‘Holiness’ seems to be the term we would choose in preference to any other to denote moral perfection in its highest and most general form; a holy man is one distinguished by the practice of outstanding virtue.

For this reason it is important to note that in the Bible holiness is not used primarily of men at all, but of God; and in God it is not first of all a moral quality so much as a quality of his being. (This is not to say that Israel's idea of God was ever divorced from morality, or that the Bible was ever concerned with a philosophical definition of God like the Greek First Cause. That, I hope, will become clear in what follows. But it does mean that the Bible is not so anxiously concerned with morality, especially human morality, as we are inclined to be).