1. THE HISTORY AND PRINCIPLES OF JUDAISM. Judaism is the religion of the Hebrew people and of that portion of the same to-day known as Jews.* A religion which has been active in the world for so many cen turies has naturally undergone modification as to details from age to age, both by growth from within and by adoption from without; but in essentials, Judaism has been character istically staunch to its principles from its earliest days. The objects of this article is to outline, historically and concisely, the essentials, and briefly to mention the successive secondary points of accretion and modification. There are five ages of development to be distinguished.
I. The Patriarchal Judaism's funda mental conception is its earliest: the spiritual nature of the Deity and His consequent eleva tion above all human forms, methods and attributes. Though not clearly expressed in Genesis, this seems to be at bottom the lesson taught by the first Hebrew, Abraham, who, in the land of Canaan whither the divine call had summoned him from his home in Mesopotamia, built altars to the Living God and °called upon His name.° These altars, built without images, taught the first principle of the spirituality of God, not to he represented by stock or stone. What Genesis omits, Jewish legend as recorded in Talmud and Midrash abundantly supplies, in the shape of tradition — no doubt with suffi cient substratum of truth — as to who Abraham came to the conception of an invisible spiritual God, and how he preached his first convictions of the new truth by vigorous assault upon fhe idols of his father, an image-carver, and his neighbors. Most scholars see in the abortive °sacrifice of Isaac° (Gen. xxii) also an object lesson of protest against the prevalent Canaan lush practice of human sacrifices, and espe cially of sacrifices of children. For the rest, we have, beyond the institution of Circum cision (Gen. xvii, 9) as protest, and possibly as physical aid against the current temptations to the immoralities which formed essential features of Canaanite idolatry, no trace of any code of observance connected with this early form of Judaism; no regulations as to cere monies or food-laws (compare Gen. xviii, 8, in
contradiction to Ex. xxiii, 19), unless indeed the Noachide prohibition of blood (Gen. ix, 4) is to be understood as current among this branch of Noah's descendants.
II. The Formative National With the advent of Moses and the contact with a much more highly developed religious culture, that of the Egyptians, a more elaborate Juda ism came into being. A definite central shrine as a visible mark of God's presence among men (Ex. xxv, 8), but still without any central image or idol; and above all, the direct and formal acceptance by the Hebrews of a mission of enlightenment to the nations on behalf of °the Holy God,° i.e., the Pure (Ex. xix, 5, 6), prepared the way for the adoption of a some what complex religious ritual — cast in the uni versally prevailing form of animal sacrifices and burnt offerings — together with a system of fasts, feasts and holy days, food-laws and health laws, regulations political and agricultural, the whole forming a body of legislation, set down in the later books of the Pentateuch, admirably suited both to Israel's formative desert-sojourn and to she promised period of reoccupancy of the land of Canaan, the old home of the patri archs. Of fundamental principles we note in Moses' age, the Eternity of God (Ehyeh asher Ehyeh °I shall be what I am,° Ex. iii, 14) ; the Unity of God, in contraversion of the multi tudinous, circumscribed and mutually antago nistic gods of Canaan and Egypt. the duty of uprooting the foul idolators and idolatries of the land of Canaan (Ex. xxiii, 24, 33; Deut. vii, 1, 6); the fact of the divine revelation of religious and ethical fundamentals (Deut. v, 22) ; the duty of serving God by acts of love and obedience to His revealed will (Deut. x, 12) and of training children in this practice (Deut. xi, 19); love of the neighbor —the °Golden Ethic°—(Lev. xix, 18); love of the foreigner, °for strangers were ye in the land of Egypt° (Ex. xxii, 21; Lev. xix, 34; Deut. x, 19), etc.