was placed before the history of the Hebrew
patriarchs, to form, as it were, an introduction to the Bible of humanity.

Judaism, then, far from being the late product of the Torah and tradition,
as it is often considered, was actually the creator of the Law.
Transformed and unfolded in Babylonia, it created its own sacred
literature and shaped it ever anew, filling it always with its own spirit
and with new thoughts. It is by no means the petrifaction of the Mosaic
law and the prophetic teachings, as we are so often told, but a continuous
process of unfolding and regeneration of its great religious truth.

5. True enough, traditional or orthodox Judaism does not share this view.
The idea of gradual development is precluded by its conception of divine
revelation, by its doctrine that both the oral and the written Torah were
given at Sinai complete and unchangeable for all time. It makes allowance
only for special institutions begun either by the prophets, by Ezra and
the Men of the Great Synagogue, his associates, or by the masters of the
Law in succeeding centuries. Nevertheless, tradition says that the Men of
the Great Synagogue themselves collected and partly completed the sacred
books, except the five books of Moses, and that the canon was made under
the influence of the holy spirit. This holy spirit remained in force also
during the creative period of Talmudism, sanctioning innovations or
alterations of many kinds.(11) Modern critical and historical research has
taught us to distinguish the products of different periods and stages of
development in both the Biblical and Rabbinical sources, and therefore
compels us to reject the idea of a uniform origin of the Law, and also of
an uninterrupted chain of tradition reaching back to Moses on Sinai.
Therefore we must attach still more importance to the process of
transformation which Judaism had to undergo through the centuries.(12)

Judaism manifested its wondrous power of _assimilation_ by renewing itself
to meet the demands of the time, first under the influence of the ancient
civilizations, Babylonia and Persia, then of Greece and Rome, finally of
the Occidental powers, molding its religious truths and customs in ever
new forms, but all in consonance with its own genius. It adopted the
Babylonian and Persian views of the hereafter, of the upper and the nether
world with their angels and demons; so later on it incorporated into its
religious and legal system elements o