II
Christianity stands in the closest relation with Hebrew religion. Much as the philosophy of Greece and Rome have contributed to Christendom, there is no such intimate relation between them as that which connects Christian Ethics with the morality of Israel. Christ Himself, and still more the Apostle Paul, assumed as a substratum of {45} their teaching the revelation which had been granted to the Jews. The moral and religious doctrines comprehended under the designation of the 'law' served, as the apostle said, as a paidagogos or usher whose function it was to lead them to the school of Christ.
At the outset we are impressed by the fact that the Ethics of Judaeism was inseparable from its religion. Moral obligations were conceived as divine commands, and the moral law as a revelation of the divine will. At first Jehovah was simply a tribal deity, but gradually this restricted view gave place to the wider conception of God as the sovereign of all men. The divine commandment is the criterion and measure of man's obedience. Evil, while it has its source and head in a hostile but subsidiary power, consists in violation of Jehovah's will.
There are three main channels of Hebrew revelation, commonly known as the Law, the Prophecy, and Poetry of Old Testament.
1. LAW
(1) The Mosaic Legislation centering in the Decalogue[10] is the first stage of Old Testament Ethic. The ten commandments, whether derived from Mosaic enactment or representing a later summary of duty, hold a supreme and formative place in the teaching of the Old Testament. All, not even excepting the fourth, are purely moral requirements. They are, however, largely negative; the fifth commandment only rising to positive duty. They are also merely external, regulative of outward conduct. The sixth and seventh protect the rights of persons, while the eighth guards outward property. Though these laws may be shown to have their roots in the moral consciousness of mankind, they were at first restricted by Israel in their scope and practice to its own tribes.
(2) The Civil laws present a second factor in the ethical education of Israel. The 'Book of the Covenant'[11] reveals a certain advancement in political legislation. Still the {46} hard and legal enactments of retaliation—'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth'—disclose a barbarous conception of right. Alongside of these primitive laws must be set those of a more humane nature—laws with regard to release, the permission of gleaning, the privileges of the year of jubilee.
(3) The Ceremonial laws embody a third element in the moral life of Israel. These had to do chiefly with commands and prohibitions relative to personal conduct—'Meats and drinks and diverse washings'; and with sacrifices and forms of ritual worship.[12]
With regard to the moral value of the commandments two opposite errors are to be avoided. We must not refuse to recognise in the Old Testament the record of a true, if elementary and imperfect, revelation of God. But also we must beware of exalting the commandments of the Old Dispensation to the level of those of the New; and thus misunderstanding the nature and relation of both.
The Christian faith is in a sense the development of Judaeism, though it is infinitely more. The commandments of Moses, in so far as they have their roots in the constitution of man, have not been superseded, but taken up and spiritualised by the Ethic of the Gospel.