The Jewish Philosophy of History
The majestic narrative of the fortunes of the Jewish people, as unfolded in the Pentateuch, incorporates four different strains of literary tradition. Once fused together, writes S.G.F. Brandon, they produced a philosophy of history that has influenced not only Israel itself but the whole of Christian Europe.
Each year for countless generations on the fourteenth day of the month Nisan the Jews, wherever they may be throughout the world, keep the Passover. On the evening of that day they gather in their homes to eat a roasted lamb, together with unleavened bread. They do this to commemorate what they believe to have been one of the greatest crises in the history of their people, namely, the Exodus from Egypt.
This Passover festival does in fact enshrine and typify the essential spirit of Judaism, and it provides the key to that peculiar attitude to the past that has moulded the strange destiny of the Jewish people, and, through Christianity, has profoundly affected the Weltanschauung of the Western nations. For the Passover festival itself witnesses to the propensity of the Hebrew mind to explain all its institutions and customs in terms of the sacred history of Yahweh’s1 dealings with Israel.
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