Excerpt from The Religion of the Hebrews, Vol. 5
A knowledge of the religion of the Hebrews is of prime importance not only to the professed believer in religion but also to the student of civilization, for religion plays a large part in the history of civilization. Indeed, generally speaking, religion and economics are the two great elements of civilization.
In the broader sense of religion, the religion of the Hebrews was partner with the religions of Greece, Italy, and the Teutons in the creation of the religious-cultural-humane element of our civilization. In the narrower sense of religion, the religion discussed in this volume is the parent of the dominant religion of our civilization.
The religion of the Hebrews produced two great world religions, Christianity and Islam, the most vitally aggressive and the most universal of all religions, and a third, national, religion, Judaism, circumscribed in size though not in space by its racial character, but playing a part quite out of proportion to the number of its adherents. Of these the first and the last are direct descendants of the religion of the Hebrews; Islam belongs to a side line. Philosophically none of the three is thoroughly intelligible without a knowledge of the religion of the Hebrews; practically that knowledge is of great value both to the actual adherents of all and also to their spiritual descendants, who comprise, if not absolutely the greater, at least the overwhelmingly dominant part of the human race.
Considered critically, merely as a phenomenon, the religion of the Hebrews is of peculiar interest, because we are able to trace its development from the rudest beginnings to the completed form with an accuracy and precision possible in the case of no other religion. Hence it becomes practically the norm for the study of other religions, throwing light on their origins and the methods of their growth to a degree greater than they do on it or on one another.
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