the creation of a single person, either prophet or a
man with divine claims. It points back to the patriarchs as its first source of
revelation. It speaks not of the God of Moses, of Amos and Isaiah, but of
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, thereby declaring the Jewish genius
to be the creator of its own religious ideas. It is therefore incorrect to speak
of a “Mosaic,” “Hebrew,” or “Israelitish,” religion. The name Judaism
alone expresses the preservation of the religious heritage of Israel by the
tribe of Judah, with a loyalty which was first displayed by Judah himself in
the patriarchal household, and which became its characteristic [pg 017]
virtue in the history of the various tribes. Likewise the rigid measures of
Ezra in expelling all foreign elements from the new commonwealth proved
instrumental in impressing loyalty and piety upon Jewish family life.

4. As it was bound up with the life of the Jewish people, Judaism remained
forever in close touch with the world. Therefore it appreciated adequately
the boons of life, and escaped being reduced to the shadowy form of
“otherworldliness.”21 It is a religion of life, which it wishes to sanctify by
duty rather than by laying stress on the hereafter. It looks to the deed and
the purity of the motive, not to the empty creed and the blind belief. Nor is
it a religion of redemption, contemning this earthly life; for Judaism
repudiates the assumption of a radical power of evil in man or in the world.
Faith in the ultimate triumph of the good is essential to it. In fact, this
perfect confidence in the final victory of truth and justice over all the
powers of falsehood and wrong lent it both its wondrous intellectual force
and its high idealism, and adorned its adherents with the martyr's crown of
thorns, such as no other human brow has ever borne.

5. Christianity and Islam, notwithstanding their alienation from Judaism
and frequent hostility, are still daughter-religions. In so far as they have
sown the seeds of Jewish truth over all the globe and have done their share
in upbuilding the Kingdom of God on earth, they must be recognized as
divinely appointed emissaries and agencies. Still Judaism sets forth its
doctrine of God's unity and of life's holiness in a far superior form than does
Christianity. It neither permits the deity to be degraded into the sphere of
the sensual and human, nor does it base its morality upon a love bereft of
the vital principle of justice. Against the rigid monotheism of Islam, which
demands blind submission to the stern decrees of inexorable fate, Judaism
on the other hand urges its belief [pg 018] in God's paternal love and mercy,
which educates all the children of men, through trial and suffering, for their
high destiny.

6. Judaism denies most emphatically the right of Christianity or any other
religion to arrogate to itself the title of “the absolute religion” or to claim to
be “the finest blossom and the ripest fruit of religious development.” As if
any mortal man at any time or under any condition could say without
presumption: “I am the Truth” or “No one cometh unto the Father but by
me.”22 “When man was to proceed from the hands of his Maker,” says the
Midrash, “the Holy One, Blessed be His name, cast truth down to the earth,
saying, ‘Let truth spring forth from the earth, and righteousness look down
from heaven.’ ”23 The full unfolding of the religious and moral life of
mankind is the work of countless generations yet to come, and many divine
heralds of truth and righteousness have yet to contribute their share. In this
work of untold ages, Judaism claims that it has achieved and is still
achieving its full part as the prophetic world-religion. Its law of
righteousness, which takes for its scope the whole of human life, in its
political and social relations as well as its personal aspects, forms the
foundation of its ethics for all time; while its hope for a future realization of
the Kingdom of God has actually become the aim of human history. As a
matter of fact, when the true object of religion is the hallowing of life rather
than the salvation of the soul, there is little room left for sectarian
exclusiveness, or for a heaven for believers and a hell for unbelievers. With
this broad outlook upon life, Judaism lays claim, not to perfection, but to
perfectibility; it has supreme capacity for growing toward the highest ideals
of mankind, as beheld by the prophets in their Messianic visions.

[pg 019]

Chapter IV. The Jewish Articles of Faith

1. In order to reach a clear opinion, whether or not Judaism has articles of
faith in the sense of Church dogmas, a question so much discussed since the
days of Moses Mendelssohn, it seems necessary first to ascertain what faith
in general means to the Jew.24 Now the word used in Jewish literature for
faith is Emunah, from the root Aman, to be firm; this denotes firm reliance
upon God, and likewise firm adherence to him, hence both faith and
faithfulness. Both Scripture and the Rabbis demanded confiding trust in
God, His messengers, and His words, not the formal acceptance of a
prescribed belief.25 Only when contact with the non-Jewish world
emphasized the need for a clear expression of the belief in the unity of God,
such as was found in the Shema,26 and when the proselyte was expected to
declare in some definite form the fundamentals of the faith he espoused,
was the importance of a concrete confession felt.27 Accordingly we find the
beginnings of a formulated belief in the synagogal liturgy, in the Emeth we
[pg 020] Yatzib28 and the Alenu,29 while in the Haggadah Abraham is
represented both as the exemplar of a hero of faith and as the type of a
missionary, wandering about to lead the heathen world towards the pure
monotheistic faith.30 While the Jewish concept of faith underwent a certain
transformation, influenced by other systems of belief, and the formulation
of Jewish doctrines appeared necessary, particularly in opposition to the
Christian and Mohammedan creeds, still belief never became the essential
part of religion, conditioning salvation, as in the Church founded by Paul.
For, as pointed out above, Judaism lays all stress upon conduct, not
confession; upon a hallowed life, not a hollow creed.

2. There is no Biblical nor Rabbinical precept, “Thou shalt believe!” Jewish
thinkers felt all the more the need to point out as fundamentals or roots of
Judaism those doctrines upon which it rests, and from which it derives its
vital force. To the rabbis, the “root” of faith is the recognition of a divine
Judge to whom we owe account for all our doings.31 The recital of the
Shema, which is called in the Mishnah “accepting the yoke of God's

sovereignty,” and which is followed by the solemn affirmation, “True and
firm belief is this for us”32 (Emeth we Yatzib or Emeth we Emunah), is, in
fact, the earliest form of the confession of faith.33 In the course of time this
confession of belief in the unity of God was no longer deemed sufficient to
serve as basis for the whole structure of Judaism; so the various schools and
authorities endeavored to work out in detail a series of fundamental
doctrines.

3. The Mishnah, in Sanhedrin, X, 1, which seems to date back to the
beginnings of Pharisaism, declares the following [pg 021] three to have no
share in the world to come: he who denies the resurrection of the dead; he
who says that the Torah—both the written and the oral Law—is not divinely
revealed; and the Epicurean, who does not believe in the moral government
of the world.34 We find here (in reverse order, owing to historical
conditions), the beliefs in Revelation, Retribution, and the Hereafter singled
out as the three fundamentals of Rabbinical Judaism. Rabbi Hananel, the
great North African Talmudist, about the middle of the tenth century, seems
to have been under the influence of Mohammedan and Karaite doctrines,
when he speaks of four fundamentals of the faith: God, the prophets, the
future reward and punishment, and the Messiah.35

4. The doctrine of the One and Only God stands, as a matter of course, in
the foreground. Philo of Alexandria, at the end of his treatise on Creation,
singles out five principles which are bound up with it, viz.: 1, God's
existence and His government of the world; 2, His unity; 3, the world as His
creation; 4, the harmonious plan by which it was established; and 5, His
Providence. Josephus, too, in his apology for Judaism written against
Apion,36 emphasizes the belief in God's all-encompassing Providence, His
incorporeality, and His self-sufficiency as the Creator of the universe.

[pg 022]
The example of Islam, which had very early formulated a confession of
faith of speculative character for daily recitation,37 influenced first Karaite
and then Rabbanite teachers to elaborate the Jewish doctrine of One Only
God into a philosophic creed. The Karaites modeled their creed after the
Mohammedan pattern, which gave them ten articles of faith; of these the

first three dwelt on: 1, creation out of nothing; 2, the existence of God, the
Creator; 3, the unity and incorporeality of God.38

Abraham ben David (Ibn Daud) of Toledo sets forth in his “Sublime Faith”
six essentials of the Jewish faith: 1, the existence; 2, the unity; 3, the
incorporeality; 4, the omnipotence of God (to this he subjoins the existence
of angelic beings); 5, revelation and the immutability of the Law; and 6,
divine Providence.39 Maimonides, the greatest of all medieval thinkers,
propounded thirteen articles of faith, which took the place of a creed in the
Synagogue for the following centuries, as they were incorporated in the
liturgy both in the form of a credo (Ani Maamin) and in a poetic version.
His first five articles were: 1, the existence; 2, the unity; 3, the
incorporeality; 4, the eternity of God; and 5, that He alone should be the
object of worship; to which we must add his 10th, divine Providence.40
Others, not satisfied with the purely metaphysical form of the Maimonidean
creed, accentuated the doctrines of creation out of nothing and special
Providence.41

[pg 023]
This speculative form of faith, however, has been most severely denounced
by Samuel David Luzzatto (1800-1865) as “Atticism”;42 that is, the
Hellenistic or philosophic tendency to consider religion as a purely
intellectual system, instead of the great dynamic force for man's moral and
spiritual elevation. He holds that Judaism, as the faith transmitted to us
from Abraham, our ancestor, must be considered, not as a mere speculative
mode of reasoning, but as a moral life force, manifested in the practice of
righteousness and brotherly love. Indeed, this view is supported by modern
Biblical research, which brings out as the salient point in Biblical teaching
the ethical character of the God taught by the prophets, and shows that the
essential truth of revelation is not to be found in a metaphysical but in an
ethical monotheism. At the same time, the fact must not be overlooked that
the Jewish doctrine of God's unity was strengthened in the contest with the
dualistic and trinitarian beliefs of other religions, and that this unity gave
Jewish thought both lucidity and sublimity, so that it has surpassed other
faiths in intellectual power and in passion for truth. The Jewish conception
of God thus makes truth, as well as righteousness and love, both a moral
duty for man and a historical task comprising all humanity.

5. The second fundamental article of the Jewish faith is divine revelation,
or, as the Mishnah expresses it, the belief that the Torah emanates from God
(min ha shamayim). In the Maimonidean thirteen articles, this is divided
into four: his 6th, belief in the prophets; 7, in the prophecy of Moses as the
greatest of all; 8, in the divine origin of the Torah, both the written and the
oral Law; and 9, its immutability. The fundamental character of these,
however, was contested [pg 024] by Hisdai Crescas and his disciples,
Simon Duran and Joseph Albo.43 As a matter of fact, they are based not so
much upon Rabbinical teaching as upon the prevailing views of
Mohammedan theology,44 and were undoubtedly dictated by the desire to
dispute the claims of Christianity and Islam that they represented a higher
revelation. Our modern historical view, however, includes all human
thought and belief; it therefore rejects altogether the assumption of a
supernatural origin of either the written or the oral Torah, and insists that
the subject of prophecy, revelation, and inspiration in general be studied in
the light of psychology and ethnology, of general history and comparative
religion.

6. The third fundamental article of the Jewish faith is the belief in a moral
government of the world, which manifests itself in the reward of good and
the punishment of evil, either here or hereafter. Maimonides divides this
into two articles, which really belong together, his 10th, God's knowledge
of all human acts and motives, and 11, reward and punishment. The latter
includes the hereafter and the last Day of Judgment, which, of course,
applies to all human beings.

7. Closely connected with retribution is the belief in the resurrection of the
dead, which is last among the thirteen articles. This belief, which originally
among the Pharisees had a national and political character, and was
therefore connected especially with the Holy Land (as will be seen in
Chapter LIV below), received in the Rabbinical schools more and more a
universal form. Maimonides went so far as to follow the Platonic view
rather than that of the Bible or the Talmud, and thus transformed it into a
belief in the continuity of the soul after death. In this form, however, it is
actually a postulate, or corollary, of the belief in retribution.

[pg 025]

8. The old hope for the national resurrection of Israel took in the
Maimonidean system the form of a belief in the coming of the Messiah
(article 12), to which, in the commentary on the Mishnah, he gives the
character of a belief in the restoration of the Davidic dynasty. Joseph Albo,
with others, disputes strongly the fundamental character of this belief; he
shows the untenability of Maimonides' position by referring to many
Talmudic passages, and at the same time he casts polemical side glances
upon the Christian Church, which is really founded on Messianism in the
special form of its Christology.45 Jehuda ha Levi, in his Cuzari, substitutes
for this as a fundamental doctrine the belief in the election of Israel for its
world-mission.46 It certainly redounds to the credit of the leaders of the
modern Reform movement that they took the election of Israel rather than
the Messiah as their cardinal doctrine, again bringing it home to the
religious consciousness of the Jew, and placing it at the very center of their
system. In this way they reclaimed for the Messianic hope the universal
character which was originally given it by the great seer of the Exile.47

9. The thirteen articles of Maimonides, in setting forth a Jewish Credo,
formed a vigorous opposition to the Christian and Mohammedan creeds;
they therefore met almost universal acceptance among the Jewish people,
and were given a place in the common prayerbook, in spite of their
deficiencies, as shown by Crescas and his school. Nevertheless, we must
admit that Crescas shows the deeper insight into the nature of religion when
he observes that the main fallacy of the Maimonidean system lies in
founding the Jewish faith on speculative knowledge, which is a matter of
the intellect, rather than love which flows from the heart, and which alone
leads to piety and goodness. True love, he says, requires [pg 026] the belief
neither in retribution nor in immortality. Moreover, in striking contrast to
the insistence of Maimonides or the immutability of the Mosaic Law,
Crescas maintains the possibility of its continuous progress in accordance
with the intellectual and spiritual needs of the time, or, what amounts to the
same thing, the continuous perfectibility of the revealed Law itself.48 Thus
the criticism of Crescas leads at once to a radically different theology than
that of Maimonides, and one which appeals far more to our own religious
thought.

10. Another doctrine of Judaism, which was greatly underrated by medieval
scholars, and which has been emphasized in modern times only in contrast
to the Christian theory of original sin, is that man was created in the image
of God. Judaism holds that the soul of man came forth pure from the hand
of its Maker, endowed with freedom, unsullied by any inherent evil or
inherited sin. Thus man is, through the exercise of his own free will,
capable of attaining to an ever higher degree his mental, moral, and spiritual
powers in the course of history. This is the Biblical idea of God's spirit as
immanent in man; all prophetic truth is based upon it; and though it was
often obscured, this theory was voiced by many of the masters of
Rabbinical lore, such as R. Akiba and others.49

11. Every attempt to formulate the doctrines or articles of faith of Judaism
was made, in order to guard the Jewish faith from the intrusion of foreign
beliefs, never to impose disputed beliefs upon the Jewish community itself.
Many, indeed, challenged the fundamental character of the thirteen articles
of Maimonides. Albo reduced them to three, viz.: the belief in God, in
revelation, and retribution; others, with more arbitrariness than judgement,
singled out three, five, six, or even more as principal doctrines;50 while rigid
conservatives, [pg 027] such as Isaac Abravanel and David ben Zimra,
altogether disapproved the attempt to formulate articles of faith. The former
maintained that every word in the Torah is, in fact, a principle of faith, and
the latter51 pointed in the same way to the 613 commandments of the Torah,
spoken of by R. Simlai the Haggadist in the third century.52

The present age of historical research imposes the same necessity of
restatement or reformulation upon us. We must do as Maimonides did,—as
Jews have always done,—point out anew the really fundamental doctrines,
and discard those which have lost their holdup on the modern Jew, or which
conflict directly with his religious consciousness. If Judaism is to retain its
prominent position among the powers of thought, and to be clearly
understood by the modern world, it must again reshape its religious truths in
harmony with the dominant ideas of the age.

Many attempts of this character have been made by modern rabbis and
teachers, most of them founded upon Albo's three articles. Those who
penetrated somewhat more deeply into the essence of Judaism added a

fourth article, the belief in Israel's priestly mission, and at the same time,
instead of the belief in retribution, included the doctrine of man's kinship
with God, or, if one may coin the word, his God-childship.53 Few, however,
have succeeded in working out the entire content of the Jewish faith from a
modern viewpoint, which must include historical, critical, and
psychological research, as well as the study of comparative religion.

12. The following tripartite plan is that of the present attempt to present the
doctrines of Judaism systematically along the lines of historical
development:

[pg 028]
I. God

a. Man's consciousness of God, and divine revelation.

b. God's spirituality, His unity, His holiness, His perfection.

c. His relation to the world: Creation and Providence.

d. His relation to man: His justice, His love and mercy.

II. Man

a. Man's God-childship; his moral freedom and yearning for God.

b. Sin and repentance; prayer and worship; immortality, reward and
punishment.

c. Man and humanity: the moral factors in history.

III. Israel and the Kingdom of God

a. The priest-mission of Israel, its destiny as teacher and martyr among the
nations, and its Messianic hope.

b. The Kingdom of God: the nations and religions of the world in a divine
plan of universal salvation.

c. The Synagogue and its institutions.

d. The ethics of Judaism and the Kingdom of God.

[pg 029]

Part I. God

A. God As He Makes Himself Known To Man

Chapter V. Man's Consciousness of God and Belief in God

1. Holy Writ employs two terms for religion, both of which lay stress upon
its moral and spiritual nature: Yirath Elohim—“fear of God”—and Daath
Elohim—“knowledge or consciousness of God.” Whatever the fear of God
may have meant in the lower stages of primitive religion, in the Biblical and
Rabbinical conceptions it exercises a wholesome moral effect; it stirs up the
conscience and keeps man from wrongdoing. Where fear of God is lacking,
violence and vice are rife;54 it keeps society in order and prompts the
individual to walk in the path of duty. Hence it is called “the beginning of
wisdom.”55 The divine revelation of Sinai accentuates as its main purpose
“to put the fear of God into the hearts of the people, lest they sin.”56

2. God-consciousness, or “knowledge of God,” signifies an inner
experience which impels man to practice the right and to shun evil, the
recognition of God as the moral power of life. “Because there is no
knowledge of God,” therefore do the people heap iniquity upon iniquity,
says Hosea, and he hopes to see the broken covenant with the Lord renewed
through [pg 030] faithfulness grounded on the consciousness of God.57
Jeremiah also insists upon “the knowledge of God” as a moral force, and,
like Hosea, he anticipates the renewal of the broken covenant when “the
Lord shall write His law upon the heart” of the people, and “they shall all
know Him from the least of them unto the greatest of them.”58 Wherever
Scripture speaks of “knowledge of God,”59 it always means the moral and
spiritual recognition of the Deity as life's inmost power, determining human
conduct, and by no means refers to mere intellectual perception of the truth
of Jewish monotheism, which is to refute the diverse forms of polytheism.
This misconception of the term “knowledge of God,” as used in the Bible,
led the leading medieval thinkers of Judaism, especially the school of

Maimonides, and even down to Mendelssohn, into the error of confusing
religion and philosophy, as if both resulted from pure reason. It is man's
moral nature rather than his intellectual capacity, that leads him “to know
God and walk in His ways.”60

3. It is mainly through the conscience that man becomes conscious of God.
He sees himself, a moral being, guided by motives which lend a purpose to
his acts and his omissions, and thus feels that this purpose of his must
somehow be in accord with a higher purpose, that of a Power who directs
and controls the whole of life. The more he sees purpose ruling individuals
and nations, the more will his God-consciousness grow into the conviction
that there is but One and Only God, who in awful grandeur holds dominion
over the world. This is the developmental process of religious truth, as it is
unfolded [pg 031] by the prophets and as it underlies the historic framework
of the Bible. In this light Jewish monotheism appears as the ripe fruitage of
religion in its universal as well as its primitive form of God-consciousness,
as the highest attainment of man in his eternal seeking after God.
Polytheism, on the other hand, with its idolatrous and immoral practices,
appeared to the prophets and lawgivers of Israel to be, not a competing
religion, but simply a falling away from God. They felt it to be a loss or
eclipse of the genuine God-consciousness. The object of revelation,
therefore, is to lead back all mankind to the God whom it had deserted, and
to restore to all men their primal consciousness of God, with its power of
moral regeneration.

4. In the same degree as this God-consciousness grows stronger, it
crystallizes into belief in God, and culminates in love of God. As stated
above,61 in Judaism belief—Emunah—never denotes the acceptance of a
creed. It is rather the confiding trust by which the frail mortal finds a firm
hold on God amidst the uncertainties and anxieties of life, the search for His
shelter in distress, the reliance on His ever-ready help when one's own
powers fail. The believer is like a little child who follows confidingly the
guidance of his father, and feels safe when near his arm. In fact, the double
meaning of Emunah, faith and faithfulness, suggests man's child-like faith
in the paternal faithfulness of God. The patriarch Abraham is presented in
both Biblical and Rabbinical writings as the pattern of such a faith,62 and the
Jewish people likewise are characterized in the Talmud as “believers, sons

of believers.”63 The Midrash extols such life-cheering faith as the power
which inspires true heroism and deeds of valor.64

5. The highest triumph of God-consciousness, however, is attained in love
of God such as can renounce cheerfully all [pg 032] the boons of life and
undergo the bitterest woe without a murmur. The book of Deuteronomy
inculcates love of God as the beginning and the end of the Law,65 and the
rabbis declare it to be the highest type of human perfection. In commenting
upon the verse, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with
all thy soul, and with all thy might,” they say: “Love the Law, even when
thy life is demanded as its price, nay, even with the last breath of thy body,
with a heart that has no room for dissent, amid every visitation of
destiny!”66 They point to the tragic martyrdom of R. Akiba as an example of
such a love sealed by death. In like manner they refer the expression, “they
that love Thee,”67 to those who bear insults without resentment; who hear
themselves abused without retort; who do good unselfishly, without caring
for recognition; and who cheerfully suffer as a test of their fortitude and
their love of God.68 Thus throughout all Rabbinical literature love of God is
regarded as the highest principle of religion and as the ideal of human
perfection, which was exemplified by Job, according to the oldest
Haggadah, and, according to the Mishnah, by Abraham.69 Another
interpretation of the verse cited from Deuteronomy reads, “Love God in
such a manner that thy fellow-creatures may love Him owing to thy
deeds.”70

All these passages and many others71 show what a prominent place the
principle of love occupied in Judaism. This is, indeed, best voiced in the
Song of Songs:72 “For love is strong as death; the flashes thereof are flashes
of fire, a very [pg 033] flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench that
love, neither can the floods drown it.” It set the heart of the Jew aglow
during all the centuries, prompting him to sacrifice his life and all that was
dear to him for the glorification of his God, to undergo for his faith a
martyrdom without parallel in history.

[pg 034]

Chapter VI. Revelation, Prophecy, and Inspiration

1. Divine revelation signifies two different things: first, God's self-
revelation, which the Rabbis called Gilluy Shekinah, “the manifestation of
the divine Presence,” and, second, the revelation of His will, for which they
used the term Torah min ha Shamayim, “the Law as emanating from
God.”73 The former appealed to the child-like belief of the Biblical age,
which took no offense at anthropomorphic ideas, such as the descent of God
from heaven to earth, His appearing to men in some visible form, or any
other miracle; the latter appears to be more acceptable to those of more
advanced religious views. Both conceptions, however, imply that the
religious truth of revelation was communicated to man by a special act of
God.

2. Each creative act is a mystery beyond the reach of human observation. In
all fields of endeavor the flashing forth of genius impresses us as the work
of a mysterious force, which acts upon an elect individual or nation and
brings it into close touch with the divine. In the religious genius especially
is this true; for in him all the spiritual forces of the age seem to be energized
and set into motion, then to burst forth into a new religious consciousness,
which is to revolutionize religious thought and feeling. In a child-like age
when the emotional life and the imagination predominate, and man's mind,
still receptive, is overwhelmed by mighty visions, the Deity stirs the soul in
some form perceptible to [pg 035] the senses. Thus the “seer” assumes a
trance-like state where the Ego, the self-conscious personality, is pushed
into the background; he becomes a passive instrument, the mouthpiece of
the Deity; from Him he receives a message to the people, and in his vision
he beholds God who sends him. This appearance of God upon the
background of the soul, which reflects Him like a mirror, is Revelation.74

3. The states of the soul when men see such visions of the Deity
predominate in the beginnings of all religions. Accordingly, Scripture

ascribes such revelations to non-Israelites as well as to the patriarchs and
prophets of Israel,—to Abimelek and Laban, Balaam, Job, and Eliphaz.75
Therefore the Jewish prophet is not distinguished from the rest by the
capability to receive divine revelation, but rather by the intrinsic nature of
the revelation which he receives. His vision comes from a moral God. The
Jewish genius perceived God as the moral power of life, whether in the
form expressed by Abraham, Moses, Elijah, or by the literary prophets, and
all of these, coming into touch with Him, were lifted into a higher sphere,
where they received a new truth, hitherto [pg 036] hidden from man. In
speaking through them, God appeared actually to have stepped into the
sphere of human life as its moral Ruler. This self-revelation of God as the
Ruler of man in righteousness, which must be viewed in the life of any
prophet as a providential act, forms the great historical sequence in the
history of Israel, upon which rests the Jewish religion.76

4. The divine revelation in Israel was by no means a single act, but a
process of development, and its various stages correspond to the degrees of
culture of the people. For this reason the great prophets also depended
largely upon dreams and visions, at least in their consecration to the
prophetic mission, when one solemn act was necessary. After that the
message itself and its new moral content set the soul of the prophet astir.
Not the vision or its imagery, but the new truth itself seizes him with
irresistible force, so that he is carried away by the divine power and speaks
as the mouthpiece of God, using lofty poetic diction while in a state of
ecstacy. Hence he speaks of God in the first person. The highest stage of all
is that where the prophet receives the divine truth in the form of pure
thought and with complete self-consciousness. Therefore the Scripture says
of Moses and of no other, “The Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man
speaks to another.”77

5. The story of the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai is in reality the
revelation of God to the people of Israel as part of the great world-drama of
history. Accordingly, the chief emphasis is laid upon the miraculous
element, the descent of the Lord to the mountain in fire and storm, amid
thunder and lightning, while the Ten Words themselves were proclaimed
[pg 037] by Moses as God's herald.78 As a matter of fact, the first words of
the narrative state its purpose, the consecration of the Jewish people at the

outset of their history to be a nation of prophets and priests.79 Therefore the
rabbis lay stress upon the acceptance of the Law by the people in saying:
“All that the Lord sayeth we shall do and hearken.”80 From a larger point of
view, we see here the dramatized form of the truth of Israel's election by
divine Providence for its historic religious mission.

6. The rabbis ascribed the gifts of prophecy to pagans as well as Israelites at
least as late as the erection of the Tabernacle, after which the Divine
Presence dwelt there in the midst of Israel.81 They say that each of the
Jewish prophets was endowed with a peculiar spiritual power that
corresponded with his character and his special training, the highest, of
course, being Moses, whom they called “the father of the prophets.”82

The medieval Jewish thinkers, following the lead of Mohammedan
philosophers or theologians, regard revelation quite differently, as an inner
process in the mind of the prophet. According to their mystical or
rationalistic viewpoint, they describe it as the result of the divine spirit,
working upon the soul either from within or from without. These two
standpoints betray either the Platonic or the Aristotelian influence.83 Indeed,
the rabbis themselves showed traces of neo-Platonism [pg 038] when they
described the ecstatic state of the prophets, or when they spoke of the divine
spirit speaking through the prophet as through a vocal instrument, or when
they made distinctions between seeing the Deity “in a bright mirror” or
“through a dark glass.”84

The view most remote from the simple one of the Bible is the rationalistic
standpoint of Maimonides, who, following altogether in the footsteps of the
Arabic neo-Aristotelians, assumed that there were different degrees of
prophecy, depending upon the influence exerted upon the human intellect
by the sphere of the Highest Intelligence. He enumerates eleven such
grades, of which Moses had the highest rank, as he entered into direct
communication with the supreme intellectual sphere. Still bolder is his
explanation of the revelation on Sinai. He holds that the first two words
were understood by the people directly as logical evidences of truth, for
they enunciated the philosophical doctrines of the existence and unity of
God, whereas the other words they understood only as sounds without
meaning, so that Moses had to interpret them.85 In contrast to this amazing

rationalism of Maimonides is the view of Jehuda ha Levi, who asserts that
the gift of prophecy became the specific privilege of the descendants of
Abraham after their consecration as God's chosen people at Sinai, and that
the holy soil of Palestine was assigned to them as the habitation best
adapted to its exercise.86 The other attempt of some rationalistic thinkers of
the Middle Ages to have a “sound created for the purpose”87 of uttering the
words “I am the Lord thy God,” rather than accepting the anthropomorphic
Deity, merits no consideration whatever.

7. It is an indisputable fact of history that the Jewish people, [pg 039] on
account of its peculiar religious bent, was predestined to be the people of
revelation. Its leading spirits, its prophets and psalmists, its law-givers and
inspired writers differ from the seers, singers, and sages of other nations by
their unique and profound insight into the moral nature of the Deity. In
striking contrast is the progress of thought in Greece, where the awakening
of the ethical consciousness caused a rupture between the culture of the
philosophers and the popular religion, and led to a final decay of the
political and social life. The prophets of Israel, however, the typical men of
genius of their people, gradually brought about an advance of popular
religion, so that they could finally present as their highest ideal the God of
the fathers, and make the knowledge of His will the foundation of the law
of holiness, by which they desired to regulate the entire conduct of man.
Thus, religion was no longer confined by the limits of nationality, but was
transformed into a spiritual force for all mankind, to lead through a
revelation of the One and Holy God toward the highest morality.

8. The development of thought brought the God-seeking spirits to the desire
to know His will, or, in Scriptural language, His ways, in order to attain
holiness in their pursuit. The natural consequence was the gradual receding
of the power of imagination which had made the enraptured seer behold
God Himself in visions. As the Deity rose more and more above the realm
of the visible, the newly conceived truth was realized as coming to the
sacred writer through the spirit of God or an angel. Inspiration took the
place of revelation. This, however, still implies a passive attitude of the soul
carried away by the truth it receives from on high. This supernatural
element disappears gradually and passes over into sober, self-conscious

thought, in which the writer no longer thinks of God as the Ego speaking
through him, but as an outside Power spoken of in the third person.

[pg 040]
A still lower degree of inspiration is represented by those writings which
lack altogether the divine afflatus, and to which is ascribed a share of the
holy spirit only through general consensus of opinion. Often this imprint of
the divine is not found in them by the calm judgment of a later generation,
and the exact basis for the classification of such writings among the holy
books is sometimes difficult to state. We can only conclude that in the
course of time they were regarded as holy by that very spirit which was
embodied in the Synagogue and its founders, “the Men of the Great
Synagogue,” who in their work of canonizing the Sacred Scriptures were
believed to have been under the influence of the holy spirit.88

9. Except for the five books of Moses, the idea of a mechanical inspiration
of the Bible is quite foreign to Judaism. Not until the second Christian
century did the rabbis finally decide on such questions as the inspiration of
certain books among the Hagiographa or even among the Prophets, or
whether certain books now excluded from the canon were not of equal rank
with the canonical ones.89 In fact, the influence of the holy spirit was for
some time ascribed, not only to Biblical writers, but also to living masters
of the law.90 [pg 041] The fact is that divine influence cannot be measured
by the yardstick or the calendar. Where it is felt, it bursts forth as from a
higher world, creating for itself its proper organs and forms. The rabbis
portray God as saying to Israel, “Not I in My higher realm, but you with
your human needs fix the form, the measure, the time, and the mode of
expression for that which is divine.”91

10. While Christianity and Islam, its daughter-religions, must admit the
existence of a prior revelation, Judaism knows of none. It claims its own
prophetic truth as the revelation, admits the title Books of Revelation
(Bible) only for its own sacred writings, and calls the Jewish nation alone
the People of Revelation. The Church and the Mosque achieved great things
in propagating the truths of the Sinaitic revelation among the nations, but
added to it no new truths of an essential nature. Indeed, they rather obscured
the doctrines of God's unity and holiness. On the other hand, the people of

the Sinaitic revelation looked to it with a view of ever revitalizing the dead
letter, thus evolving ever new rules of life and new ideas, without ever
placing new and old in opposition, as was done by the founder of the
Church. Each generation was to take to heart the words of Scripture as if
they had come “this very day” out of the mouth of the Lord.92

[pg 042]

Chapter VII. The Torah—the Divine Instruction

1. During the Babylonian Exile the prophetic word became the source of
comfort and rejuvenation for the Jewish people. Now in its place Ezra the
Scribe made the Book of the Law of Moses the pivot about which the entire
life of the people was to revolve. By regular readings from it to the
assembled worshipers, he made it the source of common instruction.
Instead of the priestly Law, which was concerned only with the regulation
of the ritual life, the Law became the people's book of instruction, a Torah
for all alike,93 while the prophetic books were made secondary and were
employed by the preacher at the conclusion of the service as “words of
consolation.”94 Upon the Pentateuch was built up the divine service of the
Synagogue as well as the whole system of communal life, with both its law
and ethics. The prophets and other sacred books were looked upon only as
means of “opening up” or illustrating the contents of the Torah. These other
parts of [pg 043] the Mikra (“the collection of books for public reading”)
were declared to be inferior in holiness, so that, according to the Rabbinical
rule, they were not even allowed to be put into the same scroll as the
Pentateuch.95 Moreover, neither the number, order, nor the division of the
Biblical books was fixed. The Talmud gives 24, Josephus only 22.96

Tradition claims a completely divine origin only for the Pentateuch or
Torah, while the rabbis often point out the human element in the other two
classes of the Biblical collection.97

2. The traditional belief in the divine origin of the Torah includes not only
every word, but also the accepted interpretation of each letter, for both
written and oral law are ascribed to the revelation to Moses on Mt. Sinai, to
be transmitted thence from generation to generation. Whoever denies the
divine origin of either the written or the oral law is declared to be an
unbeliever who has no share in the world to come, according to the
Tannaitic code, and consequently according to Maimonides98 also. But here
arises a question of vital importance: What becomes of the Torah as the
divine foundation of Judaism under the study of modern times? Even
conservative investigators, such as Frankel, Graetz, and Isaac Hirsch Weiss,
not to mention such radicals as Zunz and Geiger, admit the gradual progress
and growth of this very system of law, both oral and written. And if
different historical conditions have produced the development [pg 044] of
the law itself, we must assume a number of human authors in place of a
single act of divine revelation.99

3. But another question of equal importance confronts us here, the meaning
of Torah. Originally, no doubt, Torah signified the instruction given by the
priests on ritual or juridical matters. Out of these decisions arose the written
laws (Toroth), which the priesthood in the course of time collected into
codes. After a further process of development they appeared as the various
books of Moses, which were finally united into the Code or Torah. This
Torah was the foundation of the new Judean commonwealth, the “heritage
of the congregation of Jacob.”100 The priestly Torah, lightly regarded during
the prophetic period, was exalted by post-exilic Judaism, so that the
Sadducean priesthood and their successors, the rabbis, considered strict
observance of the legal form to be the very essence of religion. Is this, then,
the true nature of Judaism? Is it really—as Christian theologians have held
ever since the days of Paul, the great antagonist of Judaism—mere nomism,
a religion of law, which demanded formal compliance with its statutes
without regard to their inner value? Or shall we rather follow Rabbi Simlai,
the Haggadist, who first enumerated the 613 commandments of the Torah
(mandatory and prohibitive), considering that their one aim is the higher

moral law, in that they are all summed up by a few ethical principles, which
he finds in the 15th Psalm, Isaiah XXXIII, 15; Micah VI, 8; Isaiah LVI, 1;
and Amos V, 4?101

4. All these questions have but one answer, a reconciling one, Judaism has
the two factors, the priest with his regard for the law and the prophet with
his ethical teaching; and the Jewish Torah embodies both aspects, law and
doctrine. [pg 045] These two elements became more and more correlated,
as the different parts of the Pentateuch which embodied them were molded
together into the one scroll of the Law. In fact, the prophet Jeremiah, in
denouncing the priesthood for its neglect of the principles of justice, and
rebuking scathingly the people for their wrongdoing, pointed to the divine
law of righteousness as the one which should be written upon the hearts of
men.102 Likewise, in the book of Deuteronomy, which was the product of
joint activity by prophet and priest, the Law was built upon the highest
moral principle, the love of God and man. In a still larger sense the
Pentateuch as a whole contains priestly law and universal religion
intertwined. In it the eternal verities of the Jewish faith, God's omnipotence,
omniscience, and moral government of the world, are conveyed in the
historical narratives as an introduction to the law.

5. Thus the Torah as the expression of Judaism was never limited to a mere
system of law. At the outset it served as a book of instruction concerning
God and the world and became ever richer as a source of knowledge and
speculation, because all knowledge from other sources was brought into
relation with it through new modes of interpretation. Various systems of
philosophy and theology were built upon it. Nay more, the Torah became
divine Wisdom itself,103 the architect of the Creator, the beginning and end
of creation.104

While the term Torah thus received an increasingly comprehensive
meaning, the rabbis, as exponents of orthodox Judaism, came to consider
the Pentateuch as the only book of revelation, [pg 046] every letter of which
emanated directly from God. The other books of the Bible they regarded as
due only to the indwelling of the holy spirit, or to the presence of God, the
Shekinah. Moreover, they held that changes by the prophets and other
sacred writers were anticipated, in essentials, in the Torah itself, and were

therefore only its expansions and interpretations. Accordingly, they are
frequently quoted as parts of the Torah or as “words of tradition.”105

6. Orthodox Judaism, then, accepted as a fundamental doctrine the view
that both the Mosaic Law and its Rabbinical interpretation were given by
God to Moses on Mt. Sinai. This viewpoint is contradicted by all our
knowledge and our whole mode of thinking, and thus both our historical
and religious consciousness constrain us to take the position of the
prophets. To them and to us the real Torah is the unwritten moral law which
underlies the precepts of both the written law and its oral interpretation.
From this point of view, Moses, as the first of the prophets, becomes the
first mediator of the divine legislation, and the original Decalogue is seen to
be the starting point of a long process of development, from which grew the
laws of righteousness and holiness that were to rule the life of Israel and of
mankind.106

7. The time of composition of the various parts of the Pentateuch, including
the Decalogue, must be decided by independent critical and historical
research. It is sufficient for us to know that since the time of Ezra the
foundation of [pg 047] Judaism has been the completed Torah, with its
twofold aspect as law and as doctrine. As law it contributed to the
marvelous endurance and resistance of the Jewish people, inasmuch as it
imbued them with the proud consciousness of possessing a law superior to
that of other nations, one which would endure as long as heaven and
earth.107 Furthermore, it permeated Judaism with a keen sense of duty and
imprinted the ideal of holiness upon the whole of life. At the same time it
gave rise also to ritualistic piety, which, while tenaciously clinging to the
traditional practice of the law, fostered hair-splitting casuistry and caused
the petrifaction of religion in the codified Halakah. As doctrine it impressed
its ethical and humane idealism upon the people, lifting them far above the
narrow confines of nationality, and making them a nation of thinkers. Hence
their eagerness for their mission to impart the wisdom stored in their
writings to all humanity as its highest boon and the very essence of divine
wisdom.

[pg 048]

Chapter VIII. God's Covenant

1. Judaism has one specific term for religion, representing the moral
relation between God and man, namely, Berith, covenant. The covenant was
concluded by God with the patriarchs and with Israel by means of
sacrificial blood, according to the primitive custom by which tribes or
individuals became “blood brothers,” when they were both sprinkled with
the sacrificial blood or both drank of it.108 The first covenant of God was
made after the flood, with Noah as the representative of mankind; it was
intended to assure him and all coming generations of the perpetual
maintenance of the natural order without interruption by flood, and at the
same time to demand of all mankind the observance of certain laws, such as
not to shed, or eat, blood. Here at the very beginning of history religion is
taken as the universal basis of human morality, so developing at the outset
the fundamental principle of Judaism that it rests upon a religion of
humanity, which it desires to establish in all purity. As the universal idea of
man forms thus its beginning, so Judaism will attain its final goal only in a
divine covenant comprising all humanity. Both the rabbis and the
Hellenistic writers consider the covenant of Noah with its so-called
Noahitic commandments as unwritten laws of humanity. In fact, they are
referred to Adam also, so that religion appears in its [pg 049] essence as
nothing else than a covenant of God with all mankind.109

2. Accordingly, Judaism is a special basis of relationship between God and
Israel. Far from superseding the universal covenant with Noah, or confining
it to the Jewish people, this covenant aims to reclaim all members of the
human family for the wider covenant from which they have relapsed. God
chose for this purpose Abraham as the one who was faithful to His moral
law, and made a special covenant with him for all his descendants, that they
might foster justice and righteousness, at first within the narrow sphere of
the nation, and then in ever-widening circles of humanity.110 Yet the
covenant with Abraham was only the precursor of the covenant concluded

with Israel through Moses on Mt. Sinai, by which the Jewish people were
consecrated to be the eternal guardians of the divine covenant with
mankind, until the time when it shall encompass all the nations.111

3. In this covenant of Sinai, referred to by the prophet Elijah, and afterward
by many others, the free moral relationship of man to God is brought out;
this forms the characteristic feature of a revealed religion in
contradistinction to natural religion. In paganism the Deity formed an
inseparable part of the nation itself; but through the covenant God became a
free moral power, appealing for allegiance to the spiritual nature of man.
This idea of the covenant suggested to the prophet Hosea the analogy with
the conjugal relation,112 a conception of love and loyalty which became
typical of the tender relation of God to Israel through the centuries. In days
of direst woe Jeremiah and the book of [pg 050] Deuteronomy invested this
covenant with the character of indestructibility and inviolability.113 God's
covenant with Israel is everlasting like that with the heaven and the earth; it
is ever to be renewed in the hearts of the people, but never to be replaced by
a new covenant. Upon this eternal renewal of the covenant with God rests
the unique history of Judaism, its wondrous preservation and regeneration
throughout the ages. Paul's doctrine of a new covenant to replace the old114
conflicts with the very idea of the covenant, and even with the words of
Jeremiah.

4. The Israelitish nation inherited from Abraham, according to the priestly
Code, the rite of circumcision as a “sign of the covenant,”115 but under the
prophetic influence, with its loathing of all sacrificial blood, the Sabbath
was placed in the foreground as “the sign between God and Israel.”116 In
ancient Israel and in the Judean commonwealth the Abrahamitic rite formed
the initiation into the nationality for aliens and slaves, by which they were
made full-fledged Jews. With the dispersion of the Jewish people over the
globe, and the influence of Hellenism, Judaism created a propaganda in
favor of a world-wide religion of “God-fearing” men pledged to the
observance of the Noahitic or humanitarian laws. Rabbinism in Palestine
called such a one Ger Toshab—sojourner, or semi-proselyte; while the full
proselyte who accepted the Abrahamitic rite was called Ger Zedek, or
proselyte of righteousness.117 Not only the Hellenistic writings, but also the
Psalms, the liturgy, and the older Rabbinical literature [pg 051] give

evidence of such a propaganda,118 but it may be traced back as far as
Deutero-Isaiah, during the reign of Cyrus. His outlook toward a Jewish
religion which should be at the same time a religion of all the world, is
evident when he calls Israel “a mediator of the covenant between God and
the nations,” a “light to the peoples,”—a regenerator of humanity.119

5. This hope of a universal religion, which rings through the Psalms, the
Wisdom books and the Hellenistic literature, was soon destined to grow
faint. The perils of Judaism in its great struggles with the Syrian and Roman
empires made for intense nationalism, and the Jewish covenant shared this
tendency. The early Christian Church, the successor of the missionary
activity of Hellenistic Judaism, labored also at first for the Noahitic
covenant.120 Pauline Christianity, however, with a view to tearing down the
barrier between Jew and Gentile, proclaimed a new covenant, whose central
idea is belief in the atoning power of the crucified son of God.121 Indeed,
one medieval Rabbinical authority holds that we are to regard Christians as
semi-proselytes, as they practically observe the Noahitic laws of
humanity.122

6. Progressive Judaism of our own time has the great task of re-emphasizing
Israel's world-mission and of reclaiming for Judaism its place as the
priesthood of humanity. It is to proclaim anew the prophetic idea of God's
covenant with humanity, whose force had been lost, owing to inner and
outer obstacles. Israel, as the people of the covenant, aims to unite all
nations and classes of men in the divine covenant. It must outlast all other
religions in its certainty that ultimately there can be but the one religion,
uniting God and man by a single bond.123

[pg 052]

B. The Idea Of God In Judaism

Chapter IX. God and the Gods

1. Judaism centers upon its sublime and simple conception of God. This
lifts it above all other religions and satisfies in unique measure the longing
for truth and inner peace amidst the futility and incessant changes of earthly
existence. This very conception of God is in striking contrast to that of most
other religions. The God of Judaism is not one god among many, nor one of
many powers of life, but is the One and holy God beyond all comparison. In
Him is concentrated all power and the essence of all things; He is the
Author of all existence, the Ruler of life, who lays down the laws by which
man shall live. As the prophet says to the heathen world: “The gods that
have not made the heavens and the earth, these shall perish from the earth
and from under the heavens.... Not like these is the portion of Jacob; for He
is the Former of all things.... The Lord is the true God; He is the living God
and the everlasting King; at His wrath the earth trembleth, and the nations
are not able to abide His indignation.”124

2. This lofty conception of the Deity forms the essence of Judaism and was
its shield and buckler in its lifelong contest with the varying forms of
heathenism. From the very first the God of Judaism declared war against
them all, whether at [pg 053] any special time the prevailing form was the
worship of many gods, or the worship of God in the shape of man, the
perversion of the purity of God by sensual concepts, or the division of His
unity into different parts or personalities. The Talmudic saying is most
striking: “From Sinai, the Mount of revelation of the only God, there came
forth Sinah, the hostility of the nations toward the Jew as the banner-bearer
of the pure idea of God.”125 Just as day and night form a natural contrast,
divinely ordained, so do the monotheism of Israel and the polytheism of the
nations constitute a spiritual contrast which can never be reconciled.

3. The pagan gods, and to some extent the triune God of the Christian
Church, semi-pagan in origin also, are the outcome of the human spirit's
going astray in its search for God. Instead of leading man upwards to an
ideal which will encompass all material and moral life and lift it to the
highest stage of holiness, paganism led to depravity and discord. The
unrelenting zeal displayed by prophet and law-giver against idolatry had its
chief cause in the immoral and inhuman practices of the pagan nations—
Canaan, Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon—in the worship of their deities.126
The deification of the forces of nature brutalized the moral sense of the
pagan world; no vice seemed too horrible, no sacrifice too atrocious for
their cults. Baal, or Moloch, the god of heaven, demanded in times of
distress the sacrifice of a son by the father. Astarte, the goddess of
fecundity, required the “hallowing” of life's origin, and this was done by the
most terrible of sexual orgies. Such abominations exerted their seductive
influence upon the shepherd tribes of Israel in their new home in Canaan,
and thus aroused the fiercest indignation of prophet and law-giver, who
hurled their vials of wrath against those shocking rites, those lewd idols,
and those who [pg 054] “whored after them.”127 If Israel was to be trained to
be the priest people of the Only One in such an environment, tolerance of
such practices was out of the question. Thus in the Sinaitic law God is
spoken of as “the jealous God”128 who punishes unrelentingly every
violation of His laws of purity and holiness.

4. The same sharp contrast of Jewish ethical and spiritual monotheism
remained also when it came in contact with the Græco-Syrian and Roman
culture. Here, too, the myths and customs of the cult and the popular
religion offended by their gross sensuality the chaste spirit of the Jewish
people. Indeed, these were all the more dangerous to the purity of social
life, as they were garbed with the alluring beauty of art and philosophy.129
The Jew then felt all the more the imperative duty to draw a sharp line of
demarcation between Judaism with its chaste and imageless worship and
the lascivious, immoral life of paganism.

5. This wide gulf which yawned between Israel's One and holy God and the
divinities of the nations was not bridged over by the Christian Church when
it appeared on the stage of history and obtained world-dominion. For
Christianity in its turn succeeded by again dragging the Deity into the world

of the senses, adopting the pagan myths of the birth and death of the gods,
and sanctioning image worship. In this way it actually created a Christian
plurality of gods in place of the Græco-Roman pantheon; indeed, it
presented a divine family after the model of the Egyptian and Babylonian
religions,130 and thus pushed the ever-living God and Father of mankind into
the background. This tendency has never been [pg 055] explained away,
even by the attempts of certain high-minded thinkers among the Church
fathers. Judaism, however, insists, as ever, upon the words of the Decalogue
which condemn all attempts to depict the Deity in human or sensual form,
and through all its teachings there is echoed forth the voice of Him who
spoke through the seer of the Exile: “I am the Lord, that is My name, and
My glory will I not give to another, neither My praise to graven images.”131

6. When Moses came to Pharaoh saying, “Thus speaketh JHVH the God of
Israel, send off My people that they may serve Me,” Pharaoh—so the
Midrash tells—took his list of deities to hand, looked it over, and said,
“Behold, here are enumerated the gods of the nations, but I cannot find thy
God among them.” To this Moses replied, “All the gods known and familiar
to thee are mortal, as thou art; they die, and their tomb is shown. The God
of Israel has nothing in common with them. He is the living, true, and
eternal God who created heaven and earth; no people can withstand His
wrath.”132 This passage states strikingly the difference between the God of
Judaism and the gods of heathendom. The latter are but deified powers of
nature, and being parts of the world, themselves at one with nature, they are
subject to the power of time and fate. Israel's God is enthroned above the
world as its moral and spiritual Ruler, the only Being whom we can
conceive as self-existent, as indivisible as truth itself.

7. As long as the pagan conception prevailed, by which the world was
divided into many divine powers, there could be no conception of the idea
of a moral government of the universe, of an all-encompassing purpose of
life. Consequently [pg 056] the great thinkers and moralists of heathendom
were forced to deny the deities, before they could assert either the unity of
the cosmos or a design in life. On the other hand, it was precisely this
recognition of the moral nature of God, as manifested both in human life
and in the cosmic sphere, which brought the Jewish prophets and sages to
their pure monotheism, in which they will ultimately be met by the great

thinkers of all lands and ages. The unity of God brings harmony into the
intellectual and moral world; the division of the godhead into different
powers or personalities leads to discord and spiritual bondage. Such is the
lesson of history, that in polytheism, dualism, or trinitarianism one of the
powers must necessarily limit or obscure another. In this manner the
Christian Trinity led mankind in many ways to the lowering of the supreme
standard of truth, to an infringement on justice, and to inhumanity to other
creeds, and therefore Judaism could regard it only as a compromise with
heathenism.

8. Judaism assumed, then, toward paganism an attitude of rigid exclusion
and opposition which could easily be taken for hostility. This prevailed
especially in the legal systems of the Bible and the rabbis, and was intended
primarily to guard the monotheistic belief from pagan pollution and to keep
it intact. Neither in the Deuteronomic law nor in the late codes of
Maimonides and Joseph Caro is there any toleration for idolatrous practices,
for instruments of idol-worship, or for idolaters.133 This attitude gave the
enemies of the Jew sufficient occasion for speaking of the Jewish God as
hating the world, as if only national conceit underlay the earnest rigor of
Jewish monotheism.

9. As a matter of fact, since the time of the prophets Judaism has had no
national God in any exclusive sense. While the Law insists upon the
exclusive worship of the one God of [pg 057] Israel, the narratives of the
beginnings in the Bible have a different tenor. They take the lofty
standpoint that the heathen world, while worshiping its many divinities, had
merely lost sight of the true God after whom the heart ever longs and
searches. This implies that a kernel of true piety underlies all the error and
delusion of paganism, which, rightly guided, will lead back to the God from
whom mankind had strayed. The Godhead, divided into gods—as is hinted
even in the Biblical name, Elohim—must again become the one God of
humanity. Thus the Jew holds that all worship foreshadows the search for
the true God, and that all humanity shall at one time acknowledge Him for
whom they have so long been searching. Surely the Psalms express, not
national narrowness, but ardent love for humanity when they hail the God
of Israel, the Maker of heaven and earth, as the world's great King, and tell
how He will judge the nations in justice, while the gods of the nations will

be rejected as “vanities.”134 Nor does the divine service of the Jew bear the
stamp of clannishness. For more than two thousand years the central point
in the Synagogue liturgy every morning and evening has been the battle-cry,
“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” And so does the
conclusion of every service, the Alenu, the solemn prayer of adoration,
voice the grand hope of the Jew for the future, that the time may speedily
come when “before the kingdom of Almighty all idolatry shall vanish, and
all the inhabitants of the earth perceive that unto Him alone every knee
must bend, and all flesh recognize Him alone as God and King.”135

[pg 058]

Chapter X. The Name of God

1. Primitive men attached much importance to names, for to them the name
of a thing indicated its nature, and through the name one could obtain
mastery over the thing or person named. Accordingly, the name of God was
considered to be the manifestation of His being; by invoking it man could
obtain some of His power; and the place where that name was called
became the seat of His presence. Therefore the name must be treated with
the same reverential awe as the Deity Himself. None dare approach the
Deity, nor misuse the Name. The pious soul realized the nearness of the
Deity in hearing His name pronounced. Finally, the different names of God
reflect the different conceptions of Him which were held in various
periods.136

2. The Semites were not like the Aryan nations, who beheld the essence of
their gods in the phenomena of nature such as light, rain, thunder, and

lightning,—and gave them corresponding names and titles. The more
intense religious emotionalism of the Semites137 perceived the Godhead
rather as a power working from within, and accordingly gave it such names
as El (“the Mighty One”), Eloha or Pahad (“the Awful One”), or Baal (“the
Master”). Elohim, the plural form of Eloha, denoted originally the godhead
as divided into a number of gods or godly beings, that is, polytheism. When
[pg 059] it was applied to God, however, it was generally understood as a
unity, referring to one undivided Godhead, for Scripture regarded
monotheism as original with mankind. While this view is contradicted by
the science of comparative religion, still the ideal conception of religion,
based on the universal consciousness of God, postulates one God who is the
aim of all human searching, a fact which the term Henotheism fails to
recognize.138

3. For the patriarchal age, the preliminary stage in the development of the
Jewish God-idea, Scripture gives a special name for God, El Shaddai—“the
Almighty God.” This probably has a relation to Shod, “storm” or “havoc”
and “destruction,” but was interpreted as supreme Ruler over the celestial
powers.139 The name by which God revealed Himself to Moses and the
prophets as the God of the covenant with Israel is JHVH (Jahveh). This
name is inseparably connected with the religious development of Judaism
in all its loftiness and depth. During the period of the Second Temple this
name was declared too sacred for utterance, except by the priests in certain
parts of the service, and for mysterious use by specially initiated saints.
Instead, Adonai—“the Lord”—was substituted for it in the Biblical reading,
a usage which has continued for over two thousand years. The meaning of
the name in pre-Mosaic times may be inferred from the fiery storms which
accompanied each theophany in the various Scriptural passages, as well as
from the root havah, which means “throw down” and “overthrow.”140

[pg 060]
To the prophets, however, the God of Sinai, enthroned amid clouds of storm
and fire, moving before His people in war and peace, appeared rather as the
God of the Covenant, without image or form, unapproachable in His
holiness. As the original meaning of JHVH had become unintelligible, they
interpreted the name as “the ever present One,” in the sense of Ehyeh asher
Ehyeh, “I shall be whatever (or wherever) I am to be”; that is, “I am ever

ready to help.” Thus spoke God to Moses in revealing His name to him at
the burning bush.141

4. The prophetic genius penetrated more and more into the nature of God,
recognising Him as the Power who rules in justice, mercy, and holiness.
This process brought them to identify JHVH, the God of the covenant, with
the One and only God who overlooks all the world from his heavenly
habitation, and gives it plan and purpose. At the same time, all the prophets
revert to the covenant on Sinai in order to proclaim Israel as the herald and
witness of God among the nations. In fact, the God of the covenant
proclaimed His universality at the very beginning, in the introduction to the
Decalogue: “Ye shall be Mine own peculiar possession from among all
peoples, for all the earth is Mine. And ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of
priests and a holy nation.”142 In other words,—you have the special task of
mediator among the nations, all of which are under My dominion.

5. In the Wisdom literature and the Psalms the God of the covenant is
subordinated to the universality of JHVH as Creator and Ruler of the world.
In a number of the Psalms and in some later writings the very name JHVH
was avoided probably on account of its particularistic tinge. It was
surrounded more and more with a certain mystery. Instead, God as the
“Lord” is impressed on the consciousness and adoration of men, in all His
sublimity and in absolute unity. [pg 061] The “Name” continues its separate
existence only in the mystic lore. The name Jehovah, however, has no place
whatsoever in Judaism. It is due simply to a misreading of the vowel signs
that refer to the word Adonai, and has been erroneously adopted in the
Christian literature since the beginning of the sixteenth century.143

6. Perhaps the most important process of spiritualization which the idea of
God underwent in the minds of the Jewish people was made when the name
JHVH as the proper name of the God of the covenant was given up and
replaced by Adonai—“the Lord.” As long as the God of Israel, like other
deities, had His proper name, he was practically one of them, however
superior in moral worth. As soon as He became the Lord, that is, the only
real God over all the world, a distinctive proper noun was out of place.
Henceforth the name was invested with a mysterious and magic character. It
became ineffable, at least to the people at large, and its pronunciation sinful,

except by the priests in the liturgy. In fact, the law was interpreted so as
directly to forbid this utterance.144 Thus JHVH is no longer the national God
of Israel. The Talmud guards against the very suspicion of a “Judaized God”
by insisting that every benediction to Him as “God the Lord” must add
“King of the Universe” rather than the formula of the Psalms, “God of
Israel.”145

7. The Midrash makes a significant comment on the words of the Shema:
“Why do the words, ‘the Lord is our God’ precede the words, ‘the Lord is
One’? Does not the particularism of the former conflict with the
universalism of the latter sentence? No. The former expresses the idea that
the Lord is ‘our God’ just so far as His name is more intertwined [pg 062]
with our history than with that of any other nation, and that we have the
greater obligation as His chosen people. Wherever Scripture speaks of the
God of Israel, it does not intend to limit Him as the universal God, but to
emphasize Israel's special duty as His priest-people.”146

8. Likewise is the liturgical name “God of our fathers” far from being a
nationalistic limitation. On the contrary, the rabbis single out Abraham as
the missionary, the herald of monotheism in its march to world-conquest.
For his use of the term, “the God of heaven and the God of the earth”147
they offer a characteristic explanation: “Before Abraham came, the people
worshiped only the God of heaven, but Abraham by winning them for his
God brought Him down and made Him also the God of the earth.”148

9. Reverence for the Deity caused the Jew to avoid not only the utterance of
the holy Name itself, but even the common use of its substitute Adonai.
Therefore still other synonyms were introduced, such as “Master of the
universe,” “the Holy One, blessed be He,” “the Merciful One,” “the
Omnipotence” (ha Geburah),149 “King of the kings of kings” (under Persian
influence—as the Persian ruler called himself the King of Kings);150 and in
Hasidean circles it became customary to invoke God as “our Father” and
“our Father in heaven.”151 The rather strange appellations for God,
“Heaven”152 and (dwelling) “Place” (ha Makom) seem to originate in certain
formulas of the oath. In the latter name the rabbis even found hints of God's
omnipresence: “As space—Makom—encompasses all things, so does God
encompass the world instead of being encompassed by it.”153

[pg 063]
10. The rabbis early read a theological meaning into the two names JHVH
and Elohim, taking the former as the divine attribute of mercy and the latter
as that of justice.154 In general, however, the former name was explained
etymologically as signifying eternity, “He who is, who was, and who shall
be.” Philo shows familiarity with the two attributes of justice and mercy,
but he and other Alexandrian writers explained JHVH and Ehyeh
metaphysically, and accordingly called God, “the One who is,” that is, the
Source of all existence. Both conceptions still influence Jewish exegesis
and account for the term “the Eternal” sometimes used for “the Lord.”

[pg 064]

Chapter XI. The Existence of God

1. For the religious consciousness, God is not to be demonstrated by
argument, but is a fact of inner and outer experience. Whatever the origin
and nature of the cosmos may be according to natural science, the soul of
man follows its natural bent, as in the days of Abraham, to look through
nature to the Maker, Ordainer, and Ruler of all things, who uses the
manifold world of nature only as His workshop, and who rules it in freedom
as its sovereign Master. The entire cosmic life points to a Supreme Being
from whom all existence must have arisen, and without whom life and
process would be impossible. Still even this mode of thought is influenced
and determined by the prevalent monotheistic conceptions.

Far more original and potent in man is the feeling of limitation and
dependency. This brings him to bow down before a higher Power, at first in

fear and trembling, but later in holy awe and reverence. As soon as man
attains self-consciousness and his will acquires purpose, he encounters a
will stronger than his own, with which he often comes into conflict, and
before which he must frequently yield. Thus he becomes conscious of duty
—of what he ought and ought not to do. This is not, like earlier limitations,
purely physical and working from without; it is moral and operates from
within. It is the sense of duty, or, as we call it, conscience, the sense of right
and wrong. This awakened very early in the race, [pg 065] and through it
God's voice has been perceived ever since the days of Adam and of Cain.155

2. According to Scripture, man in his natural state possesses the certainty of
God's existence through such inner experience. Therefore the Bible contains
no command to believe in God, nor any logical demonstration of His
existence. Both the Creation stories and those of the beginnings of mankind
assume as undisputed the existence of God as the Creator and Judge of the
world. Arguments appealing to reason were resorted to only in competition
with idolatry, as in Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, and Deutero-Isaiah, and
subsequently by the Haggadists in legends such as those about Abraham.
Nor does the Bible consider any who deny the existence of God;156 only
much later, in the Talmud, do we hear of those who “deny the fundamental
principle” of the faith. The doubt expressed in Job, Koheleth, and certain of
the Psalms, concerns rather the justice of God than His existence. True,
Jeremiah and the Psalms157 mention some who say “There is no God,” but
these are not atheists in our sense of the word; they are the impious who
deny the moral order of life by word or deed. It is the villain (Nabal), not
the “fool” who “says in heart, there is no God.” Even the Talmud does not
mean the real atheist when speaking of “the denier of the fundamental
principle,” but the man who says, “There is neither a judgment nor a Judge
above and beyond.”158 In other words, the “denier” is the same as the
Epicurean (Apicoros), who refuses to recognize the moral government of
the world.159

3. After the downfall of the nation and Temple, the situation changed
through the contemptuous question of the [pg 066] nations, “Where is your
God?” Then the necessity became evident of proving that the Ruler of
nations still held dominion over the world, and that His wondrous powers
were shown more than ever before through the fact of Israel's preservation

in captivity. This is the substance of the addresses of the great seer of the
Exile in chapters XL to LIX of Isaiah, in which he exposes the gods of
heathendom to everlasting scorn, more than any other prophet before or
afterward. He declares these deities to be vanity and naught, but proclaims
the Holy One of Israel as the Lord of the universe. He hath “meted out the
heavens with the span,” and “weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills
in a balance.” Before Him “the nations are as a drop of the bucket,” and
“the inhabitants of the earth as grasshoppers.” “He bringeth out the hosts of
the stars by number, and calleth them all by name,” “He hath assigned to
the generations of men their lot from the beginning, and knoweth at the
beginning what will be their end.”160 Measured by such passages as these
and such as Psalms VIII, XXIV, XXXIII, CIV, and CXXXIX, where God is
felt as a living power, all philosophical arguments about His existence seem
to be strange fires on the altar of religion. The believer can do without them,
and the unbeliever will hardly be convinced by them.

4. Upon the contact of the Jew with Greek philosophy doubt arose in many
minds, and belief entered into conflict with reason. But even then, the
defense of the faith was still carried on by reasoning along the lines of
common sense.161 Thus the regularity of the sun, moon, and stars,—all
worshiped by the pagans as deities—was considered a proof of God's
omnipotence and rule of the universe, a proof which the legend ascribes to
Abraham in his controversy with Nimrod.162 In like manner, the apocryphal
Book of Wisdom163 [pg 067] says that true wisdom, as opposed to the folly
of heathenism, is “to reason from the visible to the Invisible One, and from
the cosmos, the great work of art, to the Supreme Artificer.”

5. Philo was the first who tried to refute the “atheistic” views of materialists
and pantheists by adducing proofs of God's existence from nature and the
human intellect. In the former he pointed out order as evidence of the
wisdom underlying the cosmos, and in the latter the power of self-
determination as shadowing forth a universal mind which determines the
entire universe.164 Still, with his mystical attitude, Philo realized that the
chief knowledge of God is through intuition, by the inner experience of the
soul.

6. Two proofs taken from nature owe their origin to Greek philosophy.
Anaxagoras and Socrates, from their theory of design in nature, deduced
that there is a universal intelligence working for higher aims and purposes.
This so-called teleological proof, as worked out in detail by Plato, was the
unfailing reliance of subsequent philosophers and theologians.165 Plato and
Aristotle, moreover, from the continuous motion of all matter, inferred a
prime cause, an unmoved mover. This is the so-called cosmological proof,
used by different schools in varying forms.166 It occupies the foremost place
in the systems of the Arabic Aristotelians, and consequently is dominant
among the Jewish philosophers, the Christian scholastics, and in the modern
philosophic schools down to Kant. It is based upon the old principle of
causality, and therefore takes the mutability and relativity of all beings in
the cosmos as evidence of a Being that is immutable, unconditioned, and
absolutely necessary, causa sui, the prime cause of all existence.

[pg 068]
7. The Mohammedan theologians added a new element to the discussion. In
their endeavor to prove that the world is the work of a Creator, they pointed
as evidence to the multiformity and composite structure, the contingency
and dependency of the cosmos; thus they concluded that it must have been
created, and that its Creator must necessarily be the one, absolute, and all-
determining cause. This proof is used also by Saadia and Bahya ben
Joseph.167 Its weakness, however, was exposed by Ibn Sina and Alfarabi
among the Mohammedans, and later by Abraham ibn Daud and
Maimonides, their Jewish successors as Aristotelians. These proposed a
substitute argument. From the fact that the existence of all cosmic beings is
merely possible,—that is, they may exist and they may not exist,—these
thinkers concluded that an absolutely necessary being must exist as the
cause and condition of all things, and this absolutely unconditioned yet all-
conditioning being is God, the One who is.168 Of course, the God so
deduced and inferred is a mere abstraction, incapable of satisfying the
emotional craving of the heart.

8. While the cosmological proof proceeds from the transitory and imperfect
nature of the world, the ontological proof, first proposed by Anselm of
Canterbury, the Christian scholastic of the XI century, and further
elaborated by Descartes and Mendelssohn, proceeds from the human

intellect. The mind conceives the idea of God as an absolutely perfect
being, and, as there can be no perfection without existence, the conclusion
is that this idea must necessarily be objectively true. Then, as the idea of
God is innate in man, God must necessarily exist,—and for proof of this
they point to the Scriptural verse, “The fool hath said in his heart, there is
no God,” [pg 069] and other similar passages. In its improved form, this
argument uses the human concept of an infinitely perfect God as evidence,
or, at least, as postulate that such a Being exists beyond the finite world of
man.169

Another argument, rather naïve in character, which was favored by the
Stoics and adopted by the Church fathers, is called de consensu gentium,
and endeavored to prove the reality of God's existence from the universality
of His worship. It speaks well for the sound reasoning of the Jewish
thinkers that they refused to follow the lead of the Mohammedans in this
respect, and did not avail themselves of an argument which can be used just
as easily in support of a plurality of gods.170

9. All these so-called proofs were invalidated by Immanuel Kant, the great
philosopher of Königsberg, whose critical inquiry into the human intellect
showed that the entire sum of our knowledge of objects and also of the
formulation of our ideas is based upon our limited mode of apperception,
while the reality or essence, “the thing in itself,” will ever remain beyond
our ken. If this is true of physical objects, it is all the more true of God,
whom we know through our minds alone and not at all through our five
senses. Accordingly, he shows that all the metaphysical arguments have no
basis, and that we can know God's existence only through ethics, as a
postulate of our moral nature. The inner consciousness of our moral
obligation, or duty, implies a moral order of life, or moral law; and this, in
turn, postulates the existence of God, the Ruler of life, who assigns to each
of us his task and his destiny.171

10. It is true that God is felt and worshiped first as the supreme power in the
world, before man perceives Him as [pg 070] the highest ideal of morality.
Therefore man will never cease looking about him for vestiges of divinity
and for proofs of his intuitive knowledge of God. The wondrous order,
harmony, and signs of design in nature, as well as the impulse of the reason

to search for the unity of all things, corroborate this innate belief in God.
Still more do the consciousness of duty in the individual—conscience—and
the progress of history with its repeated vindication of right and defeat of
wrong proclaim to the believer unmistakably that the God of justice reigns.
But no proof, however convincing, will ever bring back to the skeptic or
unbeliever the God he has lost, unless his pangs of anguish or the void
within fill his desolate world anew with the vivifying thought of a living
God.

11. Among all the Jewish religious philosophers the highest rank must be
accorded to Jehudah ha Levi, the author of the Cuzari,172 who makes the
historical fact of the divine revelation the foundation of the Jewish religion
and the chief testimony of the existence of God. As a matter of fact, reason
alone will not lead to God, except where religious intuition forms, so to
speak, the ladder of heaven, leading to the realm of the unknowable.
Philosophy, at best, can only demonstrate the existence of a final Cause, or
of a supreme Intelligence working toward sublime purposes; possibly also a
moral government of the world, in both the physical and the spiritual life.
Religion alone, founded upon divine revelation, can teach man to find a
God, to whom he can appeal in trust in his moments of trouble or of woe,
and whose will he can see in the dictates of conscience and the destiny of
nations. Reason must serve as a corrective for the contents of revelation,
scrutinizing and purifying, deepening and spiritualizing ever anew the
truths received through intuition, but it can never be the final source of
truth.

[pg 071]
12. The same method must apply also to modern thought and research,
which substituted historical methods for metaphysics in both the physical
and intellectual world, and which endeavors to trace the origin and growth
of both objects and ideas in accordance with fixed laws. The process of
evolution, our modern key with which to unlock the secrets of nature,
points most significantly to a Supreme Power and Energy. But this energy,
entering into the cosmic process at its outset, causing its motion and its
growth, implies also an end, and thus again we have the Supreme
Intelligence reached through a new type of teleology.173 But all these
conceptions, however they may be in harmony with the Jewish belief in

creation and revelation, can at best supplement it, but can certainly neither
supplant nor be identified with it.

[pg 072]

Chapter XII. The Essence of God

1. An exquisite Oriental fable tells of a sage who had been meditating
vainly for days and weeks on the question, What is God? One day, walking
along the seashore, he saw some children busying themselves by digging
holes in the sand and pouring into them water from the sea. “What are you
doing there?” he asked them, to which they replied, “We want to empty the
sea of its water.” “Oh, you little fools,” he exclaimed with a smile, but
suddenly his smile vanished in serious thought. “Am I not as foolish as
these children?” he said to himself. “How can I with my small brain hope to
grasp the infinite nature of God?”

All efforts of philosophy to define the essence of God are futile. “Canst
thou by searching find out God?” Zophar asks of his friend Job.174 Both
Philo and Maimonides maintain that we can know of God only that He is;
we can never fathom His innermost being or know what He is. Both find
this unknowability of God expressed in the words spoken to Moses: “If I
withdraw My hand, thou shall see My back—that is, the effects of God's
power and wisdom—but My face—the real essence of God—thou shalt not
see.”175

2. Still, a divinity void of all essential qualities fails to satisfy the religious
soul. Man demands to know what God is—at least, what God is to him. In

the first word of the [pg 073] Decalogue God speaks through His people
Israel to the religious consciousness of all men at all times, beginning, “I
am the Lord, thy God.” This word I lifts God at once above all beings and
powers of the cosmos, in fact, above all other existence, for it expresses His
unique self-consciousness. This attribute above all is possessed by no being
in the world of nature, and only by man, who is the image of his Maker.
According to the Midrash, all creation was hushed when the Lord spoke on
Sinai, “I am the Lord.”176 God is not merely the supreme Being, but also the
supreme Self-consciousness. As man, in spite of all his limitations and
helplessness, still towers high above all his fellow creatures by virtue of his
free will and self-conscious action, so God, who knows no bounds to His
wisdom and power, surpasses all beings and forces of the universe, for He
rules over all as the one completely self-conscious Mind and Will. In both
the visible and invisible realms He manifests Himself as the absolutely free
Personality, moral and spiritual, who allots to every thing its existence,
form, and purpose. For this reason Scripture calls Him “the living God and
everlasting King.”177

3. Judaism, accordingly, teaches us to recognize God, above all, as
revealing Himself in self-conscious activity, as determining all that happens
by His absolutely free will, and thus as showing man how to walk as a free
moral agent. In relation to the world, His work or workshop, He is the self-
conscious Master, saying “I am that which I am”; in relation to man, who is
akin to Him as a self-conscious rational and moral being, He is the living
Fountain of all that knowledge and spirituality for which men long, and in
which alone they may find contentment and bliss.

Thus the God of Judaism, the world's great I Am, forms a complete contrast,
not only to the lifeless powers of nature and destiny, which were worshiped
by the ancient pagans, [pg 074] but also to the God of modern paganism, a
God divested of all personality and self-consciousness, such as He is
conceived of by the new school of Christian theology, with its pantheistic
tendency. I refer to the school of Ritschl, which strives to render the myth
of the man-god philosophically intelligible by teaching that God reaches
self-consciousness only in the perfect type of man, that is, Christ, while
otherwise He is entirely immanent, one with the world. All the more
forcibly does Jewish monotheism insist upon its doctrine that God, in His

continual self-revelation, is the supermundane and self-conscious Ruler of
both nature and history. “I am the Lord, that is My name, and My glory will
I not give to another,”—so says the God of Judaism.178

4. The Jewish God-idea, of course, had to go through many stages of
development before it reached the concept of a transcendental and spiritual
god. It was necessary first that the Decalogue and the Book of the Covenant
prohibit most stringently polytheism and every form of idolatry, and second
that a strictly imageless worship impress the people with the idea that
Israel's God was both invisible and incorporeal.179 Yet a wide step still
intervened from that stage to the complete recognition of God as a purely
spiritual Being, lacking all qualities perceptible to the senses, and not
resembling man in either his inner or his outer nature. Centuries of gradual
ripening of thought were still necessary for the growth of this conception.
This was rendered still more difficult by the Scriptural references to God in
His actions and His revelations, and even in His motives, after a human
pattern. Israel's sages required centuries of effort to remove all
anthropomorphic and anthropopathic notions of God, and thus to elevate
Him to the highest realm of spirituality.180

[pg 075]
5. In this process of development two points of view demand consideration.
We must not overlook the fact that the perfectly clear distinction which we
make between the sensory and the spiritual does not appeal to the child-like
mind, which sees it rather as external. What we call transcendent, owing to
our comprehension of the immeasurable universe, was formerly conceived
only as far remote in space or time. Thus God is spoken of in Scripture as
dwelling in heaven and looking down upon the inhabitants of the earth to
judge them and to guide them.181 According to Deuteronomy, God spoke
from heaven to the people about Mt. Sinai, while Exodus represents Him as
coming down to the mountain from His heavenly heights to proclaim the
law amid thunder and lightning.182 The Babylonian conception of heaven
prevailed throughout the Middle Ages and influenced both the mystic lore
about the heavenly throne and the philosophic cosmology of the
Aristotelians, such as Maimonides. Yet Scripture offers also another view,
the concept of God as the One enthroned on high, whom “the heavens and
the heaven's heavens cannot encompass.”183

The fact is that language still lacked an expression for pure spirit, and the
intellect freed itself only gradually from the restrictions of primitive
language to attain a purer conception of the divine. Thus we attain deeper
insight into the spiritual nature of God when we read the inimitable words
of the Psalmist describing His omnipresence,184 or that other passage: “He
that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall He not
see? He that chastiseth the nations, shall He not correct, even He that
teaches man knowledge?”185

The translators and interpreters of the Bible felt the need of eliminating
everything of a sensory nature from God and [pg 076] of avoiding
anthropomorphism, through the influence of Greek philosophy. This
spiritualization of the God idea was taken up again by the philosophers of
the Spanish-Arabic period, who combated the prevailing mysticism.
Through them Jewish monotheism emphasized its opposition to every
human representation of God, especially the God-Man of the Christian
Church.

6. On the other hand, we must bear in mind that we naturally ascribe to God
a human personality, whether we speak of Him as the Master-worker of the
universe, as the all-seeing and all-hearing Judge, or the compassionate and
merciful Father. We cannot help attributing human qualities and emotions to
Him the moment we invest Him with a moral and spiritual nature. When we
speak of His punitive justice, His unfailing mercy, or His all-wise
providence, we transfer to Him, imperceptibly, our own righteous
indignation at the sight of a wicked deed, or our own compassion with the
sufferer, or even our own mode of deliberation and decision. Moreover, the
prophets and the Torah, in order to make God plain to the people, described
Him in vivid images of human life, with anger and jealousy as well as
compassion and repentance, and also with the organs and functions of the
senses,—seeing, hearing, smelling, speaking, and walking.

7. The rabbis are all the more emphatic in their assertions that the Torah
merely intends to assist the simple-minded, and that unseemly expressions
concerning Deity are due to the inadequacy of language, and must not be
taken literally.186 “It is an act of boldness allowed only to the prophets to
measure the Creator by the standard of the creature,” says the Haggadist,

and again, “God appeared to Israel, now as a heroic warrior, now as a
venerable sage imparting knowledge, and again as a kind dispenser of
bounties, but always in a [pg 077] manner befitting the time and
circumstance, so as to satisfy the need of the human heart.”187 This is
strikingly illustrated in the following dialogue: “A heretic came to Rabbi
Meir asking, ‘How can you reconcile the passage which reads, “Do I not fill
heaven and earth, says the Lord,” with the one which relates that the Lord
appeared to Moses between the cherubim of the ark of the covenant?’
Whereupon Rabbi Meir took two mirrors, one large and the other small, and
placed them before the interrogator. ‘Look into this glass,’ he said, ‘and into
that. Does not your figure seem different in one than in the other? How
much more will the majesty of God, who has neither figure nor form, be
reflected differently in the minds of men! To one it will appear according to
his narrow view of life, and to the other in accordance with his larger
mental horizon.’ ”188

In like manner Rabbi Joshua ben Hanania, when asked sarcastically by the
Emperor Hadrian to show him his God, replied: “Come and look at the sun
which now shines in the full splendor of noonday! Behold, thou art dazzled.
How, then, canst thou see without bewilderment the majesty of Him from
whom emanates both sun and stars?”189 This rejoinder, which was familiar
to the Greeks also, is excelled by the one of Rabban Gamaliel II to a
heathen who asked him “Where does the God dwell to whom you daily
pray?” “Tell me first,” he answered, “where does your soul dwell, which is
so close to thee? Thou canst not tell. How, then, can I inform thee
concerning Him who dwells in heaven, and whose throne is separated from
the earth by a journey of 3500 years?” “Then do we not do better to pray to
gods who are near at hand, and whom we can see with our eyes?” [pg 078]
continued the heathen, whereupon the sage struck home, “Well, you may
see your gods, but they neither see nor help you, while our God, Himself
unseen, yet sees and protects us constantly.”190 The comparison of the
invisible soul to God, the invisible spirit of the universe, is worked out
further in the Midrash to Psalm CIII.

8. From the foregoing it is clear that, while Judaism insists on the Deity's
transcending all finite and sensory limitations, it never lost the sense of the
close relationship between man and his Maker. Notwithstanding Christian

theologians to the contrary, the Jewish God was never a mere abstraction.191
The words, “I am the Lord thy God,” betoken the intimate relation between
the redeemed and the heavenly Redeemer, and the song of triumph at the
Red Sea, “This is my God, I will extol Him,” testifies—according to the
Midrash—that even the humblest of God's chosen people were filled with
the feeling of His nearness.192 In the same way the warm breath of union
with God breathes through all the writings, the prayers, and the whole
history of Judaism. “For what great nation is there that hath God so nigh
unto them as the Lord our God is, whenever we call upon Him?” exclaims
Moses in Deuteronomy, and the rabbis, commenting upon the plural form
used here, Kerobim, = “nigh,” remark: “God is nigh to everyone in
accordance with his special needs.”193

9. Probably the rabbis were at their most profound mood in their saying,
“God's greatness lies in His condescension, as may be learned from the
Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. To quote only Isaiah also: ‘Thus saith
the High and [pg 079] Lofty One, I dwell in high and holy places, with him
that is of a contrite and humble spirit.’194 For this reason God selected as the
place of His revelation the humble Sinai and the lowly thornbush.”195 In
fact, the absence of any mediator in Judaism necessitates the doctrine that
God—with all His transcendent majesty—is at the same time “an ever
present helper in trouble,”196 and that His omnipotence includes care for the
greatest and the smallest beings of creation.197

10. The doctrine that God is above and beyond the universe, transcending
all created things, as well as time and space, might lead logically to the
view of the deist that He stands outside of the world, and does not work
from within. But this inference has never been made even by the boldest of
Jewish thinkers. The Psalmist said, “Who is like the Lord our God, that hath
His seat on high, that humbleth Himself to behold what is in heaven and on
earth?”198—words which express the deepest and the loftiest thought of
Judaism. Beside the all-encompassing Deity no other divine power or
personality can find a place. God is in all; He is over all; He is both
immanent and transcendent. His creation was not merely setting into motion
the wheels of the cosmic fabric, after which He withdrew from the world.
The Jew praises Him for every scent and sight of nature or of human life,
for the beauty of the sea and the rainbow, for every flash of lightning that

illumines the darkened clouds and every peal of thunder that shakes the
earth. On every such occasion the Jew utters praise to “Him who daily
renews the work of creation,” or “Him who in everlasting faithfulness
keepeth His covenant with mankind.” Such is the teaching of the men of the
Great Synagogue,199 and the charge of the Jewish [pg 080] God idea being a
barren and abstract transcendentalism can be urged only by the blindness of
bigotry.200

11. The interweaving of the ideas of God's immanence and transcendency is
shown especially in two poems embodied in the songs of the Synagogue,
Ibn Gabirol's “Crown of Royalty” and the “Songs of Unity” for each day of
the week, composed by Samuel ben Kalonymos, the father of Judah the
Pious of Regensburg. Here occur such sentences as these: “All is in God
and God is in all”; “Sufficient unto Himself and self-determining, He is the
ever-living and self-conscious Mind, the all-permeating, all-impelling, and
all-accomplishing Will”; “The universe is the emanation of the plenitude of
God, each part the light of His infinite light, flame of His eternal
empyrean”; “The universe is the garment, the covering of God, and He the
all-penetrating Soul.”201 All these ideas were borrowed from neo-Platonism,
and found a conspicuous place in Ibn Gabirol's philosophy, later influencing
the Cabbalah.

Similarly the appellation, Makom, “Space,” is explained by both Philo and
the rabbis as denoting “Him who encompasses the world, but whom the
world cannot encompass.”202 An utterance such as this, well-nigh
pantheistic in tone, leads directly to theories like those of Spinoza or of
David Nieto, the well-known London Rabbi, who was largely under
Spinozistic influence203 and who still was in accord with Jewish thought.
Certainly, as long as Jewish monotheism conceives of God as self-
conscious Intellect and freely acting Will, it can easily accept the principle
of divine immanence.

12. We accept, then, the fact that man, child-like, invests God with human
qualities,—a view advanced by Abraham [pg 081] ben David of Posquieres
in opposition to Maimonides.204 Still, the thinkers of Judaism have ever
labored to divest the Deity of every vestige of sensuousness, of likeness to
man, in fact, of every limitation to action or to free will. Every conception

which merges God into the world or identifies Him with it and thus makes
Him subject to necessity, is incompatible with the Jewish idea of God,
which enthrones Him above the universe as its free and sovereign Master.
“Am I a God near at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any
hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do I
not fill heaven and earth?”205 “To whom will you liken Me, that I should be
equal?”206

[pg 082]

Chapter XIII. The One and Only God

1. From the very beginning no Jewish doctrine was so firmly proclaimed
and so heroically defended as the belief in the One and Only God. This
constitutes the essence and foundation of Judaism. However slowly the
people learned that there could be no gods beside the One God, and that
consequently all the pagan deities were but “naught and vanity,” the
Judaism of the Torah starts with the proclamation of the Only One, and later
Judaism marches through the nations and ages of history with a never-silent
protest against polytheism of every kind, against every division of the
Godhead into parts, powers, or persons.

2. It is perfectly clear that divine pedagogy could not well have demanded
of a people immature and untrained in religion, like Israel in the wilderness
period, the immediate belief in the only one God and in none else. Such a
belief is the result of a long mental process; it is attained only after
centuries of severe struggle and crisis. Instead of this, the Decalogue of
Sinai demanded of the people that they worship only the God of the

Covenant who had delivered them from Egypt to render them His people.207
But, as they yielded more and more to the seductive worship of the gods of
the Canaanites and their other neighbors, the law became more rigid in
prohibiting such idolatrous practices, and the prophets poured forth their
unscathing wrath against the “stiff-necked people” [pg 083] and endeavored
by unceasing warnings and threats to win them for the pure truth of
monotheism.208

3. The God of Sinai proclaims Himself in the Decalogue as a “jealous
God,” and not in vain. He cannot tolerate other gods beside Himself. Truth
can make no concession to untruth, nor enter into any compromise with it
without self-surrender. A pagan religion could well afford to admit foreign
gods into its pantheon without offending the ruling deities of the land. On
the contrary, their realm seemed rather to be enlarged by the addition. It was
also easy to blend the cults of deities originally distinct and unite many
divinities under a composite name, and by this process create a system of
worship which would either comprise the gods of many lands or even
merge them into one large family. This was actually the state of the various
pagan religions at the time of the decline of antiquity. But such a procedure
could never lead towards true monotheism. It lacks the conception of an
inner unity, without which its followers could not grasp the true idea of God
as the source and essence of all life, both physical and spiritual. Only the
One God of revelation made the world really one. In Him alone heaven and
earth, day and night, growth and decay, the weal and woe of individuals and
nations, appear as the work of an all-ruling Power and Wisdom, so that all
events in nature and history are seen as parts of one all-comprising plan.209

4. It is perfectly true that a wide difference of view exists between the
prohibition of polytheism and idolatry in the Decalogue and the
proclamation in Deuteronomy of the unity of God, and, still more, between
the law of the Pentateuch and the prophetic announcement of the day when
Israel's [pg 084] God “shall be King of the whole earth, and His name shall
be One.”210 Yet Judaism is based precisely upon this higher view. The very
first pages of Genesis, the opening of the Torah, as well as the exilic
portions of Isaiah which form the culmination of the prophets, and the
Psalms also, prove sufficiently that at their time monotheism was an axiom
of Judaism. In fact, heathenism had become synonymous with both image-

worship and belief in many gods beside the Only One of Israel, and
accordingly had lost all hold upon the Jewish people. The heathen gods
were given a place in the celestial economy, but only as subordinate rulers
or as the guardian angels of the nations, and always under the dominion of
God on high.211

5. Later, in the contest against Græco-Egyptian paganism, the doctrine of
God's unity was emphasized in the Alexandrian propaganda literature, of
which only a portion has been preserved for us. Here antagonism in the
most forcible form is expressed against the delusive cults of paganism, and
exclusive worship claimed for “the unseen, yet all-seeing God, the
uncreated Creator of the world.”212 The Rabbinical Haggadah contains but
dim reminiscences of the extensive propaganda carried on previous to
Hillel, the Talmudic type of the propagandist. Moreover, this period
fostered free inquiry and philosophical discussion, and therefore the
doctrine of unity emerged more and more from simple belief to become a
matter of reason. The God of truth put to flight the gods of falsehood.
Hence many gentiles espoused the cause of Judaism, becoming “God-
fearing men.”213

6. In this connection it seems necessary to point out the difference between
the God of the Greek philosophers—Xenophanes and Anaxagoras, Plato
and Aristotle—and the God of the Bible. In abandoning their own gods, the
Greek [pg 085] philosophers reached a deistic view of the cosmos. As their
study of science showed them plan and order everywhere, they concluded
that the universe is governed by an all-encompassing Intelligence, a divine
power entirely distinct from the capricious deities of the popular religion.
Reflection led them to a complete rupture with their religious belief. The
Biblical belief in God underwent a different process. After God had once
been conceived of, He was held up as the ideal of morality, including both
righteousness and holiness. Then this doctrine was continuously elucidated
and deepened, until a stage was reached where a harmony could be
established between the teachings of Moses and the wisdom of Plato and
Aristotle. To the noble thinkers of Hellas truth was an object of supreme
delight, the highest privilege of the sage. To the adherents of Judaism truth
became the holiest aim of life for the entire people, for which all were

taught to battle and to die, as did the Maccabean heroes and Daniel and his
associates, their prototypes.

7. A deeper meaning was attached to the doctrine of God's unity under
Persian rule, in contact with the religious system of Zoroaster. To the
Persians life was a continual conflict between the principles of good and of
evil, until the ultimate victory of good shall come. This dualistic view of the
world greatly excels all other heathen religious systems, insofar as it assigns
ethical purpose to the whole of life. Yet the great seer of the Exile opposes
this system in the name of the God of Judaism, speaking to Cyrus, the king
of Persia; “I am the Lord and there is none else; beside Me there is no God.
I will gird thee, though thou dost not know Me, in order that the people
shall know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none
beside Me. I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and also
create evil, I am the Lord that doeth these things.”214 This declaration of
pure [pg 086] monotheism is incompatible with dualism in both the
physical and the moral world; it regards evil as being mere semblance
without reality, an opposing force which can be overcome and rendered a
source of new strength for the victory of the good. “Out of the mouth of the
Most High cometh there not the evil and the good?”215

8. The division of the world into rival realms of good and evil powers, of
angelic and demoniacal forces, which originated in ancient Chaldea and
underlies the Zoroastrian dualism, finally took hold of Judaism also. Still
this was not carried to such an extent that Satan, the supreme ruler of the
demon world, was given a dominion equal to that of God, or interfering
with it, so as to impair thereby the principle of monotheism, as was done by
the Church later on. As a matter of fact, at the time of nascent Christianity
the leaders of the Synagogue took rigid measures against those heretics
(Minim) who believed in two divine powers,216 because they recognized the
grave danger of moral degeneracy in this Gnostic dualism. In the Church it
led first to the deification of Christ (i.e. the Messiah) as the vanquisher of
Satan; afterwards, owing to a compromise with heathenism, the Trinity was
adopted to correspond with the three-fold godhead,—father, mother, and
son,—the place of the mother deity being taken by the Holy Ghost, which
was originally conceived as a female power (the Syrian Ruha being of the
feminine gender).217

9. The churchmen have attempted often enough to harmonize the dualism or
trinitarianism of Christianity with the monotheism of the Bible. Still
Judaism persists in considering such an infringement upon the belief in
Israel's one and only God as really a compromise with heathenism. “A [pg
087] Jew is he who opposes every sort of polytheism,” says the Talmud.218

10. The medieval Jewish thinkers therefore made redoubled efforts to
express with utmost clearness the doctrine of God's unity. In this effort they
received special encouragement from the example of the leaders of Islam,
whose victorious march over the globe was a triumph for the one God of
Abraham over the triune God of Christianity. A great tide of intellectual
progress arose, lending to the faith of the Mohammedans and subsequently
also to that of the Jews an impetus which lasted for centuries. The new
thought and keen research of that period had a lasting influence upon the
whole development of western culture. An alliance was effected between
religion and philosophy, particularly by the leading Jewish minds, which
proved a liberating and stimulating force in all fields of scientific
investigation. Thus the pure idea of monotheism became the basis for
modern science and the entire modern world-view.219

11. The Mohammedan thinkers devoted their attention chiefly to elucidating
and spiritualizing the God idea, beginning as early as the third century of
Islamism, so to interpret the Koran as to divest God of all anthropomorphic
attributes and to stress His absolute unity, uniqueness, and the
incomparability of His oneness. Soon they became familiar with neo-
Platonic and afterward with Aristotelian modes of speculation through the
work of Syrian and Jewish translators. With the help of these they built up a
system of theology which influenced Jewish thought also, first in Karaite
and then in Rabbanite circles.220 Thus sprang up successively the
philosophical systems of Saadia, Jehuda ha Levi, Ibn Gabirol, Bahya, Ibn
Daud, and Maimonides. The philosophical hymns and the articles of faith,
both of which found a place in the liturgy [pg 088] of the Synagogue, were
the work of their followers. The highest mode of adoring God seemed to be
the elaboration of the idea of His unity to its logical conclusion, which
satisfied the philosophical mind, though often remote from the
understanding of the multitude. For centuries the supreme effort of Jewish
thought was to remove Him from the possibility of comparison with any

other being, and to abolish every conception which might impair His
absolute and simple unity. This mental activity filled the dwellings of Israel
with light, even when the darkness of ignorance covered the lands of
Christendom, dispelled only here and there by rays of knowledge emanating
from Jewish quarters.221

12. The proofs of the unity of God adduced by Mohammedan and Jewish
thinkers were derived from the rational order, design, and unity of the
cosmos, and from the laws of the mind itself. These aided in endowing
Judaism with a power of conviction which rendered futile the conversionist
efforts of the Church, with its arguments and its threats. Israel's only One
proved to be the God of truth, high and holy to both the mind and the heart.
The Jewish masters of thought rendered Him the highest object of their
speculation, only to bow in awe before Him who is beyond all human ken;
the Jewish martyrs likewise cheerfully offered up their lives in His honor;
and thus all hearts echoed the battle-cry of the centuries, “Hear O Israel, the
Lord our God, the Lord is One,” and all minds were illumined by the
radiant hope, “The Lord will be King of the earth; on that day the Lord shall
be One, and His name shall be One.”

13. Under all conditions, however, the doctrine of unity remained free from
outward compulsion and full of intrinsic vigor and freshness. There was still
room for differences of opinion, such as whether God's life, power, wisdom,
and unity are attributes—distinct from His being, and qualifying it,—or [pg
089] whether they are inherent in His nature, comprising His very essence.
This controversy aimed to determine the conception of God, either by
Aristotelian rationalism, as represented by Maimonides, or by the positive
religious assumptions of Crescas and others.

This is Maimonides' statement of the unity: “God is one; that is, He is
unlike any other unit, whether made one in point of numbers or species, or
by virtue of composition, separation, and simplification. He is one in
Himself, there being no multiplicity in Him. His unity is beyond all
definition.”222

Ibn Gabirol in his “Crown of Royalty” puts the same thought into poetic
form: “One art Thou; the wise wonder at the mystery of Thy unity, not
knowing what it is. One art Thou; not like the one of dimension or number,

as neither addition nor change, neither attribute nor quality affects Thy
being. Thou art God, who sustainest all beings by Thy divinity, who holdest
all creatures in Thy unity. Thou art God, and there is no distinction between
Thy unity, Thy eternity, and Thy being. All is mystery, and however the
names may differ, they all tell that Thou art but one.”223

14. Side by side with this rationalistic trend, Judaism always contained a
current of mysticism. The mystics accepted literally the anthropomorphic
pictures of the Deity in the Bible, and did not care how much they might
affect the spirituality and unity of God. The philosophic schools had
contended against the anthropomorphic views of the older mystics, and thus
had brought higher views of the Godhead to dominance; but when the
rationalistic movement had spent its force, the reaction came in the form of
the Cabbalah, the secret lore which claimed to have been “transmitted”
(according to the meaning of the word) from a hoary past. The older system
of thought had stripped the Deity of all reality and had robbed religion of all
positiveness; now, in [pg 090] contrast, the soul demanded a God of
revelation through faith in whom might come exaltation and solace.224

Nevertheless the Maimonidean articles of faith were adopted into the liturgy
because of their emphasis on the absolute unity and indivisibility of God, by
which they constituted a vigorous protest against the Christian dogma.
Judaism ever found its strength in God the only One, and will find Him ever
anew a source of inspiration and rejuvenation.

[pg 091]

Chapter XIV. God's Omnipotence and Omniscience

1. Among all the emotions which underlie our God-consciousness the
foremost is the realization of our own weakness and helplessness. This
makes us long for One mightier than ourselves, for the Almighty whose acts
are beyond comparison. The first attribute, therefore, with which we feeble
mortals invest our Deity is omnipotence. Thus the pagan ascribes supreme
power over their different realms to his various deities. Hence the name for
God among all the Semites is El—“the Powerful One.”225 Judaism claims
for God absolute and unlimited power over all that is. It declares Him to be
the source and essence of all strength, the almighty Creator and Ruler of the
universe. All that exists is His creation; all that occurs is His achievement.
He is frequently called by the rabbis ha Geburah, the Omnipotence.226

2. The historical method of study seems to indicate that various cosmic
potencies were worshiped in primitive life either singly or collectively
under the name of Elohim, “divine powers,” or Zibeoth Elohim, “hosts of
divine powers.” With the acceptance of the idea of divine omnipotence,
these were united into a confederacy of divine forces under the dominion of
the one God, the “Lord of Hosts.” Still these powers of heaven, earth and
the deep by no means at once surrendered their identity. Most of them
became angels, “messengers” of the omnipotent God, or “spirits” roaming
in the realms where once they ruled, while a few were relegated as monsters
to the region of superstition. The heathen deities, which [pg 092] persisted
for a while in popular belief, were also placed with the angels as “heavenly
rulers” of their respective lands or nations about the throne of the Most
High. At all events, Israel's God was enthroned above them all as Lord of
the universe. In fact, the Alexandrian translators and some of the rabbis
actually explained in this sense the Biblical names El Shaddai and J.H.V.H.
Zebaoth.227 The medieval philosophers, however, took a backward step
away from the Biblical view when, under the influence of Neoplatonism,
they represented the angels and the spirits of the stars as intermediary
forces.228

3. According to the Bible, both the Creation and the order of the universe
testify to divine omnipotence. God called all things into existence by His
almighty word, unassisted by His heavenly messengers. He alone stretched
out the heavens, set bounds to the sea, and founded the earth on pillars that
it be not moved; none was with Him to partake in the work. This is the

process of creation according to the first chapter of Genesis and the fortieth
chapter of Isaiah. So He appears throughout the Scriptures as “the Doer of
wonders,” “whose arm never waxes short” to carry out His will. “He
fainteth not, neither is He weary.” His dominion extends over the sea and
the storm, over life and death, over high and low. Intermediary forces
participating in His work are never mentioned. They are referred to only in
the poetic description of creation in the book of Job: “Where wast thou
when I laid the foundations of the earth?... When the morning stars sang
together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.”229

[pg 093]
Proof of God's supreme power was found particularly in history, either in
His miraculous changing of the natural order, or in His defeat of the mighty
hostile armies which bade Him defiance.230 Often the heathen deities or the
celestial powers are introduced as dramatic figures to testify to the triumph
of the divine omnipotence, as when the Lord is said to “execute judgment
against the gods of Egypt” or when “the stars in their courses fought against
Sisera.”231

4. God's power is limited only by His own volition. “He doeth what He
willeth.”232 In man the will and the power for a certain act are far apart, and
often directly conflicting. Not so with God, for the very idea of God is
perfection, and His will implies necessarily the power to accomplish the
desired end. His will is determined only by such factors as His knowledge
and His moral self-restraint.

5. Therefore the idea of God's omnipotence must be coupled with that of
His omniscience. Both His power and His knowledge are unlike man's in
being without limitation. When we repeat the Biblical terms of an all-
seeing, all-hearing, and all-knowing God, we mean in the first instance that
the limitation of space does not exist for Him. He beholds the extreme parts
of the earth and observes all that happens under the heavens; nothing is
hidden from His sight. He not only sees the deeds of men, He also searches
their thoughts. Looking into their hearts, He knows the word, ere it is upon
the tongue. Looking into the future, he knows every creature, ere it enters
existence. “The darkness and the light are alike to Him.” With one glance

He surveys all that is and all that happens.233 He is, as the rabbis express it,
“the all-seeing Eye and the all-hearing Ear.”234

[pg 094]
In like manner the distinctions of time disappear before Him. The entire
past is unrolled before His sight; His book records all that men do or suffer,
even their tears;235 and there is no forgetfulness with Him. The remotest
future also is open before Him, for it is planned by Him, and in it He has
allotted to each being its days and its steps.236 Yea, as He beholds events ere
they transpire, so He reveals the secrets of the future to His chosen ones, in
order to warn men of the judgments that threaten them.237

6. The idea of divine omniscience could ripen only gradually in the minds
of the people. The older and more child-like conception still remains in the
stories of the Deluge and the Tower of Babel, where God descended from
heaven to watch the doings of men, and repented of what He had done.238
Obviously the idea of divine omniscience took hold of the people as a result
of the admonitions of the prophets.

7. Philosophical inquiry into the ideas of the divine omnipotence and
omniscience, however, discloses many difficulties. The Biblical assertion
that nothing is impossible to God will not stand the test as soon as we ask
seriously whether God can make the untrue true,—as making two times two
to equal five—or whether He can declare the wrong to be right. Obviously
He cannot overturn the laws of mathematical truth or of moral truth,
without at the same time losing His nature as the Source and Essence of all
truth. Nor can He abrogate the laws of nature, which are really His own
rules for His creation, without detracting from both His omniscience and
the immutability of His will. This question will be discussed more fully in
connection with miracles, in chapter XXVII.

Together with the problem of the divine omniscience arises the difficulty of
reconciling this with our freedom of will and [pg 095] our moral
responsibility. Would not His foreknowledge of our actions in effect
determine them? This difficulty can only be solved by a proper conception
of the freedom of the will, and will be discussed in that connection in
chapter XXXVII.

Altogether, we must guard against applying our human type of knowledge
to God. Man, limited by space and time, obtains his knowledge of things
and events by his senses, becoming aware of them separately as they exist
either beside each other or in succession. With God all knowledge is
complete; there is no growth of knowledge from yesterday to to-day, no
knowledge of only a part instead of the whole of the world. His
omniscience and omnipotence are bound up with His omnipresence and
eternity. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My
ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My
ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”239

[pg 096]

Chapter XV. God's Omnipresence and Eternity

1. As soon as man awakens to a higher consciousness of God, he realizes
the vast distance between his own finite being limited by space and time,
and the Infinite Being which rules everywhere and unceasingly in lofty
grandeur and unlimited power. His very sense of being hedged in by the
bounds and imperfections of a finite existence makes him long for the
infinite God, unlimited in might, and brings to him the feeling of awe
before His greatness. But this conception of God as the omnipresent and
everlasting Spirit, as distinct from any created being, is likewise the result
of many stages of growing thought.

2. The primitive mind imagines God as dwelling in a lofty place, whence
He rules the earth beneath, descending at times to take part in the affairs of
men, to tarry among them, or to walk with them.240 The people adhered

largely to this conception during the Biblical period, as they considered as
the original seat of the Deity, first Paradise, later on Sinai or Zion, and
finally the far-off heavens. It required prophetic vision to discern that “the
heavens and the heavens' heavens do not encompass God's majesty,”
expressed also in poetic imagery that “the heaven is My throne and the
earth My footstool.”241 The classic form of this idea of the divine
omnipresence is found in the oft-quoted passage from Psalm CXXXIX.242

[pg 097]
3. The dwelling places of God are to give way the moment His
omnipresence is understood as penetrating the universe to such an extent
that nothing escapes His glance nor lies without His dominion.243 They are
then transformed into places where He had manifested His Name, His
Glory, or His Presence (“Countenance,” in the Hebrew). In this way certain
emanations or powers of God were formed which could be located in a
certain space without impairing the divine omnipresence. These
intermediary powers will be the theme of chapter XXXII.

The following dialogue illustrates this stage of thought: A heretic once said
sarcastically to Gamaliel II, “Ye say that where ten persons assemble for
worship, there the divine majesty (Shekinah) descends upon them; how
many such majesties are there?” To which Gamaliel replied: “Does not the
one orb of day send forth a million rays upon the earth? And should not the
majesty of God, which is a million times brighter than the sun, be reflected
in every spot on earth?”244

4. Nevertheless a conception of pure spirit is very difficult to attain, even in
regard to God. The thought of His omnipresence is usually interpreted by
imagining some ethereal substance which expands infinitely, as Ibn Ezra
and Saadia before him were inclined to do,245 or by picturing Him as a sort
of all-encompassing Space, in accordance with the rabbis.246 The New
Testament writers and the Church fathers likewise spoke of God as Spirit,
but really had in mind, for the most part, an ethereal substance resembling
light pervading cosmic space. The often-expressed belief that man may see
God after death rests upon this conception of God as a substance
perceptible to the mind.247

[pg 098]

A higher standpoint is taken by a thinker such as Ibn Gabirol, who finds
God's omnipresence in His all-pervading will and intellect.248 But this type
of divine omnipresence is rather divine immanence. The religious
consciousness has a quite different picture of God, a self-conscious
Personality, ever near to man, ever scanning his acts, his thoughts, and his
motives. Here philosophy and religion part company. The former must
abstain from the assumption of a divine personality; the latter cannot do
without it. The God of religion must partake of the knowledge and the
feelings of His worshiper, must know his every impulse and idea, and must
feel with him in his suffering and need. God's omnipresence is in this sense
a postulate of religion.

5. The second earthly and human limitation is that of time. Confined by
space and time, man casts his eyes upward toward a Being who shall be
infinite and eternal. Whatever time begets, time swallows up again.
Transitoriness is the fate of all things. Everything which enters existence
must end at last. “Also heaven and earth perish and wax old like a garment.
Only God remains forever the same, and His years have no end. He is from
everlasting to everlasting, the first and the last.” So speak prophet and
psalmist, voicing a universal thought249; and our liturgical poet sings:

“The Lord of all did reign supreme
Ere yet this world was made and formed;
When all was finished by His will,
Then was His name as King proclaimed.

“And should these forms no more exist,
He still will rule in majesty;
He was, He is, He shall remain,
250
His glory never shall decrease.”

[pg 099]
6. But the idea of God's eternity also presents certain difficulties to the
thinking mind. As Creator and Author of the universe, God is the First
Cause, without beginning or end, the Source of all existence; as Ruler and
Master of the world, He maintains all things through all eternity; though

heaven and earth “wax old like a garment,” He outlasts them all. Now, if He
is to manifest these powers from everlasting to everlasting, He must ever
remain the same. Consequently, we must add immutability as a corollary of
eternity, if the latter is to mean anything. It is not enough to state that God is
without beginning and without end; the essential part of the doctrine is His
transcendence above the changes and conditions of time. We mortals cannot
really entertain a conception of eternity; our nearest approach to it is an
endless succession of periods of time, a ceaseless procession of ages and
eons following each other. Endless time is not at all the same as
timelessness. Therefore eternity signifies transcendence above all existence
in time; its real meaning is supermundaneity.251

7. This seems the best way to avoid the difficulty which seemed almost
insuperable to the medieval thinkers, how to reconcile a Creation at a
certain time and a Creator for whom time does not exist. In the effort to
solve the difficulty, they resorted to the Platonic and Aristotelian definition
of time as the result of the motions of the heavenly bodies; thus they
declared that time was created simultaneously with the world. This is
impossible for the modern thinker, who has learned from Kant to regard
time and space, not as external realities, but as human modes of
apperception of objects. So the contrast between the transient character of
the world and the eternity of God becomes all the greater with the
increasing realization of the vast gap between the material world and the
divine spirit.

[pg 100]
At this point arises a still greater difficulty. The very idea of creation at a
certain time becomes untenable in view of our knowledge of the natural
process; the universe itself, it seems to us, extends over an infinity of space
and time. Indeed, the modern view of evolution in place of creation has the
grave danger of leading to pantheism, to a conception of the cosmos which
sees in God only an eternal energy (or substance) devoid of free volition
and self-conscious action.252 We can evade the difficulty only by assuming
God's transcendence, and this can be done in such a way as not to exclude
His immanence, or—what is the same thing—His omnipresence.

8. Both God's omnipresence and His eternity are intended only to raise Him
far above the world, out of the confines of space and time, to represent His
sublime loftiness as the “Rock of Ages,” as holding worlds without number
in “His eternal arms.” “Nothing can be hidden from Him who has reared the
entire universe and is familiar with every part of it, however remote.”253

[pg 101]

Chapter XVI. God's Holiness

1. Judaism recognizes two distinct types of divine attributes. Those which
we have so far considered belong to the metaphysical group, which chiefly
engage the attention of the philosopher. They represent God as a
transcendental Being who is ever beyond our comprehension, because our
finite intellect can never grasp the infinite Spirit. They are not descriptions,
but rather inferences from the works of the Master of the world to the
Master himself. But there are other divine attributes which we derive from
our own moral nature, and which invest our whole life with a higher moral
character. Instead of arising from the external necessity which governs
nature in its causes and effects, these rest upon our assumption of inner
freedom, setting the aims for all that we achieve. This moral nature is
realized to some extent even by the savage, when he trembles before his
deity in pangs of conscience, or endeavors to propitiate him by sacrifices.
Still, Judaism alone fully realized the moral nature of the Deity; this was
done by investing the term “holiness” with the idea of moral perfection, so
that God became the ideal and pattern of the loftiest morality. “Be ye holy,
for I the Lord your God am holy.”254—This is the central and culminating
idea of the Jewish law.255

2. Holiness is the essence of all moral perfection; it is purity unsullied by
any breath of evil. True holiness can be [pg 102] ascribed only to Divinity,
above the realm of the flesh and the senses. “There is none holy but the
Lord, for there is none beside Thee,” says Scripture.256 Whether man stands
on a lower or higher level of culture, he has in all his plans and aspirations
some ideal of perfection to which he may never attain, but which serves as
the standard for his actions. The best of his doings falls short of what he
ought to do; in his highest efforts he realizes the potentiality of better
things. This ideal of moral perfection works as the motive power of the will
in setting for it a standard; it establishes human freedom in place of nature's
compulsion, but such an ideal can emanate only from the moral power
ruling life, which we designate as the divine Holiness.

3. Scripture says of God that He “walketh in holiness,”257 and accordingly
morality in man is spoken of as “walking in the ways of God.”258 “Walk
before Me and be perfect!” says God to Abraham.259 Moses approached God
with two petitions,—the one, “Show me Thy ways that I may know Thee!”
the other, “Show me, I pray Thee, Thy glory!” In response to the latter God
said, “No man can see Me and live”, but the former petition was granted in
that the Lord revealed Himself in His moral attributes.260 These alone can be
understood and emulated by man; in regard to the so-called metaphysical
attributes God will ever remain beyond human comprehension and
emulation.

4. In order to serve as vehicle for the expression of the highest moral
perfection, the Biblical term for holiness, Kadosh, had to undergo a long
process of development, obscuring its original meaning. The history of this
term gives us the deepest insight into the working of the Jewish genius
towards the full revelation of the God of holiness. At first the word [pg 103]
Kadosh261 seems to have denoted unapproachableness in the sense in which
fire is unapproachable, that is, threatening and consuming. This fiery nature
was ascribed by primitive man to all divine beings. Hence the angels are
termed “the holy ones” in Scripture.262 According to both priestly practice
and popular belief, the man who approached one of these holy ones with
hand or foot, or even with his gaze, was doomed to die.263 Out of such crude
conceptions evolved the idea of God's majesty as unapproachable in the
sense of the sublime, banishing everything profane from its presence, and

visiting with punishment every violation of its sanctity. The old conception
of the fiery appearance of the Deity served especially as a figurative
expression of the moral power of God, which manifests itself as a
“consuming fire,”264 exterminating evil, and making man long for the good
and the true, for righteousness and love.

5. The divine attribute of holiness has accordingly a double meaning. On
the one hand, it indicates spiritual loftiness transcending everything sensual,
which works as a purging power of indignation at evil, rebuking injustice,
impurity and falsehood, and punishing transgression until it is removed
from the sight of God. On the other hand, it denotes the condescending
mercy of God, which, having purged the soul of wrong, wins it for the right,
and which endows man with the power of perfecting himself, and thus leads
him to the gradual building up of the kingdom of goodness and purity on
earth. This ethical conception of holiness, which emanates from the moral
nature of God, revealed to the prophetic genius of Israel, must not be
confused with the old Semitic conception of priestly or [pg 104] ritual
holiness. Ritual holiness is purely external, and is transferable to persons
and things, to times and places, according to their relation to the Deity.
Hence the various cults applied the term “holy” to the most abominable
forms of idolatry and impure worship.265 The Mosaic law condemned all
these as violations of the holiness of Israel's God, but could not help
sanctioning many ordinances and rites of priestly holiness which originated
in ancient Semitic usages. Hence the two conceptions of holiness, the
priestly or external and the prophetic or ethical, became interwoven in the
Mosaic code to such an extent as to impair the standard of ethical holiness
stressed by the prophets, the unique and lofty possession of Judaism. Hence
the letter of the Law caused a deplorable confusion of ideas, which was
utilized by the detractors of Judaism. The liberal movement of modern
Judaism, in pointing to the prophetic ideals as the true basis of the Jewish
faith, is at the same time dispelling this ancient confusion of the two
conceptions of holiness.

6. The Levitical holiness adheres outwardly to persons and things and
consists in their separation or their reservation from common use. In
striking contrast to this, the holiness which Judaism attributes to God

denotes the highest ethical purity, unattainable to flesh and blood, but
designed for our emulation.

The contemplation of the divine holiness is to inspire man with fear of sin
and to exert a healthful influence upon his conduct. Thus God became the
hallowing power in Judaism and its institutions, truly the “Holy One of
Israel” according to the term of Isaiah and his great exilic successor, the so-
called Deutero-Isaiah.266 Thus His holiness invested His people with [pg
105] special sanctity and imposed upon it special obligations. In the words
of Ezekiel, God became the “Sanctifier of Israel.”267

The rabbis penetrated deeply into the spirit of Scripture, at the same time
that they adhered strictly to its letter. While they clung tenaciously to the
ritual holiness of the priestly codes, they recognized the ideal of holiness
which is so sharply opposed in every act and thought to the demoralizing
cults of heathenism.268

7. Accordingly, holiness is not the metaphysical concept which Jehuda ha
Levi considers it,269 but the principle and source of all ethics, the spirit of
absolute morality, lending purpose and value to the whole of life. As long as
men do good or shun evil through fear of punishment or hope for reward,
whether in this life or the hereafter, so long will ideal morality remain
unattained, and man cannot claim to stand upon the ground of divine
holiness. The holy God must penetrate and control all of life—such is the
essence of Judaism. The true aim of human existence is not salvation of the
soul,—a desire which is never quite free from selfishness,—but holiness
emulating God, striving to do good for the sake of the good without regard
to recompense, and to shun evil because it is evil, aside from all
consequences.270

8. The fact is that holiness is a religious term, based upon divine revelation,
not a philosophical one resting upon speculative reasoning. It is a postulate
of our moral nature that all life is governed by a holy Will to which we must
submit willingly, and which makes for the good. How volition and
compulsion are with God one and the same, how the good exists in God
without the bad, or holiness and moral purpose without unholy or immoral
elements, how God can be exactly opposite to all we know of man,—this is
a question which [pg 106] philosophy is unable to answer. In fact, holiness

is best defined negatively, as the “negation of all that man from his own
experience knows to be unholy.” These words of the Danish philosopher
Rauwenhoff are made still clearer by the following observations: “The
strength in the idea of holiness lies exactly in its negative character. There is
no comparison of higher or lesser degree possible between man's
imperfections and God's perfect goodness. Instead, there is an absolute
contrast between mankind which, even in its noblest types, must wrestle
with the power of evil, and God, in whom nothing can be imagined which
would even suggest the possibility of any moral shortcoming or
imperfection.”271 As the prophet says, “Thou art too pure of eyes to look
complacently upon evil,”272 and according to the Psalmist, “Who shall
ascend into the mountain of the Lord, and who shall stand in His holy
place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.”273

9. The idea of holiness became the preëminent feature of Judaism, so that
the favorite name for God in Rabbinical literature was “the Holy One,
blessed be He,” and the acme of all ceremonial and moral laws alike was
found in “the Hallowing of His name.”274 If the rabbis as followers of the
Priestly Code were compelled to lay great stress upon ritual holiness, they
yet beheld in it the means of moral purification. They never lost sight of the
prophetic principle that moral purity is the object of all human life, for “the
holy God is sanctified through righteousness.”275

[pg 107]

Chapter XVII. God's Wrath and Punishment

1. Scripture speaks frequently of the anger and zeal of God and of His
avenging sword and judgment, so as to give the impression that “the Old
Testament God is a God of wrath and vengeance.” As a matter of fact, these
attributes are merely emanations of His holiness, the guide and incentive to
moral action in man. The burning fire of the divine holiness aims to awaken
the dormant seeds of morality in the human soul and to ripen them into full
growth. Whenever we to-day would speak of pangs of conscience, of bitter
remorse, Scripture uses figurative language and describes how God's wrath
is kindled against the wrongdoing of the people, and how fire blazes forth
from His nostrils to consume them in His anger. The nearer man stands to
nature, the more tempestuous are the outbursts of his passion, and the more
violent is the reaction of his repentance. Yet this very reaction impresses
him as though wrought from outside or above by the offended Deity. Thus
the divine wrath becomes a means of moral education, exactly as the
parents' indignation at the child's offenses is part of his training in morality.

2. Thus the first manifestation of God's holiness is His indignation at
falsehood and violence, His hatred of evil and wrongdoing. The longer men
persist in sin, the more does He manifest Himself as “the angry God,” as a
“consuming fire” which destroys evil with holy zeal.276 The husbandman
cannot [pg 108] expect the good harvest until he has weeded out the tares
from the field; so God, in educating man, begins by purging the soul from
all its evil inclinations, and this zeal is all the more unsparing as the good is
finally to triumph in His eternal plan of universal salvation. We must bear in
mind that Judaism does not personify evil as a power hostile to God, hence
the whole problem is only one of purifying the human soul. Before the sun
of God's grace and mercy is to shine, bearing life and healing for all
humanity, His wrath and punitive justice must ever burst forth to cleanse the
world of its sin. For as long as evil continues unchecked, so long cannot the
divine holiness pour forth its all-forbearing goodness and love.

3. On this account the first revelation of God on Sinai was as “a jealous
God, who visiteth the sins of the fathers upon the children and the children's
children until the third and fourth generation.” So the prophets, from Moses
to Malachi, speak ever of God's anger, which comes with the fury of
nature's unchained forces, to terrify and overwhelm all living beings.277
Thus Scripture considers all the great catastrophes of the hoary past,—

flood, earthquakes, and the rain of fire and brimstone that destroys cities—
as judgments of the divine anger on sinful generations. Wickedness in
general causes His displeasure, but His wrath is provoked especially by
violations of the social order, by desecrations of His sanctuary, or attacks on
His covenant, and His anger is kindled for the poor and helpless, when they
are oppressed and deprived of their rights.278

4. Thus the divine holiness was felt more and more as a moral force, and
that which appeared in pre-prophetic times to be an elemental power of the
celestial ire became a refining [pg 109] flame, purging men of dross as in a
crucible. “I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger,” says the prophet,
“for I am God and not man, the Holy One in the midst of thee, and I will
not come in fury.”279 So sings the Psalmist, “His anger is but for a moment;
His favor for a life-time.”280 In the same spirit the rabbis interpreted the
verse of the Decalogue, “The sin of the fathers is visited upon the children
and children's children only if they continue to act as their fathers did, and
are themselves haters of God.”281

The fact is that Israel in Canaan had become addicted to all the vices of
idolatry, and if they were to be trained to moral purity and to loyalty to the
God of the Covenant, they must be taught fear and awe before the flame of
the divine wrath. Only after that could the prophet address himself to the
conscience of the individual, saying:

“Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire?
Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?
He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly;
He that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from
holding of bribes,
That stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from
looking upon evil;
He shall dwell on high; his place of defense shall be the munitions of rocks;
His bread shall be given, his water shall be sure.
Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty; they shall behold a land
282
stretching afar.”

Here we behold the fiery element of the divine holiness partly depicted as a
reality and partly spiritualized. The last of the prophets compares the divine
wrath to a melting furnace, which on the Day of Judgment is to consume
evildoers as stubble, while to those who fear the Lord He [pg 110] shall
appear as the sun of righteousness with healing on its wings.283

5. The idea as expressed by the prophets, then, was that God's anger will
visit the wicked, and particularly the ungodly nations of heathendom, and
that He shall judge all creatures in fire.284 This was significantly altered
under Persian influence, when the Jew began to regard the world to come as
promising to the righteous greater bliss than the present one. Then the day
of divine wrath meant doom eternal for evil-doers, who were to fall into the
fiery depths of Gehenna, “their worm is never to die and their fire never to
be quenched.”285 This became the prevailing view of the rabbis, of the
Apocalyptics and also of the New Testament and the Church literature.286
The Jewish propaganda in the Hellenistic literature, however, combined the
fire of Gehenna with the Stoic, or pagan, view of a general world-
conflagration, and announced a general doomsday for the heathen world,
unless they be converted to the belief in Israel's one and holy God, and
ceased violating the fundamental (Noachian) laws of humanity.287

6. A higher view of the punitive anger of God is taken by Beruriah, the
noble wife of R. Meir,288—if, indeed, the wife of the saintly Abba Helkiah
did not precede her289—in suggesting a different reading of the Biblical text,
as to make it offer the lesson: “not the sinners shall perish from the earth,
but the sins.” From a more philosophical viewpoint both Juda ha Levi and
Maimonides hold that the anger which we ascribe to [pg 111] God is only
the transference of the anger which we actually feel at the sight of
evildoing. Similarly, when we speak of the consuming fire of hell, we
depict the effect which the fear of God must have on our inner life, until the
time shall come when we shun evil as ungodly and love the good because it
is both good and God-like.290

[pg 112]

Chapter XVIII. God's Long-suffering and Mercy

1. In one of the little known apocryphal writings, the Testament of
Abraham, a beautiful story is told of the patriarch. Shortly before his death,
the archangel Michael drove him along the sky in the heavenly chariot.
Looking down upon the earth, he saw companies of thieves and murderers,
adulterers, and other evil-doers pursuing their nefarious practices, and in
righteous indignation he cried out: “Oh would to God that fire, destruction,
and death should instantly befall these criminals!” No sooner had he spoken
these words than the doom he pronounced came upon those wicked men.
But then spoke the Lord God to the heavenly charioteer Michael: “Stop at
once, lest My righteous servant Abraham in his just indignation bring death
upon all My creatures, because they are not as righteous as he. He has not
learned to restrain his anger.”291 Thus, indeed, the wrath kindled at the sight
of wrongdoing would consume the sinner at once, were it not for another
quality in God, called in Scripture long-suffering. By this He restrains His
anger and gives the sinner time to improve his ways. Though every wicked
deed provokes Him to immediate punishment, yet He shows compassion
upon the feeble mortal. “Even in wrath He remembereth compassion.”292
“He hath no delight in the death of the sinner, but that he shall return from
his ways and live.”293 The divine holiness does not merely overwhelm and
consume; its essential [pg 113] aim is the elevation of man, the effort to
endow him with a higher life.

2. It is perfectly true that a note of rigor and of profound earnestness runs
through the pages of Holy Writ. The prophets, law-givers, and psalmists
speak incessantly of how guilt brings doom upon the lands and nations. As
the father who is solicitous of the honor of his household punishes
unrelentingly every violation of morality within it, so the Holy One of Israel
watches zealously over His people's loyalty to His covenant. His glorious
name, His holy majesty cannot be violated with immunity from His dreaded
wrath. There is nothing of the joyous abandon which was predominant in

the Greek nature and in the Olympian gods. The ideal of holiness was
presented by the God of Israel, and all the doings of men appeared faulty
beside it.

But its power of molding character is shown by Judaism at this very point,
in that it does not stop at the condemnation of the sinner. It holds forth the
promise of God's forbearance to man in his shortcomings, due to His
compassion on the weakness of flesh and blood. He waits for man, erring
and stumbling, until by striving and struggling he shall attain a higher state
of purity. This is the bright, uplifting side of the Jewish idea of the divine
holiness. In this is the innermost nature of God disclosed. In fear and awe of
Him who is enthroned on high, “before whom even the angels are not
pure,” man, conscious of his sinfulness, sinks trembling into the dust before
the Judge of the whole earth. But the grace and mercy of the long-suffering
Ruler lift him up and imbue him with courage and strength to acquire a new
life and new energy. Thus the oppressive burden of guilt is transformed into
an uplifting power through the influence of the holy God.

3. The predominance in God of mildness and mercy over punitive anger is
expressed most strikingly in the revelation to Moses, when he had entreated
God to let him see His ways. [pg 114] The people had provoked God's
anger by their faithlessness in the worship of the golden calf, and He had
threatened to consume them, when Moses interceded in their behalf. Then
the Lord passed by him, and proclaimed: “The Lord, the Lord, God,
merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth,
keeping mercy unto the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and
transgression and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon the children's children,
unto the third and unto the fourth generation.”294 Such a passage shows
clearly the progress in the knowledge of God's nature. For Abraham and the
traditions of the patriarchs God was the righteous Judge, punishing the
transgressors. He is represented in the same way in the Decalogue on
Sinai.295 Was this to be the final word? Was Israel chosen by God as His
covenant people, only to encounter the full measure of His just but
relentless anger and to be consumed at once for the violation of this
covenant? Therefore Moses wrestled with his God. Filled with
compassionate love for his people, he is willing to offer his life as their

ransom. And should God himself lack this fullness of love and pity, of
which even a human being is capable? Then, as from a dark cloud, there
flashed suddenly upon him the light of a new revelation; he became aware
of the higher truth, that above the austerity of God's avenging anger prevails
the tender forgiveness of His mercy; that beyond the consuming zeal of His
punitive justice shines the sun-like splendor of His grace and love. The
rabbis find the expression of mercy especially in the name JHVH (i.e. “the
One who shall ever be”) which is significantly placed here at the head of
the divine attributes. Indeed, only He who is the same from everlasting to
everlasting, and to whom to-morrow is like yesterday, can show
forbearance to erring [pg 115] man, because in whatsoever he has failed
yesterday he may make good to-morrow.

4. Like Moses, the master of the prophets, so the prophet Hosea also
learned in hard spiritual struggle to know the divine attribute of mercy and
lovingkindness. His own wife had proved faithless, and had broken the
marital covenant; still his love survived, so that he granted her forgiveness
when she was forsaken, and took her back to his home. Then, in his distress
at the God-forsaken state of Israel through her faithlessness, he asked
himself: “Will God reject forever the nation which He espoused, because it
broke the covenant? Will not He also grant forgiveness and mercy?” The
divine answer came to him out of the depths of his own compassionate soul.
Upon the crown of God's majesty which Amos had beheld all effulgent with
justice and righteousness, he placed the most precious gem, reflecting the
highest quality of God—His gracious and all-forgiving love.296 Whether the
priority in this great truth belongs to Hosea or Moses is a question for
historical Bible research to answer, but it is of no consequence to Jewish
theology.

5. Certainly Scripture represents God too much after human fashion, when
it ascribes to him changes of mood from anger to compassion, or speaks of
His repentance.297 But we must bear in mind that the prophets obtained their
insight into the ways of God by this very process of transferring their own
experience to the Deity. And on the other hand, we are told that “God is not
a man that He should lie, neither the son of man that He should repent.”298
All these anthropomorphic [pg 116] pictures of God were later avoided by

the ancient Biblical translators by means of paraphrase, and by the
philosophers by means of allegory.299

6. According to the Midrashic interpretation of the passage from the
Pentateuch quoted above, Moses desired to ascertain whether God ruled the
world with His justice or with His mercy, and the answer was: “Behold, I
shall let My goodness pass before thee. For I owe nothing to any of My
creatures, but My actions are prompted only by My grace and good will,
through which I give them all that they possess.”300 According to Judaism
justice and mercy are intertwined in God's government of the world; the
former is the pillar of the cosmic structure, and the latter the measuring line.
No mortal could stand before God, were justice the only standard; but we
subsist on His mercy, which lends us the boons of life without our meriting
them. That which is not good in us now is to become good through our
effort toward the best. God's grace underlies this possibility.

Accordingly, the divine holiness has two aspects, the overwhelming wrath
of His justice and the uplifting grace of His long-suffering. Without justice
there could be no fear of God, no moral earnestness; without mercy only
condemnation and perdition would remain. As the rabbis tell us, both justice
and mercy had their share in the creation of man, for in man both good and
bad appear and struggle for supremacy. All generations need the divine
grace that they may have time and opportunity for improvement.301

7. Thus this conception of grace is far deeper and worthier of God than is
that of Paulinian Christianity; for grace in Paul's sense is arbitrary in action
and dependent upon the acceptance [pg 117] of a creed, therefore the very
reverse of impartial justice. In Judaism divine grace is not offered as a bait
to make men believe, but as an incentive to moral improvement. The God
of holiness, who inflicts wounds upon the guilty soul by bitter remorse,
offers also healing through His compassion. Justice and mercy are not two
separate powers or persons in the Deity, as with the doctrine of the Church;
they are the two sides of the same divine power. “I am the Lord before sin
was committed, and I am the Lord after sin is committed”—so the rabbis
explain the repetition of the name JHVH in the revelation to Moses.302

[pg 118]

Chapter XIX. God's Justice

1. The unshakable faith of the Jewish people was ever sustained by the
consciousness that its God is a God of justice. The conviction that He will
not suffer wrong to go unpunished was read into all the stories of the hoary
past. The Babylonian form of these legends in common with all ancient
folk-lore ascribes human calamity to blind fate or to the caprice of the gods,
but the Biblical narratives assume that evil does not befall men undeserved,
and therefore always ascribe ruin or death to human transgression. So the
Jewish genius beheld in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah a divine
judgment upon the depraved inhabitants, and derived from it a lesson for
the household of Abraham that they should “keep the way of the Lord to do
righteousness and justice.”303 The fundamental principle of Judaism
throughout the ages has been the teaching of the patriarch that “the Judge of
all the earth cannot act unjustly,”304 even though the varying events of
history force the problem of justice upon the attention of Jeremiah,305 the
Psalmists,306 the author of the book of Job,307 and the Talmudical sages.308
“Righteousness and justice are the foundations of Thy throne”309—this is
the sum and substance of the religious experience of Israel. At the same
time man realizes how far from his grasp is the divine justice: [pg 119]
“Thy righteousness is like the mighty mountains; Thy judgments are like
the great deep.”310

2. The Master-builder of the moral world made justice the supporting pillar
of the entire creation. “He is The Rock, His work is perfect, for all His ways
are just; a God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and right is He.”311
There can be no moral world order without a retributive justice, which
leaves no infringement of right unpunished, just as no social order can exist

without laws to protect the weak and to enforce general respect. The God of
Judaism rules over mankind as Guardian and Vindicator of justice; no
wrong escapes His scrutinizing gaze. This fundamental doctrine invested
history, of both the individual and the nation, with a moral significance
beyond that of any other religious or ethical system.

Whatever practice or sense of justice may exist among the rest of mankind,
it is at best a glimpse of that divine righteousness which leads us on and
becomes a mighty force compelling us, not only to avoid wrongdoing, but
to combat it with all the passion of an indignant soul and eradicate it
wherever possible. Though in our daily experience justice may be sadly
lacking, we still cling to the moral axiom that God will lead the right to
victory and will hurl iniquity into the abyss. As the sages remark in the
Midrash: “How could short-sighted and short-lived man venture to assert,
‘All His ways are just,’ were it not for the divine revelation by which the
eyes of Moses were opened, so that he could gaze into the very depths of
life?”312 That is, the idea of divine justice is revealed, not in the world as it
is, but in the world as it should be, the ideal cosmos which lives in the
spirit.

[pg 120]
3. It cannot be denied that justice is recognized as a binding force even by
peoples on a low cultural plane, and the Deity is generally regarded as the
guardian of justice, exactly as in Judaism. This fact is shown by the use of
the oath in connection with judicial procedure among many nations. Both
Roman jurisprudence and Greek ethics declare justice to be the foundation
of the social life. Nevertheless the Jewish ideal of justice cannot be
identified with that of the law and the courts. The law is part of the social
system of the State, by which the relations of individuals are determined
and upheld. The maintenance of this social order, of the status quo, is
considered justice by the law, whatever injustice to individuals may result.
But the Jewish idea of justice is not reactionary; it owes to the prophets its
position as the dominating principle of the world, the peculiar essence of
God, and therefore the ultimate ideal of human life. They fought for right
with an insistence which vindicated its moral significance forever, and in
scathing words of indignation which still burn in the soul they denounced
oppression wherever it appeared. The crimes of the mighty against the

weak, they held, could not be atoned for by the outward forms of piety.
Right and justice are not simply matters for the State and the social order,
but belong to God, who defends the cause of the helpless and the homeless,
“who executes the judgment of the fatherless and the widow,” “who
regardeth not persons, nor taketh bribes.”313 Iniquity is hateful to Him; it
cannot be covered up by pious acts, nor be justified by good ends. “Justice
is God's.”314 Thus every violation of justice, whether from sordid self-
seeking or from tender compassion, is a violation of God's cause; and every
vindication of justice, every strengthening of the power of right in society,
is a triumph of God.

4. Accordingly, the highest principle of ethics in Judaism, the cardinal point
in the government of the world, is not love, [pg 121] but justice. Love has
the tendency to undermine the right and to effeminize society. Justice, on
the other hand, develops the moral capacity of every man; it aims not
merely to avoid wrong, but to promote and develop the right for the sake of
the perfect state of morality. True justice cannot remain a passive onlooker
when the right or liberty of any human being is curtailed, but strains every
effort to prevent violence and oppression. It battles for the right, until it has
triumphed over every injustice. This practical conception of right can be
traced through all Jewish literature and doctrine; through the laws of Moses,
to whom is ascribed the maxim: “Let the right have its way, though it bore
holes through the rock”,315 through the flaming words of the prophets;316
through the Psalmists, who spoke such words as these: “Thou art not a God
who hath pleasure in wickedness; evil shall not sojourn with Thee. The
arrogant shall not stand in Thy sight; Thou hatest all workers of iniquity.”317

Nor does justice stop with the prohibition of evil. The very arm that strikes
down the presumptuous transgressor turns to lift up the meek and endow
him with strength. Justice becomes a positive power for the right; it
becomes Zedakah, righteousness or true benevolence, and aims to readjust
the inequalities of life by kindness and love. It engenders that deeper sense
of justice which claims the right of the weak to protection by the arm of the
strong.

5. Hence comes the truth of Matthew Arnold's striking summary of Israel's
Law and Prophets in his “Literature and Dogma,” as “The Power, not

ourselves, that maketh for righteousness.” Still, when we trace the
development of this central thought in the soul of the Jewish people, we
find that it arose from a peculiar mythological conception. The God of Sinai
had manifested Himself in the devastating elements of [pg 122] nature—
fire, storm, and hail; later, the prophetic genius of Israel saw Him as a moral
power who destroyed wickedness by these very phenomena in order that
right should prevail. At first the covenant-God of Israel hurls the plagues of
heaven upon the hostile Egyptians and Canaanites, the oppressors of His
people. Afterward the great prophets speak of the Day of JHVH which
would come at the end of days, when God will execute His judgment upon
the heathen nations by pouring forth all the terrors of nature upon them. The
natural forces of destruction are utilized by the Ruler of heaven as means of
moral purification. “For by fire will the Lord contend.”318

In this process the sense of right became progressively refined, so that God
was made the Defender of the cause of the oppressed, and the holiest of
duties became the protection of the forsaken and unfortunate. Justice and
right were thus lifted out of the civil or forensic sphere into that of divine
holiness, and the struggle for the down-trodden became an imperative duty.
Judaism finds its strength in the oft-repeated doctrine that the moral welfare
of the world rests upon justice. “The King's strength is that he loveth
justice,” says the Psalmist, and commenting upon this the Midrash says,
“Not might, but right forms the foundation of the world's peace.”319

6. Social life, therefore, must be built upon the firm foundation of justice,
the full recognition of the rights of all individuals and all classes. It can be
based neither upon the formal administration of law nor upon the elastic
principle of love, which too often tolerates, or even approves certain types
of injustice. Judaism has been working through the centuries to realize the
ideal of justice to all mankind; therefore the Jew has suffered and waited for
the ultimate triumph of the God of justice. God's kingdom of justice is to be
established, not in a world to come, but in the world that now is, in the life
of [pg 123] men and nations. As the German poet has it, “Die
Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht” (the history of the world is the world's
tribunal of justice).

7. The recognition of God as the righteous Ruler implies a dominion of
absolute justice which allows no wrongdoing to remain unpunished and no
meritorious act to remain unrewarded. The moral and intellectual maturity
of the people, however, must determine how they conceive retribution in the
divine judgment. Under the simple conditions of patriarchal life, when
common experience seemed to be in harmony with the demands of divine
justice, when the evil-doer seemed to meet his fate and the worthy man to
enjoy his merited prosperity, reward and punishment could well be
expressed by the Bible in terms of national prosperity and calamity. The
prophets, impressed by the political and moral decline of their era,
announced for both Israel and the other nations a day of judgment to come,
when God will manifest Himself as the righteous Ruler of the world. In
fact, those great preachers of righteousness announced for all time the truth
of a moral government of the world, with terror for the malefactors and the
assurance of peace and salvation for the righteous. “He will judge the world
with righteousness, and the peoples with equity” becomes a song of joyous
confidence and hope on the lips of the Psalmist.320 This final triumph of
justice does not depend, as Christian theologians assert, on the mere
outward conformity of Israel to the law.321 On the contrary, it offers to the
innocent sufferer the hope that “his right shall break forth as light,” while
“the wicked shall be put to silence in darkness.”322 We must admit, indeed,
that the Biblical idea of retribution still has too much of the earthly flavor,
and [pg 124] often lacks true spirituality. The explanation of this lies in the
desire of the expounders of Judaism that this world should be regarded as
the battle-ground between the good and the bad, that the victory of the good
is to be decided here, and that the idea of justice should not assume the
character of other-worldliness.

8. It is true that neither the prophets, such as Jeremiah, nor the sages, such
as the authors of Job and Koheleth, actually solved the great enigma which
has baffled all nations and ages, the adjustment of merit and destiny by
divine righteousness. Yet even a doubter like Job does not despair of his
own sense of justice, and wrestles with his God in the effort to obtain a
deeper insight. Still the great mass of people are not satisfied with an
unfulfilled yearning and seeking. The various religions have gradually
transferred the final adjustment of merit and destiny to the hereafter; the
rewards and punishments awaiting man after death have been depicted

glaringly in colors taken from this earthly life. It is not surprising that
Judaism was influenced by this almost universal view. The mechanical form
of the principle of justice demands that “with the same measure one metes
out, it shall be meted out to him,”323 and this could not be found either in
human justice or in human destiny. Therefore the popular mind naturally
turned to the world to come, expecting there that just retribution which is
lacking on earth.

Only superior minds could ascend to that higher ethical conception where
compensation is no longer expected, but man seeks the good and happiness
of others and finds therein his highest satisfaction. As Ben Azzai expresses
it, “The reward of virtue is virtue, and the punishment of sin is sin.”324 At
this point justice merges into divine holiness.

[pg 125]
9. The idea of divine justice exerted its uplifting force in one more way in
Judaism. The recognition of God as the righteous Judge of the world—
Zidduk ha Din325—is to bring consolation and endurance to the afflicted,
and to remove from their hearts the bitter sting of despair and doubt. The
rabbis called God “the Righteous One of the universe,”326 as if to indicate
that God himself is meant by the Scriptural verse, “The righteous is an
everlasting foundation of the world.”327

Far remote from Judaism, however, is the doctrine that God would consign
an otherwise righteous man to eternal doom, because he belongs to another
creed or another race than that of the Jew. Wherever the heathens are
spoken of as condemned at the last judgment, the presumption based upon
centuries of sad experience was that their lives were full of injustice and
wickedness. Indeed, milder teachers, whose view became the accepted one,
maintained that truly righteous men are found among the heathen, who have
therefore as much claim upon eternal salvation as the pious ones of Israel.328

[pg 126]

Chapter XX. God's Love and Compassion

1. As justice forms the basis of human morality, with kindness and
benevolence as milder elements to mitigate its sternness, so, according to
the Jewish view, mercy and love represent the milder side of God, but by no
means a higher attribute counteracting His justice. Love can supplement
justice, but cannot replace it. The sages say:329 “When the Creator saw that
man could not endure, if measured by the standard of strict justice, He
joined His attribute of mercy to that of justice, and created man by the
combined principle of both.” The divine compassion with human frailty, felt
by both Moses and Hosea, manifests itself in God's mercy. Were it not for
the weakness of the flesh, justice would have sufficed. But the divine plan
of salvation demands redeeming love which wins humanity step by step for
higher moral ends. The educational value of this love lies in the fact that it
is a gift of grace, bestowed on man by the fatherly love of God to ward off
the severity of full retribution. His pardon must conduce to a deeper moral
earnestness.330 “For with Thee there is forgiveness that Thou mayest be
feared.”331 R. Akiba says: “The world is judged by the divine attribute of
goodness.”332

[pg 127]
2. As a matter of course, in the Biblical view God's mercy was realized at
first only with regard to Israel and was afterward extended gradually to
humanity at large. The generation of the flood and the inhabitants of Sodom
perished on account of their guilt, and only the righteous were saved. This
attitude holds throughout the Bible until the late book of Jonah, with its
lesson of God's forgiveness even for the heathen city of Nineveh after due
repentance. In the later Psalms the divine attributes of mercy are expanded
and applied to all the creatures of God.333 According to the school of Hillel,
whenever the good and evil actions of any man are found equal in the scales
of justice, God inclines the balances toward the side of mercy.334 Nay more,

in the words of Samuel, the Babylonian teacher, God judges the nations by
the noblest types they produce.335

The ruling Sadducean priesthood insisted on the rigid enforcement of the
law. The party of the pious, the Hasidim, however,—according to the
liturgy, the apocryphal and the rabbinical literature,—appealed to the mercy
of God in song and prayer, acknowledging their failings in humility, and
made kindness and love their special objects in life. Therefore with their
ascendancy the divine attributes of mercy and compassion were
accentuated. God himself, we are told, was heard praying: “Oh that My
attribute of mercy may prevail over My attribute of justice, so that grace
alone may be bestowed upon My children on earth.”336 And the second
word of the Decalogue was so interpreted that God's mercy—which is said
to extend “to the thousandth generation”—is five hundred times as
powerful as His punitive justice,—which is applied “to the third and fourth
generation.”337

[pg 128]
3. Divine mercy shows itself in the law, where compassion is enjoined on
all suffering creatures. Profound sympathy with the oppressed is echoed in
the ancient law of the poor who had to give up his garment as a pledge:
“When he crieth unto Me, I shall hear, for I am gracious.”338 In the old
Babylonian code, might was the arbiter of right,339 but the unique genius of
the Jew is shown in adapting this same legal material to its impulse of
compassion. The cry of the innocent sufferer, of the forsaken and fatherless,
rises up to God's throne and secures there his right against the oppressor.
Thus in the Mosaic law and throughout Jewish literature God calls himself
“the Judge of the widow,” “the Father of the fatherless,”340 “a Stronghold to
the needy.”341 He calls the poor, “My people,”342 and, as the rabbis say, He
loves the persecuted, not the persecutors.343

4. Even to dumb beasts God extends His mercy. This Jewish tenderness is
an inheritance from the shepherd life of the patriarchs, who were eager to
quench the thirst of the animals in their care before they thought of their
own comfort.344 This sense of sympathy appears in the Biblical precepts as
to the overburdened beast,345 the ox treading the corn,346 and the mother-
beast or mother-bird with her young,347 as well as the Talmudic rule first to

feed the domestic animals and then sit down to the meal.348 This has
remained a characteristic trait of Judaism. Thus, in connection with the
verse of the Psalm, “His tender mercies are over all His works,”349 it is
related of Rabbi Judah the Saint, the redactor of the Mishnah, [pg 129] that
he was afflicted with pain for thirteen years, and gave as reason that he once
struck and kicked away a calf which had run to him moaning for protection;
he was finally relieved, after he had taught his household to have pity even
on the smallest of creatures.350 In fact, Rabban Gamaliel, his grandfather,
had taught before him: “Whosoever has compassion on his fellow-
creatures, on him God will have compassion.”351 The sages often interpret
the phrase “To walk in the way of the Lord”—that is, “As the Holy One,
blessed be He, is merciful, so be ye also merciful.”352

5. Thus the rabbis came to regard love as the innermost part of God's being.
God loves mankind, is the highest stage of consciousness of God, but this
can be attained only by the closest relation of the human soul to the Most
High, after severe trials have softened and humanized the spirit. It is not
accidental that Scripture speaks often of God's goodness, mercy, and grace,
but seldom mentions His love. Possibly the term ahabah was used at first
for sensuous love and therefore was not employed for God so often as the
more spiritual hesed, which denotes kind and loyal affection.353 However,
Hosea used this term for his own love for his faithless wife, and did not
hesitate to apply it also to God's love for His faithless people, which he
terms “a love of free will.”354 His example is followed by Jeremiah, most
tender of the prophets, who gave the classic expression to the everlasting
love of God for Israel, His beloved son.355 This divine love, spiritually
understood, forms the chief topic of the Deuteronomic addresses.356 In this
book God's love appears as that of a father for his son, who lavishes gifts
upon him, but also chastises him for his own [pg 130] good.357 The mind
opened more and more to regard the trials sent by God as means of
ennobling the character,358 and the men of the Talmudic period often speak
of the afflictions of the saints as “visitations of the divine love.”359

6. The sufferings of Israel in particular were taken to be trials of the divine
love.360 God's love for Israel, “His first-born son,”361 is not partial, but from
the outset aims to train him for his world mission. The Song of Moses
speaks of the love of the Father for His son “whom He found in the

wilderness”;362 and this is requited by the bridal love of Israel with which
the people “went after God in the wilderness.”363 It is this love of God,
according to Akiba's interpretation of the Song of Songs, which “all the
waters could not quench,” “a love as strong as death.”364 This love raised up
a nation of martyrs without parallel in history, although the followers of the
so-called Religion of Love fail to give it the credit it deserves and seem to
regard it as a kind of hatred for the rest of mankind.365 Whenever the
paternal love of God is truly felt and understood it must include all classes
and all souls of men who enter into the relation of children to God.
Wherever emphasis is laid upon the special love for Israel, it is based upon
the love with which the chosen people cling to the Torah, the word of God,
upon the devotion with which they surrender their lives in His cause.366

7. Still, Judaism does not proclaim love, absolute and unrestricted, as the
divine principle of life. That is left to the Church, whose history almost to
this day records ever so many acts of lovelessness. Love is unworthy of
God, unless it is guided by justice. Love of good must be accompanied by
[pg 131] hate of evil, or else it lacks the educative power which alone
makes it beneficial to man.

God's love manifests itself in human life as an educative power. R. Akiba
says that it extends to all created in God's image, although the knowledge of
it was vouchsafed to Israel alone.367 This universal love of God is a doctrine
of the apocryphal literature as well. “Thou hast mercy upon all ... for Thou
lovest all things that are, and hatest nothing which Thou hast made.... But
Thou sparest all, for they are Thine, O Lord, Lover of souls,” says the Book
of Wisdom;368 and when Ezra the Seer laments the calamity that has
befallen the people, God replies, “Thinkest thou that thou lovest My
creatures more than I?”369

8. Among the mystics divine love was declared to be the highest creative
principle. They referred the words of the Song of Songs,—“The midst
thereof is paved with love,”370 to the innermost palace of heaven, where
stands the throne of God.371 Among the philosophers Crescas considered
love the active cosmic principle rather than intellect, the principle of
Aristotle, because it is love which is the impulse for creation.372 This
conception of divine love received a peculiarly mystic color from Juda

Abravanel, a neo-Platonist of the sixteenth century, known as Leo
Hebraeus. He says: “God's love must needs unfold His perfection and
beauty, and reveal itself in His creatures, and love for these creatures must
again elevate an imperfect world to His own perfection. Thus is engendered
in man that yearning for love with which he endeavors to emulate the divine
perfection.”373 Both Crescas and Leo Hebraeus thus gave the keynote for
Spinoza's “Intellectual love” as the cosmic principle,374 and this has been
echoed even [pg 132] in such works as Schiller's dithyrambs on “Love and
Friendship” in his “Philosophic Letters.”375 Still this neo-Platonic view has
nothing in common with the theological conception of love. In Judaism
God is conceived as a loving Father, who purposes to lead man to happiness
and salvation. In other words, the divine love is an essentially moral
attribute of God, and not a metaphysical one.

9. If we wish to speak of a power that permeates the cosmos and turns the
wheel of life, it is far more correct to speak of God's creative goodness.376
According to Scripture, each day's creation bears the divine approval: “It is
good.”377 Even the evil which man experiences serves a higher purpose, and
that purpose makes for the good. Misfortune and death, sorrow and sin, in
the great economy of life are all turned into final good. Accordingly,
Judaism recognizes this divine goodness not only in every enjoyment of
nature's gifts and the favors of fortune, but also in sad and trying
experiences, and for all of these it provides special formulas of
benediction.378 The same divine goodness sends joy and grief, even though
shortsighted man fails to see the majestic Sun of life which shines in
unabated splendor above the clouds. Judaism was optimistic through all its
experiences just because of this implicit faith in God's goodness. Such faith
transforms each woe into a higher welfare, each curse into actual blessing;
it leads men and nations from oppression to ever greater freedom, from
darkness to ever brighter light, and from error to ever higher truth and
righteousness. Divine love may have pity upon human weakness, but it is
divine goodness that inspires and quickens human energy. After all, love
cannot be the dominant principle of life. Man cannot love all the time, nor
can he love all the world; his sense of justice demands that he hate [pg 133]
wickedness and falsehood. We must apply the same criterion to God. But,
on the other hand, man can and should do good and be good continually and
to all men, even to the most unworthy. Therefore God becomes the pattern

and ideal of an all-encompassing goodness, which is never exhausted and
never reaches an end.

[pg 134]

Chapter XXI. God's Truth and Faithfulness

1. In the Hebrew language truth and faithfulness are both derived from the
same root; aman, “firmness,” is the root idea of emeth, “truth,” and emunah,
“faithfulness.” Man feels insecurity and uncertainty among the varying
impressions and emotions which affect his will; therefore he turns to the
immovable Rock of life, calls on Him as the Guardian and Witness of truth,
and feels confident that He will vindicate every promise made in His sight.
He is the God by whom men swear—Elohe amen;379 nay, who swears by
Himself, saying, “As true as that I live.”380 He is the supreme Power of life,
“the God of faithfulness, in whom there is no iniquity.”381 The heavens
testify to His faithfulness; He is the trustworthy God, whose essence is
truth.382

2. Here, too, as with other attributes, the development of the idea may be
traced step by step. At first it refers to the God of the covenant with Israel,
who made a covenant with the fathers and keeps it with the thousandth
generation of their descendants. He shows His mercy to those who love
Him and keep His commandments. The idea of God's faithfulness to His
covenant is thus extended gradually from the people to the cosmos, and the
heavens are called upon to witness to the faithfulness of God throughout the
realm of life. Thus in both the [pg 135] Psalms and the liturgy God is
praised as the One who is faithful in His word as in His work.383

3. From this conception of faithfulness arose two other ideas which exerted
a powerful influence upon the whole spiritual and intellectual life of the
Jew. The God of faithfulness created a people of faithfulness as His own,
and Israel's God of truth awakened in the nation a passion for truth
unrivaled by any other religious or philosophical system. Like a silver
stream running through a valley, the conviction runs through the sacred
writings and the liturgy that the promise made of yore to the fathers will be
fulfilled to the children. As each past deliverance from distress was
considered a verification of the divine faithfulness, so each hope for the
future was based upon the same attribute. “He keepeth His faith also to
those who sleep in the dust.” These words of the second of the Eighteen
Benedictions clearly indicate that even the belief in the hereafter rested
upon the same fundamental belief.

On the other hand, the same conception formed the keynote of the idea of
the divine truthfulness. The primitive age knew nothing of the laws of
nature with which we have become familiar through modern science. But
the pious soul trusts the God of faithfulness, certain that He who has created
the heaven and the earth is true to His own word, and will not allow them to
sink back into chaos. One witness to this is the rainbow, which He has set
up in the sky as a sign of His covenant.384 The sea and the stars also have a
boundary assigned to them which they cannot transgress.385 Thus to the
unsophisticated religious soul, with no knowledge of natural science, the
world is carried by God's “everlasting arms”386 and [pg 136] His
faithfulness becomes token and pledge of the immutability of His will.

4. At this point the intellect grasps an idea of intrinsic and indestructible
truth, which has its beginning and its end in God, the Only One. “The gods
of the nations are all vanity and deceit, the work of men; Israel's God is the
God of truth, the living God and everlasting King.”387 With this cry has
Judaism challenged the nations of the world since the Babylonian exile. Its
own adherents it charged to ponder upon the problems of life and the nature
of God, until He would appear before them as the very essence of truth, and
all heathenish survivals would vanish as mist. God is truth, and He desires
naught but truth, therefore hypocrisy is loathsome to him, even in the
service of religion. With this underlying thought Job, the bold but honest
doubter, stands above his friends with their affected piety. God is truth—

this confession of faith, recited each morning and evening by the Jew, gave
his mind the power to soar into the highest realms of thought, and inspired
his soul to offer life and all it holds for his faith. “God is the everlasting
truth, the unchangeable Being who ever remains the same amid the
fluctuations and changes of all other things.” This is the fundamental
principle upon which Joseph Ibn Zaddik and Abraham Ibn Daud, the
predecessors of Maimonides, reared their entire philosophical systems,
which were Aristotelian and yet thoroughly Jewish.388

Mystic lore, always so fond of the letters of the alphabet and their hidden
meanings, noted that the letters of Emeth—aleph, mem and tav—are the
first, the middle, and the last letters of the alphabet, and therefore concluded
that God made [pg 137] truth the beginning, the center, and the end of the
world.389 Josephus also, no doubt in accordance with the same tradition,
declares that God is “the beginning, the center, and the end of all things.”390
A corresponding rabbinical saying is: “Truth is the seal of God.”391

[pg 138]

Chapter XXII. God's Knowledge and Wisdom

1. The attempt to enumerate the attributes of God recalls the story related in
the Talmud392 of a disciple who stepped up to the reader's desk to offer
prayer, and began to address the Deity with an endless list of attributes.
When his vocabulary was almost exhausted, Rabbi Haninah interrupted him
with the question, “Hast thou now really finished telling the praise of God?”
Mortal man can never know what God really is. As the poet-philosopher
says: “Could I ever know Him, I would be He.”393 But we want to ascertain

what God is to us, and for this very reason we cannot rest with the negative
attitude of Maimonides, who relies on the Psalmist's verse, “Silence is
praise to Thee.”394 We must obtain as clear a conception of the Deity as we
possibly can with our limited powers.

To the divine attributes already mentioned we must add another which in a
sense is the focus of them all. This is the knowledge and wisdom of God,
the omniscience which renders Him all-knowing and all-wise. Through this
all the others come into self-consciousness. We ascribe wisdom to the man
who sets right aims for his actions and knows the means by which to attain
them, that is, who can control his power and knowledge by his will and
bend them to his purpose. In the same manner we think of wisdom in view
of the marvelous order, design, and unity which we see in the natural and
the moral world. But this wisdom must be all-encompassing, comprising
time and eternity, directing all the forces and beings [pg 139] of the world
toward the goal of ideal perfection.395 It makes no difference where we find
this lesson. The Book of Proverbs singles out the tiny ant as an example of
wondrous forethought;396 the author of Job dwells on the working together
of the powers of earth and heaven to maintain the cosmic life;397 modern
science, with its deeper insight into nature, enables us to follow the
interaction of the primal chemical and organic forces, and to follow the
course of evolution from star-dust and cell to the structure of the human eye
or the thought-centers of the brain. But in all these alike our conclusion
must be that of the Psalmist: “O Lord, how manifold are Thy works, in
wisdom hast Thou made them all.”398

2. Accordingly, if we are to speak in human terms, we may consider God's
wisdom the element which determines His various motive-powers,—
omniscience, omnipotence, and goodness,—to tend toward the realization
of His cosmic plan. Or we may call it the active intellect with which God
works as Creator, Ordainer, and Ruler of the universe. The Biblical account
of creation presupposes this wisdom, as it portrays a logical process,
working after a definite plan, proceeding from simpler to more complex
forms and culminating in man. Biblical history likewise is based upon the
principle of a divinely prearranged plan, which is especially striking in such
stories as that of Joseph.399

3. At first the divine wisdom was supposed to rest in part on specially gifted
persons, such as Joseph, Solomon, and Bezalel. As Scripture has it, “The
Lord giveth wisdom, out of His mouth cometh knowledge and
understanding.”400 Later the obscure destiny of the nation appears as the
design of an all-wise Ruler to the great prophets and especially to Isaiah,
the [pg 140] high-soaring eagle among the seers of Israel.401 With the
progressive expansion of the world before them, the seers and sages saw a
sublime purpose in the history of the nations, and felt more and more the
supreme place of the divine wisdom as a manifestation of His greatness.
Thus the great seer of the Exile never tires of illumining the world-wide
plan of the divine wisdom.402

4. A new development ensued under Babylonian and Persian influence at
the time when the monotheism of Israel became definitely universal. The
divine wisdom, creative and world-sustaining, became the highest of the
divine attributes and was partially hypostatized as an independent cosmic
power. In the twenty-eighth chapter of the Book of Job wisdom is depicted
as a magic being, far remote from all living beings of earth, beyond the
reach of the creatures of the lowest abyss, who aided the Creator with
counsel and knowledge in measuring and weighing the foundations of the
world. The description seems to be based upon an ancient Babylonian
conception—which has parallels elsewhere—of a divine Sybil dwelling
beneath the ocean in “the house of wisdom.”403 Here, however, the
mythological conception is transformed into a symbolic figure. In the eighth
chapter of Proverbs the description of divine wisdom is more in accordance
with Jewish monotheism; wisdom is “the first of God's creatures,” “a
master-workman” who assisted Him in founding heaven and earth, a
helpmate and playmate of God, and at the same time the instructor of men
and counselor of princes, inviting all to share her precious gifts. This
conception is found also in the apocryphal literature,—in Ben Sira, the book
of Enoch, the Apocalypse of Baruch, and the Hellenistic Book of
Wisdom.404

[pg 141]
From this period two different currents of thought appeared. The one
represented wisdom as an independent being distinct from God, and this
finally became merged, under Platonic influence, into the views of neo-

Platonism, Gnosticism, and the Christian dogma. The other identified the
divine wisdom with the Torah, and therefore it is the Torah which served
God as counselor and mediator at the Creation and continues as counselor
in the management of the world. This view led back to strict monotheism,
so that the cosmology of the rabbis spoke alternately of the divine wisdom
and the Torah as the instruments of God at Creation.405

5. The Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages, such as Saadia, Gabirol,
and Jehuda ha Levi, followed the Mohammedan theologians in enumerating
God's wisdom among the attributes constituting His essence, together with
His omnipotence, His will, and His creative energy. But they would not take
wisdom or any other attribute as a separate being, with an existence outside
of God, which would either condition Him or admit a division of His
nature.406 “God himself is wisdom,” says Jehuda ha Levi, referring to the
words of Job: “He is wise in heart.”407 And Ibn Gabirol sings in his “Crown
of Royalty”:

“Thou art wise, and the wisdom of Thy fount of life floweth from Thee;
And compared with Thy wisdom man is void of understanding;
Thou art wise, before anything began its existence;
And wisdom has from times of yore been Thy fostered child;
Thou art wise, and out of Thy wisdom didst Thou create the world,
408
Life the artificer that fashioneth whatsoever delighteth him.”

[pg 142]

Chapter XXIII. God's Condescension

1. An attribute of great importance for the theological conception of God,
one upon which both Biblical and rabbinical literature laid especial stress, is
His condescension and humility. The Psalmist says409: “Thy condescension
hath made me great,” which is interpreted in the Midrash that the Deity
stoops to man in order to lift him up to Himself. A familiar saying of R.
Johanan is410: “Wherever Scripture speaks of the greatness of God, there
mention is made also of His condescension. So when the prophet begins,
‘Thus saith the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is
Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place,’ he adds the words, ‘With him also
that is of a contrite and humble spirit.’411 Or when the Deuteronomist says:
‘For the Lord your God, the great God, the mighty and the awful,’ he
concludes, ‘He doth execute justice for the fatherless and widow, and loveth
the stranger.’412 And again the Psalmist: ‘Extol Him that rideth upon the
skies, whose name is the Lord, a Father of the fatherless and a Judge of the
widows.’ ”413 “Do you deem it unworthy of God that He should care for the
smallest and most insignificant person or thing in the world's household?”
asks Mendelssohn in his Morgenstunden. “It certainly does not detract from
the dignity of a king to be seen fondling his child as a loving father,” and he
quotes [pg 143] the verse of the Psalm, “Who is like unto the Lord our God,
that is enthroned on high, that looketh down low upon heaven and upon the
earth.”414

2. This truth has a religious depth which no philosophy can set forth. Only
the God of Revelation is near to man in his frailty and need, ready to hear
his sighs, answer his supplication, count his tears, and relieve his wants
when his own power fails. The philosopher must reject as futile every
attempt to bring the incomprehensible essence of the Deity within the
compass of the human understanding. The religious consciousness,
however, demands that we accentuate precisely those attributes of God
which bring Him nearest to us. If reason alone would have the decisive
voice in this problem, every manifestation of God to man and every
reaching out of the soul to Him in prayer would be idle fancy and self-
deceit. It is true that the Biblical conception was simple and child-like
enough, representing God as descending from the heavens to the earth. Still
Judaism does not accept the cold and distant attitude of the philosopher; it
teaches that God as a spiritual power does condescend to man, in order that
man may realize his kinship with the Most High and rise ever nearer to his

Creator. The earth whereon man dwells and the human heart with its
longing for heaven, are not bereft of God. Wherever man seeks Him, there
He is.

3. Rabbinical Judaism is very far from the attitude assigned to it by
Christian theologians,415 of reducing the Deity to an empty transcendental
abstraction and loosening the bond which ties the soul to its Maker. On the
contrary, it maintains these very relations with a firmness which betokens
its soundness and its profound psychological truth. In this spirit a Talmudic
master interprets the Deuteronomic verse: “For what great nation is there
that hath God so nigh unto [pg 144] them, as the Lord our God is
whensoever we call upon Him?”416 saying that “each will realize the
nearness of God according to his own intellectual and emotional
disposition, and thus enter into communion with Him.” According to
another Haggadist the verse of the Psalm, “The voice of the Lord
resoundeth with power,”417 teaches how God reveals Himself, not with His
own overwhelming might, but according to each man's individual power
and capacity. The rabbis even make bold to assert that whenever Israel
suffers, God suffers with him; as it is written, “I will be with him in
trouble.”418

4. As a matter of fact, all the names which we apply to God in speech or in
prayer, even the most sublime and holy ones, are derived from our own
sensory experience and cannot be taken literally. They are used only as
vehicles to bring home to us the idea that God's nearness is our highest
good. Even the material world, which is perceptible to our senses, must
undergo a certain inner transformation before it can be termed science or
philosophy, and becomes the possession of the mind. It requires still further
exertions of the imagination to bring within our grasp the world of the
spirit, and above all the loftiest of all conceptions, the very being of God.
Yet it is just this Being of all Beings who draws us irresistibly toward
Himself, whose nearness we perceive in the very depths of our intellectual
and emotional life. Our “soul thirsteth after God, the living God,” and
behold, He is nigh, He takes possession of us, and we call Him our God.

5. The Haggadists expressed this intimate relation of God to man, and
specifically to Israel, by bold and often naïve metaphors. They ascribe to

God special moments for wrath and for prayer, a secret chamber where he
weeps over the [pg 145] distress of Israel, a prayer-mantle (tallith) and
phylacteries which He wears like any of the leaders of the community, and
even lustrations which He practices exactly like mortals.419 But such
fanciful and extravagant conceptions were never taken seriously by the
rabbis, and only partisan and prejudiced writers, entirely lacking in a sense
of humor, could point to such passages to prove that a theology of the
Synagogue carried out a “Judaization of God.”420

[pg 146]

C. God In Relation To The World

Chapter XXIV. The World and its Master

1. In using the term world or universe we include the totality of all beings at
once, and this suggests a stage of knowledge where polytheism is
practically overcome. Among the Greeks, Pythagoras is said to have been
the first to perceive “a beautiful order of things” in the world, and therefore
to call it cosmos.421 Primitive man saw in the world innumerable forces
continually struggling with each other for supremacy. Without an ordering
mind no order, as we conceive it, can exist. The old Babylonian conception
prevalent throughout antiquity divided the world into three realms, the
celestial, terrestrial, and the nether world, each of which had its own type of
inhabitants and its own ruling divinities. Yet these various divine powers
were at war with each other, and ultimately they, too, must submit to a blind
fate which men and gods alike could read in the stars or other natural
phenomena.

With the first words of the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth,” Judaism declared the world to be a unity and God its Creator
and Master. Heathenism had always beheld in the world certain blind forces
of nature, working without plan or purpose and devoid [pg 147] of any
moral aims. But Judaism sees in the world the work of a supreme Intellect
who fashioned it according to His will, and who rules in freedom, wisdom,
and goodness. “He spoke, and it was; He commanded, and it stood.”422
Nature exists only by the will of God; His creative fiat called it into
existence, and it ceases to be as soon as it has fulfilled His plan.

2. That which the scientist terms nature—the cosmic life in its eternal
process of growth and reproduction—is declared by Judaism to be God's
creation. Ancient heathen conceptions deified nature, indeed, but they knew

only a cosmogony, that is, a process of birth and growth of the world. In
this the gods participate with all other beings, to sink back again at the close
of the drama into fiery chaos,—the so-called “twilight of the gods.” Here
the deity constitutes a part of the world, or the world a part of the deity, and
philosophic speculation can at best blend the two into a pantheistic system
which has no place for a self-conscious, creative mind and will. In fact, the
universe appears as an ever growing and unfolding deity, and the deity as an
ever growing and unfolding universe. Modern science more properly
assumes a self-imposed limitation; it searches for the laws underlying the
action and interaction of natural forces and elements, thus to explain in a
mechanistic way the origin and development of all things, but it leaves
entirely outside of its domain the whole question of a first cause and a
supreme creative mind. It certainly can pass no opinion as to whether or not
the entire work of creation was accomplished by the free act of a Creator.
Revelation alone can speak with unfaltering accents: “In the beginning God
created heaven and earth.” However we may understand, or imagine, the
beginning of the natural process, the formation of matter and the inception
of motion, we see above the confines of space [pg 148] and time the
everlasting God, the absolutely free Creator of all things.

3. No definite theological dogma can define the order and process of the
genesis of the world; this is rather a scientific than a religious question. The
Biblical documents themselves differ widely on this point, whether one
compares the stories in the first two chapters of Genesis, or contrasts both
of them with the poetical descriptions in Job and the Psalms.423 And these
divergent accounts are still less to be reconciled with the results of natural
science. In the old Babylonian cosmography, on which the Biblical view is
based, the earth, shaped like a disk, was suspended over the waters of the
ocean, while above it was the solid vault of heaven like a ceiling. In this the
stars were fixed like lamps to light the earth, and hidden chambers to store
up the rain. The sciences of astronomy, physics, and geology have abolished
these childlike conceptions as well as the story of a six-day creation, where
vegetation sprang from the earth even before the sun, moon, and stars
appeared in the firmament.

The fact is that the Biblical account is not intended to depreciate or
supersede the facts established by natural science, but solely to accentuate

those religious truths which the latter disregards.424 These may be summed
up in the following three doctrines:

4. First. Nature, with all its immeasurable power and grandeur, its wondrous
beauty and harmony, is not independent, but is the work, the workshop, and
the working force of the great Master. His spirit alone is the active power;
His will must be carried out. It is true that we cannot conceive the universe
otherwise than as infinite in time and space, because both time and space
are but human modes of apperception. In fact, we cannot think of a Creator
without [pg 149] a creation, because any potentiality or capacity without
execution would imply imperfection in God. Nevertheless we must
conceive of God as the designing and creating intellect of the universe,
infinitely transcending its complex mechanism, whose will is expressed
involuntarily by each of the created beings. He alone is the living God; He
has lent existence and infinite capacity to the beings of the world; and they,
in achieving their appointed purpose, according to the poet's metaphor,
“weave His living garment.” The Psalmist also sings in the same key:

“Of old Thou didst lay the foundations of the earth;
And the heavens are the work of Thy hands;
They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure;
Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment.
As a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall pass away;
425
But Thou art the selfsame, and Thy years shall have no end.”

5. Second. The numberless beings and forces of the universe comprise a
unity, working according to one plan, subserving a common purpose, and
pursuing in their development and interaction the aim which God's wisdom
assigned them from the beginning. However hostile the various elements
may be toward each other, however fierce the universal conflict, “the
struggle for existence,” still over all the discord prevails a higher concord,
and the struggle of nature's forces ends in harmony and peace. “He maketh
peace in His high places.”426 Even the highest type of heathenism, the
Persian, divided the world into mutually hostile principles, light and
darkness, good and evil. But Judaism proclaims God as the Creator of both.
No force is left out of the universal plan; each contributes its part to the

whole. Consequently the very progress of natural science confirms more
and more the principle of the divine Unity. The researches of science are
ever [pg 150] tending toward the knowledge of universal laws of growth,
culminating in a scheme of universal evolution. Hence this supports and
confirms Jewish monotheism, which knows no power of evil antagonistic to
God.

6. Third. The world is good, since goodness is its creator and its final aim.
True enough, nature, bent with “tooth and claw” upon annihilating one or
another form of existence, is quite indifferent to man's sense of compassion
and justice. Yet in the wise, though inscrutable plan of God she does but
serve the good. We see how the lower forms of life ever serve the higher,
how the mineral provides food for the vegetable, while the animal derives
its food from the vegetable world and from lower types of animals. Thus
each becomes a means of vitality for a higher species. So by the continuous
upward striving of man the lower passions, with their evil tendencies, work
more and more toward the triumph of the good. Man unfolds his God-
likeness; he strives to

“Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die.”

7. The Biblical story of Creation expresses the perfect harmony between
God's purpose and His work in the words, “And behold, it was good”
spoken at the end of each day's Creation, and “behold, it was very good” at
the completion of the whole. A world created by God must serve the highest
good, while, on the contrary, a world without God would prove to be “the
worst of all possible worlds,” as Schopenhauer, the philosopher of
pessimism, quite correctly concludes from his premises. The world-view of
Judaism, which regards the entire economy of life as the realization of the
all-encompassing plan of an all-wise Creator, is accordingly an energizing
optimism, or, more precisely, meliorism. This view is voiced by the rabbis
in many significant utterances, such as the maxim of R. Akiba,
“Whatsoever the Merciful One does, [pg 151] is for the good,”427 or that of
his teacher, Nahum of Gimzo, “This, too, is for the good.”428 His disciple,
R. Meir, inferred from the Biblical verse, “God saw all that He had made,

and behold, it was very good,” that “death, too, is good.”429 Others
considered that suffering and even sin are included in this verse, because
every apparent evil is necessary that we may struggle and overcome it for
the final victory of the good.430 As an ancient Midrash says: “God is called a
God of faith and faithfulness, because it was His faith in the world that
caused Him to bring it into existence.”431

[pg 152]

Chapter XXV. Creation As the Act of God

1. “Thus shall ye say unto them: The gods that have not made the heavens
and the earth, these shall perish from the earth, and from under the heavens.
He that hath made the earth by His power, that hath established the world
by His wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by His understanding ...
the Lord God is the true God.”432 With this declaration of war against
heathenism, the prophet drew the line, once for all, between the uncreated,
transcendent God and the created, perishable universe. It is true that Plato
spoke of primordial and eternal matter and Aristotle of an eternally rotating
celestial sphere, and that even Biblical exegetes, such as Ibn Ezra,433
inferred from the Creation story the existence of primeval chaotic matter.
Yet, on the whole, the Jewish idea of God has demanded the assumption
that even this primitive matter was created by God, or, as most thinkers
have phrased it, that God created the world out of nothing. This doctrine
was voiced as early as the Maccabean period in the appeal made by the
heroic mother to the youngest of her seven sons.434 In the same spirit R.
Gamaliel II scornfully rejects the suggestion of a heretic that God used
primeval substances already extant in creating the world.435

[pg 153]
2. Of course, thinking people will ever be confronted by the problem how a
transcendental God could call into existence a world of matter, creating it
within the limits of space and time, without Himself becoming involved in
the process. It would seem that He must by the very act subject Himself to
the limitations and mutations of the universe. Hence some of the ancient
Jewish teachers came under the influence of Babylonian and Egyptian
cosmogonies in their later Hellenistic forms, and resorted to the theory of
intermediary forces. Some of these adopted the Pythagorean conception of
the mysterious power of letters and numbers, which they communicated to
the initiated as secret lore, with the result that the suspicion of heresy rested
largely upon “those who knew,” the so-called Gnostics.

The difficulty of assuming a creation at a fixed period of time was met in
many different ways. It is interesting to note that R. Abbahu of Cæsarea in
the fourth century offered the explanation: “God caused one world after
another to enter into existence, until He produced the one of which He said:
‘Behold, this is good.’ ”436 Still this opinion seems to have been expressed
by even earlier sages, as it is adopted by Origen, a Church father of the third
century, who admitted his great debt to Jewish teachers.437

The medieval Jewish philosophers evaded the difficulty by the Aristotelian
expedient of connecting the concept of time with the motion of the spheres.
Thus time was created with the celestial world, and timelessness remained
an attribute of the uncreated God.438 Such attempts at harmonization prove
the one point of importance to us,—which, indeed, was frankly stated by
Maimonides,—that we cannot accept literally the Biblical account of the
creation.

The modern world has been lifted bodily out of the [pg 154] Babylonian
and so-called Ptolemaic world, with its narrow horizon, through the labors
of such men as Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Lyall, and Darwin. We live in
a world immeasurable in terms of either space or time, a world where
evolution works through eons of time and an infinite number of stages.
Such a world gives rise to concepts of the working of God in nature totally
different from those of the seers and sages of former generations, ideas of
which those thinkers could not even dream. To the mind of the modern

scientist the entire cosmic life, extending over countless millions of years,
forming starry worlds without end, is moved by energy arising within. It is
a continuous flow of existence, a process of formation and re-formation,
which can have no beginning and no end. How is this evolutionist view to
be reconciled with the belief in a divine act of creation? This is the problem
which modern theology has set itself, perhaps the greatest which it must
solve.

Ultimately, however, the problem is no more difficult now than it was to the
first man who pondered over the beginnings of life in the childhood of the
world. The same answer fits both modes of thought, with only a different
process of reasoning. Whether we count the world's creation by days or by
millions of years, the truth of the first verse of Genesis remains: “In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” In our theories the whole
complicated world-process is but the working out of simple laws. This leads
back as swiftly and far more surely than did the primitive cosmology to an
omnipotent and omniscient creative Power, defining at the very outset the
aim of the stupendous whole, and carrying its comprehensive plan into
reality, step by step. We who are the products of time cannot help applying
the relation of time to the work of the Creator; time is so interwoven with
our being that a modern evolutionist, Bergson, considers it the fundamental
element of reality. Thus it is natural that we should think of God as setting
the first atoms and forces of [pg 155] the universe into motion somewhere
and somehow, at a given moment. Through this act, we imagine, the order
prevailing through an infinitude of space and time was established for the
great fabric of life. To earlier thinkers such an act of a supermundane and
immutable God appeared as a single act. The idea of prime importance in
all this is the free activity of the Creator in contradistinction to the blind
necessity of nature, the underlying theory of all pagan or unreligious
philosophy.439 The world of God, which is the world of morality, and which
leads to man, the image of God, must be based upon the free, purposive
creative act of God. Whether such an act was performed once for all or is
everlastingly renewed, is a quite secondary matter for religion, however
important it may be to philosophy, or however fundamental to science. In
our daily morning prayers, which refer to the daily awakening to a life
seemingly new, God is proclaimed as “He who reneweth daily the work of
creation.”440

[pg 156]

Chapter XXVI. The Maintenance and Government of the World

1. For our religious consciousness the doctrine of divine maintenance and
government of the world is far more important than that of creation. It
opposes the view of deism that God withdrew from His creation, indifferent
to the destiny of His creatures. He is rather the ever-present Mind and Will
in all the events of life. The world which He created is maintained by Him
in its continuous activity, the object of His incessant care.

2. Scripture knows nothing of natural law, but presents the changing
phenomena of nature as special acts of God and considers the natural forces
His messengers carrying out His will. “He opens the windows of heaven to
let the rain descend upon the earth.”441 “He leads out the hosts of the stars
according to their number and calleth them by name.”442 He makes the sun
rise and set. “He says to the snow: Fall to the earth!”443 and calls to the wind
to blow and to the lightning to flash.444 He causes the produce of the earth
and the drought which destroys them. “He opens the womb to make beasts
and men bring forth their young;” “He shuts up the womb to make them
barren.”445 “He also provides the food for all His creatures in due season,
even for the young ravens when they cry.”446 His breath keeps all alive. “He
withdraweth their breath, and they perish, and [pg 157] return to their dust.
He sendeth forth His spirit, they are created; He reneweth the face of the
earth.”447 We are told also that God assigns to each being its functions,
telling the earth to bring forth fruit,448 the sea not to trespass its boundary,449
the stars and the seas to maintain their order.450 To each one He hath set a
measure, a law which they dare not transgress. God's wisdom works in
them; they all are subject to His rule.

3. This conclusion betokens an obvious improvement upon the earlier and
more childlike view. It recognizes that there is an order in the universe and
all under divine supervision. Thus Jeremiah speaks of a covenant of God
with heaven and earth, and of the laws which they must obey,451 and in
Genesis the rainbow is represented as a sign of the covenant of peace made
by God with the whole earth.452 As God “maketh peace in the heavens
above,”453 He establishes order in the world. As the various powers of
nature are invested with a degree of independence, God's sovereignty
manifests itself in the regularity with which they interact and coöperate.454
The lore of the mystics speaks even of an oath which God administered
upon His holy Name to the heavens and the stars, the sea and the abyss, that
they should never break their designated bounds or disturb the whole order
of creation.455

4. Further progress is noted in the liturgy, in such expressions as that “God
reneweth daily the work of creation,” or “He openeth every morning the
gate of heaven to let the sun come out of its chambers in all its splendor”
and “at eventide He maketh it return through the portals of the west.”
Again, “He reneweth His creative power in every phenomenon [pg 158] of
nature and in every turn of the season;” “He provideth every living being
with its sustenance.”456 Indeed, in the view of Judaism the maintenance of
the entire household of nature is one continuous act of God which can
neither be interrupted nor limited in time. God in His infinite wisdom works
forever through the same laws which were in force at the beginning, and
which shall continue through all the realms of time and space.

We feeble mortals, of course, see but “the hem of His garment” and hear
only “a whisper of His voice.” Still from the deeper promptings of our soul
we learn that science does not touch the inmost essence of the world when
it finds a law of necessity in the realm of nature. The universe is maintained
and governed by a moral order. Moral objects are attained by the forces of
the elements, “the messengers of God who fulfilled His word.”457 Both the
hosts of heaven and the creatures of the earth do His bidding; their every
act, great or small, is as He has ordered. Yet of them all man alone is made
in God's image, and can work self-consciously and freely for a moral
purpose. Indeed, as the rabbis express it, he has been called as “the co-
worker with God in the work of creation.”458

5. The conception of a world-order also had to undergo a long development.
The theory of pagan antiquity, echoed in both Biblical and post-Biblical
writings, is that the world is definitely limited, with both a beginning and an
end. As heaven and earth came into being, so they will wax old and shrink
like a garment, while sun, moon, and stars will lose their brightness and fall
back into the primal chaos.459 The belief in a cataclysmic ending of the
world is a logical corollary of the belief in the birth of the world. In striking
contrast, the prophets hold forth the hope of a future regeneration of [pg
159] the world. God will create “a new heaven and a new earth” where all
things will arise in new strength and beauty.460

This hope, as all eschatology, was primarily related to the regeneration of
the Jewish people. Accordingly, the rabbis speak of two worlds,461 this
world and the world to come. They consider the present life only a
preliminary of the world to come, in which the divine plan of creation is to
be worked out for all humanity through the truths emanating from Israel.
This whole conception rested upon a science now superseded, the
geocentric view of the universe, which made the earth and especially man
the final object of creation. For us only a figurative meaning adheres to the
two worlds of the medieval belief, following each other after the lapse of a
fixed period of time. On the one hand, we see one infinite fabric of life in
this visible world with its millions of suns and planets, among which our
earth is only an insignificant speck in the sky. With our limited
understanding we endeavor to penetrate more and more into the eternal
laws of this illimitable cosmos. On the other hand, we hold that there is a
moral and spiritual world which comprises the divine ideals and eternal
objects of life. Both are reflected in the mind of man, who enters into the
one by his intellect and into the other by his emotions of yearning and awe.
At the same time both are the manifestation of God, the Creator and Ruler
of all.

[pg 160]

Chapter XXVII. Miracles and the Cosmic Order

1. “Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the mighty?
Who is like unto Thee, glorious in holiness,
462
Fearful in praises, doing wonders!”

Thus sang Israel at the Red Sea in words which are constantly reëchoed in
our liturgy. Nothing impresses the religious sense of man so much as
unusual phenomena in nature, which seem to interrupt the wonted course of
events and thus to reveal the workings of a higher Power. A miracle—that
is, a thing “wondered” at, because not understood—is always regarded by
Scripture as a “sign”463 or “proof”464 of the power of God, to whom nothing
is impossible. The child-like mind of the past knew nothing of fixed or
immutable laws of nature. Therefore the question is put in all simplicity: “Is
anything too hard for the Lord?”465 “Is the Lord's hand waxed short?”466 “Or
should He who created heaven and earth not be able to create something
which never was before?”467 Should “He who maketh a man's mouth, or
makes him deaf, dumb, seeing or blind,”468 not be able also to open the
mouth of the dumb beast or the eyes of the blind? Should not He who
killeth and giveth life have the power also to call the dead back to life, if He
sees fit? Should not He who openeth the womb for every birth, be able to
open it for her who is ninety years old? Or when a [pg 161] whole land is
wicked, to shut the wombs of all its inhabitants that they may remain
barren? Again, should not He who makes the sun come forth every morning
from the gates of the East and enter each night the portals of the West, not
be able to change this order once, and cause it to stand still in the midst of
its course?469

So long as natural phenomena are considered to be separate acts of the
divine will, an unusual event is merely an extraordinary manifestation of
this same power, “the finger of God.” The people of Biblical times never
questioned whether a miracle happened or could happen. Their concern was
to see it as the work of the arm of God either for His faithful ones or against
His adversaries.

2. With the advance of thought, miracles began to be regarded as
interruptions of an established order of creation. The question then arose,
why the all-knowing Creator should allow deviations from His own laws.
As the future was present to Him at the outset, why did He not make
provision in advance for such special cases as He foresaw? This was exactly
the remedy which the rabbis furnished. They declared that at Creation God
provided for certain extraordinary events, so that a latent force, established
for the purpose at the beginning of the world, is responsible for incidents
which appeared at the time to be true interferences with the world order.
Thus God had made a special covenant, as it were, with the work of
creation that at the appointed time the Red Sea should divide before Israel;
that sun and moon should stand still at the bidding of Joshua; that fire
should not consume the three youths, Hananel, Mishael, and Azariah; that
the sea-monster should spit forth Jonah alive; together with other so-called
miracles.470 The same idea [pg 162] occasioned the other Haggadic saying
that shortly before the completion of the creation on the evening of the sixth
day God placed certain miraculous forces in nature. Through them the earth
opened to swallow Korah and his band, the rock in the wilderness gave
water for the thirsty multitude, and Balaam's ass spoke like a human being;
through them also the rainbow appeared after the flood, the manna rained
from heaven, Aaron's rod burst forth with almond blossoms and fruit, and
other wondrous events happened in their proper time.471

3. Neither the rabbis nor the medieval Jewish thinkers expressed any doubt
of the credibility of the Biblical miracles. The latter, indeed, rationalized
miracles as well as other things, and considered some of them imaginary.
Saadia accepts all the Biblical miracles except the speaking serpent in
Paradise and the speaking ass of Balaam, considering these to be parables
rather than actual occurrences.472 In general, both Jewish and Mohammedan
theologians assumed that special forces hidden in nature were utilized by
the prophets and saints to testify to their divine mission. These powers were
attained by their lofty intellects, which lifted them up to the sphere of the
Supreme Intellect. All medieval attempts to solve the problem of miracles
were based upon this curious combination of Aristotelian cosmology and
Mohammedan or Jewish theology.473 True, Maimonides rejects a number of
miracles as contrary to natural law, and refers to the rabbinical saying that
some of the miraculous events narrated in Scripture were so only in

appearance. Still he claims for [pg 163] Moses, as the Mohammedans did
for Mohammed, miraculous powers derived from the sphere of the Supreme
Intellect. In a lengthy chapter on miracles Albo follows Maimonides,474
while his teacher Crescas considers the Biblical miracles to be direct
manifestations of the creative activity of God.475 Gersonides has really two
opinions; in his commentary he reduces all miracles to natural processes,
but in his philosophical work he adopts the view of Maimonides.476 Jehuda
ha Levi alone insisted on the miracles of the Bible as historic evidence of
the divine calling of the prophets.477 To all the rest, the miracle is not
performed by God but by the divinely endowed man. God himself is no
longer conceived of as changing the cosmic order. Both He and the world
created by His will remain ever the same. Still, according to this theory,
certain privileged men are endowed with special powers by the Supreme
Intellect, and by these they can perform miracles.

4. It is evident that in all this the problem of miracles is not solved, nor even
correctly stated. Both rabbinical literature and the Bible abound with
miracles about certain holy places and holy persons, which they never
venture to doubt. But the rabbis were not miracle-workers like the Essenes
and their Christian successors.478 On the contrary, they sought to repress the
popular credulity and hunger for the miraculous, saying: “The present
generation is not worthy to have miracles [pg 164] performed for them, like
the former ones;”479 or “The providing of each living soul with its daily
food, or the recovery of men from a severe disease is as great a miracle as
any of those told in Scripture;”480 or again, “Of how small account is a
person for whom the cosmic order must be disturbed!”481 Thus when the
wise men of Rome asked the Jewish sages: “If your God is omnipotent, as
you claim, why does He not banish from the world the idols, which are so
loathsome to Him?” they replied: “Do you really desire God to destroy the
sun, moon, and stars, because fools worship them? The world continues its
regular course, and idolaters will not go unpunished.”482

5. In Judaism neither Biblical nor rabbinical miracles are to be accepted as
proof of a doctrinal or practical teaching.483 The Deuteronomic law
expressly states that false prophets can perform miracles by which they
mislead the multitude.484 We can therefore ascribe no intrinsic religious
importance to miracles. The fact is that miracles occur only among people

who are ignorant of natural law and thus predisposed to accept marvels.
They are the products of human imagination and credulity. They have only
a subjective, not an objective value. They are psychological, not physical
facts.

The attitude of Maimonides and Albo toward Biblical miracles is especially
significant. The former declares in his great Code:485 “Israel's belief in
Moses and his law did not rest on miracles, for miracles rather create doubt
in the mind of the believer. Faith must rest on its intrinsic truth, and this can
never be subverted by miracles, which may be of a deceitful nature.” Albo
devotes a lengthy chapter to developing this idea still further, undoubtedly
referring to the Church; he speaks of miracles wrought by both Biblical [pg
165] and Talmudic heroes, such as Onias the rain-maker, Nicodemus ben
Gorion, Hanina ben Dosa, and Phinehas ben Jair, the popular saints.486 In
modern times Mendelssohn, when challenged by the Lutheran pastor
Lavater either to accept the Christian faith or refute it, attacked especially
the basic Christian faith in miracles. He stated boldly that “miracles prove
nothing, since every religion bases its claims on them and consequently the
truth of one would disprove the convincing proof of the other.”487

6. Our entire modern mode of thinking demands the complete recognition
of the empire of law throughout the universe, manifesting the all-
permeating will of God. The whole cosmic order is one miracle. No room is
left for single or exceptional miracles. Only a primitive age could think of
God as altering the order of nature which He had fixed, so as to let iron
float on water like wood to please one person here,488 or to stop sun, star, or
sea in their courses in order to help or harm mankind there.489 It is more
important for us to inquire into the law of the mind by which the fact itself
may differ from the peculiar form given it by a narrator. With our historical
methods unknown to former ages, we cannot accept any story of a miracle
without seeking its intrinsic historical accuracy. After all, the miracle as
narrated is but a human conception of what, under God's guidance, really
happened.

Accordingly, we must leave the final interpretation of the Biblical narratives
to the individual, to consider them as historical facts or as figurative
presentations of religious ideas. Even now some people will prefer to

believe that the Ten Commandments emanated from God Himself in
audible tones, as medieval thinkers maintained.490 Some will adopt the old
semi-rationalistic explanation that He created a voice [pg 166] for this
special purpose. Others will hold it more worthy of God to communicate
directly with man, from spirit to spirit, without the use of sensory means;
these will therefore take the Biblical description as figurative or mythical.
In fact, he who does not cling to the letter of the Scripture will probably
regard all the miracles as poetical views of divine Providence, as child-like
imagery expressing the ancient view of the eternal goodness and wisdom of
God. To us also God is “a Doer of wonders,” but we experience His
wonderworking powers in ourselves. We see wonders in the acts of human
freedom which rises superior to the blind forces of nature. The true miracle
consists in the divine power within man which aids him to accomplish all
that is great and good.

[pg 167]

Chapter XXVIII. Providence and the Moral Government of the
World

1. None of the precious truths of Judaism has become more indispensable
than the belief in divine Providence, which we see about us in ever new and
striking forms. Man would succumb from fear alone, beholding the dangers
about him on every side, were he not sustained by a conviction that there is
an all-wise Power who rules the world for a sublime purpose. We know that
even in direst distress we are guided by a divine hand that directs
everything finally toward the good. Wherever we are, we are protected by
God, who watches over the destinies of man as “does the eagle who hovers

over her young and bears them aloft on her pinions.” Each of us is assigned
his place in the all-encompassing plan. Such knowledge and such faith as
this comprise the greatest comfort and joy which the Jewish religion offers.
Both the narratives and the doctrines of Scripture are filled with this idea of
Providence working in the history of individuals and nations.491

2. Providence implies first, provision, and second, predestination in
accordance with the divine plan for the government of the world. As God's
dominion over the visible world appears in the eternal order of the cosmos,
so in the moral world, where action arises from freely chosen aims, God is
[pg 168] Ruler of a moral government. Thus He directs all the acts of men
toward the end which He has set. Judaism is most sharply contrasted with
heathenism at this point. Heathenism either deifies nature or merges the
deity into nature. Thus there is no place for a God who knows all things and
provides for all in advance. Blind fate rules all the forces of life, including
the deities themselves. Therefore chance incidents in nature or the positions
of the stars are taken as indications of destiny. Hence the belief in oracles
and divination, in the observation of flying arrows and floating clouds, of
the color and shape of the liver of sacrificial animals, and other signs of
heaven and earth which were to hint at the future.492

On the other hand, Judaism sees in all things, not the fortuitous dealings of
a blind and relentless fate, but the dispensations of a wise and benign
Providence. It knows of no event which is not foreordained by God. It
sanctioned the decision by lot493 and the appeal to the oracle (the Urim and
Thummim)494 only temporarily, during the Biblical period. But soon it
recognized entirely the will of God as the Ruler of destiny, and the people
accepted the belief that “the days,” “the destinies,” and even “the tears” of
man are all written in His “book.”495 Thus they perceived God as “He who
knows from the beginning what will be at the end.”496 The prophets, His
messengers, could thus foretell His will. They perceive Him as the One who
“created the smith that brought forth the weapon for its work, and created
the master who uses it for destruction.”497 However the foe may rage, he is
but [pg 169] “the scourge in the hand of God,” like “the axe in the hand of
him who fells the tree.”498 No device of men or nations can withstand His
will, for He turns all their doings to some good purpose and transforms
every curse into a blessing.499

3. Naturally this truth was first accepted in limited form, in the life of
certain individuals. The history of Joseph and of King David were used as
illustrations to show how God protects His own. The experiences of the
people confirmed this belief and expanded it to apply to the nation. The
wanderings of Israel through the wilderness and its entrance to the promised
land were regarded as God's work for His chosen people. The prophets
looked still further and saw the destinies of all nations, entering the
foreground of history one by one, as the sign of divine Providence, so that
finally the entire history of mankind became a great plan of divine
salvation, centered upon the truth intrusted to Israel.

Beside this conception of general Providence ruling in history, the idea of
special Providence arose in response to human longing. The belief in
Providence developed to a full conception of care for the world at large and
for each individual in his peculiar destiny, a conviction that divine
Providence is concerned with the welfare of each individual, and that the
joyous or bitter lot of each man forms a link in the moral government of the
world. The first clear statement of this comes from the prophet Jeremiah in
his wrestling and sighing: “I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in
himself, it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.”500 Special
Providence is discussed still more vividly and definitely in the book of Job.
Later on it becomes a specific Pharisaic doctrine, “Everything is
foreseen.”501 “No man suffers so much as the injury of a finger unless it has
been decreed in heaven.”502 A [pg 170] divine preordination decides a man's
choice of his wife503 and every other important step of his life.

4. This theory of predestination, however, presents a grave difficulty when
we consider it in relation to man's morality with its implication of self-
determination. While this question of free will is treated fully in another
connection,504 we may anticipate the thought at this point. The Jewish
conception of divine predestination makes as much allowance as possible
for the moral freedom of man. This is shown in Talmudic sayings, such as
“Everything is within the power of God except the fear of God,”505 or
“Repentance, prayer, and charity avert the evil decree.”506 Thus Maimonides
expressly states in his Code that the belief in predestination cannot be
allowed to influence one's moral or religious character. A man can decide by

his own volition whether he shall become as just as Moses or as wicked as
Jeroboam.507

5. The service of the New Year brings out significantly the Jewish
harmonization between the ideas of God's foreknowledge and man's moral
freedom. This festival, in the Bible called the Festival of the Blowing of the
Shofar, was transformed under Babylonian influence into the Day of Divine
Judgment. But it is still in marked contrast to the Babylonian New Year's
Day, when the gods were supposed to go to the House of the Tablets of
Destiny in the deep to hear the decisions of fate.508 The Jewish sages taught
that on this day God, the Judge of the world, pronounces the destinies of
men and nations according to their deserts. They thus replaced the heathen
idea of blind fate by that of eternal justice as the formative power of life.
Then, moved by a desire to mitigate the rigor of stern justice for the frail
and failing mortal, they included also God's long-suffering and [pg 171]
mercy. These attributes are thus supposed to intercede, so that the final
decision is left in suspense until the Day of Atonement, the great day of
pardon. Some Tannaitic teachers509 find it more in accord with their view of
God to say that He judges man every day, and even every hour.

Of course, the philosophic mind can take this whole viewpoint in a
figurative sense alone. All the more must we recognize that this sublime
religious thought of God liberates morality from the various limitations of
the ancient pagan conception of Deity and the more recent metaphysical
view. In place of these it asserts that there is a moral government of the
world, which must be imitated in the moral and religious consciousness of
the individual.

6. The belief in a moral government of the world answers another question
which the medieval Jewish philosophers and their Mohammedan
predecessors endeavored to solve, but without satisfying the religious
sentiment, the chief concern of theology. Some of them maintain that God's
foreknowledge does not determine human deeds.510 Maimonides and his
school, however, say that it is impossible for us to comprehend the
knowledge and power of God, and that therefore such a question is outside
the sphere of human knowledge. “Know that, just as God has made the
elements of fire and air to rise upwards and water and earth to sink

downward, so has He made man a free, self-determining being, who acts of
his own volition.”511 The Mohammedans would often give up human
freedom rather than the omniscience and all-determining power of God; but
the Jewish thinkers, [pg 172] significantly, with only the possible exception
of Crescas,512 laid stress upon the divine nature which man attains through
moral freedom, even at the risk of limiting the omniscience of God.

7. The philosophers failed, however, to emphasize sufficiently a point of
highest importance for religion, God's paternal care for all His creatures.
Indeed, God ceases to be God, if He has not included our every step in His
plan of creation, thus surrounding us with paternal love and tender care.
Instead of the three blind fates of heathendom who spin and cut the threads
of destiny without even knowing why, the divine Father himself sits at the
loom of time and apportions the lot of men according to His own wisdom
and goodness. Such a belief in divine Providence is ingrained in the soul,
and reasoning alone will not suffice to attain it. Therefore even such great
thinkers as Maimonides and Gersonides go astray as religious teachers
when they follow Aristotelian principles in this very intimate matter. They
assume a general Providence aiming for the preservation of the species, but
include a special Providence only so far as the recipient of it is endowed
with reason and has thus approached the divine Intellect. A Providence of
this type, the result of human reasoning, is a mere illusion, as the pious
thinker, Hasdai Crescas, clearly shows.513 For the man who prays to God in
anxiety or distress this bears nothing but disappointment.

The Aristotelian conception of the world has this great truth, that there is no
such thing as chance, that everything is foreseen and provided by the divine
wisdom. But religion must hold that the individual is an object of care by
God, that “not a sparrow falls into the net without God's will,”514 [pg 173]
that “every hair on the head of man is counted and cared for in the heavenly
order,”515 and that the most insignificant thing serves its purpose under the
guidance of an all-wise God. We use figurative expressions for the divine
care, because we cannot grasp it entirely or literally.

8. The Bible in the Song of Moses compares divine Providence to the eagle
spreading her protecting wings over her young and bearing them aloft, or
urging them to soar along.516 The rabbis elaborate this by referring to the

twofold care which the eagle thus bestows, as she watches over those who
are still tender and helpless, shielding them from the arrows below by
bearing them on her wings, but inspiring the maturer and stronger ones to
fly by her side.517 In the same way Providence trains both individuals and
generations for their allotted task. A little child requires incessant care on
the part of its mother, until it has learned how to eat, walk, speak, and to
decide for itself, but the wise parent gradually withdraws his guiding hand
so that the growing child may learn self-reliance and self-respect. The
divine Father trains man thus through the childhood of humanity. But no
sooner does the divine spirit in man awaken to self-consciousness than he is
thrown on his own resources to become the master of his own destiny. The
divine power which, in the earlier stages, had worked for man, now works
with him and within him. In the rabbinic phrase, he is now ready to be a
“co-worker with God in the work of creation.”518 Only at those grave
moments when his own powers fail him, he still feels in the humility of
faith that his ancient God is still near, “a very present help in trouble,” and
that “the Guardian of Israel neither slumbereth nor sleepeth.”519

[pg 174]
Philosophy cannot tolerate the removal of the dividing line between the
transcendent God and finite man. Hence the relation of man's free will and
divine foresight cannot be solved by any process of reasoning. But when
religion proclaims a moral government of the world, then man, with his
moral and spiritual aims, attains a place in Creation akin to the Creator. Of
course, so long as he is mentally a child and has no clear purpose,
Providence acts for him as it does for the animal with its marvelous instinct.
Through His chosen messengers God gives the people bread and water,
freedom and victory, instruction and law. The wondrous tales describing the
divine protection of Israel in its early life may strike us as out of harmony
with the laws of nature, but they are true portrayals of the experience of the
people. Whatever happened for their good in those days had to be the work
of God; they had not yet wakened to the power hidden in their own soul.
Their heroes felt themselves to be divine instruments, roused by His spirit
to perform mighty deeds or to behold prophetic visions. It is God who
battles through them. It is God who speaks through them. Both their moral
and spiritual guidance works from without and above. At this stage of life
autonomy is neither felt nor desired. When man awakens to moral self-

consciousness and maturity, this inner change impresses him as an outer
one; the change in him is interpreted as a change in God. He feels that God
has withdrawn behind His eternal laws of nature and morality which work
without direct interference, and in his new sense of independence he thinks
that he can dispense with the divine protection and forethought. As if mortal
man can ever dispense with that Power which has endowed him with his
capacity for worthy accomplishment! Thus in times of danger and distress
man turns to God for help; thus at every great turning point in the life of an
individual or nation the idea of an all-wise Providence imbues him with [pg
175] new hope and new security. And in all these cases the great lesson of
providential direction is typified in the history of Israel as related in the
Bible.

10. The idea of Providence, indeed, belongs also to certain pagan
philosophers, who observed the great purposes of nature which the single
creature and the species are both to serve. The Stoics in particular made a
study of teleology, the system of purposive ends in nature. Philo adopted
much from them in his treatise on Providence. Later the popular
philosophic group among the Mohammedans, the so-called “Brothers of
Purity,” based their doctrines of God and His relation to the world on a
teleological view of nature. In fact, the Jewish philosopher and moralist
Bahya ben Pakudah has embodied many of their ideas in his “Duties of the
Heart.”520

Jewish folklore—preserved in rabbinic literature—has also attempted a
popular explanation of the obscure ways of Providence, in strange events of
nature as well as the great enigmas of human destiny. Thus the flight of
David from Saul affords the lesson of the good purpose which may be
served by so insignificant a thing as a spider, or by so dreadful a state as
insanity.521 Vast numbers of the Jewish legends and fables deal with
adversities which are turned into ultimate good by the working of an all-
wise Providence.522

[pg 176]

Chapter XXIX. God and the Existence of Evil

1. A leading objection to the belief in divine Providence is the existence in
this world of physical and moral evil. All living creatures are exposed to the
influence of evil, according to their physical or moral constitutions and the
peculiar conditions of their existence. Heathenism accounts for the powers
of darkness, pain and death by assuming the existence of forces hostile to
the heavenly powers of light and life, or of a primitive principle of evil, the
counterpart of the divine beings. But to those who believe in an almighty
and all-benign Creator and Ruler of the universe, the question remains:
Why do life and the love of life encounter so many hindrances? Why does
God's world contain so much pain and bitterness, so much passion and sin?
Should not Providence have averted such things? The answer of Judaism
has already been stated here, but we need further elaboration of the theme
that there is no evil before God, since a good purpose is served even by that
which appears bad. In the life of the human body pleasure and pain, the
impetus to life and its restraint and inhibition form a necessary contrast,
making for health; so, in the moral order of the universe, each being who
battles with evil receives new strength for the unfolding of the good. The
principle of holiness, which culminates in Israel's holy God, transforms and
ennobles every evil. As the Midrash explains, referring to Deut. XI, 26: “If
thou but seest that both good and evil are placed in thy [pg 177] hand, no
evil will come to thee from above, since thou knowest how to turn it into
good.”523

2. The conception of evil passed through a development parallel with that of
the related conceptions which we have just reviewed. At first every
misfortune was considered to be inflicted by divine wrath as a punishment
for human misdeeds. Nations and individuals were thought to suffer for
some special moral cause; through suffering they were punished for past
wrong, warned against its repetition in the future, and urged to repentance
and improvement of their conduct. Even death, the fate of all living

creatures, was regarded as a punishment which the first pair of human
beings brought upon all their descendants through their transgression of the
divine command. The Talmudic sages clung to the view of the Paradise
legend in the Bible, when they held that every death is due to some sin
committed by the individual.524

This view, which was shared by paganism, was accompanied by a higher
conception, gradually growing in the thinking mind. As a father does not
punish his child in anger, but in order to improve his conduct, so God
chastens man in order to purify his moral nature. Good fortune tends to
harden the heart; adversity often softens and sweetens it. In the crucible of
suffering the gold of the human soul is purified from the dross. The evil
strokes of destiny come upon the righteous, not because he deserves them,
but because his divine Friend is raising him to still higher tests of virtue.
This standpoint, never reached even by the pious sufferer Job, is attained by
rabbinic Judaism when it calls the visitations of the righteous “trials of the
divine love.”525 Thus evil, both physical and spiritual, receives its true
valuation in the divine economy. Evil exists only to be overcome by the [pg
178] good. In His paternal goodness God uses it to educate His children for
a place in His kingdom.

3. According to the direct words of Scripture good and evil, light and
darkness, emanate alike from the Creator. This is accentuated by the great
seer of the Exile,526 who protests against the Persian belief in a creative
principle of good and a destructive principle of evil. The rabbis, however,
ascribe the origin of evil to man; they take as a negation rather than a
question the verse in Lam. III, 38: “Do not evil and good come out of the
mouth of the Most High?” Thus they refer this to the words of
Deuteronomy, “Behold, I have set before you this day life and good, death
and evil; choose thou life!”527

Such medieval thinkers as Abraham Ibn Daud and Maimonides did not
ascribe to evil any reality at all.528 Evil to them is the negation of good, just
as darkness is the negation of light, or poverty of riches. As evil exists only
for man, man can overcome it by himself. Before God it has no essential
existence. Unfortunately, such metaphysics does not equip man with
strength and courage to cope with either pain or sin. The same lack is

evident in that modern form of pseudo-science which poses as a religion,
Christian Science, which has made propaganda so widely among both Jews
and non-Jews. Christian Science declares pain, sickness, and all evil to be
merely the “error of mortal mind,” which can all be dispelled by faith; such
a view neither strengthens the soul for its real struggles nor convinces the
mind by an appeal to facts.529

4. Frail mortals as we are, we need the help of the living God. Thus only
can we overcome physical evil, knowing [pg 179] that He bears with us,
feels with us, and transforms it finally into good. We need it also to
overcome moral evil, in the consciousness that He has compassion upon the
repentant sinner and gives him courage to follow the right path. The modern
philosophers of pessimism had the correct feeling in adopting the Hindu
conception, and emphasizing the pain and misery of existence, repeating
Job's ancient plaint over the hard destiny of mankind. The shallow
optimism of the age would rather conceal the dark side of life and indulge
in outbursts of self-sufficiency. Yet if we measure it only by a physical
yardstick, life cannot be called a boon. Against shallow optimism we have
the testimony of every thorn and sting, every poisonous breath and every
destructive element in nature's household, as well as all vice and evil in the
world of man. The world does not appear good, unless we measure it by the
ideal of divine holiness. If God is the Father watching over the welfare of
every mortal, all things are good, because all serve a good purpose in His
eternal plan. Every hindrance or pressure engenders new power; every sting
acts as a spur to higher things. Short-sighted and short-lived as is man, he
forgets too easily that in the sight of God “a thousand years are as a single
day,” world-epochs like “watches in the night,” and that the mills of divine
justice grind on, “slowly but exceeding small.” But one belief illumines the
darkness of destiny, and that is that God stands ever at the helm, steering
through every storm and tempest toward His sublime goal. In the moral
striving of man we can but realize that our every victory contributes toward
the majestic work of God.530

[pg 180]

Chapter XXX. God and the Angels

1. Judaism insists with unrelenting severity on the absolute unity and
incomparability of God, so that no other being can be placed beside Him.
Consequently, every mention of divine beings (Elohim or B'ne Elohim) in
either the Bible or post-Biblical literature refers to subordinate beings only.
These spirits constitute the celestial court for the King of the World.531 All
the forces of the universe are His servants, fulfilling His commands. Hence
both the Hebrew and Greek terms for angel, Malak and angelos, mean
“messenger.” These beings derive their existence from God; some of them
are merely temporary, so that without Him they dissolve into nothing.
Although Scripture uses the terms, “God of gods” and “King of kings,” still
we cannot attribute any independent existence to subordinate divine beings.
In fact, Maimonides in his sixth article of faith holds that worship of such
beings is prohibited as idolatry by the second commandment.532 Thus the
unity of God lifts Him above comparison with any other divine being. This
is most emphatically expressed in Deuteronomy: “Know this day, and lay it
to thy heart, that the Lord He is God in heaven above, and upon the earth
beneath; there is none else,”533 and “See [pg 181] now that I, even I, am He,
and there is no god with Me; I kill and make alive; I have wounded and I
heal, and there is none that can deliver out of My hand.”534 The same
attitude is found in Isaiah: “I am the Lord that maketh all things, that
stretched forth the heavens alone, that spread abroad the earth by Myself” “I
am the Lord and there is none else; beside Me there is no god.”535 Such
conceptions allow no place for angels or spirits.

2. It was certainly not easy for prophet, lawgiver, or sage to dispel the
popular belief in divine beings or powers, which primitive Judaism shared
with other ancient faiths. No sharp line was drawn at first between God and
His accompanying angels, as we may infer from the story of the angels who
appeared to Abraham, and the similar incidents of Hagar and Jacob.536 The
varying application of the term Elohim to God and to the angels or gods is

proof enough of the priority of polytheism, even in Judaism. The trees or
springs, formerly seats of the ancient deities, spirits, or demons, were now
the places for the appearance of angels, shorn of their independence,
looking like fiery or shining human beings. Popular belief, however,
perpetuated mythological elements, ascribing to the angels higher wisdom
and sometimes sensuality as well. Such a case is the fragment preserved in
Genesis telling of the union of sons of God to the daughters of men, causing
the generation of giants.537 Obviously the old Babylonian “mountain of the
gods,” with its food for the gods, became in the Paradise legend the garden
of Eden, the seat of God;538 and the Psalmist still speaks of the “angels'
food,” which appeared as manna in the wilderness.539 On the whole, the
sacred writers were most eager to allot to the angels a very subordinate
position in the divine household. [pg 182] They figure usually as hosts of
beings, numbered by myriads, wrapped in light or in fleeting clouds. They
surround the throne or chariot of God; they comprise His heavenly court or
council; they sing His praise and obey His call.

Scripture is quite silent about the creation of these angelic beings, as on
most purely speculative questions. At the very beginning of the world God
consults them when He is to create man after the image of the celestial
beings. For this is the original meaning of Elohim in Gen. I, 26 and 27 and
V, 1: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”; “And God created
man in his own image, in the image of godly beings He created him.” This
view is echoed in Psalm VIII, verse 6: “Thou hast made him a little lower
than godly beings.” In Job XXXVIII, 7, both the morning stars and the sons
of God, or angels, “shout together in joy” when the Lord laid the
foundations of the earth.540

3. In Biblical times—which does not include the book of Daniel, a work of
the Maccabean time—the angels and demons were not invested with proper
names or special functions. The Biblical system does not even distinguish
clearly between good and evil spirits. The goat-like demons of the field
popularly worshiped were merely survivals of pagan superstitions.541

In general the angels carry out good or evil designs according to their
commands from the Lord of Hosts. They are sent forth to destroy Sodom, to
save Lot, and to bring Abraham the good tidings of the birth of a son.542 On

one occasion the host of spirits protect the people of God; on another they
annihilate hostile powers by pestilence and plagues.543 At one time a
multitude appear, led by a celestial chieftain; at another [pg 183] a single
angel performs the miracle. In any case the destroying angel is not a demon,
but a messenger of the divine will. Originally some of these primitive forces
were dreaded or worshiped by the people, but all have been transformed
into members of the celestial court and called to bear witness to the
dominion of the Omnipotent.

4. The belief in angels served two functions in the development of
monotheism. On the one hand, it was a stage in the concentration of the
divine forces, beginning with polytheism, continuing through belief in
angels, and culminating in the one and only God of heaven and earth. On
the other hand, certain sensuous elements in the vision of God by the seers
had to be removed in the spiritualization of God, and it was found easiest to
transform these into separate beings, related to Deity himself. Thus the fiery
appearance of God to the eye or the voice which was manifested to the ear
were often personified as angels of God. This very process made possible
the purification of the God idea, as the sublime essence of the Deity was
divested of physical and temporal elements, and God was conceived more
and more as a moral and spiritual personality. Hence in Biblical passages
the names of God and of the angel frequently alternate.544 The latter is only
a representative of the divine personality—in Scriptural terms, the presence
or “face” of God. Therefore the voice of the angel is to be obeyed as that of
God himself, because His name is present in His representative. A similar
meaning became attached later on to the term Shekinah, the “majesty” of
God as beheld in the cloud of fire. This was spoken of in place of God that
He might not be lowered into the earthly sphere. For further discussion of
this subject, see chapter XXXII, “God and Intermediary Powers.” In fact,
we note that the post-exilic prophets all received their revelations, not from
God, but through a special angel.545 They no longer [pg 184] believed that
God might be seen or heard by human powers, and therefore their visions
had to be translated into rational thoughts by a mediating angel.

5. Persian influence gave Jewish angelology and demonology a different
character. The two realms of the Persian system included vast hosts of
beneficent spirits under Ahura-Mazda (Ormuzd) and of demons under the

dominion of Angro-mainyus (Ahriman). So in Judaism also different orders
of angels arose, headed by archangels who bore special names. The number
seven was adopted from the Persians, while both names and order were
often changed. All of them, however, were allotted special functions in the
divine household. The pagan deities and primitive spirits which still
persisted in popular superstition were given a new lease of life. Each force
of nature was given a guardian spirit, just as in nature-worship; angels were
appointed over fire, water, each herb, each fountain, and every separate
function of life. A patron angel was assigned to each of the seventy nations
of the world mentioned in the genealogy of Noah.546

Thus the celestial court grew in number and in splendor. A beginning was
made with the heavenly chariot-throne of Ezekiel, borne aloft by the four
holy living creatures (the hayoth), surrounded by the fiery Cherubim, the
winged Seraphim, and the many-eyed Ofanim (wheels).547 This was
elaborated by the addition of rows of surrounding angels, called “angels of
service,” headed by the seven archangels. Of these the chief was Michael,
the patron-saint of Israel, and the next Gabriel, who is sometimes even
placed first. Raphael and Uriel are regularly mentioned, the other three
rarely, and not always by the same names. The Irin of Daniel—known as
“the Watchers,” but more precisely “the ever-watchful Ones”—are [pg 185]
another of the ten classes of angels included. Below these are myriads of
inferior angels who serve them. Their classification by rank was a favorite
theme of the secret lore of the Essenes, partly preserved for us in the
apocalyptic literature and the liturgy. The Essenic saints endeavored to
acquire miraculous powers through using the names of certain angels, and
thus exorcising the evil spirits.

This secret lore seems to be patterned after the Zoroastrian or Mazdean
system. It is noteworthy that the most prominent angelic figure is Metatron,
the charioteer of the Merkabah or chariot-throne on high, which is merely
another form of Mithras, the Persian god of light, who acts as charioteer for
Ahura Mazda.548 Two other angels are mentioned as standing behind the
heavenly throne, Akathriel, “the crown-bearer of God,” and Sandalphon,
“the twin brother” = Synadelphon.

6. A striking contrast exists between the simple habitation in the sky
depicted in the prophetic and Mosaic books, and the splendor of the
heavenly spheres according to the rabbinical writings. The Oriental courts
lent all their grandeur to the majestic throne of God, on which He was
exalted above all earthly things. The immense space between was filled in
by innumerable gradations of beings leading up to Him. There was no
longer a question how far these other beings shared the nature of God; His
dominion was absolute. Still a new question, not known to the Bible, arose,
as to when the angelic world was created and out of what primordial
element. At first a logical answer was given, that the angels emanated from
the element of fire. Later the schoolmen, trying to dispose of the angels as
possible peers or rivals of the eternal God, ascribed their creation to the
second day, when the heaven was made as a vault over the earth, or to the
fifth [pg 186] day, when the winged creatures arose.549 On the whole, the
rabbis denied every claim of the angels to an independent or an eternal
existence. Just because they firmly believed in the existence of angels and
even saw them from time to time, they felt bound to declare their secondary
rank. Only the archangels were made from an eternal substance, while the
others were continually being created anew out of the breath of God or from
the “river of fire” which flowed around His throne. Thus even the realm of
celestial spirits was merged into the stream of universal life which comes
and goes, while God was left alone in matchless sovereignty, above all the
fluctuations of time.

On the other hand, the rabbis opposed the Essenic idea of assigning to the
angels an intermediary task between God and man, and deprecated as a
pagan custom the worship or invocation of angels. “Address your prayer to
the Master of life and not to His servants; He will hear you in every
trouble,” says R. Judan.550 Some of the teachers even declared that any
godly son of Israel excels the angels in power. It is certainly significant, as
David Neumark has pointed out, that the Mishnah eliminates every
reference to the angels.551

7. In spite of this, none of the medieval Jewish philosophers doubted the
existence of angels.552 Indeed, there was no reason for them to do so, as they
had managed to insert them into their philosophic systems as intermediary
beings leading up to the Supreme Intelligence. All that was necessary was

to identify the angels of the Bible with the “ideas” of Plato or the “rulers of
the spheres,” the “separate intelligences” of Aristotle. By this one step the
existence of angels as cosmic powers was proved to be a logical necessity.
The ten [pg 187] rulers of the spheres even corresponded with the ten orders
of angels in the cosmography of the Jewish, Mohammedan, and Christian
schoolmen. The only difference between the Aristotelian and the rabbinical
views was that the former held the cosmic powers to be eternal; the latter,
that they were created.

In both Biblical and rabbinical literature the angels are usually conceived of
as purely spiritual powers superior to man. Maimonides, however,
following his rationalistic method, declared them to be simply products of
the imagination, the hypostases of figurative expressions which were not
meant to be taken literally. To him every force and element of nature is an
angel or messenger of God. In this way the entire angelology of the Bible,
including even Ezekiel's vision of the heavenly chariot (the Merkabah), in
becoming a part of the Maimonidean system turns into natural philosophy
pure and simple.553 Of course, Saadia, Jehuda ha Levi, and Gabirol do not
share this rationalistic view. To them the angels are either cosmic powers of
an ethereal substance, endowed with everlasting life, or living beings
created by God for special purposes.554

The later Cabbalistic lore extended the realm of the celestial spirits still
more, creating new names of angels for its mystical system and its magical
practices. Yet in this magic it subordinated the angels to man. In fact, it
followed Saadia largely in this, making man the center and pinnacle of the
work of creation, in fact, the very mirror of the Creator.555

8. For our modern viewpoint the existence of angels is a question of
psychology rather than of theology. The old Babylonian world has
vanished, with its heaven as the dwelling [pg 188] place of God, its earth
for man, and its nether world for the shades and demons. The world in
which we live knows no above or beneath, no heaven or hell, no host of
good and evil spirits moving about to help or hurt man. It sees matter and
energy working everywhere after the same immutable laws through an
infinitude of space and time, a universe ever evolving new orbs of light,
engendering and transforming worlds without number and without end.

There is no place in infinite space for a heaven or for a celestial throne. A
world of law and of process does not need a living ladder to lead from the
earth below to God on high. Though the stars be peopled with souls
superior to ours, still they cannot stand nearer to God than does man with
his freedom, his moral striving, his visions of the highest and the best.
Through man's spiritual nature God, too, is recognized as a Spirit; through
man's moral consciousness God is conceived of as the Ruler of a moral
world; but this same process at once does away with the need for any other
spirits or divine powers beside Him. God alone has become the object of
human longing. Man feels akin to His God who is ever near; he learns to
know Him ever better. He can dispense with the angelic hosts. As they
return to the fiery stream of poetic imagination whence they emerged,
nebulous figures of a glorious world that has vanished, man rises above
angel and Seraph by his own power to the dignity of a servant, nay, a child
of God. Indeed, as the rabbis said, the prophets, sages, and seers are the true
messengers of God, the angels who do His service.556

[pg 189]

Chapter XXXI. Satan and the Spirits of Evil

1. The great advantage of Judaism over other religious systems lies in its
unified view of life, which it regards as a continuous conflict between good
and evil influences within man. As man succeeds in overcoming evil and
achieving good, he asserts his own moral personality. Outside of man
Judaism sees no real contrast between good and evil, since both have
emanated from God, the Spirit of goodness. Judaism recognizes no primal
power of evil plotting against God and defying Him, such as that of the

Persian dualism. Nor does Judaism espouse the dualism of spirit and matter,
identifying matter with evil, from which the soul strives to free itself while
confined in the prison house of the body. Such a conception is taught by
Plato, probably under Oriental influence, and is shared by the Hindu and
Christian ascetics who torture themselves in order to suppress bodily desire
in their quest of a higher existence. The Jewish conception of the unity of
God necessitates the unity of the world, which leaves no place for a cosmic
principle of evil. In this Judaism dissents from modern philosophers also,
such as John Stuart Mill and even Kant, who speak of a radical evil in
nature. No power of evil can exist in independence of God.557 As the
Psalmist says: “His kingdom ruleth over all. Bless the Lord, ye angels of
His, ye mighty in strength that fulfill His word, hearkening unto the voice
of His word.”558

[pg 190]
This increased the difficulty of the problem of the origin of evil. The answer
given by the general Jewish consciousness, expressed by both Biblical and
rabbinical writers, is that evil comes from the free will of man, who is
endowed with the power of rebelling against the will of God. This idea is
symbolized in the story of the fall of man. The serpent, or tempter,
represents the evil inclination which arises in man with his first
consciousness of freedom. So in Jewish belief Satan, the Adversary, is only
an allegorical figure, representing the evil of the world, both physical and
moral. He was sent by God to test man for his own good, to develop him
morally. He is “the spirit that ever wills evil, but achieves the good,” and
therefore in the book of Job he actually comes before God's throne as one of
the angels.559

2. In tracing the belief in demons we must draw a sharp distinction between
popular views and systematic doctrine.560 During the Biblical era the people
believed in goat-like spirits roaming the fields and woods, the deserts and
ravines, whom they called Seirim—hairy demons, or satyrs,—and to whom
they sacrificed in fear and trembling.561 As Ibn Ezra ingeniously pointed out
in his commentary, Azazel was originally a desert demon dwelling in the
ravines near Jerusalem, to whom a scapegoat was offered at the opening of
the year, a rite preserved in the Day of Atonement cult of the Mosaic
Code.562 In fact, in ancient Babylon, Syria, and Palestine diseases and

accidents were universally ascribed to evil spirits of the wilderness or the
nether world. The Bible occasionally mentions these evil spirits as punitive
angels sent by God. In the more popular view, which is reflected [pg 191]
by apocryphal and rabbinical literature, and which was influenced by both
the Babylonian and Persian religions, they appear in increasing numbers
and with specific names. Each disease had its peculiar demon. Desolate
places, cemeteries, and the darkness of night were all peopled by
superstition with hosts of demons (Shedim), at whose head was Azazel,
Samael; Beelzebub, the Philistine god of flies and of illness;563 Belial, king
of the nether world;564 or the Persian Ashma Deva (Evil Spirit), under the
Hebrew name of Ashmodai or Shemachzai.565 The queen of the demons was
Lilith or Iggereth bath Mahlath, “the dancer on the housetops.”566

The Essenes seem to have made special studies of both demonology and
angelology, believing that they could invoke the good spirits and conjure
the evil ones, thus curing various diseases, which they ascribed to
possession by demons. While these exorcisms are not so common in the
Talmud as they are in the New Testament, there remain many indications
that such practices were followed by Jewish saints and believed by the
people. Often the rabbis seem to have considered them the work of
“unclean spirits,” which they endeavored to overcome with the “spirit of
holiness,” and particularly by the study of the Torah.567

3. This answers implicitly the question of the origin of demons. Obviously
the belief in malevolent spirits is incompatible with the existence of an all-
benign and all-wise Creator. Accordingly, two alternative explanations are
offered in the rabbinical and apocalyptic writings. According to one, the
demons are half angelic and half animal beings, sharing intelligence and
flight with the angels, sensuality with beasts and with men. Their double
nature is ascribed to incompleteness, because they were created last of all
beings, and [pg 192] their creation was interrupted by the coming of the
Sabbath, putting an end to all creation.568 According to the other view they
are the offspring of the “fallen angels,” issuing from the union of the angels
with the daughters of men as described in Gen. VI, 1 f. These spread the
virus of impurity over all the earth, causing carnal desire and every kind of
lewdness. The whole world of demons is regarded as alienated from God by
the rebellion of the heavenly hosts, as if the fall of man by sin had its

prototype in the celestial sphere.569 A rabbinical legend, which corresponds
with a Persian myth, ascribes the origin of demons to the intercourse of
Adam with Lilith, the night spirit.570 On the other hand, the archangel
Samael is said to have cast lascivious glances at the beauty of Eve, and then
to have turned into Satan the Tempter.571 The Jewish systems of both
angelology and demonology, first worked out in the apocalyptic literature,
were further elaborated by the Cabbalah.

Angelology found a conspicuous place in the liturgy in connection with the
Kedushah Benediction and likewise in the liturgy and the theology of the
Church.572

On the other hand the belief in evil spirits and in Satan, the Evil One,
remained rather a matter of popular credulity and never became a positive
doctrine of the Synagogue. True, the liturgy contained morning prayers
which asked God for protection against the Evil One, and formulas
invoking the angels to shield one during the night from evil spirits.573 But
the arch-fiend was never invested with power over the soul, depriving man
of his perfect freedom and divine sovereignty, as in the Christian Church.

[pg 193]
4. In the formation of the idea of the arch-fiend, Satan, we can observe the
interworking of several elements. The name Satan in no way indicates a
demon. It denotes simply the adversary, the one who offers hindrances. The
name was thus applied to the accuser at court.574 In Zechariah and in Job575
Satan appears at the throne of God as the prosecutor, roaming about the
earth to espy the transgressions of men, seeking to lure them to their
destruction. In the Books of Chronicles576 Satan has become a proper name,
meaning the Seducer.

The Serpent in the Paradise story is more completely a demon, although the
legend intends rather to account for man's morality, his distinction between
good and evil. Satan was then identified with the serpent, who was called
by the rabbis Nahash ha Kadmoni, “the primeval Serpent,” after the
analogy of the serpent-like form of Ahriman. Thus Satan in the person of
the serpent became the embodiment of evil, the prime cause of sin and
death.577 Possibly a part in this process was played by the Babylonian figure
of Tihamat, the dragon of chaos (Tehom in the Hebrew), with whom the god

Marduk wrestled for dominion over the world, and who has parallels in the
Biblical Rahab and similar mythological figures.

We must not overlook such rabbinical legends as the one about how the
poisonous breath of the serpent infected the whole human race, except
Israel who has been saved by the law at Sinai.578 Occasionally we hear that
the Evil Spirit (Yezer ha Ra) will be slain by God579 or by the Messiah.580
These Haggadic sayings, however, were never accepted as normative for
religious belief. On the contrary, they were always in dispute, [pg 194] and
many a Talmudic teacher minimized the fiendish character of Satan, who
became a stimulus to moral betterment through the trials he imposes.581
Philo, allegorizing the legends, turns the evil angels of the Bible into
wicked men.582

5. As to demons in general, the Talmudists never doubted their existence,
but endeavored to minimize their importance. They changed the demon
Azazel into a geographical term by transposing the letters.583 They explained
“the sons of God who came to the daughters of men to give birth to the
giants of old” as aristocratic Sethites who intermarried with low-class
families of the Cainites.584 As to the rest, the entire belief in demons and
ghosts was too deeply rooted in the folk mind to be counteracted by the
rabbis. Even lucid thinkers of the Middle Ages were caught by these
baneful superstitions, including Jehuda ha Levi, Crescas, and Nahmanides,
the mystic.585 Only a small group fought against this offshoot of fear and
superstition, among them Saadia, Maimonides and his school, Ibn Ezra,
Gersonides, and Juda Ibn Balag. To Maimonides the demons mentioned in
Mishnah and Talmud are only figurative expressions for physical plagues.
He considers the belief in demons equivalent to a belief in pagan deities.
“Many pious Israelites,” he says,586 “believe in the reality of demons and
witches, thinking that they should not be made the object of worship and
regard, for the reason that the Torah has prohibited it. But they fail to see
that the Law commands us to banish all these things from sight, because
they are but falsehood and deceit, as is the whole idolatry with which they
are intrinsically connected.”

[pg 195]

6. This sound view was disseminated by the rationalistic school in its
contest with the Cabbalah, and has exerted a wholesome influence upon
modern Judaism. Thus Satan is rejected by Jewish doctrine, while Luther
and Calvin, the Reformers of the Christian Church, still believed in him.
Milton's “Paradise Lost” placed him in the very foreground of Christian
belief, and the leaders of the Protestant Churches, up to the present, accord
him a prominent place in their scheme of salvation, as the opponent and
counterpart of God. In his work on Christian dogmatics, David Friedrich
Strauss observes acutely: “The whole (Christian) idea of the Messiah and
his kingdom must necessarily have as its counterpart a kingdom of demons
with a personal ruler at its head; without this it is no more possible than the
north pole of the magnet would be without a south pole. If Christ has come
to destroy the works of the Devil, there would be no need for him to come,
unless there were a Devil. On the other hand, if the Devil is to be
considered merely the personification of evil, then a Christ who would be
only the personification of the ideal, but not a real personality, would
suffice equally.”587 At present Christian theologians and even philosophers
have recourse to Platonic and Buddhist ideas, that evil is implanted in the
world from which humanity must free itself, and they thus present
Christianity as the religion of redemption par excellence.588 Over against
this, Judaism still maintains that there is no radical or primitive evil in the
world. No power exists which is intrinsically hostile to God, and from
which man must be redeemed. According to the Jewish conception, the
goodness and glory of God fill both heaven and earth, while holiness
penetrates all of life, bringing matter and flesh within the realm of the
divine. Evil is but the contrast [pg 196] of good, as shade is but the contrast
of light. Evil can be overcome by each individual, as he realizes his own
solemn duty and the divine will. Its only existence is in the field of
morality, where it is a test of man's freedom and power. Evil is within man,
and against it he is to wage the battles of life, until his victory signalizes the
triumph of the divine in his own nature.589

[pg 197]

Chapter XXXII. God and the Intermediary Powers

1. In addition to the angels who carried out God's will in the universe, the
Biblical and post-Biblical literature recognizes other divine powers which
mediate between Him and the world of man. The more a seer or thinker
became conscious of the spirituality and transcendency of God, the more he
felt the gulf between the infinite Spirit and the world of the senses. In order
to bridge this gap, the Deity was replaced by one of His manifestations
which could appear and act in a world circumscribed by space and time.590
As we found in prophecy the direct revelation of God giving way to a
mediating angel, so either “the Glory” or “the Name” of JHVH takes the
place of God himself. That is, instead of God's own being, His reflected
radiance or the power invested in His name descends from on high. The
rabbis kept the direct revelation of God for the hallowed past or the desired
future, but at the same time they needed a suitable term for the presence of
God; they therefore coined the word Shekinah—“the divine
Condescension” or “Presence”—to be used instead of the Deity himself.
Thus the verse of the Psalm:591 “God standeth in the congregation of God,”
is translated by the Targum, “The divine Presence (Shekinah) resteth upon
[pg 198] the congregation of the godly.” Instead of the conclusion of the
speech to Moses, “Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among
them,”592 the Targum has, “And I shall let My Presence (Shekinah) dwell
among them.” Thus in the view of the rabbis Shekinah represents the visible
part of the divine majesty, which descends from heaven to earth, and on the
radiance of which are fed the spiritual beings, both angels and the souls of
the saints.593 God himself was wrapped in light, whose brilliancy no living
being, however lofty, could endure; but the Shekinah or reflection of the
divine glory might be beheld by the elect either in their lifetime or in the
hereafter. In this way the rabbis solved many contradictory passages of
Scripture, some of which speak of God as invisible, while others describe
man as beholding Him.594

2. Just as the references to God's appearing to man suggested luminous
powers mediating the vision of God, so the passages which represent God
as speaking suggest powers mediating the voice. Hence arose the
conception of the divine Word, invested with divine powers both physical
and spiritual. The first act of God in the Bible is that He spoke, and by this
word the world came into being. The Word was thus conceived of as the
first created being, an intermediary power between the Spirit of the world
and the created world order. The word of God, important in the cosmic
order, is still more so in the moral and spiritual worlds. The Word is at times
a synonym of divine revelation to the men of the early generations or to
Israel, the bearer of the Law. Hence the older Haggadah places beside the
Shekinah the divine Word (Hebrew, Maamar; Aramaic, Memra; Greek,
Logos) as the intermediary force of revelation.

Contact with the Platonic and Stoic philosophies led gradually to a new
development which appears in Philo. The [pg 199] Word or Logos becomes
“the first-created Son of God,” having a personality independent from God;
in fact he is a kind of vice regent of God himself. From this it was but a
short step toward considering him a partner and peer of the Almighty, as
was done by the Church with its doctrine that the Word became flesh in
Christ, the son of God.595 In view of this the rabbinical schools gave up the
idea of the personified Word, replacing it with the Torah or the Spirit of
God. The older term was retained only in liturgical formulas, such as: “Who
created the heavens by His Word,” or, “Who by His Word created the
twilight and by Wisdom openeth the gates of heaven.”596

3. As has been shown above,597 Wisdom is described in the Bible as the first
of all created beings, the assistant and counselor of God in the work of
creation. Then we see that Ben Sira identifies Wisdom with the Torah.598
Thus the Torah, too, was raised to a cosmic power, the sum and substance
of all wisdom. In fact, the Torah, like the Logos of Plato, was regarded as
comprising the ideas or prototypes of all things as in a universal plan. The
Torah is the divine pattern for the world. In such a connection Torah is far
from meaning the Law, as Weber asserts.599 It means rather the heavenly
book of instruction which contains all the wisdom of the ages, and which
God himself used as guide at the Creation. God is depicted as an architect

with His plan drafted before He began the erection of the edifice,—a
conception which avoids all danger of deifying the Logos.

4. Several other conceptions, however, do not belong at all to the
intermediary powers, where Weber places them.600 This applies to Metatron
(identical with the Persian Mithras),601 [pg 200] whom the mystic lore calls
the charioteer of the heavenly throne-chariot, represented by the rabbis as
the highest of the angels, leader of the heavenly hosts, and vice-regent of
God. That no cosmic power was ascribed to him is proved by the very fact
of his identification with Enoch, whom the pre-Talmudic Haggadah
describes as taken up into heaven and changed into an angel of the highest
rank, standing near God's throne.602

5. The only real mediator between God and man is the Spirit of God, which
is mentioned in connection with both the creation and divine revelation. In
the first chapter of Genesis the Spirit of God is described as hovering over
the gloom of chaos like the mother bird over the egg, ready to hatch out the
nascent world.603 God breathed His spirit into the body of man, to make him
also god-like.604 The prophet likewise is inspired by the spirit of God to see
visions and to hear the divine message.605 Thus the spirit of God has two
aspects; it is the cosmic principle which imbues primal matter with life; it is
a link between the soul of man and God on high. The view of Ezekiel was
but one step from this, to conceive the spirit as a personal being, and place
him beside God as an angel.

The prophets and psalmists, feeling the spirit of God upon them, considered
it an emanation of the Deity. Still, a profounder insight soon disapproved
the severance of the Spirit of God from God himself, as if He were not
altogether spirit. Therefore the accepted term came to be the Holy Spirit.606
In this form, however, his personality became more distinct and his separate
existence more defined. Henceforth he is [pg 201] the messenger of God,
performing miracles or causing them, speaking in the place of God, or
defending His people Israel. Nay, more, the Holy Spirit is supposed to have
dictated the words of Scripture to the sacred writers, and to have inspired
the Men of the Great Synagogue in collecting the sacred writings into a
canon.607

Moreover, the workings of the Holy Spirit continued long after the
completion of the Biblical canon. All the chief institutions of the Synagogue
originally claimed that they were prompted by the Holy Spirit, resting upon
the leaders of the community. This claim was basic to the authority of
tradition and the continuity of the authority of Jewish lore. It seems,
however, that certain abuses were caused by miracle-workers who
disseminated false doctrines under the alleged inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Therefore the rabbis restricted such claims to ancient times and insisted
more strongly than ever upon the preservation of the traditional lore. For a
time a substitute was found in the Bath Kol (“Echo” or “Whisper of a
heavenly voice”), but this also was soon discredited by the schools.608
Obviously the rabbis desired to avert the deification of either the Holy
Spirit or the Word. Sound common sense was their norm for interpreting the
truth of the divine revelation. In other words, they relied on God alone as
the living force in the development of Judaism.

6. But some sort of mediation was ascribed to several other spiritual forces.
First, the Name of God often takes the place of God himself.609 When the
name of the Deity was called over some hallowed spot, the worshipers felt
that the presence of God also was bound up with the sacred place.610

[pg 202]
“My name is in him,” says God of the angel whom He sends to lead the
people.611 The invocation of the name was believed to have an actual
influence upon the Deity. Furthermore, since God is frequently represented
as swearing by His own name,612 this ineffable name was invested with
magic powers, as if God himself dwelt therein.613 Thus it came to be used as
a talisman by the popular saints.614 Indeed, God is described as conjuring
the depths of the abyss by His holy name, lest they overflow their
boundaries.615 Moreover, the Name, like the Word, or Logos, was regarded
as a creative power, so that we are told that before the world was created
there were only God and His holy Name.616 Owing to the introduction of
Adonai (the Lord) for JHVH, the pronunciation of the Name fell into
oblivion and the Name itself became a mystery; therefore its cosmic
element also was lost and it dropped into the sphere of mystic and
philosophical speculation.

7. Another attribute of God which received some attention, owing to the
frequent mention of the omnipotence of God in the Bible, was ha Geburah
(the Power). A familiar rabbinic expression is: “We have heard from the
mouth of the Power,” that is, from the divine omnipotence.617 Two
fundamental principles were early perceived in the moral order of the
world: the punitive justice and compassion of God. These were taken as the
meanings of the two most common Biblical names of God, JHVH and
Elohim. Elohim, being occasionally used in dispensing justice,618 was
thought to signify God in His capacity as Judge of the whole earth, and
hence as the divine Justice. JHVH, on the other hand, meant the divine
mercy, as it was used in the revelation of the long-suffering [pg 203] and
merciful God to Moses after the sin of Israel before the golden calf.619 Thus
both the rabbis and Philo620 often speak of these two attributes, justice and
mercy, as though they constituted independent beings, deliberating with
God as to what He should do. The Midrash tells in a parable how before the
creation of man, Justice, Mercy, Truth, and Peace were called in by God as
His counselors to deliberate whether or no man should be created.621

8. One Haggadah concludes from the passage about Creation in Proverbs,
that there are three creative powers, Wisdom, Understanding, and
Knowledge.622 Another derives from Scripture seven creative principles:
Knowledge, Understanding, Might, Grace and Mercy, Justice and
Rebuke;623 and seven attributes which do service before God's throne:
Wisdom, Judgment and Justice, Grace and Mercy, Truth and Peace.624 By
combining these lists of three and seven this was finally enlarged to ten,
which became the basis for the entire mystic lore. Thus the Babylonian
master Rab enumerates ten creative principles: Wisdom, Understanding,
and Knowledge, Might and Power, Rebuke, Justice and Righteousness,
Love and Mercy.625 It is hard to say whether the ten attributes of the
Haggadah are at all connected with the ten Sefiroth (cosmic forces or
circles) of the Cabbalah. These last are hardly the creation of pure
monotheism, but rather emanations from the infinite, conceived after the
pattern of heathen ideas.626

9. The assumption of all these intermediaries aimed chiefly to spiritualize
the conception of God and to elevate [pg 204] Him above all child-like,
anthropomorphic views, so that He becomes a free Mind ruling the whole

universe. At the same time, it became natural to ascribe material substance
to these intermediaries. As they filled the chasm between the supermundane
Deity and the world of the senses, they had to share the nature of both
matter and mind. Hence the Shekinah and the Holy Spirit are described by
both the rabbis and the medieval philosophers as a fine, luminous, or
ethereal substance.627 The entire ancient and medieval systems were
modeled after the idea of a ladder leading up, step by step, from the lowest
to the highest sphere; God, the Most High, being at the same time above the
highest rung of the ladder and yet also a part of the whole.

10. Our modern system of thought holds the relation of God to nature and
man to be quite different from all this. To our mind God is the only moral
and spiritual power of life. He is mirrored in the moral and spiritual as well
as intellectual nature of man, and therefore is near to the human conscience,
owing to the divine forces within man himself. Not the world without, but
the world within leads us to God and tells us what God is. Hence we need
no intermediary beings, and they all evaporate before our mental horizon
like mist, pictures of the imagination without objective reality. Ibn Ezra
says in the introduction to his commentary on the Bible that the human
reason is the true intermediating angel between God and man, and we hold
this to be true of both the intellect and the conscience. For the theologian
and the student of religion to-day the center of gravity of religion is to be
sought in psychology and anthropology. In all his upward striving, his
craving and yearning for the highest and the best, in his loftiest aspirations
and ideals, man, like Isaiah the prophet, can behold only the hem of God's
garment; he seeks God above him, because he feels Him within himself. [pg
205] He must pass, however, through the various stages of growth, until his
self-knowledge leads to the knowledge of the God before whom he kneels
in awe. Then finally he feels Him as his Father, his Educator in the school
of life, the Master of the universal plan in which the individual also has a
place in building up the divine kingdom of truth, justice, and holiness on
earth. For centuries he groped for God, until he received a Book to serve as
“a lamp to his feet and a light to his path,” to interpret to him his longing
and his craving. Israel's Book of Books must ever be re-read and re-
interpreted by Israel, the keeper of the book, through ages yet to come. Well
may we say: the mediator between God and the world is man, the son of
God; the mediator between God and humanity is Israel, the people of God.

[pg 206]

Part II. Man

Chapter XXXIII. Man's Place in Creation

1. The doctrine concerning man is inseparably connected with that about
God. Heathenism formed its deities after the image of man; they were
merely human beings of a larger growth. Judaism, on the contrary, asserts
that God is beyond comparison with mankind; He is a purely spiritual being
without form or image, and therefore utterly unlike man. On the other hand,
man has a divine nature, as he was made in the image of God, fashioned
after His likeness. The highest and deepest in man, his mental, moral, and
spiritual life, is the reflection of the divine nature implanted within him, a
force capable of ever greater development toward perfection. This unique
distinction among all creatures gives man the highest place in all creation.

2. The superiority of the human race is expressed differently in various
passages in Scripture. According to the first chapter of Genesis the whole
work of creation finds its culmination in man, whose making is introduced
by a solemn appeal of God to the hosts of heaven: “Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness.”628 This declaration proclaimed that man was the
completion and the climax of the physical creation, as well as the beginning
of a new order of creation, [pg 207] a world of moral aims and purposes, of
self-perfection and self-control. In the world of man all life is placed at the
service of a higher ideal, after the divine pattern.

The second chapter of Genesis depicts man's creation differently. Here he
appears as the first of created beings, leading a life of perfect innocence in
the garden of divine bliss. Before him God brings all the newly created
beings that he may give them a name and a purpose. But the Serpent enters
Paradise as tempter, casting the seed of discord into the hearts of the man
and the woman. As they prove too feeble to resist temptation, they can no
longer remain in the heavenly garden in their former happy state. Only the
memory of Paradise remains, a golden dream to cast hope over the life of
struggle and labor into which they enter. The idea of the legend is that man's
proper place is not among beings of the earth, but he can reach his lofty

destiny only by arduous struggle with the world of the senses and a constant
striving toward the divine. The same idea is expressed more directly in the
eighth Psalm:

“What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man, that Thou thinkest of him?
Yet Thou hast made him but little lower than the godly beings (Elohim)
And hast crowned him with glory and honor.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands;
Thou hast put all things under his feet.”

3. According to the Haggadists,629 before the fall man excelled even the
angels in appearance and wisdom, so that they were ready to prostrate
themselves before him. Only when God caused a deep sleep to fall upon
man, they recognized his frailty and kinship with other beings of the earth.
The idea expressed in this legend resembles the one implied in the legend of
Paradise, viz. man has a twofold nature. With his heavenly spirit he can soar
freely to the highest [pg 208] realm of thought, above the station of the
angels; yet his earthly frame holds him ever near the dust. It is this very
contrast that constitutes his greatness, for it makes him a citizen of two
worlds, one perishable, the other eternal. He is the highest result of
Creation, the pride of the Creator.630 Thus he was appointed God's vice-
regent on earth by the words spoken to the first man and woman: “Be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over
every living thing that creepeth upon the earth.”631 The rabbis add a striking
comment upon the word R'du, which is used here for “have dominion” but
which may also mean, “go down.” They say: “The choice is left in man's
own hand. If you maintain your heaven-born dignity, you will have
dominion over all things; if not, you will descend to the level of the brute
creation.”632

4. An ancient Mishnah derives a significant lesson from the story of the
creation of man633: “Both the vegetable and animal worlds were created in
multitudes. Man alone was created as a single individual in order that he
may realize that he constitutes a world in himself, and carries within him

the true value of life. Hence each human being is entitled to say: ‘The
whole world was created for my sake.’ He who saves a single human life is
as one who saves a whole world, and he who destroys a single human life is
as one who destroys a whole world.”

5. While it is man's spiritual side which is the image of God, yet he derives
all his powers and faculties from earthly life, just as a tree draws its strength
from the soil in which it is rooted. Judaism does not consider the soul the
exclusive [pg 209] seat of the divine, as opposed to the body. In fact,
Judaism admits no complete dualism of spirit and matter, however striking
some aspects of their contrast may be. The whole human personality is
divine, just so far as it asserts its freedom and molds its motives toward a
divine end. In recognition of this fact Hillel claimed reverence for the
human body as well as mind, comparing it to the homage rendered to the
statue of a king, for man is made in the image of God, the King of all the
world.634 Thus the Greek idea that man is a microcosm, a world in
miniature, reflecting the cosmos on a smaller scale, was expressed in the
Tannaitic schools as well.635 The stamp of divinity is borne by man in his
entire heaven-aspiring nature, as he strives to elevate the very realm of the
senses into the sphere of morality and holiness.

6. In this respect the Jewish view parts from that of Plato and the Hindu
philosophers. These divide man into a pure celestial soul and an impure
earthly body and hold that the physical life is tainted by sin, while the spirit
is divine only in so far as it frees itself from its prison house of flesh.
Judaism, on the other hand, emphasizes the unified character of man, by
which he can bend all his faculties and functions to a godlike mastery over
the material world. This appears first in his upright posture and heavenward
glance, which proclaim him master over the whole animal world cowering
before him in lowly dread. His whole bodily structure corresponds to this,
with its constant growth, its wondrous symmetry, and the unique flexibility
of the hands, with which he can perform ever new and greater
achievements. Above all, we see the nobility of man in his high forehead
and receding jaw, which contrast so strikingly with the structure of most
animals and even with many of the lower races. Indeed, primitive man
could scarcely imagine a nobler pattern by which to model his deity than
the figure of a man.

[pg 210]
7. In fact, the Biblical verse, “God created man after the image of the divine
beings” (elohim), was originally taken literally, in the sense that angels
posed as models for the creation of man.636 The phrase was referred to the
spiritual, god-like nature of man only when the difference between material
and spiritual things became better understood, and man obtained a clearer
knowledge of himself. Man grew to feel that his craving for the perfect,
whether in the field of truth and right, or of beauty, is the force which lifts
him, in spite of all his limitations, into the realm of the divine. His soaring
imagination and ceaseless longing for perfection disclose before his eyes a
partial vista of the infinite. The human spirit carries mortal man above the
confines of time and space into those boundless realms where God resides
in lonely majesty.637

Man did not emanate perfect from the hand of the Creator, but ready for an
ever greater perfection. Being the last of all created beings, as the Midrash
says, he can be put to shame by the smallest insect, which is prior to him.
Yet before the beginning of creation a light shone upon his spirit that has
illumined his achievements through untold generations.638

8. The resemblance of man to God is attributed also to his free will and self-
consciousness, by which he claims moral dignity and mastery over all
things.639 Still, all these superior qualities which we call human are not
ready-made endowments, free gifts bestowed by God; they are simply
potentialities [pg 211] which may be gradually developed. Man must strive
to attain the place destined for him in the scheme of creation by the exertion
of his own will and the unfolding of the powers that lie within him. The
impulse toward self-perfection, which is constantly stimulated by the desire
to overcome obstacles and to extend one's power, knowledge, and
possessions, forms the kernel of the divine in man. This is the “spirit in
man, and the breath of the Almighty, that giveth them understanding.”640
Thus the teaching of modern science, of the gradual ascent of man through
all the stages of animal life, does not impair the lofty position in creation
which Judaism has assigned him. Plant and animal are what they have
always been, children of the earth; man with his heaven-aspiring soul is the
image of his Creator, a child of God. Giver of name and purpose to all

things about him, he ranks above the angels; he “marches on while all the
rest stand still.”641

[pg 212]

Chapter XXXIV. The Dual Nature of Man

1. According to Jewish doctrines, man is formed by a union of two natures:
the flesh, which he shares with all the animals, and the spirit, which renders
him a child of God. The former is rooted in the earth and is earthward bent;
the latter is a “breath from God” and strives to unfold the divine in man
until he attains the divine image. This discord brings a tremendous internal
conflict, leading from one historic stage to another, achieving ever higher
things, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, until at last the whole earth is to be
a divine kingdom, the dwelling-place of truth, goodness, and holiness.

2. According to the Biblical view man consists of flesh (basar) and spirit
(ruah). The term flesh is used impartially of all animals, hence the Biblical
term “all flesh”642 includes both man and beast. The body becomes a living
being by being penetrated with the “breath of life” (ruah hayim), at whose
departure the living body turns at once into a lifeless clod. This breath of
life is possessed by the animal as well as by man, as both of them breathe
the air. Hence in ancient tongues “breath” and “soul” are used as synonyms,
as the Hebrew nefesh and neshamah, the Latin anima and spiritus, the
Greek pneuma and psyche. A different primitive belief connected the soul
with the blood, noting that man or beast dies when the hot life-blood flows
out of the body, so that we read in the Bible, “the blood is the soul.”643 In
this [pg 213] the soul is identified with the life, while the word ruah,
denoting the moving force of the air, is used more in the sense of spirit or
soul as distinct from the body.

Thus both man and beast possess a soul, nefesh. The soul of man is merely
distinguished by its richer endowment, its manifold faculties by which it is
enabled to move forward to higher things. Thus the animal soul is bound for
all time to its destined place, while the divine spirit in man makes him a
free creative personality, self-conscious and god-like. For this reason the
creation of man forms a special act in the account in Genesis. Both the plant
and animal worlds rose at God's bidding from the soil of mother earth, and

the soul of the animal is limited in origin and goal by the earthly sphere.
The creation of man inaugurates a new world. God is described as forming
the body of man from the dust of the earth and then breathing His spirit into
the lifeless frame, endowing it with both life and personality. The whole
man, both body and soul, has thus the potentiality of a higher and nobler
life.

3. Accordingly Scripture does not have a thorough-going dualism, of a
carnal nature which is sinful and a spiritual nature which is pure. We are not
told that man is composed of an impure earthly body and a pure heavenly
soul, but instead that the whole of man is permeated by the spirit of God.
Both body and soul are endowed with the power of continuous self-
improvement. In order to see the great superiority of the Jewish view over
the heathen one, we need only study the old Babylonian legend preserved
by Berosus. In this the deity made man by mixing earth with some of its
own life-blood, thus endowing the human soul with higher powers. In the
Bible the difference between man and beast does not lie in the blood,
although the blood is still thought to be the life. The distinction of man is in
the spirit, ruah, which emanates from God and penetrates both body and
soul, [pg 214] lifting the whole man into a higher realm and making him a
free moral personality.

Still the Bible makes no clear distinction between the three terms, nefesh,
neshamah, and ruah.644 Philo first distinguished between three different
substances of the soul, but his theory was the Platonic one, for which he
simply used the three Biblical names.645 The Jewish philosophers of the
Middle Ages, beginning with Saadia, took the same attitude, even though
they realized more or less that the division of the soul into three substances
has no Scriptural warrant.646 In rabbinical literature this division is scarcely
known, and there is little mention of either the animal soul, nefesh, or the
vital spark, ruah. Instead the word neshamah is used for the human psyche
as the higher spiritual substance, and the contrast to it is not the Biblical
basar, flesh, but the Aramaic guph, body.647 This bears a trace of Persian
dualism, with its strong contrast between the earthly body and the heavenly
soul.

4. In fact, rabbinical Judaism does not recognize any relationship between
the soul of the animal and that of man, but claims that man has a special
type of existence. The Midrash tells648 that God formed Adam's body so as
to reach from earth to heaven, and then caused the soul to enter it. In the
same way God implants the soul into the embryo before its birth and while
in the womb. Before this the soul had a bird-like existence in an immense
celestial cage (guph = columbarium), and when it leaves the body in death,
it again takes [pg 215] its flight toward heaven. There its conduct on earth
will reap a reward in the garden of eternal bliss or a punishment in the
infernal regions. The belief in the preëxistence of the soul was shared by the
rabbis with the apocryphal authors and Philo.649

However, rabbinical Judaism never followed Philo so far in the footsteps of
Plato as to consider the body or the flesh the source of impurity and sin, or
“the prison house of the soul.” This view is fundamental in the Paulinian
system of other-worldliness. For the rabbis the sensuous desire of the body
(yezer) is a tendency toward sin, but never a compulsion. The weakness of
the flesh may cause a straying from the right path, but man can turn the
desires of the flesh into the service of the good. He can always assert his
divine power of freedom by opposing the evil inclination (yezer ha ra) with
the good inclination (yezer ha tob) to overcome it.650 In fact, the rabbis are
so far from acknowledging the existence of a compulsion of evil in the
flesh, that they point to the history of great men as proof that the highest
characters have the mightiest passions in their souls, and that their greatness
consists in the will by which they have learned to control themselves.651

5. In the light of modern science the whole theory separating body and soul
falls to the ground, and the one connecting man more closely with the
animal world is revived. In this connection we think of the idea which
medieval thinkers adopted from Plato and Aristotle, that there is a substance
of souls—nefesh hahiyonith—which forms the basic life-force [pg 216] of
men and animals. Physiology and psychology reveal the interaction and
dependence of body and soul in the lowest forms of animal life as well as in
the higher forms, including man. The beginnings of the human mind must
be sought once for all in the animal, just as the origin of the animal reaches
back into the plant world. Indeed, Aristotle anticipates the discoveries of
modern science, placing the vegetative and animal souls beside the spirit of

man. Thus motion and sensibility form the lower boundary-line of the
animal kingdom, and self-consciousness and self-determination are the
criteria of humanity.

Yet this very self-conscious freedom which forms man's personality, his
ego, lifts him into a realm of free action under higher motives, transcending
nature's law of necessity, and therefore not falling within the domain of
natural science. Dust-born man, notwithstanding his earthly limitations, in
spite of his kinship to mollusk and mammal, enters the realm of the divine
spirit. In the Midrash the rabbis remark that man shares the nature of both
animals and angels.652 Admitting this, we feel that he is tied neither to
heaven nor to the earth, but free to lift himself above all creatures or sink
below them all.

6. Endowed with this dual nature, man stands in the very center of the
universe, and God esteems him “equal in value to the entire creation,” as
Rabbi Nehemiah says of a single human soul.653 Rabbi Akiba stresses the
image of God in humanity when he says: “Beloved is man, for he is created
in God's image, and it was a special token of love that he became conscious
of it. Beloved is Israel, for they are called the children of God, and it was a
special token of love that they became conscious of it.”654 The Midrash
compares man to God in exquisite manner: “Just as God permeates the
world and carries it, unseen yet seeing all, enthroned [pg 217] within as the
Only One, the Perfect, and the Pure, yet never to be reached or found out;
so the soul penetrates and carries the body, as the one pure and luminous
being which sees and holds all things, while itself unseen and unreached.”655
The conception of the soul is here divested of every sensory attribute, and
portrayed as a divine force within the body. This conception, which was
accepted by the medieval philosophers, is thoroughly consistent with our
view of the world. The soul it is which mirrors both the material and
spiritual worlds and holds them in mutual relation through its own power. It
is at the same time swayed upward and downward by its various cravings,
heavenly and earthly, and this very tension constitutes the dual nature of the
human soul.

[pg 218]

Chapter XXXV. The Origin and Destiny of Man

1. Of all created beings man alone possesses the power of self-
determination; he assigns his destiny to himself. While he endeavors to find
the object of all other things and even of his own existence in the world, he
finds his own purpose within himself. Star and stone, plant and beast fulfill
their purpose in the whole plan of creation by their existence and varied
natures, and are accordingly called “good” as they are. Man, however,
realizes that he must accomplish his purpose by his manner of life and the
voluntary exertion of his own powers. He is “good” only as far as he fulfills
his destiny on earth. He is not good by mere existence, but by his conduct.
Not what he is, but what he ought to be gives value to his being. He is good
or bad according to the direction of his will and acts by the imperative: “I
ought” or “I ought not,” which comes to him in his conscience, the voice of
God calling to his soul.

2. The problem of human destiny is answered by Judaism with the idea that
God is the ideal and pattern of all morality. The answer given, then, is “To
walk in the ways of God, to be righteous and just,” as He is.656 The prophet
Micah expressed it in the familiar words: “It has been told thee, O man,
what is good, and what the Lord doth require of thee: Only to do justly, and
to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.”657 Accordingly the Bible
considers men of the older generations the prototypes of moral conduct,
“righteous [pg 219] men who walked with God.” Such men were Enoch,
Noah, and above all Abraham, to whom God said: “I am God Almighty;
walk before Me, and be thou whole-hearted. And I will make My covenant
between thee and Me.”658 The rabbis singled out Abraham as the type of a
perfect man on account of his love of righteousness and peace; contrasting
him with Adam who sinned, they beheld him as “the great man among the
heroes of the ancient times.” They even considered him the type of true
humanity, in whom the object of creation was attained.659

3. This moral consciousness, however, which tells man to walk in the ways
of God and be perfect, is also the source of shame and remorse. With such
an ideal man must feel constantly that he falls short, that he is not what he
ought to be. Only the little child, who knows nothing as yet of good and
evil, can preserve the joy of life unmarred. Similarly, primitive man, being
ignorant of guilt, could pass his days without care or fear. But as soon as he
becomes conscious of guilt, discord enters his soul, and he feels as if he had
been driven from the presence of God.

This feeling is allegorized in the Paradise legend. The garden of bliss, half
earthly, half heavenly, which is elsewhere called the “mountain of God,”660
a place of wondrous trees, beasts, and precious stones, whence the four
great rivers flow, is the abode of divine beings. The first man and woman
could dwell in it only so long as they lived in harmony with God and His
commandments. As soon as the tempter in the shape of the serpent called
forth a discord between the divine will and human desire, man could no
longer enjoy celestial bliss, but must begin the dreary earthly life, with its
burdens and trials.

[pg 220]
4. This story of the fall of the first man is an allegorical description of the
state of childlike innocence which man must leave behind in order to attain
true strength of character. It is based upon a view common to all antiquity
of a descent of the race; that is: first came the golden age, when man led a
life of ease and pleasure in company with the gods; then an age of silver,
another of brass, and finally the iron age, with its toil and bitter woe. Thus
did evil deeds and wild passions increase among men. This view fails
utterly to recognize the value of labor as a civilizing force making for
progress, and it contradicts the modern historical view. The prophets of
Israel placed the golden age at the end, not the beginning of history, so that
the purpose of mankind was to establish a heavenly kingdom upon the
earth. In fact, the fall of man is not referred to anywhere in Scripture and
never became a doctrine, or belief, of Judaism. On the contrary, the
Hellenistic expounders of the Bible take it for granted that the story is an
allegory, and the book of Proverbs understands the tree of life symbolically,
in the verse: “She (the Torah) is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon
her.”661

5. Still the rabbis in Talmud and Midrash accepted the legend in good faith
as historical662 and took it literally as did the great English poet:

“The fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden.”

In fact, they even followed the Persian dualism with its evil principle, the
primeval serpent, or the Babylonian legend of the sea-monster Tiamat, and
regarded the serpent in Paradise as a demon. He was identified with Satan,
the arch-fiend, and later with evil in general, the yezer ha ra.663 Thus the [pg
221] belief arose that the poisonous breath of the serpent infected all
generations, causing death even of the sinless.664 The apocrypha also held
that the envy of Satan brought death into the world.665 This prepared for the
dismal church doctrine of original sin, the basis of Paul's teachings, which
demanded a blood atonement for curse-laden humanity, and found it after
the pagan pattern in the vicarious sacrifice of a dying god.666

Against such perversion of the simple Paradise story the sound common
sense of the Jewish people rebelled. While the early Talmudists
occasionally mention the poisoning of the human race by the serpent, they
find an antidote for the Jewish people in the covenant with Abraham or that
of Sinai.667 One cannot, however, discern the least indication of belief in
original sin, either as inherent in the human race or inherited by them. Nor
does the liturgy express any such idea, especially for the Day of Penitence,
when it would certainly be mentioned if the conception found any place in
Jewish doctrine. On the contrary, the prevailing thought of Judaism is that
of Deuteronomy and Ezekiel,668 that “Each man dies by his own sin,” that
every soul must bear only the consequences of his own deeds. The rabbis
even state that no man dies unless he has brought it upon himself by his
own sin, and mention especially certain exceptions to this rule, such as the
four saintly men who died without sin,669 or certain children whose death
was due to the sin of their parents.670 They could never admit that the whole
human race was so corrupted by the sin of the first man that it is still in a
state of sinfulness.

6. Of course, the rabbinical schools took literally the Biblical story of the
fall of man and laid the chief blame upon [pg 222] woman, who fell a prey
to the wiles of the serpent. This is done even by Ben Sira, who says: “With
woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all must die.”671 So
the Talmud says that due to woman, man, the crown, light, and life of
creation, lost his purity, his luster, and his immortality.672 The Biblical verse,
“They did eat, and the eyes of them both were opened,” is interpreted by
Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai and Rabbi Akiba as “They saw the dire
consequences of their sin upon all coming generations.”673 The fall of man
is treated most elaborately in the same spirit in the two apocalyptic books
written after the destruction of the Second Temple, the Apocalypse of
Baruch and the IV Book of Esdras.674 The incompatibility of divine love
with the sufferings of man and of the Jewish people on account of the sin of
the first man is solved by an appeal to the final Day of Judgment, and the
striking remark is added that, after all, “each is his own Adam and is held
responsible for his own sin.” We cannot deny that these two books contain
much that is near the Paulinian view of original sin. It seems, however, that
the Jewish teachers were put on their guard by the emphasis of this
pessimistic dogma by the nascent Church, and did their best to give a
different aspect to the story of the first sin. Thus they say: “If Adam had but
shown repentance, and done penance after he committed his sin, he would
have been spared the death penalty.”675 Moreover, they actually represent
Adam and Eve as patterns of repentant sinners, who underwent severe
penance and thus obtained the promise of divine mercy and also of final
resurrection.676 Instead of transmitting the heritage of sin to coming
generations, the [pg 223] first man is for them an example of repentance. So
do the Haggadists tell us quite characteristically that God merely wanted to
test the first man by an insignificant command, so that the first
representative of the human race should show whether he was worthy to
enter eternal life in his mortal garb, as did Enoch and Elijah. As he could
not stand the test, he forfeited the marks of divine rank, his celestial
radiance, his gigantic size, and his power to overcome death.677 Obviously
the Biblical story was embellished with material from the Persian legend of
the fall of Yima or Djemshid, the first man, from superhuman greatness
because of his sin,678 but it was always related frankly as a legend, and
could never influence the Jewish conception of the fall of man.

7. Judaism rejects completely the belief in hereditary sin and the corruption
of the flesh. The Biblical verse, “God made man upright; but they have
sought out many inventions,”679 is explained in the Midrash: “Upright and
just as is God, He made man after His likeness in order that he might strive
after righteousness, and unfold ever more his god-like nature, but men in
their dissensions have marred the divine image.”680 With reference to
another verse in Ecclesiastes:681 “The dust returneth unto the earth as it was,
and the spirit returneth unto God who gave it,” the rabbis teach “Pure as the
soul is when entering upon its earthly career, so can man return it to his
Maker.”682 Therefore the pious Jew begins his daily prayers with the words:
“My God, the soul which Thou hast given me is pure.”683 The life-long
battle with [pg 224] sin begins only at the age when sensual desire, “the evil
inclination,” awakens in youth; then the state of primitive innocence makes
way for the sterner contest for manly virtue and strength of character.

8. In fact, the whole Paradise story could never be made the basis for a
dogma. The historicity of the serpent is denied by Saadia;684 the rabbis
transfer Paradise with the tree of life to heaven as a reward for the future;685
and both Nahmanides the mystic and Maimonides the philosopher give it an
allegorical meaning.686 On the other hand, the Haggadic teachers perceived
the simple truth that a life of indolence in Paradise would incapacitate man
for his cultural task, and that the toils and struggles inflicted on man as a
curse are in reality a blessing. Therefore they laid special stress on the
Biblical statement: “He put man into the garden of Eden to dress it and to
keep it.”687 The following parable is especially suggestive: “When Adam
heard the stern sentence passed: ‘Thou shalt eat the herb of the field,’ he
burst into tears, and said: ‘Am I and my ass to eat out of the same manger?’
Then came another sentence from God to reassure him, ‘In the sweat of thy
face shalt thou eat bread,’ and forthwith he became aware that man shall
attain a higher dignity by dint of labor.”688 Indeed, labor transforms the
wilderness into a garden and the earth into a habitation worthy of the son of
God. The “book of the generations of [pg 225] man” which begins with
Adam is accordingly not the history of man's descent, but of his continuous
ascent, of ever higher achievements and aspirations; it is not a record of the
fall of man, but of his rise from age to age. According to the Midrash689 God
opened before Adam the book with the deeds and names of the leading
spirits of all the coming generations, showing him the latent powers of the

human intellect and soul. The phrase, “the fall of man,” can mean, in fact,
only the inner experience of the individual, who does fall from his original
idea of purity and divine nobility into transgression and sin. It cannot refer
to mankind as a whole, for the human race has never experienced a fall, nor
is it affected by original or hereditary sin.

[pg 226]

Chapter XXXVI. God's Spirit in Man

1. Man is placed in an animal world of dull feelings, of blind and crude
cravings. Yet his clear understanding, his self-conscious will and his
aspirations forward and upward lead him into a higher world where he
obtains insight into the order and unity of all things. By the spirit of God he
is able to understand material things and grasp them in their relations; thus
he can apply all his knowledge and creative imagination to construct a
world of ideals. But this world, in all its truth, beauty and goodness, is still
limited and finite, a feeble shadow of the infinite world of God. As the
Bible says: “The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the
inward parts.”690 “It is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty, that
giveth them understanding.”691

2. According to the Biblical conception, the spirit of God endows men with
all their differing capacities; it gives to one man wisdom by which he
penetrates into the causes of existence and orders facts into a scientific
system; to another the seeing eye by which he captures the secret of beauty
and creates works of art; and to a third the genius to perceive the ways of
God, the laws of virtue, that he may become a teacher of ethical truth. In
other words, the spirit of God is “the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the
Lord.”692 It works upon the scientific interest of the investigator, [pg 227]
the imagination of the artist and poet, the ethical and social sense of the
prophet, teacher, statesman, and lawgiver. Thus their high and holy vision
of the divine is brought home to the people and implanted within them
under the inspiration of God. In commenting upon the Biblical verse,
“Wisdom and might are His ... He giveth wisdom to the wise, and
knowledge to them that know understanding,”693 the sages wisely remark,
“God carefully selects those who possess wisdom for His gift of wisdom.”
Even as a musical instrument must be attuned for the finer notes that it may
have a clear, resonant tone, so the human soul must be made especially
susceptible to the gifts of the spirit in order to be capable of unfolding them.

Thus the Talmud records an interesting dialogue on this very passage
between a Roman matron familiar with the Scripture, and Rabbi Jose ben
Halafta. She asked sarcastically, “Would it not have been more generous of
your God to have given wisdom to those that are unwise than to those that
already possess it?” Thereupon the Jewish master replied, “If you were to
lend a precious ornament, would you not lend it to one who was able to
make use of it? So God gives the treasure of wisdom to the wise, who know
how to appreciate and develop it, not to the unwise, who do not know its
value.”694

3. Thus the diverse gifts of the divine spirit are distributed differently
among the various classes and tribes of men, according to their capacity and
the corresponding task which is assigned them by Providence. The divine
spark is set aglow in each human soul, sometimes feebly, sometimes
brightly, but it blazes high only in the privileged personality or group. The
mutual relationship between God and man is recognized by the Synagogue
in the Eighteen Benedictions, where the [pg 228] one directly following the
three praises of God is devoted to wisdom and knowledge: “Thou favorest
man with knowledge, and teachest mortals understanding. So favor us with
knowledge, understanding, and discernment from Thee. Blessed art Thou,
O Lord, gracious Giver of knowledge.”695 This petition, remarks Jehuda ha
Levi,696 deserves its position as first among these prayers, because wisdom
brings us nearer to God. It is also noteworthy that the Synagogue prescribes
a special benediction at the sight of a renowned sage, even if he is not a
Jew, reading, “Praised be He who has imparted of His wisdom to flesh and
blood.”697

4. Maimonides holds that in the same degree as a man studies the works of
God in nature, he will be filled with longing for direct knowledge of God
and true love of Him.698 “Not only religion, but also the sciences emanate
from God, both being the outcome of the wisdom which God imparts to all
nations,”—thus wrote a sixteenth-century rabbi, Loewe ben Bezalel of
Prague, known usually as “the eminent Rabbi Loewe.”699 The men of the
Talmud also accord the palm in certain types of knowledge to heathen
sages, and did not hesitate to ascribe to some heathens the highest
knowledge of God in their time.700 As a mystic of the thirteenth century,
Isaac ben Latif, says: “That faith is the most perfect which perceives truth

most fully, since God is the source of all truth.”701 Of the two heads of the
Babylonian academies, Rab and Samuel, one asserted that Moses through
his prophetic genius reached forty-nine of the fifty degrees of the divine
understanding (as the fiftieth is reserved for God alone), while the other
claimed the same distinction for King Solomon as the result of his
wisdom.702

[pg 229]
5. Thus the spirit of God creates in man both consciously and unconsciously
a world of ideas, which proves him a being of a higher order in creation.
This impulse may work actively, searching, investigating, and creating, or
passively as an instrument of a higher power. At first it is a dim, uncertain
groping of the spirit; then the mind acquires greater lucidity by which it
illumines the dark world; and, as one question calls for the other and one
thought suggests another, the world of ideas opens up as a well-connected
whole. Thus man creates by slow steps his languages, the arts and sciences,
ethics, law and all the religions with their varying practices and doctrines.
At times this spirit bursts forth with greater vehemence in great men,
geniuses who lift the race with one stroke to a higher level. Such men may
say, in the words of David, the holy singer: “The spirit of the Lord spoke by
me, and His word was upon my tongue.”703 They may repeat the experience
of Eliphaz the friend of Job:

“Now a word was secretly brought to me,
And mine ear received a whisper thereof.
In thoughts from the visions of the night,
When deep sleep falleth on men,
Fear came upon me, and trembling,
And all my bones were made to shake.
Then a spirit passed before my face,
That made the hair of my flesh to stand up.
It stood still, but I could not discern the appearance thereof;
A form was before mine eyes;
704
I heard a still voice.”

In such manner men of former ages received a religious revelation, a divine
message.

6. The divine spirit always selects as its instruments individuals with special
endowments. Still, insight into history shows that these men must needs
have grown from the [pg 230] very heart of their own people and their own
age, in order that they might hold a lofty position among them and
command attention for their message. However far the people or the age
may be from the man chosen by God, the multitude must feel at least that
the divine spirit speaks through him, or works within him. Or, if not his
own time, then a later generation must respond to his message, lest it be lost
entirely to the world.

The rabbis, who knew nothing of laws of development for the human mind,
assumed that the first man, made by God Himself, must have known every
branch of knowledge and skill, that the spirit of God must have been most
vigorous in him.705 They therefore believed in a primeval revelation, coeval
with the first man. Our age, with its tremendous emphasis on the historical
view, sees the divine spirit manifested most clearly in the very development
and growth of all life, social, intellectual, moral and spiritual, proceeding
steadily toward the highest of all goals. With this emphasis, however, on
process, we must lay stress equally on the origin, on the divine impulse or
initiative in this historical development, the spirit which gives direction and
value to the whole.

[pg 231]

Chapter XXXVII. Free Will and Moral
Responsibility

1. Judaism has ever emphasized the freedom of the will as one of its chief
doctrines. The dignity and greatness of man depends largely upon his
freedom, his power of self-determination. He differs from the lower animals
in his independence of instinct as the dictator of his actions. He acts from
free choice and conscious design, and is able to change his mind at any
moment, at any new evidence or even through whim. He is therefore
responsible for his every act or omission, even for his every intention. This
alone renders him a moral being, a child of God; thus the moral sense rests
upon freedom of the will.706

2. The idea of moral freedom is expressed as early as the first pages of the
Bible, in the words which God spoke to Cain while he was planning the
murder of his brother Abel: “Whether or not, thou offerest an acceptable
gift,” (New Bible translation: “If thou doest well, shall it not be lifted up?
and if thou doest not well,”) “sin coucheth at the door; and unto thee is its
desire, but thou mayest rule over it.”707 Here, without any reference to the
sin of Adam in the first generation, the man of the second generation is told
that he is free to choose between good and evil, that he alone is responsible
before God for what he does or omits to do. This certainly indicates that the
moral freedom of man is not impaired by hereditary sin, or by any evil
power outside [pg 232] of man himself. This principle is established in the
words of Moses spoken in the name of God: “I have set before thee life and
death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life, that thou mayest
live, thou and thy seed.”708 In like manner Jeremiah proclaims in God's
name: “Behold I set before you the way of life and the way of death.”709

3. From these passages and many similar ones the sages derived their oft-
repeated idea that man stands ever at the parting of the ways, to choose
either the good or the evil path.710 Thus the words spoken by God to the

angels when Adam and Eve were to be expelled from Paradise: “Behold,
the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil,” are interpreted by
R. Akiba: “He was given the choice to go the way of life or the way of
death, but he chose the way of death by eating of the forbidden fruit.”711 R.
Akiba emphasizes the principle of the freedom of the will again in the terse
saying: “All things are foreseen (by God), but free will is granted (to
man).”712

4. At the first encounter of Judaism with those philosophical schools of
Hellas which denied the freedom of the human will, the Jewish teachers
insisted strongly on this principle. The first reference is found in Ben Sira,
who refutes the arguments of the Determinists that God could make man
sin, and then goes on: “God created man at the beginning, endowing him
with the power of self-determination, saying to him: If thou but willest,
thou canst observe My commandments; to practice faithfulness is a matter
of free will.... As when fire and water are put before thee, so that thou
mayest reach forth thy hand to that which thou desirest, so are life and death
placed before man, and whatever he chooses of [pg 233] his own desire will
be given to him.”713 The Book of Enoch voices this truth also in the forceful
sentences: “Sin has not been sent upon the earth (from above), but men
have produced it out of themselves; therefore they who commit sin are
condemned.”714 We read similar sentiments in the Psalms of Solomon, a
Pharisean work of the first pre-Christian century:715 “Our actions are the
outcome of the free choice and power of our own soul; to practice justice or
injustice lies in the work of our own hands.”

The Apocalypse of Ezra is especially instructive in the great stress which it
lays on freedom, in connection with its chief theme, the sinfulness of the
children of Adam. “This is the condition of the contest which man who is
born on earth must wage, that, if he be conquered by the evil inclination, he
must suffer that of which thou hast spoken (the tortures of hell), but if he be
victorious, he shall receive (the reward) which I (the angel) have
mentioned. For this is the way whereof Moses spoke when he lived, saying
unto the people, ‘Choose life, that thou mayest live!’... For all who knew
Me not in life when they received My benefits, who despised My law when
they yet had freedom, and did not heed the door of repentance while it was

still open before them, but disregarded it, after death they shall come to
know it!”716

5. Hellenistic Judaism also, particularly Philo,717 considered the truly divine
in man to be his free will, which distinguishes him from the beast. Yet
Hellenistic naturalism could not grasp the fact that man's power to do evil in
opposition to God, the Source of the good, is the greatest reminder of his
moral responsibility. Josephus likewise mentions frequently as a
characteristic teaching of the Pharisees that man's free will [pg 234]
determines his acts without any compulsion of destiny.718 Only we must not
accept too easily the words of this Jewish historian, who wrote for his
Roman masters and, therefore, represented the Jewish parties as so many
philosophical schools after the Greek pattern. The Pharisean doctrine is
presented most tersely in the Talmudic maxim: “Everything is in the hands
of God except the fear of God.”719 Like the quotation from R. Akiba above,
this contains the great truth that man's destiny is determined by Providence,
but his character depends upon his own free decision. This idea recurs
frequently in such Talmudic sayings as these: “The wicked are in the power
of their desires; the righteous have their desires in their own power;”720
“The eye, the ear, and the nostrils are not in man's power, but the mouth, the
hand, and the feet are.”721 That is, the impressions we receive from the
world without us come involuntarily, but our acts, our steps, and our words
arise from our own volition.

6. A deeper insight into the problem of free will is offered in two other
Talmudic sayings; the one is: “Whosoever desires to pollute himself with
sin will find all the gates open before him, and whosoever desires to attain
the highest purity will find all the forces of goodness ready to help him.”722
The other reads: “It can be proved by the Torah, the Prophets, and the other
sacred writings that man is led along the road which he wishes to follow.”723

As a matter of fact, no person is absolutely free, for innumerable influences
affect his decisions, consciously and unconsciously. For this reason many
thinkers, both ancient and modern, consider freedom a delusion and hold to
determinism, [pg 235] the doctrine that man acts always under the
compulsion of external and internal forces. In opposition to this theory is
one incontestable fact, our own inner sense of freedom which tells us at

every step that we have acted, and at every decision that we have decided.
Man can maintain his own power of self-determination against all
influences from without and within; his will is the final arbiter over every
impulse and every pressure. Moreover, as we penetrate more deeply into the
working of the mind, we see that a long series of our own voluntary acts has
occasioned much that we consider external, that the very pressure of the
past on our thoughts, feelings and habits, which leaves so little weight for
the decision of the moment, is really only our past will influencing our
present will. That is, the will may determine itself, but it does not do so
arbitrarily; its action is along the lines of its own character. We have the
power to receive the influence of either the noble or the ignoble series of
impressions, and thus to yield either to the lofty or the low impulses of the
soul.

In this way the rabbis interpret various expressions of Scripture which
would seem to limit man's freedom, as where God induces man to good or
evil acts, or hardens the heart of Pharaoh so that he will not let the Israelites
go, until the plagues had been fulfilled upon him and his people.724 They
understand in such an instance that a man's heart has a prevailing
inclination toward right or wrong, the expression of his character, and that
God encouraged this inclination along the evil course; thus the freedom of
the human will was kept intact.

7. The doctrine of man's free will presents another difficulty from the side
of divine omniscience. For if God knows in [pg 236] advance what is to
happen, then man's acts are determined by this very foreknowledge; he is no
longer free, and his moral responsibility becomes an idle dream. In order to
escape this dilemma, the Mohammedan theologians were compelled to limit
either the divine omniscience or human freedom, and most of them resorted
to the latter method. It is characteristic of Judaism that its great thinkers,
from Saadia to Maimonides and Gersonides,725 dared not alter the doctrine
of man's free will and moral responsibility, but even preferred to limit the
divine omniscience. Hisdai Crescas is the only one to restrict human
freedom in favor of the foreknowledge of God.726

8. The insistence of Judaism on unrestricted freedom of will for each
individual entirely excludes hereditary sin. This is shown in the traditional

explanation of the verse of the Decalogue: “Visiting the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that
hate Me.”727 According to the rabbis the words “of them that hate Me” do
not refer to the fathers, according to the plain meaning of the passage, but to
the children and children's children. These are to be punished only when
they hate God and follow the evil example of their fathers.728 Despite
example and hereditary disposition, the descendants of evildoers can lead a
virtuous life, and their punishment comes only when they fail to resist the
evil influences of their parental household. To illustrate the Biblical words,
“Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?”729 the rabbis single out
Abraham, the son of Terah, Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, and Josiah, the son
of Manasseh.730 Man, being made in [pg 237] God's image, determines his
own character by his own free choice; by his will he can raise or lower
himself in the scale of being.

9. The fundamental character of the doctrine of free will for Judaism is
shown by Maimonides, who devotes a special chapter of his Code to it,731
and calls it the pillar of Israel's faith and morality, since through it alone
man manifests his god-like sovereignty. For should his freedom be limited
by any kind of predestination, he would be deprived of his moral
responsibility, which constitutes his real greatness. In endeavoring to
reconcile God's omnipotence and omniscience with man's freedom,
Maimonides says that God wants man to erect a kingdom of morality
without interference from above; moreover, God's knowledge is different in
kind from that of man, and thus is not an infringement upon man's freedom,
as the human type of knowledge would be. However, Abraham ben David
of Posquieres blames Maimonides for proposing questions which he could
not answer satisfactorily in the Code, which is intended for non-
philosophical readers. The fact is that this is only another of the problems
insoluble to human reasoning; the freedom of the will must remain for all
time a postulate of moral responsibility, and therefore of religion.

[pg 238]

Chapter XXXVIII. The Meaning of Sin

1. Sin is a religious conception. It does not signify a breach of law or
morality, or of popular custom and sacred usage, but an offense against
God, provoking His punishment. As long as the deity is merely dreaded as
an external power, not adored as a moral power ruling life from within for a
holy purpose, sin, too, is considered a purely formal offense. The deity
demands to be worshiped by certain rites and may be propitiated by other
formal acts.732 For Judaism, however, sin is a straying from the path of God,
an offense against the divine order of holiness. Thus it signifies an abuse of
the freedom granted man as his most precious boon. Therefore sin has a
twofold character; formally it is an offense against the majesty of God,
whose laws are broken; essentially it is a severance of the soul's inner
relations to God, an estrangement from Him.

2. Scripture has three different terms for sin, which do not differ greatly in
point of language, but indicate three stages of thought. First is het or
hataah, which connotes any straying from the right path, whether caused by
levity, carelessness, or design, and may even include wrongs committed
unwittingly, shegagah. Second is avon, a crookedness or perversion of the
straight order of the law. Third is pesha, a wicked act committed
presumptuously in defiance of God and His law. As a matter of course, the
conception of [pg 239] sin was deepened by degrees, as the prophets,
psalmists and moralists grew to think of God as the pattern of the highest
moral perfection, as the Holy One before whom an evil act or thought
cannot abide.

The rabbis usually employed the term aberah, that is, a transgression of a
divine commandment. In contrast to this they used mitzwah, a divine
command, which denotes also the whole range of duty, including the desire
and intention of the human soul. From this point of view every evil design
or impulse, every thought and act contrary to God's law, becomes a sin.

3. Sin arises from the weakness of the flesh, the desire of the heart, and
accordingly in the first instance from an error of judgment. The Bible
frequently speaks of sin as “folly.”733 A rabbinical saying brings out this
same idea: “No one sins unless the spirit of folly has entered into him to
deceive him.”734 A sinful imagination lures one to sin; the repetition of the
forbidden act lowers the barrier of the commandment, until the trespass is
hardened into “callous” and “stubborn” disregard, and finally into “reckless
defiance” and “insolent godlessness.” Such a process is graphically
expressed by the various terms used in the Bible. According to the
rabbinical figure, “sin appears at first as thin as a spider's web, but grows
stronger and stronger, until it becomes like a wagon-rope to bind a man.”
Or, “sin comes at first as a passer-by to tarry for a moment, then as a visitor
to stay, finally as the master of the house to claim possession.” Therefore it
is incumbent upon us to “guard” the heart, and not “to go astray following
after our eyes and our heart.”735

4. According to the doctrine of Judaism no one is sinful by nature. No
person sins by an inner compulsion. But [pg 240] as man has a nature of
flesh, which is sensuous and selfish, each person is inclined to sin and none
is perfectly free from it. “Who can say: I have made my heart clean, I am
pure from any sin?”736 This is the voice of the Bible and of all human
experience; “For there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good,
and sinneth not.”737 The expression occurs repeatedly in Job: “Shall mortal
man be just before God? Shall a man be pure before his Maker?”738 Even
Moses is represented in numerous passages as showing human foibles and
failings.739 In fact, “the greater the personality, the more severely will God
call him to account for the smallest trespass, for God desires to be
‘sanctified’ by His righteous ones.”740 The Midrash tells us that no one is to
be called holy, until death has put an end to his struggle with the ever-
lurking tempter within, and he lies in the earth with the victor's crown of
peace upon his brow.741 When we read the stern sentence: “Behold, He
putteth no trust in His holy ones,”742 the rabbis refer us to the patriarchs,
each of whom had his faults.743 Measured by the Pattern of all holiness, no
human being is free from blemish.

5. In connection with the God-idea, the conception of sin grew from crude
beginnings to the higher meaning given it by Judaism. The ancient

Babylonians used the same terminology as the Bible for sin and sin-
offering, but their view, like that of other Semites, was far more external.744
If one was afflicted with disease or misfortune, the inference was that he
had neglected the ritual of some deity and must appease the angered one
with a sacrificial offering. Any irregularity in the cult was an offense
against the deity. This became more moralized with the higher God-idea;
the god [pg 241] became the guardian of moral principles; and the
calamities, even of the nation, were then ascribed to the divine wrath on
account of moral lapses. The same process may be observed in the views of
ancient Israel. Here, too, during the dominance of the priestly view the
gravest possible offense was one against the cult, a culpable act entailing
the death penalty—asham, or “doom” of the offender. We shudder at the
thought that the least violation of the hierarchical rules for the sanctuary or
even for the burning of incense should meet the penalty of death. Yet such
is the plain statement of the Mosaic law and such was the actual practice of
the people.745

The more the prophetic conception of the moral nature of the Deity
permeated the Jewish religion, the more the term sin came to mean an
offense against the holiness of God, the Guardian of morality. Hence the
great prophets upbraided the people for their moral, not their ceremonial
failings. They attacked scathingly transgressions of the laws of
righteousness and purity, the true sins against God, because these originate
in dullness of heart, unbridled passion, and overbearing pride, all so hateful
to Him. The only ritual offenses emphasized as sins against God are
idolatry, violation of the name of God and of the Sabbath, for these express
the sanctity of life.746 Except for these points, the prophets and psalmists
insisted only on righteous conduct and integrity of soul, and repudiated
entirely the ritualism of the priesthood and the formalism of the cult.747 This
view is anticipated by Samuel, the master of the prophetic schools, when he
says:

“Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
And to hearken than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft,
748
And stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim.”

[pg 242]
As soon as we realize that obedience to God's will means right conduct and
purity of soul, we see in sin the desecration of the divine image in man, the
violation of his heavenly patent of nobility.

6. Sin, then, is in its essence unfaithfulness to God and to our own god-like
nature. We see this thought expressed in Job:749

“If thou hast sinned, what doest thou against Him?
And if thy transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto Him?
If thou be righteous, what givest thou unto Him?
Or what receiveth He of thy hand?
Thy wickedness concerneth a man as thou art;
And thy righteousness a son of man.”

Thus the source of sin is the human heart, the origin of all our thinking and
planning. We know sin chiefly as consciousness of guilt. Man's conscience
accuses him and compels him to confess, “Against Thee, Thee only, have I
sinned.”750 Not only the deed itself, but even more the will which caused it,
is condemned by conscience. Such self-accusation constantly proves anew
that there is no place for original sin through the fall of Adam. “I could have
controlled my evil desire, if I had but earnestly willed it,” said King David,
according to the Talmud.751

7. Sin engenders a feeling of disunion with God through the consciousness
of guilt which accompanies it. It erects a “wall of separation” between man
and his Maker, depriving him of peace and security.752 Guilt causes pain,
which overwhelms him, until he has made atonement and obtained pardon
before God. This is no imaginary feeling, easily overcome and capable of
being suppressed by the sinner with impunity. Instead, he must pay the full
penalty for his sin, lest it lead him to the very abyss of evil, to physical and
moral death. Sin in the individual becomes a sense of self-condemnation,
[pg 243] the consciousness of the divine anger. Hence the Hebrew term
avon, sin, is often synonymous with punishment,753 and asham, guilt, often
signifies the atonement for the guilt, and sometimes doom and perdition as
a consequence of guilt.754 Undoubtedly this still contains a remnant of the

old Semitic idea that an awful divine visitation may come upon an entire
household or community because of a criminal or sacrilegious act
committed, consciously or unconsciously, by one of its members. Such a
fate can be averted only by an atoning sacrifice. This accords with the rather
strange fact that the Priestly Code prescribes certain guilt offerings for sins
committed unwittingly, which are called asham.755

8. But even these unintentional sins can be avoided by the constant exercise
of caution, so that their commission implies a certain degree of guilt, which
demands a measure of repentance. Thus the Psalmist says: “Who can
discern errors? Clear Thou me from hidden faults.”756 He thus implies that
we feel responsible in a certain sense for all our sins, including those which
we commit unknowingly. The rabbis dwell especially on the idea that we
are never altogether free from sinful thoughts. For this reason, they tell us,
the two burnt offerings were brought to the altar each morning and evening,
to atone for the sinful thoughts of the people during the preceding day or
night.757

9. At any rate, Judaism recognizes no sin which does not arise from the
individual conscience or moral personality. The condemnation of a whole
generation or race in consequence of the sin of a single individual is an
essentially heathen idea, which was overcome by Judaism in the course of
time through the prophetic teaching of the divine justice and man's moral
responsibility. This sentiment was voiced by Moses [pg 244] and Aaron
after the rebellion of Korah in the words: “O God, the God of the spirits of
all flesh, shall one man sin, and wilt Thou be wroth with all the
congregation?”758 In commenting upon this, the Midrash says: “A human
king may make war upon a whole province, because it contains rebels who
have caused sedition, and so the innocent must suffer together with the
guilty; but it does not behoove God, the Ruler of the spirits, who looks into
the hearts of men, to punish the guiltless together with the guilty.”759 The
Christian view of universal guilt as a consequence of Adam's sin, the dogma
of original sin, is actually a relapse from the Jewish stage to the heathen
doctrine from which the Jewish religion freed itself.

10. According to the Biblical view sin contaminates man, so that he cannot
stand in the presence of God. The holiness of Him who is “of eyes too pure

to behold evil”760 becomes to the sinner “a devouring fire.”761 Even the lofty
prophet Isaiah realizes his own human limitations at the sublime vision of
the God of holiness enthroned on high, while the angelic choruses chant
their thrice holy. In humility and contrition he cries out: “Woe is me, for I
am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of
a people of unclean lips; For mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of
hosts.”762 The prophet must undergo atonement in order to be prepared for
his high prophetic task. One of the Seraphs purges him of his sins by
touching his lips with a live coal taken from the altar of God.

Under the influence of Persian dualism, rabbinical Judaism considers sin a
pollution which puts man under the power of unclean spirits.763 In the later
Cabbalah this idea is elaborated until the world of sin is considered a
cosmic power of impurity, opposed to the realm of right, working evil ever
[pg 245] since the fall of Adam.764 Still, however close this may come to the
Christian dogma, it never becomes identical with it; the recognition is
always preserved of man's power to extricate himself from the realm of
impurity and to elevate himself into the realm of purity by his own
repentance. Sin never becomes a demoniacal power depriving man of his
divine dignity of self-determination and condemning him to eternal
damnation. It ever remains merely a going astray from the right path, a
stumbling from which man may rise again to his heavenly height, exerting
his own powers as the son of God.

[pg 246]

Chapter XXXIX. Repentance Or the Return To God

1. The brightest gem among the teachings of Judaism is its doctrine of
repentance or, in its own characteristic term, the return of the wayward
sinner to God.765 Man, full of remorse at having fallen away from the divine
Fountainhead of purity, conscious of deserving a sentence of condemnation
from the eternal Judge, would be less happy than the unreasoning brute
which cannot sin at all. Religion restores him by the power to rise from his
shame and guilt, to return to God in repentance, as the penitent son returns
to his father. Whether we regard sin as estrangement from God or as a
disturbance of the divine order, it has a detrimental effect on both body and
soul, and leads inevitably to death. On this point the Bible affords many
historical illustrations and doctrinal teachings.766 If man had no way to
escape from sin, then he would be the most unfortunate of creatures, in spite
of his god-like nature. Therefore the merciful God opens the gate of
repentance for the sinner, saying as through His prophets of old: “I have no
pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way
and live.”767

2. The great value of the gift of divine grace, by which the sinner may
repent and return to God with a new spirit, appears [pg 247] in the
following rabbinical saying: “Wisdom was asked, ‘What shall be the
sinner's punishment?’ and answered, ‘Evil pursues sinners’;768 then
Prophecy was asked, and answered, ‘The soul that sinneth, it shall die’;769
the Torah, or legal code, was consulted, and its answer was: ‘He shall bring
a sin-offering, and the priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be
forgiven.’770 Finally God Himself was asked, and He answered:771 ‘Good
and upright is the Lord; therefore doth He instruct sinners in the way.’ ”772
The Jewish idea of atonement by the sinner's return to God excludes every
kind of mediatorship. Neither the priesthood nor sacrifice is necessary to
secure the divine grace; man need only find the way to God by his own
efforts. “Seek ye Me, and live,”773 says God to His erring children.

3. Teshubah, which means return, is an idea peculiar to Judaism, created by
the prophets of Israel, and arising directly from the simple Jewish
conception of sin. Since sin is a deviation from the path of salvation, a
“straying” into the road of perdition and death, the erring can return with
heart and soul, end his ways, and thus change his entire being. This is not
properly expressed by the term repentance, which denotes only regret for
the wrong, but not the inner transformation. Nor is Teshubah to be rendered
by either penitence or penance. The former indicates a sort of bodily self-
castigation, the latter some other kind of penalty undergone in order to
expiate sin. Such external forms of asceticism were prescribed and
practiced by many tribes and some of the historical religions. The Jewish
prophets, however, opposed them bitterly, demanding an inner change, a
transformation of soul, renewing both heart and spirit.

[pg 248]

“Let the wicked forsake his way,
And the man of iniquity his thoughts;
And let him return unto the Lord, and He will have compassion upon him,
774
And to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.”

Judaism considers sin merely moral aberration, not utter corruption, and
believes in the capability of the very worst of sinners to improve his ways;
therefore it waits ever for his regeneration. This is truly a return to God, the
restoration of the divine image which has been disfigured and corrupted by
sin.

4. The doctrine of Teshubah, or the return of the sinner, has a specially
instructive history, as this most precious and unique conception of Judaism
is little understood or appreciated by Christian theologians. Often without
intentional bias, these are so under the influence of the Paulinian dogma
that they see no redemption for man corrupted by sin, except by his belief in
a superhuman act of atonement. It is certainly significant that the legal
code, which is of priestly origin, does not mention repentance or the sinner's
return. It prescribes various types of sin-offerings, speaks of reparation for
wrong inflicted, of penalties for crime, and of confession for sins, but it

does not state how the soul can be purged of sin, so that man can regain his
former state of purity. This great gap is filled by the prophetic books and the
Psalms. The book of Deuteronomy alone, written under prophetic influence,
alludes to repentance, in connection with the time when Israel would be
taken captive from its land as punishment for its violation of the law. There
we read: “Thou shalt return unto the Lord thy God, ... with all thy heart, and
all thy soul, then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have
compassion upon thee.”775

Amos, the prophet of stern justice, has not yet reached the idea of averting
the divine wrath by the return of the sinner.776 [pg 249] Hosea, the prophet
of divine mercy and loving-kindness, in his deep compassion for the
unfaithful and backsliding people, became the preacher of repentance as the
condition for attaining the divine pardon.

“Return, O Israel, unto the Lord thy God;
For thou hast stumbled in thine iniquity.
Take with you words (of repentance),
And return unto the Lord;
Say unto Him, “Forgive all iniquity,
And accept that which is good;
777
So will we render for bullocks the offering of our lips.’ ”

The appeal of Jeremiah is still more vigorous:

“Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the Lord....
Only acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the Lord
thy God....
Break up for you a fallow ground, and sow not among thorns....
O Jerusalem, wash thy heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved;
How long shall thy baleful thoughts lodge within thee?...
Return ye now every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and your
778
doings.”

Ezekiel, while emphasizing the guilt of the individual, preached repentance
still more insistently. “Return ye, and turn yourselves from all your
transgressions; so shall they not be a stumbling-block of iniquity to you.
Cast away from you all your transgressions, wherein ye have transgressed;
and make you a new heart and a new spirit; for why will ye die, O house of
Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord
God; wherefore turn yourselves, and live.”779 The same appeal recurs after
the exile in the last prophets, Zechariah780 and Malachi.781 The latter says:
“Return unto Me, and I shall return unto you.” Likewise [pg 250] the
penitential sermon written in a time of great distress, which is ascribed to
the prophet Joel, contains the appeal:

“Turn ye unto Me with all your heart,
And with fasting, and with weeping, and with lamentation;
And rend your heart, and not your garments,
And turn unto the Lord your God;
For He is gracious and compassionate,
Long-suffering, and abundant in mercy,
782
And repenteth Him of the evil.”

This prophetic view, which demands contrition and craving for God instead
of external modes of atonement, is expressed in the penitential Psalms as
well,783 especially in Psalm LI. The idea is expanded further in the parable
of the prophet Jonah, which conveys the lesson that even a heathen nation
like the people of Nineveh can avert the impending judgment of God by
true repentance.784 From this point of view the whole conception took on a
larger aspect, and the entire history of mankind was seen in a new light. The
Jewish sages realized that God punishes man only when the expected
change of mind and heart fails to come.785

5. The Jewish plan of divine salvation presents a striking contrast to that of
the Church, for it is built upon the presumption that all sinners can find their
way back to God and godliness, if they but earnestly so desire. Even before
God created the world, He determined to offer man the possibility of
Teshubah, so that, in the midst of the continual struggle with the
allurements of the senses, the repentant sinner can ever change heart and

mind and return to God.786 Without such a possibility the world of man
could not endure; thus, because no man can stand before the divine tribunal
of stern justice, the paternal arm of a merciful God is extended to [pg 251]
receive the penitent. This sublime truth is constantly reiterated in the
Talmud and in the liturgy, especially of the great Day of Atonement.787 Not
only does God's long-suffering give the sinner time to repent; His paternal
love urges him to return. Thus the Haggadists purposely represent almost all
the sinners mentioned in the Bible as models of sincere repentance. First of
all comes King David, who is considered such a pattern of repentance, as
the author of the fifty-first Psalm, that he would not have been allowed to
sin so grievously, if he had not been providentially appointed as the shining
example of the penitent's return to God.788 Then there is King Manasseh, the
most wicked among all the kings of Judah and Israel, who had committed
the most abominable sins of idolatrous worship. Referring to the story told
of him in Chronicles, it is said that God responded to his tearful prayers and
incessant supplications by opening a rift under His throne of mercy and
receiving his petition for pardon. Thus all mankind might see that none can
be so wicked that he will not find the door of repentance open, if he but
seek it sincerely and persistently.789 Likewise Adam and Cain, Reuben and
Judah, Korah, Jeroboam, Ahab, Josiah, and Jechoniah are described in
Talmud, Midrash, and the apocalyptic literature as penitent sinners who
obtained at last the coveted pardon.790 The optimistic spirit of Judaism
cannot tolerate the idea that mortal man is hopelessly lost under the burden
of his sins, or that he need ever lose faith in himself. No one can sink so low
that he cannot find his way back to his heavenly Father by untiring self-
discipline. As the Talmud says, nothing can finally withstand the power of
[pg 252] sincere repentance: “It reaches up to the very seat of God;” “upon
it rests the welfare of the world.”791

6. The rabbis follow up the idea first announced in the book of Jonah, that
the saving power of repentance applies to the heathen world as well. Thus
they show how God constantly offered time and opportunity to the heathens
for repentance. For example, when the generation of the flood, the builders
of the Tower of Babel, and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were to be
punished, God waited to give them time for Repentance and improvement
of their ways.792 Noah, Enoch, and Abraham are represented as monitors of
their contemporaries, warning them, like the prophets, to repent in time lest

they meet their doom.793 Thus the whole Hellenistic literature of
propaganda, especially the Sibylline books, echoes the warning and the
hope that the heathen should repent of their grievous sins and return to God,
whom they had deserted in idolatry, so that they might escape the
impending doom of the last judgment day. According to one Haggadist,794
even the Messiah will appear first as a preacher of repentance, admonishing
the heathen nations to be converted to the true God and repent before Him,
lest they fall into perdition. Indeed, it is said that even Pharaoh and the
Egyptians were warned and given time for repentance before their fate
overtook them.

7. Accordingly, the principle of repentance is a universal human one, and by
no means exclusively national, as the Christian theologians represent it.795
The sages thus describe Adam as the type of the penitent sinner, who is
granted pardon [pg 253] by God. The “sign” of Cain also was to be a sign
for all sinners, assuring them they might all obtain forgiveness and
salvation, if they would but return to God.796 In fact, the prophetic appeal to
Israel for repentance, vain at the time, effected the regeneration of the
people during the Exile and gave rise to Judaism and its institutions. In the
same way, the appeal to the heathen world by the Hellenistic propaganda
and the Essene preachers of repentance did not induce the nations at once to
prepare for the coming of the Messianic kingdom, but finally led to the rise
of the Christian religion, and, through certain intermediaries, of the
Mohammedan as well.

However, the long-cherished hope for a universal conversion of the heathen
world, voiced in the preachments and the prayers of the “pious ones,” gave
way to a reaction. The rise of antinomian sects in Judaism occasioned the
dropping of this pious hope, and only certain individual conversions were
dwelt on as shining exceptions.797 The heathen world in general was not
regarded as disposed to repent, and so its ultimate fate was the doom of
Gehenna. Experience seemed to confirm the stern view, which rabbinical
interpretation could find in Scripture also, that “Even at the very gate of the
nether world wicked men shall not return.”798 The growing violence of the
oppressors and the increasing number of the maligners of Judaism darkened
the hope for a universal conversion of humanity to the pure faith of Israel
and its law of righteousness. On the contrary, a certain satisfaction was felt

by the Jew in the thought that these enemies of Judaism should not be
allowed to repent and obtain salvation in the hereafter.799

8. The idea of repentance was applied all the more intensely in Jewish life,
and a still more prominent place was [pg 254] accorded it in Jewish
literature. The rabbis have numberless sayings800 in the Talmud and also in
the Haggadic and ethical writings concerning the power and value of
repentance. In passages such as these we see how profoundly Judaism dealt
with the failings and shortcomings of man. The term asa teshubah, do
repentance, implies no mere external act of penitence, as Christian
theologians often assert. On the contrary, the chief stress is always laid on
the feeling of remorse and on the change of heart which contrition and self-
accusation bring. Yet even these would not be sufficient to cast off the
oppressive consciousness of guilt, unless the contrite heart were reassured
by God that He forgives the penitent son of man with paternal grace and
love. In other words, religion demands a special means of atonement, that
is, at-one-ment with God, to restore the broken relation of man to his
Maker. The true spiritual power of Judaism appears in this, that it gradually
liberates the kernel of the atonement idea from its priestly shell. The Jew
realizes, as does the adherent of no other religion, that even in sin he is a
child of God and certain of His paternal love. This is brought home
especially on the Day of Atonement, which will be treated in a later chapter.

9. At all events, the blotting out of man's sins with their punishment remains
ever an act of grace by God.801 In compassion for man's frailty He has
ordained repentance as the means of salvation, and promised pardon to the
penitent. This truth is brought out in the liturgy for the Day of Atonement,
as well as in the Apocalyptic Prayer of Manasseh. At the same time,
Judaism awards the palm of victory to him who has wrestled with sin and
conquered it by his own will. Thus the rabbis boldly assert: “Those who
have [pg 255] sinned and repented rank higher in the world to come than
the righteous who have never sinned,” which is paralleled in the New
Testament: “There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repenteth
than over ninety and nine righteous persons, who need no repentance.”802
No intermediary power from without secures the divine grace and pardon
for the repentant sinner, but his own inner transformation alone.

[pg 256]

Chapter XL. Man, the Child of God

1. The belief that God hears our prayers and pardons our sins rests upon the
assumption of a mutual relation between man and God. This belief is
insusceptible of proof, but rests entirely upon our religious feelings and is
rooted purely in our emotional life. We apply to the relation between man
and God the finest feelings known in human life, the devotion and love of
parents for their children and the affection and trust the child entertains for
its parents. Thus we are led to the conviction that earth-born man has a
Helper enthroned in the heavens above, who hearkens when he implores
Him for aid. In his innermost heart man feels that he has a special claim on
the divine protection. In the words of Job,803 he knows that his Redeemer
liveth. He need not perish in misery. Unlike the brute creation and the hosts
of stars, which know nothing of their Maker, man feels akin to the God who
lives within him; he is His image, His child. He cannot be deprived of His
paternal love and favor. This truly human emotion is nowhere expressed so
clearly as in Judaism. “Ye are the children of the Lord your God.”804 “Have
we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us?”805 “Like as a father
hath compassion on his children, so hath the Lord compassion upon them
that fear Him.”806

2. Still, this simple idea of man's filial relation to God and God's paternal
love for man did not begin in its beautiful final form. For a long time the
Jew seems to have avoided the [pg 257] term “Father” for God, because it
was used by the heathen for their deities as physical progenitors, and did
not refer to the moral relation between the Deity and mankind. Thus
worshipers of wooden idols would, according to Scripture, “say to a stock,
Thou art my father.”807 Hosea was the first to call the people of Israel
“children of the living God,”808 if they would but improve their ways and
enter into right relations with Him. Jeremiah also hopes for the time when
Israel would invoke the Lord, saying, “Thou art my Father,” and in return
God would prove a true father to him.809 However, Scripture calls God a
Father only in referring to the people as a whole.810 The “pious ones”

established a closer relation between God and the individual by means of
prayer, so that through them the epithets, “Father,” “Our Father,” and “Our
Father in heaven” came into general use. Hence, the liturgy frequently uses
the invocation, “Our Father, Our King!” We owe to Rabbi Akiba the
significant saying, in opposition to the Paulinian dogma, “Blessed are ye, O
Israelites! Before whom do you purify yourselves (from your sins)? And
who is it that purifies you? Your Father in heaven.”811 Previously Rabbi
Eliezer ben Hyrcanos dwelt on the moral degeneration of his age, which
betokened the end of time, and exclaimed: “In whom, then, shall we find
support? In our Father who is in heaven.”812 The appellative “Father in
heaven” was the stereotyped term used by the “pious ones” during the
century preceding and the one following the rise of Christianity, as a glance
at the literature of the period indicates.813

3. It is instructive to follow the history of this term. In Scripture God is
represented as speaking to David, “I will be [pg 258] to him for a father,
and he shall be to Me for a son,”814 or “He shall call unto Me: Thou art my
Father, ... I also will appoint him first-born.”815 So in the apocryphal
writings God speaks both to Israel and to individual saints: “I shall be to
them a Father, and they shall be My children.”816 Elsewhere it is said of the
righteous, “He calls God his Father,” and “he shall be counted among the
sons of God.”817 We read concerning the Messiah: “When all wrongdoing
will be removed from the midst of the people, he shall know that all are
sons of God.”818 Obviously only righteousness or personal merit entitles a
man to be called a son of God. In fact, we are expressly told of Onias, the
great Essene saint, that his intimate relation with God emboldened him to
converse with the Master of the Universe as a son would speak with his
father.819 According to the Mishnah the older generation of “pious ones”
used to spend “an hour in silent devotion before offering their daily prayer,
in order to concentrate heart and soul upon their communion with their
Father in heaven.”820 Thus it is said of congregational prayer that through it
“Israel lifts his eyes to his Father in heaven.”821 In this way prayer took the
place of the altar, of which R. Johanan ben Zakkai said that it established
peace between Israel and his Father in heaven.822 Afterwards the question
was discussed by Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Jehuda whether even sin-laden
Israel had a right to be called “children of God.” Rabbi Meir pointed to

Hosea as proof that the backsliders also remain “children of the living
God.”823

4. In the Hellenistic literature, with its dominating idea of universal
monotheism, God is frequently invoked or spoken of as the Father of
mankind. The implication is that each [pg 259] person who invokes God as
Father enters into filial relation with Him. Thus what was first applied to
Israel in particular was now broadened to include mankind in general, and
consequently all men were considered “children of the living God.” The
words of God to Pharaoh, speaking of Israel as His “first-born son,”824 were
taken as proof that all the nations of the earth are sons of God and He the
universal Father. Israel is the first-born among the sons of God, because his
patriarchs, prophets, and psalmists first recognized Him as the universal
Father and Ruler. From this point of view Judaism declared love for fellow-
men and regard for the dignity of humanity to be fundamental principles of
ethics. “As God is kind and merciful toward His creation, be thou also kind
and merciful toward all fellow-creatures,” is the oft-repeated teaching of the
rabbis.825 Likewise, “Whoever takes pity on his fellow-beings, on him God
in heaven will also take pity.”826 Love of humanity has so permeated the
nature of the Jew that the rabbis assert: “He who has pity on his fellow-men
has the blood of Abraham in his veins.”827 This bold remark casts light upon
the strange dictum: “Ye Israelites are called by the name of man, but the
heathen are not.”828 The Jewish teachers were so deeply impressed with
man's inhumanity to man, so common among the heathen nations, and the
immorality of the lives by which these desecrated God's image, that they
insisted that the laws of humanity alone make for divine dignity in man.

5. Rabbi Akiba probably referred to the Paulinian dogma that Jesus, the
crucified Messiah, is the only son of God, in his well-known saying:
“Beloved is man, for he is created in God's image, and it was a special
token of love that he became conscious of it. Beloved is Israel, for they are
called the children of God, and it was a special token of love that they [pg
260] became conscious of it.”829 Here he claims the glory of being a son of
God for Israel, but not for all men. Still, as soon as the likeness of man to
God is taken in a spiritual sense, then it is implied that all men have the
same capacity for being a son of God which is claimed for Israel. This is
unquestionably the view of Judaism when it considers the Torah as

entrusted to Israel to bring light and blessing to all the families of men.
Rabbi Meir, the disciple of Rabbi Akiba, said: “The Scriptural words, ‘The
statutes and ordinances which man shall do and live thereby,’ and similar
expressions indicate that the final aim of Judaism is not attained by the
Aaronide, nor the Levite, nor even the Israelite, but by mankind.”830 Such a
saying expresses clearly and emphatically that God's fatherly love extends
to all men as His children.

6. According to the religious consciousness of modern Israel man is made in
God's image, and is thus a child of God. Consequently Jew and non-Jew,
saint and sinner have the same claim upon God's paternal love and mercy.
There is no distinction in favor of Israel except as he lives a higher and
more god-like life. Even those who have fallen away from God and have
committed crime and sin remain God's children. If they send up their
penitent cry to the throne of God, “Pardon us, O Father, for we have sinned!
Forgive us, O King, for we have done evil!”; their prayer is heard by the
heavenly Father exactly like that of the pious son of Israel.

[pg 261]

Chapter XLI. Prayer and Sacrifice

1. The gap between man and the sublime Master of the universe is vast, but
not absolute. The thoughts of God are high above our thoughts, and the
ways of God above our ways, baffling our reason when we endeavor to
solve the vexatious problems of destiny, of merit and demerit, of retribution
and atonement. Yet religion offers a wondrous medium to bring the heart of
man into close communion with Him who is enthroned above the heavens,
one that overleaps all distances, removes all barriers, and blends all
dissonances into one great harmony, and that is—Prayer. As the child must
relieve itself of its troubles and sorrows upon the bosom of its mother or
father in order to turn its pain into gladness, so men at all times seek to
approach the Deity, confiding to Him all their fears and longings in order to
obtain peace of heart. Prayer, communion between the human soul and the
Creator, is the glorious privilege enjoyed by man alone among all creatures,
as he alone is the child of God. It voices the longing of the human heart for
its Father in heaven. As the Psalmist has it, “My soul thirsteth for God, for
the living God.”831

2. However, both language, the means of intercourse between man and man,
and prayer, the means of intercourse between man and God, show traces of
a slow development lasting for thousands of years, until the loftiest
thoughts and [pg 262] sublimest emotions could be expressed. The real
efficacy of prayer could not be truly appreciated, until the prophetic spirit
triumphed over the priestly element in Judaism. In the history of speech the
language of signs preceded that of sounds, and images gradually ripened
into abstract thoughts. Similarly, primitive man approaches his God with
many kinds of gifts and sacrificial rites to express his sentiments. He acts
out or depicts what he expects from the Deity, whether rain, fertility of the
soil, or the extermination of his foes. He shares with his God his food and
drink, to obtain His friendship and protection in time of trouble, and
sacrifices the dearest of his possessions to assuage His wrath or obtain His
favor.

3. In the lowest stage of culture man needed no mediator in his intercourse
with the Deity, who appeared to him in the phenomena of nature as well as
in the fetish, totem, and the like. But soon he rose to a higher stage of
thought, and the Deity withdrew before him to the celestial heights, filling
him with awe and fear; then rose a class of men who claimed the privilege
to approach the Deity and influence Him by certain secret practices.
Henceforth these acted as mediators between the mass of the people and the
Deity. In the first place, these were the magicians, medicine-men, and
similar persons, who were credited with the power to conjure up the hidden
forces of nature, considered either divine or demoniac. After these arose the
priests, distinguished from the people by special dress and diet, who
established in the various tribes temples, altars, and cults, under their own
control. Then there were the saints, pious penitents or Nazarites, who led an
ascetic life secluded from the masses, hoping thus to obtain higher powers
over the will of the Deity. All these entertained more or less clearly the
notion that they stood in closer relation to the Deity than the common
people, whom they then excluded from the sanctuary and all access to the
Deity.

[pg 263]
The Mosaic cult, in the so-called Priestly Code, was founded upon this
stage of religious life, forming a hierarchical institution like those of other
ancient nations. It differed from them, however, in one essential point. The
prime element in the cult of other nations was magic, consisting of oracle,
incantation and divination, but this was entirely contrary to the principles of
the Jewish faith. On the other hand, all the rites and ceremonies handed
down from remote antiquity were placed in the service of Israel's holy God,
in order to train His people into the highest moral purity. The patriarchs and
prophets, who are depicted in Scripture as approaching God in prayer and
hearing His voice in reply, come under the category of saints or elect ones,
above the mass of the people.

4. Foreign as the entire idea of sacrifice is to our mode of religious thought,
to antiquity it appeared as the only means of intercourse with the Deity. “In
every place offerings are presented unto My name, even pure oblations,”832
says the prophet Malachi in the name of Israel's God. Even from a higher
point of view the underlying idea seems to be of a simple offering laid upon

the altar. Such were the meal-offering (minha);833 the burnt offering (olah),
which sends its pillar of smoke up toward heaven, symbolizing the idea of
self-sacrifice; while the various sin-offerings (hattath or asham) expressed
the desire to propitiate an offended Deity. However, since the sacrificial cult
was always dominated by the priesthood in Israel as well as other nations,
the lawgiver made no essential changes in the traditional practice and
terminology. Thus it was left to the consciousness of the people to find a
deeper spiritual meaning in the sacrifices [pg 264] instead of stating one
directly. The want was supplied only by the later Haggadists who tried to
create a symbolism of the sacrificial cult. The laying on of hands by the
individual who brought the offering, seems to have been a genuine
symbolic expression of self-surrender. In the case of sin-offerings the
Mosaic cult added a higher meaning by ordering a preceding confession of
sin. Here, indeed, the individual entered into personal communion with God
through his prayer for pardon, even though the priest performed the act of
expiation for him.

5. The great prophets of Israel alone recognized that the entire sacrificial
system was out of harmony with the true spirit of Judaism and led to all
sorts of abuses, above all to a misconception of the worship of God, which
requires the uplifting of the heart. In impassioned language, therefore, they
hurled words of scathing denunciation against the practice and principle of
ritualism: “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no delight in your
solemn assemblies.

Yea, though ye offer Me burnt-offerings and your meal-offerings, I will not
accept them; Neither will I regard the peace-offerings of your fat beasts.

Take thou away from Me the noise of thy songs; and let Me not hear the
melody of thy psalteries.

But let justice well up as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.”834

Thus speaks Amos in the name of the Lord. And Hosea:

“For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than
835
burnt-offerings.”

Isaiah spoke in a similar vein:

“To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me? saith the Lord;
I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I
delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats....

[pg 265]
Bring me no more vain oblations; it is an offering of abomination unto Me;
new moon and sabbath, the holding of convocations—I cannot endure
iniquity along with the solemn assembly....

And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes from you; yea,
when ye make many prayers, I will not hear; your hands are full of blood.

Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings From before
Mine eyes, cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the
836
oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.”

Most striking of all are the words of Jeremiah, spoken in the name of the
Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt-offerings unto your
sacrifices, and eat ye flesh. For I spoke not unto your fathers, nor
commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt,
concerning burnt-offerings and sacrifices, but this thing I commanded them,
saying; ‘Hearken unto My voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be
My people; and walk ye in all the way that I command you, that it may be
well with you.’ ”837

6. However, the mere rejection of the sacrificial cult was quite negative, and
did not satisfy the normal need for communion with God. Therefore the
various codes established a sort of compromise between the prophetic ideal
and the priestly practice, in which the ideal was by no means supreme.
Sometimes the prophetic spirit stirred the soul of inspired psalmists, and
their lips echoed forth again the divine revelation:

“Hear, O My people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify against
thee: God, thy God, am I. I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices; and thy
burnt-offerings are continually before Me. I will take no bullock out of thy

house, nor he-goats out of thy folds. For every beast of the forest is Mine,
and the cattle upon a thousand hills.... [pg 266] Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or
drink the blood of goats?”838 Another psalmist says: “Sacrifice and meal-
offering thou hast no delight in; Mine ears hast Thou opened; burnt-offering
and sin-offering hast Thou not required.”839

Still, the sacrificial cult was too deeply rooted in the life of the people to be
disturbed by the voice of the prophets or the words of a few psalmists. It
was connected with the Temple, and the Temple was the center of the social
life of the nation. The few faint voices of protest went practically unheeded.
The priestly pomp of sacrifice could only be displaced by the more
elevating and more spiritual devotion of the entire congregation in prayer,
and this process demanded a new environment, and a group of men with
entirely new ideas.

7. The need of a deeper devotion through prayer was not felt until the Exile.
There altar and priesthood were no more, but the words of the prophets and
the songs of the Levites remained to kindle the people's longing for God
with a new zeal. Until then prayer was rare and for special occasions.
Hannah's prayer at Shiloh filled even the high priest with amazement.840 The
prophets alone interceded in behalf of the people, because the ordinary man
was not considered sufficiently clean from sin to approach the Deity in
prayer. But on foreign soil, where sacrifices could not be offered to the God
of Israel, the harp of David resounded with solemn songs expressing the
national longing toward God. The most touching psalms of penitence and
thanksgiving date from the exile. A select class of devout men, called the
godly or pious ones, Hasidim or Anavim,841 assembled by the rivers of
Babylon for regular prayer, turning their faces toward [pg 267] Jerusalem,
that the God of Israel might answer them from His ancient seat.842 Thus the
great seer of the exile voiced the hope for “a house of prayer for all
peoples” to stand in the very place where the sacrifices were offered to
God.843 The congregation of Hasidim elaborated a liturgy under the Persian
influence, in which prayer was the chief element, and the secondary part,
the instruction from the Torah and the monitions of the prophets. The
Synagogue, the house of meeting for the people, spread all over the world,
and by its light of truth and glow of fervor it soon eclipsed the Temple, with
all its worldly pomp. In fact, the priesthood of the Temple were finally

compelled to make concessions to the lay movement of the Hasidim. They
added a prayer service, morning and evening, to the daily sacrifices, and
opened the Hall of Hewn Stones, the meeting place of the High Court of
Justice, as a Synagogue in charge of the priests.844

8. In this manner the ancient sacrificial cult, thus long monopolized by the
priesthood, was gradually superseded by congregational prayer which was
no longer confined to a certain time or class, and justly called by the rabbis
“a service of the heart.”845 Moreover, the Temple itself lost much of its hold
upon the hearts of the people, owing to the more spiritual character of the
Synagogue. Thus the torch of the Roman soldiery which turned the Temple
into a heap of ashes broke only the national bond, but left the religious bond
of the Synagogue unbroken. True, the hope for the restoration of the Temple
with the priestly sacrifices was not relinquished, and officially the daily
prayers were considered only a “temporary substitute” for the divinely
ordained sacrificial cult.846

[pg 268]
Nevertheless, the deeper religious consciousness of the people felt that the
celestial gate of divine mercy opens only to prayer, which emanates from
the innermost depths of the soul. Accordingly, some of the Haggadists try to
prove from Scripture that prayer ranks above sacrifice,847 while others even
identify worship with prayer.848 They represent God as appearing to Moses
in the guise of one who leads the congregation in prayer, His face covered
by the prayer-shawl (tallith), in order to teach man for all time the mode
and power of prayer.849 Still these remain isolated expressions of an
underlying sentiment; on the whole, the rabbis regarded the Mosaic
legislation, with its emphasis on sacrifice, far too highly to accord prayer
any but a secondary place, either accompanying sacrifice or as its
substitute.850

9. Through many centuries, then, the belief in the divine origin of the
sacrificial cult remained, even though it could no longer be carried out. The
liturgy contained prayers for the speedy restoration of the Temple and the
sacrifices, which were preserved by tradition, and nowhere was even an
echo heard of the bold words of Jeremiah denying the divine character of
the sacrifices,851 even though the idea of the restoration of the old cult must

have been repugnant to thinkers. The sages of former ages could only resort
to a compromise or an allegorical interpretation. It is noteworthy that the
Haggadist Rabbi Levi considered the sacrifices a concession of God to the
people, who were disposed to idolatry, in order to win them gradually for
the pure monotheistic ideal.852 This view was adopted by the Church
Fathers, and later by Maimonides and other medieval thinkers. On the other
hand, an allegorical meaning was assigned to the sacrifices by Philo [pg
269] and Jehuda ha Levi, as well as by Samson Raphael Hirsch in modern
times.853

Reform Judaism, recognizing the results of Biblical research and the law of
religious progress, adopted the prophetic view of the sacrifices.
Accordingly, the sacrificial cult of the Mosaic code has no validity for the
liberal movement, and all reference to it has been eliminated from the
reform liturgy. In this, however, the connection with the past was by no
means severed. The main part of the service remains the same, although
much of the character and many of the details have been changed.854 Only
the allusions to the Temple worship and the sacrifices were eliminated, and
the entire form of the service was made more solemn and inspiring “by
combining ancient time-honored formulas with modern prayers and
meditations in the vernacular and in the spirit of the age.” The morning and
evening services retained their places, while the additional festal service
(mussaf) was abrogated, because it stood for the additional festal sacrifice.
As to the voluntary element in the old sacrificial system, the peace, sin, and
thank-offerings, this is replaced in the reform ritual, as in the traditional
practice, by private devotions for special occasions, to be selected by the
individual.

The traditional Jewish prayer has certainly a wondrous force. It remains a
source of inspiration from which the religious consciousness will ever draw
new strength and vitality. It echoes the voice of Israel singing the song of
redemption by the Red Sea: “This is My God, and I will [pg 270] glorify
Him; My father's God, and I will exalt Him.”855 Consequently our liturgy
must ever respond to a double demand; it must throb with the spirit of
continuity with our great past, to make us feel one with our fathers of yore;
and it must express clearly and fully our own views and needs, our
convictions and our hopes.

[pg 271]

Chapter XLII. The Nature and Purpose of Prayer

1. Prayer is the expression of man's longing and yearning for God in times
of dire need and of overflowing joy, an outflow of the emotions of the soul
in its dependence on God, the ever-present Helper, the eternal Source of its
existence. Springing from the deepest necessity of human weakness, the
expression of a momentary wish, prayer is felt to be the proud prerogative
of man as the child of God, and at last it becomes adoration of the Most
High, whose wisdom and whose paternal love and goodness inspire man
with confidence and love.

2. Every prayer is offered on the presumption that it will be heard by God
on high. “O Thou that hearest prayer, unto Thee doth all flesh come,” sings
the Psalmist.856 No doubt of the efficacy of prayer can arise in the devout
spirit. There can be only the question whether, and how far, the Deity can
allow its decrees to be influenced by human wishes. Childlike faith
anticipates divine interference in the natural order at any time, because it
has not yet attained the conception of a moral order in the universe and,
therefore, expects from prayer also miraculous effects on life. As the Deity
can suddenly send or withhold rain or drought, barrenness or birth, life or
death, so the inference is that the man of God can do the same with his
prayer. This is the point of view of the Biblical and Talmudic periods, as
well as of the entire ancient world. It seems almost childish to our religious
consciousness when, [pg 272] according to Talmudic tradition, the high
priest petitioned God in the Sanctuary on the Day of Atonement for a year
rich in rain and blessed with sunshine and with dew, and at the same time
expressed the entreaty that the prayers of travelers for dry or cool weather
should find no hearing.857 That the prayers of the pious may alter God's
decree is not doubted for a moment by the rabbis; only they insist that God
has taken into account beforehand the efficacy of this prayer in deciding the
fate of the pious, in order that they may petition for that which He actually
plans to do. “God longs for the prayer of the pious”; for that reason, they
say, the Mothers of Israel were afflicted with barrenness, until the prayers of

the Patriarchs had accomplished the transformation in their constitutions.858
On the other hand, the rabbis warn against excessive pondering over prayer
and its efficacy, as through it that childlike faith would be weakened, which
is the basis of all prayer.859

3. According to the rabbinic viewpoint, prayer has the power to reverse
every heavenly decree, inasmuch as it appeals from the punitive justice of
God, which has decided thus, to His attributes of grace and mercy, which
can at any time effect a change. When the prophet Isaiah came to King
Hezekiah with the message: “Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die,” he
replied, “Finish thy message and go; I have received the tradition from my
royal ancestor David that, even when the sword already touches the neck,
man shall not desist from an appeal to the divine mercy.”860 Nay more, the
rabbis believed that God Himself prays, saying, “Oh, that My mercy shall
prevail over My justice!”861 Only after the divine judgment has been
executed prayer becomes vain. In general, the entire Talmudic period
ascribed miraculous power to prayer, especially the prayers of the pious,
like the popular [pg 273] saint Onias or Hanina ben Dosa.862 In many such
cases the invocation of God was combined with the use of the sacred name,
the tetragrammaton, to which magical powers were ascribed.863

4. The two attributes of God, Justice and Mercy, correspond to the double
nature of mankind, as the sinful man, who deserves punishment, is called to
account by the former, while the righteous man may appeal to the latter.
Accordingly, the efficacy of prayer could be so explained that, before it can
influence the decision of God, it demands the reformation of man. While
the unregenerate man meets an evil destiny, the reformed man has become a
different being, and hence instead of justice mercy will control his fate.
Albo pleads for this view of prayer, when he cites the Talmudic incident
about R. Meir. It is said that R. Meir interceded for the people of Mimla,
who all seemed to have been doomed to die on attaining manhood because
they inherited the curse of the priestly family of Eli.864 But he also
recommended to them that they should devote their lives to worthy deeds,
as it is said in the Proverbs:865 “The hoary head is a crown of glory, it is
found in the way of righteousness.”866

Other thinkers ascribe to prayer the power to change the fate determined by
the stars, because it exalts man into a higher sphere of godliness, exactly
like the spirit of prophecy. Of course, this conception is connected with the
belief in astrology, which swayed even clear thinkers like Ibn Ezra.867

5. According to our modern thinking there can be no question of any
influence upon a Deity exalted above time and [pg 274] space, omniscient,
unchangeable in will and action, by the prayer of mortals. Prayer can exert
power only over the relation of man to God, not over God Himself. This
indicates the nature and purpose of prayer. Man often feels lonely and
forlorn in a world which overpowers him, to which he feels superior, and
yet which he cannot master. Therefore he longs for that unseen Spirit of the
universe, with whom alone he feels himself akin, and in whom alone he
finds peace and bliss amid life's struggle and unrest. This longing is both
expressed and satisfied in prayer. Following the natural impulse of his soul,
man must pour out before his God all his desires and sighs, all the emotions
of grief and delight which sway his heart, in order that he may find rest, like
a child at its mother's bosom. Therefore the childlike mind believes that
God can be induced to come down from His heavenly heights to offer help,
and that He can be moved and influenced in human fashion. The truth is
that every genuine prayer lifts man up toward God, satisfies the desire for
His hallowing presence, unlocks the heavenly gate of mercy and bliss, and
bestows upon man the beatific and liberating sense of being a child of God.
The intellect may question the effect of prayer upon the physical, mental, or
social constitution of man, or may declare prayer to be pious self-deception.
The religious spirit experiences in prayer the soaring up of the soul toward
union with God in consecrated moments of our mortal pilgrimage. This is
no deception. The man who prays receives from the Godhead, toward
whom he fervently lifts himself, the power to defy fate, to conquer sin,
misery, and death. “The Lord is nigh to all them that call upon Him, to all
that call upon Him in truth.”868

6. To pray, then, is to look up to God and to pour out before Him one's
wishes, thoughts, sorrows, and joys. Certainly the All-knowing does not
require to be told by us what we desire [pg 275] or what we need. “For
there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, Thou knowest it
altogether.”869 But we mortals merely aspire toward Him who bears the

world on His eternal arms, to express in His presence our agony and our
jubilation, because we are certain of His paternal sympathy. When we
praise and extol Him for the happiness and the many pleasures which He
has granted us, He becomes the Partaker and Protector of our fortune, just
as He is our sympathetic Helper when we cry out to Him under the burden
of sin or grief, in the anxiety of danger or of guilt. Every genuine prayer
realizes deeply the truth of the words, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and
He will sustain thee.”870

7. Self-expression before God in prayer has thus a double effect; it
strengthens faith in God's love and kindness, as well as in His all-wise and
all-bountiful prescience. But it also chastens the desires and feelings of
man, teaching him to banish from his heart all thoughts of self-seeking and
sin, and to raise himself toward the purity and the freedom of the divine will
and demand. The essence of every prayer of supplication is that one should
be in unison with the divine will, to sum up all the wishes of the heart in the
one phrase, “Do that which is good in Thine own eyes, O Lord.”871 On the
other hand, only the prayer which avoids impure thoughts and motives can
venture to approach a holy God, as the sages infer from the words of Job,
“There is no violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure.”872

8. Every prayer, teach the sages, should begin with the praise of God's
greatness, wisdom, and goodness, in order that man should learn
submission and implicit confidence before he proffers his requests.873 While
looking up to the divine Ideal [pg 276] of holiness and perfection, he will
strive to emulate Him, and seek to grow ever nearer to the holy and the
perfect. But only when he prays with and for others, that is, in public
worship, will he realize that he is a member of a greater whole, for then he
prays only for that which advances the welfare of all. “He who prays with
the community,” say the rabbis, “will have his prayer granted.”874

Another saying of theirs is that he who prays should have his face directed
to the sanctuary, and when he stands on its sacred precincts, he should turn
his face toward the Holy of Holies.875 By this they meant that the attitude of
the suppliant should ever be toward the highest, making the soul soar up to
the Highest and Holiest in reverent awe and adoration, transforming the
worshiper into a new character, pure from all dross.

9. Therefore prayer offered with the community upon the sanctified ground
of the house of God exerts a specially powerful influence upon the
individual. In the silent chamber the oppressed spirit may find calm and
composure in prayer; but the pure atmosphere of heavenly freedom and
bliss is attained with overwhelming might only by the united worship of
hundreds of devout adorers, which rings out like the roaring of majestic
billows: “The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence
before Him.”876 The familiar strains from days of yore touch the deep, long-
silent chords of the heart, and awaken dormant sentiments and repressed
thoughts, endowing the soul with new wings, to lift itself up toward God,
the Father, from whom it had felt itself alienated. In the ardor of communal
worship the traditional words of the prayer-book obtain invigorating power;
the heart is newly strengthened; the covenant with heaven sealed anew. To
such communal prayer, which springs from the heart, the rabbis refer the
Biblical words, “to serve Him with the whole [pg 277] heart.”877 The
synagogal worship exerts an ennobling influence upon the spirit of the
individual as well as that of the community. For after all the main object is
that the soul which aspires toward God may learn to find God. “Seek ye the
Lord while He may be found; call ye upon Him while He is near.”878 No
man is so poor as he who calls in agony: “O God!” and to whom neither the
heaven above nor the heart within answers, “Behold, God is here.” Nor is
any man so rich with all his possessions as he who realizes, like the
Psalmist, that “the nearness of God is the true good,” and imbued with this
thought exclaims, “Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And beside Thee I
desire none upon earth.”879

[pg 278]

Chapter XLIII. Death and the Future Life

1. The vision of man is directed upwards and forwards; he will not resign
himself to decay in the dust like the beast. As he bears in his breast the
consciousness of a higher divine world, he is equally confident of his own
continuity after death. He cannot and will not believe that with the giving
up of his last living breath his being would become dust like that of the
animal; or that his soul, which has hitherto accomplished and planned so
much, should now suddenly cease altogether to exist. The longing for a
future life, however expressed, has filled him and buoyed him up since the
very beginning of history. Even the most primitive tribe does not allow its
dead to lie and rot like the carcasses of the beast, but lays them to rest in the
grave with all their possessions, in the expectation that somewhere and
somehow, under, over or beyond the earth, they will continue their lives,
even in a better form than before.

This longing for immortality implanted in the human soul is so represented
in the legend of Paradise that the tree whose fruit bestowed upon the
celestial beings the gift of eternal life—like the Greek ambrosia, “the food
of the gods”—was originally intended for mankind also in the divine
“Garden of Bliss.” But after man fell through sin, all access to it was denied
him, in order that he might not stretch out his hand for it and thereby attain
that immortality which was vouchsafed only to divine beings.880 According
to his original destiny, therefore, man should live forever; and, just as
legend allows [pg 279] those divinely elected, like Enoch and Elijah,881 to
ascend to heaven alive, so at a later period prophecy predicts a time when
God will annihilate death forever.882 Accordingly, through the power of his
divine soul man possesses a claim to immortality, to eternal life with God,
the “Fountain of life.”

2. It was just this keen longing for an energetic life on earth, this mighty
yearning to “walk before God in the land of the living,”883 which made it
more difficult for Judaism to brighten the “valley of the shadow of death”

and to elevate the vague notion of a shadowy existence in the hereafter into
a special religious teaching. Until long after the Exile the Jewish people
shared the view of the entire ancient world,—both the Semitic nations, such
as the Babylonians and Phœnicians, and the Aryans, such as the Greeks and
Romans,—that the dead continue to exist in the shadowy realm of the
nether world (Sheol), the land of no return (Beliyaal),884 of eternal silence
(Dumah), and oblivion (Neshiyah),885 a dull, ghostly existence without clear
consciousness and without any awakening to a better life. We must,
however, not overlook the fact that even in these most primitive
conceptions a certain imperishability is ascribed to man as marking his
superiority over the animal world, which is altogether abandoned to decay.
Hence the belief in the existence of the shades, the Refaim in Sheol.886 But
throughout the Biblical period no ethical idea yet permeated this
conception, and no attempt was made to transform the nether world into a
place of divine judgment, of recompense for the good and evil deeds
accomplished on earth,887 as did the Babylonians and Egyptians. Both the
prophets and the Mosaic code persist in applying their promises and threats,
in fact, their entire view of retribution, to this world, nor do [pg 280] they
indicate by a single word the belief in a judgment or a weighing of actions
in the world to come.

3. Whether the Mosaic-prophetic writings be regarded from the standpoint
of traditional faith or of historical criticism, the limitation of their teaching
and exhortation to the present life can be considered narrowness only by
biased expounders of the “Old Testament.” The Israelitish lawgiver could
not have been altogether ignorant of the Egyptian or the Babylonian
conceptions of the future world. Obviously Israel's prophets and lawgivers
deliberately avoided giving any definite expression to the common belief in
a future life after death, especially as the Canaanitish magicians and
necromancers used this popular belief to carry on their superstitious
practices, so dangerous to all moral progress.888 The great task which
prophetic Judaism set itself was to place the entire life of men and nations
in the service of the God of justice and holiness; there was thus no motive
to extend the dominion of JHVH, the God of life, to the underworld, the
playground of the forces of fear and superstition. As late as the author of the
book of Job and of the earlier Psalms, Sheol was known as the despot of the
nether world with its demoniacal forms, as the “king of terrors” who

extends his scepter over the dead.889 Only gradually does the thought find
expression in the Psalms that the Omnipotent Ruler of heaven could also
rescue the soul out of the power of Sheol,890 and that His omnipresence
included likewise the nether world.891 In this trustful spirit the Hasidic
Psalmist expressed the hope: “Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Sheol,
neither wilt Thou suffer Thy godly one to see the pit. Thou makest me to
know the path of life; in Thy presence is fulness of joy; in Thy right hand
bliss forevermore.”892

[pg 281]
4. Biblical Judaism evinced such a powerful impetus toward a complete and
blissful life with God, that the center and purpose of existence could not be
transferred to the hereafter, as in other systems of belief, but was found in
the desire to work out the life here on earth to its fullest possible
development. Virtue and wisdom, righteousness and piety, signify and
secure true life; vice and folly, iniquity and sin, lead to death and
annihilation. This is the ever recurring burden of the popular as well as of
the prophetic and priestly wisdom of Israel.893 In the song of thanks of King
Hezekiah after his recovery, the Jewish soul expresses itself, when he
says:894 “I said, I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord in the land of the
living.... But Thou hast delivered my soul from the pit of corruption. For the
nether world cannot praise Thee; death cannot celebrate Thee. The living,
the living, he shall praise Thee, as I do this day. The father to the children
shall make known Thy truth.” Therefore the author of the seventy-third
Psalm, ennobled by trials, finds sufficient comfort and happiness in the
presence of God that he can spurn all earthly treasures.895 Job, too, in his
affliction longed for death as release from all earthly pain and sorrow, but
not to bring him a state of rest and peace like the Nirvana of the Indian
beggar-monk, or an outlook into a better world to come. Such an awakening
to a new life seems to him unthinkable,—although many commentators
have often endeavored to read such a hope into certain of his expressions.896
Instead, his belief in God as the Ruler of the infinite world, with His lofty
moral purpose far outreaching all human wisdom, lent him courage and
power for further effort and persistent striving on earth. Since to this [pg
282] suffering hero, impelled to deeds by his own energy, life is a
continuous battle, a hereafter as a “world of reward and punishment” can
hardly solve the great enigma of human existence in a satisfactory manner

for him. The wise ones—says a Talmudic maxim—find rest neither in this
world nor in the world to come, but “they shall ascend from strength to
strength, until they appear before God on Zion.”897

5. In the course of time, however, the question of existence after death
demanded more and more a satisfactory answer. Under the severe political
and social oppression that came upon the Jewish people, the pious ones
failed to see a just equation of man's doings and his destiny in this life. The
bitter disappointment which they experienced made them look to the God of
justice for a future, when virtue would receive its due reward and vice its
befitting punishment. The community of the pious especially awaited in
vain the realization of the great messianic hope with which the prophetic
words of comfort had filled their hearts. They had willingly offered up their
lives for the truth of Judaism, and the God of faithfulness could not deceive
them. Surely the shadowy realm of the nether world could not be the end of
all. So the voice of promise came to them from the book of Isaiah, where
these encouraging and comforting words were inserted by a later hand:
“Thy dead shall live; thy (My) dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing, ye
that dwell in the dust, for Thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall
cast forth the shades.”898 Even before this time the God of Israel had been
praised as “He who killeth and maketh alive, who bringeth down to Sheol,
and bringeth up.”899 So was also the miraculous power of restoring the dead
to life ascribed to the [pg 283] prophets.900 Furthermore, the vision of the
prophet Ezekiel concerning the dry bones which arose to new life, in which
he beheld the divine revelation of the approaching event of the restoration
of the Jewish nation,901 shows how familiar the idea of resurrection must
have been to the people. Hence the minds of the Jewish people were
sufficiently prepared to adopt the Persian belief in the resurrection of the
dead.

6. This, however, led to a tremendous process of transformation in Judaism
with a wide chasm between Mosaism and Rabbinism, or, more accurately,
between the Sadducees, who adhered to the letter of the law, and the
Pharisees, who embodied the progressive spirit of the people. On the one
hand, Jesus ben Sira, who at the close of his book speaks with great
admiration of the high-priest Simon the Just as his contemporary, knew as
yet nothing of a future life, and like Koheleth saw the end of all human

existence in the dismal realm of the nether world. Yet at the same time, the
Hasidim or pious ones and their successors, the Pharisees, were developing
after the Persian pattern the thought of a divine judgment day after death,
when the just were to awaken to eternal life, and the evil-doers to shame
and everlasting contempt.902 This advanced moral view, frequently
overlooked, transformed the ancient Semitic Sheol from the realm of shades
to a place of punishment for sinners, and thus invested it with an ethical
purpose.903 After this the various Biblical names for the nether world
became the various divisions of [pg 284] hell.904 Indeed, the Psalmists and
the Proverbs had announced to the wicked their destruction in Sheol, and on
the other hand held out for the godly the hope of deliverance from Sheol
and a beatific sight of God in the land of the living. Thus the transition was
prepared for the new world-conception. All the promises and threats of the
law and the prophets, when they did not receive fulfillment in this world,
appeared now to point forward to the world to come. Moreover, the
Pharisees in their disputes with the Sadducees made use of every reference,
however slight, to the future life,—even of such passages as those which
speak of the Patriarchs as receiving the promise of possessing the Holy
Land, as if they were still alive,—as proofs of the continued life of the dead,
or of their resurrection.905 Thus it came about that the leading authorities of
rabbinic Judaism were in the position to declare in the Mishnah: “He who
says that the belief in the resurrection of the dead is not founded on the
Torah (and therefore does not accept it) shall have no share in the world to
come.”906

7. The founders of the liturgy of the Synagogue, in opposition to the
Sadducees, formulated therefore the belief in resurrection in the second of
the “Eighteen (or Seven) Benedictions” of the daily prayer in the following
words: “Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou revivest the dead. Thou art
mighty to save. Thou sustainest the living with loving-kindness, revivest the
dead with great mercy, supportest the falling, healest the sick, loosest the
bound, and keepest Thy faith to them that sleep in the dust. (This refers to
the Patriarchs, to whom God has promised the land of the future.) Who is
like unto Thee, O Lord of mighty acts, and who resembleth Thee, O King,
who killest and bringest to life, and causest salvation to spring forth? Yea,
faithful art Thou to [pg 285] revive the dead. Blessed art Thou, O Lord,
who revivest the dead.” In this prayer dating from the age of the

Maccabees907 the Jewish consciousness of two thousand years found a
twofold hope,—the national and the universally human. The national hope,
which combined the belief in the restoration of the kingdom of David and
of the sacrificial cult with the resurrection of the dead in the Holy Land, can
be understood only in connection with a historic view of Israel's place in the
world, and is treated in the third part of this book. The purely human hope
for the continuity or the renewal of life rests on two fundamental problems
which must be examined more closely in the next two chapters. The one
belongs to the province of psychology and considers the question: What is
the eternal divine element in man? The other goes more deeply into the
religious and moral nature of man and considers the question: Where and
how does divine retribution—reward or punishment—take place in human
life? To both of these questions our modern view, with its special aim
toward a unified grasp of the totality of life, requires a special answer. This
can be neither that of rabbinic Judaism, which rests upon Persian dualism,
nor that of medieval philosophy, which was under the Platonic-Aristotelian
influence.

[pg 286]

Chapter XLIV. The Immortal Soul of Man

1. The idea of immortality has been found in Scripture in a rather obscure
and probably corrupt passage,908 “In the way of righteousness is life, and in
the pathway thereof there is no death.” In the same spirit Aquila, the Bible
translator, who belonged to the school of R. Eliezer and R. Joshua, renders
the equally obscure passage from the Psalms,909 “He will lead us to
immortality,” reading al maveth, the Al with Alef, for al muth, the Al with
Ayin. There is more solid foundation for the view that the verse, “God
created man in His own image” implies that there is an imperishable divine
essence in man. In fact, that which distinguishes man from the animal as
well as from the rest of creation, both the starry worlds above and the
manifold forms of life on earth about him, is his self-conscious personality,
his ego, through which he feels himself akin with God, the great world-
ruling I Am. This self-conscious part of man, which lends to his every
manifestation its value and purpose, can no more disappear into nothingness
than can God, who called into existence this world with all its phenomena,
who set it in motion and directs it. Whatever thought the crudest of men
may have of his ego, his self,910 or however the most learned scholar may
explain the marvelous action and interaction of physical and psychical or
spiritual [pg 287] forces which culminates in his own self-conscious
personality, it appears certain that this ego cannot cease to be with the
cessation of the bodily functions. There is in us something divine, immortal,
and the only question is wherein it may be found.

2. The creation of man which is described in the Bible in the words, “God
formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life, and man became a living soul”911 corresponds to the child-
like conceptions of a primitive people. On the other hand, Scripture speaks
of death in parallel terms, “The dust returneth to the earth as it was, and the
spirit (Ruah, the life-giving breath) returneth unto God who gave it.”912

The conception that the soul enters into man as the breath of life and leaves
him at his death, flying toward heaven like a bird,913 is quite as ancient and
as universal as the other, that the soul descends into the nether world as a
shadowy image of the body, there to continue a dull existence. The two are
related to one another, and in the Bible, as well as in the literature of other
peoples, they have given rise to diverse definitions of the soul. This was the
point of departure for the development of the conception of immortality in
one or the other direction, according to whether the body was considered a
part of the personality which somehow survives after death, or only the
spiritual substance of the soul was thought to live on in celestial regions as
something divine. The former led to the theory of the resurrection of the
body and its reunion with the soul; the latter to the belief in a future life for
the soul, after it had been separated or released from the body.

3. When once the soul was felt to be a “lamp of the Lord,” filling the body
with light when man is awake,914 it was easy to imagine that the soul had
escaped and temporarily returned [pg 288] to God in sleep. This induced the
teachers of the Synagogue to prescribe a morning prayer of thanks which
reads, “Blessed art Thou, O God, who restorest the souls unto dead
bodies.”915 The conception underlying this prayer throws light upon the
entire belief in resurrection. Death to the pious is only a prolonged sleep.
On that account the prophet in the passage from Isaiah already referred to,
as well as the Hasidic author of the Book of Daniel,916 could express the
hope that “those who sleep in the dust shall awake.” As at every awakening
from sleep in the morning, so at the great awakening in the future, the souls
which have departed in death shall return again to their bodies. These
bodies could then hardly be conceived of as subject to decomposition, and
the picture in Ezekiel's vision of resurrection917 had to be accepted as fact.
Still R. Simeon b. Yohai in the especially instructive thirty-fourth chapter of
Pirke de R. Eliezer assumes the complete disintegration of the body, in
order to render the miracle of resurrection so much the greater. Later still
arose the legend of an indestructible bone of the spinal column, called Luz,
which was to form the nucleus for the revival of the whole body.918 The
name Luz, which denotes an almond tree and is the name given in the Bible
to a city also,919 seemed to point to a connection with two legends, a
fabulous city into which death could not enter,920 and the tree of resurrection
in the Osiris cycle.921

4. Still, no clear, consistent view of the soul prevailed as yet in the rabbinic
age. The popular belief, influenced by Persian notions, was that the soul
lingers near the body for a certain time after it has relinquished it, either
from three to seven days or for an entire year.922 Furthermore it was said
that after death the souls hovered between heaven and earth [pg 289] in the
form of ghosts, able to overhear the secrets of the future decreed above and
to betray them to human beings below. In fact, the rabbis of the Talmud,
especially the Hasidim, never hesitated to accept these ghost stories.923
Some sages of the Talmudic period taught that the souls of the righteous
ascend to heaven, there to dwell under the throne of the divine majesty,
awaiting the time of the renewal of the world, while the souls of the godless
hovered over the horizon of the earth as restless demoniacal spirits, finally
to succumb to the fate of annihilation, after they had been cast down into
the fiery pit of Gehenna or Sheol.924 Of course, this view, which prevails in
both the Talmud and the New Testament, according to which the souls of
the wicked are to be consumed in the fire of Gehenna, is inconsistent with
the conception of the purely spiritual nature of the soul.

Nevertheless at this same epoch we find the higher idea expressed that the
soul is an invisible, god-like essence, pervading the body as a spiritual force
and differing from it in nature in much the same way as God is
differentiated from the world.925 “Thou wishest to know where God dwells,
who is as high as are the heavens above the earth; tell me then where dwells
thy soul, which is so near,” replied R. Gamaliel to a heathen.926 The
prevailing view of the schools is that God implants the soul in the embryo
while in the mother's womb, together with all the spiritual potentialities
which make it human. In fact, R. Simlai, the third-century Haggadist,
advances the Platonic conception of the preëxistence of the soul, as a being
of the highest intelligence, which sees before birth all things throughout the
world, but forgets all at birth, so that all subsequent learning is only a
recollection.927 In Hellenistic Judaism especially the doctrine seems to have
been general of the preëxistence of the soul, or of the creation of all human
souls simultaneously [pg 290] with the creation of the world.928 Of course,
the soul which emanates from a higher world must be eternal.

5. The first clear idea of the nature of the soul came with the
philosophically trained thinkers, who were dependent either on Plato, main

founder of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, or on Aristotle, who
ascribes immortality only to the creative spirit of God, the supreme
Intelligence as a cosmic power. The nearest approach to Plato was Philo,929
who saw in the three Biblical names for the soul, nefesh, ruah, and
neshama, the three souls of the Platonic system,—the sensuous soul, which
has its seat in the abdomen; the courageous or emotional soul, situated in
the breast; and the intellectual soul, which dwells in the brain and contains
the imperishable divine nature. This last is kept in its physical environment
as in a prison or a grave, and ever yearns for liberation and reunion with
God. The soul of the righteous enters the world of angels after death; that of
the wicked the world of demons.

Saadia, who was under the influence of Aristotle interpreted from the neo-
Platonic viewpoint, did not share the Platonic dualism of matter and spirit,
nor did he divide the soul into three parts, seated in various parts of the
human body. He finds the soul to be a spiritual substance created
simultaneously with the body, and uniting the three forces of the soul
distinguished in Scripture into one inseparable whole, the seat of which is in
the heart,—wherefore soul and heart are often synonymous in the Bible.
This indivisible substance possesses a luminous nature like that of the
spheres, but is simpler, finer, and purer than they, and endowed with the
power of thought. It was created by God out of the primal ether from which
He made the angels, simultaneously with the body and [pg 291] within it.
By this union it was qualified to display that moral activity prescribed for it
in the divine teaching, the neglect of which would defile and tarnish it.
According to Saadia some kind of material substance adheres to the soul as
well as to the angels, and on that account he does not hesitate to accept the
Talmudic expressions about the abode of the soul after death, or the last
judgment which is to take place as soon as the appointed number of souls
shall have made their entrance into their earthly bodies, when the souls of
the righteous will have their angelic nature recognized, and those of the
wicked will have their lower character revealed. However, Saadia combats
with so much greater fervor the Hindu teaching of metempsychosis, which
had been adopted by Plato and Pythagoras.930

Bahya connects his theory with the three souls of Plato, and likewise
ascribes to the soul an ethereal essence.931 He holds that its destiny is to

raise itself to the order of the angels through self-purification, and finally to
return to God as the divine Source of light. To this end the intellectual soul,
which has its being from the primal light, must overcome the lower
sensuous soul which leads to sin.

6. The conception that the soul is a substance derived from the luminous
primal matter, like the heavenly spheres and the angels, was now
persistently retained by the Jewish thinkers, who explained thereby its
immortality. In adopting the Aristotelian theory that the soul is the form-
principle of the body, the Platonic doctrine of its preexistence was gradually
relinquished, and its existence ascribed to a creative act of God at the birth
of the child or at its conception. But Jehuda ha-Levi, the most pious of all
the philosophers, emphasized vigorously the indivisibility of the soul, its
incorporeality and [pg 292] its reality apart from the condition of the body,
and—in opposition to the Aristotelian free-thinkers, who expected the
human soul to be absorbed into the divine soul, the active intellect,—he
declared the immortality of the individual a fundamental article of faith.932

Now some of the Jewish thinkers, following Jehuda ha Levi, Ibn Daud, and
others, though Aristotelians, shrank from the logical conclusion of denying
all individuality to the soul, and attributed to it rather a process of
purification, which ends with the elevation of the soul-essence to angelic
rank and thus guarantees its immortality. Not so Maimonides, who accepted
with inexorable earnestness the Aristotelian idea of form as the perfection
of matter. The essence of the human soul is, for him, that force or
potentiality which qualifies it for the highest development of the intellect,
and is alone capable of grasping the divine. Yet it can acquire a part in the
creative World-spirit only in the same degree as it unfolds this potentiality
to share the divine intellect, whose seat is the highest sphere of the universe.
By dint of this acquired intelligence it can live on as an independent
intellect, in the image of God, and thus attain beatitude in the contemplation
of Divinity.933

7. Naturally the view of Maimonides, that a certain measure of immortality
is granted only to the wise,—though they must be morally perfect as well,
—aroused great opposition. Hasdai Crescas proves its untenableness by
asking, “Why shall the wise alone share in immortality? Furthermore, how

can something that came into existence in the course of human life
suddenly acquire eternal duration? Or how can there be any bliss in the
knowledge of God where there is no personality, [pg 293] no self-conscious
ego to enjoy it?” Therefore Crescas ascribed to the soul an indestructible
spiritual essence whose perfection is attained, not by mere intellect or
knowledge, but by love of God manifested in a religious and moral life, and
which is thereby made to share in eternal bliss.934

8. All these various thinkers find the future life either expressed or
suggested in the Scriptures as a truth based upon reason. This is especially
the conception of Abraham ibn Daud, who, contrary to his Aristotelian
successor Maimonides, sees in self-consciousness, by which the soul
differentiates itself from the body as a personality, the proof that it cannot
be subject to dissolution with the body.935

Besides the philosophic doctrine of the immortality of the soul, however,
the traditional belief in the resurrection of the body demanded some
consideration on the part of these philosophers. Saadia defends the latter
with all his might, endeavoring to reconcile the two as best he can.936 All the
rest leave us in doubt whether resurrection is to be understood literally or
symbolically. Maimonides especially involves himself in difficulties,
inasmuch as in his commentary on the Mishna he considers the resurrection
of the dead an unalterable article of faith, whereas in his Code937 and in the
Moreh he speaks only of immortality; and again before the end of his life he
wrote, obviously in self-defense, a work which seems to favor bodily
resurrection, yet without clarifying his conceptions at any time.938 The belief
in resurrection had taken too deep a root in the Jewish consciousness and
had been too firmly established through the liturgy of the Synagogue for
any philosopher to touch it without injuring the very foundations of faith.

[pg 294]
Moreover, beside external caution a certain inner need seems to have
impelled toward the acceptance of resurrection. As soon as one thinks of the
soul as existing or continuing to live in an incorporeal state, one is
involuntarily led toward the belief in the soul's preëxistence or even in the
possibility of metempsychosis. Thus it seemed more reasonable to believe
in a new formation of the human body together with a new creation of the

world. Therewith came the disposition to assign to the soul in the future
world a body of finer substance, like that assumed by the mystic
Nahmanides,939 in order to assure to the new humanity a wondrous duration
of life like that of Elijah.

9. While the popular philosopher Albo rightly declares that the nature of the
soul is as far beyond all human understanding as is the nature of God,940 the
mystics sought all the more to penetrate its secrets. The Cabbalah also
divides the soul into three different substances according to the three
Biblical names, assigning their origins to the three different spheres of the
universe, and reiterating the Platonic theory of the preexistence of the soul
and its future transmigration. This division into three parts provided scope
for all types of theories concerning the soul in its sensuous, its moral, and
its intellectual nature. Fundamentally the Cabbalah considered the soul an
emanation from the divine intellect with a luminous character just like the
philosophers. But in the Platonic view of the ascending order of creation,
which forms the basis of the Cabbalah, this mundane life is an abyss of
moral degradation, so that the soul yearns toward the primal Source of light,
finally to find freedom and bliss with God.941 Thus the later Cabbalah
returned to the teachings of Philo, the Jewish Plato, for whom death was
only the stripping off of the earthly frame in order to enter the pure and
luminous world of God.

[pg 295]
10. With Moses Mendelssohn, who in his Phædon tried to translate Plato's
proof of immortality into modern terms, a new attitude toward the nature
and destiny of the soul arose in Judaism among both the philosophers and
the educated laity. Mendelssohn not only endeavored to prove the
immortality of the soul through its indivisibility and incorporeality, as all
the neo-Platonists and Jewish philosophers had done before him; he also
attempted to show from the harmonious plan which pervades and controls
all of God's creation, that the soul may enter a sphere of existence greater in
extent and content than the little span of earthly life which it relinquishes.
The progress of the soul toward its highest unfolding, unsatisfied in this
life, demands a future growth in the direction of god-like perfection.942 At
this point the philosopher enters the province of faith, and thus furnishes for
all time the cardinal point of the belief in immortality. The divine spirit in