361 To Amos and Hosea, Yahweh is simply the supreme god, the suzerain of all other gods.
362 Is. ii. 3, 4; cf. Micah iv. 1–3. See Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (1897), p. 229, for the opinion of different commentators on the possible exilic or postexilic date of these passages.
363 Is. i. 11–17.
364 Micah vi. 6–8.
365 Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel (1885), p. 414.
366 This festival was probably of Babylonian origin. It was associated with astronomical phenomena—with the seven planets of ancient astronomy and with the phases of the moon.
367 The feast of Purim is another transformed festival; “Babylonian in origin, it was given a Jewish dress and became incorporated into the system of Jewish observances” (David Philipson, The Reform Movement in Judaism (1907), p. 3).
368 Thus the festival of Dionysus, which “in its origin was a mere burst of primitive animal spirits, is transmuted into a complex and beautiful work of art” (Dickinson, The Greek View of Life, p. 14).
369 Deut. vi. 14.
370 Montefiori, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion (1892), p. 197.
371 Prolegomena to the History of Israel (1885), p. 402. Renan speaks of Deuteronomy in the same strain: “This Thora was the worst enemy of the universal religion which the prophets of the eighth century had in their dreams” (History of the People of Israel (1891), vol. iii, p. 175).
372 Cf. Chapter XVI. The persecutions of the medieval Church were largely the outcome of this legislation which made the extermination of God’s enemies, that is, idolators and misbelievers, a pious duty. “The terrible Directorium Inquisitorum of Nicholas Eymeric follows Deuteronomy word for word” (Renan, History of the people of Israel (1891), vol. iii, p. 179).
373 Deut. xx. 16.
374 Ibid. vii. 2.
375 Jewish Religious Life after the Exile (1898), p. 45. The teachings of this same intolerant monolatry has, down to the present day, exerted a retarding influence upon the development of international morality, especially upon the war ethics of the Christian nations.
376 We meet with the same phenomenon in medieval times. The Christian Church, which was so harsh in its dealings with misbelievers, was a tender mother toward the poor and the afflicted of the faith.
377 The origin of these cities may date from a much earlier time than the reform under King Josiah. The code may simply register changes already effected in the customary law. See Nathaniel Schmidt, The Prophet of Nazareth (1905), p. 61.
378 Deut. iv. 41, 42; xix. 1–13.
379 Deut. xv. 7, 8.
380 Ibid. xxiv. 6.
381 Ibid. xxiv. 12, 13.
382 Ibid. xxiv. 17.
383 Ibid. xxiv. 14, 15.
384 Ibid. xxiii. 19, 20. Cf. Maspero, The Dawn of Civilization, p. 760. The poor in these early times were, in all the lands advancing in civilization, literally devoured by the money lenders.
385 Deut. xxiv. 19.
386 Ruth ii. 4–17.
387 Deut. v. 14, 15.
388 Ibid. xv. 12.
389 Ibid. xv. 13, 14.
390 All these regulations respecting slaves, however, lack universalism. It is compassion for the slave not as a man, but as a Hebrew, that moves the legislator. The laws are in general for the benefit of Hebrew slaves alone. Gentiles or foreigners are not included in these humane provisions. See Lev. xxv and Ex. xxi. 2.
391 See Is. xl-lxvi.
392 “Deutero-Isaiah was the first to emphasize and make use of this plenary and unconditional monotheism.”—Montefiori, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion (1892), p. 269.
393 Is. xliii. 10.
394 Ibid. xliv. 6.
395 Ibid. xliv. 24.
396 Ibid. xlv. 5.
397 Ibid. xlvi. 9.
398 There is a repetition of this in the Koran, where the Prophet of Arabia speaks as one to whom the idea of the unity of deity had come as a new thought.
399 W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites (1894), p. 81.
400 See above, pp. 18–20.
401 “I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.”—Deut. v. 9.
402 Ezek. xviii. 2.
403 Ibid. xviii. 3.
404 Ezek. xviii. 20. The entire chapter is devoted to this single subject. This truer view had dawned upon the compilers of the Deuteronomic code. Cf. Deut. xxiv. 16 and Jer. xxxi. 29, 30.
405 See below, p. 364.
406 See lii. 13-liii. 12.
407 Cf. Bennett, The Religion of the Post-Exilic Prophets (1907), pp. 326 ff.
408 In the year 539 B.C. Cyrus, king of Persia, having captured Babylon, issued a decree giving the Jewish exiles in Babylonia permission to return to their own land and to rebuild the Temple destroyed fifty years before by Nebuchadnezzar. A band returned and set themselves to the task of restoring their houses and rebuilding the Temple. After many interruptions and long delay the building was finished and dedicated anew to the worship of Yahweh (516 B.C.).
409 “The growth of Judaism and the Judaic veneration for the law, after Ezra’s reformation, shows some marked resemblances to the growth in post-Reformation Protestant theology of the legal conception of salvation, and particularly the tendency to formalize and almost to deify the literal inspiration and authority of the Scriptures.”—Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics (1892), p. 95.
410 For life under the law consult Schürer, History of the Jewish People, division ii, vol. ii, pp. 90 ff.
411 Matt. xxiii. 23.
412 Ibid. xv. 11, 20. “The identification of morality with ritual in his [Jesus’] day had confused the issue before human life much as that issue is now confused by the identification of morality with opinion” (Hall, History of Ethics within Organized Christianity (1910), p. 62).
413 Ps. cxxxvii. 9; see Ps. cix.
414 On this subject see Toy, Judaism and Christianity (1891), pp. 246 ff.
415 “The people had learned to draw nigh to God without the aid of sacrifice.”—W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites (1894), p. 215.
416 Cf. Mark i. 21; vi. 2.
417 Renan, History of the People of Israel (1895), vol. iv, p. 195.
418 Consult on this subject Charles, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life (1898–1899).
419 See above, pp. 139 f.
420 See Cheyne, Jewish Religious Life after the Exile (1898), p. 229; and Toy, Judaism and Christianity (1891), pp. 378, 386.
421 Ps. xvi. 10, Rev. Ver.
423 Cf. above, p. 44; see also Toy, Judaism and Christianity (1891), p. 387; Hall, History of Ethics within Organized Christianity (1910), p. 216.
424 The Pharisees; cf. Acts xxiii. 6–8.
425 We see a repetition of all this in what is going on to-day among the Jews in the great cities of the New World. Liberal Judaism is largely the outcome of just such influences as brought forth Christianity out of the narrow ritual Judaism of the Alexandrian Age. See David Philipson, The Reform Movement in Judaism (1907), chap. xii.
426 “Those psalms into which a sense of something like the brotherhood of nations begins to penetrate are for various reasons later than 382 B.C.... Not till the coming of the Macedonian reconciler of East and West could there be a presentiment of the truth of the divine education, not only of Israel, but of the human race.”—Cheyne, Jewish Religious Life after the Exile (1898), pp. 134 f.
427 To Hillel is credited the maxim, “What thou wouldst not have another do to thee, do not thou to another.”
428 The teaching of the Orphic sects that there are two elements, one good and another bad, in man’s nature, was an esoteric doctrine which had no influence on the popular mind and conscience. Cf. G. Lowes Dickinson, The Greek View of Life, 6th ed., pp. 31 f.
429 There are, it is true, gods of the lower world unfriendly to man, but there is nothing in the Greek world-view corresponding to the Egyptian conception of the struggle between the good Osiris and the wicked Set, or of the Persian idea of the conflict between the beneficent Ahura Mazda and the evil-working Ahriman. Nor was there anything in this view like the Babylonian or Persian notion of malicious spirits.
430 The Dionysian cult fostered art, but not directly morality. In so far as the Attic drama was an elevating moral influence, the cult may be said to have indirectly promoted morals. But the foreign orgiastic god had to be thoroughly converted before he could strengthen others.
431 The pre-Hellenic Oriental cult of Aphrodite had undoubtedly an unfavorable influence on morality. “Some part of this evil character [was] transplanted into Greek legend, but very little into Greek worship.... What we know is that until the declining period of Greek history the cult of Aphrodite, so far as it appears in written or monumental record, was as pure and austere as that of Zeus and Athena” (Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States (1896), vol. ii, pp. 657, 663).
432 Cf. Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen (1882), Bd. i, S. 165.
433 Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States (1896), vol. i, p. 74, quoting Charondas, the Sicilian legislator.
434 Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States (1896), vol. iv, pp. 177 ff.
435 Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, 2d ed., p. 292.
436 History of Greece (1900), pp. 320 f.
437 Thucyd. i. 70.
438 For an illuminating comparison of the Greek virtues of fortitude and temperance with the corresponding Christian virtues, see T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, 5th ed., pp. 304 ff.
439 Ethics, iii. 10.
440 “But let [each man] know,” says Plato, “how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as in him lies, not only in this life but in all that which is to come. For this is the way of happiness” (Republic, tr. Jowett, x. 619).
441 Socrates, it is true, taught that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong, but he was here far in advance of the common Greek conscience.
442 Quoted by Taylor, Ancient Ideals (1896), vol. i, p. 247.
443 Christian Ethics (1873), vol. i, p. 63.
444 The Greek View of Life (1909), p. 205.
445 If we contrast the Greek conception of man’s nature with that of certain systems of Christian theology, we shall better understand the ethical value of such ideas and beliefs. On the occasion of a college commencement one of the speakers, a stout upholder of the doctrines of the fall of man, original sin, and the utter depravity of the natural man, roundly denounced this injunction of Pindar’s. He said to the young people who had chosen as their class motto, “Be what you are,” that that was just what they ought not to be. He then went on to show them that their nature was wholly corrupt, that all their natural inclinations were toward evil continually, and that if they ever hoped for salvation they must become what they were not.
446 “Aristotle may be almost said to have made the difference between Greek and barbarian the basis of his moral code.”—Lecky, History of European Morals, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 200.
447 Politics, i. 7, sec. 5; 8, sec. 12; vii. 14, sec. 21.
448 For the ethics of Greek slavery consult Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen (1882), Bd. ii, S. 203–219.
449 Thebes, but not from moral scruples seemingly, prohibited under the penalty of death the destruction of healthy infants.
450 The reader of Plato will recall how Socrates uses this practice of the exposition of infants to illustrate his art of bringing to birth true and false ideas (“lies and shadows”) in the minds of his pupils, and exposing to die those that are vain shadows. See his Dialogues, tr. Jowett, vol. iii, pp. 350 f.
451 The practice of the exposition of female infants in the Hellenistic Age, when luxury increased and children became a burden, seems to have been more common than in earlier times.
452 Mahaffy, Social Life in Greece (1888), p. 120.
453 Politics, vi. 4, sec. 12. This contempt for tradesmen and laborers, generally speaking, continued through all periods of Greek history. In some states, however, particularly in Athens, it underwent modification. “The later Athenians began to consider trade an honorable road to riches, and aristocrats like Nicias were known as careful trade masters.” In Rhodes, also, trade became honorable.
454 Paulsen, System of Ethics, tr. Thilly, p. 62 n.
455 Laws, tr. Jowett, xi. 919.
456 They were charged with adulteration of foods, cheating in measure, etc. Demosthenes declares that a man honest in commercial transactions was a prodigy. Cf. Mahaffy, Social Life in Greece (1888), p. 419.
457 See above, p. 89.
458 This ethical feeling is to be reckoned with in dealing with Asiatics—until there is a change in their ideal of manliness. The overlooking of an injury is apt to be regarded by them as an indication of weakness and cowardice.
459 Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen (1882), Bd. ii, S. 312.
460 Herod. vi. 24. The Delphian oracle tried to cure this defect in the national character. See the story of Glaucus, Herod. vi. 86.
461 Die Ethik der alten Griechen (1882), Bd. ii, S. 413.
462 Ethics, tr. Welldon, i. 4.
463 Ethics: the Facts of the Moral Life (1908), p. 95.
464 Od. xix. 396–398.
465 Thucyd. i. 5.
466 Il. xxii. 485–499.
467 See Xen. Mem. ii. 1, 21, for the parable, by the Sophist Prodicus, of the choice of Heracles at the parting of the ways.
468 The Republic, iii. 386–392.
469 See above, p. 35.
470 “The blessed islands of the West were indeed even then [in the Homeric Age] a home for the dead, but they had not yet been opened to moral worth, as in the days of Pindar.”—Mahaffy, Social Life in Greece (1888), p. 26.
471 See Zeller, History of Philosophy (1881), vol. i, p. 125, and Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen (1882), Bd. i, S. 99. “Strictly speaking,” says Professor Seymour, “Homer knows of no instance of rewards, and of only one case of punishment after death” (Life in the Homeric Age (1908), p. 469).
472 For the Greek view of the underworld, and the incoming of the idea of rewards and punishments in the after life, see Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen (1882), Bd. i, S. 97 ff., and Rhode, Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeits Glaube der Griechen, 4te Auflage, Bd. i, S. 301–319.
473 This moralization of Hades is carried still further by Vergil. It is instructive to compare his vision of Hades with Homer’s.
474 Republic, x. 614–616; see also Gorgias, 523–527.
475 Herod. i. 30–32. But Nemesis appears later in the story, and Crœsus is represented as being punished for the crime of an ancestor.
476 Ibid. vii. 10. The views which the historian here attributes to the Persian Artabanus were of course a reflection of Greek belief. For further instances in Greek literature of the conception of the envy of the gods, consult Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen (1882), Bd. i, S. 78–84.
477 Thucyd. vii. 77.
478 Pericles (1890), p. 312.
479 “The very event [the Persian war] which determined the sudden splendor of the drama gave a sublime and terrific sanction to the already existing morality.”—Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets (1880), vol. ii, p. 17.
480 Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States (1896), vol. i, p. 129. After the tale had been moralized by Æschylus, Phidias carved the story on the great Zeus throne at Olympia, using it to give emphasis to the conception of the god as the guardian of the moral order of the world.
481 Thucyd. v. 84–116.
482 The attitude of the later philosophers toward the notion that the gods are envious is fairly represented by Plato’s protest: “He [the Creator] is good, and no goodness can have any jealousy of anything” (Timæus, tr. Jowett, 29).
483 “The dispensation which takes the aspect of divine envy to mortals might, it seems, from a higher point of view, be discerned as the very opposite; human vicissitude is the result of a divine love anxious to share the true blessedness which comes in the form of sorrow.”—Wedgwood, The Moral Ideal, 3d ed., p. 112.
484 Taylor, Ancient Ideals (1896), vol. i, p. 227.
485 Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States (1891), vol. i, p. 129.
486 Republic, tr. Jowett, x. 613.
487 See James Adam, The Vitality of Platonism (1911), chap. v, “Ancient Greek Views of Suffering and Evil.”
488 When we contrast with this Sophocles’ treatment of the same theme in Antigone we realize how great an advance during the interval the Greeks had made in humanitarian feeling.
489 See Thucyd. iii. 53–59.
490 The Spartan admiral Callicratides (the successor of Lysander, 406 B.C.) refused to sell his Greek prisoners of war as slaves, but he stood almost or quite alone in this. See Xen. Hellen. i. 6, 14.
491 Mahaffy, Social Life in Greece (1888), p. 235.
492 The war brought into fearful exaggeration the salient weakness of Greek morality. The most reprehensible moral faults of the Greeks were the outgrowth of political factions and cabals, of party jealousies and rivalries in the close quarters of city walls. These faults were lifted into the most savage passions by the war. Thucydides in a memorable passage (iii. 82) draws a striking picture of the disastrous moral effects of the prolonged quarrel.
493 See above, p. 180.
494 Republic, v. 469–471.
495 Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution (1906), vol. i, p. 267; see also A. Ræder, L’Arbitrage international chez les Hellenes (1912).
496 Études sur l’histoire de humanité (1880), t. ii, p. 105. Because of its long exemption from the ravages of war, Elis was more populous and wealthy than any other district of the Peloponnesus (Polyb. iv. 73, 74). The contrast presented by Greece in general constituted an impressive commentary on the fatal consequences for Greek civilization of the war system. Speaking of the depopulation which incessant wars had caused over almost all the world he knew, Plutarch says of Greece, a land once “strong in cities,” that the whole country could raise barely three thousand men, the same number that the single city of Megara sent to Platæa at the time of the Persian war (Philosophical Essays, “On the Cessation of Oracles,” sec. viii).
497 See above, p. 18.
498 “Really to see the good and to know it as such, yet not to love and pursue it, is impossible; the vision carries with it its own persuasion and authority.”—Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 74. “Mere school and word knowledge, of course, is powerless, but real knowledge, knowledge that represents real personal conviction, cannot fail to influence life.”—Paulsen, System of Ethics, tr. Thilly (1906), p. 62.