urge, s
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
but this is achieved, not primarily, as in the view of the prophets, by circumcision of the heart, but by means of all the countless purifying and aton- ing acts prescribed by the Law for every conceivable case (cf. especially Lv 12 and 15). Neglect of these rules—even wholly unintentional and unconscious neglect—involves the same degree of culpability as a mortal sin does. The rigid consistency and out- wardly mechanical character of this whole concep- tion come out, above all, in the ritual of the Great Day of Atonement. The solemn propitiation made by Aaron with the goat of the people (Lv 16%) is intended, properly speaking, not for the people themselves but (vv.1® 2°) for the inner sanctuary, the Tent of Meeting and the altar—in other words, for things without life. Atonement on behalf of these for all the ritual transgressions and omissions of the people thus appears as the most important feature in the ritual of the Great Day of Atonement. It can occasion no surprise that very depreciatory judgments have often been passed on P alike for his exclusiveness towards foreigners and his placing of moral and physical (ritual) purity on precisely the same level. The gulf between the religion of the Prophets—above all, of Deutero-Isaiah—and that of the Priests’ Code has been described as one that cannot be bridged. That there is, in fact, a deep gulf between the two, and that this shows itself in P in the shape of a falling away from the pure level reached by the Prophets, are truths that need be denied all the less, seeing that the teaching of Jesus certainly attached itself to the prophets, and would have the Law interpreted only in their sense and spirit. Yet, if we would do justice to P, there are two things that must not be forgotten. In the first place, even his system did not exclude the possibility of viewing the revelation of the Divine will as a guide to real inward piety and morality, and of thus finding in it a means of joy and edifica- tion.* Many passages in the Psalms (1? 19°", and almost the whole of Ps 119) testify to this rejoicing of the heart in God’slaw. The period of painful attention to the observance of the Law first set in when the religion of Israel was seriously endangered by Antiochus Epiphanes. It was thought then that the anger of God could be appeased only by the strictest, most literal fulfilment of the Law, and the time of consummation be thus brought on. But the heavy burden of the Law was increased, above all, by the addition of the alleged oral tradi- tion from Sinai downwards, the casuistry developed in Pharisaic circles, with its endless particular rules, which kept the Israelite who was loyal to the Law in momentary anxiety lest he had in any way incurred defilement and consequently heinous guilt. 7 But, secondly, it must not be forgotten that, in spite of its inferiority to the religion of the Pro- phat: the Law fulfilled an important mission in the course of the history of the religion of Israel asa whole. Experience had taught that the great mass of the people had proved themselves incap- able of understanding and fruitfully assimilating the teaching of the prophets. Hence the latter had its place taken by another Divine pedagogic method—the discipline of the Law, with its cease- less reminders of the immense distance between the holy God and the sinful uncleanness of every- thing creaturely, with its constant compelling of a lively sense of the need of forgiveness and atone- ment, and of the duty of a conscientious use of the prescribed means of propitiation. In_ short, the Law proved a radaywyds eis Xpiordy (Gal 3”) not only in the sense that it forced the recognition of the impossibility of attaining to righteousness before God by the works of the Law, but also that it was a school which taught absolute sub- * Of. Gunkel, Ausgewihlte Psalmen, Gottingen, 1904, p. 22 ff.
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
723
mission to the will of God and therewith sincere piety. And what an intensely religious life might be developed alongside of and under the rule of the Law, is witnessed by the last two groups of literature we have yet to consider: the religious Lyric and Elegiac poetry, and the remnants of the so-called Hokhmah or Wisdom literature.
IX. THE RELIGIOUS LYRIC AND ELEGIAC POETRY (Books of Psalms and Lamentations).
If, in addition to the Prophets, only the Law had come down to us, a wholly inadequate, nay partially wrong, idea of the power exercised by the Prophetic religion would have been inevitable. But, fortunately, more than one literary product has survived, and amongst these the Psalms are, above all, fitted to guide us to a profounder judg- ment. In them is exhibited such a wonderful variety and intensity of the genuinely religious life, that our verdict must be that there is prac- tically no trace to be detected of the serious danger that was called up by the complete equal- izing of ritual obligations with specially moral duties, of physical with moral purity ; nay, testi- monies are not wanting to an express repudiation of sacrifice (see above, p. 686°), z.e. of what is to P the most important element in the cultus.
The numerous critical questions connected with the Books of Psalms and Lamentations may here be entirely passed over (see article LAMENTATIONS in vol. ili., and PSALMS in vol. iv.). It may be that in the Psalms there still survive scattered relics of pre-exilic religious poetry, but in that form in which the book now lies before us it is a work of the post-exilic period * and may thus, in spite of all its variety of contents, be treated with- out hesitation as a harmonious whole, and a con- sistent witness to the faith and hopes of post-exilic Israel.