THE BOOK OF PROVERBS AND THE AVESTA.
The legend of the Queen of Sheba forms not only a poetic prologue
to the epical tradition of Solomon's wisdom, but has a substantial
connexion with the character of that wisdom, to whose final
personification she contributed.
The corresponding Oriental stories do not necessarily deprive this
legend of historic basis, but point to the region of this "Queen
of the Seven (Sheba)." Those Oriental pilgrimages of eminent women
to great sages, however invested with magnificence, are natural;
even such romances could not have been invented unless in accordance
with the genius of the country in which they were written. There is
no antecedent improbability that a queen, belonging to a region in
which her sex enjoyed large freedom, should have made a journey to
meet Solomon.
The Abyssinians, who regard her as the founder of their dynasty, at the
same time show how little characteristic of their country the legend
was, by their ancient tradition, that it was the Queen of Sheba who
provided that no woman should sit on the throne, forever! They claim
that this Queen is referred to in Psalm xlv.--"At thy right hand
doth stand the Queen, in gold of Ophir." This psalm is Solomonic,
but the reference is no doubt to the Queen Mother, Bathsheba (whose
throne was on his "right hand," 1 Kings ii. 19). Neither Naamah
the Ammonitess, mother of Solomon's successor, nor the daughter of
Pharaoh, who was his especially distinguished wife, is described as
a queen,--this indeed not being a Jewish title for a king's wife. The
psalm indicates much glory to be conferred on a woman by wedlock with
Solomon, but not that he was to derive any honor from either or all of
the "threescore queens" assigned him in later times (Cant. vi. 8). In
another Solomonic Psalm (lxxii.) it is said:
"The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents:
The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts,
Yea, all kings shall fall down before him."
No glory is here supposed to be derivable from a woman, and an inventor
would probably have merely devised a saga on the last of the lines
just quoted, which is adapted in 1 Kings iv. 34, to Solomon's wisdom,
or he would have imagined some instance of a particularly illustrious
monarch coming to pay homage to Solomon. That the only example
particularized is that of a woman carries some signs of reality.
Assuming that there was ever any King Solomon at all, this Psalm
lxxii., whose Hebrew title is "Of Solomon," might have been written
in the height of his reign. The title of "God" given him in Psalm
xlv. is here approximated in the opening line, "Give the King thy
judgments, O Elohim," and in the ascription to him of such virtues and
such beneficent dominion, "from the river (Euphrates) to the ends of
the earth," without any further reference to God, that an indignant
Jahvist expands the doxology (18, 19) to include a reclamation for
Jahveh. The ancient lyric closes with verse 17, which says of Solomon:
"His name shall endure forever;
His name shall have emanations as long as the sun;
Men shall bless themselves in him;
All nations shall call him The Happy."
The Jahvist answers:
"Blessed be Jahveh Elohim, the Elohim of Israel,
Who alone doeth wondrous things,
And blessed be His glorious name forever;
And let the whole earth be filled with His glory.
Amen, and Amen."
Now in this beautiful poem (omitting the doxology) the elation is
especially concerning some connexion with Sheba. In verse 10 it is
said "The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts"; in verse 15,
"To him shall be given of the gold of Sheba." These lines might have
been written on the announcement of a royal visit, or meeting, which
had not mentioned a queen. But what country is indicated by Sheba (the
Seven)? In India there are seven holy rivers, and seven holy Rishis,
represented by the seven stars of the Great Bear. But these correspond
with the Seven Rivers of Persia which enter into the Persian Gulf, in
the Avesta called Satavæsa, a star-deity. In the Yîr Yast 9 it is said:
"Satavæsa makes those waters flow down to the seven Karshvares of
the earth, and when he has arrived down there he stands, beautiful,
spreading ease and joy on the fertile countries, thinking in
himself, 'How shall the countries of the Aryas grow fertile?'"
As there are seven heavens, there are seven earths (Karshvares),
and these, as already shown (ante II.), are presided over by the
"seven infinite ones" (Amesha-Spentas). Of these seven the first is
Ahura Mazda himself, and of the others only one is female--Armaîti,
genius of the earth. Of this wonderful and beautiful personification
more must be said presently, but it may be said here that Armaîti
was the spouse of Ahura Mazda, and Queen of the Seven,--the seven
Ameshi-Spentas who preside respectively over the seven karshvares of
the earth.
The function of Armaîti being to win men from nomadic life and warfare,
to foster peace and tillage, she was a type of "the eternal feminine";
and such an ideal could hardly have been developed except in a region
where women were held in great honour, nor could it fail to produce
women worthy of honor. That such was the fact in Zoroastrian Persia
is proved by many passages in the Avesta, wherein we find eminent
women among the first disciples of Zoroaster. There is a litany to the
Fravashis, or ever living and working spirits, of twenty-seven women,
whose names are given in Favardîn Yast (139-142). Among these was
the Queen Hutaosa, converted by Zoroaster, the wife of King Vîstâspa,
the Constantine of Zoroastrianism. Hutaosa was naturally a visible and
royal representative of Armaîti, "Queen of the Seven," a princess of
peace, a patroness of culture, to be imitated by other Persian queens.
That the sanctity of "seven" was impressed on all usages of life in
Persia is shown in the story of Esther. King Ahasuerus feasts on the
seventh day, has seven chamberlains, and consults the seven princes
of Media and Persia ("wise men which knew the times"). When Esther
finds favor of the King above all other maidens, as successor to
deposed Vashti, she is at once given "the seven maidens, which were
meet to be given her, out of the King's house; and he removed her
and her maidens to the best place of the house of the women." Esther
was thus a Queen of the Seven,--of Sheba, in Hebrew,--and although
this was some centuries after Solomon's time, there is every reason
to suppose that the Zoroastrian social usages in Persia prevailed
in Solomon's time. At any rate we find in the ancient Psalm lxxii.,
labeled "Of Solomon," Kings of Sheba (the Seven) mentioned along
with the Euphrates, chief of the Seven Rivers (Zend Haptaheando); and
remembering also the "sevens" of Esther, we may safely infer that a
"Queen of Sheba" connoted a Persian or Median Queen.
We may also fairly infer, from the emphasis laid on "sevens" in Esther,
in connexion with her wit and wisdom, that a Queen of the Seven had
come to mean a wise woman, whether of Jewish or Persian origin, a
woman instructed among the Magi, and enjoying the freedom allowed by
them to women. There is no geographical difficulty in supposing that a
Persian queen like Hutaosa, a devotee of Armaîti (Queen of the Seven,
genius of Peace and Agriculture), might not have heard of Salem, the
City of Peace, of its king whose title was the Peaceful (Solomon),
and visited that city,--though of course the location of the meeting
may have been only a later tradition. [10]
The object of the Queen's visit to Solomon was "to test him with hard
questions" as to his wisdom. It was not to discover or pay court to his
wisdom, though he received from her "of the gold of Sheba" spoken of
in the psalm. As a royal missionary of the Magi her ability and title
to prove Solomon's knowledge, and decide on it, are assumed in the
narrative (1 Kings x.). Several sentences in her tribute to Solomon's
"wisdom and goodness" recall passages in the Psalm (lxxii.). There is
here an intimation of some prevailing belief that Solomon's wisdom
was harmonious with the Zoroastrian wisdom. Whether the visit of
the Queen be mythical or not, and even if both she and Solomon are
regarded as mythical, the legend would none the less be an expression
of a popular perception of elements not Jewish in Solomonic literature.
Of course only Biblical mythology is here referred to. The Moslem
mythology of Solomon and the Queen (Balkis) has taken from the
Avesta Wise King Yima's potent ring, and his power over demons, and
other fables, in most instances to be noted only as an unconscious
recognition of a certain general accent common to the narratives of
the two great kings. Yet it can hardly be said that the stories of Yima
in the Avesta and of Solomon in the Bible are entirely independent of
each other,--as in Yima's being given by the deity a sort of choice
and selecting the political career, Ahura Mazda saying: "Since thou
wanted not to be the preacher and the bearer of my law, then make thou
my worlds thrive, make my worlds increase: undertake thou to nourish,
to rule, and to watch over my world." Ahura Mazda requests Yima to
build an enclosure for the preservation of the seeds of life (men,
animals, and plants) during a succession of fatal winters, and some
of the particulars resemble both the legend of the ark and that of
building the temple. Yima was, like Solomon, a priest-king (he is also
called "the good shepherd"); he was, like Solomon, beset by satans
(daêvas), and after a reign of fabulous prosperity he finally fell by
uttering falsehood. What the falsehood was is told in the Bundahis:
the good part of creation was ascribed to the evil creator.
Several other heroes of the Avesta have assisted in the idealisation
of Solomon, notably King Vîstâspa, already mentioned. Like Solomon,
he is famous for his horses and his wealth. Zoroaster exhorts him,
"All night long address the heavenly Wisdom; all night long call for
the Wisdom that will keep thee awake." From Zoroaster the "Young King"
learned "how the worlds were arranged"; and he is advised "have no
bad priests or unfriendly priests."
It is now necessary to inquire whether there is anything corresponding
to these facts in the ancient writings ascribed to Solomon. The
lower criticism has little liking for Solomon, and makes but a feeble
struggle for the genuineness of his canonical books against the higher
criticism, which forbids us to assign any word to Solomon. But these
higher critics acquired their learning while lower critics, and it
is difficult to repress an occasional suspicion of the survival of
an unconscious prejudice against the royal secularist, apparent in
their unwillingness to admit any participation at all of Solomon in
the wisdom books. Is this quite reasonable?
It is of course clear that Solomon cannot be described as the author of
any book or compilation that we now possess. But neither did Boccaccio
write Shakespeare's "Cymbeline," nor Dryden's "Cymon and Iphigenia,"
nor the apologue of the Ring in Lessing's "Nathan the Wise," nor
Tennyson's "Falcon," all of which, however, are his tales. I select
Boccaccio for the illustration because his defiance of "the moralities"
led to his suppression in most European homes, thus facilitating the
utilization of his ideas by others who derive credit from his genius,
this being precisely what might be expected in the case of the great
secularist of Jerusalem. For no one can carefully study the Book
of Proverbs without perceiving that a large number of them never
could have been popular proverbs, but are terse little essays and
fables, some of them highly artistic, which indicate the presence
at some remote epoch of a man of genius. And I cannot conceive any
fair reason for setting aside the tradition of many centuries which
steadily united the name of Solomon with much of this kind of writing,
or for believing that every sentence he ever uttered or wrote is lost.
It would require a separate work to pick out from the two Anthologies
ascribed to Solomon (the First, Proverbs x. i-xxii. 16; the Second,
xxv-xxix), the more elaborate thoughts, and piece together those that
represent one mind, even were I competent for that work. But this
fine task awaits some scholar, and, indeed, the whole Book of Proverbs
needs a more thorough treatment in this direction than it has received.
Of the last seven chapters of the Book of Proverbs, one (xxx.),
containing the fragments of Agur and his angry antagonist, has been
(vii.) considered. Chapters xxv., xxvi., xxvii., and xxxi. 10-31, may
with but little elimination fairly come under their general heading,
"These are also proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, King
of Judah, copied out." Chapters xxviii. and xxix., with their flings
at princes and wealth, contain many Jahvist insertions. The admirable
verses in xxiv. 23-34, and those in xxxi. 10-29, 31, represent the
high secular ethics of the Solomonic school.
The verses last mentioned (exaltation of the virtuous woman) are,
curiously enough, blended with "The words of King Lemuel, the oracle
which his mother taught him." The ancient Rabbins identify Lemuel
with Solomon, and relate that when, on the day of the dedication
of the temple, he married Pharaoh's daughter, he drank too much at
the wedding feast, and slept until the fourth hour of the next day,
with the keys of the temple under his pillow. Whereupon his mother,
Bathsheba, entered and reproved him with this oracle. Bathsheba's
own amour with Solomon's father does not appear to have excited any
rabbinical suspicion that the description of the virtuous wife with
which the Book of Proverbs closes is hardly characteristic of the
woman. She was the "Queen Mother," a part of the divine scheme, her
conception of the builder of the temple immaculate, predetermined in
the counsels of Jahveh.
The first nine verses of this last chapter in the Book of Proverbs
certainly appear as if written at a later day, perhaps even so late as
the third century before our era, and aimed at the Jahvist tradition
of Solomon. Lemuel seems to be allegorical, and we here have an
early instance of the mysterious disinclination to mention the great
King's name. His name, Renan assures us, is hidden under "Koheleth,"
but he is not named in the text of that book or even in that of the
"Wisdom of Solomon." In Ezra v. 11 the mention of the temple as the
house "which a great king of Israel builded and finished" seems to
indicate a purposed suppression of Solomon's name, which continued
(Jeremiah lii. 20 is barely an exception) until this silence was
broken by Jesus Ben Sira, and again by Jesus of Nazareth.
The removal of verse 30 (Proverbs xxxi.), clearly a late Jahvist
protest, leaves the praise of the virtuous woman with which the book
closes without any suggestion of piety. Yet we find here that "her
price is far above rubies," "she openeth her mouth with wisdom," and
one or two other tropes which probably united with some in the First
Anthology to evolve more distinctly the goddess Wisdom. Some sentences
of the First Anthology grew like mustard seed. "Wisdom resteth in the
heart of him who hath understanding" (Proverbs xiv. 33), reappears
in 1 Kings iii. 12, and in x. 24 it is definitely stated that it was
the wisdom which God had put into Solomon's heart that made all the
earth seek his presence. It was a miracle they went to see; the glory
is not that of Solomon, but that of God. [11]
The nearest approach to a personification of Wisdom in the First
Anthology is Proverb xx. 15: "There is gold and abundance of pearls,
but the lips of knowledge are a (more) precious jewel." This expands in
Job to a long list of precious things--gold, coral, topaz, pearls--all
surpassed by Wisdom, and the similitudes journey on to the parables
of Jesus, wherein the woman sweeps for the lost silver, and the
man sells all he has for the pearl of price. This, however, was a
comparatively simple and human development. And the first complete
personification of Wisdom, growing out of "the lips of knowledge," and
perhaps influenced by the portraiture of "the virtuous woman," is an
expression of philosophical and poetic religion. This personification
is in Proverbs viii. and ix., which are evidently far more ancient
than the seven chapters preceding them, and no doubt constitute the
original editorial Prologue to the so-called "Proverbs of Solomon,"
with the exception of some Jahvist cant about "the fear of Jahveh." We
hear from "the lips of knowledge" a reaffirmation of the "excellent
things" said in the Anthologies about the superiority of Wisdom to
gems. (The word "ancient" given by the revisers in the margin to
viii. 18 may possibly signify the antiquity of the Anthologies when
this Prologue was written.) The scholarly writer of the Prologue had
closely studied the ancient proverbs, and occasionally gives good hints
for the interpretation of some that puzzle modern translators. Thus
Wisdom, in describing herself as "sporting" (viii. 30), indicates the
right meaning of x. 23 to be that while the fool finds his sport in
mischief, the wise man finds his sport with wisdom. (This proverb may
also have suggested the laughter of the "virtuous woman" in xxxi. 25.)
In viii. 22-31, Wisdom becomes more than a personification, and takes
her place in cosmogony. This passage, which contains germs of much
of our latter-day theology, must be quoted in full, and comparatively
studied. Wisdom speaks:
22. Jahveh acquired me in the outset of his way,
Before his works, from of old.
23. From eternity was I existent,
From the first, before the earth.
24. When no deep seas I was brought forward,
When no fountains abounding with water.
25. Before the mountains were fixed,
Before the hills, was I brought forward:
26. When he had not fashioned the earth and the fields,
And the consummate part of the dust of the world.
27. When he established the heavens, I was there;
When he set a boundary on the face of the deep;
28. When he made firm the clouds above;
When the fountains of the deep became strong;
29. When he gave to the sea its limit,
That the waters should not pass over their coast;
When he marked out the foundation pillars of the earth:
30. Then was I near him, as a master builder:
And I was his delight continually,
Sporting before him at all times;
31. Sporting in the habitable part of his earth,
And my delight was with the sons of men.
Let us compare with this picture of Wisdom that of Armaîti, genius of
the Earth, in the sacred Zoroastrian books. In the Gâtha Ahunavaiti,
7, it is said: "To succor this life (to increase it) Armaîti came
with wealth, and good and true mind: she, the everlasting one,
created the material world; but the soul, as to time, the first
cause among created beings, was with thee" (Ahura Mazda). Thus, like
Wisdom, Armaîti is everlasting: she was not created, but "acquired,"
by the deity. When Ahura Mazda, as chief of the seven Amesha-spentas,
ideally designed the world, she gave it reality, as master-builder,
and, like Wisdom, hewed out the foundation pillars he had marked
out,--namely, the Seven Karshvares of the earth. The opening lines
of Proverbs ix. read almost like a quotation from some Gâtha:
"Wisdom hath builded her house,
She hath hewn out her seven pillars."
Like Wisdom, Armaîti was the continual delight of the supreme God. In
an ancient Pâli MS., it is said that Zoroaster saw the supreme being in
heaven, with Armaîti seated at his side, her hand caressing his neck,
and said: "Thou, who art Ahura Mazda, turnest not thy eyes away from
her, and she turns not away from thee." Ahura Mazda tells Zoroaster
that she is "the house mistress of my heaven, and mother of the
creatures." [12] Like Wisdom, Armaîti has joy in the "habitable part"
of the earth, and the "sons of men," from whom she receives especial
delight ("the greatest joy"), are enumerated in the Vendîdâd, also
the places in which she has such delight. They are the faithful who
cultivate the earth morally and physically, and the places so watered
or drained, and homes "with wife, children, and good herds within."
Armaîti has a daughter, "the good Ashi," whose function is to pass
between earth and heaven and bring the heavenly wisdom (Vohu-Mano,
"Good Thought") to mankind. The soul of the world thus reaches, and
is reached by, heaven, and Armaîti thus becomes a personification
of the combined human and superhuman Wisdom ascribed to great men,
such as Solomon. At the same time the "sons of men" are all the
children of Armaîti, and she finds delight among them. Even the
rudest are restrained by her culture. "By the eyes of Armaîti the
(demonic) ruffian was made powerless," says Zoroaster. The spirit of
the Earth, laughing with her flowers and fruits, survived in Persia
the sombre reign of Islam, to sing in the quatrain of Omar Khayyám:
"I asked my fair bride--the World--what was her dower: she answered,
'My dower is in the joy of thy heart.'"
"The sons of men" is not an Avestan phrase, for to Armaîti her
daughters are as dear as her sons, but we find in the Vendîdâd "the
seeds of men and women." These are sprung from those who were selected
for preservation in the Vara, or enclosure, of the first man, Yimi,
made by direction of the deity, when the evil powers brought fatal
winters on the world. The deformed, diseased, wicked, were excluded;
the chosen people were those formed of "the best of the earth." From
long and prosperous life on earth, the Amesha of immortality, the
good angel of death, conducted them to eternal happiness; they are the
immortals, children of the demons being mortals. There was something
corresponding to this in the Jewish idea of their being a chosen
people, as distinguished from the Gentile world (see Deut. xxxii. 8),
and no doubt the phrase "sons of men" represented a divine dignity
afterwards expressed in the title, "Son of Man." [13]
The Solomonic hymn of Wisdom at the creation (Proverbs viii. 22-31)
contains other Avestan phrases. "From eternity was I existent," recalls
Zervan akarana, "boundless time," and verse 26, relating to the earth,
is still more significant: in it "the sum" has been suggested by the
Revisers for (E. V.) "the highest part" (of the earth), but in either
rendering it is near to the Avestan phrase, "the best of Armaîti"
(Earth). This phrase is reproduced in the Bundahis (xv. 6), where the
creator, Ahura Mazda, says to the first pair, "You are men (cf. Genesis
v. 2, he 'called their name Adam'), you are the ancestry of the world,
and you are created the best of Armaîti (the Earth) by me." (West's
translation. Sacred Books of the East. Vol. V., p. 54, n. 2.) The
word for Earth in Proverb 26 is adamah, and in the Septuagint (various
reading) it is actually translated Armaith,--Armaîti's very name. We
may thus find in Proverb 26 (viii.) the idea of Omar Khayyám, "Man
is the whole creation's summary."
Whether there is any connexion between the Sanskrit Adima and
Hebrew Adam is still under philological discussion: probably not,
for their meaning is different, Adima meaning "the first," and
Adam relating to the material out of which he is said to have been
formed. Adam is derived from Adamah: after all, man came from the
great Woman--"the Mother of all living." [14] Adamah, according to
Sale, is a Persian word meaning "red earth," and in Hebrew also it
connotes redness. Armaîti might have acquired an epithet of ruddiness
from her union with Âtar, the genius of Fire (Fargard xviii. 51,
52. Darmesteter. Introduction, iv. 30). In Hebrew adamah combines
three senses--a fortress, redness, and cultivated ground. In Proverbs
(viii. 31) we have the fortress or enclosure, "the habitable part of
his earth"; in verse 26 the cultivated earth, "the highest part (or
sum, or best) of the dust of the earth." The "delight" in which Wisdom
dwelt (verse 30) is Eden, the garden of delight, and in verse 31 this
delight associated with the human children of the earth. Here we have
the elements of the narrative of the creation of Adam in Genesis,
and of the garden, though clearly not derived from Genesis. And in
Genesis we find something like a personification of the earth, as in
ix. 13, "It (the rainbow) shall be a token of a covenant between me
and the earth."
The idea of a creative deity requiring, as in Proverbs viii., the
assistance of another personal being, is foreign to Jahvism, but it
is of the very substance of Zoroastrianism, and it reappears in the
Elohism of Genesis. Another important and fundamental fact is, that we
find in the prologue to Proverbs a deity contending against something,
circumscribing forces that need control, not of his creation. It is
plain that the conception of monotheistic omnipotence had not yet
been formed. There are higher and lower parts of the earth.
Although there is no evidence that any such compilation as our
"Genesis" existed at the time when the prologue (viii., ix.) to the
"Proverbs of Solomon" was composed, the Elohistic opening of Genesis,
especially in its original form, harmonises with the Parsi conflict
between Light and Darkness.
"When of old Elohim separated heaven and earth--when the earth was
desolation and emptiness--darkness on the face of the deep, and
the spirit of Elohim brooding on the face of the waters,--Elohim
said, Be Light; Light was." [15]
The spirit of God "brooding" over the waters (Genesis i. 1) may
be identified with the Wisdom of Proverbs ix. 1, who "builds her
house" as the Elohim built the universe, and "hath hewn out her
seven pillars" like a true Armaîti, "Queen of the Seven." She is
the Spirit of Light. And perhaps the darkness that was on the face
of the abyss suggested the antagonistic personification in the next
chapter (ix.) named by Professor Cheyne "Dame Folly." Wisdom, having
builded her house, spread her table, mingled her wine, sends forth her
maidens to invite the simple to forsake Folly, enjoy her feast, and
"live." Dame Folly,--who though she has "a seat in high places" is
"silly,"--clamours to every wayfarer that even the bread and water
of her table, being surreptitious, are sweeter than the luxuries
and wine offered by Wisdom. This appears to be the meaning of Dame
Folly's somewhat obscure invitation.
"'Waters stolen are sweet!
Forbidden bread is pleasant!'
He knoweth not her phantoms are there,
That her guests are in the underworld."
In this contrast between Wisdom inviting all to enter her house,
drink her wine, and "live," and Folly inviting them to her "Sheol,"
we have nearly a quatrain of Omar Khayyám: "Since from the beginning
of life to its end there is for thee only this earth, at least live
as one who is on it and not under it."
In the Avesta the good and wise Mother Earth (Armaîti) is opposed by
a malign female "Drug" (demoness), whose paramours are described in
Fargard xviii. (Vendîdâd). These two are fairly represented by Wisdom
and Folly as personified in Proverbs viii. and ix.
The Jahvist who in Proverbs i. 1-7 (excepting the first six verses)
undertakes to edit the original and ancient editor as well as Solomon,
presents the curious case of one of Dame Folly's phantoms interpreting
the words of Wisdom's guests. Unable to comprehend their portraiture
of Dame Folly, he imagines that the allusion must be to harlotry,
admonishes his "son" that "Jahveh giveth wisdom," which among other
things will "deliver thee from the strange woman," whose "house sinketh
down to the underworld and her paths unto phantoms." Which recalls
the pious lady who on hearing her ritualistic pastor accused by a
dissenter of leanings toward the Scarlet Woman, anxiously inquired
of a friend whether she had ever heard any scandal connected with
their vicar's name!
Our Jahvist editor seems to be one who would often say of laughter
"it is mad"; and naturally could not imagine how Wisdom could "sport"
before the Lord (viii. 30) unless she were in some sense mad. The
sport before Jahveh could only be in mockery of some sinner's torment,
like the derision ascribed to Jahveh (Psalm ii. 4); consequently our
editor represents Wisdom crying abroad in the streets:
"Because I have called and ye refused....
I also will laugh in the day of your calamity,
I will mock when your fear cometh."
But Pliny mentions the Mazdean belief, confirmed by Parsi tradition,
that Zoroaster was born laughing. To him Ahura Mazda says: "Do thou
proclaim, O pure Zoroaster, the vigor, the glory, the help and the
joy that are in the Fravashis (souls) of the faithful."
However, we may see in these first seven chapters of Proverbs that
Wisdom had become detached from the sons of men, in whom she had
once found delight, was no longer in the human heart, but had finally
ascended to wield the heavenly thunderbolts. And yet it is probable
that we owe to this vindictive and menacing attitude of deified Wisdom
the preservation of so many witty and sceptical things in books
traditionally ascribed to Solomon. The orthodox legend being that
the Lord had put supernatural wisdom into Solomon's heart, and never
revoked it despite his "idolatry" and secularism, it followed that the
naughty man could not help continuing to be a medium of this divine
person, Wisdom, and that it might be a dangerous thing to suppress
any utterance of hers through Solomon,--unwitting blasphemy. However
profane or worldly the writings might appear to the Jahvist mind,
there was no knowing what occult inspiration there might be in them,
and the only thing editors could venture was to sprinkle through them
plenteous disinfectants in the way of "Fear-of-the-Lord" wisdom.
The proverbs in which the name Jahveh appears are not, of course, to
be indiscriminately rejected as entirely Jahvist interpolations. It
seems probable that little more than the word Jahveh has been supplied
in some of these,--e. g., xix. 3, xx. 27, xxi. 1, 3, xxviii. 5,
xxix. 26. But in a majority of cases the proverbs containing the name
Jahveh are ethically and radically inharmonious with the substance
and spirit of the book as a whole, which is founded on the supremacy
of human "merits" as fully as Zoroastrianism, in which salvation
depends absolutely on Good Thought, Good Word, Good Deed. In dynamic
monotheism (as distinguished from ethical) of which Jahvism is the
ancient and Islam the modern type, the doctrine of human "merits"
is inadmissible: a man's virtues are not his own, and in Jahveh's
sight they are but "filthy rags," except so far as they are given by
Jahveh. But in the Solomonic proverbs the highest virtues, and the
supreme blessings of the universe, are obtained by a man's own wisdom,
character, and deeds. And in some cases the claims for Jahveh appear
to have been inserted as if in answer or retort to proverbs ignoring
the participation of any deity in such high matters. I quote a few
instances, in which the antithesis turns to antagonism:
Solomon--By kindness and truth iniquity is atoned for.
Jahvist--By the fear of Jahveh men turn away from evil. (xvi. 6.)
Solomon--He who is skilful in a matter findeth good.
Jahvist--Whoso trusteth in Jahveh, happy is he! (xvi. 20.)
In several other cases entire proverbs seem to be inserted for the
correction of preceding ones,--these being not always understood by
the interpolator:
Solomon--Treasures of evil profit not,
But virtue delivereth from death.
Jahvist--Jahveh will not suffer the righteous man to be famished,
But the desires of the unrighteous he thrusteth away. (x. 2, 3.)
Solomon--The tongue of the just is choice silver;
The heart of the evil is little worth:
The lips of the just feed many,
But fools die through heartlessness.
Jahvist--The blessing of Jahveh, that maketh rich,
And work addeth nothing thereto. (x. 20-22.)
Solomon--The virtuous man hath an everlasting foundation. (x. 25.)
Jahvist--The fear of Jahveh prolongeth days. (x. 27.)
Solomon--Hear counsel, receive correction,
That thou mayst be wise in thy future.
Jahvist--Many are the purposes in a man's heart,
But the counsel of Jahveh, that shall stand. (xix. 20-1.)
Solomon--The acceptableness of a man is his kindness:
Better off the poor than the treacherous man.
Jahvist--The fear of Jahveh addeth to life;
Whoso is filled therewith shall abide, he shall not be visited
by evil. (xix. 22-3.)
Solomon--The upright man considereth his way.
Jahvist--Wisdom is nothing, heart nothing,
Counsel nothing, against Jahveh. (xxi. 29, 30.)
In one instance the Jahvist has made a slip by which his hand is
confessed. In xvii. 3 we find:
The fining-pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold,
But Jahveh trieth hearts.
But he omitted to notice the repetition in xxvii. 21, where we find
the profound sentence which the Jahvist had reduced to commonplace:
The fining-pot for silver and the furnace for gold,
And a man is proved by that which he praiseth.
The Jahvist spirit is also discoverable in xx. 22:
Solomon--Say not "I will retaliate evil";
Jahvist--Wait for Jahveh and he will save thee.
Also in xxv. 21-2:
Solomon--If he that hateth thee be hungry, give him bread to eat,
If he be athirst give him water to drink.
Jahvist--For thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head,
And Jahveh shall reward thee.
A similar mean and vindictive spirit is shown in xxiv. 18, following
a magnanimous proverb; but in verse 29, probably more ancient than 18,
we find the unqualified rebuke of retaliation:
Say not "As he hath done to me, so will I do to him,
I will render to the man according to his work."
It was this generosity that Buddha exercised, [16] and Jesus; and it
was left to Paul to recover the Jahvist modifications of Solomon's
wisdom in order to adulterate for hard Romans the humane spirit of
Jesus (Romans xii. 19, 20). The Solomonic sentences are normally so
magnanimous as to throw suspicion on any clause tainted with smallness
or vulgarity. The pervading spirit is, "The benevolent heart shall
be enriched, and he who watereth shall himself be watered."
There is one proverb (xiv. 32) which suggests a belief in immortality,
or possibly in the Angel of Death:
By his evil deeds the evil man is thrust downward,
But the virtuous man hath confidence in his death.
According to the Avesta every man is born with an invisible noose
around his neck. When a good man dies the noose falls, and he passes
to a beautiful region where he is met by a maid, to whom he says, "Who
art thou, who art the fairest I have ever seen?" She answers, "O thou
of good thoughts, good words, good deeds, I am thy actions." The evil
man meets a leprous hag, embodiment of his actions, who by his noose
drags him down through the evil-thought hell, the evil-word hell, the
evil-deed hell, to the region of "Endless Darkness" (Yast xxii.). This
darkness may be metaphorically spoken of in Proverbs xx. 20:
He that curseth his father and mother,
His lamp shall be put out in the blackest darkness.
But generally the allusions to death in the Solomonic proverbs do not
seem to allude to physical death. In x. 2 "virtue delivereth from
death" is in antithesis to the unprofitableness of evil treasures,
and in 16:
The reward of a virtuous man is life;
The gain of the wicked is sin.
Here "life" and "sin" are in opposition. Other sentences to be
compared are:
The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life,
To avoid the snares of death. (xiii. 14, cf. the Jahvist xiv. 27.)
Understanding is a fountain of life to those who possess it,
But the snare of fools is Folly. (xvi. 22.)
He that hateth reproof shall die. (xv. 10.)
The way of life is upward to the wise,
So as to turn away from the grave (sheol) beneath. (xv. 24.)
Death and life are in the power of the tongue,
And they who love it shall eat its fruit. (xviii. 21.)
(In the last clause "it" probably refers to "life," unless the pronoun
be cancelled altogether.)
The getting of treasures by a tongue of falsehood
Is getting a fleeting vapour, delusions of death. (xxi. 6.)
In the way of virtue is life,
But the way of the by-path leadeth to death. (xii. 28.)
The man who wandereth from the way of instruction
Shall rest in the congregation of the phantoms. (xxi. 16.)
The two proverbs last quoted may be usefully compared with the ancient
Prologue (viii. ix.) already referred to in this chapter, as they
are there reproduced pictorially in Wisdom and Dame Folly sitting at
their respective doors. Wisdom offers long life and happiness:
But he who wandereth from me doeth violence to his own life,
All who hate me love death. (viii. 36.)
Dame Folly tries to turn into her by-path those who are "proceeding
straight in their course" (ix. 15), but her victim--
He knoweth not her phantoms are there,
That her guests are in the underworld. (ix. 18.)
The same Hebrew word Rephaim (phantoms or shades) is used here and
in xxi. 16.
All of these references to death and the underworld (sheol), except
perhaps xiv. 32, refer to the living death, moral and spiritual,
which is of such vast and fundamental significance in Zoroastrian
religion. In this religion the evil power is "all death." The universe
is divided by and into "the living and the not living." [17] "When
these two Spirits came together they made first Life and Death,"--words
sometimes used as synonymous with the "Good and the Evil Mind." Ahura
Mazda representing all the forces that work for health and life,
Angromainyu (Ahriman) all that work for disease and destruction, have
ranged with them all animals and plants, on one side or the other, in
this great conflict. The life of an Ahrimanian creature is "incarnate
death." (Darmesteter's Introduction to the Vendîdâd, v. 11.) His
destructiveness is equally against virtue, wisdom, peace, health,
happiness, life, and all of these, not merely physical dissolution,
are included in his Avestan title, "The Fiend who is all death." He
is the Abaddon of Revelation ix. 11, also he "that had the power of
death" in Hebrews ii. 14, and probably came into both of these from
Proverbs xxvii. 20:
Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied,
And the eyes of man are never satisfied.
Dr. Inman (Ancient Faiths, i., p. 180) connects Abaddon with "Abadan
(cuneiform), the lost one, the sun in winter, or darkness," which
conforms with the Avestan Ahriman, who is emphatically a winter-demon,
his hell being in the north (cf. Jeremiah i. 14 and elsewhere),
and is the natural adversary of the Fire-worshipper.
Among the Zoroastrians there were not only Towers of Silence (Dakhma)
for the literally dead, but also for the confinement of those tainted
by carrying corpses, or by any contact with the death-fiend's empire,
such as being struck with temporary death. "The unclean," says
Darmesteter, "are confined in a particular place, apart from all clean
persons and objects, the Armêst-gâh, which may be described, therefore,
as the Dakhma for the living." Here then are the dead-alive guests of
Dame Folly (Proverbs ix. 15), who opposes Wisdom, as Ahriman created
Akem-Mano (evil thought) to oppose Vohu-Mano (good thought), and here
is the assembly that might give the Solomonic proverb its metaphor:
The man who wandereth from the way of instruction
Shall rest in the congregation of the phantoms (or shades,
Rephaim).
The Zoroastrian books from which I have been quoting contain passages
of very unequal date, but it is the opinion of Avestan scholars that
most of them are from very ancient sources, pre-Solomonic, and there
is no chronological difficulty in supposing that such institutions
as the Armêst-gâh, for the separation of the unclean, should not
have been well known in ancient Jerusalem before the corresponding
levitical laws concerning the unclean and the leprous existed.
The Book of Proverbs was also a growth, and although, as has been
stated, there is reason to regard as later additions most of the
proverbs containing the word Jahveh, as they are inconsistent with the
general ethical tenor of the book, there are several in which that
name is evidently out of place. Even in the editorial Prologue we
can hardly recognize orthodox Jahvism in the conception of a being,
Wisdom, not created by Jahveh yet giving him delight and some kind
of assistance at the creation; and nowhere else in the Old Testament
do we find such an idea as that of xx. 27, "The spirit of a man is
Jahveh's lamp," or in xix. 17:
He who is kind to the poor lendeth to Jahveh,
And his good deed shall be recompensed to him.
But in the Zoroastrian religion men and women render assistance and
encouragement to the gods, and we find the chief deity, Ahura Mazda,
saying to Zoroaster concerning the Fravashis, or souls, of holy
men and women: "Do thou proclaim, O pure Zoroaster, the vigor and
strength, the glory, the help and the joy, that are in the Fravashis
of the faithful ... do thou tell how they came to help me, how they
bring assistance unto me.... Through their brightness and glory,
O Zoroaster, I maintain that sky there above." Favardîn Yast, 1,
2.) As Frederick the Great said, "a king is the chief of subjects,"
so with Zoroaster Ahura Mazda is the chief of the faithful; or,
as Luther said, "God is strong, but he likes to be helped."
The similitude in Proverbs xx. 27 is especially important in our
inquiry:
The spirit of man is the lamp of Jahveh,
Searching all the chambers of the body.
The word for "spirit" here is Nishma, which occurs in but one other
instance in the Bible, namely, in Job xxvi. 4. Job asks:
To whom hast thou uttered words?
And whose spirit came forth from thee?
This chapter of Job (xxvi.) is closely related to Proverbs viii. and
ix., both in thought and phraseology: the Rephaim, or phantoms,
the "pillars," the ordering of earth and clouds, the boundary on
the deep; and there is an allusion to "the confines of Light and
Darkness," which point to the domains of Wisdom and Dame Folly. Job
and the proverbialist surely got these ideas from the same source,
and also the word nishma, translated "spirit," which throughout the
Old Testament is ruach, save in the two texts indicated. But there
is no text in the Bible where ruach, spirit, or soul, is associated
with light like the nishma of the proverb, and in Job nishma evidently
means a superhuman spirit. Now there is a Chaldean word, nisma, which
in the Persian Bundahis appears as nismô, and is translated by West,
"living soul." The ordinary word for soul in the Parsi scriptures
seems to be rûbân, and West regards the two words as meaning the same
thing, the breath, or soul, basing this on the following passage of
the Bundahis, representing the separation of the first mortal into
the first human pair, Mâshya and Mâshyoi:
"And the waists of both were brought close, and so connected
together that it was not clear which is the male and which the
female, and which is the one whose living soul (nismô) of Aûharmazd
(God) is not away (lacking). As it is said thus: 'Which is created
before, the soul (nismô) or the body? And Aûharmazd said that
the soul is created before, and the body after, for him who was
created; it is given unto the body to produce activity, and the
body is created only for activity; hence the conclusion is this,
that the soul (rûbân) is created before and the body after. And
both of them changed from the shape of a plant into the shape of
man, and the breath (nismô) went spiritually into them, which is
the soul (rûbân)." [18]
With all deference to the learned translator, I cannot think his
exegesis here quite satisfactory. In the first sentence nismô is the
breath of God; and although in the second the same word is used for
the human soul, the writer seems to have aimed in the last sentence
at a distinction: the divine breath or spirit (nismô) creates a soul
(rûbân), to receive which the plant is transformed into a body fitted
for the "activity" of an imbreathed soul. West twice translates nismô
"living soul," but rûbân only "soul." Does not this indicate Ahura
Mazda as the source of divine life, as in Genesis ii. 7, where
Jahveh-Elohim breathes into man, who becomes a "living soul,"--a
being within the domain of the god of life, not subject to the god of
death? Is it not his rûbân that is the image of nismô? (Cf. Genesis
ix. 5, 6.)
Turning now to the Avesta, we find the famous Favardin Yast,
a collection of litanies and ascriptions to the Fravashis. "The
Fravashi," says Darmesteter, "is the inner power in every being that
maintains it and makes it grow and subsist. Originally the Fravashis
were the same as the Pitris of the Hindus or the Manes of the Latins,
that is to say, the everlasting and deified souls of the dead;
but in course of time they gained a wider domain, and not only men,
but gods and even physical objects, like the sky and the earth, had
each a Fravashi." "The Fravashi was independent of the circumstances
of life or death, an immortal part of the individual which existed
before man and outlived him."
In Yast xxii. 39, 40, it is said: "O Maker, how do the souls of the
dead, the Fravashis of the holy Ones, manifest themselves?" Ahura
Mazda answered: "They manifest themselves from goodness of spirit
and excellence of mind."
Favardin Yast, 9: "Through their brightness and glory, O Zarathrustra,
I maintain the wide earth," etc. 12: "Had not the awful Fravashis
of the faithful given help unto me, those animals and men of mine,
of which there are such excellent kinds, would not subsist; strength
would belong to the fiend."
In other verses these Fravashis (the word means "protectors") help
the children unborn, nourish health, develop the wise. The imagery
relating to them is largely related to the stars, of which many are
guardians. These are probably the origin of the Solomonic similitude
of reason, "The spirit (nishma) of man is the lamp of----?"
With all of these correspondences between the Solomonic proverbs,
nothing is more remarkable than their originality, so far as
any ancient scriptures are concerned. While they are totally
different from the Psalms, in showing man as a citizen of the world,
relying on himself and those around him for happiness, and exalting
nothing above human virtue and intelligence, without any religious
fervor or wrath, the proverbialist is equally far from the ethical
superstitions of Zoroastrian religion, which abounds in fictitious
"merits" and anathematises fictitious immoralities. It is as if
some sublime Eastern pedlar and banker of ethical and poetic gems,
who had come in contact with Oriental literatures, had separated
from their liturgies and prophecies the nuggets of gold and the
precious stones, polishing, resetting, and exciting others to do the
like. At the same time many of the sentences are the expressions of
an original mind, a man of letters, neither Eastern nor Oriental,
and these may be labelled with the line of the Persian poet Faizi:
"Take Faizi's Díwán to bear witness to the wonderful speeches of a
freethinker who belongs to a thousand sects."