1 Aramaic idioms and a gradual decline of Hebrew could not, of course, be prevented, and had already begun in the times of Jeremiah and Ezekiel; but no stronger infusion is to be discovered, except, on the one hand, in certain poems of the age immediately following the return from the captivity, and, on the other hand, in the later Persian times, in the book of Koheleth [Ecclesiastes], the author of which, in dealing with entirely new subject matter, did not hesitate to make use of the modern language of his day. It is elevating to see how forcible and how beautiful the Hebrew idiom still appears for general purposes in the memoirs of Ezra and Nehemiah; and we also know that Nehemiah was not disposed to tolerate corruption of the language. Malachi, too, still writes with great purity. But, with the book of Koheleth, certainly not much later, the whole of the important element thus recently introduced suddenly breaks in; and it is only resisted by the still later authors of the books of Chronicles, Esther, and Daniel, by an effort of self-restraint. In the book of Ecclesiastes, however, we are quite justified in saying that the way is being paved for a completely new-Hebrew language. This was a special formation of this period, drawn together from native and foreign, old and new materials, and particularly from the language of philosophy, and it reappears long afterwards, in times which were still more favourable to new developments of this kind, in the shape of the Rabbinical Hebrew. The penultimate division of the Chronicles, which is now reckoned as the book of Ezra, gives us the first example, on an extended scale, of a Hebrew book composed in part of entirely Aramaic sections; and it admits of no doubt on other grounds that Aramaic books, even on the higher subjects of faith, proceeded at a very early period from the hands of Israelites.-Besides this, Hebrew was only preserved in tolerable purity by the best writers in and about Jerusalem. In Samaria, the fusion of widely different elements in the population 5 produced a regularly mongrel language. Its spirit and chief constituents were doubtless Aramaic, but it included a great deal of Phoenician, old Canaanite, and other Vol. iv. p. 279. 2 For example Pss. cxvi., cxxxix. Poets could most easily venture on such innovations, and it is remarkable in general to see how full of variety the language of the poets suddenly becomes after the release from Babylon, as if that event had caused a greater number of poets to sing from their inmost hearts, and had given them all greater freedom even in the style of their language. From Neh. xiii. 24. 4 The Aramaic words of Jer. x. 11 are certainly foreign to the context of the passage, and do not proceed from Jeremiah, but they must have stood at a very early period in a completely Aramaic work of an elevated character. Vol. iv. p. 215 sq. foreign materials, and thus formed a tolerably distinct dialect. In Galilee, too, where the faithful were now only connected with Jerusalem by community of religion, a similarily corrupt form of Aramaic had been constantly making its way undisturbed since the Assyrian period. By this time it had, no doubt, acquired much the same form as we observe in the New Testament. One practice which now permanently established itself was the calculation of years by the reigns of the Persian kings; in designating the months, however, the Chaldee names were employed, a usage which need not surprise us after the remarks already made. This innovation was all the more easily introduced, and took all the deeper hold, because the nation had done so little in the previous thousand years of its independent existence towards bringing a chronology of its own into general use. But it is remarkable that some writers still preserve the old-Hebrew method of reckoning the months from the beginning of spring.3 2 4 But this linguistic fusion, which could not maintain its progress without difficulty, was far less important than the growing prevalence and vigour of freer modes of speaking of the Divine under the fixed images and names of imaginative forms. This kind of mythology is an essential characteristic of heathen religions, and even of Zarathustrianism. The ancient severity and even rigidity with which the original Jahveism allowed the Divine to be conceived under fixed images, had already been struggling after greater freedom for a long time, in proportion to the increasing wealth of its historical experience, and to the growing variety of movement with which thought, poetry, and art, together with the general spiritual life of the people, had striven after further development and transformation. The whole series of these thousand years was thus, it may be said, one long struggle to break through the first narrow limits of Jahveism in this direction also, to correspond with the expansion 1 P.107. It is remarkable that Ezekiel and the great book of Kings which appeared, according to p. 18, in the middle of the captivity, still use the old-Hebrew designations of the months, even with their full names, which are of rare occurrence, 1 Kings vi. 1, 38, vii. 2 (to which, however, the last narrator adds the numbers by which it was more usual to describe them). Haggai, also, still employs them, but not Zechariah. 2 Vol. i. p. 204 sqq. 5 A his memoirs, but Nehemiah gave it up; 5 It is sufficient to refer to the conception of the God of Armies, vol. iii. Ezra still used this computation in p. 62. which it had sustained in so many others.' But nothing was more calculated to excite and stimulate these efforts and the wants in which they originated, than the closer intermixture of Israel with other nations, especially in the east, which gradually set in from the tenth and still more from the eighth century, onward. Here it was brought face to face with highly-developed mythologies, and that, too, in religions like the Zarathustrian, which revealed a more earnest spirit, and had no share in the general worship of idols. Two special peculiarities distinguished the Zarathustrian religion: (1) the sharp distinction between evil and good, even in each individual object of thought, in the invisible and the visible, in the abstract powers and tendencies as well as in the various created things; (2) the attempt to include all the infinite variety of separate eras, powers, tendencies, creatures, and essences within fixed series, numbers, and limits, so that number itself acquired in this system a certain sanctity. The union of these two elements to a greater extent than had ever before been realised, constitutes the great charm which the genius of Zarathustrianism undoubtedly exercised for so long a period and over so wide an area. Touched by this system, and fascinated, at any rate, by the external beauty of its forms and numbers, the spirit of the ancient religion of Israel, or rather, in the first instance only, its poetic and artistic faculty, burst with the greater ease through the rigorous limitations which had hitherto confined it, and appropriated a set of images, representations, and names, which were unknown to the primitive Jahveism. In particular, the spiritual power of evil, which was now far more deeply recognised in general, was conceived as more independent, was thought of under fixed images and forms, and so put in sharp contrast to the pure, good God. Thus the opposition was no longer confined solely to Jahveh on the one side, and the heathen deities on the other; but an idea which might lead to far more profound and significant consequences was also adopted and pursued with growing freedom, viz. that of the antagonism between evil and good in all spiritual matters; and, under these circumstances, the attempt was made in both quarters simultaneously to represent under definite forms and images the countless host of spiritual powers individually conceivable. The whole of this freer movement of thought and imagination served, in the first place, none but poetical and prophetic purposes,2 and it was not till much later that it furnished material for real reflexion and speculation. These For instance, by the idea of immortality, vol. iv. p. 212 sq. * 1 Kings xxii. 19-22; Job; Is. xxiv. 21 sq., and the great section Zech. i. 7-vi. images were at first by no means simply borrowed from the foreign religions; on the contrary, they really shaped themselves with a fresh creative originality, in accordance with the inner tendencies and spirit of the true religion, worked themselves into exact accord with it, and even took their names from the circle into which they were thus introduced. At first, therefore, they scarcely appear except among certain special poets and prophets; Ezekiel, for example, delights in all kinds of images, however far-fetched, of divine things (widely differing in this respect from the simplicity of Jeremiah), yet he never speaks of evil spirits. But the influence of Zarathustrian imagery is distinctly visible in the new Jerusalem in Zechariah, when he makes the seven Amshaspands (who stand round the throne of the supreme God, like the seven chief nobles round that of the king) into the seven eyes of God,2 and with his sacred numbers and series is the first to prepare the way for the Gnostics and Kabbalists. These representations, however, underwent continual development, and subsequently sank so deeply into the whole thought and language of Israel that the Chronicler speaks of the actions of evil spirits even in perfectly simple narrative. To what extreme this tendency naturally led, and how it finally contributed to the ruin of the national spirit, will appear further on. IV. THE TRANSFORMATION OF LITERATure. As a general rule the higher spiritual condition of any nation is most readily perceptible in its poetry and literature, and it is precisely in this department that we see most clearly how hard it was for the higher spirit characteristic of Israel to rise once more to its former energy and creative independence, and how easily the grander flight which it seemed about to take at the beginning of this period might ere long again be impeded and its course checked by unforeseen and powerful obstacles. Even in the noblest efforts and hopes of its first attempts, we have seen how completely and how painfully the people soon 1 P. 137. 2 Zech. iii. 9, iv. 10; and subsequently in Rev. i. 4, and often later, applied in a great variety of ways. In a more remote way we may compare this with the custom of calling the nearest officers and servants of the great king his eyes and ears, Herod. i. 114; Xen. Cyrop. viii. 2, 10; Esch. Pers. 973; Aristoph. Acharn. 92, 124. 31 Chron. xxi. 1, 2 Chron. xx. 22; cf. vol. iii. p. 55. • P. 120 sqq. found itself checked, and even thrown back again into its ancient sorrows and misfortunes; and this sad experience stifled and maimed even the spirit which was striving after freer action in the forces of poetry and the forms of art. The hagiocracy which, as the only possible power among the people, now acquired an ascendancy overshadowing everything else, bound down the mind to what had once been adopted as absolutely above criticism, and with each successive stage in its development took from it the more completely all liberty to soar freely in any direction and to seek the truth solely for its own sake. In the form under which it now rose in Israel, resting upon a book of sacred law and a body of customs sanctioned by antiquity, as its firmest foundation, the hagiocracy was certainly effective in promoting the careful preservation, interpretation, and application of the law and other ancient books which seemed to be of high importance. In fact, the increased attention and labour bestowed on the venerable book of the law, and then, by an easy transition, on antiquity generally, constituted its greatest permanent service; but that in other respects it hampered and broke the upward course of the spirit, instead of stimulating or guiding it, was proved even in this period of its primitive purity. The complete silence which gradually fell upon the highest form of spiritual activity in Israel, viz. prophecy, the preponderance of an exclusively backward flight towards the past, the unyielding pressure of foreign supremacy, and the increasing influx of foreign elements of thought, which there was no longer any greater power of spiritual life to oppose, united to complete the decline of poetry and literature. This gradual deterioration had already set in, as we have seen,' before the destruction of Jerusalem; but now that the fresh flight essayed by general literature as well as prophecy towards the end of the exile was so soon checked again, it advanced with increasing rapidity. It is true that great numbers of books continued to be written, and indeed they gradually became more numerous than ever, so that Koheleth could found an entirely novel complaint on their perplexing and wearisome multiplication; but the intrinsic value of this literature corresponded less and less to its increasing fertility. It is only in the poetry of song, of all kinds of poetry the simplest, and therefore in all ages the most indestructible and ever fresh, that we still find certain fragments quite worthy of comparison with the ancient models in depth of thought, in 1 Vol. iv. p. 276 sqq. 2 Ecc. xii. 12; cf. vi. 6. |