JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY As Jewish and Christian conceptions of morals are identical, truth or chastity being neither Jewish nor Christian monopolies, and as the reader may be expected to be acquainted with the evolution of Judaism in the Bible, attention may now be directed to the development of post-biblical Judaism and to the points wherein it differs from the Christian religion.
Judaism, rejecting alike the Trinity and the Incarnation, be lieves in a single universal God, Who is immanent as well as tran scendent : man, made in the Divine image, has direct access to his Heavenly Father, without the intervention or mediation of a Son. Judaism further denies the Christian doctrine of the Atonement and teaches that there is no original sin needing a superhuman counterweight, but only the freedom to sin, an inevitable concomi tant of free will. Man can therefore, unaided, achieve his own re demption by penitence. Prayer having replaced the sacrifices of the Temple, no extra substitute for them is needed. Hence nothing analogous to the Mass as a propitiatory offering exists in Judaism. This world is not regarded as inherently bad and Judaism con sequently repudiates those Gospel sayings and teachings which, inspired by the conviction that the end of the world was imminent (the so-called interimsethik), maintained that the pious should abandon the ordinary conditions of settled social life and concen trate on the approaching change in the order of things. Therefore wealth was essentially bad and marriage unnecessary (Luke, vi., 24 ; xviii., 24-5 ; James, i. io ; Matthew, xix., 23). Thus while a monk must be a celibate, a Rabbi ought to have a wife, since marriage is the first command in the Bible (Gen. i., 28). Even the recer ha-ral or evil inclination is from God": it is called rah me'oclh, exceedingly good, in Genesis and God instituted it "for His Glory." This phrase is used in the second benediction of the Jewish marriage service? On the other hand in the Book of Common Prayer, the Form of Solemnization of Matrimony not only declares matrimony to be an "honourable estate instituted of God" but continues to add that it was "ordained for a remedy against sin and to avoid fornication." The latter sentiment is entirely unjewish.
It will be noted that among the proposed revisions of the Church of England prayer book the deletion of this view of marriage was advocated. In this, as in certain other matters, Christianity is approximating to the Jewish view from which it diverged under the influence of Interimsethik and through the agency of St. Paul. Judaism differs also from Christianity in rejecting asceticism. Family ties are not an impediment to the service of God. Elijah sent Elisha back to kiss his father and mother (I Ki., xix., 2o) before following his call, whereas Jesus, in similar circumstances, demanded the renunciation of kith and kin : "If any man cometh 'See S. Singer's Authorized Daily Prayer Book, p. 239 and p. cxcvi.
of I. Abraham's annotated ed. See also pp. too seq. of I. Elbogen's Jiidischer Gottesdienst, Frankfurt-a-M. (1924).
Jewish Encyclopaedia, s.v. Laws, Noachian.
F. C. Porter, Yale Bicent. Bib. and Sem. Stud., Lond. (19oI), p. 122.
W. 71 in J. Theodor's ed., Berl. (19°3) ; see his note in loc. "Singer, op. cit., p. 299.
unto me and hateth not his own father and mother and wife and children . . . he cannot be my disciple."" Again Jesus declares that he comes to set a man at variance with his father, whereas Judaism says, "Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father and ye shall keep my Sabbaths" or "Ye shall keep my statutes, which, if a man do, he shall live by The Nazarite had to bring a sin offering because he had abstained from boons with which God had endowed him, and the great authority Samuel stated "he that fasts for self-affliction is called a Judaism does not recognize Jesus as divine, as a Son of God or as born of a Virgin. It denies the possibility of his vicarious atone ment for the sins of humanity and maintains conversely the doc trine of personal responsibility to God direct. It denies that Jesus was the Messiah and places the Messianic age in the future, some authorities holding that this consummation will be non-cata strophic, but the outcome of the gradual development of the human race, Judaism believing essentially in progressive evolution, while others hold that a personal Messiah, sent by God, will bring the Golden Age to pass. Judaism, as the guide to perfection, will be centralized in Zion, whence the Word of the Lord will go forth. As regards the immortality of the soul, Judaism and Christianity have the same beliefs, both having tacitly dropped the belief in the resurrection of the body. Judaism has no sacraments, only ceremonies and symbols, and no creed, in the sense of an obligatory confession to which adherents are required to subscribe. Not using the term salvation in the Christian sense, it does not require belief in a Jewish doctrine as a condition for enjoying the life to come. It is doubtful whether an atheist who kept the Torah or Jewish ideals of righteousness could be called a Jew," but he would cer tainly not be damned. Faced with the dilemma of condoning sin (by excluding the possibility of any sin being unforgivable) and the alternative of eternal punishment, the Rabbis usually admitted the latter in theory but took care to examine each notorious sinner, e.g., Jeroboam and Elisha ben Abuya, and then managed to find extenuating circumstances or overlooked virtues in each case.