traditional practice of the law, fostered hair-splitting
casuistry and caused the petrifaction of religion in the codified Halakah.
As _doctrine_ it impressed its ethical and humane idealism upon the
people, lifting them far above the narrow confines of nationality, and
making them a nation of thinkers. Hence their eagerness for their mission
to impart the wisdom stored in their writings to all humanity as its
highest boon and the very essence of divine wisdom.

Chapter VIII. God's Covenant

1. Judaism has one specific term for religion, representing the moral
relation between God and man, namely, _Berith_, covenant. The covenant was
concluded by God with the patriarchs and with Israel by means of
sacrificial blood, according to the primitive custom by which tribes or
individuals became "blood brothers," when they were both sprinkled with
the sacrificial blood or both drank of it.(108) The first covenant of God
was made after the flood, with Noah as the representative of mankind; it
was intended to assure him and all coming generations of the perpetual
maintenance of the natural order without interruption by flood, and at the
same time to demand of all mankind the observance of certain laws, such as
not to shed, or eat, blood. Here at the very beginning of history religion
is taken as the universal basis of human morality, so developing at the
outset the fundamental principle of Judaism that it rests upon a religion
of humanity, which it desires to establish in all purity. As the universal
idea of man forms thus its beginning, so Judaism will attain its final
goal only in a divine covenant comprising all humanity. Both the rabbis
and the Hellenistic writers consider the covenant of Noah with its
so-called Noahitic commandments as unwritten laws of humanity. In fact,
they are referred to Adam also, so that religion appears in its essence as
nothing else than a covenant of God with all mankind.(109)

2. Accordingly, Judaism is a special basis of relationship between God and
Israel. Far from superseding the universal covenant with Noah, or
confining it to the Jewish people, this covenant aims to reclaim all
members of the human family for the wider covenant from which they have
relapsed. God chose for this purpose Abraham as the one who was faithful
to His moral law, and made a special covenant with him for all his
descendants, that they might foster justice and righteousness, at first
within the narrow sphere of t