“uncircumcised Philistines” predominated. From the description
of Sennacherib’s invasion it is clear that social and economic
conditions must have been seriously, perhaps radically
disturbed,[1]
and the quiescence of Judah during the next few decades implies
an internal weakness and a submission to Assyrian supremacy.
During the 7th century new movements were coming from
Arabia, and tribes growing ever more restless made an invasion
east of the Jordan through Edom, Moab and Ammon. Although
they were repulsed, this awakening of a land which has so often
fed Palestine and Syria, when viewed with the increasing
weakness of Assyria, and subsequent vicissitudes in the history
of the Edomites, Nabataeans and East Jordan tribes, forbids
us to treat the invasion as an isolated
raid.[2] Later, the fall of
the Judaean kingdom and the deportation of the leading classes
brought a new social upheaval. The land was not denuded,
and the fact that “some scores of thousands of Jews remained
in Judah through all the period of the
exile,”[3] even though
they were “the poorest of the land,” revolutionizes ordinary
notions of this period. (See Jews: § 18). But the Judaean
historians have successfully concealed the course of events,
although, as has long been recognized, there was some movement
Inauguration of
New Conditions.
upwards from the south of Judah of groups closely
related to Edomite and kindred peoples of South
Palestine and Northern Arabia. The immigrants,
like the new occupants of Samaria, gradually
assimilated themselves to the new soil; but the circumstances
can hardly be recovered, and even the relations between Judah
and Samaria can only be inferred. In the latter part of the
6th century we find some restoration, some revival of the old
monarchy in the person of Zerubbabel (520 B.C.); but again
the course of events is problematical (Jews,
§ 20).[4] Not until
the middle of the 5th century do the biblical records (book of
Nehemiah) furnish a foundation for any reconstruction. Here
Jerusalem is in sore distress and in urgent need of reorganization.
Zerubbabel’s age is of the past, and any attempt to revive
political aspirations is considered detrimental to the interests of
the surrounding peoples and of the Persian Empire. Scattered
evidence suggests that the Edomites were responsible for a new
catastrophe. Amid internal and external difficulties Nehemiah
proceeds to repair religious and social abuses, and there is an
important return of exiles from Babylonia. The ruling classes
are related partly to the southern groups already mentioned
and partly to Samaria; but the kingship of old is replaced
by a high-priest, and, under the influence of Babylonian Jews
of the strictest principles, a breach was made between Judah
and Samaria which has never been healed (Jews: § 21 seq.).
Biblical history itself recognizes in the times of Artaxerxes,
Nehemiah and Ezra the commencement of a new era, and
although only too much remains obscure we have in these
centuries a series of vicissitudes which separate the old Palestine
of Egyptian, Hittite, Babylonian and Assyrian supremacy from
the land which was about to enter the circle of Greek and
Roman civilization. This division, it may be added, also seems
to leave its mark upon the lengthy archaeological history of
Palestine from the earliest times to the Byzantine age. There
is a certain poverty and decadence of art, a certain simplicity
of civilization and a decline in the shape and decoration of
pottery which seems to exhibit signs of derivation from skin
prototypes elsewhere associated with desert peoples. This
phase comes at a stage which severs the earlier phases (including
the “Amarna” age) from those which are very closely connected
with Seleucid and later times. Its appearance has been
associated with the invasion of the Israelites or with the establishment
of the independent monarchy, but on very inadequate
grounds; and since it has been independently placed at the
latter part of the monarchy, its historical explanation may
presumably be found in that break in the career of Palestine
when peoples were changed and new organizations slowly grew
up.[5] The great significance of these vicissitudes for the course
of internal conditions in Palestine is evident when it is observed
that the subsequent cleavage between Judah and Samaria,
not earlier than the 5th century, presupposes an antecedent
common foundation which, in view of the history of the
monarchies, can hardly be earlier than the 7th century. These
centuries represent an age which the Jewish historians have
partly ignored (as regards Samaria) and partly obscured (as
regards the return from exile and the reconstruction of Judah);
but since this age stands at the head of an historical development
which leads on to Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism, it
is necessary to turn from Palestine as a land in order to notice
more particularly certain features of the Old Testament upon
which the foregoing evidence directly bears.
The Old Testament is essentially a Palestinian, an Oriental, work and is entirely in accord with Oriental thought and custom.[6] Yet, in its characteristic religion and legislation there are essential spiritual and ethical peculiarities which give it a uniqueness and a permanent value, the reality of which becomes more impressive when Biblical Religion. the Old Testament is viewed, not merely from a Christian or a Jewish teleology, but in the light of ancient, medieval and modern Palestine. The ideas which characterize the Old Testament are planted upon lower levels of thought, and they appear in different aspects (legal, prophetical, historical) and with certain developments both within its pages and in subsequent literature. To ignore or to obscure the features which are opposed to these ideas would be to ignore the witness of external evidence and to obscure the old Testament itself. The books were compiled and preserved for definite aims, and their teaching is directed now to the needs of the people as a whole—as in the ever popular stories of Genesis—now to the inculcation of the lessons of the past, and now to matters of ritual. They are addressed to a people whose mental processes and philosophy were primitive; and since teaching, in order to be communicable, must adapt itself to current beliefs of God, man and nature—and the inveterate conservatism of man must be born in mind—the trend of ideas must not be confused with the average standard of thought.[7] The teaching was not necessarily presented in the form of an over-elaborated moral lesson, but was associated with conceptions familiar to the land; and when these conceptions are examined from the anthropological standpoint, they are found to contain much that is strange and even abhorrent to modern convictions of a purely spiritual deity. There are moreover many traces of conflicting ideas and ideals, of cruder beliefs and customs, and of attempts to remove or elevate them. In Genesis and elsewhere there are examples of popular thought which have not the characteristic spirit of the prophets, and which, it is clear, could only gradually be purified. The notion of a Yahweh scarcely less limited in power than man, the naïve views of supernatural beings and their nearness to man, and the persistence of features which stand relatively low in the scale of mental culture, only serve to enhance the reality of the spirit which inspired the endeavour to reform. There were rites and customs which only after lapse of time were considered iniquitous. Magical practices and forms of sacred prostitution and human sacrifice were familiar, and the denunciations of the prophets and the
- ↑ See G. A. Smith, Jerusalem, ii. 160, 196 seq.
- ↑ See L. B. Paton, Early Hist. of Syria and Pal. (London, 1902), p. 269; Winckler, Keilinschr. u. das A.T., p. 151.
- ↑ G. A. Smith, Jerusalem, ii. 269.
- ↑ On ordinary historical grounds it is probable that there was a political reorganization and a welding of the diverse elements throughout the land (J. A. Montgomery, The Samaritans, Philadelphia, 1907; p. 62 seq.). There is internal literary support for this in the criticism of Deuteronomy (which appears to have in view a comprehensive Israel and Judah at this period), and of various passages evidently earlier than Nehemiah’s time (see R. H. Kennett, Journ. of Theol. Stud., 1905, pp. 175–181; 1906, pp. 486, 498).
- ↑ For the late date, see F. Petrie, Tell-el-Hesy (1891), p. 47 seq., and Bliss and Macalister, Excavations in Palestine (1902), pp. 72, 74, 101, 124; and, for the suggestion in the text, S. A. Cook, Expositor, (Aug. 1909), pp. 104–114.
- ↑ See, e.g., E. Sellin, Alttest. Relig. im Rahmen der andern altorientalischen (Leipzig, 1908).
- ↑ On the characteristics of primitive thought, see G. F. Stout, Manual of Psychology (London, 1907), Bk. IV., especially pp. 574–579.
