It is often hard for us to read the Bible without a sense of estrangement — not only because it describes a prescientific age but because its characters seek religious fulfillment in ways we have trouble understanding. We think of worship in terms of prayer, hymns, and the study of sacred texts; they thought of it largely in terms of animal sacrifice. The strangeness of Biblical religion is one reason that philosophers like Kant and Hegel concluded that to the degree that it is a religion at all, Judaism is a purely statutory one. As Hegel put it: “All law is given by the Lord, and is thus entirely positive commandment.” No doubt much of Biblical religion would seem like positive commandment if we were asked to practice it today. Even if we could be allowed into the Holy of Holies, few people would feel comfortable watching the high priest perform his duties. But is that any reason to conclude that the people for whom these rituals were intended would have felt the same way? Is our abhorrence of cult worship sufficient grounds for saying that they would have regarded it as arbitrary ritual or “entirely positive” commandments?

In an important passage in The Guide of the Perplexed (3. 32), Maimonides argues that in ancient times, the situation was the exact opposite of what Kant and Hegel thought: rather than force meaningless rituals on a people who did not want them, God provided for priestly vestments and animal sacrifice because the people were so used to these things that they would have been baffled by a religion that excluded them.