Literature upon special portions and aspects of the Sermon has been cited in the footnotes. C. W. VoTAw.
NEW TESTAMENT TIMES.—
Introduction. i. Distribution of the Jewish Population in the Holy Land. ii. Languages. iii. Political Constitution. iv. Social Conditions, v. Parties. vi. Education and Culture. vii. Art and Literature. viii. The Jews of the Diaspora. Literature.
The Advent of Christ falls within the penulti- mate period of that era of Israelitish history which begins with the Return of the Jews from Babylon (B.C. 538) and ends with the Fall of Jerusalem (A.D. 70). From both an external and an internal point of view, this era marks a far-reaching trans- formation of the conditions of Jewish life. At the outset, Judza, which was not quite the same in extent as the ancient kingdom of Judah, forms a small province of the Persian, and afterwards of the Greek Empire. The population, at first seanty and poor, gradually increases, and, under the orderly arrangements of the Law, attains to a certain measure of prosperity. But internal party-strife consumes its strength, and, under Antiochus Epiphanes, reaches such a height that this Seleucid monarch, in the pride of his Greek culture, but with political shortsightedness, forms the resolution of entirely rooting out the proper Jewish religion. This period of extreme danger is unexpectedly followed by a brilliant revival of the Jewish State, which recalls the flourishing period of pre-exilic history, and which struck the people themselves in this light. The nation shakes itself free from the foreign yoke, and the Has- monzan princes not only become high priests, but finally assume the title of ‘king.’ This glory, however, is of short duration, and the Jewish people are rudely awakened from their dream. The internal dissensions that followed the death of queen Alexandra, hasten the intervention of the Romans, and lead to the conquest of Jerusalem by Pompey (B.C. 63). The Romans do not, how- ever, destroy the Jewish State, but allow it to continue under a variety of changing forms, until at last the perpetual discontent of the Jews leads to the outbreak of the desperate war for freedom,
NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 45
which issued in the destruction of the State and the Temple.
From the spiritual point of view, this period marks the development of Judaism in opposition to the national life and the religion of the pre- exilic period. The deeper foundation of this is found in the remarkable recasting which the Jewish spirit underwent during the Exile. No- where else in the history of mankind is there an instance of a people being transformed in so wonderful and radical a fashion as the Jews in the course of their captivity in Babylon. They left Babylon a body whose true life lay not in the actual state of things, but in future expectations and in a world of cultus-notions created out of recollections of the past. To the actual world they sought to accommodate themselves upon certain abstract principles, and, when this attempt failed, they withdrew entirely into that spiritual world which was constructed wholly according to those dogmatic principles. They found their support in the Messianic expectation, for the sake of which they submitted to the burdensome prescriptions of the Law, which were intended to shield them from the heathen impurity of the world, and thereby render them worthy to hail the advent of the Messianic glory. Yet it is not to be over- looked, in this connexion, that the noblest spirits in the Jewish community, especially during the earlier periods of the post-exilic era, filled those outward forms with a rich inward content. There still survived in them the pure prophetic spirit, and the ideas created by men like Jeremiah and Deutero-Isaiah ; nay, the writings which emanated from this period, such as the Psalms and the Book of Job, touch us almost more nearly than the writings of those prophets, because the ideas con- tained in them have found simpler expression and are less closely bound up with the historical form. But the conditions under which the Jews lived seldom permitted a lengthened enjoyment of this contemplative life. Not only were they disturbed in their rest by contact with the heathen world, but even amongst themselves there were men of a different disposition, whose recollections turned rather to their pre-exilic forefathers, and who, with a stronger sense of actualities, plunged vigor- ously into the relations of life, and sought to help themselves. Between them and the ‘quiet in the land’ there grew up an ever-increasing opposition, which may be regarded as the moving factor in the post-exilic history. Through these conflicts with opposition without and within, not only was the stricter Judaism disturbed, but it was driven also to the discussion of the great religious problems and to new developments. The fruits of these spiritual struggles may be seen in the entirely new conception of the state of man after death and in the transformation of the Messianic hope, which in the Apocalyptic litera- ture seeks to free itself from national Biuitations and takes a start in the direction of universal- ism. It may be safely concluded that, in this move- ment, contact with foreign forms of thought was not without importance—primarily contact with Parsism, secondarily with the Greek world.
i. DISTRIBUTION OF THE JEWISH POPULATION IN THE Hoty LAND. — Leaving out of account meanwhile those Israelites who were scattered in various lands, the Jewish population was at first confined to Judea proper, from which the Israel- ites derived their now universally current appella- tion (Gr. Iovdaio, Germ. ‘Juden,’ Eng. ‘Jews’). The land taken possession of by the returning exiles was considerably smaller in the southern direction than in pre-exilic times. Whereas for- merly Beersheba was regarded as the southern limit, the part of Judea that lay to the south had