now suspended at an infinite distance, high above all the present scene of existence; and the further notion was soon conceived that it would only be revealed again in the whole of its wondrous significance and power in the fulness of things, at the end of all time.1 In the same way, the heathen had their mysterious names of deities, and the Chinese emperor's original name is suspended over all his subjects, inviolable and unapproachable during his reign, while he is designated by some other appellation. But this God of the ancient community, though men feared his name above all things, and desired utterly to surrender themselves to him in deepest awe, was in reality ever retiring further and further from them, into a mysterious distance; and while they were restrained by their scruples from looking into his face or calling upon him by his true name, they were really losing him more and more, so undesigned was this most significant of all the signs of Israel's last great era! As the name of the people changes with each of the three great stages of its history, and each name may serve as a brief symbol of the whole essence of the special era to which it belongs, so it is to a still greater extent with the name of God; and nothing is more significant than that the simple but sublime Jahveh should be succeeded by the splendid Jahveh of Hosts, together with the very free use of Jahveh, and this, again, finally by a blank. But this practice of avoiding the highest conceivable name of the true religion, when it had acquired the force of law, gradually fostered the most artificial ways of thinking and speaking of God, as though it were impossible, at least for human language, to find any name fully worthy of being used as an adequate designation of the Unspeakable. Nor was this all, it also produced many kinds of superstition, especially the prevalent belief that it was possible to work miracles" by the bold utterance of the mysterious heavenly name, the probable sound of which it would still be. easy to imitate. These tendencies, no doubt, only reached their further development in the following centuries, but their ultimate source lies hidden here.

4

Now, when the believer thus endeavours himself to fulfil the

1 See Comm. on Rev. ii. 27. 2 See Rémusat, Nouveaux Mélanges Asiatiques, vol. ii. p. 6 sqq.

3 Hebrows, Israel, Judeans; on the other hand the name of Jews is more appropriately bestowed on the nation after Christ, or, later still, after the war of Hadrian.

As in the circumlocution of Rev. i.

4; see Die Johanneischen Schriften, vol. ii. p. 108 sq.

Certain Gnostics seriously believed that some miraculous power was to be found in sounds such as Iao, Hieo, Iae; and so did the author of the Greek Testamentum Salomonis (in Ilgen's Zeitschr., 1844, vol. iii. p. 45).

whole of the sacred law, and yet sees the less conscientious, or even those who are absolutely hostile to it, prospering, it would naturally depend entirely upon his disposition and circumstances whether he burst into indignant wrath against them and cursed or chastised them severely, according as they were beyond or within his power, as we have seen Nehemiah doing,' or whether, on the other hand, he was led to entertain doubts of his own conduct and to fall into a sullen, or even, as far as the distinction between good and evil is concerned, into an indifferent state of judgment and action. Indeed, we see this half sullen, half indifferent life increase to a dangerous extent among the members of the new community before the Persian age is over, so that Malachi cannot raise his prophetic voice high enough in denunciation of it; 2 and Koheleth wrote his book of sayings with the special object of rather reminding a generation growing in discontent and sullenness of the joys of life, as well as of the duty, in all fear of God, of thankfully enjoying life itself as a divine gift.3 In this respect, also, the book of Koheleth is the first of its kind, and the inference suggests itself that the people which has to be thus admonished on the enjoyment of life must be growing old already, or that, at least, in spite of its last great change, it cannot completely renew its youth again.

3. Finally, this same obscure feeling of discontent might receive the most formidable accretion from an entirely new and unexpected source. The hagiocracy arose on the basis of the great book of the law, and it was, in consequence, logically driven back towards the primitive condition of the ancient community. Indeed, the renovation of the true religion, which is the last and highest special effort of this third era, could not fail, if it were but profound enough, to involve a return to those fundamental truths which had been enunciated in the first instance, and to the spirit which had once been revealed in all its power through them. But since the hagiocracy laid down as its special foundation the book of the law alone, and did so because there were no old sacred laws and ordinances expressly prescribed anywhere else, it was ever more and more inclined to leap over the whole intermediate development of the second era, which we may call the prophetic, on account of the great prophets who then stood by the side of the kings. This great movement had certainly not yet been brought to a full

1 Neh. iii. 36-38 [iv. 4-6], and vi. 14; and under the other aspect, xiii. 25.

Mal. ii. 17, iii. 13-18.

3 See the Dichter des A. Bs. vol. iv. p. 183 sqq.

and clear conclusion, nor had it made way for an entirely new basis of life, simply because it had been violently broken off by the destruction of Jerusalem. In many respects, however, it towered far above the primitive condition of the community in the first era; and many golden grains had already found their way from its spiritual treasures into the great book of the law itself, though not to such an extent as completely to remove the defects of the ancient order. The fact, therefore, that the hagiocracy depended immediately on this great book of the law alone, rendered it easy for it to take a reactionary direction, the consequences of which might be very dangerous. It concealed behind it nothing less than the ancient theocracy, in the form under which it was described and aspired after as a national blessing in the great book of the law, the very letter of which was now considered sacred. Thus, in proportion to the logical consistency with which it developed and confirmed itself, it must constantly feel impelled to return to the primitive national constitution; and indeed, in all imperial and national relations, the community strove in its latest period to recur to its earliest state, as it found it set forth in the sacred law. Thus it followed the lead of the ancient theocracy in endeavouring more effectually to close its ranks externally against the heathens and semi-heathens, a principle which also harmonised completely with the scrupulous character which was becoming prominent in it, and of which we have already seen an instance,' immediately after the foundation of the new Jerusalem, in the treatment of the Samaritans. This was one of the first important events of the new community; it made a great rent in the religious and national relations of the holy land itself, and so became a precedent for all the future. The result was seen in the constant imposition of fresh national limitations upon religion at a time when it ought, on the contrary, to be throwing them off more and more, rising above all lower difficulties and doubts, and victoriously extending itself through the whole wide world. Indeed the ancient theocracy which lay here concealed, endured the foreign supremacy as long as it was inevitable, but could by no means be reconciled with it, since the Messianic hopes could never again be quite extinguished, but necessarily tended to break out into more. abundant blossom at every time of external oppression. The first disturbances which sprang from these causes were speedily followed, it is true, by a long period of tranquillity under the

1 P. 103 sqq.

Persian supremacy; but though Ezra genuinely submitted himself to it and exhorted all his contemporaries to acknowledge its benefits, yet, at the same time, he considered it due alone to the sins of the people that they had been made the slaves of the stranger; and he therefore hoped from the bottom of his heart that by-and-by the relation might be again reversed. And so, in the times which succeeded Ezra's, when the Persian empire kept losing in prestige and internal strength, when the rule of the satraps became more and more arbitrary and pernicious, and Palestine especially had much to suffer from the protracted and devastating wars between the Persians and the Egyptians whose craving for independence could never be stilled, we find in the book of Koheleth expressions of profound dissatisfaction with the external supremacy, which the sage author can only attempt laboriously to smooth down. The events and the religion of its primitive history had strengthened the nation in a hatred of arbitrary despotism; and at this very moment the hagiocracy was endeavouring to restore it to that position which it had occupied a thousand years before.

In all this lay just so many germs of dissolution, threatening this form of constitution and government also, as soon as it should begin to rise in power and to unfold its specific genius. It is true indeed that the propitious tendencies and germs of the hagiocracy were far more powerful, and that this whole stage of the history is occupied with their growing ascendancy, but still we shall see the others constantly returning under more and more highly developed forms. We are now sufficiently prepared to form at once a correct estimate of the general results of this period.

D. THE ISSUE OF THE PERSIAN EPOCH.

About this time of transition, it is true, we only possess very scanty and obscure information; and, indeed, at this point we come upon an interval of nearly two hundred years of which our knowledge is very slender and disconnected. The age of Ezra and Nehemiah falls between the antiquity proper of

1 P. 122 sqq.

Ezr. ix. 7-9, Neh. ix. 36 sq.; also Bar. i. 11-13, iv. 6 sqq., and elsewhere. 3 This is nowhere described more vividly or intelligibly than by Xenophon at the end of the same book which is

intended to glorify Cyrus and the noble early history of his empire, Cyrop. viii. 8, 2 sqq.

See the Dichter des A. Bs. vol. iv. p. 180 sq.

the nation and the fully-developed hagiocracy in which the sun of its long course was finally to sink for ever, but it has preserved for us the last records which give us the most trustworthy insight into the activity of these noble individuals and the condition of their time; and they supply the last proof that great epochs always produce and preserve testimonies to their own glory as splendid as themselves.

This much, however, we know with certainty, that in Judea the peaceful and prosperous co-operation with the Persian supremacy which had become the true basis of the external rise and progress of the new kingdom of Jahveh at Jerusalem, was at last most profoundly disturbed. The indications above mentioned in the book of Koheleth have already prepared us to expect that all the accumulated dissatisfaction with the Persian supremacy would at last break out under various forms; and certain obscure traditions, here and there preserved, imply that this really took place. These considerations bring us unavoidably to the closer examination of an institution which now rises into fresh relations and is henceforth of the utmost importance for all the remaining course of the history, almost down to its very end.

I. THE RISE AND CHARACTER OF THE HIGH-PRIESTLY POWER UNDER THE HAGIOCRACY.

The high-priestly power in Israel was perfectly legitimate and indispensable. It was rendered so by its remote origin, and also, in accordance with the spirit of the age, by the support conferred on it, in common with everything relating to the priesthood, the sanctuary, and religion, by the sacred book of law and the inferences now drawn from it. Intended originally simply to knit the priestly tribe firmly together and to provide for the performance of certain high offices in the sacred ceremonial, the high-priesthood, in virtue of its inheritance by the right of primogeniture, had in early times become a powerful support and pillar at first of the lofty edifice of the sacred objects, and then, by its means, of the whole community of the people of the true religion. In the premonarchical times of Israel, when the other supreme powers were relaxed, it stepped into their place from time to time as the leader of the whole nation;' and then in the separate kingdom of Judah, after the disruption of the old kingdom, it was most eminently