After this, wishing to prove that there is no difference between Jews
and Christians, and those animals previously enumerated by him, he
asserts that the Jews were “fugitives from Egypt, who never performed
anything worthy of note, and never were held in any reputation or
account.”[602] Now, on the point of their not being fugitives, nor
Egyptians, but Hebrews who settled in Egypt, we have spoken in the
preceding pages. But if he thinks his statement, that “they were never
held in any reputation or account,” to be proved, because no remarkable
event in their history is found recorded by the Greeks, we would answer,
that if one will examine their polity from its first beginning, and the
arrangement of their laws, he will find that they were men who
represented upon earth the shadow of a heavenly life, and that amongst
them God is recognised as nothing else, save He who is over all things,
and that amongst them no maker of images was permitted to enjoy the
rights of citizenship.[603] For neither painter nor image-maker existed
in their state, the law expelling all such from it; that there might be
no pretext for the construction of images,—an art which attracts the
attention of foolish men, and which drags down the eyes of the soul from
God to earth. There was, accordingly, amongst them a law to the
following effect: “Do not transgress the law, and make to yourselves a
graven image, any likeness of male or female; either a likeness of any
one of the creatures that are upon the earth, or a likeness of any
winged fowl that flieth under the heaven, or a likeness of any creeping
thing that creepeth upon the earth, or a likeness of any of the fishes
which are in the waters under the earth.”[604] The law, indeed, wished
them to have regard to the truth of each individual thing, and not to
form representations of things contrary to reality, feigning the
appearance merely of what was really male or really female, or the
nature of animals, or of birds, or of creeping things, or of fishes.
Venerable, too, and grand was this prohibition of theirs: “Lift not up
thine eyes unto heaven, lest, when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and
the stars, and all the host of heaven, thou shouldst be led astray to
worship them, and serve them.”[605] And what a _régime_[606] was that
under which the whole nation was placed, and which rendered it
impossible for any effeminate person to appear in public;[607] and
worthy of admiration, too, was the arrangement by which harlots were
removed out of the state, those incentives to the passions of the youth!
Their courts of justice also were composed of men of the strictest
integrity, who, after having for a lengthened period set the example of
an unstained life, were entrusted with the duty of presiding over the
tribunals, and who, on account of the superhuman purity of their
character,[608] were said to be gods, in conformity with an ancient
Jewish usage of speech. Here was the spectacle of a whole nation devoted
to philosophy; and in order that there might be leisure to listen to
their sacred laws, the days termed “Sabbath,” and the other festivals
which existed among them, were instituted. And why need I speak of the
orders of their priests and sacrifices, which contain innumerable
indications [of deeper truths] to those who wish to ascertain the
signification of things?
Footnote 602:
οὔτ’ ἐν λόγῳ, οὔτ’ ἐν ἀριθμῷ αὐτοὺς πότε γεγενημένους.
Footnote 603:
ἐπολιτεύετο.
Footnote 604:
Cf. Deut. iv. 16-18.
Footnote 605:
Cf. Deut. iv. 19.
Footnote 606:
πολιτεία.
Footnote 607:
οὐδὲ φαίνεσθαι θηλυδρίαν οἷον τ’ ἦν.
Footnote 608:
οἵ τινες διὰ τὸ καθαρὸν ἦθος, καὶ τὸ ὑπὲρ ἄνθρωπον.