The origin and development of the moral ideas

The gods of the Romans were on the whole unsympathetic and lifeless beings, some of them even actually pernicious, as the god of Fever, who had a temple on the Palatine hill, and the god of Ill-Fortune, who had an altar on the Esquiline hill.175 The relations between the gods and their worshippers were cold, ceremonial, legal. The chief thing was not to break “the peace of the gods,” or, when it was broken, to restore it.176 They were rendered propitious by “sanctity” and “piety.”177 But sanctity was defined as “the knowledge of how we ought to worship them,” and piety was only “justice towards the gods,” the return for benefits received; Cicero asks, “What piety is due to a being from whom you receive nothing?”178 The divine law, fas, was distinguished from the human law, jus. To the former belonged not only the religious rites but the duties to the dead, as also the duties to certain living individuals.179 Offences against parents were avenged by the divi parentum;180 the duty of hospitality was enforced by the dii hospitales and Jupiter;181 boundaries were protected by Jupiter Terminalis and Terminus;182 and Jupiter, Dius Fidius, and Fides, were the guardians of sworn faith.183

The god of Israel was a powerful protector of his chosen people, but he was a severe master who inspired more fear than love. In the pre-prophetic period at least, he was no model of goodness. He had unaccountable moods, his wrath often resembled “rather the insensate violence of angered nature, than the reasonable indignation of a moralised personality”184—as appears, for instance, from the suggestion of David that Saul’s undeserved enmity might be due to the incitement of God.185 At the same time his severity was also a guardian of human relationships. It turned against children who were disrespectful to their parents, against murderers, adulterers, thieves, false witnesses—indeed, the whole criminal law was a revelation of the Lord. He was moreover a protector of the poor and needy,186 and a preserver of strangers.187 But offences against God were, in the Ten Commandments, mentioned before offences against man; religious rites were put on the same level with the rules of social morality; neglect of circumcision, or disregard of the precepts of ceremonial cleanliness, or sabbath-breaking, was punished with the same severity as the greatest crimes.188 “To the ordinary man,” says Wellhausen, “it was not moral but liturgical acts that seemed to be truly religious.”189 A different opinion, however, was expressed by the Prophets.

They opposed the vice of the heart to the outward service of the ritual.190 God was said by them to desire not sacrifice but mercy,191 and to hate the hypocritical service of Israel with its feast-days and solemn assemblies;192 and the true fast was declared to consist in moral welldoing.193 To them righteousness was the fundamental virtue of Yahveh, and if he punished Israel his anger was no longer a merely fitful outburst, unrelated to Israel’s own wrongdoing, but an essential element of his righteousness.194 However, as M. Halévy observes, the truly national conceptions of the Hebrews were not those which the Prophets maintained, but those which they opposed.195 The importance of ritual was more than ever emphasised in the post-prophetic priestly code.