This great event was turned to excellent account by the priests and prophets of Jehovah. Instead of regarding it as a natural consequence of the political relations of Judea with more powerful empires, they represented it as the fulfillment of the penalties threatened by Jehovah for infidelity towards himself. And as this view offered a plausible explanation of their unparalleled misfortunes, it was naturally accepted by many as the true solution of sufferings so difficult to reconcile with the protection supposed to be accorded by their national god. Under these circumstances a double process went on during their compulsory residence in heathendom. Great numbers, who were either not Jehovists, or whose Jehovism was but lukewarm, gradually adapted themselves to their situation among idolaters, and became at length indistinguishably fused, as the ten scribes had been, with the alien races. But a few remained faithful to their God. These few it was who formed the whole of the nation which, when return was possible, returned to their native soil. Those who were not inspired by a deep sense of the sanctity of their national religion; those to whom the restoration of their national rites was not the one object of overwhelming importance; those whose hopes of national restoration were of a temporal rather than a spiritual nature, had no sufficient motive to return to their native soil. Jerusalem could have no attractions for them which Babylon did not possess. Thus, by a natural process, the most ardent, the most spiritual, the most unbending monotheists were weeded out from the mass of the community, and it was they who accompanied Zerubbabel or Ezra on his sacred mission. Misfortune, which had not shaken their faith, had deepened and purified it. Not only were they Jehovists, but they were Jehovists of the sternest type. There was among them none of that admixture of levity, and none of that facile adaptability to foreign rites, which characterized the oldest Jews. From this time forward their monotheism has never been broken by a single relapse.

Thus the Captivity forms the turning-point in the character of the Jews; for, in fact, the nation which was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar was not the nation which, in the days of Kyros and Artaxerxes returned to re-colonize and rebuild Jerusalem. The conquered people belonged to a monarchy which, if it was now feeble and sunken, was directly descended from one which had been glorious and mighty, and which had aimed at preserving for Judea the status and dignity of an independent power. Under its influence the Jews had been mobile, idolatrous, deaf to the voice of Jehovistic prophets, neglectful of Jehovistic rites; desirous of conquest, and, when that was impossible, unwilling on political grounds to submit to foreign domination; rude if not semi-barbarous in morals, and distracted by the contention of rival religious parties. But this polity, of which the ruling motives were mainly political, was succeeded after the return of the exiles by a polity of which the ruling motives were exclusively religious. All were now adherents of Jehovah; all were zealous performers of the rites conceived to be his due.

This change must be borne in mind if we would understand Jewish history; for the same language is not applicable to the Jews before and after the Captivity, nor can we regard in the same light a struggling and feeble race upholding its unanimous faith in the midst of trials, and an independent nation in which a party, from time to time victorious, endeavors to impose that faith by force. We may without inconsistency censure the violence of the Jehovistic sectaries, and admire the courage of the Jehovistic people. But although there is much in this change that is good, it must be admitted that it has its bad side. While becoming more conscientious, more scrupulously true to its own principles, and more penetrated with a sense of religion, Judaism became at the same time more rigid, more formal, more ritualistic, and more unsocial. Ewald has remarked that the constitution established after the return from captivity is one that lays undue stress upon the exterior forms of religion, and may in time even become hostile to what is truly holy. As it claims to be in possession of something holy which temporal governments do not possess, it cannot submit to their dominion; hence, he observes, Israel could never become an independent nation again under this constitution.[90] Nor was this all. Even apart from its tendency to magnify external forms, which was perhaps not of its essence, the religion of Jehovah had inherent vices. The Jews, believing their god to be the only true one, and insisting above all on the supreme importance of preserving the purity of his cultus, were necessarily led to assume a haughty and exclusive attitude towards all other nations, which could not fail to provoke their hostility. This unloveable spirit was shown immediately after their return by their contumelious rejection of the Sâmaritan proposals to aid in building the temple—proposals which seem to have been made in good faith; by the Sabbatarian legislation of Nehemiah; and even more by the exclusively harsh measures taken by Ezra for the purification of the race. It was simply inevitable that all heathen nations who came in contact with them should hate a people who acted on such principles. Nor were the fears of the heathen altogether without foundation. When the Jews recovered a temporary independence under the Maccabees, their intolerance, now able to vent itself in acts of conquest, became a source of serious danger. Thus, John Hyrcanus destroyed the temple of the Sâmaritans (who also worshiped Jehovah) on Mount Gerizim, and the Jews actually commemorated the event by a semi-festival. Alexander Jannasus, too, carried on wars of conquest against his neighbors. In one of these he took the town of Gaza, and evinced the treatment to be expected from him by letting loose his army on the inhabitants and utterly destroying their city. It was no doubt their unsocial and proud behavior towards all who were not Jews that provoked the heathens to try their temper by so many insults directed to the sensitive point—their religion. Culpable as this was, it must be admitted that it was in some degree the excessive scrupulosity of the Jews in regard to things indifferent in themselves that exposed them to so much annoyance. Had they been content to permit the existence of Hellenic or Roman customs side by side with theirs, they might have been spared the miseries which they subsequently endured. But the Scriptures, from beginning to end, breathed a spirit of fierce and exclusive attachment to Jehovah; he was the only deity; all other objects of adoration were an abomination in his sight. Penetrated with this spirit, the Jews patiently submitted to the yoke of every succeeding authority—Chaldeans, Syrians, Egyptians, Romans—until the stranger presumed to tamper with the national religion. Then their resistance was fierce and obstinate. The great rebellion which broke out in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, under the leadership of Mattathias, was provoked by the attempt of that monarch to force Greek institutions on the Jewish people. The glorious dynasty of the Asmoneans were priests as well as kings, and the royal office, indeed, was only assumed by them in the generation after that in which they had borne the priestly office, and as a consequence of the authority derived therefrom. Under the semi-foreign family of the Herods, who supplanted the Asmoneans, and ruled under Roman patronage, as afterwards under the direct government of Rome, it was nothing but actual or suspected aggressions against the national faith that provoked the loudest murmurs or the most determined opposition. It was this faith which had upheld the Jews in their heroic revolt against Syrian innovations. It was this which inspired them to support every offshoot of the Asmonean family against the odious Herod. It was this which led them to entreat of Pompey that he would abstain from the violation of the temple; to implore Caligula, at the peril of their lives, not to force his statue upon them; to raise tumults under Cumanus, and finally to burst the bonds of their allegiance to Rome under Gessius Florus. It was this which sustained the war that followed upon that outbreak—a war in which even the unconquerable power of the Roman Empire quailed before the unrivaled skill and courage of this indomitable race; a war of which I do not hesitate to say that it is probably the most wonderful, the most heroic, and the most daring which an oppressed people has ever waged against its tyrants.

But against such discipline as that of Rome, and such generals as Vespasian and Titus, success, however brilliant, could be but momentary. The Jewish insurrection was quelled in blood, and the Jewish nationality was extinguished—never to revive. One more desperate effort was indeed made; once more the best legions and the best commanders of the Empire were put in requisition; once more the hopes of the people were inflamed, this time by the supposed appearance of the Messiah, only to be doomed again to a still more cruel disappointment. Jerusalem was razed to the ground; Aelia Capitolina took its place; and on the soil of Aelia Capitolina no Jew might presume to trespass. But if the trials imposed on the faith of this devoted race by the Romans were hard, they were still insignificant compared to those which it had to bear from the Christian nations who inherited from them the dominion of Europe. These nations considered the misfortunes of the Jews as proceeding from the divine vengeance on the crime they had committed against Christ; and lest this vengeance should fail to take effect, they made themselves its willing instruments. No injustice and no persecution could be too bad for those whom God himself so evidently hated. Besides, the Jews had a miserable habit of acquiring wealth; and it was convenient to those who did not share their ability or their industry to plunder them from time to time. But the Jewish race and the Jewish religion survived it all. Tormented, tortured, robbed, put to death, hunted from clime to clime; outcasts in every land, strangers in every refuge, the tenacity of their character was proof against every trial, and superior to every temptation. In this unequal combat of the strong against the weak, the synagogue has fairly beaten the Church, and has vindicated for itself that liberty which during centuries of suffering its enemy refused to grant. Eighteen hundred years have passed since the soldiers of Titus burned down the temple, laid Jerusalem in ashes, and scattered to the winds the remaining inhabitants of Judea; but the religion of the Jews is unshaken still; it stands unconquered and unconquerable, whether by the bloodthirsty fury of the legions of Rome, or by the still more bloodthirsty intolerance of the ministers of Christ.

Subdivision I.—The Historical Books.

It is scarcely necessary to say that no complete account of the contents of the Old Testament can be attempted here. To accomplish anything like a full description of its various parts, and to discuss the numerous critical questions that must arise in connection with such a description, would in itself require a large volume. In a treatise on comparative religion, anything of this kind would be out of place. It is mainly in its comparative aspect that we are concerned with the Bible. Hence many very interesting topics, such, for instance, as the age or authorship of the several books, must be passed over in silence. Tempting as it may be to turn aside to such inquiries, they have no immediate bearing on the subject in hand. Whatever may be the ultimate verdict of Biblical criticism respecting them, the conclusions here reached will remain unaffected. All that I can do is to assume without discussion the results obtained by the most eminent scholars, in so far as they appear to me likely to be permanent. That the Book of Genesis, for example, is not the work of a single writer, but that at least two hands may be distinguished in it; that the Song of Solomon is, as explained both by Renan and Ewald, a drama, and not an effusion of piety; that the latter part of Isaiah is not written by the same prophet who composed the former,—are conclusions of criticism which I venture to think may now be taken for granted and made the basis of further reasoning. At the same time I have taken for granted—not as certain, but as likely to be an approximation to the truth—the chronological arrangement of the prophets proposed by Ewald in his great work on that portion of Scripture. Further than this, I believe there are no assumptions of a critical character in the ensuing pages.

First, then, it is to be observed that the problems which occupied the writers of the Book of Genesis, and which in their own fashion they attempted to solve, were the same as those which in all ages have engaged the attention of thoughtful men, and which have been dealt with in many other theologies besides that of the Hebrews. The Hebrew solution may or may not be superior in simplicity or grandeur to the solutions of Parsees, Hindus, and others; but the attempt is the same in character, even if the execution be more successful. The authors of Genesis endeavor especially to account for:—

Although the fourth of these questions is, so far as I am aware, not a common subject of consideration in popular mythologies, the first three are the standard subjects of primitive theological speculation. Let us begin with the Creation.

One of the earliest inquiries that human beings address themselves to when they arrive at the stage of reflection is:—How did this world in which we find ourselves come into being? Out of what elements was it formed? Who made it, and in what way? A natural and obvious reply to such an inquiry is, that a Being of somewhat similar nature to their own, though larger and more powerful, took the materials of which the world is formed and moulded them, as a workman moulds the materials of his handicraft, into their present shape. The mental process gone through in reaching this conclusion is simply that of pursuing a familiar analogy in such a manner as to bring the unknown within the range of conceptions applicable to the known. The solution, as will be seen shortly, contrives to satisfy one-half of the problem only by leaving the other half out of consideration. This difficulty, however, does not seem to have occurred to the ancient Hebrew writers who propounded the following history of the Creation of the Universe:—