WHERE THIS NEW RELIGION AROSE. Far to the eastern end of the Mediterranean there had long lived a branch of the Semitic race, which had developed a national character and made a contribution of first importance to the religious thought of the world. These were the Hebrew people who, leaving Egypt about 1500 B.C., in the Exodus, had come to inhabit the land of Canaan, south of Phoenicia and east and north of Egypt. From a wandering, pastoral people they had gradually changed to a settled, agricultural people, and had begun the development of a regular State. Unwilling, however, to bear the burdens of a political State, and objecting to taxation, a standing army, and forced labor for the State, the nationality which promised at one time fell to pieces, and the land was overrun by hostile neighbors and the people put under the yoke. After a sad and tempestuous history, which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D., the inhabitants were sold into slavery and dispersed throughout the Roman Empire. These people developed no great State, and made no contributions to government or science or art. Their contribution was along religious lines, and so magnificent and uplifting is their religious literature that it is certain to last for all time. Alone among all eastern people they early evolved the idea of one omnipotent God. The religion that they developed declared man to be the child of God, erected personal morality and service to God as the rule of life, and asserted a life beyond the grave. It was about these ideas that the whole energy of the people concentrated, and religion became the central thought of their lives. This religion, unlike the other religions of the Mediterranean world, emphasized duty to God, service, personal morality, chastity, honesty, and truth as its essential elements. The Law of Moses became the law of the land. Woman was elevated to a new place in the life of the ancient world. [4] Children became sacred in the eyes of the people. Their literary contribution, the Old Testament--written by a series of patriarchs, lawgivers, prophets, and priests--pictures, often in sublime language, the various migrations, deliverances, calamities, and religious hopes, aspirations, and experiences of this Chosen People.