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By
ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, M.A.
The writer has attempted in this volume to take up a few of the mostcharacteristic points in Jewish doctrine and practice, and to explainsome of the various phases through which they have passed, since thefirst centuries of the Christian era.
The presentation is probably much less detached than is the casewith other volumes in this series. But the difference was scarcelyavoidable. The writer was not expounding a religious system which hasno relation to his own life. On the contrary, the writer is himself aJew, and thus is deeply concerned personally in the matters discussedin the book.
The reader must be warned to keep this fact in mind throughout. On the onehand, the book must suffer a loss of objectivity; but, on the other hand,there may be some compensating gain of intensity. The author trusts,at all events, that, though he has not written with indifference, hehas escaped the pitfall of undue partiality.
The aim of this little book is to present in brief outline some of theleading conceptions of the religion familiar since the Christian Eraunder the name Judaism.
The word 'Judaism' occurs for the first time at about 100 B.C., in theGraeco-Jewish literature. In the second book of the Maccabees (ii. 21,viii. 1), 'Judaism' signifies the religion of the Jews as contrasted withHellenism, the religion of the Greeks. In the New Testament (Gal. i. 13)the same word seems to denote the Pharisaic system as an antithesis tothe Gentile Christianity. In Hebrew the corresponding noun never occursin the Bible, and it is rare even in the Rabbinic books. When it doesmeet us, Jahaduth implies the monotheism of the Jews as opposedto the polytheism of the heathen.
Thus the term 'Judaism' did not pass through quite the same transitionsas did the name 'Jew.' Judaism appears from the first as a religiontranscending tribal bounds. The 'Jew,' on the other hand, was originallya Judaean, a member of the Southern Confederacy called in the BibleJudah, and by the Greeks and Romans Judaea. Soon, however, 'Jew' cameto include what had earlier been the Northern Confederacy of Israel aswell, so that in the post-exilic period Jehudi or 'Jew' means anadherent of Judaism without regard to local nationality.
Judaism, then, is here taken to represent that later development ofthe Religion of Israel which began with the reorganisation after theBabylonian Exile (444 B.C.), and was crystallised by the Roman Exile(during the first centuries of the Christian Era). The exact periodwhich will be here seized as a starting-point is the mome