decline. A good example is Johann Karl Wilhelm Vatke . Vatke , apparently influenced by Hegel , argued that biblical law actually moved in the expected Hegelian fashion from primitive to more developed. That is, for him, Judaism is not seen as a falling away from a more developed type, as de Wette supposed, but as a stage in the growth of the biblical heritage to a more mature state. In posing matters in this way, Vatke provided a useful model for Jewish scholars. He saw the evolution of law as a rational and thoughtful process in reaction to the concrete, indeterminate history of the community. In particular, he situates the development in Israel ’s religious life in the context of the community’s on-going struggle against Canaanite worship. But in all events, the evolution of ancient Jewish religion and law, then, can be portrayed as a progressive struggle on the part of the people to overcome the limitations of their environment in order to enact more perfectly their cultural and religious heritage.
It is in light of these developments that we can make sense of the debates going on within the reforming community of Jewish intellectuals. Consider for a moment the following comments by Abraham Geiger :
Not everything that has been handed down to us from ages past stems from hoary antiquity or from the very beginning of time. Later periods have grafted many a twig onto the ancient trunk, and have added many a new link to the chain of tradition. Only a dull and simple mind can believe that things have always been as they are now... The mind which lives on in the present sees the structure only as it is now, apparently complete and grown together not a homogeneous whole, and views it as composed entirely of essentials, so that anyone who would dare touch the sanctuary thereby violates it. co There are, as it were, two subtexts to this paragraph. To Jewish ears, Geiger is clearly addressing the Orthodox, that is, those who claim that the current state of halakhah is a“homogeneous whole” that is“composed of essentials” and was given to Moses from “ages past” in“hoary antiquity.” In short, he is paraphrasing the notion that the halakhah is a timeless and unchanging construct given