Palestine is a word equivalent to Philistia, or the land of the Philistines. A similar name for the coast region of Syria has been found on a monument in Nineveh,336 and at Karnak in Egypt.337 Josephus and Philo use the term "Palestine," as applying to the Philistines; and the accurate learning of Milton appears in his using it in the same sense.338 "The land of Canaan," "The land of Israel," and "Judæa" were the names afterward given to the territory of the children of Israel. It is a small country, like others as famous; for it is only about one hundred and forty English miles in length, and forty in width. It resembles Greece and Switzerland, not only in its small dimensions, but by being composed of valleys, separated by chains of mountains and by ranges of hills. It was isolated by the great sea of sand on the east, and the Mediterranean on the west. Sharply defined on the east, west, and south, it stretches indefinitely into Syria on the north. It is a hilly, high-lying region, having all the characters of Greece except proximity to the sea, and all those of Switzerland except the height of the mountains. Its valleys were well watered and fertile. They mostly ran north and south; none opened a way across, Judæa to the Mediterranean. This geographical fact assisted in the isolation of the country. Two great routes of travel passed by its borders without entering its hills. On the west the plains of Philistia were the highway of the Assyrian and Egyptian armies. On the north the valley of the Orontes, separated by the chain of Lebanon from Palestine, allowed the people of Asia a free passage to the sea. So, though surrounded by five great nations, all idolatrous,—the Babylonians, Medes, Assyrians, Phoenicians, and Egyptians,—the people of Judæa were enabled to develop their own character and institutions without much interference from without. Inaccessible from the sea, and surrounded, like the Swiss, by the natural fortifications of their hills, like the Swiss they were also protected by their poverty from spoilers. But being at the point of contact of three continents, they had (like the Mahommedans afterwards) great facilities for communicating their religious ideas to other nations.
Palestine is so small a country that from many points the whole of it may be overlooked339. Toward the east, from all points, may be seen the high plateau of Moab and the mountains of Gilead. Snow-capped Hermon is always visible on the north. In the heart of the land rises the beautiful mountain Tabor, clothed with vegetation to its summit. It is almost a perfect cone, and commands the most interesting view in all directions. From its top, to which you ascend from Nazareth by a path which Jesus may have trod, you see to the northeast the lofty chain of Hermon (Jebel es Sheikh = the Captain) rising into the blue sky to the height of ten thousand feet, covered with eternal snow. West of this appears the chain of Lebanon. At the foot of Tabor the plain of Esdraelon extends northerly, dotted with hills, and animated with the camps of the Arabs340. The Lake of Galilee gleams, a silver line, on the east, with Bashan and the mountains of Gilead in the distance, and farther to the southeast the great plateau of Moab rises like a mountain wall beyond the Jordan. The valley of the Jordan itself, sunk far below the level of the Mediterranean, is out of sight in its deep valley; nor is anything seen of the Dead Sea. To the northwest rises rocky Carmel, overhanging the Bay of Accha (or Acre), on the Mediterranean.
The whole country stands high. Hebron, at the south, is three thousand feet above the level of the sea; Jerusalem is twenty-six hundred; the Mount of Olives, twenty-seven hundred; and Ebal and Gerizim in Samaria, the same. The valley in which Nazareth stands is eight hundred and twenty feet above the sea; that at the foot of Tabor, four hundred and thirty-nine; while the summit of Tabor itself is seventeen hundred and fifty. From Judæa the land plunges downward very rapidly toward the east into the valley of Jordan. The surface of Lake Galilee is already five hundred and thirty-five feet below that of the Mediterranean, and that of the Dead Sea is five hundred feet lower down.341 Palestine is therefore a mountain fastness, and most of the waves of war swept by, leaving it untouched and unassailed. From Jerusalem to Jericho the distance is only thirteen miles, but the latter place is a thousand feet lower than the former, so that it was very proper to speak of a man's "going down from Jerusalem to Jericho."
The Jews belonged to what has been called the Semitic race. This family, the only historic rival of the Japhetic (or Aryan) race, is ethnologically composed of the Assyrians and Babylonians, the Phoenicians, the Hebrews and other Syrian tribes, the Arabs and the Carthaginians. It is a race which has been great on land and at sea. In the valley of the Euphrates and that of the Tigris its sons carried all the arts of social life to the highest perfection, and became mighty conquerors and warlike soldiers. On the Mediterranean their ships, containing Phoenician navigators, explored the coasts, made settlements at Carthage and Cadiz, and sailing out of the Straits of Gibraltar went as far north as Great Britain, and circumnavigated Africa two thousand years before Vasco da Gama. This race has given to man the alphabet, the Bible, the Koran, commerce, and in Hannibal the greatest military genius of all time.
That the different nations inhabiting the region around the Euphrates and Tigris, Syria and Arabia, belonged to one great race, is proved by the unimpeachable testimony of language. The Bible genealogies trace them to Shem, the son of Noah. Ewald,342 who believes that this region was inhabited by an aboriginal people long before the days of Abraham,—a people who were driven out by the Canaanites,—nevertheless says that they no doubt were a Semitic people. The languages of all these nations is closely related, being almost dialects of a single tongue, the differences between them being hardly greater than between the subdivisions of the German group of languages.343 That which has contributed to preserve the close homogeneity among these tongues is, that they have little power of growth or development. As M. Renan says, "they have less lived than lasted."344
The Phoenicians used a language almost identical with the Hebrew. A sarcophagus of Ezmunazar, king of Sidon, dating from the fifth century before Christ, was discovered a few years since, and is now in the Museum of the Louvre. It contains some thirty sentences of the length of an average verse in the Bible, and is in pure Hebrew.345 In a play of Plautus346 a Carthaginian is made to speak a long passage in his native language, the Punic tongue; this is also very readable Hebrew. The black basalt stele, lately discovered in the land of Moab, contains an inscription of Mesha, king of Moab, addressed to his god, Chemosh, describing his victory over the Israelites. This is also in a Hebrew dialect. From such facts it appears that the Hebrews, Phoenicians, and Canaanites were all congeners with each other, and with the Babylonians and Assyrians.
But now the striking fact appears that the Hebrew religion differed widely from that of these other nations of the same family. The Assyrians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, and Carthaginians all possessed a nearly identical religion. They all believed in a supreme god, called by the different names of Ilu, Bel, Set, Hadad, Moloch, Chemosh, Jaoh, El, Adon, Asshur. All believed in subordinate and secondary beings, emanations from this supreme being, his manifestations to the world, rulers of the planets. Like other pantheistic religions, the custom prevailed among the Semitic nations of promoting first one and then another deity to be the supreme object of worship. Among the Assyrians, as among the Egyptians, the gods were often arranged in triads, as that of Ann, Bel, and Ao. Anu, or Cannes, wore the head of a fish; Bel wore the horns of a bull; Ao was represented by a serpent. These religions represented the gods as the spirit within nature, and behind natural objects and forces,—powers within the world, rather than above the world. Their worship combined cruelty and licentiousness, and was perhaps as debasing a superstition as the world has witnessed. The Greeks, who were not puritans themselves in their religion, were shocked at the impure orgies of this worship, and horrified at the sacrifice of children among the Canaanites and Carthaginians.
How then did the Hebrews, under Moses and the later prophets, originate a system so widely different? Their God was above nature, not in it. He stood alone, unaccompanied by secondary deities; he made no part of a triad; he was not associated with a female representative. His worship required purity, not pollution; its aim was holiness, and its spirit humane, not cruel. Monotheistic in its spirit from the first, it became an absolute monotheism in its development. Whence this wide departure in the Hebrews from the religious tendencies and belief of the surrounding nations, who spoke the same language and belonged to the same stock?
M. Renan considers this a question of race.347 He says: "The Indo-European race, distracted by the variety of the universe, never by itself arrived at monotheism. The Semitic race, on the other hand, guided by its firm and sure sight, instantly unmasked Divinity, and without reflection or reasoning attained the purest form of religion that humanity has known." But the Assyrians, Babylonians, Arabians before Mohammed, Phoenicians, and Carthaginians, and perhaps the Egyptians, belonged to the Semitic race. Yet none of these nations attained to any monotheism purer than that of the Veda or the Avesta. The Arabs, near relations of the Hebrews, were divided between a worship like that of Babylon and Sabæism, or star-worship. No doubt in all these Semitic families the idea of one supreme god lay behind that of the secondary deities; but this was also the case in the Aryan races. And in both this primitive monotheism receded instead of becoming more distinct, with the single exception of the Hebrews. M. Renan's view is not, therefore, supported by the facts. We must look further to find the true cause, and therefore are obliged to examine somewhat in detail the main points of Hebrew history. It would be easy, but would not accord with our plan, to accept the common Christian explanation, and say, "Monotheism was a direct revelation to Moses." For we are now not able to assume such a revelation, and are obliged to consider the subject from the outside, from the stand-point of pure history.
We have been so accustomed to regard the Jewish religion as a part of our own, and so to look at it from within, that it is hard to take the historic position, and to look at it from without. But to compare it with other religions, and to see what it really is and is not, this is necessary. It becomes more difficult to assume the attitude of an impartial observer, because of the doctrine of verbal inspiration, so universally taught in the Protestant Church. From childhood we have looked on the Old Testament as inspired throughout, and all on the same level of absolute infallibility. There is no high, no low, no degrees of certitude or probability, where every word is assumed to be the very word of God. But those who still hold to the plenary inspiration of the Old Testament must consent, for our present purpose, to suspend their faith in this doctrine, and provisionally to look at the Old Testament with the same impartial though friendly scrutiny with which we have regarded the sacred books of other nations. Not a little will be gained for the Jewish Scriptures by this position. If they lose the authority which attaches to the Word of God, they will gain the interest which belongs to the utterance of man.
While M. Renan finds the source of Hebrew monotheism in a like tendency in the whole Semitic race,—a supposition which we have seen to be contradicted by the facts,—Max Müller regards the true origin of this tendency to be in Abraham himself, the friend of God, and Father of the Faithful. He calls attention to the fact that both Moses and Christ, and subsequently Mohammed, preached no new God, but the God of Abraham. "Thus," says he, "the faith in the one living God, which seemed to require the admission of a monotheistic instinct grafted in every member of the Semitic family, is traced back to one man." He adds his belief that this faith of Abraham in one supreme God came to him by a special revelation.
And if, by a special revelation, is meant a grand profound insight, an inspired vision of truth, so deep and so living as to make it a reality like that of the outward world, then we see no better explanation of the monotheism of the Hebrews than this conviction transmitted from Abraham through father and son, from generation to generation.
For the most curious fact about this Jewish people is, that every one of them348 is a child of Abraham. All looked back with the same ancestral pride to their great progenitor, the friend of God. This has never been the case with any other nation, for the Arabs are not a nation. One can hardly imagine a greater spur to patriotism than this union of pride of descent with pride in one's nation and its institutions. The proudest and poorest Jew shared it together. There was one distinction, and that the most honorable, which belonged equally to all.
We have seen that, in all the Semitic nations, behind the numerous divine beings representing the powers of nature, there was dimly visible one Supreme Being, of whom all these were emanations. The tendency to lose sight of this First Great Cause, so common in the race, was reversed in Abraham. His soul rose to the contemplation of the Perfect Being, above all, and the source of all. With passionate love he adored this Most High God, Maker of heaven and earth. Such was his devotion to this Almighty Being, that men, wondering, said, "Abraham is the friend of the Most High God!" He desired to find a home where he could bring up his children in this pure faith, undisturbed and unperverted by the gross and low worship around him. In some "deep dream or solemn vision" it was borne in on his mind that he must go and find such a home.
We are not to suppose, however, that the mind of Abraham rose to a clear conception of the unity of God, as excluding all other divine beings. The idea of local, tribal, family gods was too deeply rooted to be at once relinquished. Abraham, as described in Genesis, is a great Arab chief, a type of patriarchal life, in which all authority is paternal. The religion of such a period is filial, and God is viewed as the protector and friend of the family or tribe. Only the family God of Abraham was the highest of all gods, the Almighty (Gen. xvii. 1), who was also the God of Isaac (Gen. xxviii. 3) and of Jacob (Gen. xxxv. 11).
Stanley349 expresses his satisfaction that the time has past in which the most fastidious believer can object to hearing Abraham called a Bedouin sheik. The type has remained unchanged through all the centuries, and the picture in the Bible of Abraham in his tent, of his hospitality, his self-respect, his courage, and also of his less noble traits, occasional cunning and falsehood, and cruelty toward Hagar and Ishmael,—these qualities, good and bad, are still those of the desert. Only in Abraham something higher and exceptional was joined with them.
In the Book of Genesis Abraham enters quite abruptly upon the scene. His genealogy is given in Genesis (chap, xi.), he being the ninth in descent from Shem, each generation occupying a little more than thirty years. The birth of Abraham is usually placed somewhere about two thousand years before Christ. His father's name was Terah, whom the Jewish and Mohammedan traditions describe as an idolater and maker of idols. He had two brothers, Nahor and Haran; the latter being the father of Lot, and the other, Nahor, being the grandfather of Rebecca, wife of Isaac. Abraham's father, Terah, lived in Ur of the Chaldees (called in Scripture Casdim). The Chaldees, who subsequently inhabited the region about the Persian Gulf, seemed at first to have lived among the mountains of Armenia, at the source of the Tigris; and this was the region where Abraham was born, a region now occupied by the people called Curds, who are perhaps descendants of the old Chaldees, the inhabitants of Ur. The Curds are Mohammedans and robbers, and quite independent, never paying taxes to the Porte. The Chaldees are frequently mentioned in Scripture and in ancient writers. Xenophon speaks of the Carduchi as inhabitants of the mountains of Armenia, and as making incursions thence to plunder the country, just as the Curds do now. He says they were found there by the younger Cyrus, and by the ten thousand Greeks. The Greeks, in their retreat, were obliged to fight their way through them, and found them very skilful archers. So did the Romans under Crassus and Mark Antony. And so are they described by the Prophet Habakkuk (chap, i. 6-9):—
As they were in the time of Habakkuk, so are they to-day. Shut up on every side in the Persian Empire, their ancestors, the Carduchi, refused obedience to the great king and his satraps, just as the Curds refuse to obey the grand seignior and his pashas. They can raise a hundred and forty thousand armed men. They are capable of any undertaking. Mohammed himself said, "They would yet revolutionize the world."
The ancient Chaldees seem to have been fire-worshippers, like the Persians. They were renowned for the study of the heavens and the worship of the stars, and some remains of Persian dualism still linger among their descendants, who are accused of Devil-worship by their neighbors.
That Abraham was a real person, and that his story is historically reliable, can hardly be doubted by those who have the historic sense. Such pictures, painted in detail with a Pre-Raphaelite minuteness, are not of the nature of legends. Stories which are discreditable to his character, and which place him in a humiliating position towards Pharaoh and Abimelech, would not have appeared in a fictitious narrative. The mythical accounts of Abraham, as found among the Mohammedans and in the Talmud,350 show, by their contrast, the difference between fable and history.
The events in the life of Abraham are so well known that it is not necessary even to allude to them. We will only refer to one, as showing that others among the tribes in Palestine, besides Abraham, had a faith in God similar to his. This is the account of his meeting with Melchisedek. This mysterious person has been so treated by typologists that all human meaning has gone out of him, and he has become, to most minds, a very vapory character.351 But this is doing him great injustice.
One mistake often made about him is, to assume that "Melchisedek, King of Salem," gives us the name and residence of the man, whereas both are his official titles. His name we do not know; his office and title had swallowed it up. "King of Justice and King of Peace,"—this is his designation. His office, as we believe, was to be umpire among the chiefs of neighboring tribes. By deciding the questions which arose among them, according to equity, he received his title of "King of Justice." By thus preventing the bloody arbitrament of war, he gained the other name, "King of Peace." All questions, therefore, as to where "Salem" was, fall to the ground. Salem means "peace"; it does not mean the place of his abode.
But in order to settle such intertribal disputes, two things were necessary: first, that the surrounding Bedouin chiefs should agree to take him as their arbiter; and, secondly, that some sacredness should attach to his character, and give authority to his decisions. Like others in those days, he was both king and priest; but he was priest "of the Most High God,"—not of the local gods of the separate tribes, but of the highest God, above all the rest. That he was the acknowledged arbiter of surrounding tribes appears from the fact that Abraham paid to him tithes out of the spoils. It is not likely that Abraham did this if there were no precedent for it; for he regarded the spoils as belonging, not to himself, but to the confederates in whose cause he fought. No doubt it was the custom, as in the case of Delphi, to pay tithes to this supreme arbiter; and in doing so Abraham was simply following the custom. The Jewish traveller, Wolff, states that in Mesopotamia a similar custom prevails at the present time. One sheik is selected from the rest, on account of his superior probity and piety, and becomes their "King of Peace and Righteousness." A similar custom, I am told, prevails among some American tribes. Indeed, where society is organized by clans, subject to local chiefs, some such arrangement seems necessary to prevent perpetual feuds.
This "King of Justice and Peace" gave refreshments to Abraham and his followers after the battle, blessing him in the name of the Most High God. As he came from no one knows where, and has no official status or descent, the fact that Abraham recognized him as a true priest is used in the Book of Psalms and the Epistle to the Hebrews to prove there is a true priesthood beside that of the house of Levi. A priest after the order of Melchisedek is one who becomes so by having in him the true faith, though he has "no father nor mother, beginning of days nor end of life," that is, no genealogical position in an hereditary priesthood.
The God of Abraham was "The Most High." He was the family God of Abraham's tribe and of Abraham's descendants. Those who should worship other gods would be disloyal to their tribe, false to their ancestors, and must be regarded as outlaws. Thus the faith in a Supreme Being was first established in the minds of the descendants of Abraham by family pride, reverence for ancestors, and patriotic feeling. The faith of Abraham, that his God would give to his descendants the land of Palestine, and multiply them till they should be as numerous as the stars or the sand, was that which made him the Father of the Faithful.
The faith of Abraham, as we gather it from Genesis, was in God as a Supreme Being. Though almighty, God was willing to be Abraham's personal protector and friend. He talks with Abraham face to face. He comes to him, and agrees to give to him and to his posterity the land of Canaan, and in this promise Abraham has entire faith. His monotheism was indeed of an imperfect kind. It did not exclude a belief in other gods, though they were regarded as inferior to his own. His family God, though almighty, was not omnipresent. He came down to learn whether the rumors concerning the sinfulness of Sodom were correct or not. He was not quite sure of Abraham's faith, and so he tested it by commanding him to sacrifice Isaac, in whom alone the promise to Abraham's descendants could be fulfilled. But though the monotheism of Abraham was of so imperfect a kind, it had in it the root of the better kind which was to come. It was imperfect, but not false. It was entire faith in the supreme power of Jehovah to do what he would, and in his disposition to be a friend to the patriarch and his posterity. It was, therefore, trust in the divine power, wisdom, and goodness. The difference between the religion of Abraham and that of the polytheistic nations was, that while they descended from the idea of a Supreme Being into that of subordinate ones, he went back to that of the Supreme, and clung to this with his whole soul.
In speaking of Moses and of his law, it may be thought necessary to begin by showing that such a man as Moses really existed; for modern criticism has greatly employed itself in questioning the existence of great men. As the telescope resolves stars into double, triple, and quadruple stars, and finally into star-dust, so the critics, turning their optical tubes toward that mighty orb which men call Homer, have declared that they have resolved him into a great number of little Homers. The same process has been attempted in regard to Shakespeare. Some have tried to show that there never was any Shakespeare, but only many Shakespeare writers. In like manner, the critics have sought to dissolve Moses with their powerful analysis, and, instead of Moses, to give us a number of fragmentary writings from different times and hands, skilfully joined together; in fact, instead of Moses, to give us a mosaic. Criticism substitutes human tendencies in the place of great men, does not love to believe in genius, and often appears to think that a number of mediocrities added together can accomplish more than one man of genius.
Certainly this is a mistake. The easiest and most natural solution of wonderful results is the supposition of genius, inspiration, heroism, as their cause. Great men explain history. Napoleon explains the history of Europe during a quarter of a century. Suppose a critic, a thousand years hence, should resolve Napoleon into half a dozen Napoleons; would they explain the history of Europe as well? Given a man like Napoleon, and we can understand the French campaigns in Italy and Germany, the overthrow of Austria, the annihilation of Prussia, the splendid host of field-marshals, the Bonaparte circle of kings, the Codex, the Simplon Road, and the many changes of states and governments on the map of Europe. One man of genius explains it all. But take away the man of genius, and substitute a group of small men in his place, and the thing is much more obscure and unintelligible. So, given Moses, the man of genius and inspiration, and we can understand the Exodus, understand the Jewish laws, understand the Pentateuch, and understand the strange phenomenon of Judaism. But, instead of Moses, given a mosaic, however skilfully put together, and the thing is more difficult. Therefore, Moses is to be preferred to the mosaic, as the more reasonable and probable of the two, just as Homer is preferable to the Homerids, and Shakespeare to the Shakespeare Club.352
We find in Moses the three elements of genius, inspiration, and knowledge. Perhaps it is not difficult to distinguish them. We see the natural genius and temperament of Moses breaking out again and again throughout his career, as the rocky strata underlying the soil crop out in the midst of gardens, orchards, and fields of corn. The basis of his nature was the hardest kind of rock, with a surging subterranean fire of passion beneath it. An awful soul, stem and terrible as Michael Angelo conceived him, the sublime genius carving the sublime lawgiver in congenial marble. The statue is as stern as law itself. It sits in one of the Roman churches, between two columns, the right hand grasping the tables of the law, the symbolic horns of power protruding from the brow, and the austere look of the judge bent upon those on the left hand. A fiery nature, an iron will, a rooted sense of justice, were strangely overflowed and softened by a tenderness toward his race, which was not so much the feeling of a brother for brethren as of a parent for children.
Educated in the house of Pharaoh, and adopted by his daughter as her child, taken by the powerful and learned priesthood of Egypt into their ranks, and sharing for many years their honors and privileges, his heart yearned toward his brethren in the land of Goshen, and he went out to see them in their sufferings and slavery. His impetuous nature broke out in sudden indignation at the sight of some act of cruelty, and he smote the overseer who was torturing the Jewish slave. That act made him an exile, and sent him to live in Arabia Petrea, as a shepherd. If he had thought only of his own prospects and position, he would not have gone near the Israelites at all, but lived quietly as an Egyptian priest in the palace of Pharaoh. But, as the writer to the Hebrews says, he "refused, to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season."353 Another instance of his generous and tender feelings toward his nation is seen in his behavior when the people made the golden calf. First, his anger broke out against them, and all the sternness of the lawgiver appeared in his command to the people to cut down their idolatrous brethren; then the bitter tide of anger withdrew, and that of tenderness took its place, and he returned into the mountain to the Lord and said, "O, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written." Moses did not make much account of human life. He struck dead the Egyptian who was ill-treating a Jew; he slew the Jews who turned to idolatry; he slew the Midianites who tempted them; but then he was ready to give up his own life too for the sake of his people and for the sake of the cause. This spirit of Moses pervades his law, this same inconsistency went from his character into his legislation; his relentless severity and his tender sympathy both appear in it. He knows no mercy toward the transgressor, but toward the unfortunate he is full of compassion. His law says, "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, burning for burning, stripe for stripe." But it also says, "Ye shall neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. Ye shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child." "If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer." "If thou at all take thy neighbor's raiment to pledge, thou shalt deliver it unto him by that the sun goeth down, for that is his covering." "If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again."
Such severities joined with such humanities we find in the character of Moses, and such we find to have passed from his character into his laws. But perhaps the deepest spring of character, and its most essential trait, was his sense of justice as embodied in law. The great idea of a just law, freely chosen, under its various aspects of Divine command, ceremonial regulations, political order, and moral duty, distinguished his policy and legislation from that of other founders of states. His laws rested on no basis of mere temporal expediency, but on the two pivots of an absolute Divine will and a deliberate national choice. It had the double sanction of religion and justice; it was at once a revelation and a contract. There was a third idea which it was the object of his whole system, and especially of his ceremonial system, to teach and to cultivate,—that of holiness. God is a holy God, his law is a holy law, the place of his worship is a holy place, and the Jewish nation as his worshippers are a holy people. This belief appears in the first revelation which he received at the burning bush in the land of Midian. It explains many things in the Levitical law, which without this would seem trivial and unmeaning. The ceremonial purifications, clean and unclean meats, the arrangements of the tabernacle, with its holy place, and its Holy of Holies, the Sabbath, the dresses of the priests, the ointment with which the altar was anointed, are all intended to develop in the minds of the people the idea of holiness.354 And there never was a people on whose souls this notion was so fully impressed as it was upon the Jews. Examined, it means the eternal distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil, and the essential hostility which exists between them. Applied to God, it shows him to have a nature essentially moral, and a true moral character. He loves good and hates evil. He does not regard them with exactly the same feeling. He cannot treat the good man and the bad man in exactly the same way. More than monotheism, this perhaps is the characteristic of the theology of Moses.
The character of Moses had very marked deficiencies, it had its weakness as well as its strength. He was impetuous, impatient, wanting in self-possession and self-control. There is a verse in the Book of Numbers (believed by Eichhorn and Eosenmuller to be an interpolation) which calls him the meekest of men. Such a view of his character is not confirmed by such actions as his killing the Egyptian, his breaking the stone tables, and the like. He declares of himself that he had no power as a speaker, being deficient probably in the organ of language. His military skill seems small, since he appointed Joshua for the military commander, when the people were attacked by the Amalekites. Nor did he have, what seems more important in a legislator, the practical tact of organizing the administration of affairs. His father-in-law, Jethro, showed him how to delegate the details of government to subordinates, and to reserve for himself the general superintendence. Up to that time he had tried to do everything by himself. That great art, in administration, of selecting proper tools to work with, Moses did not seem to have.
Having thus briefly sketched some of the qualities of his natural genius and character, let us see what were the essential elements of his legislation; and first, of his theology, or teachings concerning God.
Monotheism, as we all know, lay at the foundation of the law of Moses. But there are different kinds of monotheism. In one sense we have seen almost all ancient religions to have been monotheisms. All taught the existence of a Supreme Being. But usually this Supreme Being was not the object of worship, but had receded into the background, while subordinate gods were those really reverenced. Moses taught that the Supreme Being who made heaven and earth, the Most High God, was also the only object of worship. It does not appear that Moses denied the existence of the gods who were adored by the other nations; but he maintained that they were all inferior and subordinate, and far beneath Jehovah, and also that Jehovah alone was to be worshipped by the Jews. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" (Exod. xx. 3; Deut. v. 7). "Ye shall not go after other gods" (Deut. vi. 14). "Ye shall make no mention of the name of other gods" (Exod. xxiii. 13). "For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords" (Deut. x. 17). The first great peculiarity of the theology of Moses was therefore this, that it taught that the Infinite and Supreme Being, who in most religions was the hidden God, was to the Jews the revealed and ever-present God, the object of worship, obedience, trust, and love. His name was Jahveh, the "I am," the Being of beings.355
In a certain sense Moses taught the strict unity of God. "Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord" (Deut. vi. 4), is a statement which Jesus calls the chief of the commandments (Mark xii. 29, 30). For when God is conceived of as the Supreme Being he becomes at once separated by an infinite distance from all other deities, and they cease to be gods in the sense in which he is God. Now as Moses gave to Jehovah infinite attributes, and taught that he was the maker and Lord of heaven and earth, eternal (Deut. xxxiii. 27), a living God, it followed that there was no God with him (Deut. xxxii. 39), which the prophets afterwards wrought out into a simple monotheism. "I am God, and there is no other God beside me" (Isaiah xliv. 8). Therefore, though Moses did not assert in terms a simple monotheism, he taught what contained the essential germ of that idea.
This one God, supreme and infinite, was also so spiritual that no idol, no statue, was to be made as his symbol. He was a God of truth and stern justice, visiting the sins of parents on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hated him, but showing mercy to thousands of those who loved and obeyed him. He was a God who was merciful, long-suffering, gracious, repenting him of the evil, and seeking still to pardon and to bless his people. No doubt there is anthropomorphism in Moses. But if man is made in God's image, then God is in man's image too, and we must, if we think of him as a living and real God, think of him as possessing emotions like our human emotions of love, pity, sorrow, anger, only purified from their grossness and narrowness.
Human actions and human passions are no doubt ascribed by Moses to God. A good deal of criticism has been expended upon the Jewish Scriptures by those who think that philosophy consists in making God as different and distant from man as possible, and so prefer to speak of him as Deity, Providence, and Nature. But it is only because man is made in the image of God that he can revere God at all. Jacobi says that, "God, in creating, theomorphizes man; man, therefore, necessarily anthropomorphizes God." And Swedenborg teaches that God is a man, since man was made in the image of God. Whenever we think of God as present and living, when we ascribe to him pleasure and displeasure, liking and disliking, thinking, feeling, and willing, we make him like a man. And not to do this may be speculative theism, but is practical atheism. Moses forbade the Jews to make any image or likeness of God, yet the Pentateuch speaks of his jealousy, wrath, repentance; he hardens Pharaoh's heart, changes his mind about Balaam, and comes down from heaven in order to see if the people of Sodom were as wicked as they were represented to be. These views are limitations to the perfections of the Deity, and so far the views of Moses were limited. But this is also the strong language of poetry, which expresses in a striking and practical way the personality, holiness, and constant providence of God.
But Moses was not merely a man of genius, he was also a man of knowledge and learning. During forty years he lived in Egypt, where all the learning of the world was collected; and, being brought up by the daughter of Pharaoh as her son, was in the closest relations with the priesthood. The Egyptian priests were those to whom Pythagoras, Herodotus, and Plato went for instruction. Their sacred books, as we have seen, taught the doctrine of the unity and spirituality of God, of the immortality of the soul, and its judgment in the future world, beside teaching the arts and sciences. Moses probably knew all that these books could teach, and there is no doubt that he made use of this knowledge afterward in writing his law. Like the Egyptian priests he believed in one God; but, unlike them, he taught that doctrine openly. Like them he established a priesthood, sacrifices, festivals, and a temple service; but, unlike them, he allowed no images or idols, no visible representations of the Unseen Being, and instead of mystery and a hidden deity gave them revelation and a present, open Deity. Concerning the future life, about which the Egyptians had so much to say, Moses taught nothing. His rewards and punishments were inflicted in this world. Retribution, individual and national, took place here. As this could not have been from ignorance or accident, it must have had a purpose, it must have been intentional. The silence of the Pentateuch respecting immortality is one of the most remarkable features in the Jewish religion. It has been often objected to. It has been asserted that a religion without the doctrine of immortality and future retribution is no religion. But in our time philosophy takes a different view, declaring that there is nothing necessarily religious in the belief of immortality, and that to do right from fear of future punishment or hope of future reward is selfish, and therefore irreligious and immoral. Moreover it asserts that belief in immortality is a matter of instinct, and something to be assumed, not to be proved; and that we believe in immortality just in proportion as the soul is full of life. Therefore, though Moses did not teach the doctrine of immortality, he yet made it necessary that the Jews should believe in it by the awakening influence of his law, which roused the soul into the fullest activity.
But beside genius, beside knowledge, did not Moses also possess that which he claimed, a special inspiration? And if so, what was his inspiration and what is its evidence? The evidence of his inspiration is in that which he said and did. His inspiration, like that of Abraham, consisted in his inward vision of God, in his sight of the divine unity and holiness, in his feeling of the personal presence and power of the Supreme Being, in his perception of his will and of his law. He was inwardly placed by the Divine Providence where he could see these truths, and become the medium of communicating them to a nation. His inspiration was deeper than that of the greatest of subsequent prophets. It was perhaps not so large, nor so full, nor so high, but it was more entire; and therefore the power that went forth from the word and life of Moses was not surpassed afterward. "There arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face." No prophet afterward till the time of Jesus did such a work as he did. Purity, simplicity, and strength characterized his whole conduct. His theology, his liturgy, his moral code, and his civil code were admirable in their design and their execution.
We are, indeed, not able to say how much of the Pentateuch came from Moses. Many parts of it were probably the work of other writers and of subsequent times. But we cannot doubt that the essential ideas of the law proceeded from him.
We have regarded Moses and his laws on the side of religion and also on that of morals; it remains to consider them on that of politics. What was the form of government established by Moses? Was it despotism or freedom? Was it monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, or republicanism? Were the Jews a free people or an enslaved people?
Certainly the Jews were not enslaved. They had one great protection from despotism,—a constitution. The Mosaic law was their constitution. It was a written constitution, and could therefore be appealed to. It was a published constitution, and was therefore known by all the people. It was a sacred constitution; given on the authority of God, and therefore could not be modified, except by the same authority. This constitution therefore was a protection against despotism. A constitution like this excludes all arbitrary and despotic authority. We can therefore safely say that the law of Moses saved the nation from despotism. Thus he gave them an important element of political freedom. No matter how oppressive laws are, a government of fixed law involves in the long run much more real freedom than the government, however kind, which is arbitrary, and therefore uncertain and changeable.
But were these laws oppressive? Let us look at them in a few obvious points of view.
What did they exact in regard to taxation? We know that in Eastern governments the people have been ground to the earth by taxation, and that agriculture has been destroyed, the fruitful field become a wilderness, and populous countries depopulated, by this one form of oppression. It is because there has been no fixed rate of taxation. Each governor is allowed to take as much as he can from his subordinates, and each of the subordinates as much as he can get from his inferiors, and so on, till the people are finally reached, out of whom it must all come. But under the Mosaic constitution the taxes were fixed and certain. They consisted in a poll-tax, in the first-fruits, and the tithes. The poll-tax was a half-shekel paid every year at the Temple, by every adult Jew. The first-fruits were rather an expression of gratitude than a tax. The tithes were a tenth part of the annual produce of the soil, and went for the support of the Levites and the general expenses of the government.
Another important point relates to trials and punishments. What security has one of a fair trial, in case he is accused of crime, or what assurance of justice in a civil cause? Now we know that in Eastern countries everything depends on bribery. This Moses forbade in his law. "Thou shalt take no gift, for the gift blindeth the eyes; thou shalt not wrest the judgment of the poor, but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbor."
Again, the accuser and accused were to appear together before the judge. The witnesses were sworn, and were examined separately. The people had cheap justice and near at hand. "Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, throughout thy tribes; and they shall judge the people with just judgment."
There were courts of appeal from these local judges.
There seems to have been no legislative body, since the laws of Moses were not only a constitution but also a code. No doubt a common law grew up under the decisions of the local courts and courts of appeal. But provision was made by Moses for any necessary amendment of his laws by the reference which he made to any prophet like himself who might afterward arise, whom the people were to obey.356
There was no provision in the Jewish constitution for a supreme executive. But the law foretold that the time would come in which they would desire a king, and it defined his authority. He should be a constitutional king. (Deut. xvii. 14-20.)
We have already said that one great object and purpose of the ceremonial law of Moses was to develop in the minds of the people the idea of holiness. This is expressed (Lev. xix. 2), "Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy."
Another object of the ceremonial law was to surround the whole nation with an impenetrable hedge of peculiarities, and so to keep them separate from surrounding nations. The ceremonial law was like a shell which protected the kernel within till it was ripe. The ritual was the thorny husk, the theology and morality were the sacred included fruit. In this point of view the strangest peculiarities of the ritual find an easy explanation. The more strange they are, the better they serve their purpose. These peculiarities produced bitter prejudice between the Jews and the surrounding nations. Despised by their neighbors, they despised them again in turn; and this mutual contempt has produced the result desired. The Jews, in the very heart of the world, surrounded by great nations far more powerful than themselves, conquered and overrun by Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Syrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, have been more entirely separated from other nations than the Chinese or the people of Japan. Dispersed as they are, they are still a distinct people, a nation within other nations. Like drops of oil floating on the water but never mingling with it, so the Jews are found everywhere, floating drops of national life in the midst of other nationalities. In Leviticus (xviii. 3) we find the command, "After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do; and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do; neither shall ye walk in their ordinances." They have not obeyed this command in its letter, but continue to obey its spirit in its unwritten continuation: "After the doings of the English and French and Americans shall ye not do, nor walk in their ordinances, but shall still continue a peculiar people."