Chapter LII. Israel, the Servant of the Lord, Martyr and Messiah Of the Nations Chapter LIII. The Messianic Hope Chapter LIV. Resurrection, a National Hope Chapter LV. Israel and the Heathen Nations Chapter LVI. The Stranger and the Proselyte Chapter LVII. Christianity and Mohammedanism, the Daughter-Religions Of Judaism Chapter LVIII. The Synagogue and its Institutions Chapter LIX. The Ethics of Judaism and the Kingdom of God List Of Abbreviations Index Footnotes DEDICATION To The Memory Of EDWARD L. HEINSHEIMER THE LAMENTED PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE HEBREW UNION COLLEGE IN WHOM ZEAL FOR THE HIGH IDEALS OF JUDAISM AND PATRIOTIC DEVOTION TO OUR BLESSED COUNTRY WERE NOBLY EMBODIED In Friendship And Affection PREFACE In offering herewith to the English-reading public the present work on Jewish Theology, the result of many years of research and of years of activity as President and teacher at the Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati, I bespeak for it that fairness of judgment to which every pioneer work is entitled. It may seem rather strange that no such work has hitherto been written by any of the leading Jewish scholars of either the conservative or the progressive school. This can only be accounted for by the fact that up to modern times the Rabbinical and philosophical literature of the Middle Ages sufficed for the needs of the student, and a systematic exposition of the Jewish faith seemed to be unnecessary. Besides, a real demand for the specific study of Jewish theology was scarcely felt, inasmuch as Judaism never assigned to a creed the prominent position which it holds in the Christian Church. This very fact induced Moses Mendelssohn at the beginning of the new era to declare that Judaism “contained only truths dictated by reason and no dogmatic beliefs at all.” Moreover, as he was rather a deist than a theist, he stated boldly that Judaism “is not a revealed religion but a revealed law intended solely for the Jewish people as the vanguard of universal monotheism.” By taking this legalistic view of Judaism in common with the former opponents of the Maimonidean articles of faith—which, by the way, he had himself translated for the religious instruction of the Jewish youth—he exerted a deteriorating influence upon the normal development of the Jewish faith under the new social conditions. The fact is that Mendelssohn emancipated the modern Jew from the thraldom of the Ghetto, but not Judaism. In the Mendelssohnian circle the impression prevailed, as we are told, that Judaism consists of a system of forms, but is substantially no religion at all. The entire Jewish renaissance period which followed, characteristically enough, made the cultivation of the so-called science of Judaism its object, but it neglected altogether the whole field of Jewish theology. Hence we look in vain among the writings of Rappaport,