Review: Studies in the History and Philosophy of Religion

Reviewed Work(s): Studies in the Philosophy of Religion by A. Seth Pringle-Pattison; The

Growth of the Idea of God by Shailer Mathews; Hebrew Religion. Its Origin and
Development by W. O. E. Oesterley and Theodore H. Robinson;
Le Piétisme Juif dans les Testaments des Douze Patriarches. Études D'Histoire et
de Philosophie Religueuses publiées par la Faculté de Théologie Protestante de L'Université
de Strasbourg, No. 22
by Robert Eppel
Review by: Louis Finkelstein
Source: The Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Apr., 1933), pp. 377-383
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1451939
Accessed: 29-02-2020 06:01 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

University of Pennsylvania Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and

extend access to The Jewish Quarterly Review

This content downloaded from 47.31.111.254 on Sat, 29 Feb 2020 06:01:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY
OF RELIGION

IF IT be true, as theologians assert, that man lives most n

those rare moments when, freeing himself of the fetters which
to his island-planet, he permits his spirit to soar into the r
deeper being, then the history of religious thought must be the
of man at his best. Clearly such a history should be fascinating
as instructive. And so indeed it becomes in the deft and skilled hands

of Professor A. Seth Pringle-Pattison whose Studies in the Philosophy

of Religion' discuss the development of religious thought insofar as it
affected the rise of Christianity. Professor Pringle-Pattison's outstand-
ing place among theologians had already been made secure through his
first series of Gifford Lectures, published under the title the Idea of
God (Oxford, 1920). His present work, based on another series of Gifford
Lectures, is as important a contribution to the history of theology
as its predecessor was to systematic theology.
Doctor Pattison's approach to the philosophy of religion is explained
in his introduction where he says: "The facts with which a philosophy
of religion has to deal are supplied by the history of religion in the most
comprehensive sense of the term-as Tiele puts it, 'all the religions of
the civilized and uncivilized world, dead and living;' religion in short
as a 'historical and psychological phenomenon' in all its manifestations."
Following this plan, the author gives us an insight into the facts of
primitive religion, sums up the various theories current about the
relation of magic and religion, and searches into the mental process of
the people to whom the individual is a "tribesman rather than a man."
He proceeds to analyze the growth and development of Greek religion
from early days, through those of Homer, to the times of the philos-
ophers. He shows that even before the time of the philosophers the
Greeks were tending toward henotheism, by which he means a religion
in which "the sense of divine unity" is "practically present in spite of a
polytheistic creed."

1 Studies in the Philosophy of Religion. Partly based on The Gifford

Lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh in the year 1923.
By A. SETH PRINGLE-PATTISON, LL.D., D.C.L. Oxford: at the CLAREN-
DON PRESS, 1930. Pp. viii+256.
377

This content downloaded from 47.31.111.254 on Sat, 29 Feb 2020 06:01:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 378 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

Coming to the philosophers, he analyzes first the contributions of

the Sophists and Socrates, and then proceeds to a study of Plato's
religion. He reminds us that the ethical doctrine of Plato "leads us to
the very heart of religion, not only of Plato's religion but of all religion"
(p. 91). He quotes with approval Bradley's sentences: "Goodness,
beauty and truth are all there is which in the end is real. Their reality,
appearing amid chance and change, is beyond these and is eternal.
But in whatever world they appear, that world so far is real." "The
language," he says, "is the language of Plato; the sentences might
almost have been written by Plato himself as they stand, and yet they
sound to us quite natural and as true as they are beautiful." A genera-
tion which seeks truth everywhere except in the classics cannot be too
forcibly or too frequently reminded that while the founders of science
and philosophy may have lacked some of our comforts and inventions,
they were masters of wisdom and understood in many respects better
than we, the meaning of "good."
Turning from Greece to Judea, the author follows the development
of Jewish religion from its infancy to the beginnings of the talmudic
period. He accepts the general dicta of modern biblical criticism, though
even here we note his care and watchfulness. He is not by any means
convinced that the so-called "priestly code" was the narrowing instru-
ment many scholars declare it to have been. After saying that, from
the point of view of religious development, the later concern with ritual
cannot but "appear to us a backward step" (p. 119), he proceeds to
show that it would be unfair to regard the priestly Law as a deliberate
attempt to substitute a system of ritual observance for the inward
piety of prophetic religion. "It was not a movement conceived by its
authors as hostile to the spiritual ideals of the prophets. The prophetic
writings continued to be read in the synagogues alongside of the Law
throughout all the centuries of Judaism. It was the scribes who pre-
served these books for us and multiplied copies for the pious Jew."
In making these comments, Professor Pattison does not yet-it seems
to a writer sympathetic to the scribes and the great Jewish legislators
-do full justice to them. Scholars have been far too prone to forget
that among the passages which they assign to the "late, narrow and
legalistic priestly code" is the story of the Creation in which the equality
of man and woman is emphasized and re-emphasized. "Male and female
he created them," the Scriptures say; not first male and then female.
As the talmudic sages long ago remarked, the mention of the mother
before the father in Lev. 19.2 is not accidental but is intended to place

This content downloaded from 47.31.111.254 on Sat, 29 Feb 2020 06:01:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 HISTORY-PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION-FINKELSTEIN 379

the mother on an equal plane with the father in regard to the so

filial obligations (Kid. 31a). As if to make the point clear beyond dou
the Scriptures mention the mother first also in another passage (Le
21.2). The right of daughters to inherit their father's property (Num
27.7); the law of the jubilee year through which an almost utopi
democratic ownership of land was to have been guaranteed (Lev. 25.1
the equality of the stranger and the Israelite before the law (Lev. 24.22
the elaborate arrangements for distinguishing the unintentional sinn
from the wilful wrongdoer (Num. 25.9 ff.); all these emanate from t
so-called "Book of Holiness" and the "Priestly Code," so frequent
condemned for "narrowness, particularism, and ceremonialism." Th
name "priestly code" insofar as it seems to imply special favoritis
for the priesthood is a clear misnomer. No one familiar with the develo
ment of Jewish law in which the rights of the Levites and the Pries
were so frequently opposed can believe that a code which gave the mos
important tax-the tithe-to the Levites was a "priestly" code. So f
was the arrangement proposed in this code from satisfying the priests
that when the Hasmoneans were in power they seized the tithe in sp
of the law definitely assigning it to the Levites. The "Priestly Code
retains the Deuteronomic prohibition against the priests owning lan
but makes special provision for cities of the Levites (Num. 35.1 ff
That all this is forgotten by many writers on biblical subjects is du
to the unfortunate tendency of Bible students to ignore the relatio
of the earlier Jewish communal and social organization to the lat
writings and traditions. Seen in the light of the development of Jewis
law and theology the legislation subsumed under the names "code o
holiness" and "priestly code" marks a sharp advance in ethical standa
and in religious insight. Neither of them can be called narrow,
nationalistic, priestly, or aristocratic. As for the tendency to codif
the traditional ceremonialism in fixed norms, Professor Pringle-Pattis
cites the parallel of Zoroastrian religion whose history is so similar
many respects to that of Judaism. After a thorough investigation
the development of that great religion, the author proceeds to a stu
of the origin and development of Christianity, showing how each o
the older religions: Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Hellenic religion, co
tributed toward the new theology. One turns from the book with t
sense of having passed through a stimulating and faith-increasin
adventure.

Dealing in part with the same problems as confront Professor Pat-

tison, the distinguished dean of the Chicago Divinity School, Doctor

This content downloaded from 47.31.111.254 on Sat, 29 Feb 2020 06:01:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 380 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

Shailer Mathews, in his Growth of the Idea of God,2 follows the develop-
ment of the idea of God from the earliest beginnings of religion in primi-
tive man's blind search for Divine help and guidance to early, mediaeval
and modern Christianity, and even attempts to prognosticate the
future of the religion. Dean Mathews's main thesis is that the con-
ception of God in any particular civilization will depend on its forms
of social, political and other institutional life. Among primitive peoples
with their tribal organization God is naturally conceived as the Chief-
tain; in the early national state, as the King; in the Roman Empire
as the single Ruler. The origin of Jewish monotheism is sought by Dean
Mathews in the concentration of worship and government in Jerusalem;
the political unity of Israel being, in his opinion, the foundation on
which the prophets reared their idea of the Divine unity. Turning to
fields where his contributions are more direct, original and certain, the
author gives us a clear and careful study of the religious trends in later
Hellenic days and in the Roman Empire. He makes the necessary dis-
tinction between popular and philosophic religion, and shows how among
the Greek philosophers, there was a distinct tendency toward mon-
otheism. But the monotheism of the classical philosophers arose not
from their religious insight, but from their search for unity in the world.
"God was thus essentially a metaphysical term, the ultimate of the
philosopher. Others had their gods" (p. 100). In Christianity the two
approaches were united, and so we have in Christian theology the
monotheism of religion bound together, in philosophical circles, with a
metaphysical conception of God, essentially foreign to the Hebraism
from which Christianity was born.
Doctor Mathews's study of mediaeval Christianity may well serve
as an introduction to the religious philosophy of the scholastics. Like
Professor Pringle-Pattison, Dean Mathews is clearly endeavoring to
overcome the tendency of modern students to ignore the achievements
of past thinkers, who had to contemplate God without the assistance
of trains, steamships, aeroplanes, radios and the other contraptions
which are tending to make our own generation so arrogant and self-
sufficient. Jewish readers will note with particular interest the author's
reference to Maimonides as "one of the greatest of the mediaeval
thinkers who gave not only to Judaism but indirectly to Christianity a
philosophical basis for the God revealed in the Bible" (p. 155).

2 The Growth of the Idea of God. By SHAILER MATHEWS, D.D., LL.D.

New York: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 1931. Pp. xv+237.

This content downloaded from 47.31.111.254 on Sat, 29 Feb 2020 06:01:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 HISTORY-PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION-FINKELSTEIN 381

For many who are not historically minded, the most important
chapter in the volume will doubtless prove the last in which Dean
Mathews speaks of a "Contemporary God." Here Mathews with his
unusual lucidity and erudition tries, as did the philosophers of the mid-
dle ages, to disentangle the conception of God from the anthropo-
morphisms with which it is so frequently associated. He arrives at the
definition: "God is our conception, born of social experience, of the
personality-evolving and personally responsive elements of our cosmic
environment with which we are organically related" (p. 226). It is
difficult in a brief review to do justice to the argument by which the
author justifies the definition, or to the explanation he gives of it. He
finds room in it for both prayer to God and meditation about Him.
Note that he speaks of our "cosmic environment" rather than of the
Universe, for he declines to align himself either with panpsychism or
pantheism. But neither does he deal with the problem of the transcend-
ency of God. This avoidance of a crucial question weakens the argument
and the definition to which it leads. The "personality evolving and
personally responsive elements of our cosmic environment" seem to
many of us a reflection of the profoundest Being, and it is to that Being,
rather than to the reflection, that we offer homage, praise, prayer and
worship.
More limited in its scope than either of the preceding volumes, the
Hebrew Religion3 by Oesterley and Robinson is yet an important con-
tribution to the history of religion. A number of excellent volumes on
the development of biblical theology have appeared in recent years,
since the publication of Kautzsch's Biblische Theologie des Alten Testa-
ments on which most of them draw, and the plan of which they generally
follow. The present authors have broken with the tradition established
by this book in two respects. They devote much more space to the
Semitic and pre-Mosaic customs and beliefs and they deal much more
fully with the Judaism of the second commonwealth. The treatment
of prophetic theology is thus necessarily briefer, but this may be jus-
tifiable since other volumes are available for a discussion of that par-
ticular aspect of the history of Jewish religion.
The authors have made a serious attempt to be just to later Judaism,
and to see Pharisaism in the light of its own conceptions and values.
With the material at hand they have done what they could to follow

3 Hebrew Religion. Its Origin and Development. By W. O. E.

OESTERLEY, M.A., D.D. and THEODORE H. ROBINSON, M.A., D.D.
New York: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 1930. Pp. xxiv+400.

This content downloaded from 47.31.111.254 on Sat, 29 Feb 2020 06:01:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 382 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

the development of Jewish thought in the later biblical books, the

apocrypha, the pseudepigrapha and the early rabbinic traditions.
If the specialist in these fields finds the treatment inadequate he must
remember how little has yet been done to make accessible to scholars
generally a knowledge of the tendencies and conceptions of rabbinic
Judaism.
How much still remains to be done, in elucidating not only rabbinic
traditions but pseudepigraphical works, can be seen from an examina-
tion of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. No book in the whole
pseudepigraphical literature surpasses this work in depth of human
understanding, loftiness of spiritual outlook, or tenderness of affection
toward all creatures. There is in it a mixture of devotion to Israel with
fellow-feeling for the Gentiles; of reverence for learning with under-
standing for the simple and untutored; of earnest piety with forgiveness
for the wayward and the sinful. When we speak of the legalism of the
second commonwealth, it is well to keep in mind that it is to one of its
sons we owe this extraordinary treatise. It may well be that he, rather
the more chauvinistic writer of the Book of Jubilees, represented the
dominant thought of the age. In fact there is good reason from a study
of rabbinic tradition to believe that it was so.

Hardly sufficient attention has been given to this work, in view of

its importance. A number of articles and monographs have been devoted
to it, but it still awaits an interpreter who will do it full justice. The
excellent edition and translation of Charles, with his copious notes,
offers the groundwork for such a study, which must take into account
not only the numerous parallels between the book and biblical, apoc-
ryphal and pseudepigraphical literature generally, but also with the
rabbinic traditions on the origins of which it can throw much light.
A step in the direction of such a comprehensive study has been taken
by Robert Eppel in his Le Pietisme Juif dans les Testaments des Douze
Patriarches.4 After giving a sufficient introduction into the external
nature of the book, the author enters on a discussion of its date, and
decides, against Charles, that it is pre-Maccabean. This finding can
hardly be accepted. It is true that the work has no reference to the
persecutions of Antiochus. But the description of the wars between
Jacob and the Canaanites, found both in the Testaments and in the

4 Le PiStisme Juif dans les Testaments des Douze Patriarches. litudes

D'Histoire et de Philosophie Religueuses publiees par la Faculte de
Theologie Protestante de L'Universite de Strasbourg, No. 22. Par
ROBERT EPPEL. Paris: Librairie FELIX ALCAN, 1930. Pp. viii+202.

This content downloaded from 47.31.111.254 on Sat, 29 Feb 2020 06:01:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 HISTORY OF JEWISH LITURGY-FINKELSTEIN 383

Book of Jubilees, is reminiscent of some of the Maccabean campaigns

and could hardly have been composed before them. There is much to
be said about the community of tradition between the Testaments and
the Book of Jubilees which points to their origin at about the same age.
Eppel speaks of the peace which the book takes for granted, and ap-
parently can find no place for it in the Hasmonean era, crowded as it
was with foreign and domestic war. But he apparently underestimates
the quality of the Golden Era of the reign of Simon and the greater
part of the reign of Hyrcan. There may have been wars but to the
people who had lived through the sufferings of the persecution and
the first Maccabean struggle, the period of semi-independence was
almost messianic. At least it appeared to be a beginning of the mes-
sianic age. The Hasmonean victories brought prosperity to the country
and self-respect to the community. Even those who suffered hunger
and privation did so gladly, feeling that their pains were part of a
transition to a better world-order.

The author's discussion of the theology of the book, which occupies

the larger part of his volume, is lucid, complete and well arranged.

A HISTORY OF THE JEWISH LITURGY5

RABBIS, teachers and students have long felt the need for a book in
English on the Jewish liturgy. Elbogen's Der Jiidische Gottesdienst in
seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung, which is the most authoritative and
excellent work on the subject, being in German is not accessible to the
many students unacquainted with that language. The attempt to
translate the work into Hebrew was not carried out; and so besides
the small, though valuable, Companion to the Daily Prayer Book by
Israel Abrahams (London 1922), many American and English students
had no authoritative work about the origin and development of the
Jewish service.
Prof. A. Z. Idelsohn has now provided this in his work Jewish Liturgy
and Its Development. Drawing on all available sources, Dr. Idelsohn
presents in lucid form the information necessary for an understanding
of the chief points in this history. Here and there we find lapses, even

s Jewish Liturgy and Its Development. By ABRAHAM Z. IDELSOHN,

Professor of Jewish Music and Liturgy, Hebrew Union College. New
York: HENRY HOLT & COMPANY, [1932]. Pp. xix + 404.

This content downloaded from 47.31.111.254 on Sat, 29 Feb 2020 06:01:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms