RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AMONG THE ANCIENT HEBREWS

Abstract

I ANY STUDY of religious education among the ancient Hebrews one must bear in mind that in the earliest forms of their religion the Hebrews are scarcely to be distinguished from the nations which surrounded them. They shared in the practices and the ideals of tribal groups of their time. Their God was a tribal God. Their religion presupposed a community of life with their God in such human activities as eating, drinking, sleeping, walking, fighting, laughing, and the like. Go as far back as we may, however, we fail to find a point in the development of the Hebrews' religion where their God was not distinguished by morality, albeit a morality to be judged according to the times. Always there is among the people a moral consciousness which entails moral responsibility to a moral God. One can only discover the substance of the religious education of the times by looking into the religious customs and habits of the period, for the objective of religious education was the production of a growing number of worthy members of the family, the tribe, or the agricultural community. If we discover what the adult population believed, and how they acted in accordance with this belief, we shall find the body of truth or practice in which the children were trained and the social and religious atmosphere from which they absorbed further training. In an agricultural period as early as that of the Judges, for instance, we find the crude anthropomorphic ideas of Jehovah already described, and the rude rock altars upon which the families of Gideon and Samson were accustomed, without priest or elaborate rites, to offer their simple sacrifices, expecting in return the immediate blessing which they craved. We find evidences of toleration of human sacrifice as in the case of Jephthah's daughter and the tradition of Abraham, and violation of the law of hospitality as in the case of the killing of Sisera by Jael when he had taken refuge in her home, and numerous occasions upon which deceit seems to have been not only sanctioned but directed by Jehovah. One could catalog a long list of crimes against society which are utterly at variance with Christian teaching and yet which seem to have been approved, or at least not disapproved, by these early communities. Although polygamy was the custom and women were counted as property, romances were not uncommon, as we discover from stories such as that of Isaac and Rebecca. Such qualities as courage, illustrated in the story of Gideon, testify to the existence of a spirit of self sacrifice. No doubt underneath the occasional spectacular manifestations of life which the Bible records there was a steady current of wholesome living and a struggle to merit the favor of a God who required men to live at their best. Perhaps the most significant and encouraging thing which we see in relation to religious education is the intensity of family life and feeling. In a social atmosphere which threw all the responsibility of life upon the family and made that family responsible to God for the conduct of its members, and the carrying on of its traditions into the future, the re-