History of the People of Israel

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VI. PROM THE RETURN OUT OP THE BABYLONIAN CAP TIVITY TO THE OUTBREAK OP THE REBEL LION OP THE MACCABEES. history of the people of Israel begins with -- the migration of Abraham from the Euphrates to the Jordan; it closes, one may say in a certain sense, with the compulsory migration of the exiles...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VI. PROM THE RETURN OUT OP THE BABYLONIAN CAP TIVITY TO THE OUTBREAK OP THE REBEL LION OP THE MACCABEES. history of the people of Israel begins with -- the migration of Abraham from the Euphrates to the Jordan; it closes, one may say in a certain sense, with the compulsory migration of the exiles from the Jordan back to the Euphrates. The Babylonian exile constitutes the crisis in the history of the people of Israel from both the political and the religious standpoint. Politically and nationally the Babylonian captivity put an end for ever to the people of Israel. Even when, three hundred and fifty years later, there was once more a Jewish state, those who formed it were not the people of Israel, not even the Jewish nation, but that portion which remained in the mother country of a great religious organization scattered over all Asia and Egypt. It would on this account be technically correct to entitle the second part of our theme, which is to occupy us in the last five chapters, simply Jewish history, or history of the Jewish people. Yet still more tremendous is the change which the Babylonian exile producedin the religious life of Israel, though indeed the two are most intimately and inherently connected. The very overthrow of the Judean state and the destruction of the national life had the effect of entirely reconstructing the religion of Israel. Even in the last periods of Judean independence there had been evolving a movement which had for its aim to spiritualize religion as much as possible. In order to guard it against growing worldly and to avoid with all care the danger of sullying its purity, the leaders in this movement had aimed at separating religion from its foundation in nature and basing it absolutely upon itself and the spirit. This was a ...