sacred vessels, chalices and censers which had been stolen from the churches. It is certain that in such cases the Jews were merely concerned with such purchase as a business transaction and intended no sacrilege; nevertheless, the purchase of such church goods lent a certain weight to the accusation of desecration, and for that reason it was strictly forbidden later on. Gregory of Tours asserted that the Jews had stolen a picture of Jesus from a church and had whipped it, whereupon blood had flowed from it, sprinkling the perpetrators of the act, who were thereby detected. Depping mentions another case in which a Jew of Paris, in order to escape the search for church vessels that had been pawned, hid a golden cross and a costly copy of the Gospels under his cloak. Mendacious compilations of the Bohemian chroniclers Hajek and Neplack declare that the Jews of Prague robbed churches in 1070 and 1071; but these reports bear the stamp of clumsy invention. Bishop Cosmas reported that in 1124 a Jew who had been converted to Christianity and had turned a synagogue into a church had returned to Judaism and desecrated this church. Subsequently the charge of desecration of relics disappeared; it was limited to the charge of host desecration, which still claimed its Jewish victims for centuries.

Lit.: Depping, Georg, Die Juden im Mittelalter (1834); Stobbe, Otto, Die Juden in Deutschland während des Mittelalters (3rd ed., 1923).

RELIGION. 1. Introduction. Religion may be regarded as man's birthright. Totally absent from the animal realm, it flowered forth in man at the very dawn of history and has persisted as a dominant force in all stages of his evolution. Not a tribe has been discovered thus far without some form of religion. Its fears have haunted man's conscious as well as subconscious life, and its hopes have buoyed him and served as the goals and incentives of his conduct. Its rites and calendars of feasts and fasts have formed his earliest and most effective schools of discipline and education, and have stimulated his many-sided creativity. Its fancies and ideas about nature and the supernatural constituted the substance of his thinking, and ripened into the cultural and intellectual achievements which crown humanity with glory. Religion has mothered the arts that give scope to genius, such as writing, poetry, drama, music, painting, sculpture and architec ture, and the sciences, both abstract, like mathematics, logic and philosophy, and concrete, such as astronomy and medicine. It has also played a gigantic role in the formation of nations and states, and in the creation of the international mind that transcends the barriers of race and country.

As religion is inextricably interfused with the general complex of social relations and endeavors which constitute civilization, the line of demarcation between them sometimes becomes tenuous. Yet their differences must be recognized if justice is to be done to both. Civilization connotes the expression of the sum total of man's creative activity, the products of his hands and brain. It represents the humanization of man, his rise above the level of animality and savagery, his advance in thought and behavior, in skills, in knowledge and in morals, his improvement and progress in social, economic and political standards and organization. As part of the hierarchy of values that make for the higher life, religion forms an important part of civilization. However, it is definitely distinguished from all its other parts by its concern with the transcendant, by its direction of man's heart and mind toward the holy or the divine determiner of his destiny. Religion is a special phase of human culture or civilization, which frequently clashes with its other phases, seeking to curb and to subordinate them to its own values and standards. Not being confined to a watertight compartment,

religion enters into every phase of civilization and functions as its motivating spirit and conscience.

2. Essence of Religion. This basic attribute of humanity has kept pace with the growth of society and with the evolution of its culture. In primitive society religion remained stagnant through long ages. Fluctuating as tribal life, its notions and forms constantly wavered and varied, and yet remained curiously monotonous and uniform. Individual feeling, chance occurrences, naive observation and experience sometimes affected the choice of gods or spirits and the forms of their worship. With the progress of tribal organization and the formation of nations and states religion advanced and grew into a cementing and stabilizing force, which strengthened the structure of custom, law and morality.

At its threshold religion appears in forms akin to magic or is expressed in worship of the dead, of souls and spirits, of animals, and of forces of nature. It translates itself into notions of strange "power" or mana, of fetishism and totemism, and of tabus and clean and unclean. These may stem naturally from naive fancies of primitive man in his reaction to the puzzling and bewildering phenomena of the external world. Religion in the proper sense of the term begins with the emergence of the rudimentary idea of deity or, to use the terminology of Rudolf Otto, of a numen or daemon. Vague and inchoate as the numen is, it is felt to be living, powerful and uncanny. It is begotten, not as certain schools of sociology maintain, as a "collective product of crowd imagination," and, therefore, has not its origin in group or folk psychology, but in the intuition of persons of innate spiritual or prophetic

powers.

Born of the religious consciousness itself, the numinous feeling is sui generis and can not be derived from or reduced to any other state of consciousness. Like all primary elements in our psychical or mental life, like pleasure and pain, love and hate, the response to light and the sense of time and space, so the numinous feeling emerges in due course in the development of the human mind and spirit. It comes a priori. Like every absolutely primary datum, it can not be defined satisfactorily in terms of other experience. Its character can only be suggested by feelings akin to it, by way of analogy and contrast.

At the root of the religious experience is not merely the feeling of fear, love, expectation, or dependence, but-as Otto has pointed out-of creaturehood, ie. of a creature overwhelmed by its own nothingness in contrast to the overpowering, mysterious and supreme Being. This complex creature feeling arises in the consciousness when the numinous object is felt to be present outside of the self. It is compounded of various feelings, of strange excitement, intoxicating frenzy, transport and ecstasy, or of hushed trembling and speechless humility. It evokes fear and awe before the eerie and uncanny or mysterious. Man feels himself overcome by the numinous being, which is "wholly other" from anything in natural experience and fills the mind with wonder and astonishment (cf. Gen. 18:27; 28:17-18; 32:25-30; Ex. 3:3 et seq.; Judges 13:18 et seq.; Isa. 6; Job 4:12-16). In one of its aspects the qualitative content of the numinous consists of awefulness and majesty, and in another it is something uniquely attractive and fascinating. The nonrational element of fascination has as its parallel on the rational side: love, mercy, pity, comfort, strength, joy, bliss, and peace. These "natural" elements of the common life appear here as absolute and complete. Although of supreme importance for the religious experience of bliss or felicity, they do not exhaust it.

The same applies to the opposite experience of infelicity-the wrath of God. Both contain fundamentally non-rational elements.

In the development of the holy two nearly simultaneous processes may be noted. The first, just described, is the numinous. It is purely psychological and non-rational. Daemonic dread rises to the fear of the gods and thence to the fear of God; daemonic power comes to be Divine power; and dread is transformed into worship. Out of the confusion of emotion and bewilderment of feeling grows "religio," and out of shudder, "reverence" and holy "awe." The numen becomes God. It is to God rendered absolute that the attribute holy (kadosh, hagios, sanctus) properly pertains. The other process, which is secondary and subsidiary to the numinous, is that of rationalization and moralization. The numinous attracts and appropriates meanings derived from social and individual value and obligation, justice and goodness. These come to be conceived as the will of the deity. The holy thus becomes the good, and the good, by that process, is identified with the holy.

It is the coalescence of these two elements in the teachings of the prophets that gives Judaism its chief distinction. "Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like unto Thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?" (Ex. 15:11). “The Lord of hosts is exalted through justice, and God the Holy One is sanctified through righteousness" (Isa. 5:16). "Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Thy throne; mercy and truth go before Thee" (Ps. 89:15). He wills goodness. The law which He reveals through His prophets is not only good and just but also holy. Merging with the moral and the rational, the holy comes to represent the consummation of perfect goodness and truth. As such it forms the divine pattern of behavior for man. "Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy" (Lev. 19:2). The holy is set off from the ordinary or the common, and is guarded by restrictions and prohibitions. Unlike the secular, it serves not as an instrument to something else, but constitutes an end in itself, the supreme and unconditioned goal of human striving (see Otto, Idea of the Holy, 113 et seq.).

3. Unity and Diversity of Religion. Religion is a universal phenomenon. Like speech it is an endowment of human nature. And like speech it has expressed itself in an endless variety of dialects and forms. These diversities no less than the unities in religion belong to its very essence. It never exists in the abstract, but always in the concrete, conditioned by the life of its people, by such factors as geography, climate or economics. These specific elements give each religion its particular physiognomy and character as well as its power over the lives of men.

Wide are the differences between the religions of the aborigines of Australia, the primitives of Asia and Africa, the great religions of India, China and Japan, and the monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yet certain elements appear in all of them. They share a common essence. The sense of the holy forms the seed from which all religions grow. Hence features discovered in the lowest appear also in the noblest. In varying ways they all strive to awaken man's consciousness that he does not live by bread alone. They recognize a gulf between man and nature as well as between man and the gods or God, and set themselves to bridging it by uniting the human spirit with its divine source and thereby to integrating human life and to investing it with sanctity and worth. All of them operate in line with their distinctive traditions and modes of expression. The religions of advancing civilizations gradually acquire finer forms. Under the influence of prophetic and philosophic criticism, its primitive admixtures of magic

and superstition are replaced with rites and practices in greater accord with the awakened moral and esthetic sense. Its outworn notions regarding the world and man are corrected by more accurate versions of reality. Man's baser emotions are purged, and blind custom and tabu are replaced by standards of right and duty based on reason and on conscience.

When the critical spirit separates itself from traditional religion and replaces its standards and demands with judgments of its own, friction arises between them. This is illustrated by the periodic conflicts between philosophy or science and religion. Progressive religions resolve these conflicts not by ignoring or decrying the new visions of truth, but by integrating them with their own texture and by deepening their traditional values and ideas in the light of the new teaching.

Touching the lives of all races of men, religion naturally came to take on different meanings for people of different temperaments and conditions. Building as it does the morale and spirit of each group, it often fig. ured as a source of danger to hostile neighbors. This accounts for the different attitudes of men toward their own religion and toward the religions of others. Within the particular religious community itself, religion often has been utilized to strengthen the hands of the rulers and priests over the rest of the people. Thus in the dark hours of civilization, the light of religion, too, often is dimmed. It becomes infected with the poisons, passions, prejudices and hatreds of men, and is turned into an instrument of domination and persecution. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the bloody wars of different factions within the same religion represent the nightmare of civilization and compromise the fair name of religion. However, the moral element in religion comes to life in the consciences of prophetic figures and in the reformatory movements, which they initiate, restoring religion to its pristine purity, holding out salvation to the afflicted and admonishing the strong and charging them with duties and responsibilities.

4. The Term Religion. The philosophical analysis of this universal phenomenon came comparatively late in the intellectual development of humanity. The detachment and critical spirit necessary for such an effort were lacking in the ancient world. Thus in Israel, where, through prophetic inspiration, religion attained its profoundest expression, it continued to rest on a customary and pragmatic basis. Biblical literature shows little or no reflection regarding its nature, and no precise term for its designation. As among the Egyptians, Babylonians and other nations of antiquity, no conception of religion was evolved beyond that of the worship and propitiation of God and the performance of His will as a means of securing national and personal happiness. The idea of the holy assumed the form of a covenant relationship between the nation or individual and God, based on the principle of mutual reciprocity, and served as the ground of ceremonial purity, dietary laws, ritual practice and moral requirements. Entailing acts of worship, consisting of sacrifice and prayer, religion was designated as ‘abodath 'elohim. This term covered religion as a whole as well as the act of worship at the Temple. The psychological terms yir'ah (fear) and 'emunah (faith) were also used occasionally for the whole of religion. In a few instances da'ath 'elohim (knowledge of God, i.e. of practical nature) and torah (divine doctrine, instruction or law) appear as approximations of religion in its pragmaticintellectualistic aspect. Only in post-Biblical literature does the word dath (borrowed from the Persian data, and first used in Ezra and in Esther in the sense of decree, edict, and law) make its appearance as a general term for religion.

While the Western world received its philosophies and sciences from Greece and most of its religious ideas and standards from ancient Israel, it derived the term itself from the least spiritual of ancient peoples, the Romans. In his work The Nature of the Gods (book 2, chap. 18), Cicero places the explanation of the word religio in the mouth of a Stoic. He derives it from re-legere, to care, reread, or practice, a verb which represents the opposite of negligere, to neglect. Religion thus represents conscientiousness, scrupulousness, respect for what is sacred, i.e. a form of God-consciousness, devotion to the gods, expressed through the punctilious performance of the rites connected with their worship. The Roman Church Father Lactantius derived the word from re-ligare, to bind, i.e. forging a link between man and God (Divinarum Institutionum, book 7, chap. 4, section 28). Through Augustine this conception prevailed through the Middle Ages, proving particularly applicable to "the monastic life with its binding rules." Canon Liddon remarked that "Lactantius may be wrong in the etymology, but he has certainly seized the broad popular sense of the word when he connected it with the idea of an obligation by which man is bound to an invisible God" (Some Elements of Religion, 19; see also Cassel's Latin-English Dictionary, under religio). Both definitions correspond to vital phases of religious experience. In some religions ceremonial exactness predominates, while in others the inward conformity of feeling, thought and deed to the Divine ideal appears as the highest goal. Sometimes both formal and inner picty are combined in the same religion. Both definitions stress the idea of religion as a relationship between the worshipper and the object of his worship.

Religion, while rooted in the emotions, does not remain confined to them. It enters deeply into the social life of the group which professes it and transforms it into (1) a spiritual community, congregation or church. It develops into (2) a cult or body of ritual and ceremony, into (3) a code of morality or standards of law and discipline for the individual and the group and into (4) a creed or beliefs regarding God, the soul, and their interrelations. These four elements represent the basic substance of all religions and take on distinctive forms in each religion.

5. Social Nature of Religion. Growing and operating within the life of the community, religion everywhere assumes a social character. It has developed as a social force, like language and conceptual thought; and it has retained this characteristic all through history. As distinguished from magic, religion is not the affair of the isolated individual in disregard of others, but of men in groups, tribes, nations or communities. As a social possession, it is inseparably connected with the mores of peoples, and forms the lever of moral progress. Its faith in the unseen is also a faith in and loyalty to ideals and values that have proved themselves helpful to the best interests of the community. Rooted in temporary needs of its people, religion also transcends them. Conserving the values of former times and preserving the memories of past ages, it also turns the minds of men to distant futures. Linked with particular groups, nations or churches, religion has glimpsed the dawn of a united humanity, established as a universal Kingdom of God. Through its organized forms and institutions, it grows into power and effectiveness.

6. Personal Religion. Collective emotion ultimately derives from individual emotion. Like love, so religion, while social in significance, has its genesis in individual life. The "qualitatively unique feeling content" of religion is born within the individual soul. William James conceives of religion as representing "the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the

divine" (Varieties of Religious Experience, 31). A. N. Whitehead, too, takes religion to be "what man does with his own solitariness" (Religion in the Making, 16).

Whichever be considered primary, neither the personal nor the social element can be absent from any vital religion. Religion means not only that we do justly and love mercy, but that we also walk humbly before God (Micah 6:8). In its true form it grows into a personal inspiration and possession, into inward sanctity, reverence, and humility before God, and into a deep love, trust and joy in Him. As a torath ha'adam, a law and an art of personal conduct, it figures as a self-discipline, on the one hand, and as an extra dimension of the soul, on the other. It is marked by moral probity and integrity and by singleness of purpose. It evokes a worship that is free from both vapid emotionalism and mechanical routine and that is alive with sincere devotion which comes from the heart, a consecration to God's will and purpose, and an earnest outreaching of the soul toward him. Religion rendered personal, through earnest prayer of praise and thanksgiving and supplication for His guidance, fortifies the human spirit, enables it to overcome sin and evil, and endows it with deathless glory.

See also: ATONEMENT; CONFESSION; FAITH; Love; PIETY; PRAYER; REPENTANCE. For specific religions, see JUDAISM; CHRISTIANITY; ISLAM. SAMUEL S. COHON.

RELIGION OF ISRAEL. 1. Definition. The term "religion of Israel" is used by scholars to denote that form of religious beliefs and observances which was prevalent among the ancient Israelites from the dawn of their history to the end of the Babylonian Exile (6th cent. B.C.E.), when it becomes an organized religion in the form of Judaism. This religion received definite characteristics in the period of the wilderness, was further modified through the settlement in Palestine, matured under the teachings of the prophets, and was purified of its older elements during the Exile. It furnishes the basis and the substance for the future development of Judaism.

2. Pre-Israelite Background. The Israelites belonged to that group of nations known as the Semites, who inhabited the regions in and around Palestine. The religion of the ancient Semites was a primitive one. In its earliest stage one finds traces of animism, a belief that many objects in nature, such as sacred stones, rustling trees, running water or notable mountains, possessed a life and will of their own which could affect human life; they were the abode of spirits who might be friendly and helpful to human beings if they were properly approached and worshipped. Some Bible scholars claim to find traces of animism in some of the older passages of the Bible.

Other early forms which may possibly have had influence in the pre-Israelitic religion are totemism, or the veneration of an animal regarded as protective of the group, and ancestor or hero worship, in which the spirits of the departed are invoked to aid their descendants or followers.

The early Semitic religions were as a rule polytheistic, having many types of deities, both male and female, corresponding to almost every aspect of nature or of human thought. A typical instance is the religion of the Assyrians and Babylonians.

3. Beginnings of the Religion of Israel. According to tradition, Abraham was the first to learn the error of polytheism. The story of his descendants, through Isaac, Jacob and the twelve tribes, is the history of the gradual revelation of the true nature of God. During this period of nomadic existence some of the first ritual observances took shape. Among these are the observance of the New Moon, with the lunar

calendar and possibly the Sabbath. There was also the observance of a spring festival of the first-born, on the full moon of the first month, and a thank-offering at shearing-time, both natural observances for a nomadic people.

It was, however, the experience of bondage in Egypt and the remarkable emancipation under the leadership of Moses that laid the foundations of a new and distinct religion. The Exodus from Egypt, and the unique circumstances surrounding it, brought to the Israelites a revelation of new truths in the realm of the spirit. While dwelling with the Kenite tribe in the territory of the Midianites, Moses experienced a call from God bidding him to free the Israelites through the power of His name of Yahveh, which was thus first revealed. Once the redemption was won, Israel came to the sacred mountain of Yahveh and there entered upon a covenant, which implied not only worship but also obedience to a religious law, couched in the form of ten primary commandments and additional regulations. Thus the foundation for a new and individual religion of the Israelites was established.

This new religion differed in many respects from the primitive religion of the Semites. It eliminated the sex element from the description of the deity. By stressing the idea of the "jealous God" Who would not brook other gods, a monotheistic emphasis was stamped on the form of worship. Finally, the idea of a free covenant, entered into by Israel with a God originally revealed to the Kenites, made for discipline; Israel needed God, but God could dispense with Israel, and could punish them if they went astray. This paved the way for the concept of a universal God.

4. Yahvism versus Baalism. The conquest of Canaan on the part of the Israelites confirmed them in their belief in the rightness of their beliefs. Yet the very conquest led them to slip back into idolatrous ways. Dwelling in the midst of the Canaanites, who held that success in agriculture depended upon propitiating the local Baal, the "proprietor" of the land, the Israelites came to observe the rites of Baal together with those of Yahveh, and even to observe the two religions alternately. They took over the agricultural festivals of Baal worship: observances of the spring barley harvest, the summer wheat harvest, and the final autumn harvest; with this went an elaborate code of sacrifices, an organized priesthood, and ecstatic prophets.

Thus Israel fell more and more into the worship of Baal. But when peril threatened their existence, when enemies overcame them, they returned to their ancient God of the desert, and invoked Him in battle. The Song of Deborah (Judges 5) recounts a typical example of such a return to their ancient faith and the victory that was won thereby. Again and again, through the agency of such men as Samuel and David, it was demonstrated to the people that true inspiration both for the individual and for the nation could be found only in the One God, Yahveh.

Thus, despite a constant tendency to stray into ways of Baal-worship, there was always a group which insisted upon the purer religion of Yahveh. From time to time they succeeded in effecting sweeping reforms in the religion of the people. One of the first of these was in the time of Asa of Judah (9th cent. B.C.E.), when the people rededicated themselves to the worship of Yahveh, crystallizing this rededication in the form of a covenant. This covenant or code (Ex. 34) is, in the opinion of scholars, the first document of many which comprise the Torah and Joshua. Another reformation seems to have taken place through the influence of Elijah and his followers-a reformation which is dramatically depicted in the story of the contest between Yahweh and Baal at Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18). Elijah, morcover, was more than a reformer of cult and ritual; he

vigorously opposed injustice, inequality and immorality, and did not hesitate to confront King Ahab himself and denounce him for wrongdoing. Thus Elijah gave a new purpose to religion, and became the forerunner of the literary prophets.

5. The Literary Prophets. A new epoch in the evolution of the religion of Israel opened up with the appearance of the literary prophets-often called thus to differentiate them from the diviners or seers who preceded them. The first of these was Amos of Tekoa, in Judah, who lived about 760 B.C.E.

His call to prophecy was typical: "The Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said unto me; Go, prophesy unto My people Israel" (Amos 7:15). He had been a humble shepherd; he had not desired to play the part of a prophet. The sinfulness which he beheld-the greed and impoverishment, the injustice in affairs large and smallstirred him to the very core of his being. "The Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?" (Amos 3:8). He called for justice and righteousness lest the inevitable doom of God's punishment sweep over the land. Yahveh was not merely the God of Israel; He was the One God of all the peoples, demanding obedience not only in ritual but also to His law of righteousness. This was the first enunciation of ethical monotheism.

Each prophet who followed Amos added new insight to these basic teachings. Hosea translated the tribulations of his private life into terms of relationship of God to man: God's justice is tempered by His love and mercy; man need but repent and return to God, Who in His lovingkindness will forgive his sins and receive him graciously. Isaiah of Jerusalem (whose writings are found in Isa. 1 to 39) sharply attacked the social ills of his day.

Through his observation of contemporary political crises he arrived at the realization that religion must establish standards in a nation, that "the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever" (Isa. 32:17). The crown of Isaiah's achievement is his majestic picture of the ideal king who will bring into being a new era of truth and justice.

In 722 B.C.E. the Northern Kingdom of Israel-the bulk of the nation—was destroyed by the Assyrians. Only Judah remained, to survive for a century and a quarter before succumbing; but in this brief span of time the lessons of the prophets were intensified and reinforced. From time to time kings who were impressed by the teachings of the prophets brought about religious cleansings-although these were often followed in turn by a reaction.

Notable was the reformation during the reign of King Josiah. In 621 B.C.E. there came to light the Book of Deuteronomy (a portion of our present Deuteronomy), a very embodiment of the ideals of the prophets expressed in practical requirements of religion:

"Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children" (Deut. 6:4-7). As there is one God, so should there be but one sanctuary, Jerusalem. The priesthood was to be restricted to the descendants of the tribe of Levi. As God is just, universal, loving, so man must be righteous, must abolish idolatry, must love even the stranger.

This Deuteronomic Reformation was followed by a reaction after the death of Josiah. It was natural, then, for the deep-thinking prophets to ponder on the perplexing problem of religion-why do the righteous suffer, why is there so much disappointment in life?

Habakkuk answered: "The righteous shall live by his faith" (Hab. 2:4). Jeremiah pleaded for the inwardness of religion, the truth that God is in man, that religion is not

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

to be imposed from without but rather is the prompting of the heart from within: "I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people" (Jer. 31:33). The strength of a personal religion such as this was exemplified in the tortured life of Jeremiah; despite the unpopularity of his prophecies, he spoke the word of God with conviction in the face of suffering and the threat of death.

6. Survival in Exile. By 586 B.C.E., when the kingdom of Judah came to an end, the Temple was burned and the nation exiled to Babylonia, the religion of Israel was strong enough to survive even these catastrophes. It had been shaped and molded in the crucible of life; it had evolved teachings as to the relation of God and man; it had given tangible expression to these ideals in laws and commandments which bore the sanction of God.

During the Exile the prophet Ezekiel brought comfort and once more stressed the doctrine of individual righteousness (Ezek. 18). The assemblies, later to become synagogues, took the place of the Temple. Deutero-Isaiah (Isa. 40 to 55) preached a new hope for the future, with Israel as the Servant of God, sanctified by its hardships for its place in history. As a suffering servant of God, "to be a light to the nations," Israel found hope for survival and sanctification for service.

The religion of Israel was now well founded. The formation of the Bible was progressing steadily; into its historic records was incorporated the viewpoint of the prophets, in its poetry was immortalized the prayers of Israel, in its wisdom literature was recorded the philosophy of its people. On these foundations the scribes and the sages, the rabbis and teachers, philosophers and poets, legalists and preachers, continued the uninterrupted unfolding of the Jewish way of life and reared the structure of Judaism. MORRIS Goldstein.

Lit.: Barton, G. A., The Religion of Israel (1918); Budde, Karl, The Religion of Israel Before the Exile (1899); Buttenwieser, Moses, The Prophets of Israel (1914); Driver, S. R., Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (1920); Goldstein, Morris, Thus Religion Grows (1936); Kittel, R., The Religion of the People of Israel (1925); Morgenstern, Julian, "The Foundations of Israel's History," Central Conference of American Rabbis Year Book, vol. 25; idem, studies published in the Hebrew Union College Annual; Oesterley, W. O. E., and Robinson, T. H., The Hebrew Religion, Its Origin and Development (1930); Smith, H. P., The Religion of Israel (1940); Smith, W. R., The Religion of the Semites (1927).

RELIGIOUS AND COMMUNAL FUNCTIONARIES, see FUNCTIONARIES, RELIGIOUS AND COMMUNAL.

RELIGIOUS DISPUTATIONS,

TIONS.

see DISPUTA

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. The history of religious liberty is part of that struggle for liberty in general which includes political, social and other aspects of liberty; it is specifically the history of the struggle for liberty of conscience. To Americans of the 20th cent. this is assumed as a matter of course; it comes as something of a shock to the average person to learn that Jews were enfranchised in New Hampshire as late as 1877. The winning of religious liberty was a long and difficult effort in the face of psychological, social, political and philosophical opposition. Not only were many of the blind forces which control human society arrayed against religious liberty, but there still are, in the middle of the 20th cent., those who oppose religious liberty on principle.

The chief forces which make for religious intolerance may be summed up as follows: 1. the psychological fear of the unknown; 2. the social and political

powers which refuse to be dislodged from what they consider to be their rights; 3. the specific situation in the western world which is controlled by the exclusive philosophy of the Christian scheme of salvation.

The granting of liberty of conscience, the acknowledgment that all men have the right to worship as they please or not to worship at all and peacefully to propagate their several notions of truth, depends on a high state of cultural attainment: it presupposes a willingness to recognize that others may hold opinions and views contrary to one's own and yet do this out of equally pure motives and keen insight. It is significant that a model controversialist is defined by Dean Kitchin in negative terms, as one who "does not try to blacken his adversary's character, to impute to him evil motives, to heap on him detestable epithets" (Life of Bishop Browne, 218). So rooted in human minds is the primitive fear of the unknown factor which may unsettle the precarious balance of life that men even today are afraid lest their hard won security, never too certain, be disturbed by novel, strange or heterodox ideas. Hence to be different is in itself a crime, and the gravamen against a stranger is his strangeness. The history of culture is characterized by the paradoxes which mark the clash between the old and the new, with the liberal steadily striving to overcome the stubborn resistance of the conservative to new and strange ideas.

This hatred of the different is further enhanced and complicated by the positive love for that which is, by the veneration of the old, the accepted, the orthodox. It is at this point that the psychological obstacles to granting liberty to dissidents become aggravated by the entrance of social and political factors. The powers that be look upon innovation as a threat to their vested interests; they are alarmed for their own very real property and prerogatives. An established church feels that can not afford the infiltration of ideas which may weaken its own position. Its security, it feels, is threatened by the presence of other religious theories.

This phenomenon can be readily observed in the history of Europe in the Middle Ages. After the great controversies on the nature of God (Athanasius-Arius) and the nature of man (Augustine-Pelagius) had been settled by various councils, the church was so secure in its position and possessed so much power that it could afford to be lenient with Jews and heretics. But when, in the 13th cent., it felt a threat to its vested interests from the growing freedom of thought, it began to proceed vigorously, not only against its own dissidents, but also against the Jews.

A final and especially important factor in the struggle for religious liberty in the western world was the fact that Christianity stands apart from all other religious systems in that claims the exclusive possession of the sole knowledge and means necessary to salvation. No non-baptized person, with few exceptions, can achieve eternal bliss. From this exclusiveness stems its intolerance of other religious ideas and forms. Moslems (except when they belonged to a fanatical sect), Buddhists and Brahmans were far superior in their tolerance. In their religions the stress is upon the effect of dogma on life; hence even the Mahayana religion, which alone of the religions of India sent out missionaries, was not intolerant (Kayserling, Travel Diary of a Philoso pher, vol. 2, p. 314). But in Christianity, dogma itself embodies salvation. The Catholic church is frankly and avowedly intolerant; even so broad-minded a man as Leo XIII proclaims to the world that "it is not lawful for the State, any more than for the individual . . . to hold in equal favor different kinds of religion: that the unrestrained freedom of thinking and of openly making known one's thoughts is not inherent in the rights of citizens, and is by no means to be reckoned worthy of favor and support" (Encyclical letter, Immortale Dei). Monseigneur John A. Ryan, by no means an ecclesiastical obscurantist, but rather one of the freer spirits of the church in the United States, in commenting on the Encyclical, admits quite honestly that the Catholic view is intolerant, "the fact that the individual may in good faith think that his false religion is true gives no more right to propagate it than . . . the perverted ethical notions of the dealer in obscene literature confer upon him the right to corrupt the morals of the community'

...