POSTSCRIPTA.
Early in the year 1896 a company of Jews performed at the Novelty
Theatre, London, in the Hebrew language, a drama entitled "King
Solomon." It was an humble affair, and only about three score
in the audience--I and one very dear to me being apparently the
only "Gentiles" present. The drama was mainly the legend of the
Judgment of Solomon and that of the visit of the Queen of Sheba, both
conventionalized, and performed in an automatic way, no spark of human
passion or emotion animating either of the women claiming the babe,
or the Queen of Sheba. The part of Solomon was acted by a fine-looking
man, who went through it in the same perfunctory way that characterized
Joseph Meyer, the Oberammergau Christ, as he appears to the undevout
critical eye. Such has the biblical Solomon become in Europe.
In the same week I attended a matinée of "Aladdin" in Drury Lane
Theatre, which was crowded, mainly with children, who were filled
with delight by the fairy play. The leading figures were elaborated
from Solomonic lore. A beautiful being in dazzling white raiment
and crown appears to Aladdin; she is a combination of the Queen
of Sheba and Wisdom; she presents the youth with a ring (symbol of
Solomon's espousal with Wisdom, or as the Abyssinians say, with the
Queen of Sheba); by means of this ring he obtains the Wonderful Lamp
(the reflected or terrestrial wisdom). An Asmodeus, well versed in
modern jugglery, charms the audience with his tricks and antics,
before proceeding to get hold of the magic ring of Aladdin, and
commanding the lamp, which he succeeds in doing, as he succeeded with
Solomon. This is what legendary Solomon has become in Europe.
In European Folklore, Solomon and his old adversary, Asmodeus, now
better known as Mephistopheles, have long been blended. Solomon's seal
was the mediæval talisman to which the demon eagerly responds. The
Wisdom involved is all a matter of magic. It is wonderful that
so little recognition has been given in literature to the epical
dignity and beauty of the biblical legends of Solomon. In early
English literature there was at one time a tendency to ascribe to
Solomon various proverbs not in the Bible. In one old manuscript he
is credited with saying:
"Save a thief from the gallows and he'll help to hang thee."
Also,
"Many a one leads a hungry life,
And yet must needs wed a wife."
In Chaucer's "Melibæus" there are ten proverbs ascribed to Solomon
which are not in the Bible. But generally it is Solomon the magician
who has interested the poets. In the old work, "Salomon and Saturn,"
the wise man informs Saturn that the most potent of all talismans is
the Bible:
"Golden is the Word of God,
Stored with gems;
It hath silver leaves;
Each one can,
Through spiritual grace
A Gospel relate."
And it is further said, "Each (leaf) will subdue devils." In a
profounder vein Solomon says: "All Evil is from Fate; yet a wise-minded
man may moderate every fate with self-help, help of friends, and the
divine spirit."
In Prospero burying his Book, Shakespeare seems to have followed
the rabbinical legend that after Solomon by his written formulas had
made the devils serve him, in building the temple and other works,
he resolved to practice magic no more, and buried his book. But the
devils said to the people, "he only ruled you by his book," and pointed
out where it was hidden; so they left the prophets and followed magic.
At what time the notion arose that Solomon had demonic familiars does
not appear, but the story in 1 Kings iii. of the gift of wisdom has
some appearance of a reclamation for the deity of a credit that was
popularly ascribed to a rival power. However this may be, there is
a popular habit of tracing unusual human performances to Satan. As I
write this paragraph (in Paris) I note a theatrical placard announcing
"les sataniques devins" of Williany de Torre, a man who cries out the
name and address you secretly select in the Paris Directory. Why not
advertise the divinations as "angelic" instead of satanic? The heavenly
beings have somehow no great reputation for cleverness. Probably
this is due to the long association of intellectuality and science
with heresy.
The late Lord Lytton ("Owen Meredith") wrote a brief poem on a
version given him by Robert Browning of the story in my Preface,
of Solomon leaning on his staff long after he was dead: a worm gnaws
the end of the staff and Solomon falls, crumbled to dust, and nothing
left visible but his crown. A poem by Leigh Hunt, "The Inevitable"
(in some editions, "The Angel of Death"), tells of a man who, in
terror of Death, entreats Solomon to transport him to the remotest
mountain of Cathay. Solomon does so.
"Solomon wished and the man vanished straight;
Up comes the Terror, with his orbs of fate:
'Solomon,' with a lofty voice said he,
'How came that man here, wasting time with thee?
I was to fetch him ere the close of day,
From the remotest mountain of Cathay.'
Solomon said, bowing him to the ground,
'Angel of death, there will the man be found.'"
The story of the Fall of Man, in Genesis, so fascinated Schopenhauer
that he was ready to forgive the Bible all its blunders. The whole
world, said the great pessimist, looks like a vast accumulation of
evil developed from some absurdly small misstep. And this misstep
was precisely in accord with the philosophy of Schopenhauer, who says
that the great mistake of the universe is "consciousness."
That there were Schopenhaueresque ideas among some of the Solomonic
school may be seen in Koheleth (Ecclesiastes), who says, "Be not
overwise; why commit suicide?" (vii. 16.) I have remarked elsewhere
that the story of the serpent in Eden may have been put there as a
fling at Solomon and the scientific people, but on the other hand it
may be argued that it was a fable devised by the Solomonic school
to show how Jahveh was outwitted in his attempt to breed a race of
idiots, for fear mankind might become as clever as himself. For it
was not the serpent that deceived Adam and Eve, but Jahveh, in saying
the forbidden fruit was fatal; the serpent told them the truth.
The folk-tale that Solomon's staff was gnawed by a worm, and his
crowned body reduced to dust, suggests the idea of grandeur laid low
by some insignificant form, and in the same way Jahveh's creation was
overthrown by a worm. This humiliation of Jahveh has been now somewhat
lessened by the theory that Satan took the form of the serpent,
which Dante calls the worm, but nowhere in the Bible is there any
confusion of the reptile in Eden with any devil. "If," says Kalisch,
"the serpent represented Satan it would be extremely surprising that
the former only was cursed, and that the latter is not even alluded
to." In Genesis the extreme cleverness of the serpent is recognized,
and the truth of his statement to Eve admitted, while Jahveh is shown
in the ridiculous light of having his deception about the fruit exposed
by a worm, and betaking himself to curses all round. These be thy gods,
O Christians--for the Jews absolutely ignored the tale in all their
scriptures, and in the New Testament Paul alone alludes to it. [57]
The serpent in Eden is evidently the symbol of wisdom, of medical
art--Egyptian, Phoenician, Greek--lifted in the wilderness by Moses,
and recognised by Jesus ("Be wise as serpents"), with whom as an
uplifted healer of mankind the serpent-symbol was associated. But all
of this is in contradiction to the curses of Jahveh on the serpent,
and on those to whom the serpent brought wisdom. The fable, therefore,
seems to be composed of two antagonistic parts; it is a Solomonic
anti-Jahvist fable with an anti-Solomonic moral.
In the Parsî religion the fall of man was due to the first man
having been deceived by the Evil One into ascribing the good things
in creation to him--the Evil One.
In the same way the Christian ascribes to the Evil One man's first
taste of wisdom--the knowledge of good and evil--and believes his
first step above the brute to be a fall.
In the Parsî religion that fall of man, by a lie, was recovered from
by the creation of a new man. But in Christendom man has not recovered
from his fall, nor can he ever recover from it so long as he disregards
the new man's word, "Be wise as serpents," and continues to confuse
his wisdom with diabolism.
Only through the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and of the
eternal antagonism between them, can the tree of Life be reached.
In a Gnostic legend Solomon was summoned from his tomb and asked,
"Who first named the name of God?" He answered, "The Devil."
Did reason permit belief in a personal devil, one might recognise
his supreme artifice in thus sheltering all the desolating cruelties
of men, all the discords and wars that have degraded mankind into
nations glorying in their ensigns of inhumanity, under a divine
order. Thenceforth the enemy of man became God's Devil, and whoso
accuses the scourges of man accuses the scourges of God.
Under the teaching of the Second Solomon his personal friends could see
in his tragical death a blow of the Devil aimed at God, who was trying
to subdue that lawless one, for whose existence or actions God was in
no sense responsible. But this was a transient glimpse. The Devil's
God was soon seen on his throne above the murderers of the great man;
the stake set up by the lynchers was shaped into a symbolical cross;
and all the cowardly, treacherous, murderous leaders, and the vile
lynchers, are raised into agents and priests of God, presiding at a
solemn rite and sacrifice for the salvation of mankind.
Instead of salvation a curse fell on mankind with that lie, and there
are no signs of recovery from it. By the combination of Church and
State there has been evolved a new man--a Christian restoration of
deceived Yima--and no theological development touches that misbeliever
in every believer. The Unitarian, the Theist, in their doctrine of a
divine cosmos, the optimist, the pantheist, do but rehabilitate and
philosophically reinvest the lie that the diseases and agonies in
nature and in history are parts of a divinely ordered universe. They,
too, must see Judas and the lynchers carrying out the plans of
God. What then can they say of our contemporary betrayers of justice,
the national lynchers, who are crucifying humanity throughout the
world? These, too, carrying along their missionaries, are projecting
God into history! But it is the God who was first named by the Devil,
as the risen Solomon said, not the "Eloi," the source only of good,
whom the great friend of man saw not in all that wild chaos of violence
amid which he perished, and his sublime religion with him.
When Jahveh swears "by his holiness" (as in Ps. lxxxix. 35, Amos
iv. 2), this holiness is not to be interpreted as moral, or in any
human sense. It relates to ancient philosophical ideas concerning
the spiritual and the material worlds. The supreme head of the
spiritual world is so far above the material world in majesty that
he cannot come in contact with matter, though this august "holiness"
has nothing to do with his moral character. Indeed deities were in all
countries considered quite above the moral obligations of men. Jahveh's
"holiness" required the employment of mediators in creation--the Spirit
of God brooding over the waters, Wisdom the "undefiled" master-builder,
the Word--in each of whom is some image of his quasi-physiological
"holiness," his transcendent immateriality.
It was amid these ancient conceptions that the various cults arose
which attempt to please and conciliate gods by ceremonial observances,
runes, recited formulas of petition or adulation, all based on the
awful "holiness" that doth hedge about a god, and concerned with
points of heavenly etiquette, without any implication of a moral
nature in those distant celestial beings. In Euripides' "Iphigenia"
(line 20) it is said: "Sometimes the worship of the gods, not being
conducted with exactness, overturns one's life." In the same vein
Koheleth (Ecclesiastes, v. 1, 2): "Keep thy foot when thou goest into
the house of God; for to draw nigh to him with attention is better
than to bring the sacrifices of fools who know not that they are
(? may be) doing wrong. Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thy
heart be hasty to utter a word before God; for God is in heaven,
and thou on earth; therefore let thy words be few."
But in every race ethical development reaches a stage in which
these majestic beings, concerned only about their worship according
to etiquette, are challenged. Thus in the "Cyclops" of Euripides
(xxxv. 3-5), Ulysses says: "O Jove, guardian of strangers, behold
these things; for if thou regardest them not, thou, Jove, being nought,
art vainly esteemed a god."
From the first Solomon to the last, the whole intellectual development
in Judea, which I have called Solomonic, means the subjection of
all conceptions of the divine nature and laws to the moral sentiment
and the reason of man. It was no denial of invisible beings, or of
man's relation to the universe, but a demand that all definitions
and conceptions should be approached through science, experience
and wisdom.
Solomon, and the Second Solomon, rest in their unknown graves; their
wisdom is corrupted; but their genius survives in the earth. Of old
it was said God looked down from heaven on the children of men, and
found that there was "none that doeth good, no not one." But it is
now man who, with eyes illumined by the brave and cultured Solomons
of all lands and ages, looks upon the gods to see if there be one
that doeth good. The best of them are defended only by a plea that
evil is the mask of their benevolence. But it is not humanly moral
to do evil that good may come.
Our great Omar Khayyám, by Fitzgerald's help, says:
"O Thou, who Man of baser earth didst make,
And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake:
For all the Sin wherewith the face of Man
Is blacken'd--Man's forgiveness give--and take!"
The agreement may be fair enough so far as it concerns Sin, in the
theological sense, but no Omnipotence, with unlimited choice of means
to ends, could be forgiven for the agonies of nature, even did they
result in benefits,--as generally they do not, so far as is known to
the experience of mankind.
It may be, as the American orator said, "An honest god's the noblest
work of man"; and innumerable hearts enshrine fair personal ideals
under uncomprehended names for deity; but each such private ideal is
unconsciously antagonistic to every "collectivist" deity to whom the
creation or the government of the world is ascribed.
The human heart kneels before its vision, and with Mary Magdalene
cries Rabboni, My Master; but Theology recognizes only the perfunctory
Rabbi, and carries her beloved off into union with thunder-god,
war-god, or with a deified predatory Cosmos. Yet will not the heart
be bereaved of its vision; it still sees a smile of tenderness in the
universe. And philosophy, though it regard that smile as a reflection
of the heart's own love, may with all the more certainty itself find
a religion in this maternal divinity in the earth, ever aspiring to
its own supreme humanity.
Solomon passes, Jesus passes, but the Wisdom they loved as Bride,
as Mother, abides, however veiled in fables. She is still inspiring
the unfinished work of creation, and her delight is with the children
of men.
NOTES
[1] The name given to him in 2 Sam. xii. 25, Jedidiah ("beloved of
Jah"), by the prophet of Jahveh, is, however, an important item in
considering the question of an actual monarch behind the allegorical
name, especially as the writer of the book, in adding "for Jahveh's
sake" seems to strain the sense of the name--somewhat as the name
"Jesus" is strained to mean saviour in Matt. i. 21. Jedidiah looks
like a Jahvist modification of a real name (see p. 20).
[2] This was continued in rabbinical and Persian superstitions, which
attribute to David knowledge of the language of birds. It is said
David invented coats of mail, the iron becoming as wax in his hands;
he subjected the winds to Solomon, and also a pearl-diving demon.
[3] Sacred Books of the East. Edited by F. Max Müller. Vol. IV. The
Zend-Avesta. Part I. The Vendîdâd. Translated by James
Darmesteter. P. lix., et seq.
[4] "Ammon" probably developed the name "Amîna," given in the Talmud
as the name of a favorite concubine of Solomon, to whom, while he
was bathing, he entrusted his signet ring, and from whom the Devil,
Sakhar, obtained it by appearing to her in the shape of Solomon. This
is the version referred to in the Koran, chapter xxxviii. (Sale.)
[5] The marriage of Hadad with Pharaoh's sister and that of Solomon
shortly after with Pharaoh's daughter might naturally, Colenso says,
lead to some amicable arrangement between these two young princes,
representing respectively the ancient domains of Jacob and Esau, and
the Bishop adds the pregnant suggestion: "Thus also would be explained
another phenomenon in connexion with this matter, which we observe
in the Jehovistic portions of Genesis--viz., the reconciliation of
Esau and Jacob" (Gen. xxxiii). That Solomon was on good terms with
Edom appears by the fact that his naval station was in that land
(1 K. ix. 26).
[6] The Bible, the Church, and the Reason, p. 137, n. Dr. Briggs
points out citations from the book of Jasher in Num. xxi., Jos. x.,
and 2 Sam. 1, where a dirge of David is given, and adds: "The book
of Jasher containing poems of David and Solomon could not have
been written before Solomon." The bearing of this on the age of the
Hexateuch, in its present form, is obvious.
[7] Ursprung der Sagen von Abraham, Isaak und Jakob. Kritische
Untersuchung von A. Bernstein. Berlin. 1871.
[8] The marriage is doubtful: "He took her and went in to her"
(Gen. xxxviii. 2).
[9] The Sceptics of the Old Testament, pp. 149, 155.
[10] It may be mentioned that the Moslem name for the Queen of Sheba
is Balkis, which points to the great Zoroastrian city of Balkh, near
which are the Seven Rivers (Saba' Sin), whose confluence makes the
Balkh (Oxus), with whose sands gold is mingled. (Cf. Psalm lxxii. 15.)
[11] In many places in the Avesta (e. g., Sîrôzah i. 2) a distinction
is drawn between "the heavenly wisdom made by Mazda, and the acquired
wisdom through the ear made by Mazda." Darmesteter says: "Asnya khratu,
the inborn intellect, intuition, contrasted with gaoshô-srûta khratu,
the knowledge acquired by hearing and learning. There is between the
two nearly the same relation as between the parâvidyâ and aparâvidyâ in
Brahmanism, the former reaching Brahma in se (parabrahma), the latter
sabdabrahma, the word-brahma (Brahma as taught and revealed)." (Sacred
Books of the East, Vol. XXIII., p. 4.)
[12] Sacred Books of the East. Vol. XVIII. Pahlavi Texts tr. by
West. The text quoted above (from p. 415) is of uncertain age, but it
is harmonious with the more ancient scriptures, and no doubt compiled
from them.
[13] Among the cultured Jews, just before our era, there was a
recognition of the equality of men, as is seen in the Wisdom of Solomon
vii. 1, "I myself am a mortal man, like to all, and the offspring of
him that was first made of the earth." Solomon ascribes his superiority
only to the divine gift of wisdom. This idea of human equality was in
the preaching of John the Baptist (Matt. iii. 9)--probably a Parsi
heretic, at any rate an apostle of purifying water and fire--and it
underlay the title of Jesus, "Son of Man." That in Armaîti there was
a conception of a humanity not represented by race but by character
and culture will appear by a comparison with the Vedic Aramati, a
bride of Agni (Fire) to whom she is mythologically related, on the
one hand, and on the other to the spirit of the earth who came to the
assistance of Buddha. This story, related in many forms, is that when
the evil Mâra, having tempted Buddha in vain, brought his hosts to
terrify him, all friends forsook him, and no angel came to help him,
but the spirit of the earth, which he had watered, arose as a fair
woman, who from her long hair wrung out the water Buddha had bestowed
which became a flood and swept away the evil host. Watering the Earth
is especially mentioned in the Avesta as that which makes her rejoice,
and marks the holy man.
[14] Even in the legend in Genesis ii. the "rib" is a
misunderstanding. Eve (Chavah) was the female side of Adam, which was
the name of both male and female (Gen. v. 2). The "rib" story arose no
doubt from the supposition that Adam's allusion to "bone of my bone"
had something to do with it. But Adam's phrase is an idiom meaning only
"Thou art the same as I am." (Max Müller's Science of Religion, p. 47.)
[15] These two, darkness and the brooding spirit, may seem to be
related to the raven and the dove sent out of the ark by Noah, but
this account only indicates the origin of the story of the Deluge;
for the raven was in Persia an emblem of victory, and in the Biblical
legend it was the only living creature that defied the Deluge and was
able to do without the ark. In the corresponding legend in the Avesta,
where King Yima makes an enclosure (Vara) for the shelter of the seeds
of all living creatures, the heavenly bird Karshipta brings into that
refuge the law of Ahura Mazda, and as the song of this bird was the
voice of Ahura Mazda, it may have been an idealised dove
("For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone....
The voice of the turtle is heard in the land.")
But when Yima lent himself to the lies of the Evil One his (Yima's)
"glory" left him in the form of a raven (Zambâd Yast, 36). But both
the raven and the dove were tribal ensigns, and it is not safe to
build too much on what is said of them in Eastern and Oriental books.
[16] See my Sacred Anthology, p. 240.
[17] Gaya and ajyâiti, translated by Haug "reality and unreality"
(Parsis, p. 303). The translation "living and not living" was sent
me by Prof. Max Müller in answer to a request for a careful rendering.
[18] Sacred Books of the East, Vol. V., pp. 16, 53-54. Text and notes.
[19] American Journal of Philology. Vol. III.
[20] In 1 Chron. iii. 19 Shelomith is a descendant of Solomon. In these
studies "Abishag the Shunamith," 1 Kings i. 2, has been conjecturally
connected with Psalm xlv., and the identity of her name with Shulamith
has also been mentioned. This identity of the names was suggested by
Gesenius and accepted by Fürst, Renan, and others. Abishag is thus
also a sort of "Solomona." In 1 Kings i. there is some indication of
a lacuna between verses 4 and 5. "And the damsel (Abishag) was very
fair; and she cherished the King and ministered to him; but the King
knew her not. Then"--what? why, all about Adonijah's effort to become
king! David did not marry Abishag; she remained a maiden after his
death and free to wed either of the brothers. The care with which
this is certified was probably followed by some story either of her
cleverness or of her relations with Solomon which gave her the name
Shunamith--Shulamith--Solomona. Of the Shunamith it is said they found
her far away and "brought her to the King," and in the beginning of the
Song Shulamith says "The King hath brought me into his chambers." This
suggests a probability of legends having arisen concerning Abishag,
and concerning the lady entreated in Psalm xlv., which, had they
been preserved, might perhaps account for the coincidence of names,
as well as the parallelism of the situations at court of the lady of
the psalm, of Abishag the Shunamith, and of Shulamith in the "song."
The "great woman" called Shunamith in 2 Kings 4 was probably so
called because of her "wisdom" in discerning the prophet Elisha,
and the reference to the town of Shunem (verse 8) inserted by a
writer who misunderstood the meaning of Shunamith. This story is
unknown to Josephus, though he tells the story of the widow's pot of
oil immediately preceding, in the same chapter, and asserts that he
has gone over the acts of Elisha "particularly," "as we have them set
down in the sacred books." (Antiquities. Book ix. ch. 4.) The chapter
(2 Kings iv.) is mainly a mere travesty of the stories told in 1 Kings
xvii., transparently meant to certify that the miraculous power of
Elijah had passed with his mantle to Elisha. There is no mention of
Shunem in the original legend. (1 Kings xvii.)
[21] Compare Psalm xlv. 12-15.
[22] 1. "Why will ye look upon Shulamith as upon the dance of
Mahanaim?" The sense is obscure. Cf. Gen. xxxii. 2, where Jacob names
a place Mahanaim, literally two armies or camps; but it was in honor
of the angels that met him there, and it is possible that Shulamith
is here compared to an angel. If the verse means any blush at the
dancer's display of her person it is the only trace of prudery in
the book, and betrays the Alexandrian.
[23] Job and Solomon, or the Wisdom of the Old Testament. By
T. K. Cheyne. (1887.) Those who wish to study the Solomonic literature
should read this excellent work. It is very probable, although
Professor Cheyne does not suggest this, that a dramatic "Morality"
from which Job was evolved, was imported by Solomon along with the
gold of Ophir from some Oriental land.
[24] Bath Kol,--"daughter of a voice."
[25] This may, however, have been flotsam from the Orient. Mahanshadha,
a sort of Solomon in Buddhist tales (see ante chap. ii), had a
wonderful parrot, Charaka, which he employed as a spy. It revealed
to him the plot to poison King Janaka, whose chief Minister he
was. (Tibetan Tales, p. 168.)
[26] M. Didron (Christian Iconography, Bohn's ed., i., p. 464) mentions
a picture of the thirteenth century in which the dove moving over
the face of the waters (Gen. 1) is black, God not having yet created
light. It may be, however, that the mediæval idea was that the Holy
Ghost, as a heavenly spy, was supposed to assume the color of the
night in order to detect the deeds done in darkness without itself
being seen. In later centuries this dark dove was shown at the ear
of magicians and idols, the inspirer of prophets and saints being
the white dove.
[27] The amorous relations between Ahuramazda, the deity, and Armaîti,
genius of the earth, are referred to ante Chap. VIII., in a passage
from West's Palahvi Texts. In the Vendîdâd she is sometimes called
his daughter.
[28] Cf. Gospel of Peter: "They behold three men coming out of the
tomb, and the two supporting the one, and the cross following them,
and the heads of the two reached to the heavens, and that of him who
was being led went above the heavens."
[29] Invoke, O Zoroaster, the powerful Spirit (Wind) formed by
Mazda (Light) and Spenta Armaîti (earth-mother), the fair daughter
of Ahuramazda. Invoke, O Zoroaster, my Fravashi (deathless past),
who am Ahuramazda, greatest, fairest, most solid, most intelligent,
best shapen, highest in purity, whose soul is the holy Word.
"Invoke Mithra (descending light), the lord of wide pastures, a god
armed with beautiful weapons, with the most glorious of all weapons,
with the most fiend-smiting of all weapons.
"Invoke the most holy glorious word."--Zendavesta. (Vend. Farg. xix. 2)
[30] Since this work was sent to the press the world has been enriched
by Dr. McGiffert's "History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age." He
pronounces the unknown author of the Epistle to the Hebrews "without
doubt the finest and most cultured literary genius of the primitive
church," but believes the Epistle to be somewhat later than those of
Paul. He thinks its detailed description of proceedings in the temple
might have been written after its destruction, as Clement's account
was, and remarks that the writer always calls it the "tabernacle." This
peculiarity I attribute to the emphasis in the "Wisdom of Solomon"
on the temple being "a resemblance of the holy tabernacle which thou
hast prepared from the beginning" (ix. 8). It seems unlikely that
the Epistle could have said "the priests go in continually" etc.,
had the temple not existed. Dr. McGiffert finds in some expressions
indications that there were Gentiles among those to whom the Epistle
was addressed, but even admitting this it is natural to suppose that
there must have been some fellowship of this kind among educated people
before Paul's propaganda. The passages referred to by Dr. McGiffert,
if they imply what he supposes, render it all the more improbable
that if Paul and his mission to the Gentiles preceded this Epistle,
there should be no allusion to them in it.
[31] Thus spake Angra Mainyu, the guileful, the evil-doer, the
deadly, "Fiend rush down upon him, destroy the holy Zoroaster!" The
fiend came rushing; along, the demon Bûiti, the unseen death,
the hell-born. Zoroaster chanted loudly the Ahuna-Vairya: "The
will of the Lord is the law of holiness; the riches of Vohu-manô
(heavenly wisdom) shall be given to him who works in this world
for God (Mazda), and wields according to the all-knowing (Ahura)
the power he gave him to relieve the poor. Profess (O Fiend) the law
of God!" The fiend dismayed rushed away, and said to Angra Mainyu
"O baneful Angra Mainyu, I see no way to kill him, so great is the
glory of the holy Zoroaster." Zoroaster saw all this from within his
soul: "The evil-doing devils and demons take counsel together for
my death." Up started Zoroaster, forward went Zoroaster, unshaken
by the evil spirit. "O evil-doer, Angra Mainyu. I will smite the
creation of the Evil One (Daeva) till the fiend-smiter Saoshyant
(Saviour) come up to life out of the lake Kasava, from the region
of the dawn."--Vendîdâd, Farg. xix, 1-5. (Sacred Books of the East,
Vol. iv. pp. 204-6.)
The Ahuna-Vairya, recited by Zoroaster, was the prayer by which
Ormazd in his first conflict with Ahreinan drove him back to hell.
[32] Sacred Books of the East, Vol. xxiii. p. 59.
[33] It is even doubtful whether they were not ordered to offer burnt
offerings to Job as a deity.
[34] It is, I think, an indication of the nearness of the "Gospel
according to the Hebrews" to the Apostolic Age that a sort of
caveat is there recorded against the possible implication that
the baptism of Jesus was for remission of sins. "He said to them,
Wherein have I sinned that I should go and be baptized by him?" The
whole passage is quoted on a farther page, but it may be stated here
that the descending dove certifies the sinlessness of Jesus before
his baptism. The Synoptics introduce the dove after the baptism. The
significance of the scene was thus lost.
[35] It is doubtful whether this can be regarded as historical. The
"clear beforehand" (prodêlon) renders it more probable that it is
a reference to Ps. lxxviii. 67, 68. "He refused the tent of Joseph,
and chose not the tribe of Ephraim, but chose the tribe of Judah," etc.
[36] The King of Sodom came out to Abram at the same time, but no
proper name is assigned him.
[37] The "Salem" of Gen. xiv. 18, and the "Shalem" of Gen. xxiii. 18,
are evidently competitive. Also Jacob's naming his altar
"El-Elohe-Israel" seems an answer to Abraham's "El-Elyôn," as if saying
that the latter was not the God of Israel. It is even possible that
the name "Luz" (Gen. xxviii. 19) changed to Beth-El, after Jacob's
vision of the Ladder and setting up the pillar there, is meant to
correspond with the "oaks of Mamre" (Gen. xiv. 13), where Abram dwelt
when he was met by the priest of El Elyôn. For Abram had also built
an altar at some place called Beth-El (Gen. xiii. 3) where he called
on the name of the Lord and received a promise that his seed should be
"as the dust of the earth," which is verbatim the promise made to Jacob
at his Beth-El (Gen. xxviii. 14). Now Abram next moves his tent to the
"oak of Mamre" in Hebron (Gen. xiii. 18), and the Hebrew word for oak
is Elah, or Eylon. The unusual name for the deity of both Abram and
Melchizedek, El-Elyon, was probably selected because of its resemblance
to the sacred oak or Elah of that place, and Jacob's El-Elohe-Israel
was no doubt meant to invest his deity with the same sanctity. Now
"Luz" also means a tree,--almond-tree,--and was also a name of the
Assyrian goddess Ishtar. The oak was associated also with Jacob,
who buried beneath it the idols of his household (Gen. xxxv. 1-9)
immediately before setting up his altar at Luz (the almond).
[38] It may be said in passing, that the legend in Gen. xiv., as was
first pointed out in Calmet, bears some resemblance to the Hindu myth
of Soma, a lunar being, who discovered the juice of the sacred Soma
plant (Asclepias acida), called "the king of plants." Soma was the
most sacred sacrifice to the gods, as a juice; it had the intoxicating
effect of wine; and the lunar being, Soma, was believed to be still
alive, though invisible, and is the chief of the sacerdotal tribe
to this day. In the Vishnu Purana, Soma is called "the monarch of
Brahmans." He was the Hindu Bacchus, and is regarded as the guardian of
healing plants and constellations. Melchizedek, offering wine to, and
as priest of God Most High receiving tribute from, the "High Father"
(Abram), thus bears some resemblance to Soma, the sacerdotal moon-god;
and those who care to study the matter further may be reminded that in
Babylonian mythology Malkit seems to be a "Queen of Heaven" (moon),
and is connected by Goldziher (Heb. Myth.) with Milka (Abram's
sister-in-law), whom he supposes to have the same meaning. It
is remarkable, by the way, that the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews, in telling the story of Abram and Melchizedek minutely and
critically, omits the offering of bread and wine. This is not only
an indication that the Epistle was written as already said, before
Paul's institution of the eucharist (1 Cor. x., xi.), but suggests
that the writer may have suspected the offerings as pagan. The Soma
juice was sacred also in Persia, and is the Hôm of the Avesta. Ewald
says of the story in Gen. xiv., "The whole narrative looks like a
fragment torn from a more general history of Western Asia, merely on
account of the mention of Abraham contained in it." (Hist. of Israel,
p. 308. London, 1867.) And finally it may be noted that among the
kings Abram smote, just before meeting Melchizedek, was Chedorlaomer,
King of Elam. Elam is south of Assyria and east of Persia proper; if
he fought Abram near Jerusalem, Chedorlaomer was about one thousand
miles from his kingdom, Elam. Probably it was not he but a name and
legend of his kingdom that drifted into Jewish folklore.
[39] The name Jesus is used in these pages for the man, Christ being
used for the supernatural or risen being.
[40] About 1832 the Rev. Ralph Waldo Emerson notified his congregation
in Boston (Unitarian) that he could no longer administer the "Lord's
Supper," and near the same time the Rev. W. J. Fox took the same
course at South Place Chapel, London. The Boston congregation clung
to the sacrament, and gave up their minister to mankind. The London
congregation gave up the sacrament, and there was substituted for
it the famous South Place Banquet, which was attended by such men as
Leigh Hunt, Mill, Thomas Campbell, Jerrold, and such women as Harriet
Martineau, Eliza Flower, Sarah Flower Adams (who wrote "Nearer, My
God, To Thee"). The speeches and talk at this banquet were of the
highest character, and the festival was no doubt nearer in spirit to
the supper of Jesus and his friends than any sacrament.
[41] Dr. Nicholson's "The Gospel According to the Hebrews," p. 60. In
all of my references to this Gospel I depend on this learned and very
useful work.
[42] It has always been a condition of missionary propagandise that
the new religion must adopt in some form the popular festivals,
cherished observances and talismans of the folk. It will be seen
by 1 Cor. x. 14-22 that Paul's eucharist was only a competitor with
existing eucharist, with their "cup of devils," as he calls it.
[43] Ormazd entrusted Zoroaster for seven days with omniscience, during
which time he saw, besides many other things, "a celebrity with much
wealth, whose soul, infamous in the body, was hungry and jaundiced
and in hell ... and I saw a beggar with no wealth and helpless,
and his soul was thriving in paradise."--Bahman Yast. Sacred Books
of the East, Vol. V. p. 197.
[44] Nicholson's "Gospel According to the Hebrews," pp. 36-43.
[45] Sacred Books of the East, Vol. iv, p. 206.
[46] In the apocryphal book, "Bel and the Dragon" (verse 36), the angel
thus bore by the hair Habakkuk to Babylon, and set him over the lion's
den where Daniel was confined. Habakkuk means the "embrace of love."
[47] I observed in the play at Oberammergau that while the disciples
were barefoot, Jesus wore fine white silk stockings, and was otherwise
in richer costume.
[48] On a very ancient sarcophagus in the Museo Gregoriano, Rome,
is represented in bas-relief the raising of Lazarus. Christ appears
beardless and equipped with a wand in the received guise of a
necromancer, while the corpse of Lazarus is swathed in bandages
exactly as an Egyptian mummy.--King's Gnostics, p. 145.
[49] Renan suggested that Jesus and his friends at Bethany arranged a
pretended death and resurrection of Lazarus. This seems inconsistent
with the absence of any allusion to it or to Lazarus in the Epistles,
and also with the evident relation of the narrative to the parable. It
looks more as if the parable of Lazarus and the rich man had been
dramatized and the return of Lazarus from "Abraham's bosom" added. At
every step in the narrative (John xi.) there is a suggestion of some
old "mystery-play" fossilized into prosaic literalism.
[50] This is the genuine sense of the story in Acts xiii. There
is no evidence in Paul's writings that he ever bore the name of
Saul. Bar-Jesus has a double meaning,--"Son of Jesus" and "Obstruction
of Jesus." The antithesis may have been suggested by the words of
Pilate, in many ancient versions of Matt, xxvii. 16, 17: "Whether of
the twain will ye that I release unto you? Jesus Bar Abbas, or Jesus
that is called the Christ?" Elymas, commonly used as a proper name,
means Wise Man. The word magoi denotes Wise Men in Matt. ii. 1, where
they bring gifts to the infant Christ, but the same word is made by
translators to denote a "sorcerer" when the wise man is opposing
Paul! Nobody named Sergius Paulus was known before the Consul of
A.D. 94, who must have been long enough dead for this legend to form
before it was written.
[51] "Boast not of thy clothing and raiment, and exalt not thyself in
the day of honor: for the works of the Lord (in nature) are wonderful,
and his works among (wise) men are hidden."--Ecclus. xi. 4; cf.,
in same, xvi. 26-27, where it is said the beautiful things in nature
"neither labor, nor are weary nor cease from their works."
[52] Ewald compares the omission of the name of Moses for so many
centuries with the omission of Solomon's name. (Geschichte des Volkes
Israel, Bk. ii.). Such omissions do not, he says, cast doubt on the
historic character of either. The descriptive references to Solomon
during the time when his name is suppressed are more continuous,
and more historical. The utterance of Solomon's name was probably at
first avoided through Jahvist horror of his supposed idolatry and
worldliness, but as he was addressed in a psalm as "God," and as
superstitions about his demon-commanding power grew, it seems not
improbable that there was some fear of using his name, akin to the
fear of uttering the proper name of God or of any evil power.
[53] It is shocking to find this woman named as Mary Magdalene in
the "Harmony of the Gospels," appended to the Revised Bible. This
deliberate falsehood is carefully elaborated by separating the story
as told in Matthew and Mark as another incident, under the heading,
"Mary anoints Jesus."
[54] In the newly-found tablet to which English editors give the title
"Logia Jesou," the 5th "Logion," so far as it can be made out, reads:
"... saith where there are ... and there is one alone ... I am with
him. Raise the stone and there thou shalt find me, cleave the wood
and there am I." The last sentence seems to be based on Eccles. x. 9:
"Whoso removeth stones shall be hurt therewith; and he that cleaveth
wood shall be endangered thereby." The first sentence may be an
allusion to the poor man who alone saved the city (Eccles. ix.). There
is no such word as "Jesus" in this "Logion," and perhaps it is Wisdom
who speaks.
[55] Asmodeus (identified as Aêshma by West, Bundahis xxv. 15, n. 10)
has (Tobit vi. 13) slain seven men who successively married Sara,
whom he (and Tobit) loved, and in Bundahis Aêshma has seven powers
with which he will slay seven Kayan heroes. But one is preserved, as
Tobit is. (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. V, p. 108.) Darmesteter says:
"One of the foremost amongst the Drvants (storm-fiends), their leader
in their onsets, is Aêshma, 'the raving,' 'a fiend with the wounding
spear.' Originally a mere epithet of the storm fiend, Aêshma was
afterwards converted into an abstract, the demon of rage and anger, and
became an expression for all moral wickedness, a mere name of Ahriman."
[56] The word translated "cross" is stauros, a stake. The christian
cross began its development by the carving of a figure of Jesus on
the stake, which required a support for the arms. Protestantism,
by removing the figure, has left the wooden fetish, which, however,
has been invested with Symbolical meanings, some derived from the
various crosses held sacred in many countries long before Christ.
[57] Paul (1 Tim. ii. 14), supposing him to have written the passage,
uses the story simply to justify the subordination of woman to man,
but a witty lady remarked to me that according to the story in Genesis
no harm came to the world by Eve's eating the fruit of knowledge. It
was only by the man's eating it that the thorns sprang up.