he one only God
(Deus unicus),[45] who is throned in heaven, and like the Elohim of the
patriarchs, encircled by celestial beings (Bene Elohim, Malakim,
Angels), who execute his commands, yet are not objects of religious
adoration.

The religious standpoint of Moses is the legal. Jehovah stands related
to his people as the Holy, as lawgiver and judge; and the true moral
consecration to God is symbolically expressed in the ritual, especially
in the sacrifice, while the relation of the people to God is based upon
the mediation of the priests. Along with this, and out of Mosaism, after
the time of Samuel, prophetism was developed, in which independent
religious conviction, outside the limits of the priesthood, and without
distinction of rank or birth,[46] awoke among the people. Prophetism, in
the domain of religion, is the development of the religious spirit to
individual independence and freedom. The prophet, rising above the legal
standpoint and outward ceremonial, puts the essence of true worship in
morality,[47] but recognizes also along with the deepest feeling of
dependence upon God, in the independence[48] and spontaneity of the
religious and moral life, the irresistible power of the divine spirit,
by which the Most High, though apart from the world and throned in
heaven, puts himself into the closest and most intimate communion with
the true worshiper. Thus the gulf which divided Jahveh, as a God afar
off, from the world and his worshipers, closed up more and more. With
the conviction of the pureness and truth[49] of her religion, Israel
felt the calling to raise it to the religion of the world, and in the
realization of this she saw the ideal of the future.[50]

_b. The Israelitish religion after the Captivity._

The free character which distinguished prophetism in the religion of
Israel changed, after the return of the people from captivity,
especially with the party of the Pharisees, to literalness and
formalism. The prophets gave place to the synagogue, the living
proclamation of the truth to scriptural erudition, the spirit of
freedom to slavish subjection to Scripture and tradition. As the ancient
productions of the Indian literature, originally the expression of the
popular thought of India, were elevated by the Brahmins into Veda, holy,
inspired scripture, so also the religious literature of Israel took on
the character of a closed Canon, so that what was once the expression of
religious life became n