Judaism
Abrahams, Israel, 1858-1925
English
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JUDAISM
By
ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, M.A.
READER IN TALMUDIC AND RABBINIC LITERATURE
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
FOREWORD
The writer has attempted in this volume to take up a few of the most
characteristic points in Jewish doctrine and practice, and to explain
some of the various phases through which they have passed, since the
first centuries of the Christian era.
The presentation is probably much less detached than is the case
with other volumes in this series. But the difference was scarcely
avoidable. The writer was not expounding a religious system which has
no relation to his own life. On the contrary, the writer is himself a
Jew, and thus is deeply concerned personally in the matters discussed
in the book.
The reader must be warned to keep this fact in mind throughout. On the one
hand, 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, he
has escaped the pitfall of undue partiality.
I. A.
CONTENTS
I. THE LEGACY FROM THE PAST
II. RELIGION AS LAW
III. ARTICLES OF FAITH
IV. SOME CONCEPTS OF JUDAISM
V. SOME OBSERVANCES OF JUDAISM
VI. JEWISH MYSTICISM
VII. ESCHATOLOGY
VIII. THE SURVIVAL OF JUDAISM
SELECTED LIST OF BOOKS ON JUDAISM
JUDAISM
CHAPTER I
THE LEGACY FROM THE PAST
The aim of this little book is to present in brief outline some of the
leading conceptions of the religion familiar since the Christian Era
under the name Judaism.
The word 'Judaism' occurs for the first time at about 100 B.C., in the
Graeco-Jewish literature. In the second book of the Maccabees (ii. 21,
viii. 1), 'Judaism' signifies the religion of the Jews as contrasted with
Hellenism, the religion of the Greeks. In the New Testament (Gal. i. 13)
the same word seems to denote the Pharisaic system as an antithesis to
the Gentile Christianity. In Hebrew the corresponding noun never occurs
in the Bible, and it is rare even in the Rabbinic books. When it does
meet us, _Jahaduth_ implies the monotheism of the Jews as opposed
to the polytheism of the heathen.
Thus the term 'Judaism' did not pass through quite the same transitions
as did the name 'Jew.' Judaism appears from the first as a religion
transcending tribal bounds. The 'Jew,' on the other hand, was originally
a Judaean, a member of the Southern Confederacy called in the Bible
Judah, and by the Greeks and Romans Judaea. Soon, however, 'Jew' came
to include what had earlier been the Northern Confederacy of Israel as
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