ABSTRACT
A particular zeal in pursuing ideological aims, in drawing practical consequences from ideological aims, an eager intensity and tenseness in all performances of life, which to gentiles is a somewhat baffling phenomenon–all this betrays a fundamentally religious attitude. Jewish history is the only history the author knows of that started in exile, from a homeless, alien, and oppressed condition. The substance, the foundation, the life principle of a particular human community, the Jewish tribe, is at the same time a principle to be valid for humanity as a whole. In the succeeding Persian period again a tightening and particularizing of the Jewish community took place in the reform of Ezrah, which was intended to preserve and fortify the body of Israel. The conflict that arose between these two forces has been obscured by the later Christian interpretation. To be sure, it concerned the validity of the Jewish Law.
