Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is enclosed in _underscores_.
Additional notes will be found near the end of this ebook.
ISRAEL IN EUROPE
[Illustration: (Macmillan logo)]
ISRAEL IN EUROPE
BY
G. F. ABBOTT
KNIGHT COMMANDER OF THE HELLENIC ORDER OF THE SAVIOUR
AUTHOR OF “SONGS OF MODERN GREECE,” “THE TALE OF A TOUR IN MACEDONIA,”
“THROUGH INDIA WITH THE PRINCE,” ETC.
LONDON
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1907
GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.
PREFATORY NOTE
The aims and the limits of the present work are sufficiently explained
in the Introduction. Here it only remains for me to perform the
pleasant duty of recording my gratitude to Mr. I. Abrahams, of
Cambridge, for his friendly assistance in the revision of the proofs
and my indebtedness to him for many valuable suggestions. He must not,
however, be held to share all my views.
G. F. A.
CONTENTS
PAGE
AUTHORITIES xi
INTRODUCTION xv
CHAPTER I
HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM 1
CHAPTER II
THE JEW IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE 18
CHAPTER III
JUDAISM AND PAGANISM 28
CHAPTER IV
THE DISPERSION 34
CHAPTER V
CHRISTIANITY AND THE JEWS 41
CHAPTER VI
MIDDLE AGES 62
CHAPTER VII
THE CRUSADES 83
CHAPTER VIII
USURY AND THE JEWS 105
CHAPTER IX
THE JEWS IN ENGLAND 115
CHAPTER X
THE JEWS IN SPAIN 141
CHAPTER XI
AFTER THE EXPULSION 167
CHAPTER XII
THE RENAISSANCE 178
CHAPTER XIII
THE GHETTO 196
CHAPTER XIV
THE REFORMATION AND THE JEWS 214
CHAPTER XV
CATHOLIC REACTION 232
CHAPTER XVI
IN HOLLAND 245
CHAPTER XVII
IN ENGLAND AFTER THE EXPULSION 255
CHAPTER XVIII
RESETTLEMENT 275
CHAPTER XIX
THE EVE OF EMANCIPATION 286
CHAPTER XX
PALINGENESIA 301
CHAPTER XXI
IN RUSSIA 329
CHAPTER XXII
IN ROUMANIA 379
CHAPTER XXIII
ANTI-SEMITISM 404
CHAPTER XXIV
ZIONISM 482
INDEX 519
MAP
APPROXIMATE DENSITY OF THE JEWISH POPULATION _At end_.
AUTHORITIES
GENERAL
H. Graetz’s “History of the Jews.”
Dean Milman’s “History of the Jews.”
“The Jewish Encyclopedia.”
PARTICULAR
CH. I.
E. R. Bevan’s “The House of Seleucus”; “High Priests of Israel.”
CH. II., IV., V.
J. S. Riggs’ “History of the Jewish People during the Maccabaean
and Roman Periods.”
W. D. Morrison’s “The Jews under Roman Rule.”
Mommsen’s “History of Rome.”
Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”
CH. VI., VII., VIII.
Benjamin of Tudela’s “Travels.” Transl. by Asher.
I. Abrahams’ “Jewish Life in the Middle Ages”; “Maimonides.”
Hallam’s “Middle Ages.”
S. P. Scott’s “History of the Moorish Empire in Europe.”
Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”
A. Marshall’s “Principles of Economics.”
CH. IX.
J. Jacobs’ “The Jews of Angevin England.”
B. L. Abrahams’ “The Expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290.”
J. E. Blunt’s “History of the Establishment and Residence of the
Jews in England.”
M. Margoliouth’s “The Jews in Great Britain.”
CH. X., XI.
A. de Castro’s “History of the Jews in Spain.”
J. Finn’s “History of the Jews in Spain and Portugal.”
E. H. Lindo’s “History of the Jews in Spain and Portugal.”
Prescott’s “Ferdinand and Isabella.”
CH. XII.
_The Cambridge Modern History_: Vol. I., “The Renaissance.”
W. Roscoe’s “The Life and Pontificate of Leo X.”
CH. XIII.
I. Abrahams’ “Jewish Life in the Middle Ages.”
W. C. Hazlitt’s “The Venetian Republic.”
CH. XIV.
_The Cambridge Modern History_: Vol. II. “The Reformation.”
CH. XV.
J. Finn’s “History of the Israelites in Poland.”
_The Cambridge Modern History_: Vol. III., “The Wars of
Religion”; Vol. IV., “The Thirty Years’ War.”
CH. XVI.
Motley’s “Dutch Republic.”
CH. XVII.
J. E. Blunt’s “History of the Establishment and Residence of the
Jews in England.”
M. Margoliouth’s “The Jews in Great Britain.”
CH. XVIII.
Lucien Wolf’s “Resettlement of Jews in England”; “Manasseh ben
Israel’s Mission to Oliver Cromwell.”
S. R. Gardiner’s “History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate.”
J. Morley’s “Oliver Cromwell.”
CH. XIX., XX.
M. Samuel’s “Memoirs of Moses Mendelssohn.”
Solomon Maimon’s “Autobiography.” Transl. by H. Clark Murray.
E. Schreiber’s “Reformed Judaism and its Pioneers.”
_The Cambridge Modern History_: Vol. VIII., “The French
Revolution”; Vol. IX., “Napoleon.”
_Encyclopædia Britannica_: Article, “Jews.”
CH. XXI.
Prince San Donato Demidoff’s “The Jewish Question in Russia.”
Transl. by H. Guedalla.
L. Cerf’s “Les Juifs de Russie.”
Leo Wiener’s “History of Yiddish Literature in the 19th Century.”
Beatrice C. Baskerville’s “The Polish Jew.”
CH. XXII.
Israel Davis’ “Jews in Roumania.”
E. Sincerus’ “Les Juifs en Roumanie: Les lois et leurs
conséquences.”
A. M. Goldsmid’s “Persecution of the Jews of Roumania.”
H. Sutherland Edwards’ “Sir William White: His Life and
Correspondence.”
“Rumania and the Jews,” by “Verax.”
CH. XXIII.
Joseph Jacobs’ “The Jewish Question.”
“Aspects of the Jewish Question,” by “A Quarterly Reviewer.”
Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu’s “Israel parmi les Nations.”
E. Drumont’s “La France Juive.”
_Encyclopædia Britannica_: Article, “Anti-Semitism.”
W. H. Wilkins’ “The Alien Invasion.”
C. Russell and H. S. Lewis’ “The Jew in London.”
CH. XXIV.
H. Bentwich’s “The Progress of Zionism.”
R. Gottheil’s “The Aims of Zionism.”
T. Herzl’s “A Jewish State.”
“The Jewish Question,” Anon. (Gay and Bird, 1894).
“Aspects of the Jewish Question,” by “A Quarterly Reviewer.”
_Encyclopædia Britannica_: Article, “Zionism.”
_In addition to these main guides reference, on special points, is made
to particular authorities in the footnotes._
INTRODUCTION
IT was not without reason that Philo, the famous Graeco-Jewish scholar
of Alexandria, regarded Aaron’s rod, which “was budded, and brought
forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds,” as an emblem
of his race. Torn from the stem that bore and from the soil that
nourished them, and for nearly twenty centuries exposed to the wintry
blasts of adversity and persecution, the children of Israel still bud
and blossom and provide the world with the perennial problem now known
as the Jewish Question--a question than which none possesses a deeper
interest for the student of the past, or a stronger fascination for the
speculator on the future; a question compared with which the Eastern,
the Irish, and all other vexed questions are but things of yesterday; a
question which has taxed the ingenuity of European statesmen ever since
the dispersion of this Eastern people over the lands of the West.
“What to do with the Jew?” This is the question. The manner in which
each generation of statesmen, from the legislators of ancient Rome
to those of modern Roumania, has attempted to answer it, forming as
it does a sure criterion of the material, intellectual and moral
conditions which prevailed in each country at each period, might supply
the basis for an exceedingly interesting and instructive, if somewhat
humiliating, study of European political ethics. Here I will content
myself with a lighter labour. I propose to sketch in outline the
fortunes of Israel in Europe from the earliest times to the present
day. It is a sad tale, and often told; but sufficiently important to
bear telling again. My object--in so far as human nature permits--will
be neither to excuse nor to deplore; but only to describe and, in some
measure, to explain.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Jews have been in Europe for
a longer period than some of the nations which glory in the title
of European. Ages before the ancestors of the modern Hungarians and
Slavonians were heard of, the keen features and guttural accents
of the Hebrew trader were familiar in the markets of Greece and
Italy. As early as the fourth century B.C. we find the Hebrew word
for “earnest-money” domiciled in the Greek language (ἀρραβών), and
as early as the second century in the Latin (_arrhabo_)--a curious
illustration of the Jew’s commercial activity in the Mediterranean
even in those days.[1] And yet, despite the length of their sojourn
among the peoples of the West, the majority of the Jews have remained
in many essential respects as Oriental as they were in the time of
the Patriarchs. A younger race would have yielded to the influence of
environment, a weaker race would have succumbed to oppression, a less
inflexible or unsympathetic race might have conquered its conquerors.
But the Jews, when they first came into contact with Europe, were
already too old for assimilation, too strong for extermination, too
hardened in their peculiar cult for propagandism. Even after having
ceased to exist as a state Israel survived as a nation; forming the one
immobile figure in a perpetually moving panorama. The narrow local idea
of the ancient Greek state was merged into the broad cosmopolitanism
of the Macedonian Empire, and that, in its turn, was absorbed by
the broader cosmopolitanism of Imperial Rome. But the Jew remained
faithful to his own olden ideal. Monotheism superseded Polytheism, and
the cosmopolitanism of the Roman Empire was succeeded by that of the
Roman Church. The Jew still continued rooted in the past. Mediaeval
cosmopolitanism gave way to the nationalism of modern Europe. Yet the
Jew declined to participate in the change. Too narrow in one age, not
narrow enough in another, always at one with himself and at variance
with his neighbours, now, as ever, he offers the melancholy picture of
one who is a stranger in the land of his fathers and an alien in that
of his adoption.
The upshot of this refusal to move with the rest of the world has
been mutual hatred, discord, and persecution; each age adding a new
ring to the poisonous plant of anti-Judaism. For this result both
sides are to blame--or neither. No race has ever had the sentiment of
nationality and religion more highly developed, or been more intolerant
of dissent, than the Jewish; no race has ever suffered more grievously
from national and religious fanaticism and from intolerance of dissent
on the part of others. The Jewish colonies forming, as they mostly do,
small, exclusive communities amidst uncongenial surroundings, have
always been the objects of prejudice--the unenviable privilege of all
minorities which stubbornly refuse to conform to the code approved
by the majority. The same characteristics evoked a similar hostility
against primitive Christianity and led to the persecution of the early
martyrs. No one is eccentric with impunity. Notwithstanding the gospel
of toleration constantly preached by sages, and occasionally by saints,
the attitude of mankind has always been and still is one of hostility
towards dissent. _Sois mon frère, ou je te tue_ is a maxim which, in
a modified form, might be extended to other than secret revolutionary
societies. The only difference consists in the manner in which this
tyrannical maxim is acted upon in various countries and ages: legal
disability may supersede massacre, or expulsion may be refined into
social ostracism; yet the hostility is always present, however much its
expression may change. Man is a persecuting animal.
To the Jews in Europe one might apply the words which Balzac’s cynical
priest addressed to the disillusioned young poet: “_Vous rompiez en
visière aux idées du monde et vous n’avez pas eu la considération que
le monde accorde à ceux qui obéissent à ses lois._” Now, when to mere
outward nonconformity in matters of worship and conduct is superadded
a radical discrepancy of moral, political, and social ideals, whether
this discrepancy be actively paraded or only passively maintained, the
outcome can be no other than violent friction. It is, therefore, not
surprising that the “black days” should vastly outnumber the “red” ones
in the _Jewish Calendar_--that brief but most vivid commentary on the
tragic history of the race. The marvel is that the race should have
survived to continue issuing a calendar.
At the same time, a dispassionate investigation would prove, I think,
to the satisfaction of all unbiassed minds, that the degree in which
the Jews have merited the odium of dissent has in every age been
strictly proportionate to the magnitude of the odium itself. Even at
the present hour it would be found upon enquiry that the Jews retain
most of their traditional aloofness and fanaticism--most of what their
critics stigmatise as their tribalism--in those countries in which they
suffer most severely. Nay, in one and the same country the classes
least liable to the contempt, declared or tacit, of their neighbours
are the classes least distinguished by bigotry. It is only natural
that it should be so. People never cling more fanatically to the ideal
than when they are debarred from the real. Christianity spread first
among slaves and the outcasts of society, and its final triumph was
secured by persecution. We see a vivid illustration of this universal
principle in modern Ireland. To what is the enormous influence of the
Catholic Church over the minds of the peasantry due, but to the ideal
consolations which it has long provided for their material sufferings?
Likewise in the Near East. The wealthy Christians, in order to save
their lands from confiscation, abjured their religion and embraced the
dominant creed of Islam. The poor peasants are ready to lay down their
lives for their faith, and believe that whosoever dies in defence of
it will rise again to life within forty days. It is easy to deride the
excesses of spiritual enthusiasm, to denounce the selfish despotism
of its ministers, and to deplore the blind fanaticism of its victims.
But fanaticism, after all, is only faith strengthened by adversity and
soured by oppression.
Jewish history itself shows that the misfortunes which fan bigotry also
preserve religion. Whilst independent and powerful, the Jews often
forgot the benefits bestowed upon them by their God, and transferred
the honour due to Him to the strange gods of their idolatrous
neighbours. But when Jehovah in His wrath hid His face from His people
and punished its ingratitude by placing it under a foreign yoke,
the piety of the Jews acquired in calamity a degree of fervour and
constancy which it had never possessed in the day of their prosperity.
The same phenomenon has been observed in every age. When well treated,
the Jews lost much of their aloofness, and the desire for national
rehabilitation was cherished only as a romantic dream. But in times of
persecution the longing for redemption, and for restoration under a
king of their own race, blazed up into brilliant flame. The hope of the
Messianic Redeemer has been a torch of light and comfort through many
a long winter’s night. But it has burnt its brightest when the night
has been darkest. If at such times the Jews have shown an inordinate
tenacity of prophetic promise, who can blame them? They who possess
nothing in the present have the best right to claim a portion of the
future.
CHAPTER I
HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM
IN spite of the well-known influence which Greek culture and Greek
thought exercised over a portion of the Jews under Alexander the
Great’s successors, the mass of the Hebrew nation never took kindly
to Hellenism. Alexander proved himself as great a statesman as he was
a warrior. An apostle of Hellenism though he was, he did not seek to
consolidate his Empire by enforcing uniformity of cult and custom, as
short-sighted despots have done since, but by encouraging friendly
intercourse between the Greeks and the various peoples that came under
his sceptre. Gifted with rare imagination, he entered into the feelings
of races as diverse as the Egyptian and the Jewish. To the latter he
allotted the border-lands which had long been the bone of contention
between themselves and the Samaritans. He relieved them from taxation
during the unproductive Sabbath year. He respected their prejudices,
honoured their religion, and appreciated their conscientious scruples.
While, out of deference to Chaldean religious feeling, he ordered the
Temple of Bel to be rebuilt in Babylon, he forgave the Jewish soldiers
their refusal to obey his command as contrary to the teaching of their
faith. Conciliation was the principle of Alexander’s imperialism and
the secret of his success. ♦301 B.C.♦ The Ptolemies, to whose share,
on the partition of the Macedonian Empire, Palestine ultimately fell,
inherited Alexander’s enlightened policy. The High Priest of the Jews
was recognised as the head of the nation, and it was through him that
the tribute was paid. So fared the Jews at home.
Abroad their lot was equally enviable. Some modern critics had doubted
the settlement of Jews in Egypt until the third century. But recent
discoveries (notably Mr. R. Mond’s _Aramaic Papyri_) prove that a
Jewish community existed in Egypt even in the centuries preceding
Alexander. Now persuasion and the hope of profit drew many thousands
of them to Alexandria, Cyrene, and other centres of Hellenistic
culture. In all these places they lived on terms of perfect equality
with the Greek colonists. The newly-built city on the mouth of the
Nile soon became a seat of Jewish influence and a school of learning
for the Jewish nation. Under the benign rule of the Ptolemies the Jews
prospered, multiplied, and attained success in every walk of life,
public no less than private. Of the five divisions of Alexandria they
occupied nearly two. Egypt was then the granary of Europe, and the
corn trade lay largely in Jewish hands. Refinement came in the train
of riches, and freedom begot tolerance. The Jews cultivated Greek
letters, and some of them became deeply imbued with the spirit of
Greek philosophy and even of art. This friendly understanding between
the Jewish and the Greek mind gave to the world the mystic union of
Moses and Plato in the works of Philo and the Septuagint translation
of the Old Testament, which was to prepare the way for the advent of
Christianity. And yet the bulk of the Alexandrian Jews remained a
peculiar people. Greeks and Egyptians had fused their religions into
a common form of worship. But the Jews were still separated from both
races by the invincible barriers of belief, law, and custom. They
still looked upon Jerusalem as their metropolis, and upon Alexandria
as a mere place of exile. In the midst of paganism they formed a
monotheistic colony. Their houses of prayer were also schools of
Levitical learning, where the Torah was assiduously studied and
expounded. Their one link with the State was their own Ethnarch, who
acted as supreme sovereign and judge of his people, and represented it
at Court.
Similar conditions prevailed in Palestine. There also Hellenic
language, manners, feasts, games, and philosophy effected an entrance
through the influence of the Greek colonies on the coast, and a party
of Jewish Hellenists was formed. In the land which once rang with
the prophetic utterances of an Isaiah and a Jeremiah were now sung
the love-poems of Sappho, and were quoted the witty sarcasms of the
Athenian Voltaire, Euripides. But the Torah, or Jewish religious law,
was bitterly opposed to all innovations, and the anti-Greek section
of the people, termed the “Pious” (Chassidim or Assideans), regarded
with deep misgiving the inroad of the foreign culture. Hence arose an
implacable feud between the Liberals and the Conservatives, who hated,
anathematised, and later crucified each other as cordially as brethren
only can do. But the Chassidim, though politically worsted, were
all-powerful in the affections of the community, and the time was not
distant when they were to assume the supreme command.
In 198 B.C. Palestine, after a hundred years’ struggle, passed
under the sway of the Graeco-Syrian Seleucids, who, unlike their
predecessors, initiated a policy of forcible assimilation, and, aided
by the Hellenistic party among the Jews themselves, compelled their
subjects to adopt their own civilisation and to pay homage to their
own gods. However, neither the tolerance of the Graeco-Egyptian nor
the violence of the Graeco-Syrian kings succeeded in reconciling the
Jew to the ways of the Gentile. ♦175–164 B.C.♦ Antiochus Epiphanes
might banish Jehovah from the Temple of Jerusalem and enthrone Zeus
in his stead; he might set up altars to the pagan deities in every
town and village; and he might exhaust all the resources of despotism
in the cause of conversion. The timorous were coerced into a feigned
and transient acquiescence, but the bulk of the nation, baited into
stubbornness, preferred exile or martyrdom to apostasy. The defiled
temple remained empty and the altars cold, until the smouldering
discontent of the outraged people broke out into flame, and passive
resistance yielded to fierce rebellion.
♦166–141 B.C.♦
The movement was led by the heroic, devout, and fierce house of
the Maccabees--a branch of the Hasmonaean family--who, after a long
struggle, distinguished by splendid endurance, astuteness, and
unspeakable severity, delivered their people from the levelling
Hellenism of the foreign rulers, instituted the _Sanhedrin_
(Συνέδριον), and restored the national worship of Jehovah in all
its pristine purity and narrowness. ♦163 B.C.♦ The victorious band
finally entered Jerusalem “with praise and palm branches and with
harps and cymbals and viols and with hymns and with songs,”[2]
Simon was acclaimed High Priest and Prince of Israel, and a new era
was inaugurated. ♦141. May 23.♦ The restoration of the Temple is
still celebrated by the Jews in their annual eight days’ Feast of
Dedication (_Chanukah_), when lamps are lit and a hymn is solemnly sung
commemorating the miracle of the solitary flask of oil, which escaped
pagan pollution and kept the perpetual light burning in the House of
the Lord until the day of redemption.
But religious enthusiasm, though a powerful sword, is an awkward
sceptre, and it was not long ere the victorious family forgot, as
the “Pious” would have said, the cause of God in the pursuit of
self-aggrandisement and earthly renown. The conservative elements had
been united in the supreme effort to maintain their religious liberty.
But the interest in gaining political independence was limited to the
ruling family. The Hasmonaeans, having established their dynasty,
aimed at conquest abroad and at royal splendour at home. One of them
surrounded himself with a foreign bodyguard, and another assumed
the title of King. Of their former character they retained only the
enthusiast’s ferocity. Their family was torn with feuds and stained
with the blood of its own members. This policy of worldly ambition lost
them the support of the Chassidim, who could tolerate bloodshed only
for the sake of righteousness. Moreover, the Hasmonaeans, in their new
position as an established family, had more in common with the priestly
aristocracy than with the poor fanatics by whose enthusiasm they had
conquered that position. They, therefore, joined the Hellenizing party,
and, though a barefaced adoption of the foreign gods was no longer
possible, they endeavoured to effect by example what the Seleucids
had vainly attempted to achieve by force. They were not altogether
unsuccessful. Greek architecture was introduced into Jerusalem. The
Greek numerals were adopted. Greek was understood by all the statesmen
of Judaea and employed in diplomatic negotiations. Greek names became
not uncommon. The Hebrew bards ceased to hang their harps upon the
willow-trees. There was no longer need for bitter lamentation or
lyric inspiration. Prose, tame but sober, superseded the fiery poetry
of olden times. Hymns gave place to history. The Jews were at last
enjoying with calm moderation their triumphs, religious and political,
over their foreign and domestic enemies.
But, if the Hebrew muse was silent for want of themes, the Hebrew
genius, which had dictated the ancient psalms and inspired the ancient
prophets, was not dead. The national attachment to tradition and strict
Judaism was manifested by the revival of Hebrew as a spoken tongue. It
was employed on the coinage, in public edicts, and in popular songs.
Patriotism was nourished by the celebration of the anniversaries of the
national victories over the enemies of Judaism. In one word, the crowd
refused to follow the fashions of the Court. The Jew had tasted the
fruit of Occidental culture and pronounced it unpalatable. Hellenism
had been touched and found base metal; and, notwithstanding his Kings’
efforts--their Greek temples and Greek theatres--the Hebrew remained an
Oriental. “Cursed is the man who allows his son to learn the Grecian
wisdom” was the verdict of the Talmud, and a Jewish poet many centuries
after repeats the anathema in a milder form: “Go not near the Grecian
wisdom. It has no fruit, but only blossoms.”[3]
But, though the bulk of the nation agreed in its attitude towards
foreign culture, there now appears an internal division into several
parties, differing from one another in the degree of their attachment
to the traditions of the past, and in their aspirations for the future.
Two of these sects stand out pre-eminently as representative of Hebrew
sentiment, and as the exponents of the two attitudes which have
continued to divide the Jewish nation through the ages down to our own
day. These are the Pharisees and the Sadducees, whose names are first
heard under the early Hasmonaean chiefs, but whose views correspond
with those of the Hellenistic and national parties of the Seleucid
period. The Pharisees were an offshoot of the Assidean party which,
as we have seen, had waged a truceless and successful war against
Hellenism. After their victory, the most enthusiastic of the “Pious”
retired from public life and nursed their piety and disappointment
in ascetic seclusion. But the majority of the party were far from
considering their mission fulfilled, or from being satisfied with
abstract devotion. They regarded it as a duty both to the faith and to
the fatherland to take an active part in politics. The preservation of
Judaism in its ancient exclusiveness was their programme. All public
undertakings, all national acts, as well as all private transactions,
were to be measured by the rigid standard of religion. The Law in
the hands of the Pharisees became a Procrustean bed upon which the
mind of the nation was to be stretched or maimed, according to the
requirements of nationalism and the interpretations of the Scribes.
This inflexible orthodoxy, with its concomitants of discipline and
sacrifice of individuality, was in perfect accord with the Hebrew
temperament, and the Pharisees must be regarded as the interpreters of
the views dear to the great mass of their compatriots. As time went on,
the Pharisaic attitude became more and more hardened into a theological
creed, clothed in a web of ceremonial formalities, but vivified by an
inspiring devotion to the will of Jehovah, and an ardent belief in the
ultimate triumph of His Elect.
Against this teaching arose the sect of the Sadducees, who played
towards Pharisaism a part in one respect analogous to that played by
Protestantism towards Catholicism, in another to that played by the
Cavaliers towards the Roundheads. They derived all their religious
tenets from the letter of Scripture, rejecting the lessons of oral
tradition and the “legacies of the Scribes.” They refused to believe
in angels or in the resurrection of the dead, and they repudiated the
fatalistic doctrine that the future of the individual and of the state
depends not upon human action but upon the divine will, fixed once for
all. They pointed out that, if this were the case, the belief in God’s
justice would be reduced to an absurdity, as saint and sinner would
be confused in one indiscriminate verdict. The Sadducees held that
man is master of his own fortunes. The Pharisees met the objection of
their opponents as to divine justice by the non-Scriptural doctrine
of the resurrection of the dead, which had crept into Judaism in the
latter years of the Babylonian captivity. If the saint and the sinner
fared alike in this life, they argued, the balance would be restored
in the next. The righteous would then rise up to everlasting bliss,
and the wicked to everlasting shame. This and other minor points
formed the ground of dogmatic difference between the two sects. Their
difference in questions of practical politics and in social views was
characteristic of their respective creeds. The Sadducees, far from
expecting the salvation of the nation from a miraculous intervention
of the Deity, looked to human wisdom for help. They placed the
interests of the State above the interests of the Synagogue. They
shared in the aristocrat’s well-bred horror of disturbing enthusiasms
and of asceticism. Though recognising the authority of the Law, they
were temperate in their piety and could not live by unleavened bread
alone. They favoured Hellenism and supported the Hasmonaean kings in
their efforts to shake off the trammels of ecclesiastical tyranny.
♦40–4 B.C.♦ The liberal and progressive and, at the same time,
degenerate tendencies of the Sadducean protestants are seen under their
most pronounced form in the sect of the Herodians, who later helped
Herod the Great in his endeavour to render pagan culture popular among
his subjects by the erection of temples and theatres, by the adoption
of heathen fashions of worship, and by the encouragement of the
Hellenic games. The party of the Sadducees included the great priestly
families, the noble, and the wealthy, that is, the minority. Their
opponents interpreted the feelings of the lower priesthood and of the
people. Judaism, as understood by the Pharisees, was the idol for which
the nation had suffered martyrdom, and the national devotion to that
idol had gained new fervour from the recent struggle with Hellenism.
The hatred of the Jews towards Hellenism may, in one sense, be regarded
as a sequel to that older hostility which appears to have embittered
the intercourse between Europe and Asia from the very dawn of history.
It is an antipathy which under various names and guises continues
prevalent to this day--revealing itself now in anti-Semitism, now in
anti-Turkism, and again in the exclusion of Asiatic immigrants from
English-speaking countries: a sad legacy received from our far-off
ancestors and likely to be handed down to a remote posterity. Long
before the appearance of the Jew on the stage of European politics this
antagonism had manifested itself in the hereditary feud between Hellene
and Barbarian which the ingenious Herodotus traced to the reciprocal
abductions of ladies by the inhabitants of the two continents, and of
which, according to his theory, the Trojan war was the most important
and brilliant episode.[4] The same feud was in historic times dignified
by the Persian king’s gigantic effort to subdue Europe and, at a later
period, by Alexander’s success in subduing Asia. Had the father of
history been born again to celebrate the exploits of the latter hero,
he would, no doubt, have described the Macedonian campaign as part of
the chain of enmity the first links of which he had sought and found
in the romantic records of mythical gallantry. The modern student,
while smiling a superior smile at his great forerunner’s simple faith
in legend and traditional gossip, cannot but admit that there was true
insight in Herodotus’s comprehensive survey of history; but, examining
things by the light of maturer experience and with a less uncritical
eye, he will be inclined to regard this venerable strife as the result
of a far deeper antagonism between rival civilisations, rival mental
and moral attitudes--the attitudes which in their broadest outlines may
be defined as Oriental and Occidental respectively; in their narrower
aspect, with which we are more immediately concerned, as Hebraic and
Hellenic.
The Jew had one quality in common with the Greek. They both saw life
clearly and saw it as a harmonious whole. But they each saw it from an
opposite standpoint. The thoroughness, consistency, and unity of each
ideal by itself only rendered its incompatibility with the other more
complete. It is to this incompatibility that must be attributed the
failure of Hellenism in Western Asia generally and among the Jews in
particular. A system of life reared upon a purely intellectual basis
had no charm for a race essentially spiritual. The cold language of
reason conveyed no message to the mind of the Hebrew who, in common
with most Orientals, looks to revealed religion alone for guidance in
matters of belief and conduct. The Oriental never feels happy except
in a creed, and the Hellene offered him nothing better than an ethical
code. How mean and how earthy must this code have appeared in the eyes
of men accustomed to the splendid terrors of the Mosaic Law! Again, the
intellectual freedom--the privilege of investigating all and testing
all before accepting anything as true--which the Greek has claimed from
all time as man’s inalienable birthright, and upon which he has built
his noble civilisation, was repugnant to a people swathed in the bands
of tradition and distrusting all things that are not sanctioned by
authority. The Greek had no word for Faith as distinct from Conviction.
He revered intelligence and scorned intuition. What man’s mental eye
could not see clearly was not worth seeing, or rather did not exist for
him. Palestine was the home of Revelation; Hellas of Speculation. The
one country has given us Philosophy and the Platonic Dialogues; the
other the Prophets and the Mosaic Decalogue: the former all argument,
the latter all commandment.
The following conversation between two representatives of the two
worlds brings their respective attitudes into vivid relief. One is
Justin Martyr, the other a mysterious personage--probably a fictitious
character--who sowed in Justin’s mind the seed of the new religion.
JUSTIN. Can man achieve a greater triumph than prove that reason reigns
supreme over all things, and having captured reason and being borne
aloft by it to survey the errors of other men? There is no wisdom
except in Philosophy and right reason. It is, therefore, every man’s
duty to cultivate Philosophy and to deem that the greatest and most
glorious pursuit, all other possessions as of secondary or tertiary
value; for, if these are wedded to Philosophy, they are worthy of some
acceptance; but, if divorced from Philosophy, they are burdensome and
vulgar.
STRANGER. What is Philosophy and what the happiness derived therefrom?
JUSTIN. Philosophy is the Knowledge of that which is and is true. The
happiness derived therefrom is the prize of that knowledge.
STRANGER. How can the Philosophers form a correct notion of God, or
teach anything true concerning him, since they have neither seen him
nor heard of him?
JUSTIN. God cannot be seen with the eye, but only comprehended by the
mind.
STRANGER. Has our mind, then, such and so great a power as to perceive
that which is not perceptible through the senses? Or can man’s mind
ever see God unless it is adorned with the holy spirit?
JUSTIN. To whom can, then, one apply for teaching, if there is no truth
in Plato and Pythagoras?
STRANGER. There have been men of old, older than any of these reputed
philosophers, saintly men and just, beloved of God, who spoke through
the divine spirit and predicted the things that were to be. These men
are called Prophets. They alone saw the truth and declared it unto men;
neither favouring nor fearing any one; not slaves to ambition; but only
speaking the things which they heard and saw when filled with holy
spirit. Their works are still extant, and the lover of wisdom may find
therein all about the beginning and end of things, and every thing that
he need know. They had not recourse to proof, for they were above all
proof, trustworthy witnesses of the truth. Pray thou above all things
that the gates of the light may be opened unto thee.[5]
This diversity of view reveals itself in every phase of Hebrew and
Hellenic life--political, social, religious and artistic. The Greeks
very early outgrew the primitive reverence for the tribal chief--the
belief that he derived his authority from Heaven, and that he was, on
that account, entitled to unlimited obedience on the part of man. Even
in the oldest form of the Greek state known to us--the Homeric--the
king, though wielding a sceptre “given unto him by Zeus,” is in
practice, if not in theory, controlled by the wisdom of a senate and by
the will of the people. Monarchy gradually developed into oligarchy,
and this gave way to democracy. Nor was the evolution effected until
the sacerdotal character, which formed one of the king’s principal
claims to reverence and obedience, lost its influence over the Greek
mind. In historic times the impersonal authority of human law stood
alone and paramount, quite distinct from any religious duty, which
was a matter of unwritten tradition and custom. The divorce of the
Church from the State in Greece was complete. Now, among the Jews the
opposite thing happened. Kingship remained hereditary and indissolubly
associated with sacerdotalism. The Semite could not, any more than
the Mongol, conceive of a separation between the spiritual and the
temporal Government. The King of Israel in the older days always was
of the house of David, always anointed, and always wore the double
crown of princely and priestly authority. And when, after the return
from Babylon, the house of David disappears from sight, its power
is bequeathed to the hereditary high-priest. To the Jew Church and
State, religion and morality, continued to be synonymous terms; the
distinction between the sacred and the secular sides of life was
never recognised; all law, political and social, emanated from one
Heaven-inspired code; and, while Greece was fast progressing towards
ochlocracy, Judaea remained a theocracy.
The Greek was an egoist. He disliked uniformity. Although in the
direction of his private life he voluntarily submitted to a variety
of state regulations such as the citizen of a modern country would
resent as an irksome interference with the liberties of the individual,
yet, judged by the standard of antiquity, the Greek was anything but
amenable to control, and, as time went on, his attitude became little
better than that of a highly civilised anarchist. There were limits
beyond which the Greek would never admit his neighbour’s right to
dictate his conduct any more than his thoughts. He suffered from an
almost morbid fear of having his individuality merged in any social
institution. He would rather be poor in his own right than prosper
by association with others. Discipline was the least conspicuous
trait in his character and self-assertion the strongest. The Greek
knew everything except how to obey. The Jew, on the other hand, found
his chief happiness in self-effacement and submission. His everyday
life, to the minutest details, was regulated by the Law. He was not
even allowed to be virtuous after his own fashion. The claims of the
individual upon the community were only less great than the claims of
the community upon the individual. The strength of Hebraism always lay
in its power of combination, the weakness of Hellenism in the lack of
it.
Equally striking is the contrast discerned between the aesthetic ideals
of the two races. Much in Hebrew imagination is couched in forms which
would lose all their beauty and freshness, if expressed in colour or
marble; much that would look grotesque, if dragged into the daylight
of pure reason. Its effect depends entirely on the semi-darkness of
emotional suggestion. Now the Greek hated twilight. He had no patience
with the vague and the obscure in imagination any more than in thought.
Hence artistic expression was nothing to the Jew; everything to the
Greek. Judaism shunned pictorial representation; Hellenism worshipped
it. And, as art in antiquity was largely the handmaid of religion,
this diversity of the aesthetic temperament led to an irreconcilable
religious antagonism. The Jew looked upon the pagan’s graven images
with abhorrence, and the pagan regarded the Jew’s adoration of the
invisible as a proof of atheism.
Not less repugnant to the Hebrew was the Hellenic moral temperament as
mirrored in literature, in social life, and in public worship--that
temperament which, without being altogether free from pessimism,
melancholy, and discontent, yet finds its most natural expression in a
healthy enjoyment of life and an equally healthy horror of death. “I
would rather be a poor man’s serf on earth than king among the dead!”
sighs Achilles in Hades, and the sentiment is one which his whole race
has echoed through the ages, and which, despite nineteen centuries of
Christianity, is still heard in the folk-songs of modern Greece. The
Greek saw the world as it is, and, upon the whole, found it very good.
He tasted its pleasures with moderation and bore its pains with a good
grace. He perceived beauty in all things; adoring the highest and
idealising the meanest. Even the shrill song of the humble grasshopper
held sweet music for the Greek. He revelled in the loveliness and
colour of life. He was inspired by the glory of the human form. He
extolled the majesty of man. The Hebrew mind was nursed by meditation;
the Hellenic drew its nourishment from contemplation. Nature was the
Greek’s sole guide in taste as well as in conduct; from nature he
learnt the canons of the beautiful as well as the laws of right and
wrong. Hence no country has produced greater poets than Greece, or
fewer saints.
How could this view of things, so sane and yet so earthy, be acceptable
to a race oppressed by the sense of human suffering as the fruit of
human sin? “Serve the Lord with joy; come before him with singing,”
urged the Psalmist in a moment of optimistic cheerfulness. But it was
only for a moment.[6] The true note of Hebraism is struck in another
text: “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all
is vanity.” The Greek understood the meaning of the sad refrain; but
he did not allow it to depress him. To the Greek life was a joyous
reality, or at the worst an interesting problem; to the Jew a bad
dream, or at the best an inscrutable mystery. To the Hebrew mind the
sun that shines in the sky and the blossoms that adorn the earth are
at most but pale symbols of Divine Love, pledges for a bliss which is
not of this world. And yet Socrates emptied the cup of death with a
smile and a jest, where Job would have filled the world with curses
and bitter lamentation. Laughter came as spontaneously to the Greek
as breath, and the two things died together. The Jew could not laugh,
and would not allow any one else to do so. The truth is that the Greek
never grew old, and the Jew was never young.
Another lively illustration of the gulf which separated the two races
is offered by the Greek games. These were introduced into Palestine
by the Greek rulers and colonists, were adopted by the Hellenizing
minority among the Jews themselves, and were denounced with horror by
the Conservative majority. Nudity, in the eyes of the latter, was the
colophon of shamelessness, while by the Greeks the discarding of false
shame was regarded as one of the first steps to true civilisation.
Thucydides mentions the athletic habit of racing perfectly naked as an
index to the progress achieved by his country and as one of the things
that marked off the Hellene from the Barbarian.[7] The Greeks were free
from that morbid consciousness of sex which troubled the over-clothed
Asiatics. Nor were they aware of that imaginary war between the spirit
and the flesh which gave rise to the revolting self-torments of
Eastern aspirants to heaven.
The peculiar characteristics of the Hebrew mind found their supreme
manifestation in the sect of the Essenes--the extreme wing of the
Pharisaic phalanx. The strictness of the Pharisees was laxity when
compared with the painful austerity of their brethren. The latter aimed
at nothing less than a pitiless immolation of human nature to the
demands of an ideal sanctity. Enamoured of this imaginary holiness,
the Essenes disdained all the real comforts and joys of life. Their
diet was meagre, their dwellings mean, their dress coarse. Colour
and ornament were eschewed as Satanic snares. The mere act of moving
a vessel, or even obedience to the most elementary calls of nature,
on the Sabbath, was accounted a desecration of the holy day. Contact
with unhallowed persons or objects was shunned by the Essenes as
scrupulously as contact with an infected person or object is shunned
by sane people in time of plague. They refused to taste food cooked,
or to wear clothes made, by a non-member of the sect, or to use any
implement that had not been manufactured by pure hands. Their life
in consequence was largely spent in water. For whosoever was not an
Essene was, in the eyes of these saints, a source of pollution. Thus
godliness developed into misanthropy and cleanliness into a mania.
Thus these holy men lived, turning away from the sorrows of the earth
to the peace of an ideal heaven; deriving patience with the present
from apocalyptic promises of future glory; and waiting for the day
when the unrighteous would be smitten to the dust, the dead rise from
their graves, and the just be restored to everlasting bliss under the
rule of the Redeemer--the Son of Man revealed to the holy and righteous
because they have despised this world and hated all its works and ways
in the name of the Lord of Spirits. Celibacy, seclusion, communion of
goods, distinctive garb, abstinence, discipline and self-mortification,
ecstatic rapture, sanctimonious pride and prejudice--all these
Oriental traits, gradually matured and subsequently rejected in
their exaggerated form from the main current of Judaism, marked the
Essenes out as the prototypes of Christian monasticism, and as the
most peculiar class of a very peculiar people. Could anything be more
diametrically opposed to the genius of Hellas? Despite Pythagorean
asceticism and Orphic mysticism, enthusiastic ritual, symbolic
purifications and emotional extravagances, Greek life was in the
main sober, Greek culture intellectual, and the Greek mind eminently
untheological.
Those who delight in tracing racial temperament to physical environment
may find in the contrast between the two countries an exceptionally
favourable illustration of their theory. There is more variety of
scenery in a single district of Greece than in the whole of Palestine.
Grey rocks and green valleys, roaring torrents and placid lakes, sombre
mountains and smiling vineyards, snow-clad peaks and sun-seared plains,
glaring light and deep shade alternately come and go with a bewildering
rapidity in the one country. In the other, from end to end, the plain
spreads its calm, monotonous beauty to the everlasting sun, and the
stately palms rear their heads to the blue heavens from year’s end to
year’s end, severe, uniform, immutable. It is easy to understand why
the one race should have drawn its inspiration from within and the
other from without; why the one should have sunk the individual in the
community and the other sacrificed the community to the individual; why
the one should have worshipped the form and the other the spirit. It is
especially easy to understand the Greek’s inextinguishable thirst for
new things and the Jew’s rigid attachment to the past. Everything in
Greece suggests progress; everything in Palestine spells permanence.
The result of this fundamental discrepancy of character was such as
might have been foreseen. The intense spirituality of the Jew was
scandalised at the genial rationalism and sensuousness of the pagan;
while the pagan, in his turn, was repelled by the morose mysticism and
austerity of the Jew. History never repeats itself in all particulars.
But, so far as repetition is possible, it repeated itself many
centuries after, when Puritanism--representing the nearest approach
to the sad and stern Hebraic conception of life that the Western mind
ever achieved--declared itself the enemy of Romanism, mainly because
the latter retained so much of the pagan love for form and delight in
things sensuous. Cromwell’s Ironsides illustrated this attitude by
marching to battle singing the Psalms of the Hebrew bard. It is given
to few mortals, blessed with a calm and truly catholic genius, to
reconcile the rival attitudes, and, with Matthew Arnold, to recognise
that “it is natural that man should take pleasure in his senses. It is
natural, also, that he should take refuge in his heart and imagination
from his misery.”