CHAPTER I

THE EVOLUTION OF HEBREW SOCIAL

INSTITUTIONS

WHEN one undertakes the study of Hebrew social institutions, he is concerned with a development that stretches over more than a thousand years. From the period when we first have knowledge of the Hebrews as a nomad race on the borders of Palestine to the life of the Jews in the days of Christ there is a stretch of time about equal to that which separates the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain from the present day. We recognize a long development in social institutions from the primitive conditions of the pagan Angles and Saxons to those of the complex civilization of the twentieth century. If, for example, we should undertake to study the family in English and American life, it is evident that we should have to consider the many modifications which that institution has undergone through the centuries as a result of the changing conditions of society. A treatment of the subject in a static fashion would be wholly misleading. We must take the same point of view in the study of the social life of Israel.

In the case of the Hebrews there are certain very marked epochs in each of which there were peculiar influences operating. Some of the most original of the social institutions suffered significant changes in the progress of the national life. Some of them died out altogether. Some of the most important of them were either nonexistent or merely embryonic in the earlier stages of Hebrew culture, and only gradually attained the important place which they hold in the complete perspective of Hebrew history.

It is necessary, therefore, to consider the five great stages of the history and the major influences that were in control in each of them. Then the various social elements may be studied genetically as they developed in the historic process.

§ 1. SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS OF PRIMITIVE ISRAEL

We know the Hebrews, first of all, as a group of loosely united clans of the Arabian desert. Their social institutions were determined by nomadism. They were dwellers in the rude tents of the Bedouin. Their organization was patriarchal, families naturally living together, recognizing the ties of kinship, and accepting the government of the ClanFather. Their wealth was that which could be conveyed from oasis to oasis in the desert-flocks, herds, asses, camels, the furniture of tents, perhaps some gems and costly garments. They were fighters, and by the conquest of other tribes secured captives to be their servants. So a patriarchal form of slavery existed in which the children of the slaves were the hereditary property of the children of their masters.

Social duties and obligations were simple in such primitive life. There were rights of property that must be observed. There were certain great needs, such as water and pasturage, concerning which a very definite sense of right came to exist. And there was a body of custom regulating marriage, child life, inheritance, and other personal relations.

The religion of the Hebrews in the nomadic stage was also very simple. There was the recognition of the tribal God, Jehovah, from whom protection and benefit were expected. There were certain animal sacrifices offered by the Clan-Father, and certain ceremonials to be observed at stated periods of the year and of human life. And there was a body of custom, consisting largely of taboos, which regulated the relation of the people with the Deity.

Of course in later times this desert stage of Israel's history was idealized. Many of the institutions of the more developed culture were supposed by subsequent generations

to have existed in the desert days in the same form in which they were afterward known. We shall, therefore, gain a correct view of the evolution of Hebrew life and religion only if we carefully estimate the real attainment of this primitive epoch.

§ 2. SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS BEFORE THE EXILE

It was a great advance in the life of the Hebrews when they moved from the desert into Canaan. There they came into contact with a people further developed in civilization than themselves. They learned from the Canaanites more of the arts of war, for the older inhabitants were skilled warriors, trained in the school of the Egyptians. More important still, they learned the arts of the agricultural life, for the Canaanites had already developed the fertility of Canaan, and produced the grape, the fig, the olive, and the various grains. Moreover, Palestine was a land of cities, where permanent houses, some provision for the storage of water, and walls of defense made life more regular and secure. And as the trade routes between the East and West passed through Canaan there was opportunity for obtaining the produce of the most civilized lands.

Into all this the nomad Hebrews came, and their social institutions developed into the higher agricultural stage. New obligations of property arose. The possession of the land involved problems of measurement, landmarks, trespass, inheritance, purchase and sale, simple forms of mortgage.

The patriarchal organization of society was modified by the closer neighborhood of different families involved in the residence for protection in walled cities. The principal wealth being in the land, those who were landless and yet freemen, together with the orphans, the widows, the debtors, formed a poor population for whom no clan leader was responsible. Problems of justice and of charity arose in connection with these.

With the advent of the kingship the social order developed into more coherence. The rule of the court brought its culture and its luxury. Taxation was regulated, the administration of justice was to some degree organized, and trade was developed. It would be too much to say that the Hebrews passed from the agricultural to the commercial stage, but under Solomon, Jehoshaphat, Omri, Ahab, and particularly under Jeroboam II and the later Judæan kings, there was considerable trade with Arabia and with the Syrian peoples.

The terrible wars to which the Hebrews were subject brought into prominence the military chieftain. It would seem that a military and court aristocracy replaced the old tribal leadership, and serious problems of wealth and social justice arose in consequence.

The religion of this period was determined partly by the presence of the numerous Canaanitish shrines at which the Hebrews worshiped Jehovah under the forms, often cruel and sensual, of the local Baals. This resulted in the development of a class of professional priests. With the building of the Solomonic temple a more elaborate cultus became possible, and this undoubtedly developed in the hands of the Jerusalem priesthood during the four hundred years that the temple stood. The great attempt made in the reign of Josiah to confine the sacrifices to the temple was a potent force in the evolution of Hebrew religious life.

But altogether the most significant religious influence of this period was that supreme product of the Hebrew genius, the line of men of profound religious experience and of passionate interest in social justice, who, against the religious formalism and the cynical selfishness of their times, preached the immortal sermons that we call prophecy. 83. SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS AS Affected by the Exile The social life of all later Judaism was profoundly modi

fied by the extraordinary experience of the deportation of a considerable part of the ablest citizens from Jerusalem to Babylonia. If these exiles had simply disappeared from the Hebrew life, as was usual in such cases, they would have left their fellow countrymen impoverished, but that would have been all. But very many of the exiles retained the liveliest interest in the destiny of their people as inhabitants of the sacred land. They utterly refused to become a part of the Babylonian life. They set themselves to a preparation for the rehabilitation, improvement, and particularly for the religious reformation of their race. Even though there may not have been so general a return from the exile as the Jewish traditions would indicate, there was a very intimate relationship between the Jews of Babylon and those of Palestine, and the influence of the stronger Eastern element was very marked.

While the purpose of Nebuchadrezzar in deporting the Hebrews may have been partly that he might have an agricultural population to supply his own cities with food, it is certain from the numerous Jewish names that appear in the documents of the period that the Jews became apt pupils in the school of Babylonian commerce. There they received the impulse toward trading that was so important a factor in their later development.

But the most significant change produced by the exile. arose from the fact that the people, being obliged to give up the performance of their ceremonies and customs, were constrained to preserve them for future generations in literary form. In the process of describing their ancient usages, they interpreted and rationalized them. The agricultural festivals were given a national and historical significance. The cultus of the temple, which had been observed by the initiated priesthood as a technique of worship, was now elaborated, reinterpreted, given a new theological significance. And the whole body of ancient law was codified and reorganized with reference to the establishment of a