Just as the Jewish religion was in a highly developed form at the time of the Exile, so the Law was very fully developed. That the entire Law, as embodied7 in the Pentateuch, was promulgated8 by Moses is not altogether likely, but that any considerable fraction of it is later than 586 B.C.E. is equally unlikely. Interpolations 67doubtless occurred often. To insert into an authoritative9 text an inference from the words which the interpolator honestly believed to be true, was not a generally reprehended10 practice. Perhaps some of the emphasis upon sacerdotal organization which parts of the Pentateuch show, may have so been imported into the constituent11 codes of the Torah. But on how slight a scale this was can be readily seen by comparing the Pentateuch with any of the apocryphal12 books consciously designed to magnify the priesthood.[66] The actual civil law bears every mark of high antiquity13. The religious law is at least not inconsistent with such antiquity.
Now neither in civil law nor in religious thought did the community that slowly formed itself about the acropolis of Zion remain stationary14. We must suppose that the energies of the returning exiles were pretty well concentrated upon the economic problems before them. But an actual community they were from the start, and although the communal15 life was far from attaining16 at once to the richness of former days, it contained all the elements necessary. Without a common law, i.e. a regulation of conflicting claims to property, and without a common cult2, i.e. a regulation of the communication between the divine and the human members of a state, no state was conceivable to the ancient world. Changed conditions will infallibly modify both, and some of these modifications17 it will be necessary to understand.
We possess in the book known as Ben Sira, or Ecclesiasticus,[67] an invaluable18 and easily dated record 68of life as it appeared to a cultured and wealthy inhabitant of Jerusalem about the year 200 B.C.E. The incidental references to past time and, above all, the inferences which may legitimately19 be drawn20 about the origins of a society so completely organized as that of Judea at that time, render recourse to the book a necessity at many points of our investigation21. While accordingly we find it a convenient terminus in both directions, we must make large individual qualifications. Ben Sira does not fully represent his time or his people. He belonged to a definite social stratum22. His own studies and reflections had no doubt developed conclusions that were far from being generally shared. But he is an eloquent23 and unimpeachable24 witness that the Biblical books had already reached a high measure of sanctity, and the division later perpetuated25 in the tripartite canon of Law, Prophets, and Writings, already existed; and, if nothing else, the single reference to Isaiah as the prophet of consolation26 renders it probable that even so heterogeneous27 a corpus as the canonical28 Isaiah was already extant much as we have it now.[68]
Opinions may differ as to the length of time necessary to permit this development. But that a very few generations could have sufficed for it is scarcely credible29. Since even the Secondary Canon, that of the prophets, had already become a rigid30 one, in which historical differences in parts of the same book were ignored, the Law must have been fixed31 for an even longer time, and the process of interpretation32 which every living code requires must have gone on apace for very many years indeed.
69We know very little of the actual agencies by which this process was effected. The second great code of the Jews was not finally fixed till 200 C.E. We are, however, measurably familiar with the organization of the judiciary for some two centuries before, but even here there are distressing33 gaps, and for the time before Hillel the tradition is neither clear nor full. All, therefore, that concerns the organization of the judicial34 bodies that framed and applied35 the Law must be conjectured36, and the earliest conjectures37 embodied in Talmudic tradition are perhaps as good as any. The development of “houses of prayer” was a necessity where so many Jewish communities were incapacitated from sharing in the great cult ceremonies at Jerusalem, and these houses became a convenience within Palestine and Jerusalem itself. But the creation of houses of prayer demanded local organization, and with that local organization gradations of members and the establishment of local magistrates38. There can be little doubt that the organization of the Greek city-state, familiar to the East for many years, became a model for these corporately39 organized communities. Now the judicial function inherent in the character of ancient magistrates of all descriptions might easily have been the means of originating that long series of responsa from which the later Mishnah was finally winnowed40. With every increase of population, power, and governmental machinery41, the judicial system increased in complexity42, and the intimate relation which the civil code bore to the ancient sacred code, as well as the close penetration43 of 70life by religion, tended to render the complexity still more intricate.
But if the origin of the oral law, in its application at least, can be made clear to ourselves only by means of such imaginative reconstruction44, we are helped on the side of Jewish religious development by the possession of at least one fact of prime importance. The religious system of the Bible knows of a life after death, in Sheol, but does not know of a survival of personality. Warlock and witch, by such incantations as were used by Odysseus at the mouth of the dread45 cave, or by the wise woman at En-Dor, could give the shadowy ghost enough outline to be recognizable under his former name, but for the most part all these flitting spirits were equal and indistinguishable. But about 100 B.C.E. there was current generally, although not universally, a very different belief, to wit, that in Sheol, or the grave, personality was not extinguished, but at most suspended; and that under certain conditions it might, or certainly would, be permanently46 continued. In other words, between the deportation47 to Babylon and the culmination48 of the Hasmonean rule, the belief about life after death had very considerably49 changed for most people. And the change was of a nature that must inevitably50 have affected51 conduct, since the acceptability of man’s life could no longer be proved by the na?vely simple method of Eliphaz the Temanite,[69] nor yet by the austere52 consciousness of rectitude that was the ideal of the prophets. Transferred to a world beyond perception, reward and penalty gave the Torah a superhuman sanction, which 71must have been far more powerful than we can now readily imagine.
It is idle to look for the origin of this belief in any one series of influences. For many generations poets and philosophers had swung themselves in bolder and bolder imagery up to the Deity53, which they, as Jews, conceived in so intense and personal a fashion. Very many passages in the Bible have seemed to imply a belief in personal immortality54 and resurrection, and perhaps do imply such a belief. Nor is it necessary to assume that these passages are of late origin. Some of them may be, but one would have to be very certain of the limitations of poetic55 exaltation to say just what definite background of belief metaphor56 and hyperbole demand. We shall not go far wrong if we assume that even before the Exile, individual thinkers had conceived, perhaps even preached, the dogma of personal immortality. Its general acceptance among the people occurred in the period previously57 mentioned. Its official authorization58 took place much later in the final triumph of Pharisaism.
Personal immortality and resurrection of the body are kindred, but not identical, conceptions. Of the two, resurrection is probably the older, and resurrection, we may note, implies a real suspension of personality, when the body is dissolved in death. But the body may be recombined, and, when that occurs, the personal life is renewed. The exact time must have been very differently conceived by different men. A great many, however, had already very definite fancies—one can hardly say beliefs—as to the great day that would deliver the 72souls from Sheol. That such a great day would come, on which the whole cosmos59 would be permanently readjusted, is the essence of all eschatology. It was only natural that all other hopes of the people should tend to be combined with it; and of these hopes the principal one was the Messianic hope.
It is obvious that no adequate discussion of the development of this hope can be given here, even if our fragmentary sources permitted such discussion. The most that can be done is to state the situation briefly60. It is all the more important, as the Messianic idea was the source of the most powerful political movements among the people, and the direct occasion of at least one of the desperate insurrections of the Jews.
Many nations look back to a golden age of power and prosperity, and forward to a future restoration of it. The Jews likewise never forgot the kingdom of David and Solomon, and saw no reason to despair of its return. As a matter of fact, the Hasmonean rule at its greatest extent was practically such a restoration. But conditions and people had radically61 changed between David and Alexander Jannai. In 1000 B.C.E. it was a mighty62 achievement for the small tribal63 confederation to have dominated its corner of the Levant, to have held in check the powerful coast cities of Philistia, to have been sought in alliance by Tyre and Egypt. In 100 B.C.E., men’s minds had long been accustomed to the rise and fall of great empires. Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Macedon, Egypt, Syria, Athens, and Sparta, and in the distant west Carthage and Rome, had at different times 73been lords of many lands. The Judean kingdom itself had arisen from the wreckage64 of such an empire. It was accordingly a different political ideal that filled the imagination of every nation at this time. To secure and maintain the independence of a few square miles of semi-arid soil between the Jordan and the Sea was no deed to puff65 men with inordinate66 pride, however difficult of actual accomplishment67 it was. As a step toward larger deeds, however, it was notable enough.
What was the larger deed, and how was it to be accomplished68? However disproportionate it may seem to us, it was nothing else than the dominion69 over the whole world, to be accomplished by sudden and miraculous70 conversion71 of men’s souls for the most part, or by force of arms, if it should prove necessary. And, as was natural enough, it was in the ancient royal line, the stock of David, that the leader, the Anointed of God, was to be found.
The family of David, which was still important and powerful when Zechariah xii. was written (perhaps the fourth century B.C.E.), had evidently since fallen on evil days. It cannot, of course, have entirely72 disappeared, but no member of undoubted Davidic lineage arises to make political pretensions73. It is even likely that, in the absence of adequate records, and with the loss of importance which the family suffered during the fourth and third centuries B.C.E., it had become impossible for anyone to prove descent from David.
None the less, perhaps because of the decline of the family, popular imagination clung to the royal house. 74In the bitter days of exile, the writer of Psalm74 lxxxix. loses no faith in the destiny of David’s line:
I have made a covenant75 with My chosen,
I have sworn unto David, My servant,
Thy seed will I establish forever,
And build up thy throne to all generations.
So the author of First Maccabees, a loyal supporter of a non-Davidic dynasty, puts in the mouth of the dying Mattathiah the acknowledgment of the ultimate sovereignty of the ancient house: “David for being merciful possessed77 the throne of an everlasting78 kingdom” (I Macc. ii. 57).
The certainty of this high destiny grew inversely79 with the political fortunes of the people. But when even the Hasmoneans fell, and Judea, so far from increasing the possessions of Solomon, found herself a hopelessly insignificant80 fraction of a huge empire, it was not merely the political side of the Messianic idea that fed upon its non-realization. Obscure economic and religious factors had long been operative, and all these raised popular temper to a point of high and, as it proved, destructive tension. It must always be remembered that those who undertook to lead the people against the Romans did not aim at the restoration of the Hasmonean or even Solomonic kingdom. The establishment of a throne in Jerusalem was the first step of that triumphant81 march through the world which would inaugurate the reign76 of the God-anointed son of David. The Judean zealots fought for no mean prize.
The Jews who came into contact with Greeks and Romans were a people whose development had been 75continuous from the earliest times. The cataclysms82 of their history had produced disturbances83, but no break in their institutional growth. To the civil codes of the ancient polity they were in the process of adding a new body of law based upon judicial decisions. To the ethical84 monotheism of their former development the popular mind was adding a belief in personal immortality and bodily resurrection. Folk-lore and superstitions on one side, and speculative85 philosophy on the other, were busy here, as they were busy everywhere, in modifying the attitude of the people toward the established religion.
Finally the Messianic idea was gaining strength and form. In essence a hope for future prosperity, it had united in itself all the dreams and fancies of the people, which had arisen in many ways. It became in the end the dream of a world-monarchy, in which a scion86 of David’s line would be king of kings and give law to the world from Jerusalem. The ushering87 in of that era soon became a great day of judgment88 affecting the whole universe and ardently89 desired to correct the oppressive evils of actual life.
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1
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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cult
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| n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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intelligible
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| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
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superstitions
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| 迷信，迷信行为( superstition的名词复数 ) | |
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Vogue
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| n.时髦，时尚；adj.流行的 | |
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embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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promulgated
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| v.宣扬（某事物）( promulgate的过去式和过去分词 )；传播；公布；颁布（法令、新法律等） | |
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authoritative
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| adj.有权威的，可相信的；命令式的；官方的 | |
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reprehended
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| v.斥责，指摘，责备( reprehend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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constituent
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| n.选民；成分，组分；adj.组成的，构成的 | |
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apocryphal
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| adj.假冒的，虚假的 | |
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antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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stationary
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| adj.固定的，静止不动的 | |
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communal
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| adj.公有的，公共的，公社的，公社制的 | |
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attaining
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的现在分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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modifications
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| n.缓和( modification的名词复数 )；限制；更改；改变 | |
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invaluable
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| adj.无价的，非常宝贵的，极为贵重的 | |
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legitimately
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| ad.合法地；正当地，合理地 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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stratum
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| n.地层，社会阶层 | |
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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unimpeachable
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| adj.无可指责的；adv.无可怀疑地 | |
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perpetuated
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| vt.使永存（perpetuate的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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heterogeneous
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| adj.庞杂的；异类的 | |
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canonical
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| n.权威的；典型的 | |
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credible
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| adj.可信任的，可靠的 | |
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rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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distressing
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| a.使人痛苦的 | |
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judicial
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| adj.司法的，法庭的，审判的，明断的，公正的 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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conjectured
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| 推测，猜测，猜想( conjecture的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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conjectures
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| 推测，猜想( conjecture的名词复数 ) | |
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magistrates
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| 地方法官，治安官( magistrate的名词复数 ) | |
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corporately
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| adv.团结地，共同地 | |
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winnowed
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| adj.扬净的，风选的v.扬( winnow的过去式和过去分词 )；辨别；选择；除去 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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penetration
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| n.穿透，穿人，渗透 | |
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reconstruction
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| n.重建，再现，复原 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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deportation
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| n.驱逐，放逐 | |
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culmination
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| n.顶点；最高潮 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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51
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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53
deity
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| n.神，神性；被奉若神明的人(或物) | |
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54
immortality
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| n.不死，不朽 | |
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55
poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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metaphor
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| n.隐喻，暗喻 | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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authorization
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| n.授权，委任状 | |
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cosmos
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| n.宇宙；秩序，和谐 | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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radically
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| ad.根本地，本质地 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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tribal
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| adj.部族的，种族的 | |
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wreckage
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| n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏 | |
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puff
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| n.一口(气)；一阵(风)；v.喷气，喘气 | |
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inordinate
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| adj.无节制的；过度的 | |
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accomplishment
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| n.完成，成就，（pl.）造诣，技能 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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69
dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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psalm
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| n.赞美诗，圣诗 | |
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covenant
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| n.盟约，契约；v.订盟约 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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inversely
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| adj.相反的 | |
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insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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cataclysms
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| n.（突然降临的）大灾难( cataclysm的名词复数 ) | |
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disturbances
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| n.骚乱( disturbance的名词复数 )；打扰；困扰；障碍 | |
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ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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86
scion
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| n.嫩芽，子孙 | |
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87
ushering
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| v.引，领，陪同( usher的现在分词 ) | |
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88
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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89
ardently
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| adv.热心地，热烈地 | |
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