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AuthorTopic: "Jewish" Bible as source for Christianity (and Islam) 1911 Eduorad DuJardin  (Read 15416 times)

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Re: "Jewish" Bible as source for Christianity (and Islam) 1911 Eduorad DuJardin
« Reply #45 on: February 21, 2018, 05:07:40 PM »
0

THE INVASION

This right was the consequence of their right to administer
their own funds.

Finally, the colonies had the right of jurisdiction over
their members—that is to say, that any Jew might be
judged according to the Mosaic law. In regard to these
liberties and privileges, we shall find the Roman Empire
inexorable whenever there is question of public order, and
chastise the Jews pitilessly in Judsea when they rebel,
and in the Dispersion when, under the name of Christians,
they became criminals at common law.

We have briefly shown the situation of the Jews
scattered round the Mediterranean about the beginning of
the present era. We have seen their number, the extra-
ordinary development of their colonies, their organisation,
and their privileges. We have now to inquire into their
moral, social, and political activity; and that will con-
clude our study of Judaism before St. Paul.

§ 4.

The Roman world was then a splendid marvel of proud
strength and serene power. Rome covered the world as
if with its spreading hands ; like long fingers, its great
stone roads, by which the legions and the prefects came
and went, as the blood flows in the veins and arteries,
sent out its implacable will—a will confident of itself and
irresistible, because it brought peace, organisation, and
justice to the world.

The peace it brought to the world was the fruit of four
centuries of unbroken effort. On the field of battle as
well as in the council, by the totality of its highest
military virtues as well as of its highest civic virtues, its
power had become great enough among other peoples to
create its right. It made one vast society of all the
nations gathered under its dominion; the wars of kingdom
against kingdom dissppeared; it was felt that the world
 THE INVASION

285

was, like a harmonious body, about to move according to
the great rhythm of a central will.

For the last time the world saw the colossus roar, shake
its mane, and go into action. That began at Pharsalus,
and ended at Actium. The thunder seemed to rend the
sky and overthrow the earth; the lightning flashed across
the world, from the Euphrates to the Pillars of Hercules;
the earth shook. Then there was a great silence, a
serene calm, a radiant sun, a cloudless sky ; it was the
Roman peace, “ the immeasurable majesty of the Roman
peace.”1 But the Roman peace was an armed peace;
the old legions remained in camp, the javelin in their
hand, the shield on their arm. The procurator might
display the gravity of his toga before the people ; behind
the feeble escort that accompanied him was the shadow of
the Eagles, ever ready to swoop.

It was not enough for Rome to bring peace to the
world ; it brought an organised peace. The Roman was
a born administrator no less than a born soldier. He
knew how to keep what he conquered. Never were such
profoundly statesmanlike qualities developed as among
this nation of grave men, with hard mask, calm brow,
severe eyes, and positivist spirit: men who were always
victorious and always pitiless.

And the work that had pacified and organised the world
ended in giving it justice. We have already recognised
a Roman creation in justice. To give to every man what
belongs to him, suum cuique, is an idea that was born at
Rome. Rome, in fact, was a hierarchy. Above the
countless multitude of lower beings, fit only to serve,1 2
Rome towered, a pyramid of rock, with so many thousand
citizens at its base, with the increasingly luxurious com-
pany of its leaders, and with the Emperor, the great
commander, at the summit.

There were no castes at Rome; positions were open to

1 Immensa pacis Roman® majestas.

2   Servituti nati, Cicero, De Provinciis Consularibus, v.
 286

THE INVASION

all, honours and wealth accessible to all. Foreigners
might become citizens, knights, or magistrates ; a
toleration that afterwards degenerated into abuse. The
legionaries were stationed in the provinces. Foreigners
flocked to the capital. The great freedmen whom we
find among the Caesars, at the head of the hierarchy,
were bastards of Roman nobles and beautiful slaves
imported from all parts of the earth. Christianity, which
did not abolish slavery, almost re-established castes. The
great Roman soul knew no barriers of classes, though it
knew the inequality of men. The Roman legislators
believed that every man had his place; that there is
order in the universe; that there is the oak and there is
the reed, the lion and the beast of the herd; and that
social perfection would be attained if every man,
occupying the place that suits him, prided himself on
being in his proper situation, his proper trade, his proper
charge.

Honour is the law of the few; but the simple senti-
ment of professional duty is capable of replacing decaying
religions in giving the necessary morality to the people.
Rome had no religion, in the moral sense that we give
to the word, yet never did virtue flourish more in any
nation than that. The English have kept the ideal—the
right man in the right place. Unhappy the man who
thinks he is kept from his class, despises his superiors,
and accepts not the post that life has entrusted to him.
On the other hand, the practice of common virtues is
easy, as well as the heroism of rare and great deeds, to
any man who takes pride merely in doing his profes-
sional duty. To teach that to our children it would be
enough, perhaps, as was done with young Romans, to give
them a strong military education.

Judaism proclaimed that all the Jews were equal;
it made of the Jewish people a people apart, a privi-
leged group, a caste. The Jews had no military education.
Military education had taught the Romans the inequality
 THE INVASION

287

of men and the accessibility of all to the higher offices—
discipline, on the one hand, and, on the other, the fact
that, as used to be said a century ago, every soldier has a
marshal’s baton in his knapsack. Roman justice, swum
cuique, must be defined in that way. If equality means
the possibility of all to mount the social pyramid by their
own merit, it is just; but in the mind of the mutinous
slave it means that the worker of the last hour shall have
the same pay as he who began in the morning. The
Romans never imagined that the last could be the first,
that the lowly should eat the bread of the strong, and
that life was a feast at which every comer had the right
to an equal seat. That is why Tacitus declared, in
speaking of the Jews: “ What is sacred to us is held in
horror by them ; what to us is infamous is permitted to
them.” 1

If we wish to understand the part that the Jews played
in the great concert of European peace—their moral,
social, and political attitude—we must first consult the
Latin contemporaries. There is no variation in the verdict
of the Latin writers on the Jews; and this consensus of
superior men, of whom two at least, Juvenal and Tacitus,
were great and good men as well as men of genius, is not
a thing to disregard. Christian prejudice has endeavoured
to throw suspicion on the severity of their judgment.
Renan, in his Origins of Christianity, which has a
Christian bias, never hesitates between some miserable
story from “ The Acts of the Martyrs ” and Tacitus; in
his opinion Tacitus is always wrong. The independent
historian, on the other hand, regards the authority of
Tacitus as very great, and does not understand how his
judgment may be accepted in regard to the Germans and
not accepted in regard to the Jews—unless it be that the
Christian religion, being a daughter of the Jewish religion,
owes it some respect.

1 Tacitus, Histories, v. 4.
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In the speech which we have quoted, Cicero, drawing
up an indictment of Judaism, charges their religion with
“ shuddering at the splendour of the empire, the gravity
of the Roman name, and the ancient institutions of the
city.”

Then Horace speaks several times of the Jews, some-
times representing them as a troop of fanatical prosely-
tisers, forcing people to enter their ranks,1 sometimes
laughing at their superstitions and the Sabbath.2

Persius ridicules the way in which the wretched Jews
celebrate the Sabbath.3

Juvenal describes the Jewish beggars with no other
furniture than a basket and some hay,4 and the Jewesses
hawking about cheap predictions.5 In this passage he
gathers up all the reproaches that humanity addresses to
Judaism—contempt of the laws of Rome, hatred of the
pagans, and the refusal to take part in social duties:—

The son of a superstitious observer of the Sabbath
worships only the power of the clouds and the heavens ;
after the example of his father, he has not less horror
of the flesh of a pig than of human flesh, and he is
circumcised. Educated in a contempt for Roman laws,

. he neither studies, observes, nor reveres any but the
Judaic law and all that Moses transmits to his followers
in his mysterious book. He would not tell the way to a
traveller who did not belong to his sect; he would not
show the spring to one who was not circumcised. And
all this because his father idled on the seventh day of each
week, and took no part in life’s duties.6

Suetonius attributes to Augustus a joke about the
Sabbath.7 Seneca includes the observance of the Sabbath
among the superstitions which he advises his reader to
avoid.8

Martial vents his pornographic humour on the Jews;9

1   Horace, Satires, i. 4.   2   Horace, Satires, i. 5 and   i.   9.

3   Persius, Satires, v.   4   Juvenal, iii. 13-16.

6   Juvenal, vi. 343 and 547.   6   Juvenal, xiv. 87-104.

7   Suetonius, Augustus, 76.   8   Seneca, Letter to Lucilius, xcv.

9 Martial, vii. 30, 35, and 55.
 THE INVASION

289

in another place he describes the Jew “ trained by his
mother to beg ”and again he refers to the fetidness of
the inhabitants of the ghetto, and, among the worst
smells he can recall, such as “ the smell of lagoons from
which the sea has withdrawn, the thick miasma that
rises from the marshes of Albula, the bad air of a pond in
which there has been sea-water, the emanations of a
he-goat paying attention to the female, or the exhalations
of the great-coat of a veteran soldier overcome by fatigue,”
he puts “ the breath of the observers of the Sabbath.”2

We may recall that Seneca called the Jews “ the most
rascally nation of all,” in relating that they “ had done so
well that their practices were now established all over the
earth.”3

Lastly, there is the well-known phrase of Tacitus in
which, speaking of the Christians as identified with the
Jews, he says they are “ convicted of hatred of the human
race.”4 Apologists refer exultantly to certain errors of
Tacitus in regard to Jewish history and laws; but while
Tacitus may have been mistaken on certain points of the
ancient history and legislation (restricted in his time) of
the small Palestinian people, he was better informed as to
the morals of the Jews at Home, his contemporaries. We
have quoted his verdict:—

All that is sacred to us is held in horror by them; all
that is infamous to us is permitted to them.8

He speaks of their “ sinister, fetid ” institutions, “ which
have made way by their perversity.” He speaks again of
their hatred of other men, their stubborn separatism. A
little later their customs are “absurd and sordid”;6 in
another place they are “an execrable people.”7 If Tacitus
had read the apocalypse of St. John, with its cries of rage
against Rome, and its calls for fire, he would not have 1

1 Martial, xii. 57.   2 Martial, iv. 4.

8 Seneca, quoted by St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, vi. 10.

4   Tacitus, Histories, v. 4. 6 Tacitus, Histories, v. 4.

6 Tacitus, Histories, v. 5.   7 Teterrimam gentem; Tacitus, Histories ,v. 8.

. U
 290

THE INVASION

doubted that among men who were capable of writing
such books there were some quite capable—and more
likely than Nero—of setting fire to the city.

Let us do justice to the extraordinarily powerful
qualities of the Jewish people, but we need not be
surprised at the horror with which Romans of the
early centuries regarded the ghetto. Its unconquerable
nationalism has made the Jewish people one of the
greatest in the world; but we can quite understand that
at the time of the Dispersion a Tacitus or a Juvenal
could not look upon it with anything but contempt and
indignation.

Let us picture to ourselves these groups, who have
come from Palestine, in the most desolate suburbs of the
large towns, in obscure districts under the shadow of
slaughter-houses, at the outfalls of sewers, in all sorts of
corners shunned by other people, corners where houses
were few, and there were no trees, water, or clear sky.
Let us recollect their acceptance of vile occupations, of
blows, beggary, dirt, and humiliations. The Jew who
emigrated to the West with his Syriac, Tyrian, and
Egyptian neighbours, was not like them in the depths of
his soul. While the poor Tyrian lived out his poor life
in humble servitude, while the Egyptian was resigned,
while all these orientals rejoiced when they gained a few
coins and died young and without envy, the Jew had
grown up with the idea that he was suffering, but would
be avenged ; that he was humbled, but his masters would
be punished ; and his soul was sharpened on hatred and
hope. Under the rags of the miserable Jew the Roman
felt a heart beating with hatred.

We saw that Judaism in Judaea was divided between
the two schools of Hillel and Shammai, the school of
patience and subterraneous^ war, and the school of revolt
and open war. While the disciples of Shammai, getting
the upper hand at Jerusalem, lead the holy city to
destruction, the men of the Dispersion remain faithful
 THE INVASION

291

disciples of Hillel. None of the censures of Tacitus or
Juvenal should astonish any man who understands the
book of psalms:—

I am wasted in groaning.....

I am a rejected vessel..

My wounds are fetid.....

I am sated with contempt....

Then

Avenge us, Jahveh, god of vengeance...

Let me bathe my feet in their blood...

Render unto them their outrage sevenfold in their
bosom......

Happy he who shall seize their little children, and dash
them against the rock...

Rise, judge of the earth....break their teeth in their

mouths.....let me rejoice to see my vengeance...1

It is a fierce expectation of vengeance, but there is no
preparation for revolt, no organising of war, no sharpen-
ing of weapons. The Jew of the Dispersion is not minded
to resist; he does not think of rising; no seditious idea
has ever passed through the ghetto. He bends; his
spine is appallingly supple ; the stick plays merrily on it.
He is proud, perhaps, but certainly not haughty. He
expects victory of his god, not of himself. His tremen-
dous strength lies in his confidence that his god will give
him this victory.

He watches and waits, almost with an air of resignation.
All the employments that the Latins disdain are his. He
obeys miserably; he takes up dirty offices ; he prostitutes
his girls and boys. He humbles himself the more as he
is so certain that he will be avenged. There is nothing
in him of the shudder of the slave who is ready to rebel,
of the generous anger that had shook the heart of a
Spartacus when he at last brandished the sword that
made Rome tremble, and that his arm was worthy to
brandish. The Jews of Jerusalem had in the end the

1 Psalms, passim. See above, p. 211.
 292

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Re: "Jewish" Bible as source for Christianity (and Islam) 1911 Eduorad DuJardin
« Reply #46 on: February 21, 2018, 05:08:17 PM »
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THE INVASION

soul of Spartacus; the Jews of the Dispersion remained
the sombre dreamers of the apocalypses.

The Jew of the Dispersion, who muttered raca in a
low voice to the great lords of Rome, said to them aloud:
Adoni. The spirit of hatred and rancour which his envy
spread through the world was a hatred without greatness,
and a vile rancour. He lived, and sustained himself and
encouraged others with the words : “ Patience, you will be
avenged.”

The Hebrew books do not exhort to action; they can
only curse and pray. Jahveh will smite the rich, because
they are rich. Jahveh will destroy splendour, because
it is splendid. Jahveh will bum what is beautiful.
Jahveh wishes all strength, power, and joy suppressed ;
for the Jew is weak, ugly, and sad. But the miracle of
the Jewish soul was that the cry of hatred was accom-
panied by the cry of hope—or, rather, of certainty. And
this hope was the more certain because, to realise their
dream of imperialism, these sublime wretches counted,
not on themselves, but on a god.

There is nothing more extraordinary than the mixture
of profound humility and unconquerable pride that was
characteristic of the Jewish soul. Pride, on the one
hand, because of the certainty that he will one day be
master of the world ; humility, because he does not trust
his own strength, but that of another, Jahveh. It recalls
the pride of the lackey, who can do nothing for himself,
but his master is very strong. This pride in humility
explains the work of quiet and implacable propaganda
carried on by Judaism throughout the lower strata of the
Roman world.

The hatred and hope of the Jew were diffused about
him. The obstinate Jew was a figure in the mixed troop
of the lowly of all nations who swarmed by the wayside.
The others noticed his reticence, and questioned him ;
and at times his pride disclosed the Messianic dream that
exalted him. Gradually the * troop marvelled at the
 THE INVASION

293

promises made to the Jews by their god. The years
went by, and the news spread. We can imagine the
astonishment, the admiration, of these poor folk when
they suddenly heard speak of revenge ! The revenge, it
seemed, was for the Jews only, not for the others; but,
all the same, it was something to know that the very
lowest of these lowly folk expected revenge. The Jew
began to figure among the others as a man with a secret,
a man who whispers in the shade. And presently they
were saying that perhaps it would be possible to have
a share in the inheritance promised to the Jews, and
would be as well to join in their cult.

Thus what were called Judaisers began to increase.
Foreigners converted, or affiliated, to Judaism, the
Judaisers, whom we have already found grouped about
the Jewish colonies, were not circumcised and eat non-
ritual meats; but they knew the Jewish books in the
Septuagint translation, listened to t the discourses of the
Jews, and frequented the synagogues.

Now the good news spread through the social depths.
The spirit of rancour grew. There was talk of a possible
change, and quoting of express words ; the god of the
Jews had promised. Nothing of the kind had been said
in the name of the other gods ; neither the Greek, nor
Egyptian, nor oriental gods had promised any future to
their peoples. But the god of the Jews had made a
formal engagement, and they quoted Isaiah, Jeremiah,
and then the latest of the prophets, the most precise in
regard to the promise, Daniel.

From the earliest prophets the Jews had associated
with the idea of victory over their enemies that of revenge
of the lowly over the powerful. They now spoke in low
tones of the incalculable wealth of the patricians; they
cursed their pleasures and luxury, and exalted austerity
out of hatred of the rich.

The less coarse minds had other arguments. Like
certain anarchists of our time, they mingled philosophic
 294

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considerations with their appeal to passion. It was easy
for them to ridicule the externality of an official religion
that had become purely symbolical, and to exalt the
mysterious religion which Judaism was. Jahveh had but
one temple, at Jerusalem, and no statue; for the Jews
scattered over the West he was the mysterious god
without temple or altar.

At times the whispers of the Jews were heard among
the educated classes; not infrequently free men and
women—women especially—lent an ear to them. In the
ages of the Caesars Judaism had followers even among
the patricians, so true it is that the superior classes are
never without individuals who are eager to descend
again.

This despised crowd of obscure beings who swarmed
in the depths of the Empire was animated with the most
ardent and sombre proselytism. These miserable people
were priests.

“ Ye shall be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy
people,” the Law had said.

In order to send them to preach the reign of the lowly
and the revenge of the weak, Jahveh had said to them:—

“ Ye shall all be priests.”

“Ye shall all be nobles,” their genius had said to the
Romans.

Under Augustus and Tiberius the Empire spread over
the surface of the world; it spread in strength and beauty
above the sullen hatred that rose toward it from all the
lower depths.

One day, in the year 19 of the present era, Tiberius,
though liberal, like all the Csesars, was alarmed at the
growing invasion. He forbade at Rome the ceremonies
of oriental cults, especially Egyptian and Jewish rites, and
he ordered the expulsion of the Jews from Italy. Judaism
was forbidden at Rome under pain of perpetual slavery.
The Roman Empire had divined its enemy.

It was what we might call the first of the persecutions;
 THE INVASION

295

the second, thirty years afterward, under Claudius, leads
us to the appearance of Christianity.

The Jews had bent their heads to the storm; they had
dissimulated, retired below ground, and waited. But
gradually they made their appearance again on all
sides, like a rumbling that seemed to have ceased and
begins again under one’s feet. They had to begin over
again. The Jewish invasion received a fresh impetus—
at Borne, Alexandria, in Greece, and in Asia.

At this time a tempest of heroic and furious madness
swept over Jerusalem and Judaea. Twenty partial revolts
formed a prelude to the great insurrection of the year 66.
The Jews of Jerusalem and Judaea, who were going to
seek with the sword the fulfilment of their hopes, were
abandoning the tradition of the prophets, the psalms, and
the apocalypses. They became heroes; for no heroism
was ever greater than that of the men who defended
Jerusalem against Titus. But by that very fact they
were repudiating the fundamental dogma of Judaism,
which is the abandonment of oneself in the hands of the
supernatural. They forgot that the apocalypses, the
psalms, and the prophets had preached that they must
expect nothing of their own efforts, but look for every-
thing from Jahveh.

“ Cursed be the man that trusteth in man,” Jere-
miah had said. “ Blessed is the man that trusteth in
Jahveh.”1

“ Eor I will not trust in my bow,” said the Psalms,

“ neither shall my sword save me.....Jahveh is my hope,

my strength, and my help.”2

“And in those days,” says Daniel, “ the god of heaven
shall set up an empire, which shall never be destroyed;
with his hand he shall break in pieces and consume all the
other empires.”8

Jewish tradition is with Hillel against Shammai; it is
in the Dispersion. There the oppressed flocks make no

1 Jeremiah xvii. 5 and 7.   2 Psalms xliv. 6, and passim.

3 Daniel ii. 44.
 29G

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struggle. They accept everything, or feign to accept
everything ; and they await the coming of the Messiah, in
the opening heavens, with his company of Kerubim, to
fulfil the promise.

How long would Jewish perseverance have lasted?
How long would Jewish imperialism have needed to com-
plete its conquest of the depths of the Roman world?
How long would the outcasts of the Roman world have
been able to hope for the coming of the day of Jahveh ?

Then through the Empire the news suddenly spread
that the day of deliverance was at hand, and that, mar-
vellous to relate, not only the Jews, but the Judaisers and
all the lowly who would come to them, would be invited
to take their place in the kingdom of vengeance.

This novelty was taught by a Jew of Tarsus, in Syria,
a tent-maker by trade, Shaoul or Saul, and afterwards
Paul, by name.
 APPENDICES

[We did not think it advisable to interrupt our study by the discussion
of details, of which each would require careful study. In these Appendices
we shall deal only with certain points that are especially worthy of
attention.]

I.

“ Israel ” (p. 5).—The name Israel is found, as we said,
on an Egyptian monument of the thirteenth century, a stele
raised by the Pharaoh Menephtah, who reigned from 1225 to
1215. Apart from this monument, and after this date,
Egyptology knows nothing of it. Assyriology is entirely
ignorant of it. Among the Palestinian monuments there is
only the stele of Mesa that uses it; but, without discussing
the authenticity of the stele, we may observe that the name
Israel is used by it in a solemn and archaic sense. In much
the same way the Emperor William might have said in 1871 :
“We have conquered Gaul.”

In the same way the name Sennaar (Shinear) has a precise
geographical significance in the El Amarna tablets, but the
Biblical period has only a vague and poetic meaning.

This silence of archaeological documents has led us, among
other things, to believe that, though the name Israel stood for
a reality in the age of the tribes, and, no doubt, even in the
Davidic period, it no longer did so in the time of the two
kingdoms; and that it was revived and put forward by the
Esdras school with an imperialist aim, as we have submitted
in the first part of the work, ch. iii., 1.

However that may be, we refrain from giving this name to
the kingdoms of Ephraim and Judah. There is a good deal
of confusion in this respect in the Bible and in historians ;
they give the name Israel, on the one hand, to the kingdoms
of Ephraim and Judah collectively, and, on the other hand,
to the kingdom of Ephraim separately from the kingdom of

297

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Re: "Jewish" Bible as source for Christianity (and Islam) 1911 Eduorad DuJardin
« Reply #47 on: February 21, 2018, 05:08:58 PM »
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 298

APPENDICES

Judah. It is in every respect better to adopt the name
Ephraim for the northern kingdom.

We reserve the name Israel to the two historical accepta-
tions of the word : in the first, it designates “ a certain number
of tribes settled before the year 1000 in southern Syria in
the second, it designates, from the fifth century onward, a
conception of “Jerusalem politics.”

As to the word “ Hebrew,” it is a vague term, applying
sometimes in the Bible to all the descendants of Abraham—all
the Palestinians, that is to say—and sometimes restricted to
the descendants of Jacob, or the Israelites. As the word has
not assumed any theoretical meaning analogous to that of the
word Israel, we find it possible to use it, taking it in the second
of its two meanings. We therefore call the kingdoms of
Ephraim and Judah “ Hebrew kingdoms,” though the word is
not found in Assyrian or Egyptian inscriptions contempor-
aneous with the two kingdoms.

II.

The Samaritan Pentateuch (p. 44).—As is well known,
the Samaritan cult uses a special edition of the Pentateuch,
which is called the Samaritan Pentateuch. The date of it is
disputed. We regard it as later than the Machabaean period.
The Machabees alone, as a"matter of fact, imposed Jewish rule,
and, consequently, the Jewish cult, on Samaria. After them
Samaria recovered a kind of independence, and the Samaritan
cult became a schism of Judaism. The priests of Samaria
would then prepare the edition of the books of Moses that
suited them.

III.

Our “Imperialist” Theory of the Composition of
THE MOSAIC Books (p. 52).—Our theory is the only one to
solve what M. Isidore L6vy, in his learned and acute lectures
at the iEcole des Hautes-Etudes, called the riddle of the Bible.
If the Hexateuch was composed in Judah at a time when the
kingdom of Ephraim had just been destroyed, after two
centuries of hostility (let us say, rather, at a time when the
State of Samaria was the chief enemy), how can we understand
the Jerusalem writers incorporating in their work the legends
 APPENDICES

299

of the north, and even giving to Joseph, the Ephraimitic hero,
so important a part ?

It seems to us that only one reply can be made. The
writers of Jerusalem annexed the traditions of peoples which
they knew to have once been sister-peoples, in order that one
day they might annex the peoples themselves.

Why did they not do the same in regard to the rich regions
of the West ? Not being conscious of any relationship with
them, they used other means; but their imperialism is not less
clearly shown in regard to them, and the Bible is full of their
pretensions over all countries as far as the sea.

To the critics who hold that the Jerusalemites could not
glorify enemies or rivals, we have only to quote the extra-
ordinary passage in Chronicles (v. 1-2)—a Jerusalemitic work,
if ever there was one, as no one denies—which exalts Joseph
at the expense of Judah.

IV.

The “ Documents ” (p. 58).—Critics have given the follow-
ing names to the different documents that compose the Mosaic
books:—

Jehovic and Elohic, for the most ancient;

Deuteronomic, for the following ;

Levitic or Sacerdotal, for the latest.

These names have been well chosen. To apply them to the
periods in which the different parts of the books were
composed, it is enough to give them their full meaning.

The Jehovic and Elohic period is that in which the work of
the priest-writers consists in concentrating the Jewish soul
about Jahveh, the national god; Jehovic, because it was
formerly usual to say Jehovah instead of Jahveh; Elohic,
because in Hebrew god is elohim.

The Deuteronomic period is that in which the laws of
Deuteronomy (the second series of laws) are promulgated.

The Levitic or Sacerdotal period corresponds to the zenith
of the Levitical priesthood.

We may add that it is customary to distinguish between
the Jehovist and Elohist in the last period. The range of this
study will not allow us to go into these details. We may
regard the Jehovist and Elohist as two schools, or two shades
of the same frame of mind.
 300

APPENDICES

V.

Simeon the Just (p. 98).—The reasons that have led some
to dispute the testimony of Josephus, and put back for a century
the pontificate of Simeon the Just, do not seem to us valid.
Josephus is explicit; and as to the Siracid, he gives one the
impression of speaking of the great Simeon, not as a contem-
porary, as Renan thought, but as a star shining above the
temple in the remote past. Historical probabilities agree;
Simeon the Just, so plausible at the beginning of the third
century, seems to be impossible, at the beginning of the second,
on the eve of the Machabaean period.

VI.

The Non-existence of the Prophets before the
Christian Era (p. 119).—The belief in the historical reality
of the prophets—that is to say, of characters playing the part of
prophets in ancient Judah—is the great blunder, not only of
classical exegesis, but even of independent commentators.

The most liberal Protestant students, no less than the
Rabbinical tradition, hold that the prophets were semi-
political, semi-religious characters (raised up by God, the
orthodox go on to say), a sort of tribunes or religious reformers,
who, from the time of the ancient Hebrew kingdoms down to
Esdras, preached to the people, and whose discourses were pre-
served for us by the pious care of the synagogues.

M. Maurice Vernes has proved that the books of the
prophets (pseudepigraphic, like almost all the books of the
Bible) are the works of writers who were later, not only than
the Restoration, but than Esdras. He concluded that pro-
phetism was an institution of the fourth and third centuries;
and he defined the prophets as “ men clothed with a sacred
character, exercising the ministry of inspired speech in the
precincts of the temple at Jerusalem.”1 Hence M. Vernes
only departs from tradition in placing in the fourth and third
centuries an institution which tradition referred to the period
from the eighth to the fifth century. The Protestant exegesis
offers a wrong but conceivable hypothesis when it represents

1 Du Pritendu Polythiisme des Hebreux, vol. ii., p. 399.
 APPENDICES

301

the development of the sacerdotal institutions as later than
prophetism; while the hypothesis of prophetic institutions as
contemporary with the great sacerdotal development puts M.
Yernes in great difficulties.

Not content with taking seriously the reality of the prophets,
commentators supposed that there were prophetic institutions
analogous to the sacerdotal institutions, a body of prophets
parallel to the clergy, and prophetic schools set up; and they
endeavour to draw up the history of an imaginary institution.

The more audacious supposed that the literary type of the
prophets was the idealisation, not of the wandering wizards
that the men of god really were, but of professional sooth-
sayers, attached to the temple. As a matter of fact, we find
these regular bodies of diviners everywhere in antiquity—in
Egypt and Babylon, in Greece and Rome. But—and this is
one of the distinctive features of Judaism—the only divina-
tion practised in the temple of Jerusalem was that of the
priests ; nowhere is there a single mention in the Bible of
organised divinors exercising an official function. Judaism had
no divination except that of the priests, at the head of the
social hierarchy, and that of the miserable popular men of god
at the bottom.

But how can critics to whom the Bible is not only a sacred
book, but an historical book, admit any doubt as to the reality
of these characters ? If the romances of the Round Table had
had the good fortune to found a religion, their heroes would
have become historical characters.

The thesis of the non-existence of the prophets until the
Christian era can only be developed in an exegetical work. I
would, however, call the attention of my readers to the
extraordinary silence of the Jewish legislation in regard to
prophetism as an established institution. The Hexateuch is
the collection of Judaic institutions. It contains everything:
political laws, civil laws, moral laws, religious laws, ecclesias-
tical laws, and ritual laws. The Hexateuch is not the work
of one period, but of centuries; it embraces the whole of
classic Jewish history. Now, though the word prophet is
found in it here and there, there is not a trace of any regu-
lation that might apply to a prophetic institution, in spite
of the thousand and one laws concerning the priesthood.
 302

APPENDICES

There is, moreover, never question in it of prophetism as an
institution. Of such a ministry as that of a Samuel, an
Elijah, a Jeremiah, or an Ezekiel there is no trace whatever in
the Hexateuch, the work that contains the whole of Judaism.
Why this silence ? Because prophetism was merely a literary
fiction ; because in reality there wTas no such a thing as
prophetism.

Further, the word prophet is used in the Hexateuch in a
different sense from that of the historical books. In the Hexa-
teuch the name of prophet is given to leaders like Abraham
and Moses or priests like Aaron; the word having found
favour, the writers of the Hexateuch were bound to use it;
but a prophet such as Abraham, Moses, or Aaron is a very
different thing from a prophet like Samuel, Elijah, Jeremiah,
or Ezekiel.

I may add that the early historical books (Judges, Samuel,
and Kings), as well as the later historical books (Chronicles,
Esdras, and Nehemiah), never present the prophets in any
other light than as dogmatic admonishers, and never give the
impression of playing an historical part, or of the establish-
ment of a body with any function whatever. The prophetic
books themselves, when we examine them closely, lead to the
same conclusion. As to the hagiographers, everybody knows
how little there is question of prophets in them.

On the other hand, the first book of the Machabees furnishes
direct arguments against the reality of prophetism, by showing
that at the time when it was written, not only were there no
prophets, but there had been none for a long time.1

VII.

Were the Galileans Jews? (p. 260).—The historian
Flavius Josephus, who never fails to oppose the Jews to the
Samaritans, assimilates the “Jews of Galilee” to the “Jews
of Judaea ”; see especially his Jewish Antiquities, xx. 5, and
Jewish War, ii. 21. He speaks constantly of the Galilaean
Judas the Gaulonite as a Jew. The thesis that the Galilaeans
were not Jews rests on a passage in the first book of the
Machabees (v. 23), in which it is said that Judas Maohabaeus

1 1 Machabees, iv. 46; ix. 27 and 54 ; xiv. 41.
 APPENDICES

303

brought to Jerusalem the Jews of Galilee. The fact is
improbable, and the story seems to be biassed; the return
to Jerusalem of the dispersed Jews is, in fact, one of the
clauses of the Messianic programme which the book of
Machabees likes to carry out by means of its heroes. But if
Judas Machabseus had really brought some of the Galilsean
Jews to Jerusalem about the year 164, the Judaisation of
Galilee would have had a century and a-half for its accom-
plishment, a century and a-half during which the rule of the
Machabees spread over the whole of Palestine, and might
impose Judaism in Galilee as in all other parts of Judaea,
except Samaria.

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Re: "Jewish" Bible as source for Christianity (and Islam) 1911 Eduorad DuJardin
« Reply #48 on: February 21, 2018, 05:09:58 PM »
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VIII.

Spelling of Peopee Names.—We had several systems
to choose:—

To follow the traditional transposition, and say “ Moses,”
“ Samson,” “Jerusalem,” “ Samaria,” etc.

To represent the Hebrew spelling, and say “ Mosheh,”
“ Shimeshon,” “ Jerushalaim,” “ Shomeron,” etc.—as Ledrain
has done in his translation of the Bible, which is unreadable
to the inexpert.

Reuss, and the majority of modern translators, have, in
different degrees, adopted a mixed system; Reuss says
“ Moses ” and “ Jerusalem,” but “ Shimeshon ” and “ Shome-
ron.”

We felt that it was better to adhere to the first system, and
we have, as a rule, followed the spelling of Lemaistre de Saci.
[The familiar spelling of the English Bible has been generally
retained in this translation, in accordance with the author’s
desire—Teans.]

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Re: "Jewish" Bible as source for Christianity (and Islam) 1911 Eduorad DuJardin
« Reply #49 on: February 21, 2018, 05:10:47 PM »
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I
 NDEX

ABIMELECH, 2, 3
Abraham, 60, 61, 62
Adorn, 102
Aholah, 153
Aholibah, 153

Alexander the Great, 105, 108, 124

Alexandria, Jews at, 272

Ammonites, 2, 6, 17

Amos, 121, 129

Anointed, the, 246

Antigonus, 124

Antioch, Jews at, 272, 278

Antiochus Epiphanes, 224-7, 230

Apocalypses, origin of the, 227

Apostasy, laws against, 32, 33

Aristotle, 90

Ark of the covenant, 95

Artaxerxes, 22

Artaxerxes Ochus, 124

Ascension of Moses, 244

Asherah, 7, 9, 11

Assyrians, 3, 15

Astarte, 11

Augustus, 251, 288

BAAL, 11

Babylonia, 3, 20, 56

----Jews of, 270, 271

Balthasar, 230
Bedouins, 1, 2, 6, 54
Bel, 8, 11
Benjamin, 63
Bethel, 10

Bible, beginning of the, 48, 58, 59

Caligula, 265
Cambyses, 79
Camos, 6, 11

Canaanites, 70, 71, 84, 98
Captivity, the, 17, 21
Cherubim, 151

Christ, meaning of the name, 246
Cicero, 278

Colonies, the Jewish, 174,193
Commerce at Jerusalem, 40, 110,
202

Covenant, the, 60, 67
Cyrus, 20, 21

DAGON, 6
Dan, 10

Daniel, 227-38, 247
Darmesteter, J., 196
David, 3, 44, 52, 114, 120, 208
Davidic empire, the, 44, 46, 52
Decalogue, the, 86
Deluge, the, 56, 57, 60
Democracy born at Jerusalem, 144
Deportation, the, 21
Desert, wandering in the, 94
Deuteronomy, 66, 74, 299
Dispersion of the Jews, 269-74

Edomites, 2, 6,17
Egypt, 3

----Jews in, 54, 79, 273, 278, 282

El Amarna, 1

Elephantine papyri, the, 31, 79, 90

Elijah, 156, 158, 160

Elisha, 156, 158, 160

Elohic documents, 299

Elohim, 101, 183

Ephod, the, 8

Ephraim, 4, 5, 17, 52, 297

Esau, 62

Esdras, 25, 28, 29, 31

Essenians, 253

Esther, book of, 276-7

Etymologies in the Mosaic books, 65

Exodus, 66

Ezekias, 16

Ezekiel, 149-67, 178

FAITH, nature of, 222
Felix, 263

Festivals of Judsea, 12, 13
Festus, 264

GABAON, 10
Gabriel, 233
Galilseans, the, 302
Galilee, 260, 302

305

X
 306

INDEX

Garizim, Mount, 43
Genealogies of the Old Testament,
64

Genesis, character of, 60-4
Ghetto, the, 290-2
Greece, the genius of, 89, 223

Ham, 98
Haman, 277
Hammurabi, 3, 57
Hananiah, 138

Hebrew, meaning of the word, 298
Hecatseus of Abdera, 90
Hellenism at Jerusalem, 107, 123,
225

Henoch, 243
Herods, the, 250
Hethites, 71

Hierarchy, the Jewish, 41
High-place, the, 9
High-priest, the, 41
Hillel, 249, 253, 256, 290
Hispalus, 278

History, value of Jewish, 50, 55, 57,
73

Hittites, 3

Holiness, Jewish idea of, 101
Horace on the Jews, 288
Horeb, 66, 86, 93
Hosea, 119, 120, 126
Hymns in the synagogue, 207
Hyrcan, 174

IDOLATRY, laws against, 35-8
Inquisition at Jerusalem, 83
Isaac, 62

Isaiah, 168, 175-93
Isolation of the Jews, 275
Israalou, 1

Israel, 1, 3, 52, 53, 61, 297
Israelites, 2, 3, 4, 17
Italy, Jews in, 274

JACOB, 62, 63

Jahveh, 6, 7, 10, 11, 27, 101

Japheth, 98

Jehoval, meaning of the name, 6,
note

Jehovic documents, 299
Jehovist period, 81
Jeremiah, 132-48, 178
Jerusalem, 3, 4, 10, 19, 24, 39
Jesus the Nazarene, 259, 260, 262,
264

Jew, origin of the name, 24, 90
Joachim, 16

John the Baptist, 257, 259, 261
Jonathan, 240

Joseph, 63, 66

----son of Tobias, 170

Josephus, Flavius, 155, 169, 170,
225, 251-3, 262
Joshua, 67, 70
Joshua, book of, 84
Josias, 5, 88

----reform of, 87

Judah, 4, 5, 17, 52, 297
Judaisers, 82

Judas Machabseus, 231, 239

----the Gaulonite, 257, 261, 265

Judges, period of, 3, 9, 54, 71, 72
Justice in the prophets, 197-8

----Roman idea of, 197

Justus of Tiberias, 262
Juvenal on the Jews, 288

KERUBIM, 151

Legends of Judsea, 14
Legislation, analysis of Jewish, 201
Levites, the, 41
Levitical period, the, 90
Leviticus, 66-70
Lcivy, I., 298

Literature, absence of in early
Judsea, 13, 25, 47

----character of primitive, 48, 49

Luxury condemned at Jerusalem,
202

MACEDONIAN conquest, 105-8

Machabees, the, 225, 231, 239, 242

Madness in the East, 111

Man of Sorrows, the, 188

Martial on the Jews, 288

Mashal, 48

Mathathias, 231, 240

Matsebah, 7, 9, 11

Melchisedecli, 64

Menelaus, 225, 230

Men of god, 111, 118

Mesa, 7, 14

Messiah, the, 246

Messianism, 246, 247

Michol, 114

Milkom, 6, 11

Minor prophets, the, 149

Mixed marriages, laws against, 34

Moab stele, the, 14

Moabites, 2, 6, 17

Moloch, 11

Monopoly of cult at Jerusalem, 76-8
Monotheism of the Jews, 10, 32
Monuments of Judsea, 14
Mosaic literature, origin of the, 48-
52, 58
 NDEX

307

Moses, story of, 56, 57, 66
Moshlim, 48

NABUCHODONOSOR, 16, 17, 132
Nasi, the, 163-4
Nathan, 120

Nationalism of the Jews, 30-1
Nehemiah, 22

Neighbour, Jewish idea of, 100
Nineveh, fall of, 16
Noah, 97
Numbers, 66

ONIAS, 225

----1., 123

----II., 168, 170

PACT, the, 60, 67, 70
Palestine, 106

----occupation of, 1, 2

Patriotism, origin of Jewish, 28-30
Paul, St., 112, 296
Peraea, 106

Persians, the, 20, 23, 39, 45
Persius, 288
Pharisees, 241, 251, 256
Phassur, 135
Philistines, 3
Philo, 262, 277
Phoenicia, 8, 10
Pompey, 244, 250
Pontius Pilate, 265
Priest-levites, 41

Priest-writers, the Jewish, 50, 51, 59
Priests, rule of the, at Jerusalem,
39, 40

Privileges of the Jews, 283
Prophets, late date of the, 301-2

----originals of the, 111, 115-20,

122, 258

Proselytism of the Jews, 195-6
Psalms, the, 207-22
Ptolemy, 124, 156, 171

----Philadelphus, 276

----Soter, 272

Purity, Jewish idea of, 100

RELIGION of ancient Judaea, 6-8
Renan, 70

Renascence, the, 205
Restoration of Jerusalem, 21, 25-7
Roman conquest, the, 244-5, 249
Roman peace, the, 285
Rome, genius of, 205, 223, 249, 285
----Jews at, 278, 279

SABBATH, the, 42
Sadducees, 241, 251, 256
Sadoc, 265
Salmanasar, 15
Samaria, 23, 43
Samaritan Pentateuch, 298
Samuel, 113, 119, 156
Samuel, 73
Sancherib, 16
Sanctuary, the, 9-10
Saul, 3, 112
Sedecias, 16, 17
Seleucus, 156
Seneca, 223, 279
Sennaar, 297
Septuagint, the, 276
Shammai, 249, 253, 256, 290
Sicaries, 253
Sichem, 10, 94
Silo, 10
Simeon, 241

----I., 94, 156, 166, 300

Sinai, 66, 94
Solomon, 4, 5, 34, 44, 52

----psalms of, 244

Strabo, 277, 282
Stranger, Jewish idea of, 100
Supernatural not found in Greece
or Rome, 223

Synagogue, origin of the, 208, 220

Tacitus on the Jews, 287, 289
Talmud, the, 253
Temple, building of the, 22

----interior of the, 37

----measurements of the, 161

Theocracy, origin of the Jewish, 39
Theudas, 259, 263
Thibet, 45
Tiberius, 294

Titus takes Jerusalem, 269
Tyre, 105, 106, 107

Valerius Maximus, 278
Vernes, M., 38

Virtue, Jewish idea of, 212, 213

WICKED, Jewish idea of the, 212

Zadocids, the, 159, 163
Zealots, 253
Zedekiah, 136, 141
Zorobabel, 21, 22, 27
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