is from the Jewish synagogue with its prayers and its reading and interpretation of Scripture that we get our model for the services of our Christian churches and Sunday schools to-day.

Education among the Jews. The Hebrews easily led all the other nations of antiquity in the emphasis they placed upon the education of the young. The elementary teachers were the lowest rank in the order of scribes, called "doctors of the law," and to be found in the time of Jesus in every village in Galilee and Judæa. Some one has said, "Whoever could not read was no true Jew."

Judaism not a retrogression.-Many people think the Judaism of this period a retrogression from the religion of the prophets. This is not true. Legalism has its dangers and Judaism did not escape them. It did exalt the letter of the law, and it was narrow and exclusive. Yet this is only one side of Judaism -the framework which gave it body. It was the husk or shell, and the kernel which it preserved through untold dangers was the religion of the prophets. It is difficult to see how the truly moral and spiritual elements in that religion could have been preserved through the Babylonian exile and through the terrible persecutions of the Greek period had it not been for this husk. The race would have been absorbed by its conquerors, just as other subjugated races have been, if it had not been for this high wall of exclusiveness, and the coherence which came from a passionate devotion to the law. Thus the Jewish leaders, led by the spirit of God, builded better than they knew, and as the result of their work the precious kernel was protected until the time was ripe for Judaism to give way to a new and higher religion. All the best that its inspired

leaders had worked out for a thousand years it passed on to Christianity. We should never forget the debt Christianity owes to Judaism.

We get an unfavorable impression of Judaism from the scribes and Pharisees of the New Testament, and they are anything but attractive; but they were not all of Judaism. There were scattered all over Palestine and throughout the Greek-speaking Jewish communities in the time of Christ such people as Zachariah and Elisabeth, Simeon and Anna, the sons of Zebedee, and many other admirable characters of whom we read in the Gospels and in Paul's Epistles. There were no homes in the world like the best Jewish homes, simple and God-fearing. That they were so is due to the good side of Judaism.

Moreover, a great deal of the literature of the Old Testament which is most spiritual, with the loftiest conceptions of God and of duty, was written between B. C. 400 and 200, under the influence of Judaism. To this period belong the book of Job and most of the psalms. All these things go to disprove the common idea that Judaism was all formal and narrow.

The Messianic Hope. This is a term that is applied to the expectations of the Jews that in time their powerful enemies would be destroyed, and that they would again have not only political freedom but a kingdom with its center at Jerusalem, which should dominate the other nations. There were varying conceptions from age to age of the nature of this kingdom and of the means by which it would be brought about. At this point it must be our endeavor to understand what the Messianic idea did in the development of Judaism in its formative stages.

We shall have more sympathy with the Jews in their

emphasis upon strict obedience to the letter of the law, and in the value they place upon things that seem to us of no importance, if we can get their point of view. The essence of it was this: they had a covenant with Jehovah, given to them through Moses at Sinai. By the terms of this covenant their race was to have a glorious future. Instead, they had lost their political independence and had been persecuted and humiliated. Why had Jehovah allowed this? The answer was clear: Because they had not kept their part of the covenant. Not for a moment did they lose their faith in Jehovah, and this was due to the teachings of their prophets, who had foretold the disasters that had come to them as punishment inflicted by a just but offended Deity. So they trusted their prophets for the future. The prophets had said that prosperity would return only by their obedience to Jehovah.

This

Believing that the laws of the Pentateuch were all, from the least to the greatest, of divine origin, they set themselves religiously to obey them, convinced that in so doing they were pleasing Jehovah and earning his favor. This made them a forward-looking race, with the Golden Age always ahead of them. gave them the steadfastness with which they endured untold sufferings and unspeakably cruel persecutions. The essence of the Messianic Hope, then, was their faith in the glorious future which they believed God had in store for his chosen people.

Inconsistencies of Judaism. If we expect to find a consistent theology in Judaism, we shall be disappointed. Their religion was full of contradictory beliefs. If we ask how it is possible to hold two beliefs that contradict each other, the answer is that many

of us do the same to-day. Professor Kent remarks: "While the Jews conceived of Jehovah as a universal God, they acted as though he were only a tribal deity, jealously guarding their race, and hostile to the rest of mankind; while they declared that he was the Creator and Ruler of the whole universe, they proclaimed that sacrifice could be presented to him only on the sacred temple mount; while they sang, 'Thou hast no pleasure in burnt-offering,' they devoted their best energies to keeping up an elaborate sacrificial system; while they taught that Jehovah was morally righteous and demanded the same quality in his people, they gave their chief attention to observing the often grotesque laws of ceremonialism; while they regarded him as the source alike of all good and evil, they entertained a growing belief in a personal prince of evil; . . . while they believed that God's richest blessings were moral and spiritual, the chief hopes which they cherished were that they might behold the overthrow of their foes and the establishment of a temporal kingdom in which they themselves would rule over the nations."

QUESTIONS

I. Discuss the origin and development of the synagogue.

"1

2. Contrast the synagogue with the temple and show what use each had in the religious life of the Jewish people.

3. Was Judaism a retrogression from the religion of the prophets? Give definite reasons for your answer.

4. Point out some inconsistencies in Judaism.

1 History of the Jewish People, p. 266.

LESSON LI

THE CLOSING YEARS OF PERSIAN RULE

AFTER the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem the Palestinian Jews for half a century enjoyed greater prosperity and security than at any time since before the exile. The community was reenforced by returning Jews from Egypt, Babylonia, and elsewhere, and steadily grew in strength and importance. The Persian rulers were on the whole liberal in their treatment of subject peoples until the reign of the unscrupulous Artaxerxes III, usually known as Ochus (358–337). The history of the Jews during this period is obscure, but they evidently suffered terrible persecution. It is probable that they defied the Persian power, allying themselves with Egypt, Phoenicia, and other countries. History tells of the awful vengeance wreaked by Ochus upon the Phoenicians. Thousands were slaughtered, other thousands deported, and their cities laid waste. There is no reason to doubt that the Jews suffered the same fate, though there is no biblical historian to tell the story. It is believed that certain psalms and certain passages in Isaiah and other books were written at this time, and the picture they give is a sad one. In all probability the book of Job was written during this period, with its passionate desire for an answer to the question, Why do the righteous suffer?

The Samaritan schism.-In the time of Jesus there was bitter enmity between the Jews and the Samaritans. This hatred dates back to the so-called "Samaritan schism" which began in the fifth century