Hence both under Moses, the judges, and the kings you find constant
instances of toleration. Moses says several times (_Exodus_ xx.)
that “God punishes the fathers in the children, down to the fourth
generation”; and it was necessary thus to threaten a people to whom
God had not revealed the immortality of the soul, or the punishments
and rewards of another life. These truths were not made known either
in the Decalogue or any part of _Leviticus_ or _Deuteronomy_. They
were dogmas of the Persians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, and
Cretans; but they by no means formed part of the Jewish religion.
Moses does not say: “Honour thy father and thy mother if thou
wouldst go to heaven”; but: “Honour thy father and thy mother, that
thou mayst live long on the earth.” He threatens the Jews only with
bodily maladies and other material evils. Nowhere does he tell
them that their immortal souls will be tortured after death or be
rewarded. God, who himself led his people, punished or rewarded them
at once for their good or bad actions. Everything was temporal.
Those who ignorantly maintain that Moses taught the immortality of
the soul strip the New Testament of one of its greatest advantages
over the Old Testament. It is certain that the law of Moses spoke
only of temporal chastisement, down to the fourth generation.
However, in spite of the precise formulation of this law and the
express declaration of God that he would punish down to the fourth
generation, Ezekiel announces the very opposite to the Jews. He says
(xviii., 20) that the son will not bear the iniquity of his father;
and he even goes so far as to make God say that he had given them
“statutes that were not good” (xx., 25).
The book of _Ezekiel_ was nevertheless inserted in the canon of
inspired writers. It is true that the synagogue did not allow any one
to read it until he was thirty years old, as St. Jerome tells us;
but that was in order that young men might not make evil use of the
too candid pictures of vice in chapters xvi. and xxiii. The book was
always received, in spite of the fact that it expressly contradicted
Moses.
When the immortality of the soul was at length admitted, which
probably began about the time of the Babylonian captivity, the
Sadducees continued to believe that there were no punishments and
rewards after death, and that the power of feeling and thinking
perished with us, like the power of walking and digesting. They
denied the existence of angels. They differed from the other Jews
much more than Protestants differ from Catholics, yet they remained
in the communion of their brethren. Some of their sect even became
high-priests.
The Pharisees believed in fatalism and metempsychosis. The Essenians
thought that the souls of the just went to the Fortunate Islands,
and those of the wicked into a kind of Tartarus. They offered no
sacrifices, and met in a special synagogue. Thus, when we look
closely into Judaism, we are astonished to find the greatest
toleration in the midst of the most barbaric horrors. It is a
contradiction, we must admit; nearly all nations have been ruled by
contradictions. Happy the contradiction that brings gentler ways into
a people with bloody laws.