THE Old Testament, which alone is, and ever was, the Bible of
the Jew, contains two oft-recurring ideas which rank among the
principal elements of its theological teaching. These ideas are:
(a) God as Father; (b) God as King. To give illustrations from
the Old Testament is unnecessary, as the present work is not
concerned with the theology of the Bible. It is our business to
see in what ways they were developed by the Rabbis of the Talmud
and Midrash, and adapted to their systems of thought about the
relations between the Divine and the human. The fatherhood of
God necessarily involves the sonship of man. The Rabbis living
under the rule of foreign masters--the yoke of Rome and the
memories of other yokes all equally galling--were loth to think
that the oppressors of Israel could possibly enjoy so
incomparably sublime a privilege as the Divine Fatherhood. It
seemed a glaring contradiction that nations who did not hold
themselves bound by the Mosaic code, should fall into the
category of 'sonship' in relation