ssible. He did not speculate upon the essence of the Divinity; the
beliefs about angels, about the destinies of man, about the Divine
personality, of which the first germs might already be perceived, were
quite optional--they were meditations, to which each one surrendered
himself according to the turn of his mind, but of which a great number
of men had never heard. They were the most orthodox even, who did not
share in these particular imaginations, and who adhered to the
simplicity of the Mosaic law. No dogmatic power analogous to that
which orthodox Christianity has given to the Church then existed. It
was only at the beginning of the third century, when Christianity had
fallen into the hands of reasoning races, mad with dialectics and
metaphysics, that that fever for definitions commenced which made the
history of the Church but the history of one immense controversy.
There were disputes also among the Jews--excited schools brought
opposite solutions to almost all the questions which were agitated;
but in these contests, of which the Talmud has preserved the principal
details, there is not a single word of speculative theology. To
observe and maintain the law, because the law was just, and because,
when well observed, it gave happiness--such was Judaism. No _credo_,
no theoretical symbol. One of the disciples of the boldest Arabian
philosophy, Moses Maimonides, was able to become the oracle of the
synagogue, because he was well versed in the canonical law.

The reigns of the last Asmoneans, and that of Herod, saw the
excitement grow still stronger. They were filled by an uninterrupted
series of religious movements. In the degree that power became
secularized, and passed into the hands of unbelievers, the Jewish
people lived less and less for the earth, and became more and more
absorbed by the strange fermentation which was operating in their
midst. The world, distracted by other spectacles, had little knowledge
of that which passed in this forgotten corner of the East. The minds
abreast of their age were, however, better informed. The tender and
clear-sighted Virgil seems to answer, as by a secret echo, to the
second Isaiah. The birth of a child throws him into dreams of a
universal palingenesis.[1] These dreams were of every-day occurrence,
and shaped into a kind of literature which was designated Sibylline.
The quite recent formation of the empire exalted the imagination; the
great era of peace on which it entered