Читать книгу A Thousand Years of Jewish History - Maurice H. Harris - Страница 13

But silent though the period was in external doings, it was a stirring time in Israel for what we might call the experience of the soul. When we turn to the religious life of the Jews, the epoch, apparently so barren, is full of significance. Great achievements are here disclosed behind the historian's silence.

To tell the religious story, we must go back to Ezra again—the Ezra who came to Judea with the second group of Babylonian exiles and who revived the religious life of the community (People of the Book, vol. iii, ch. xxxiv), was the father of the Scribes. A scribe was not merely, as the name might imply, one who copied the writings of others, but one who expounded them. The Pentateuch, which contains many codes of law in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, came to be called "the Law" as a whole. (Torah.) We shall learn how this term later came to include the vaster code that was gradually deduced from these Biblical books. In fact, from now on, Judaism is interpreted as law.

How did it happen that the Jewish religion was accepted by its observers as a Law? In ancient times Religion and State were one. There was not that division between sacred affairs and secular that we are familiar with to-day. Duty to God and the King were allied; patriotism merged into piety. Hence the Pentateuch contains laws touching civil as well as spiritual relations, and regulates affairs both secular and sacred. For example, it contains laws about kings, servants, agriculture, war, food, dress, courts of justice, loans, inheritance, in fact every need that arose in the civilization of the time. It contains the Decalogue, regulations for festivals and sacrificial worship, duties to the poor, the stranger, the dumb animal, the code of Holiness (Levit. xvii-xxvii), and exhortations to noble living. It is beautiful to notice how the moral pervades the secular and gives to all a sanctifying touch.

Thus the scribes of this latter day had to interpret Scripture for the daily affairs of public life as well as for the regulation of the holy seasons and the religious ceremonial in Israel's semi-independent state. So the Sanhedrin (a Greek word), a body of seventy members, was both a House of Legislature and an ecclesiastical council. It numbered 70 like the Council of Elders appointed by Moses (Exodus xxiv, 1).

Thus it happened when all political power was taken, from the Jews, the presentation of religion through the forms of law very naturally survived.

There is yet another reason for Judaism being interpreted as Law, which touches the genius of Judaism. Judaism has always been less a faith to be confessed than a life to be lived. The emphasis was laid on deed rather than on dogma, on law rather than creed. We shall later see (p. 133) that it was on this very distinction that Christianity broke away from the parent religion to become a separate Faith.

The reduction of religion to law had its abuses as well as its excellences. It led to the multiplication of ceremonials. The laws of ritual cleanliness, especially for the priests and of Sabbath observance, were very voluminous and very minute. Perhaps too much importance was laid on minor detail; there was little room for voluntary and spontaneous action. On the other hand, too much freedom in religious observance has its dangers and pitfalls too. At its best the Jewish Law tended to sanctify every act of life and to bring the humblest obligation into relationship with God. But whenever a religion crystallizes into an institution, as it inevitably must, the spirit occasionally gets lost in the form. Then it becomes the function of the prophet to bring back the emphasis to religion's vital issues.