Church Review.
 Vol. XXVIII., No. 2.     OCTOBER, 1911.        Whole No. 110.

                   THE JEWISH RACE.

 [The Jewish race is so intimately associated with the history of Chris-
tianity that Jewish history is essential to any intelligent comprehension
of the Christian Religion. The following masterly article by a Jewish
writer is of world-wide interest]
  To sum up in a few thousand words a race which has ener-
gized for 4,000 years is a task which can only be executed, if
at all, by confining oneself to elementals. And of these ele-
mentals the first and most important is the soul of the people.
The soul of the Jewish race is best seen in the Bible, saturated
from the first page of the Old Testament to the last page of the
New with the aspiration for a righteous social order and an
ultimate unification of mankind of which, in all specifically
Jewish literature, the Jewish race is to be the medium and
missionary. Wild and rude as were the beginnings of this race,
frequent as were its backslidings, and great as were--and are--
its faults, this aspiration is continuous in its literature even
up to the present day. There is every reason to believe that
the historic texts of the Old Testament were redacted in the
interests of this philosophy of history, but this pious falsifica-
tion is very different from the self-glorification of all other
epics. Israelappears throughoutnot as a hero but as a sinner
who cannot rise to his role of redeemer, of "servant of the Lord"
--that role of service, not dominance, for which his people was
"chosen."  The Talmud, the innumerable volumes of saintly
Hebrew thought, the Jewish liturgy, whether in its ancient
or its mediaeval strata, the "modernist" platforms of reformed
                        (527)




			

African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Vol. 28, Num. 2

Jewish Race

Volume:  28
Issue Number:  02
Page Number:  527
Date:  10/1911