RELATIVE FREETHOUGHT IN ISRAEL
The modern critical analysis of the Hebrew Sacred Books has made it
sufficiently clear that in Jewish as in all other ancient history
progress in religion was by way of evolving an ethical and sole deity
out of normal primitive polytheism. [338] What was special to the
Hebrews was the set of social conditions under which the evolution took
place. Through these conditions it was that the relative freethought
which rejected normal polytheism was so far favoured as to lead to a
pronounced monotheistic cultus, though not to a philosophic monotheism.
§ 1
As seen in their earliest historical documents (especially portions
of the Book of Judges), the Hebrews are a group of agricultural and
pastoral but warlike tribes of Semitic speech, with household Gods
and local deities, [339] living among communities at the same or a
higher culture stage. Their ancestral legends show similar religious
practice. [340] Of the Hebrew tribes some may have sojourned for
a time in Egypt; but this is uncertain, the written record being a
late and in large part deliberately fictitious construction. [341]
At one time twelve such tribes may have confederated, in conformity
with a common ancient superstition, seen in Arab and Greek history
as well as in the Jewish, as to the number twelve. As they advanced
in civilization, on a basis of city life existing among a population
settled in Canaan before them, parts of which they conquered, one
of their public cults, that of Yahu or Yahweh, finally fixed at
Jerusalem, became politically important. The special worshippers of
this God (supposed to have been at first a Thunder-God or Nature-God)
[342] were in that sense monotheists; but not otherwise than kindred
neighbouring communities such as the Ammonites and Moabites and
Edomites, each of which had its special God, like the cities of
Babylonia and Egypt. But that the earlier conceptions of the people
had assumed a multiplicity of Gods is clear from the fact that even
in the later literary efforts to impose the sole cult of Yahweh on the
people, the plural name Elohim, "Powers" or "Gods" (in general, things
to be feared), [343] is retained, either alone or with that of Yahweh
prefixed, though cosmology had previously been written in Yahweh's
name. The Yahwists did not scruple to combine an Elohistic narrative,
varying from theirs in cosmology and otherwise, with their own. [344]
As to the original similarity of Hebraic and other Canaanite
religions cp. E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. §§ 309-11 (i, 372-76);
Kuenen, i, 223; Wellhausen, Israel, p. 440; Winckler,
Gesch. Israels, passim; Réville, Prolég. de l'hist. des
relig. 1881, p. 85. "Before being monotheistic, Israel was
simply monolatrous, and even that only in its religious élite"
(Réville). "Their [the Canaanites'] worship was the same in
principle as that of Israel, but it had a higher organization"
(Menzies, Hist. of Rel. p. 179; cp. Tiele, Outlines, pp. 85-89). On
the side of the traditional view, Mr. Lang, while sharply
challenging most of the propositions of the higher critics,
affirms that "we know that Israel had, in an early age, the
conception of the moral Eternal; we know that, at an early age,
the conception was contaminated and anthropomorphized; and we
know that it was rescued, in a great degree, from this corruption,
while always retaining its original ethical aspect and sanction"
(Making of Religion, p. 295). If "we know" this, the discussion
is at an end. But Mr. Lang's sole documentary basis for the
assertion is just the fabricated record, reluctantly abandoned
by theological scholars as such. When this is challenged,
Mr. Lang falls back on the position that such low races as
the Australians and Fuegians have a "moral Supreme Being,"
and that therefore Israel "must" have had one (p. 309). It will
be found, however, that the ethic of these races is perfectly
primitive, on Mr. Lang's own showing, and that his estimate is a
misinterpretation. As to their Supreme Beings, it might suffice
to compare Mr. Lang's Making of Religion, chs. ix, xii, with his
earlier Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i, 168, 335; ii, 6, etc.;
but, as we have seen (above, p. 93), the Supreme Being of the
Australians eludes the closest search in a number of tribes; and
the "moral" factor is equally intangible. Mr. Lang in his later
reasoning has merely added the ambiguous and misleading epithet
"Supreme," stressing it indefinitely, to the ordinary God-idea
of the lower races. (Cp. Cox, Mythol. of Aryan Races, ed. 1882,
p. 155; and K. O. Müller, Introd. to Sci. Mythol. Eng. tr. p. 184.)
There being thus no highly imagined "moral Eternal" in the
religion of primitive man, the Hebrews were originally in the
ordinary position. Their early practice of human sacrifice is
implied in the legend of Abraham and Isaac, and in the story of
Jephthah. (Cp. Micah vi, 7, and Kuenen on the passage, i, 237.) In
their reputed earliest prophetic books we find them addicted to
divination (Hosea iv, 12; Micah v, 12. Cp. the prohibition in
Lev. xx, 6; also 2 Kings xxiii, 24, and Isa. iii, 2; as to the
use of the ephod, teraphim, and urim and thummim, see Kuenen,
Relig. of Israel, Eng. tr. i, 97-100) and to polytheism. (Amos v,
26, viii, 14; Hosea i, 13, 17, etc. Cp. Jud. viii, 27; 1 Sam. vii,
3.) These things Mr. Lang seems to admit (p. 309, note), despite
his previous claim; but he builds (p. 332) on the fact that
the Hebrews showed little concern about a future state--that
"early Israel, having, so far as we know, a singular lack of
interest in the future of the soul, was born to give himself up
to developing, undisturbed, the theistic conception, the belief
in a righteous Eternal"--whereas later Greeks and Romans, like
Egyptians, were much concerned about life after death. Mr. Lang's
own general theory would really require that all peoples at a
certain stage should act like the Israelites; but he suspends it
in the interest of the orthodox view as to the early Hebrews. At
the same time he omits to explain why the Hebrews failed to
adopt the future-state creed when they were "contaminated"--a
proposition hardly reconcilable, on any view, with the sentence
just quoted. The solution, however, is simple. Israel was not
at all "singular" in the matter. The early (Homeric) Greeks
and Romans (cp. as to Hades the Iliad, passim; Odyssey, bk. xi,
passim; Tiele, Outlines, p. 209, as to the myth of Persephone;
and Preller, Römische Mythologie, ed. Köhler, 1865, pp. 452-55,
as to the early Romans), like the early Vedic Aryans (Tiele,
Outlines, p. 117; Müller, Anthropol. Relig. p. 269), and the
early Babylonians and Assyrians (Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. i, 181-82;
Sayce, Hib. Lect. p. 364) took little thought of a future state.
"Homer knows no influence of the Psyche on the realm of the
visible, and also no cult implying it.... A later poet, who made
the last addition to the Odyssey, first introduced Hermes the
'leader of souls' [perhaps taken from a popular belief in some part
of Hellas].... Underneath, in the gloomy shades, the souls waver,
unconscious or at the best in a glimmering half-consciousness,
endowed with faint voices, feeble, indifferent.... To speak,
as do many old and recent scholars, of the 'immortal life' of
such souls, is erroneous. They live rather as the spectre of the
living in a mirror.... If the Psyche outlives her visible mate (the
body), she is powerless without him.... Thus is the Homeric world
free from ghosts (for after the burning of the body the Psyche
appears no more even in dream).... The living has peace from the
dead.... No dæmonic power is at work apart from or against the
Gods; and the night gives to the disembodied spirits no freedom"
(Rohde, Psyche, 4te Aufl. 1907, pp. 9-11).
This minimization of the normal primitive belief in spirits is
one of the reasons for seeing in the Homeric poems the outcome
of a period of loosened belief. It is not to be supposed that the
pre-Homeric Greeks, like the easterns with whom the Greeks met in
Ionia, had not the usual ghost-lore of savages and barbarians;
and it may be that for all the early civilizations under notice
the explanation is that primitive ghost-cults were abandoned by
migrating and conquering races, who rejected the ghost-cults of
the races whom they conquered, though they ostensibly accepted
their Gods. In any case they made little religious account of a
future state for themselves.
This attitude has again been erroneously regarded (e.g.,
Dickinson, The Greek View of Life, p. 35) as peculiar to the
Greeks. Mr. Lang's assumption may, in fact, be overthrown by the
single case of the Phoenicians, who showed no more concern about
a future life than did the Hebrews (see Canon Rawlinson's History
of Phoenicia, 1889, pp. 351-52), but who are not pretended to have
given themselves up much to "developing, undisturbed, the belief
in a righteous Eternal." The truth seems to be that in all the
early progressive and combative civilizations the main concern
was as to the continuance of this life. On that head the Hebrews
were as solicitous as any (cp. Kuenen, i, 65); and they habitually
practised divination on that score. Further, they attached the
very highest importance to the continuance of the individual in
his offspring. The idea of a future state is first found highly
developed in the long-lived cults of the long-civilized but
unprogressive Egyptians; and the Babylonians were developing in
the same direction. Yet the Hebrews took it up (see the evidence
in Schürer, Jewish People in the Time of Jesus, Eng. tr. Div. II,
vol. ii, p. 179) just when, according to Mr. Lang, their cult was
"rescued, in a great degree, from corruption"; and, generally
speaking, it was in the stage of maximum monotheism that they
reached the maximum of irrationality. For the rest, belief in
"immortality" is found highly developed in a sociologically
"degenerate" and unprogressive people such as the Tasmanians
(Müller, Anthrop. Rel. p. 433), who are yet primitively pure on
Mr. Lang's hypothesis; and is normal among negroes and Australian
blackfellows.
This primary polytheism is seen to the full in that constant resort
of Israelites to neighbouring cults, against which so much of the
Hebrew doctrine is directed. To understand their practice the modern
reader has to get rid of the hallucination imposed on Christendom by
its idea of revelation. The cult of Yahweh was no primordial Hebrew
creed, deserted by backsliding idolaters, but a finally successful
tyranny of one local cult over others. It is probable that it was
originally not Palestinian, but Sinaitic, and that Yahweh became the
God of Caleb-Judah only under David. [345] Therefore, without begging
the question as to the moral sincerity of the prophets and others
who identified Yahwism with morality, we must always remember that
they were on their own showing devotees of a special local worship,
and so far fighting for their own influence. Similar prophesying may
conceivably have been carried on in connection with the same or other
God-names in other localities, and the extant prophets freely testify
that they had Yahwistic opponents; but the circumstance that Yahweh
was worshipped at Jerusalem without any image might be an important
cause of differentiation in the case of that cult. In any case it must
have been through simple "exclusivism" that they reached any form of
"monotheism." [346]
The inveterate usage, in the Bible-making period, of forging and
interpolating ancient or pretended writings, makes it impossible
to construct any detailed history of the rise of Yahwism. We can
but proceed upon data which do not appear to lend themselves to the
purposes of the later adaptors. In that way we see cause to believe
that at one early centre the so-called ark of Yahweh contained
various objects held to have supernatural virtue. [347] In the older
historic documents it has, however, no such sacredness as accrues
to it later, [348] and no great traditional prestige. This ark,
previously moved from place to place as a fetish, [349] is said to
have been transferred to Jerusalem by the early king David, [350]
whose story, like that of his predecessors Saul and his son Solomon,
is in part blended with myth.
As to David, compare 1 Sam. xvi, 18, with xvii, 33, 42. Daoud
(= Dodo = Dumzi = Tammuz = Adonis) was a Semitic deity (Sayce,
Hib. Lec. pp. 52-57, and art. "The Names of the First Three Kings
of Israel," in Modern Review, Jan. 1884), whom David resembles as
an inventor of the lyre (Amos, vi, 5; cp. Hitzig, Die Psalmen,
2 Theil, 1836, p. 3). But Saul and Solomon also were God-names
(Sayce, as cited), as was Samuel (id. pp. 54, 181; cp. Lenormant,
Chaldean Magic, Eng. tr. p. 120); and when we note these data,
and further the plain fact that Samson is a solar myth, being a
personage Evemerized from Samas, the Sun-God, we are prepared
to find further traces of Evemeristic redaction in the Hebrew
books. To say nothing of other figures in the Book of Judges,
we find that Jacob and Joseph were old Canaanitish deities
(Sayce, Lectures, p. 51; Records of the Past, New Series, v,
48; Hugo Winckler, Geschichte Israels, ii, 57-77); and that
Moses, as might be expected, was a name for more than one
Semitic God (Sayce, pp. 46-47), and in particular stood for a
Sun-God. Abraham and Isaac in turn appear to be ancient deities
(Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. i, 374, § 309; Winckler, Gesch. Israels,
ii, 20-49). Miriam was probably in similar case (cp. Pagan Christs,
2nd ed. pp. 165-66). On an analysis of the Joshua myth as redacted,
further, we may surmise another reduction of an ancient cult to
the form of history, perhaps obscuring the true original of the
worship of Mary and Jesus.
It seems probable, finally, that such figures as Elijah, who
ascends to heaven in a fiery chariot, and Elisha, the "bald head"
and miracle-worker, are similar constructions of personages out
of Sun-God lore. In such material lies part of the refutation of
the thesis of Renan (Hist, des langues sémit. 2e édit. pp. 7,
485) that the Semites were natural monotheists, devoid of
mythology. [Renan is followed in whole or in part by Nöldeke,
Sketches from Eastern Hist. Eng. tr. p. 6; Soury, Relig. of
Israel, Eng. tr. pp. 2, 10; Spiegel, Erânische Alterthumskunde, i,
389; also Roscher, Draper, Peschel, and Bluntschli, as cited by
Goldziher, Mythology Among the Hebrews, Eng. tr. p. 4, note. On
the other side compare Goldziher, ch. i; Steinthal's Prometheus
and Samson, Eng. tr. (with Goldziher), pp. 391, 428, etc., and his
Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft bei den Griechen und den Römern,
1863, pp. 15-17; Kuenen, Rel. of Israel, i, 225; Smith, Rel. of the
Semites, p. 49; Ewald, Hist. of Israel, Eng. tr. 4th ed. i, 38-40;
Müller, Chips, i, 345 sq.; Selected Essays, 1881, ii, 402 sq.;
Nat. Rel. p. 314.] Renan's view seems to be generally connected
with the assumption that life in a "desert" makes a race for ever
unimaginative or unitary in its thought. The Arabian Nights might
be supposed a sufficient proof to the contrary. The historic truth
seems to be that, stage for stage, the ancient Semites were as
mythological as any other race; but that (to say nothing of the
Babylonians and Assyrians) the mythologies of the Hebrews and
of the Arabs were alike suppressed as far as possible in their
monotheistic stage. Compare Renan's own admissions, pp. 27, 110,
475, and Hist. du peuple d'Israël, i, 49-50.
At other places, however, Yahweh was symbolized and worshipped in the
image of a young bull, [351] a usage associated with the neighbouring
Semitic cult of Molech, but probably indigenous, or at least early,
in the case of Yahweh also. A God, for such worshippers, needed to be
represented by something, if he were to be individualized as against
others; and where there was not an ark or a sacred stone or special
temple or idol there could be no cult at all. "The practices of ancient
religion require a fixed meeting-place between the worshippers and
their God." [352] The pre-Exilic history of Yahweh-worship seems
to be in large part that of a struggle between the devotees of the
imageless worship fixed to the temple at Jerusalem, and other worships,
with or without images, at other and less influential shrines.
So far as can be gathered from the documents, it was long before
monotheistic pretensions were made in connection with Yahwism. They
must in the first instance have seemed not only tyrannical but
blasphemous to the devotees of the old local shrines, who in
the earlier Hebrew writings figure as perfectly good Yahwists;
and they clearly had no durable success before the period of the
Exile. Some three hundred years after the supposed period of David,
[353] and again eighty years later, we meet with ostensible traces
[354] of a movement for the special aggrandizement of the Yahweh
cult and the suppression of the others which competed with it, as
well as of certain licentious and vicious practices carried on in
connection with Yahweh worship. Concerning these, it could be claimed
by those who had adhered to the simpler tradition of one of the early
worships that they were foreign importations. They were, in fact,
specialties of a rich ancient society, and were either native to
Canaanite cities which the Hebrews had captured, or copied by them
from such cities. But the fact that they were thus, on the showing of
the later Yahwistic records, long associated with Yahwist practice,
proves that there was no special elevation about Yahwism originally.
Even the epithet translated "Holy" (Kadosh) had originally no high
moral significance. It simply meant "set apart," "not common"
(cp. Kuenen, Religion of Israel, i, 43; Wellhausen, Israel, in
Prolegomena vol. p. 499); and the special substantive (Kadesh and
Kedeshah) was actually the name for the most degraded ministrants
of both sexes in the licentious worship (see Deut. xxiii, 17,
18, and marg. Rev. Vers. Cp. 1 Kings xiv, 25; xv, 12; 2 Kings
xxiii, 7). On the question of early Hebrew ethics it is somewhat
misleading to cite Wellhausen (so Lang, Making of Religion,
p. 304) as saying (Israel, p. 437) that religion inspired law
and morals in Israel with exceptional purity. In the context
Wellhausen has said that the starting-point of Israel was normal;
and he writes in the Prolegomena (p. 302) that "good and evil
in Hebrew mean primarily nothing more than salutary and hurtful:
the application of the words to virtue and sin is a secondary one,
these being regarded as serviceable or hurtful in their effects."
§ 2
Given the co-existence of a multitude of local cults, and of
various local Yahweh-worships, it is conceivable that the Yahwists
of Jerusalem, backed by a priest-ridden king, should seek to limit
all worship to their own temple, whose revenues would thereby be
much increased. But insoluble perplexities are set up as to the
alleged movement by the incongruities in the documents. Passing over
for the moment the prophets Amos and Hosea and others who ostensibly
belong to the eighth century B.C., we find the second priestly reform,
[355] consequent on a finding or framing of "the law," represented as
occurring early in the reign of Josiah (641-610 B.C.). But later in
the same reign are placed the writings of Jeremiah, who constantly
contemns the scribes, prophets, and priests in mass, and makes
light of the ark, [356] besides declaring that in Judah [357] there
are as many Gods as towns, and in Jerusalem as many Baal-altars as
streets. The difficulty is reduced by recognizing the quasi-historical
narrative as a later fabrication; but other difficulties remain as to
the prophetic writings; and for our present purpose it is necessary
briefly to consider these.
1. The "higher criticism," seeking solid standing-ground at the
beginning of the tangible historic period, the eighth century,
singles out [358] the books of Amos and Hosea, setting aside,
as dubious in date, Nahum and Joel; and recognizing in Isaiah a
composite of different periods. If Amos, the "herdsman of Tekoa,"
could be thus regarded as an indubitable historical person, he would
be a remarkable figure in the history of freethought, as would his
nominal contemporary Hosea. Amos is a monotheist, worshipping not a
God of Israel but a Yahweh or Elohim of Hosts, called also by the name
Adon or Adonai, "the Lord," who rules all the nations and created the
universe. Further, the prophet makes Yahweh "hate and despise" the
feasts and burnt-offerings and solemn assemblies of his worshippers;
[359] and he meddles impartially with the affairs of the kingdoms
of Judah and Israel. In the same spirit Hosea menaces the solemn
assemblies, and makes Yahweh desire "mercy and not sacrifice." [360]
Similar doctrine occurs in the reputedly genuine or ancient parts of
Isaiah, [361] and in Micah. [362] Isaiah, too, disparages the Sabbath
and solemn meetings, staking all upon righteousness.
2. These utterances, so subversive of the priestly system, are yet held
to have been preserved through the ages--through the Assyrian conquest,
through the Babylonian Captivity, through the later period of priestly
reconstruction--by the priestly system itself. In the state of things
pictured under Ezra and Nehemiah, only the zealous adherents of the
priestly law can at the outset have had any letters, any literature;
it must have been they, then, who treasured the anti-priestly and
anti-ritual writings of the prophets--unless, indeed, the latter were
preserved by the Jews remaining at Babylon.
3. The perplexity thus set up is greatly deepened when we remember
that the period assigned to the earlier prophets is near the beginning
of the known age of alphabetic writing, [363] and before the known
age of writing on scrolls. A herdsman of Judea, with a classic and
flowing style, is held to have written out his hortatory addresses at
a time when such writing is not certainly known to have been practised
anywhere else; [364] and the pre-eminent style of Isaiah is held to
belong to the same period.
"His [Amos's] language, with three or four insignificant
exceptions, is pure, his style classical and refined. His
literary power is shown in the regularity of structure which often
characterizes his periods ... as well as in the ease with which
he evidently writes.... Anything of the nature of roughness or
rusticity is wholly absent from his writings" (Driver, Introd. to
Lit. of Old Test. ch. vi, § 3, p. 297, ed. 1891). Isaiah, again,
is in his own narrow field one of the most gifted and skilful
writers of all antiquity. The difficulty is thus nearly as great
as that of the proposition that the Hebrew of the Pentateuch is a
thousand years older than that of the latest prophetical books,
whose language is substantially the same. (Cp. Andrews Norton,
The Pentateuch, ed. 1863, pp. 47-48; Renan, Hist. des langues
sémit. 2e édit. p. 118.)
4. The specialist critics, all trained as clergymen, and mostly
loth to yield more than is absolutely necessary to skepticism,
have surrendered the antiquity claimed for Joel, recognizing that
the arguments for that are "equally consistent with a date after
the Captivity." [365] One of the conclusions here involved is that
"Egypt is probably mentioned only as the typical instance of a Power
hostile to Judah." Thus, when we remember the later Jewish practice of
speaking of Rome as "Babylon," or "Edom," allusions by Amos and Hosea
to "Assyria" have no evidential force. The same reasoning applies to
the supposed ancient portions of Isaiah.
5. Even on the clerical side, among the less conservative critics, it
is already conceded that there are late "insertions" in Amos. Some of
these insertions are among, or analogous to, the very passages relied
on by Kuenen to prove the lofty monotheism of Amos. If these passages,
however, suggest a late date, no less do the others disparaging
sacrifices. The same critics find interpolations and additions in
Hosea. But they offer no proof of the antiquity of what they retain.
The principal passages in Amos given up as insertions by
Dr. Cheyne, the most perspicacious of the English Hebraists, are:
iv, 13; v, 8-9; ix, 5-6; and ix, 8-15. See his introduction to 1895
ed. of Prof. Robertson Smith's Prophets of Israel, p. xv; and his
art. on Amos in the Encyclopædia Biblica. Compare Kuenen, i, 46,
48. Dr. Cheyne regards as insertions in Hosea the following: i,
10-ii, 1; "and David their King" in iii, 5; viii, 14; and xiv,
1-9 (as cited, pp. xviii-xix). Obviously these admissions entail
others.
6. The same school of criticism, while adhering to the traditional
dating of Amos and Hosea, has surrendered the claim for the Psalms,
placing most of these in the same age with the books of Job,
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Ecclesiasticus. [366] Now, the sentiment
of opposition to burnt-offerings is found in some of the Psalms in
language identical with that of the supposed early prophets. [367]
Instead of taking the former for late echoes of the latter, we may
reasonably suspect that they belong to the same culture-stage.
The principle is in effect recognized by Dr. Cheyne when he writes:
"Just as we infer from the reference to Cyrus in xliv, 28; xlv,
1, that the prophecy containing it proceeds from the age of the
conqueror, so we may infer from the fraternal feeling towards
Egypt and Assyria (Syria) in xix, 23-25, that the epilogue was
written when hopes of the union and fusion of Israelitish and
non-Israelitish elements first became natural for the Jews--i.e.,
in the early Jewish period" (Introd. to the Book of Isaiah, 1895,
pp. 109-10).
7. From the scientific point of view, finally, the element of
historical prediction in the prophets is one of the strongest grounds
for presuming that they are in reality late documents. In regard
to similar predictions in the gospels (Mt. xxiv, 15; Mk. xiii, 2;
Lk. xxi, 20), rational criticism decides that they were written after
the event. No other course can consistently be taken as to early
Hebrew predictions of captivity and restoration; and the adherence
of many Biblical scholars at this point to the traditional view
is psychologically on a par with their former refusal to accept a
rational estimate of the Pentateuchal narrative.
On some points, such as the flagrant pseudo-prediction in
Isaiah xix, 18, all reasonable critics surrender. Thus "König
sees rightly that xix, 18, can refer only to Jewish colonies in
Egypt, and refrains from the arbitrary supposition that Isaiah
was supernaturally informed of the future establishment of
such colonies" (Cheyne, Introd. to Smith's Prophets of Israel,
p. xxxiii). But in other cases Dr. Cheyne's own earlier positions
appear to involve such an "arbitrary supposition," as do Kuenen's;
and Smith explicitly posited it as to the prophets in general. And
even as to Isaiah xix, 18, whereas Hitzig, as Havet later,
rightly brings the date down to the actual historic time of the
establishment of the temple at Heliopolis by Onias (Josephus,
Ant. xiii, 3, 1; Wars, vii, 10, 2), about 160 B.C., Dr. Cheyne
(Introd. to Isaiah, p. 108) compromises by dating it about 275 B.C.
The lateness of the bulk of the prophetical writings has been
ably argued by Ernest Havet (Le Christianisme et ses Origines,
vol. iv, 1878, ch. vi; and in the posthumous vol., La Modernité
des Prophètes, 1891), who supports his case by many cogent
reasonings. For instance, besides the argument as to Isaiah xix,
18, above noted: (1) The frequent prediction of the ruin of Tyre
by Nebuchadnezzar (Isa. ch. xxiii; Jer. xxv, 22; Ezek. xxvi, 7;
ch. xxvii), false as to him (a fact which might be construed as
a proof of the fallibility of the prophets and the candour of
their transcribers), is to be understood in the light of other
post-predictions as referring to the actual capture of the city
by Alexander. (2) Hosea's prediction of the fall of Judah as well
as of Israel, and of their being united, places the passage after
the Exile, and may even be held to bring it down to the period
of the Asmoneans. So with many other details: the whole argument
deserves careful study. M. Havet's views were, of course, scouted
by the conservative specialists, as their predecessors scouted the
entire hypothesis of Graf, now taken in its essentials as the basis
of sound Biblical criticism. M. Scherer somewhat unintelligently
objected to him (Études sur la litt. contemp. vii, 268) that he was
not a Hebraist. There is no question of philology involved. It was
non-Hebraists who first pointed out the practical incredibility
of the central Pentateuchal narrative, on the truth of which
Kuenen himself long stood with other Hebraists. (Cp. Wellhausen,
Proleg. pp. 39, 347; also his (4th) ed. of Bleek's Einleit. in das
alte Test. 1878, p. 154; and Kuenen, Hexateuch, Eng. tr. pp. xv,
43.) Colenso's argument, in the gist of which he was long preceded
by lay freethinkers, was one of simple common sense. The weak side
of M. Havet's case is his undertaking to bring the prophets bodily
down to the Maccabean period. This is claiming too much. But his
negative argument is not affected by the reply (Darmesteter, Les
Prophètes d'Israël, 1895, pp. 128-31) to his constructive theory.
[Since the above was written, two French critics, MM. Dujardin
and Maurice Vernes, have sought vigorously to reconstruct the
history of the prophetic books upon new lines. I have been unable
to acquiesce in their views at essential points, but would refer
the reader to the lucid and interesting survey of the problem in
Mr. T. Whittaker's Priests, Philosophers, and Prophets (Black,
1911), ch. vi.]
It is true that where hardly any documentary datum is intrinsically
sure, it is difficult to prove a negative for one more than for
another. The historical narratives being systematically tampered with
by one writer after another, and even presumptively late writings being
interpolated by still later scribes, we can never have demonstrative
proof as to the original date of any one prophet. Thus it is arguable
that fragments of utterance from eighth-century prophets may have
survived orally and been made the nucleus of later documents. This
view would be reconcilable with the fact that the prophets Isaiah,
Hosea, Amos, and Micah are all introduced with some modification of
the formula that they prophesied "in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz,
and Hezekiah, kings of Judah," Jeroboam's name being added in the cases
of Hosea and Amos. But that detail is also reconcilable with absolute
fabrication. To say nothing of sheer bad faith in a community whose
moral code said nothing against fraud save in the form of judicial
perjury, the Hebrew literature is profoundly compromised by the simple
fact that the religious development of the people made the prestige
of antiquity more essential there for the purposes of propaganda
than in almost any other society known to us. Hence an all-pervading
principle of literary dissimulation; and what freethinking there was
had in general to wear the guise of the very force of unreasoning
traditionalism to which it was inwardly most opposed. Only thus could
new thought find a hearing and secure its preservation at the hands
of the tribe of formalists. Even the pessimist Koheleth, wearied with
groping science, yet believing nothing of the doctrine of immortality,
must needs follow precedent and pose as the fabulous King Solomon,
son of the half-mythic David.
§ 3
We are forced, then, to regard with distrust all passages in the
"early" prophets which express either a disregard of sacrifice
and ritual, or a universalism incongruous with all that we know
of the native culture of their period. The strongest ground for
surmising a really "high" development of monotheism in Judah before
the Captivity is the stability of the life there as compared with
northern Israel. [368] In this respect the conditions might indeed be
considered favourable to priestly or other culture; but, on the other
hand, the records themselves exhibit a predominant polytheism. The
presumption, then, is strong that the "advanced" passages in the
prophets concerning sacrifice belong to an age when such ideas had
been reached in more civilized nations, with whose thought travelled
Jews could come in contact.
It is true that some such ideas were current in Egypt many
centuries before the period under notice--a fact which alone
discounts the ethical originality claimed for the Hebrew
prophets. E.g., the following passage from the papyrus of Ani,
belonging to the Nineteenth Dynasty, not later than 1288 B.C.:
"That which is detestable in the sanctuary of God is noisy feasts;
if thou implore him with a loving heart of which all the words
are mysterious, he will do thy matters, he hears thy words, he
accepts thine offerings" (Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt,
by Flinders Petrie, 1898, p. 160). The word rendered "mysterious"
here may mean "magical" or "liturgical," or may merely prescribe
privacy or silence; and this last is the construction put
upon it by Renouf (Hibbert Lectures, 2nd ed. p. 102) and Erman
(Handbook of Eg. Relig. Eng. tr. p. 84). The same doctrine is put
in a hymn to Thoth (id.). But in any case we must look for later
culture-contacts as the source of the later Hebrew radicalism under
notice, though Egyptian sources are not to be wholly set aside. See
Kuenen, i, 395; and Brugsch, as there cited; but cp. Wellhausen,
Israel, p. 440.
It is clear that not only did they accept a cosmogony from the
Babylonians, but they were influenced by the lore of the Zoroastrian
Persians, with whom, as with the monotheists or pantheists of Babylon,
they would have grounds of sympathy. It is an open question whether
their special hostility to images does not date from the time of
Persian contact. [369] Concerning the restoration, it has been argued
that only a few Jewish exiles returned to Jerusalem "both under Cyrus
and under Dareios"; and that, though the temple was rebuilt under
Dareios Hystaspis, the builders were not the Gola or returned exiles,
but that part of the Judahite population which had not been deported
to Babylon. [370] The problem is obscure; [371] but, at least, the
separatist spirit of the redacted narratives of Ezra and Nehemiah
(which in any case tell of an opposite spirit) is not to be taken as
a decisive clue to the character of the new religion. For the rest,
the many Jews who remained in Babylon or spread elsewhere in the
Persian Empire, and who developed their creed on a non-local basis,
were bound to be in some way affected by the surrounding theology. And
it is tolerably certain that not only was the notion of angels derived
by the Jews from either the Babylonians or the Persians, but their
rigid Sabbath and their weekly synagogue meetings came from one or
both of these sources.
That the Sabbath was an Akkado-Babylonian and Assyrian institution
is now well established (G. Smith, Assyrian Eponym Canon, 1875,
p. 20; Jastrow, Relig. of Bab. and Assyria, p. 377; Sayce,
Hib. Lect. p. 76, and in Variorum Teacher's Bible, ed. 1885,
Aids, p. 71). It was before the fact was ascertained that Kuenen
wrote of the Sabbath (i, 245) as peculiar to Israel. The Hebrews
may have had it before the Exile; but it was clearly not then a
great institution; and the mention of Sabbaths in Amos (viii,
5) and Isaiah (i, 13) is one of the reasons for doubting the
antiquity of those books. The custom of synagogue meetings on
the Sabbath is post-exilic, and may have arisen either in Babylon
itself (so Wellhausen, Israel, p. 492) or in imitation of Parsee
practice (so Tiele, cited by Kuenen, iii, 35). Compare E. Meyer,
Gesch. des Alt. iii (1901), § 131. The same alternative arises
with regard to the belief in angels, usually regarded as certainly
Persian in origin (cp. Kuenen, iii, 37; Tiele, Outlines, p. 90;
and Sack, Die altjüdische Religion, 1889, p. 133). This also could
have been Babylonian (Sayce, in Var. Bible, as cited, p. 71); even
the demon Asmodeus in the Book of Tobit, usually taken as Persian,
being of Babylonian derivation (id.). Cp. Darmesteter's introd. to
Zendavesta, 2nd ed. ch. v. On the other hand, the conception of
Satan, the Adversary, as seen in 1 Chr. xxi, 1; Zech. iii, 1,
2, seems to come from the Persian Ahriman, though the Satan of
Job has not Ahriman's status. Such a modification would come of
the wish to insist on the supremacy of the good God. And this
quasi-monotheistic view, again, we are led to regard, in the
case of the prophets, as a possible Babylonian derivation, or
at least as a result of the contact of Yahwists with Babylonian
culture. To a foreign influence, finally, must be definitely
attributed the later Priestly Code, over-ruling Deuteronomy,
lowering the Levites, setting up a high priest, calling the
dues into the sanctuary, resting on the Torah the cultus which
before was rested on the patriarchs, and providing cities and
land for the Aaronidae and the Levites (Wellhausen, Prolegomena,
pp. 123, 127, 147, 149, 347; Israel, pp. 495, 497)--the latter
an arrangement impossible in mountainous Palestine, as regards
the land-measurements (id. Proleg. p. 159, following Gramberg and
Graf), and clearly deriving from some such country as Babylonia
or Persia. As to the high-priest principle in Babylon and Assyria,
see Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 59-61; Jastrow, as cited, p. 658.
Of the general effect of such contacts we have clear traces in two
of the most remarkable of the later books of the Old Testament, Job
and Ecclesiastes, both of which clearly belong to a late period in
religious development. The majority of the critics still confidently
describe Job as an original Hebrew work, mainly on the ground,
apparently, that it shows no clear marks of translation, though
its names and its local colour are all non-Jewish. In any case it
represents, for its time, a cosmopolitan culture, and contains the
work of more than one hand, the prologue and epilogue being probably
older than the rest; while much of the dialogue is obviously late
interpolation.
Compare Cheyne, Job and Solomon, 1887, p. 72; Bradley,
Lectures on Job, p. 171; Bleek-Wellhausen, Einleitung, § 268
(291), ed. 1878, p. 542; Driver, Introd. pp. 405-8; Cornill,
Einleit. in das alte Test. 2te. Aufl. 1892, §§ 38, 42; Sharpe,
Hist. of the Hebrew Nation, 4th ed. p. 282 sq.; Dillon, Skeptics
of the Old Test. 1895, pp. 36-39. Renan's dating of the book six
or seven centuries before Ecclesiastes (L'Ecclésiaste, p. 26;
Job, pp. xv-xliii) is oddly uncritical. It must clearly be dated
after Jeremiah and Ezekiel (Dillon, as cited); and Cornill even
ascribes it to the fourth or third century B.C. Dr. Cheyne notes
that in the skeptical passages the name Yahweh is very seldom used
(only once or twice, as in xii, 9; xxviii, 28); and Dr. Driver
admits that the whole book not only abounds in Aramaic words,
but has a good many "explicable only from the Arabic." Other
details in the book suggest the possible culture-influence of
the Himyarite Arabs, who had reached a high civilization before
500 B.C. Dr. Driver's remark that "the thoughts are thoroughly
Hebraic" burkes the entire problem as to the manifest innovation
the book makes in Hebrew thought and literary method alike. Sharpe
(p. 287) is equally arbitrary. Cp. Renan, Job, 1859, pp. xxv,
where the newness of the whole treatment is admitted.
Dr. Dillon (pp. 43-59), following Bickell, has pointed out more or
less convincingly the many interpolations made in the book after,
and even before, the making of the Septuagint translation, which
originally lacked 400 lines of the matter in the present Hebrew
version. The discovery of the Saidic version of the LXX text of
Job decides the main fact. (See Professor Bickell's Das Buch Job,
1894.) "It is quite possible even now to point out, by the help
of a few disjointed fragments still preserved, the position, and
to divine the sense, of certain spiteful and defiant passages,
which, in the interest of 'religion and morals,' were remorselessly
suppressed; to indicate others which were split up and transposed;
and to distinguish many prolix discourses, feeble or powerful
word-pictures, and trite commonplaces, which were deliberately
inserted later on, for the sole purpose of toning down the most
audacious piece of rationalistic philosophy which has ever yet
been clothed in the music of sublime verse" (Dillon, pp. 45-46).
"Besides the four hundred verses which must be excluded on the
ground that they are wanting in the Septuagint version, and were
therefore added to the text at a comparatively recent period, the
long-winded discourse of Elihu must be struck out, most [? much]
of which was composed before the book was first translated into
Greek.... In the prologue in prose ... Elihu is not once alluded
to; and in the epilogue, where all the [other] debaters are named
and censured, he ... is absolutely ignored.... Elihu's style is
toto coelo different from that of the other parts of the poem;
... while his doctrinal peculiarities, particularly his mention
of interceding angels, while they coincide with those of the New
Testament, are absolutely unknown to Job and his friends.... The
confusion introduced into the text by this insertion is bewildering
in the extreme; and yet the result is but a typical specimen of
the ... tangle which was produced by the systematic endeavour of
later and pious editors to reduce the poem to the proper level
of orthodoxy" (id. pp. 55-57). Again: "Ch. xxiv, 5-8, 10-24,
and ch. xxx, 3-7, take the place of Job's blasphemous complaint
about the unjust government of the world."
It need hardly be added here that not only the Authorized but
the Revised Version is false in the text "I know that my redeemer
liveth," etc. (xix, 25-27), that being a perversion dating from
Jerome. The probable meaning is given in Dr. Dillon's version:--
But I know that my avenger liveth;
Though it be at the end upon my dust,
My witness will avenge these things,
And a curse alight upon mine enemies.
The original expressed a complete disbelief in a future life
(ch. xiv). Compare Dr. Dillon's rhythmic version of the restored
text.
What marks off the book of Job from all other Hebrew literature
is its dramatic and reflective handling of the ethical problem of
theism, which the prophets either evade or dismiss by declamation
against Jewish sins. Not that it is solved in Job, where the rôle of
Satan is an inconclusive resort to the Persian dualistic solution,
and where the deity is finally made to answer Job's freethinking
by sheer literary thunder, much less ratiocinative though far more
artistic than the theistic speeches of the friends. But at least the
writer or writers of Job's speeches consciously grasped the issue;
and the writer of the epilogue evidently felt that the least Yahweh
could do was to compensate a man whom he had allowed to be wantonly
persecuted. The various efforts of ancient thought to solve the same
problem will be found to constitute the motive power in many later
heterodox systems, theistic and atheistic.
Broadly speaking, it is solved in practice in terms of the fortunes
of priests and worshippers. At all stages of religious evolution
extreme ill-fortune tends to detach men from the cults that have
failed to bring them succour. Be it in the case of African indigenes
slaying their unsuccessful rain-doctor, Anglo-Saxon priests welcoming
Christianity as a surer source of income than their old worship,
pagans turning Christian at the fall of Julian, or Christians going
over to Islam at the sight of its triumph--the simple primary motive
of self-interest is always potent on this as on other sides; and at
all stages of Jewish history, it is evident, there were many who held
by Yahweh because they thought he prospered them, or renounced him
because he did not. And the very vicissitude of things would breed
a general skepticism. [372] In Zephaniah (i, 12) there is a specific
allusion to those "that say in their heart, The Lord will not do good,
neither will he do evil."
Judaism is thus historically a series of socio-political selections
rather than a sequence of hereditary transmission. The first definite
and exclusive Yahwistic cult was an outcome of special political
conditions; and its priests would adhere to it in adversity insofar
as they had no other economic resort. Every return of sunshine, on the
other hand, would minister to faith; and while many Jews in the time of
Assyro-Babylonian ascendancy decided that Yahweh could not save, those
Yahwists who in the actual Captivity prospered commercially in the new
life would see in such prosperity a fresh proof of Yahweh's support,
[373] and would magnify his name and endow his priests accordingly. For
similar reasons, the most intense development of Judaism occurs after
the Maccabean revolt, when the military triumph of the racial remnant
over its oppressors inspired a new and enduring enthusiasm.
On the other hand, foreign influences would chronically tend to promote
doubt, especially where the foreigner was not a mere successful
votary exalting his own God, but a sympathetic thinker questioning
all the Godisms alike. This consideration is a reason the more for
surmising a partly foreign source for the book of Job, where, as in
the passage cited from Zephaniah, there is no thought of one deity
being less potent than another, but rather an impeachment of divine
rule in terms of a conceptual monotheism. In any case, the book stands
for more than Jewish reverie; and where it is finally turned to an
irrelevant and commonplace reaffirmation of the goodness of deity, a
certain number of sincerer thinkers in all likelihood fell back on an
"agnostic" solution of the eternal problem.
In certain aspects the book of Job speaks for a further reach of
early freethinking than is seen in Ecclesiastes (Koheleth), which,
however, at its lower level of conviction, tells of an unbelief that
could not be overborne by any rhetoric. It unquestionably derives
from late foreign influences. It is true that even in the book of
Malachi, which is commonly dated about 400 B.C., there is angry
mention of some who ask, "Where is the God of judgment?" and say,
"It is vain to serve God"; [374] even as others had said it in the
days of Assyrian oppression; [375] but in Malachi these sentiments
are actually associated with foreign influences, and in Koheleth such
influences are implicit. By an increasing number of students, though
not yet by common critical consent, the book is dated about 200 B.C.,
when Greek influence was stronger in Jewry than at any previous time.
Grätz even puts it as late as the time of Herod the Great. But
compare Dillon, p. 129; Tyler, Ecclesiastes, 1874, p. 31;
Plumptre's Ecclesiastes, 1881, introd. p. 34; Renan, L'Ecclésiaste,
1882, pp. 54-59; Kuenen, Religion of Israel, iii, 82; Driver,
Introduction, pp. 446-47; Bleek-Wellhausen, Einleitung,
p. 527. Dr. Cheyne and some others still put the date before
332 B.C. Here again we are dealing with a confused and corrupted
text. The German Prof. Bickell has framed an ingenious and highly
plausible theory to the effect that the present incoherence of
the text is mainly due to a misplacing of the leaves of the copy
from which the current transcript was made. See it set forth by
Dillon, pp. 92-97; cp. Cheyne, Job and Solomon, p. 273 sq. There
has, further, been some tampering. The epilogue, in particular,
is clearly the addition of a later hand--"one of the most timid
and shuffling apologies ever penned" (Dillon, p. 118, note).
But the thought of the book is, as Renan says, profoundly fatigued;
and the sombre avowals of the absence of divine moral government
are ill-balanced by sayings, probably interpolated by other hands,
averring an ultimate rectification even on earth. What remains
unqualified is the deliberate rejection of the belief in a future
life, couched in terms that imply the currency of the doctrine; [376]
and the deliberate caution against enthusiasm in religion. Belief
in a powerful but remote deity, with a minimum of worship and vows,
is the outstanding lesson. [377]
"To me, Koheleth is not a theist in any vital sense in
his philosophic meditations" (Cheyne, Job and Solomon,
p. 250). "Koheleth's pessimistic theory, which has its roots
in secularism, is utterly incompatible with the spirit of
Judaism.... It is grounded upon the rejection of the Messianic
expectations, and absolute disbelief in the solemn promises of
Jahveh himself.... It would be idle to deny that he had far more
in common with the 'impious' than with the orthodox" (Dillon,
pp. 119-20).
That there was a good deal of this species of tired or stoical
semi-rationalism among the Jews of the Hellenistic period may be
inferred from various traces. The opening verses of the thirtieth
chapter of the book of Proverbs, attributed to Agur, son of Jakeh,
are admittedly the expression of a skeptic's conviction that God
cannot be known, [378] the countervailing passages being plainly the
additions of a believer. Agur's utterances probably belong to the close
of the third century B.C. Here, as in Job, there are signs of Arab
influence; [379] but at a later period the main source of skepticism
for Israel was probably the Hellenistic civilization. It is told in the
Talmud that in the Maccabean period there came into use the formula,
"Cursed be the man that cherisheth swine; and cursed be the man that
teacheth his son the wisdom of the Greeks"; and there is preserved
the saying of Rabbi Simeon, son of Gamaliel, that in his father's
school five hundred learnt the law, and five hundred the wisdom of
the Greeks. [380] Before Gamaliel, the Greek influence had affected
Jewish philosophic thought; and it is very probable that among the
Sadducees who resisted the doctrine of resurrection there were some
thinkers of the Epicurean school. To that school may have belonged
the unbelievers who are struck at in several Rabbinical passages
which account for the sin of Adam as beginning in a denial of the
omnipresence of God, and describe Cain as having said: "There is
no judgment; there is no world to come, and there is no reward for
the just, and no punishment for the wicked." [381] But of Greek or
other atheism there is no direct trace in the Hebrew literature;
[382] and the rationalism of the Sadducees, who were substantially
the priestly party, [383] was like the rationalism of the Brahmans
and the Egyptian priests--something esoteric and withheld from the
multitude. In the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon, which belongs to
the first century A.C., the denial of immortality, so explicit in
Ecclesiastes, is treated as a proof of utter immorality, though the
deniers are not represented as atheists. [384] They thus seem to have
been still numerous, and the imputation of wholesale immorality to
them is of course not to be credited; [385] but there is no trace of
any constructive teaching on their part.
So far as the literature shows, save for the confused Judaic-Platonism
of Philo of Alexandria, there is practically no rational progress in
Jewish thought after Koheleth till the time of contact with revived
Greek thought in Saracen Spain. The mass of the people, in the usual
way, are found gravitating to the fanatical and the superstitious
levels of the current creed. The book of Ruth, written to resist
the separatism of the post-Exilic theocracy, [386] never altered
the Jewish practice, though allowed into the canon. The remarkable
Levitical legislation providing for the periodical restoration of
the land to the poor never came into operation, [387] any more than
the very different provision giving land and cities to the children
of Aaron and the Levites. None of the more rationalistic writings
in the canon seems ever to have counted for much in the national
life. To conceive of "Israel," in the fashion still prevalent, as
being typified in the monotheistic prophets, whatever their date,
is as complete a misconception as it would be to see in Mr. Ruskin
the expression of the everyday ethic of commercial England. The
anti-sacrificial and universalist teachings in the prophets and in the
Psalms never affected, for the people at large, the sacrificial and
localized worship at Jerusalem; though they may have been esoterically
received by some of the priestly or learned class there, and though
they may have promoted a continual exodus of the less fanatical
types, who turned to other civilizations. Despite the resistance of
the Sadducees and the teaching of Job and Ecclesiastes, the belief
in a resurrection rapidly gained ground [388] in the two or three
centuries before the rise of Jesuism, and furnished a basis for
the new creed; as did the Messianic hope and the belief in a speedy
ending of the world, with both of which Jewish fanaticism sustained
itself under the long frustration of nationalistic faith before the
Maccabean interlude and after the Roman conquest. It was in vain that
the great teacher Hillel declared, "There is no Messiah for Israel";
the rest of the race persisted in cherishing the dream. [389] With the
major hallucination thus in full possession, the subordinate species of
superstition flourished as in Egypt and India; so that at the beginning
of our era the Jews were among the most superstitious peoples in the
world. [390] When their monotheism was fully established, and placed
on an abstract footing by the destruction of the temple, it seems
to have had no bettering influence on the practical ethics of the
Gentiles, though it may have furthered the theistic tendency of the
Stoic philosophy. Juvenal exhibits to us the Jew proselyte at Rome as
refusing to show an unbeliever the way, or guide him to a spring. [391]
Sectarian monotheism was thus in part on a rather lower ethical and
intellectual [392] plane than the polytheism, to say nothing of the
Epicureanism or the Stoicism, of the society of the Roman Empire.
It cannot even be said that the learned Rabbinical class carried on a
philosophic tradition, while the indigent multitude thus discredited
their creed. In the period after the fall of Jerusalem, the narrow
nationalism which had always ruled there seems to have been even
intensified. In the Talmud "the most general representation of the
Divine Being is as the chief Rabbi of Heaven; the angelic host being
his assessors. The heavenly Sanhedrim takes the opinion of living
sages in cases of dispute. Of the twelve hours of the day three are
spent by God in study, three in the government of the world (or rather
in the exercise of mercy), three in providing food for the world,
and three in playing with Leviathan. But since the destruction of
Jerusalem all amusements were banished from the courts of heaven,
and three hours were employed in the instruction of those who had
died in infancy." [393] So little can a nominal monotheism avail,
on the basis of a completed Sacred Book, to keep thought sane when
freethought is lacking.
Finally, Judaism played in the world's thought the great reactionary
and obscurantist part by erecting into a dogma the irrational
conception that its deity made the universe "out of nothing." At
the time of the redaction of the book of Genesis this dogma had not
been glimpsed: the Hebrew conception was the Babylonian--that of a
pre-existent Chaos put into shape. But gradually, in the interests of
monotheism, the anti-scientific doctrine was evolved [394] by way of
negative to that of the Gentiles; and where the great line of Ionian
thinkers passed on to the modern world the developed conception of
an eternal universe, [395] Judaism passed on through Christianity,
as well as in its own "philosophy," the contrary dogma, to bar the
way of later science.