Part 19 (2/2)
14. It is interesting to observe how Philo of Alexandria contrasts those who join the Jewish faith with those who have become apostates. The former, he says, become at once prudent, temperate, modest, gentle, kind, human, reverential, just, magnanimous, lovers of truth, and superior to the temptations of wealth and pleasure, whereas the latter are intemperate, unchaste, unjust, irreverent, low-minded, quarrelsome, accustomed to falsehood and perjury, and ready to sell their freedom for sensual pleasures of all kinds.(1369) In the times of h.e.l.lenic culture apostasy made its appearance among the upper cla.s.ses of the Jews. As the higher-minded among the heathen world were drawn towards the sublime monotheistic faith of the Jew, so the pleasure-seeking and worldly-minded among the Jews were attracted by the allurements of Greek culture to become faithless to the G.o.d of Israel, break away from the law, and violate the covenant. Especially under Syrian rule, apostasy became a real danger to the Jewish community, and many measures had to be decided upon to avert it. The desertion of the ancestral faith was looked upon as rebellion and treason against G.o.d and Israel.(1370) With the rise of the Christian Church to power and influence the number of apostates increased, and with it also the danger to the small community of the Jews in the various lands. In the same measure as the Church made a meritorious practice of the conversion of the Jews, whether by persuasive means or by force and persecution, the authorities of Judaism had to provide the Jew with spiritual weapons of self-defense in the shape of polemical and apologetic writings,(1371) and to warn him against too close a contact with the apostate, which was too often fraught with peril for the whole community. As a number of these apostates became actual maligners of the Jews under the Roman empire, a special malediction against sectarians, the so-called _Birkat ha-Minim_, was inserted in the Eighteen Benedictions under the direction of Gamaliel II.(1372) ”Those who have emanated from my own midst hurt me most,” says the Synagogue, referring to herself the words of the Sulamite in the Song of Songs.(1373) While every other offender from among the Jewish people is declared to be ”brother,”
notwithstanding his sin,(1374) the apostate was declared to be one from whom no free-will offering was to be accepted,(1375) and to whom the gates of repentance and the gates of salvation are forever closed.(1376) The feeling of bitterness against him grew in intensity, as throughout Jewish history he often played the despicable role of an accuser of his former coreligionists and betrayer of their faith. The modern Jew also, though he sympathizes with every liberal movement among men and respects every honest opinion, however radically different from his own, cannot but behold in the att.i.tude of him who deserts the small yet heroic band of defenders of his ancient faith and joins the great and powerful majority around him, a disloyalty and weakness of character unworthy of a son of Abraham, the faithful. Since the beginning of the new era in the time of Mendelssohn, apostasy has made great inroads upon the numerical and intellectual strength of Judaism, especially among the upper cla.s.ses. It is no longer, however, of an aggressive character, but rather a result of the lack of Jewish self-respect and religious sentiment, against which measures tending to a revival of the Jewish spirit are being taken more and more. The Jews are called by the rabbis ”the faithful sons of the faithful.” The apostate must be made to feel that he is of a lower type, since he has become a deserter from the army of the battlers for the Lord, the Only One G.o.d of Israel.
Chapter LVII. Christianity and Mohammedanism, the Daughter-Religions Of Judaism
1. ”It shall come to pa.s.s on that day that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the eastern sea and half of them toward the western sea.... And the Lord shall be King over all the earth; in that day shall the Lord be One, and His name one.”(1377) These prophetic words of Zechariah may be applied to the two great world-religions which emanated from Judaism and won fully half of the human race, as it exists at present, for the G.o.d of Abraham. Though they have incorporated many non-Jewish elements in their systems, they have spread the fundamental truths of the Jewish faith and Jewish ethics to every part of the earth.
Christianity in the West and Islam in the East have aided in leading mankind ever nearer to the pure monotheistic truth. Consciously or unconsciously, both found their guiding motive in the Messianic hope of the prophets of Israel and based their moral systems on the ethics of the Hebrew Scriptures. The leading spirits of Judaism recognized this, declaring both the Christian and Mohammedan religions to be agencies of Divine Providence, intrusted with the historical mission of cooperating in the building up of the Messianic Kingdom, thus preparing for the ultimate triumph of pure monotheism in the hearts and lives of all men and nations of the world. These views, voiced by Jehuda ha Levi, Maimonides, and Nahmanides,(1378) were reiterated by many enlightened rabbis of later times. These point out that both the Christian and Mohammedan nations believe in the same G.o.d and His revelation to man, in the unity of the human race, and in the future life; that they have spread the knowledge of G.o.d by a sacred literature based upon our Scripture; that they have retained the divine commandments essentially as they are phrased in our Decalogue; and have practically taught men to fulfill the Noahitic laws of humanity.(1379) On account of the last fact the medieval Jewish authorities considered Christians to be half-proselytes,(1380) while the Mohammedans, being pure monotheists, were always still closer to Judaism.
2. In general, however, rabbinic Judaism was not in a position to judge Christianity impartially, as it never learned to know primitive Christianity as presented in the New Testament. We see no indication in either the oldest Talmudic sources or Josephus that the movement made any more impression in Galilee or Jerusalem than the other Messianic agitations of the time. All that we learn concerning Jesus from the rabbis of the second century and later is that magic arts were practiced by him and his disciples who exorcised by his name; and, still worse, that the sect named after him was suspected of moral aberrations like a few Gnostic sects, known by the collective name of _Minim_, ”sectarians.”(1381) As a matter of fact, the early Church was chiefly recruited from the Essenes and distinguished itself little from the rest of the Synagogue. Its members, who are called Judaeo-Christians, continued to observe the Jewish law and changed their att.i.tude to it only gradually.(1382) Matters took a different turn under the influence of Paul, the apostle to the heathen, who emphasized the antinomian spirit; the Judaeo-Christian sects were then pushed aside, hostility to Judaism became prominent, and the Church strove more and more for a _rapprochement_ with Rome.(1383) Then the rabbis awoke to the serious danger to Judaism from these heretics, _Minim_, when after the tragic downfall of the Jewish nation they grew to world-power as allies of the Roman Empire. Thus Isaac Nappaha, a Haggadist of the fourth century, declared: ”The turning point for the advent of the Messiah, the son of David, will not come until the whole (Roman) Empire has been converted to Christianity (_Minuth_).”(1384) This is supplemented by the Babylonian Rabbah, who plays with a Biblical phrase, saying: ”Not until the whole (Roman) world has turned to the Son (of G.o.d).”(1385) Henceforth Christian Rome was termed _Edom_, like pagan Rome from the days of Herod the Idumean. In fact, her imperial edicts showed the fratricidal hatred of Esau, with hardly a trace of the professed religion of love. No wonder the Haggadists identified Rome with the Biblical ”Boar of the forest,” and waited impatiently for the time when she would have to give up her rule as the fourth world-empire to the people of G.o.d, ushering in the Messianic era.(1386)
3. Meanwhile the relapse of Christianity from monotheism became more steady and more apparent. The One G.o.d of the Jew was pushed into the background by the ”Son of Man”; and the Virgin-Mother with her divine child became adored like the Queen of Heaven of pagan times, showing similarity especially to Isis, the Egyptian mother-G.o.ddess, with Horus, the young son-G.o.d, on her lap. The pagan deities of the various lands were transformed into saints of the Church and wors.h.i.+ped by means of images, in order to win the pagan ma.s.ses for the Christian faith. The original pure and absolute monotheism and the stern conception of holiness were thus turned into their very opposites by the hierarchy and monasticism of the Church. How, then, could the Jewish people recognize the crucified Christ as one of their own? One whose preaching seemed to bring them only d.a.m.nation and death instead of salvation and life, even while speaking in the name of Israel's G.o.d after the manner of the prophets of yore? How could they see in the strange doctrines of the Church any resemblance to their own system of faith, especially as the very doctrines which repelled them were those most emphasized by Christianity? Maimonides considered the adherents of the Roman Church to be idolaters,(1387) a view which was modified by the Jewish authorities in the West, as they became better acquainted with Christian doctrines.(1388)
4. The world-empire of the Church was subsequently divided between Rome, which the Jewish writers called _Edom_,(1389) and Byzantium, which they named _Yavan_, but neither showed any real advance in religious views and ideals. On the contrary, they both persecuted with fire and sword the little people who were faithful to their ancient monotheism, and suppressed what remained of learning and science. As the Church had the great task of disciplining wild and semi-barbarous races, there was little room left for learning or for high ideals. At this time a rigorous avenger of the persecuted spirit of pure monotheism arose among the sons of Ishmael in the desert of Arabia in the person of Mohammed, a camel-driver of Mecca, a man of mighty pa.s.sions and void of learning, but imbued with the fire of the ancient prophets of Israel. He felt summoned by Allah, the G.o.d of Abraham, to wage war against the idolatry of his nation and restore the pure faith of antiquity. He kindled a flame in the hearts of his countrymen which did not cease, until they had proclaimed the unity of G.o.d throughout the Orient, had put to flight the trinitarian dogma of the Church in both Asia and Africa, and extended their domain as far as the Spanish peninsula. He offered the Jews inducements to recognize him as the last, ”the seal,” of the prophets, by promising to adopt some of their religious practices; but when they refused, he showed himself fanatical and revengeful, a genuine son of the Bedouins, unrelenting in his wrath and ending his career as a cruel, sensuous despot of the true Oriental type. Nevertheless, he created a religion which led to a remarkable advancement of intellectual and spiritual culture, and in which Judaism found a valuable incentive to similar endeavors. Thus Ishmael proved a better heir to Abraham than was Esau, the hostile brother of Jacob.(1390)
5. The important, yet delicate question, which of the three religions is the best, the Mohammedan, Christian or Jewish, was answered most cleverly by Lessing in his _Nathan the Wise_, by adapting the parable of the three rings, taken from Boccaccio. His conclusion is that the best religion is the one which induces men best to promote the welfare of their fellow men.(1391) But the question itself is much older; it was discussed at the court of the Kaliphs in Bagdad as early as the tenth century, where the adherents of every religion there represented expressed their opinions in all candor. For centuries it was the subject of philosophical and comparative investigations.(1392) Among these, the most thorough and profound is the _Cuzari_ by the Jewish philosopher and poet, Jehuda ha Levi. But the parable of the three rings also has been traced through Jewish and Christian collections of tales dating back to the thirteenth century, and seems to be originally the work of a Jewish author. Standing between the two powerful faiths with their appeal to the temporal arm, the Jew had to resort to his wit as almost his only resource for escape. Two Jewish works have preserved earlier forms of the parable. In Ibn Verga's collection of histories of the fifteenth century, it is related that ”Don Pedro the Elder, King of Aragon (1196-1213), asked Ephraim Sancho, a Jewish sage, which of the two religions, the Jewish or Christian, was the better one. After three days' deliberation, the sage told the king a story of two sons who had each received a precious stone from their father, a jeweler, when he went on a journey. The sons then went to a stranger, threatening him with violence, unless he would decide which of the jewels was the more valuable. The king, believing the story to be a fact, protested against the action of the two sons, whereupon the Jew explained: Esau and Jacob are the two sons who have each received a jewel from their heavenly Father. Instead of asking me which jewel is the more precious, ask G.o.d, the heavenly Jeweler. He knows the difference, and can tell the two apart.”(1393)
An older and probably more original form of the parable was discovered by Steinschneider in a work by Abraham Abulafia of the thirteenth century, running as follows: ”A father intended to bequeath a precious jewel to his only son, but was exasperated by his ingrat.i.tude, and therefore buried it.
His servants, however, knowing of the treasure, took it and claimed to have received it from the father. In the course of time they became so arrogant that the son repented of his conduct, whereupon the father gave him the jewel as his rightful possession.” The story ends by stating that Israel is the son and the Moslem and Christian the servants.
Beside this witty solution of a delicate problem, some Mohammedans made attempts very early, doubtless on account of discussions with learned Jews, to prove the justification of the three religions from the Jewish Scriptures themselves. Thus they referred the verse speaking of the revelation of G.o.d on Sinai, Mount Seir, and Mount Paran(1394) to the religious teachings of Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. Naturally, the Jewish exegetes and philosophers objected vigorously to such an interpretation.
6. The question which religion is the best, has been most satisfactorily answered for Judaism by R. Joshua ben Hanania, who said that ”the righteous of the heathen have also a share in the world to come.”(1395) The question which religion is true, has been, alas, too long arbitrated by the sword, and will be decided peacefully only when the whole earth will be full of the knowledge of G.o.d. Our own age, however, has begun to examine the t.i.tle to existence of every religion from the broad standpoint of history and ethnology, a.s.signing to each its proper rank. In this large purview even the crude beliefs of savages are shown to be of value, and the various heathen religions are seen to have a historical task of their own. Each of them has to some extent awakened the dormant divine spark in man; one has aided in the growth of the ideal of the beautiful in art, another in the rise of the ideal of the true in philosophy and science; a third in the cultivation of the ideal of the good and in stimulating sympathy and love so as to enn.o.ble men and nations. Thus after a careful examination of the historical doc.u.ments of the Christian and Mohammedan religions, it is possible to state clearly their great historic mission and their achievements in the whole domain of civilization. The Jewish religion, as the mother who gave birth to both, must deliver the verdict, how far they still contribute to the upbuilding of G.o.d's kingdom on earth.
In fulfilling their appointed mission, each has given rise to valuable and peculiar inst.i.tutions, and each has fallen short of the Messianic ideal as visualized by our great prophets of old. Only an impartial judgment can say which one has reached the higher stage of civilization.
7. Christianity's origin from Judaism is proved by its religious doc.u.ments as well as by its very name, which is derived from the Greek for the t.i.tle Messiah (_Christos_), bestowed on the Nazarene by his followers. Still the name Christianity arose in Antioch among non-Jews who scarcely knew its meaning. All the sources of the New Testament, however much they conflict in details, agree that the movement of Christianity began with the appearance of John the Baptist, a popular Essene saint. He rallied the mult.i.tude at the sh.o.r.e of the Jordan, preparing them for the approaching end of the Roman world-kingdom with the proclamation, ”Wash yourselves clean from your sins!” that is, ”Take the baptismal bath of repentance, for the kingdom of heaven is nigh.”(1396) He conferred the baptismal bath of repentance upon Jesus of Nazareth and the first apostles.(1397) Jesus took up this message when John was imprisoned and finally killed by Herod Antipas on account of his preachment against him.(1398) The life of Jesus is wrapt in legends which may be reduced to the following historical elements:(1399) The young Nazarene was of an altogether different temperament from that of John the Baptist, the stern, Elijah-like preacher in the wilderness;(1400) he manifested as preacher and as a healer of the sick a profound love for, and tender sympathy with suffering humanity, a trait especially fostered among the Essenes. This drew him toward that cla.s.s of people who were shunned as unclean by the uncompromising leaders of the Pharisees, and also by the rigid brotherhoods of the Essenes, whose chief object was to attain the highest degree of holiness by a life of asceticism. His simple countrymen, the fishers and shepherds of Galilee, on hearing his wise and humane teachings and seeing his miraculous cures, considered him a prophet and a conqueror of the hosts of demons, the workers of disease. In contrast to the learned Pharisees, he felt it to be his calling to bring the good tidings of salvation to the poor and outcast, to ”seek the lost sheep of the house of Israel” and win them for G.o.d. He soon found himself surrounded by a mult.i.tude of followers, who, on a Pa.s.sover pilgrimage to Jerusalem, induced him to announce himself as the expected Messiah. He attracted the people in Jerusalem by his vehement attacks upon the Sadducean hierarchy, which he threatened with the wrath of heaven for its abuses, and also by his denunciations of the self-sufficient Pharisean doctors of the law. Soon the crisis came when he openly declared war against the avarice of the priests, who owned the markets where the sacrificial fowl for the Temple were sold, overthrowing the tables of the money-changers, and declaring the Temple to have become ”a den of robbers.”(1401) The hierarchical council delivered him to Pontius Pilatus, the Roman prefect, as an aspirant to the royal t.i.tle of Messiah, which in the eyes of the Romans meant a revolutionary leader. The Roman soldiers crucified him and mocked him, calling him, ”Jesus, the king of the Jews.”(1402)
The fate of crucifixion, however, did not end the career of Jesus, as it had that of many other claimants to the Messiahs.h.i.+p in those turbulent times. His personality had impressed itself so deeply upon his followers that they could not admit that he had gone from them forever. They awaited his resurrection and return in all the heavenly glory of the ”Son of Man,”
and saw him in their ecstatic visions, attending their love-feasts,(1403) or walking about on the lake of Nazareth while they were fis.h.i.+ng from their boats, or hovering at the summit of the mountains.(1404) This was but the starting point of that remarkable religious movement which grew first among the lower cla.s.ses in northern Palestine and Syria,(1405) then gradually throughout the entire Roman Empire, shaking the whole of heathendom until all its deities gave way to the G.o.d of Israel, the divine Father of the crucified Messiah. The Jewish tidings of salvation for the poor and lowly offered by the Nazarene became the death-knell to the proud might of paganism.
8. But the ways of Providence are as inscrutable as they are wonderful.
The poor and lowly members of the early Christian Churches, with their leaders, called ”apostles” or ”messengers” of the community,-elected originally to carry out works of charity and love,(1406)-would never have been able to conquer the great world, if they had persisted in the Essene traditions. They owed their success to the large h.e.l.lenistic groups who joined them at an early period and introduced the Greek language as their medium of expression. Henceforth the propaganda activity of the Alexandrian Jews was adopted by the young Church, which likewise took up all the works of wisdom and ethics written in Greek for the instruction of the proselytes and the young, scarcely known to the Palestinian schools.
The Essene baptism for repentance was replaced by baptism for conversion or initiation into the new faith, while the neophyte to be prepared for this rite was for a long time instructed mainly in the doctrines of the Jewish faith.(1407) Subsequently collections of wise sayings and moral teachings ascribed to the Nazarene and handed down in the Aramaic vernacular, orally or in writing, were translated into Greek. These together with the manuals for proselytes were the original Church teachings. The Greek language paved the way for the Church to enter the great pagan world, exactly as the Greek translation of the Bible in Alexandria brought the teachings of Judaism to the knowledge of the outside world.
At first the same obstacle confronted the early Church which had prevented the Synagogue from becoming a world conqueror, namely, the rite of circ.u.mcision, which was required for full members.h.i.+p. Without this, baptized converts were only half-proselytes and could not be fully a.s.similated. This cla.s.sification was still upheld by the Apostolic Convention, which met under the presidency of James the Elder.(1408) The time was ripe for a bold and radical innovation, and at this psychological moment arose a man of great zeal and unbridled energy as well as of a creative genius and a mystical imagination,-Saul of Tarsus, known by his Roman name Paulus.(1409) He had been sent by the authorities at Jerusalem to pursue the adherents of the new sect, but when he had come as far as Damascus in Syria, he suddenly turned from a persecutor into the most ardent promoter of the nascent Church, impelled by a strange hallucination. Paul was a carpet weaver by trade, born and reared in Tarsus, a seaport of Asia Minor, where he seems to have had a Greek training and to have imbibed Gnostic or semi-pagan ideas beside his Biblical knowledge. In this ecstatic vision on his journey he beheld the figure of Jesus, ”the crucified Christ,” whose adherents he was pursuing, yet whom he had never seen in the flesh, appearing as a heavenly being whom Paul identified as the heavenly Adam, the archetypal ”G.o.dlike” man.
Upon this strange vision he constructed a theological system far more pagan than Jewish in type, according to which man was corrupt through the sin of the first couple, and the death of Jesus on the cross was to be the atoning sacrifice offered by G.o.d himself, who gave His own son as a ransom for the sins of humanity. This doctrine he used as a lever with which, at one bold stroke, he was to unhinge the Mosaic law and make the infant Church a world-religion. Through baptism in the name of the Christ, the old sin-laden Adam was to be cast off and the new heavenly Adam, in the image of Christ, put on instead. The new covenant of G.o.d's atoning love was to replace the old covenant of Sinai, to abolish forever the old covenant based upon the Jewish law, and to set mankind free from all law, ”which begets sin and works wrath.” In Christ, ”who is the end of the law,” the sinfulness of the flesh should be overcome and the gates of salvation be opened to a world redeemed from both death and sin.(1410) The one essential for salvation was to accept the _mystery_ concerning the birth and death of Christ, after the manner of the heathen mystery-religions, and to employ as sacramental symbols of the mystery the rites of baptism and communion with Christ.
9. This system of Paul, however, demanded a high price of its votaries.
Acceptance of the belief meant the surrender of reason and free thinking.
This breach in pure monotheism opened the door for the whole heathen mythology and the wors.h.i.+p of the heathen deities in a new form. But the saddest result was the dualism of the system; the kingdom of G.o.d predicted by the prophets and sages of Israel for all humanity was transferred to the hereafter, and this life with all its healthy aspirations was considered sinful and in the hands of Satan. The cross, originally a sign of life,(1411) became from this time and through the Middle Ages a sign of death, casting a shadow of sin upon the Christian world and a shadow of terror upon the Jew.
The greatest harm of all, however, was done to Judaism itself. Paul made a caricature of the Law, which he declared to be a rigid, external system, not elevating life, but only inciting to transgression and engendering curse. He even aroused a feeling of hatred toward the Law, which grew in intensity, until it became a source of untold cruelty for many centuries.
This spirit permeated the Gospels more and more in their successive appearance, even finding its way into the Sermon on the Mount. In the simple form given in the Gospel of Luke this was a teaching of love and tenderness; in Matthew, Jesus is represented as offering a new dispensation to replace the revelation of Sinai.(1412) Here the Mosaic law is presented as a system of commandments demanding austere adherence to the letter with no regard to the inner life, whereas, on the other hand, the actual teachings of the Nazarene were animated by love and sympathy, emanating from the ethical spirit of the Law. Yet the very words of Jesus in this same sermon disavow every hint of antinomianism: ”Verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pa.s.s, one jot or one t.i.ttle shall in no wise pa.s.s from the Law till all be fulfilled.”(1413) As a matter of fact, the very teachings of love and inwardness which are embodied in both the Sermon on the Mount and the epistles of Paul were largely adopted from the Pharisean schools and Hasidean works as well as from the Alexandrian Propaganda literature and the Proselyte Manuals preserved by the Church.
In fact, part of this criticism was voiced by the Pharisees, as they attacked the Sadducean insistence upon the letter of the Law. The Pharisean spirit of progress applied new methods of interpretation to the Mosaic Code and especially to the Decalogue, deriving from them a higher conception of G.o.d and G.o.dliness, breaking the fetters of the letter, and working mainly for the holiness of the inner life and the endeavor to spread happiness about.(1414) Taking no heed of the actual achievements of the Synagogue, the Paulinian Church rose triumphantly to power after the downfall of the Jewish State and impregnated the Christian world with hostility to Judaism and the Jew, which lasts to this very day, thus turning the gospel of love into a source of religious hatred.
10. Nevertheless it cannot be denied that Paulinian Christianity, while growing into a world-conquering Church, achieved the dissemination of the Sinaitic doctrines as neither Judaism nor the Judaeo-Christian sect could ever have done. The missionary zeal of the apostle to the heathen caused a fermentation and dissolution in the entire neo-Jewish world, which will not end until all pagan elements are eliminated. Eventually the whole of civilization will accept, through a purified Christianity, the Fatherhood of G.o.d, the only Ruler of the world, and the brotherhood of all men as His children. Then, in place of an unsound overemphasis on the principle of love, justice will be the foundation of society; in place of a pessimistic other-worldliness, the optimistic hope for a kingdom of G.o.d on earth will const.i.tute the spiritual and ethical ideal of humanity. We must not be blind to the fact that only her alliance with Rome, her holding in one hand the sword of Esau and in the other the Scriptures of the house of Jacob, made the Church able to train the crude heathen nations for a life of duty and love, for the willing subordination to a higher power, and caused them to banish vice and cruelty from their deep hold on social and domestic life. Only the powerful Church was able to develop the ancient Jewish inst.i.tutions of charity and redeeming love into magnificent systems of beneficence, which have led civilization forward toward ideals which it will take centuries to realize.
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