Just as the myths and traditions, in part borrowed from neighboring peoples and in part transmitted from Israel’s own foretime, were transformed and moralized by the ethical genius of the Hebrew spirit, so were the institutions and festivals borrowed by the Israelites from kindred Semitic peoples, and particularly from the Canaanites, transmuted and moralized.[365] Permeated by the ethical spirit of Israel’s great teachers and transformed into moral symbols, these originally nonethical agricultural cults and festivals were given a distinct educative value.
Among these pagan institutions thus moralized was the festival or rest day of the Sabbath.[366] Filled with ethical meaning and consecrated to a religious-moral purpose, this originally pagan lunar festival was made a most important means of moral instruction and discipline.[367] This borrowing and moralizing by Israel of this festival has an almost exact parallel in the later borrowing and moralizing by the Christian Church of the pagan festival of the winter solstice, which has given Christendom one of its most beautiful anniversaries, one which takes precedence of all others in its power to evoke the tenderest altruistic sentiments.
As with the Sabbath, so was it with all the festivals which the Israelites, after their settlement in Palestine and during the period when they were passing from the nomadic to the agricultural life, adopted from the Canaanite peoples among whom they were dwelling. All of these in the course of time were turned from their original purpose, were cleansed of immoral and sensuous elements, and were thus made the means of awakening moral feelings and developing moral character.
This transforming power of the ethical genius of Israel finds a true historical parallel in the esthetic genius of ancient Hellas, which, receiving from every side elements of art and general culture, inspired them all with the beauty and energy of her own spirit.[368] “Israel,” as Cornill finely says, “resembles in spiritual things the fabulous King Midas, who turned everything he touched into gold.”
The dual morality of the Deuteronomic code
The effect of the capture of Samaria by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. and the carrying away into captivity of the flower of the Ten Tribes was to put an end to prophetism in the North and to make Judah in the South the center of the movement which had such significance for the moral life of the world.
During the century and a half that passed between the fall of the northern kingdom and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, only one great prophet appeared in Judah. This was Jeremiah, who prophesied in the reign of King Josiah, just a little time before the Captivity.
It was during the reign of this king that there appeared a book which, excepting the Gospels of the New Testament, has had a greater influence upon the general evolution of morality than any other book ever written. This was a work known as the Book of Deuteronomy, that is, the repetition of the law. Before the discovery of the Laws of Hammurabi this was the oldest known code of laws.
The book contains much archaic material—traditions, customs, judicial decisions, laws, and rituals—manifestly handed down from the earliest times in Israel, with additions made at the moment of its appearance, and all bearing plainly the stamp of the spirit and temper of these later times. Hence it comes that there are two moralities embodied in the work—an atavistic ritual morality and a progressive social morality.
The ritual ethics of the code