Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION. 1. Scope Of The Book THIS book has for its object the presentation of the spiritual development of Judaism in biblical times in its theoretical principles as well as in the expressions these principles found in the cultural manifestations of life. All currents and tendencies, lawful and unlawful, have been accorded equal attention. This procedure finds its justification even in the fact that it is the history of the spiritual development of Judaism which is the object of this book. And history teaches us that almost every one of the currents treated here, has enjoyed at some time or other a certain measure of authoritative standing. However, our aim is not only to register the facts in Judaism's spiritual development, but also, and primarily, to understand and to present in the light of historical evolutions that form of biblical Judaism which, in spite of all internal and external changes, has been preserved through the ages up to our own day. This aspect of our presentation made it imperative for us to pay especial attention to that path in the development which marks the gradual evolution and consolidation of what may be considered authoritative Judaism in the making. Corresponding to this aim special attention has been paid to the development of the Pentateuch, the Torah. The presentation is so arranged that each one of the four periods into which the biblical time has been divided, concludes with a decisive phase in thehistory of the Torah: The first period (first chapter) concludes with the proclamation of the First Book of the Covenant as "Torah"; the second (second chapter) with the proclamation of Deuteronomy as "Torah"; the third (third chapter) with the proclamation of the enlarged Priestly Code, together with Deuteronomy, as "Torah"; and the fourth...