This proletarian strain in Christianity goes back to a time long
before Jesus; it seems to have been inherent in the religious
character of the Jews--that stubborn independence, that
stiff-necked insistence on the right of a man to interview God
for himself and to find out what God wants him to do; also the
inclination to find that God wants him to oppose earthly rulers
and their plundering of the poor. What is it that gives to the
Bible the vitality it has today? Its literary style? To say that
is to display the ignorance of the cultured; for elevation of
style is a by-product of passionate conviction; it is what the
Jewish writers had to say, and not the way they said it, that has
given them their hold upon mankind. Was it their insistence upon
conscience, their fear of God as the beginning of wisdom? But
that same element appears in the Babylonian psalms, which are as
eloquent and as sincere as those of the Hebrews, yet are read
only by scholars. Was it their sense of the awful presence of
divinity, of the soul immortal in its keeping? The Egyptians had
that far more than the Hebrews, and yet we do not cherish their
religious books. Or was it the love of man for all things living,
the lesson of charity upon which the Catholics lay such stress?
The gentle Buddha had that, and had it long before Christ; also
his priests had metaphysical subtlety, greater than that of John
the Apostle or Thomas Aquinas.
No, there is one thing and one only which distinguishes the
Hebrew sacred writings from all others, and that is their
insistent note of proletarian revolt, their furious denunciations
of exploiters, and of luxury and wantonness, the vices of the
rich. Of that note the Assyrian and Chaldean and Babylonian
writing contain not a trace, and the Egyptian hardly enough to
mention. The Hindoos had a trace of it; but the true,
natural-born rebels of all time were the Hebrews. They were
rebels against oppression in ancient Judea, as they are today in
Petrograd and New York; the spirit of equality and brotherhood
which spoke through Ezekiel and Amos and Isaiah, through John the
Baptist and Jesus and James, spoke in the last century through
Marx and Lassalle and Jaures, and speaks today through Liebknecht
and Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Kautsky and Israel Zangwill and
Morris Hillquit and Abraham Cahan and Emma Goldman and the Joseph
Fels endowment.
The legal rate of interest throughout the Babylonian Empire was
20%; the laws of Manu permitted 24%, while the laws of the
Egyptians only stepped in to prevent more than 100%. But listen
to this Hebrew law:
If thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee, then
thou shalt relieve him, yea, though he be a stranger or a
sojourner, that he may live with thee: Take thou no interest of
him, or increase; but fear thy God that thy brother may live with
thee. Thou shalt not give him any money upon usury, nor lend him
thy victuals for increase.
And so on, forbidding that Hebrews be sold as bond servants, and
commanding that at the end of fifty years All debtors shall have
their debts forgiven and their lands returned to them. And note
that this is not the raving of agitators, the demand of a
minority party; it is the law of the Hebrew land.
There has been of late a great deal of new discovery concerning
the early Jews. Conrad Noel summarizes the results as follows:
The land-mark law, which sternly forbids encroachment upon
peasant rights; consideration for the foreigner; additional
sanitary and food laws; tithe regulations on behalf of widows,
orphans, foreigners, etc.; that those who have no economic
independence should eat and be satisfied; that loans should be
given cheerfully, not only without any interest, but even at the
risk of losing the principal. To withhold a loan because the year
of release is at hand in which the principal is no longer
recoverable, is described as a grave sin. When you are compelled
to free your slaves, you must give them sufficient capital to
embark upon some industry which shall prevent their falling back
into slavery. A number of holidays are insisted upon. There must
be no more crushing of the poor out of existence, for God cares
for these people who have been driven to poverty, and they shall
never cease out of the land. Howbeit there shall be no poor with
you, for the Lord will bless you, if you will obey these laws.
But then prosperity came, and culture, which meant contact with
the capitalist ideas of the heathen empires. The Jews fell from
the stern justice of their fathers; and so came the prophets,
wild-eyed men of the people, clad in camel's hair and living upon
locusts and wild honey, breaking in upon priests and kings and
capitalists with their furious denunciations. And always they
incited to class war and social disturbance. I quote Conrad Noel
again:
Nathan and Gad bad been David's political advisers, Abijah had
stirred Jeroboam to revolt, Elijah had resisted Ahab, Elisha had
fanned the rebellion of Jehu, Amos thunders against the misrule
of the king of Israel, Isaiah denounces the landlords and the
usurers, Micah charges them with blood-guiltiness; Jeremiah and
the latter prophets, though they strike a more intimate note of
personal repentance, strike it as the prelude to that national
restoration for which they hunger as exiles.
The first chapters of Isaiah are typical of the Old Testament
point of view. Just as the prophets of the nineteenth century
thundered against the "Christian" employers of Lancashire, and
told them their houses were cemented with the blood of little
children, so Isaiah cries against his generation: "Your governing
classes companion with thieves; behold you build up Sion with
blood." Their ceremonial and their Sabbath keeping are an
abomination to God. "When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide
mine eyes from you. Your hands are full of blood." The poor man
is robbed. The rich exact usury. "Woe unto you that lay house to
house and field to field, that ye may dwell alone in the midst of
the land." "Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your
doing from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well,
seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead
for the widow. Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord.
Though your sins be blood-colored, they shall be as white as
snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If
ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land.
But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured by the sword."