The two most specious arguments with which it was sought to

Produced by David Starner, Thomas Berger

and the Distributed Prooreaders team.

THE SCEPTICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

JOB * KOHELETH * AGUR

with English text translated for the first time from the primitive Hebrew

as restored on the basis of recent philological discoveries.

by

E. J. Dillon

Late Professor of Comparative Philology and Ancient Armenian at the

Imperial University of Kharkoff; Doctor of Oriental Languages of the

University of Louvain; Magistrand of the Oriental Faculty of the Imperial

University of St. Petersburg; Member of the Armenian Academy of Venice;

Membre de la Société Asiatique de Paris, &c. &c.

* * * * *

_To ALEXANDER VASSILYEVITCH PASCHKOFF, M.A.

THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED_

* * * * *

DEDICATORY NOTE

_My Dear Paschkoff,

In the philosophical problems dealt with by the Sceptics of the Old

Testament, you will recognise the theme of our numerous and pleasant

discussions during the past sixteen years. Three of these are indelibly

engraven in my memory, and, if I mistake not, in yours.

The first took place in St. Petersburg one soft Indian-summer's evening,

in a cosy room on the Gagarine Quay, from the windows of which we looked

out with admiration upon the blue expanse of the Neva, as it reflected

the burnished gold of the spire of the Fortress church. At that time we

gazed upon the wavelets of the river and the wonders of the world from

exactly the same angle of vision.

The second of these memorable conversations occurred after the lapse of

nine years. We had met together in the old place, and sauntering out one

bitterly cold December evening resumed the discussion, walking to and fro

on the moonlit bank of the ice-bound river, until evening merged into

night and the moon sank beneath the horizon, leaving us in total

darkness, vainly desirous, like Goethe, of "light, more light."

Our last exchange of views took place after six further years had sped

away, and we stood last August on the summit of the historic Mönchsberg,

overlooking the final resting-place of the great Paracelsus. The long and

interesting discussions which we had on that occasion, just before

setting out in opposite directions, you to the East and I to the West,

neither of us is likely ever to forget.

It is in commemoration of these pleasant conversations, and more

especially of the good old times, now past for ever, when we looked out

upon the wavelets of the Neva and the wonders of the world from the same

angle of vision, that I ask you to allow me to associate your name with

this translation of the primitive texts of the Sceptics of the Old

Testament.

Yours affectionately,

E. J. DILLON.

TREBIZOND, January 3, 1895._

* * * * *

PREFACE

A careful perusal of this first English translation of the primitive text

of "Job," "Koheleth," and the "Sayings of Agur" will, I doubt not,

satisfy the most orthodox reader that I am fully warranted in

characterising their authors as Sceptics. The epithet, I confess, may

prove distasteful to many, but the truth, I trust, will be welcome to

all. It is not easy to understand why any one who firmly believes that

Providence is continually educing good from evil should hesitate to admit

that it may in like manner allow sound moral principles to be enshrined

in doubtful or even erroneous philosophical theories. Or, is trust in God

to be made dependent upon the confirmation or rejection by physical

science of, say, the Old Testament account of the origin of the rainbow?

Agur, "Job" and "Koheleth" had outgrown the intellectual husks which a

narrow, inadequate and erroneous account of God's dealings with man had

caused to form around the minds of their countrymen, and they had the

moral courage to put their words into harmony with their thoughts.

Clearly perceiving that, whatever the sacerdotal class might say to the

contrary, the political strength of the Hebrew people was spent and its

religious ideals exploded, they sought to shift the centre of gravity

from speculative theology to practical morality.

The manner in which they adjusted their hopes, fears, and aspirations to

the new conditions, strikes the keynote of their respective characters.

"Job," looking down upon the world from the tranquil heights of genius,

is manful, calm, resigned. "Koheleth," shuddering at the gloom that

envelops and the pain that convulses all living beings, prefers death to

life, and freedom from suffering to "positive" pleasure; while Agur,

revealing the bitterness bred by dispelled illusions and blasted hopes,

administers a severe chastisement to those who first called them into

being. All three[1] reject the dogma of retribution, the doctrine of

eternal life and belief in the coming of a Messiah, over and above which

they at times strip the notion of God of its most essential attributes,

reducing it to the shadow of a mere metaphysical abstraction. This is why

I call them Sceptics.

"Job" and "Koheleth" emphatically deny that there is any proof to be

found of the so-called moral order in the universe, and they

unhesitatingly declare that existence is an evil. They would have us

therefore exchange our hopes for insight, and warn us that even this is

very circumscribed at best. For not only is happiness a mockery, but

knowledge is a will-o'-the-wisp. Mankind resembles the bricklayer and the

hodman who help to raise an imposing edifice without any knowledge of the

general plan. And yet the structure is the outcome of their labour. In

like manner this mysterious world is the work of man--the mirror of his

will. As his will is, so are his acts, and as his acts are, so is his

world. Or as the ancient Hindoos put it:

"Before the gods we bend our necks, and yet

within the toils of Fate

Entangled are the gods themselves. To Fate,

then, be all honour given.

Yet Fate itself can compass nought, 'tis but the

bringer of the meed

For every deed that we perform.

As then our acts shape our rewards, of what

avail are gods or Fate?

Let honour therefore be decerned to deeds

alone."

But what, I have been frequently asked, will be the effect of all this

upon theology? Are we to suppose that the writings of these three

Sceptics were admitted into the Canon by mistake, and if not, shall we

not have to widen our definition of inspiration until it can be made to

include contributions which every Christian must regard as heterodox? An

exhaustive reply to this question would need a theological dissertation,

for which I have neither desire nor leisure. I may say, however, that

eminent theologians representing various Christian denominations--Roman

Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran--have assured me that

they could readily reconcile the dogmas of their respective Churches with

doctrines educible from the primitive text of "Job," "Koheleth," and

Agur, whose ethics they are disposed to identify, in essentials, with the

teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. With the ways and means by which

they effect this reconciliation I am not now concerned.

My object was neither to attack a religious dogma, nor to provoke a

theological controversy, but merely to put the latest results of

philological science within the reach of him who reads as he runs. And I

feel confident that the reader who can appreciate the highest forms of

poetry, or who has anxiously pondered over the problems of God,

immortality, the origin of evil, &c., will peruse the writings of "Job,"

"Koheleth" and Agur with a lively interest, awakened, and sustained not

merely by the extrinsic value which they possess as historical documents,

but by their intrinsic merits as precious contributions to the literature

and philosophy of the world.

E. J. DILLON.

CONSTANTINOPLE, _New Year's Day, 1895._

Footnotes:

[1] In Agur's case, this is but an inference from his first saying, but

an inference which few would think of calling in question.

* * * * *

CONTENTS

THE POEM OF JOB

HEBREW PHILOSOPHY

THE PROBLEM OF THE POEM

JOB'S METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM

DATE OF THE COMPOSITION

THE TEXT AND ITS RECONSTRUCTION

INTERPOLATIONS

JOB'S THEOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS

ANALYSIS OF THE POEM

KOHELETH

CONDITION OF THE TEXT

PRIMITIVE FORM OF THE BOOK

KOHELETH'S THEORY OF LIFE

PRACTICAL WISDOM

KOHELETH'S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

SOURCES OF KOHELETH'S PHILOSOPHY

AGUR THE AGNOSTIC

AGUR, SON OF YAKEH

FORM AND CONTENTS OF THE SAYINGS OF AGUR

DATE OF COMPOSITION

AGUR'S PHILOSOPHY

THE POEM OF JOB (TRANSLATION OF THE RESTORED TEXT)

THE SPEAKER (TRANSLATION OF THE RESTORED TEXT)

THE SAYINGS OF AGUR (TRANSLATION OF THE RESTORED TEXT)

INDEX

THE POEM OF JOB

* * * * *

HEBREW PHILOSOPHY

According to a theory which was still in vogue a few years ago, the

ancient races of mankind were distinguished from each other no less by

their intellectual equipment than by their physical peculiarities. Thus

the Semites were supposed to be characterised, among other things, by an

inborn aptitude for historical narrative and an utter lack of the mental

suppleness, ingenuity, and sharp incisive vision indispensable for the

study of the problems of philosophy; while their neighbours, the Aryans,

devoid of historical talent, were held to be richly endowed with all the

essential qualities of mind needed for the cultivation of epic poetry and

abstruse metaphysics. This theory has since been abandoned, and many of

the alleged facts that once seemed to support it have been shown to be

unwarranted assumptions. Thus, the conclusive proof, supplied by Biblical

criticism, of the untrustworthiness of the historical books of the Old

Testament, has removed one alleged difference between Aryans and Semites,

while the discoveries which led to the reconstruction of the primitive

poem of Job and of the treatise of Koheleth have undermined the basis of

the other. For these two works deal exclusively with philosophical

problems, and, together with the Books of Proverbs and Jesus Sirach, are

the only remains that have come down to us of the ethical and

metaphysical speculations of the ancient Hebrews whose descendants have

so materially contributed to further this much-maligned branch of human

knowledge. And if we may judge by what we know of these two books, we

have ample grounds for regretting that numerous other philosophical

treatises which were written between the fourth and the first centuries

B.C. were deemed too abstruse, too irrelevant, or too heterodox to find a

place in the Jewish Canon.[2] For the Book of Job is an unrivalled

masterpiece, the work of one in whom poetry was no mere special faculty

cultivated apart from his other gifts, but the outcome of the harmonious

wholeness of healthy human nature, in which upright living, untrammelled

thought, deep mental vision, and luxuriant imagination combined to form

the individual. Hence the poem is a true reflex of the author's mind: it

dissolves and blends in harmonious union elements that appeared not

merely heterogeneous, but wholly incompatible, and realises, with the

concreteness of history, the seemingly unattainable idea which Lucretius

had the mind to conceive but lacked the artistic hand to execute; in a

word, it is the fruit of the intimate union of that philosophy which,

reckless of results, dares to clip even angels' wings, and of the art

which possesses the secret of painting its unfading pictures with the

delicate tints of the rainbow. Rich fancy and profound thought co-operate

to produce a _tertium quid_--a visible proof that the beautiful is

one with the true--for which neither literature nor philosophy possesses

a name. It is no wonder, then, that this unique poem, which gives

adequate utterance to abstract thought, truly and forcibly states the

doubts and misgivings which harrow the souls of thinking men of all ages

and nations, and helps them to lift a corner of the veil of delusion and

get a glimpse of the darkness of the everlasting Night beyond, should

appeal to the reader of the nineteenth century with much greater force

than to the Jews of olden times, who were accustomed to gauge the

sublimity of imaginative poetry and the depth of philosophic speculation

by the standard of orthodoxy and the bias of nationality.

The Book of Job, from which Pope Gregory the Great fancied he could piece

together the entire system of Catholic theology, and which Thomas of

Aquin regarded as a sober history, is now known to be a regular poem,

but, as Tennyson truly remarked, "the greatest poem whether of ancient or

modern times," and the diction of which even Luther instinctively felt to

be "magnificent and sublime as no other book of Scripture." And it is

exclusively in this light, as one of the masterpieces of the world's

literature, that it will be considered in the following pages. Whatever

religious significance it may be supposed to possess over and above, as

one of the canonical books of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, will,

it is hoped, remain unaffected by this treatment, which is least of all

controversial. The flowers that yield honey to the bee likewise delight

the bee-keeper with their perfume and the poet with their colours, and

there is no adequate reason why the magic verse which strikes a

responsive chord in the soul of lovers of high art, and starts a new

train of ideas in the minds of serious thinkers, should thereby lose any

of the healing virtues it may have heretofore possessed for the suffering

souls of the believing.

But viewed even as a mere work of art, it would be hopeless to endeavour

to press it into the frame of any one of the received categories of

literary composition, as is evident from the fact that authorised and

unauthorised opinion on the subject has touched every extreme, and still

continues oscillating to-day. Many commentators still treat it as a

curious chapter of old-world history narrated with scrupulous fidelity by

the hero or an eye-witness, others as a philosophical dialogue; several

scholars regard it as a genuine drama, while not a few enthusiastically

aver that it is the only epic poem ever written by a Hebrew. In truth, it

partakes of the nature of each and every one of these categories, and is

yet circumscribed by the laws and limits of none of them. In form, it is

most nearly akin to the drama, with which we should be disposed to

identify it if the characters of the prologue and epilogue were

introduced as _dramatis personae_ in action. But their doing and

enduring are presupposed as accomplished facts, and employed merely as a

foil to the dialogues, which alone are the work of the author. Perhaps

the least erroneous way succinctly to describe what in fact is a

_unicum_ would be to call it a psychological drama.

Koheleth, or the Preacher, is likewise a literary puzzle which for

centuries has baffled the efforts of commentators and aroused the

misgivings of theologians. Regarded by many as a _vade mecum_ of

materialists, by some as an eloquent sermon on the fear of God, and by

others as a summary of sceptical philosophy, it is impossible to analyse

and classify it without having first eliminated all those numerous

later-date insertions which, without improving the author's theology,

utterly obscure his meaning and entirely spoil his work. When, by the aid

of text criticism, we have succeeded in weeding it of the parasitic

growth of ages, we have still to allow for the changing of places of

numerous authentic passages either by accident or design, the effects of

which are oftentimes quite as misleading as those of the deliberate

interpolations. The work thus restored, although one, coherent and

logical, is still susceptible of various interpretations, according to

the point of view of the reader, none of which, however, can ignore the

significant fact that the sceptically ideal basis of Koheleth's

metaphysics is identical with that of Buddha, Kant, and Schopenhauer, and

admirably harmonises with the ethics of Job and the pessimism of the New

Testament.

The Sayings of Agur, on the contrary, tell their own interesting story,

without need of note or commentary, to him who possesses a fair knowledge

of Hebrew grammar, and an average allowance of mother wit. The lively

versifier, the keenness of whose sense of humour is excelled only by the

bitterness of his satire, could ill afford to be obscure. A member of the

literary fraternity which boasts the names of Lucian and Voltaire, a firm

believer in the force of common sense and rudimentary logic, Agur

ridicules the theologians of his day with a malicious cruelty which is

explained, if not warranted, by the pretensions of omniscience and the

practice of intolerance that provoked it. The unanswerable argument which

Jahveh considered sufficient to silence his servant Job, Agur deems

effective against the dogmatical doctors of his own day:

"Who has ascended into heaven and come down again?

* * * * *

Such an one would I question about God: What is his name?"

Footnotes:

[2] Job and Ecclesiastes were inserted in the Jewish and, one may add,

the Christian Canon, solely on the strength of passages which the

authors of these compositions never even saw, and which flatly

contradict the main theses of their works.

* * * * *

THE PROBLEM OF THE POEM

Purged of all later interpolations and restored as far as possible to the

form it received from the hand of its author, the poem of Job is the most

striking presentation of the most obscure and fascinating problem that

ever puzzled and tortured the human intellect: how to reconcile the

existence of evil, not merely with the fundamental dogmas of the ancient

Jewish faith, but with any form of Theism whatever. Stated in the terms

in which the poet--whom for convenience sake we shall identify with his

hero[3] manifestly conceived it, it is this: Can God be the creator of

all things and yet not be responsible for evil?

The Infinite Being who laid the earth's foundation, "shut in the sea with

doors," whose voice is thunder and whose creatures are all things that

have being, is, we trust, moral and good. But it is His omnipotence that

strikes us most forcibly. Almighty in theory, He is all active in fact,

and nothing that happens in the universe is brought about even indirectly

by any one but Himself. There are no second causes at work, no chance, no

laws of nature, no subordinate agents, nothing that is not the immediate

manifestation of His free will.[4] This is evident to our senses. But

what is equally obvious is that His acts do not tally with His attribute

of goodness, and that no facts known or imaginable can help us to bridge

over the abyss between the infinite justice ascribed to Him and the

crying wrongs that confront us in His universe, whithersoever we turn.[5]

His rule is such a congeries of evils that even the just man often

welcomes death as a release, and Job himself with difficulty overcame the

temptation to end his sufferings by suicide. All the cut-and-dried

explanations of God's conduct offered by His human advocates merely

render the problem more complicated. His professional apologists are

"weavers of lies," and contend for Him "with deception," and, worse than

all else, He Himself has never revealed to His creatures any truth more

soothing than the fact they set out with, that the problem is for ever

insoluble. Wisdom "is hid from the eyes of all living,"[6] and the dead

are in "the land of darkness and of gloom,"[7] whence there is no issue.

The theological views prevalent in the days of the poet, as expounded by

the three friends of Job, instead of suggesting some way out of the

difficulty were in flagrant contradiction with fact. They appealed to the

traditional theory and insisted on having that accepted as the reality.

And it was one of the saddest theories ever invented. Virtue was at best

a mere matter of business, one of the crudest forms of utilitarianism, a

bargain between Jahveh and His creatures. As asceticism in ancient India

was rewarded with the spiritual gift of working miracles, so upright

living was followed in Judea by material wealth, prosperity, a numerous

progeny and all the good things that seem to make life worth living. Such

at least was the theory, and those who were satisfied with their lot had

little temptation to find fault with it for the sake of those who were

not. In sober reality, however, the obligation was very one-sided:

Jahveh, who occasionally failed to carry out His threats, observed or

repudiated His solemn promises as He thought fit, whereas those among His

creatures who faithfully fulfilled their part of the contract were never

sure of receiving their stipulated wage in the promised coin. And at that

time none other was current: there was no future life looming in the dim

distance with intensified rewards and punishments wherewith to redress

the balance of this. And it sadly needed redressing. The victims of

seeming injustice naturally felt that they were being hardly dealt with.

And as if to make confusion worse confounded, their neighbours, who had

ridden roughshod over all law, human and divine, were frequently exempt

from misfortune, lived on the fat of the land, and enjoyed a monopoly of

the divine blessings. To Job, whose consciousness of his own

righteousness was clearer and less questionable than the justice of his

Creator, this theory of retribution seemed unworthy of belief.

The creation of this good God, then, is largely leavened with evil for

which--all things being the work of His hands--He, and He alone, is

answerable. There was no devil in those olden times upon whose broad

shoulders the responsibility for sickness, suffering, misery and death

could be conveniently shifted. The Satan or Adversary is still one of the

sons of God who, like all his brethren, has free access to the council

chamber of the Most High, where he is wont to take a critical, somewhat

cynical but not wholly incorrect view of motives and of men. In the

government of the world he has neither hand nor part, and his

interference in the affairs of Job is the result of a special permission

accorded him by the Creator. God alone is the author of good _and of

evil_,[8] and the thesis to be demonstrated by His professional

apologists consists in showing that the former is the outflow of His

mercy, and the latter the necessary effect of His justice acting upon the

depraved will of His creatures. But the proof was not forthcoming.

Personal suffering might reasonably be explained in many cases as the

meet and inevitable wage for wrong-doing; but assuredly not in all. Job

himself was a striking instance of unmerited punishment. Even Jahveh

solemnly declares him to be just and perfect; and Job was admittedly no

solitary exception; he was the type of a numerous class of righteous,

wronged and wretched mortals, unnamed and unknown:

"Omnes illacrymabiles....

ignotique longa

Nocte, carent quia vate sacro."

Job is ready to admit that God, no doubt, is just and good in theory, but

he cannot dissemble the obvious fact that His works in the universe are

neither; indeed, if we may judge the tree by its fruits, His

_régime_ is the rule of an oriental and almighty despot whose will

and pleasure is the sole moral law. And that will is too often

undistinguishable from malice of the blackest kind. Thus

"He destroyeth the upright and the wicked,

When his scourge slayeth at unawares.

He scoffeth at the trial of the innocent;

The earth is given into the hand of the wicked."

In a word, the poet proclaims that the current theories of traditional

theology were disembodied, not incarnate in the moral order of the world,

had, in fact, nowhere taken root.

The two most specious arguments with which it was sought to prop up this

tottering theological system consisted in maintaining that the wicked are

often punished and the good recompensed in their offspring--a kind of

spiritual entail in which the tenant for life is denied the usufruct for

the sake of heirs he never knew--and that such individual claims as were

left unadjusted by this curious arrangement were merged in those of the

community at large and should be held to be settled in full as long as

the weal of the nation was assured. In other words, the individual sows

and his offspring or the nation reaps the harvest. But Job rejects both

pleas as illusory and immoral, besides which, they leave the frequent

prosperity of the unrighteous unexplained. "Wherefore," he asks, "do the

wicked live, become old, yea wax mighty in strength?" The reply that the

fathers having eaten sour grapes, the children's teeth will be set on

edge, is, he contends, no answer to the objection; it merely intensifies

it. For he who sows should reap, and he who sins should suffer. After

death the most terrible punishment meted out to the posterity of

criminals is powerless to affect their mouldering dust. That, surely,

cannot be accepted as a vindication of justice, human or divine.

"Ye say: God hoards punishment for the children.

Let him rather requite the wicked himself that he may feel it!

His own eyes should behold his downfall,

And he himself should drain the Almighty's wrath.

If his sons are honoured, he will not know it;

And if dishonoured, he will not perceive it.

Only in his own flesh doth he feel pain,

And for his own soul will he lament."

As to the latter argument, that the well-being of the nation was a

settlement in full of the individual's claims to happiness, it was

equally irrelevant, even had the principle underlying it been confirmed

by experience. Granting that a certain wholesale kind of equity was

administered, why must the individual suffer for no fault of his own?

Wherein lies the justice of a Being who, credited with omnipotence,

permits that by a sweep of the wild hurricane of disaster, "green leaves

with yellow mixed are torn away"?

But the contention that, viewing the individual merely as a unit of the

aggregate, justice would be found to be dealt out fairly on the whole,

ran counter to experience. The facts were dead against it. The Hebrew

nation had fared as badly among neighbouring states as Job among his

friends and countrymen. In this respect the sorely tried individual was

the type of his nation. The destruction of the kingdom of Samaria which

had occurred nearly two hundred years before and the captivity of Judah,

which was not yet at an end, gave its death-blow to the theory. "The

tents of robbers prosper and they that provoke Shaddai[9] are secure."

In truth, there was but one issue out of the difficulty: divine justice

might not be bounded by time or space; the law of compensation might have

a larger field than our earth for its arena; a future life might afford

"time" and opportunity to right the wrongs of the present, and all end

well in the best of future worlds. This explanation would have set doubts

at rest and settled the question for at least two thousand years; and it

seemed such a necessary postulate to the fathers of the Church, who

viewed the matter in the light of Christian revelation, that they

actually put into Job's mouth the words which he would have uttered had

he lived in their own days and been a member of the true fold. And they

effected this with a pious recklessness of artistic results and of

elementary logic that speaks better for their intentions than for their

aesthetic taste. In truth, Job knows absolutely nothing of a future life,

and his friends, equally unenlightened, see nothing for it but to

"discourse wickedly for God," and "utter lies on His behalf."[10] There

was, in fact, no third course. Indeed, if the hero or his friends had

even suspected the possibility of a solution based upon a life beyond the

tomb, the problem on which the book is founded would not have existed. To

ground, therefore, the doctrines of the Resurrection, the Atonement, &c.,

upon alleged passages of the poem of Job is tantamount to inferring the

squareness of a circle from its perfect rotundity. In the Authorised

Version of the Bible the famous verses, which have probably played a more

important part in the intellectual history of mankind than all the books

of the Old Testament put together, run thus: "For I know _that_ my

redeemer liveth, and _that_ he shall stand at the latter _day_

upon the earth: and _though_ after my skin _worms_ destroy this

_body_, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for

myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; _though_ my

reins be consumed within me."[11]

Now this, it is hardly necessary to say, is not a translation from the

poem nor from any known text of it, but the embodiment of the salutary

beliefs of well-intentioned theologians--of St. Jerome among others--

momentarily forgetful of the passage: "Will ye speak wickedly for God?"

The Christian conception of a Redeemer would, had he but known it, have

proved balm to the heart of the despairing hero. As a matter of mere

fact, his own hope at that critical moment was less sublime and very much

less Christian: the coming of an avenger who would punish his enemies and

rehabilitate his name. It was the one worldly and vain longing that still

bound him to the earth. Other people demanded happiness as their reward

for virtue, too often undistinguishable from vice; Job challenged the

express approval of the Deity, asked only that he should not be

confounded with vulgar sinners. The typical perfect man, struck down with

a loathsome disease, doomed to a horrible death, alone in his misery,

derided by his enemies, and, worse than all, loathed as a common criminal

by those near and dear to him, gives his friends and enemies, society and

theologians, the lie emphatic--nay, he goes the length of affirming that

God Himself has, failed in His duty towards him. "Know, then, that God

hath wronged me."[12] His conscience, however, tells him that inasmuch as

there is such a thing as eternal justice, a time will come when the truth

will be proclaimed and his honour fully vindicated; Shaddai will then

yearn for the work of His hands, but it will be too late, "For now I must

lay myself down in the dust; and Thou shalt seek me, but I shall not be."

And it is to this conviction, not to a belief in future retribution, that

the hero gives utterance in the memorable passage in question:

"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."

He knows nothing whatever of the subsistence of our cumbrous clods of

clay after they have become the food of worms and pismires; indeed, he is

absolutely certain that by the sleep of death

"we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to."

And he emphasises his views in a way that should have given food for

wholesome reflection to his commentators.

"There is a future for the tree,

And hope remaineth to the palm;

Cut down, it will sprout again,

And its tender branch will not cease.

"Though its roots wax old in the earth,

And its stock lie buried in mould,

Yet through vapour of water will it bud,

And put forth boughs like a plant.

"But man dieth and lieth outstretched;

He giveth up the ghost, where is he then?

He lieth down and riseth not up;

Till heaven be no more he shall not awake."[13]

Nothing could well be further removed from the comforting hope of a

future life, the resurrection of the body, and eternal rewards, than this

unshaken belief that Death is our sole redeemer from the terrible evils

of life.

Footnotes:

[3] Although the former was a Jew and the latter a Gentile.

[4] _Cf._ Translation, strophe ci.:

"Is not the soul of every living thing in his hand,

And the breath of all mankind?"

Strophe civ.:

"With him is strength and wisdom,

The erring one and his error are his."

[5] Strophe cxcii.-cxciii.:

"Look upon me and tremble,

And lay your hand upon your mouth!

When I remember I am dismayed,

And trembling taketh hold on my flesh."

Strophe ccxxi.:

"Why do the times of judgment depend upon the Almighty,

And yet they who know him do not see his days?

[6] Strophe ccxxxiv.

[7] Strophe lxxxix.

[8] "The erring one and his error are his" (God's): strophe civ. _Cf_.

also strophe cvii.

[9] God.

[10] Strophe cxi.

[11] Job xix. 25-27. The Revised Version gives the passage as follows:

"But I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand up at

the last upon the earth: and after my skin hath been thus destroyed,

yet from my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and

mine eyes shall behold, and not another."

[12] Strophe clxix.

[13] Job, strophes cxxiv.-cxxvi. of my English translation.

* * * * *

JOB'S METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM

It is perhaps hardly necessary to point out that the doctrine of eternal

pains and rewards as laid down by the Christian Church, unless reinforced

by faith, neither solves the problem nor simplifies it. If the truth must

be told, it seems to unenlightened reason to entangle it more hopelessly

than before. In simple terms and in its broadest aspect the question may

be stated as follows: God created man under conditions of His own

choosing which necessarily led to the life-long misery of countless

millions upon earth and their never-ending torments in hell. To the

question, Did He know the inevitable effect of His creative act, the

answer is, God is omniscient. To the query, Could He have selected other

and more humane conditions of existence for His creature--conditions so

adjusted that, either with or without probation, man would have been

ultimately happy? the reply is, God is almighty.

Involuntarily, then, the question forces itself upon us, Is He all-good?

Can that Being be deemed good who, moved by no necessity, free to create

or to abstain from creating, at liberty to create for happiness or for

misery, calls mankind into existence under such conditions and

surroundings that myriads are miserable, so unutterably miserable, that,

compared with their tortures, the wretch bleeding and quivering on the

wheel is lolling in the lap of enjoyment? Why did God make man under such

conditions? Or at least how are we to reconcile His having done so with

His attribute of goodness? To this question there are many replies but no

answer, the former being merely attempts to explain the chronic effects

of the primordial ethical poison commonly called original sin.

Job's main objection to the theological theories in vogue among his

contemporaries, and, indeed, to all conceivable explanations of the

difficulty, is far more weighty than at first sight appears. Everything,

he tells us--if anything--is the work of God's hands; and as pain,

suffering, evil, are everywhere predominant, it is not easy to understand

in what sense God can be said to be good. The poet does not formulate the

argument, of which this is the gist, in very precise terms, nor press it

home to its last conclusions. But he leaves no doubt about his meaning.

Some men are relatively good by nature, others wicked; but all men were

created by God and act in accordance with the disposition they received

from Him. If that disposition or character brought forth sin and evil,

these then are God's work, not man's, and He alone is responsible

therefor. The individual who performs an act through an agent is rightly

deemed to have done it himself. A man, therefore, who, being free to do a

certain thing or to leave it undone, and perfectly aware of the nature of

its necessary consequences, performs it, is held to be answerable for the

results, should they prove mischievous. Much greater is his

responsibility if, instead of being restricted to the choice between

undertaking a work certain to prove pernicious and abstaining from it, he

was free to select a third course and to accomplish it in such a way that

the result would not be evil, but unmixed good. In this case it would

hardly seem possible to exonerate the doer from a charge of wanton

malice, diabolic in degree. And such is the position in which many

theologians seem--to those who view things in the light of reason--to

have placed God Himself. It was open to Him, they maintain, to create or

to refrain from creating. Having declared for the former alternative, He

is chargeable with the consequences. The consequences, however, need not

have been evil; He might, had He so willed it, have endowed His creature

with such qualities and placed him in such surroundings that, without

ceasing to be man, he would never have fallen at all. Yet it did not

please Him to adopt that course. This admission, rationalists urge, is

conclusive as to the origin of sin and evil.

But the arguments are not yet exhausted. Even then the Creator might have

made everything right by an act which it seems impossible to distinguish

from elementary justice. Had He regarded the first man who brought sin

into the world as a mere individual, and treated him as such--and this,

theologians assure us, He could easily have done[14]--He might have

punished him as an individual, and the matter would have been at an end.

But instead of this, He contemplated him as the type and representative

of the human race, and decreed that his sin should, like a subtle

spiritual poison, infect the soul of every man coming into the world. In

other words, God, who is supposed to hate evil so profoundly that He

damns for ever in hell a man guilty of one single "mortal" transgression,

enacted that if one sin were committed it should be needlessly made to

engender myriads of other sins, and that the tiny seed of evil which was

first thrown upon the earth by His creature in a moment of pardonable

weakness, and might have so easily been trampled out, should take root,

sprout up and grow into a vast Upas tree whose poisonous branches

overshadow all creation. This proposition, it is contended, explicitly

taxes God, if not with the sole authorship of sin and evil, at least with

the moral responsibility for propagating it. And this is the prevailing

view among modern apologists.

As to the origin of evil, it is to be sought for, theologians have

discovered, in the free will with which God endowed man. This, they

allege, shifts all the responsibility on the human creature because,

instead of evil, he might have chosen good. Unfortunately, the same

argument would seem to apply to the Creator Himself.[15] He, too, being

omnipotent, might have chosen good instead of evil subjects, and created

human beings whose acts would have been blameless and virtuous, their

will remaining what it is. Further, not having done this and having

needlessly allowed an abyss to be made by sin between Himself and the

first man, it was still open to Him to have abstained from widening it

until it became an impassable gulf between Himself and the entire human

race. But He did not abstain; instead of localising, He deliberately and

wantonly spread the evil, and the ruin that overwhelmed all mankind

cannot therefore be said to have sprung from the will of the race, but

from His own. Again, the interposition of a free will between God and

evil, it is urged, affords no real solution of the problem, for the

question still remains, why were the workings of that free will evil and

not good? Obviously because such was its God-created nature; for the

action of outward circumstances upon the will neither builds up nor

modifies this nature, but simply discloses it to our view.

These ideas were adopted, developed and defended by a few of the most

profound Christian philosophers of the early Church, and most ably of all

by Scotus Erigena,[16] who held that the origin of evil which cannot be

sought for in God must not be placed _in the free will of man_,

because the latter hypothesis would still leave the responsibility with

the Creator, the human will being His own handiwork.

At the root of this argument lies yet another consideration upon which

unbelieving thinkers rely still more: it is drawn from the alleged

incompatibility between the conception of a created being and free will,

and will be noticed presently. It is commonly regarded as the principal

difficulty which Theists and Pantheists are condemned continually to

encounter without ever being able to explain--the rock, so to say, upon

which their optimistic systems strike, and are shattered to

pieces--unless protected by the armour of supernatural faith.

But besides the Christian and Pantheistic theories, there is another

explanation of the origin of evil offered by the religion of more than

one-third of the human race. It is a theory which can readily be labelled

and libelled by the most unphilosophical reader, but cannot be grasped

and appreciated without serious study and reflection by the most

intelligent, for it is based upon the doctrine that time, space and

causality have no existence outside the human mind.[17] The world which

we see and know, therefore, and everything it contains is "such stuff as

dreams are made of"--the woof and warp being evolved from, and interwoven

by, our own minds. Underlying the innumerable illusive appearances which

we call the world is a reality, a being or force which is one. We and

everything else are but manifestations, in time and space, of this one

reality with which, however, each and every one of us is at bottom

identical and whose sole attribute is unity. This force or will manifests

itself in myriads of facets, so to say, in the universe, and these

manifestations are not good, constitute, indeed, a sort of fall.

Intelligence is not one of the primary attributes of this eternal will.

It attained to clear consciousness and knowledge only in man and then for

the first time perceived that the existence for which it yearned is evil

and not good. Man therefore is his own work; and existence, as it

constitutes a fall, is its own punishment; for his life is a series of

inane desires which, when momentarily satiated, are immediately succeeded

by others equally vain, fruitless and hollow, and the cessation of desire

is the beginning of tedium which is oftentimes still less endurable,

seeing that it leaves little room for hope.

"Life which ye prize is long-drawn agony;

Only its pains abide, its pleasures are

As birds which light and fly."

Every wish springs from want which causes pain, the attainment of the

wished-for object--commonly called pleasure--is but the cessation of that

pain: in other words it is a mere negation. Man's life is a never-ending

oscillation between pleasure and pain: the former mere illusion, the

latter a dread reality. The origin of this and of all other evil is

individual existence, and individual existence is the free act of the one

substance or force which is identical with each and all of us.

This theory excludes creation. For free will is utterly incompatible with

the state of a created being;[18] because _operari sequitur

esse_--_i.e._, the operation, the working of every being, must be

the necessary result of its qualities which are themselves known only by

the acts they bring forth. If these acts be praiseworthy, the qualities

are good: if reprehensible, they are bad. But if the acts are to be free,

they should be neither good nor bad. A being therefore to be perfectly

free should have no qualities at all--_i.e._, should not be created.

For it must be borne in mind that it is not the motives that impart to

the will its ethical quality. Motives are accidental and operate in the

same way as the rays of the sun falling upon a tree or a flower: they

reveal the nature of the object but are powerless to change it, for

better or for worse.[19] But if this be so, one may ask, why do we feel

sorrow, shame, repentance for acts which we were not free to perform or

abstain from performing? Because we are "metaphysically" free, that is to

say, our inborn disposition from which they necessarily emanate, is the

work of our free will, which specific acts are not. No doubt, when we do

right or wrong, we are conscious that we might have acted

differently--_had we willed it_. But this proves nothing; the

all-important question being, could we, under the circumstances, have

willed otherwise than we did? And to this the reply is an emphatic

negative. But for our personal character, be it good or evil, we are

answerable, and therefore likewise for the acts that flow from it with

the rigorous necessity characteristic of all causality. For individuality

in the human race is identical with character, and as individuality is

the work of our own free will exercised outside the realm of time and

space, we are responsible for it, and conscious of the responsibility,

although not of the manner in which it was incurred.

Our acts, therefore, and they only, show us what we really are; our

sufferings what we deserve. The former are the necessary outcome of our

character which external circumstances, in the guise of motives, call

into play; just as gravitation is acted upon when we shake an apple off

the tree. Our deeds then being the inevitable resultant of that

self-created character acted upon by motives, must consequently follow

with the same necessity as any other link in the chain of cause and

effect. The knowledge of our character and the foreknowledge of these

outward events which, in the unbroken chain of cause and effect, act upon

it, would suffice to enable us to foresee our future as readily as

astronomers foresee eclipses of the sun and moon. Now if the root of all

evil be individuality, the essence of all morality is self-denial; and no

act performed for the purpose of obtaining happiness, temporal or

eternal, is moral. The evil and pain, therefore, which befall us upon

earth cannot be regarded as the retribution for the deeds done in this

life; for these are necessary and inevitable. They are the fruits of our

character whence these acts emanate; and it is only our character which

is our own work. With the ethical nature of that character each

individual gradually grows acquainted as well in his own case as in that

of his neighbour's, solely from a study of his own acts, which often

astonish himself quite as much as his friends.

Brahmanism and Buddhism symbolized these notions in the somewhat gross

but only intelligible form in which the mind can readily grasp them,

viz., in the dogma of the transmigration of souls, according to which a

man's good deeds and bad follow him like his shadow from one existence to

another, and in this life he expiates the sins or enjoys the fruits of a

previous existence:[20]

"Each man's life

The outcome of his former living is;

The bygone wrongs bring forth sorrows and woes,

The bygone right breeds bliss.

"That which ye sow ye reap. See yonder fields!

The sesamum was sesamum, the corn

Was corn. The Silence and the Darkness knew!

So is man's fate born."

In the former religion, Brahma, who is identical with all of us, produces

the world by a kind of fall from his primeval state and remains therein

until he has redeemed himself. In the latter there is no god; man being

his own handiwork and sin and evil the result of his blind striving after

individual existence. It is however in his power, and in his alone, to

right the wrong and remedy the evil, by starving out the fatal hunger for

life. And in this work, faith, supplication and sacrifice avail him

nothing.

"Pray not! the Darkness will not brighten! Ask

Nought from the Silence, for it cannot speak!

Vex not your mournful minds with pious pains!

Ah, brothers, sisters! seek

Naught from the helpless gods by gift and hymn,

Nor bribe with blood, nor feed with fruits and cake;

Within yourself deliverance must be sought:

Each man his prison makes."