You ask, what was the philosophy of the Hebrews? The answer will be a
very short one--they had none. Their legislator himself does not
anywhere speak expressly of the immortality of the soul, nor of the
rewards of another life. Josephus and Philo believe the soul to be
material; their doctors admitted corporeal angels; and when they
sojourned at Babylon, they gave to these angels the names given them by
the Chaldæans--Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel. The name of Satan is
Babylonian, and is in somewise the Arimanes of Zoroaster. The name of
Asmodeus also is Chaldæan; and Tobit, who lived in Nineveh, is the first
who employed it. The dogma of the immortality of the soul was developed
only in the course of ages, and among the Pharisees. The Sadducees
always denied this spirituality, this immortality, and the existence of
the angels. Nevertheless, the Sadducees communicated uninterruptedly
with the Pharisees, and had even sovereign pontiffs of their own sect.
The prodigious difference in opinion between these two great bodies did
not cause any disturbance. The Jews, in the latter times of their
sojourn at Jerusalem, were scrupulously attached to nothing but the
ceremonials of their law. The man who had eaten pudding or rabbit would
have been stoned; while he who denied the immortality of the soul might
be high-priest.
It is commonly said that the abhorrence in which the Jews held other
nations proceeded from their horror of idolatry; but it is much more
likely that the manner in which they at the first exterminated some of
the tribes of Canaan, and the hatred which the neighboring nations
conceived for them, were the cause of this invincible aversion. As they
knew no nations but their neighbors, they thought that in abhorring them
they detested the whole earth, and thus accustomed themselves to be the
enemies of all men.
One proof that this hatred was not caused by the idolatry of the nations
is that we find in the history of the Jews that they were very often
idolaters. Solomon himself sacrificed to strange gods. After him, we
find scarcely any king in the little province of Judah that does not
permit the worship of these gods and offer them incense. The province of
Israel kept its two calves and its sacred groves, or adored other
divinities.