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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Solomon and Solomonic Literature, by 
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                                 SOLOMON
                                   AND
@@ -7799,361 +7765,4 @@ was only by the man's eating it that the thorns sprang up.
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 Moncure Daniel Conway
 
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Solomon and Solomonic Literature, by 
-Moncure Daniel Conway
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: Solomon and Solomonic Literature
-
-Author: Moncure Daniel Conway
-
-Release Date: October 19, 2012 [EBook #41115]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOLOMON AND SOLOMONIC LITERATURE ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net/ for Project
-Gutenberg (This book was produced from scanned images of
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-
-
-                                SOLOMON
-                                  AND
-                          SOLOMONIC LITERATURE
-
-                                   BY
-                         MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY
-
-
-
-                                CHICAGO
-                   THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
-            London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd.
-                                  1899
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-                               INSCRIBED
-                         TO MY BROTHER OMARIANS
-                                 OF THE
-                           OMAR KHAYYÁM CLUB
-                                 LONDON
-
-
-    "Seek the circle of the wise: flee a thousand leagues from men
-    without wit. If a wise man give thee poison, drink it without fear;
-    if a fool proffer an antidote, spill it on the ground."
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-                                                           Page
-    Preface                                                   v
-
-    CHAPTER I
-
-    Solomon                                                   1
-
-    CHAPTER II
-
-    The Judgment of Solomon                                  12
-
-    CHAPTER III
-
-    The Wives of Solomon                                     24
-
-    CHAPTER IV
-
-    Solomon's Idolatry                                       30
-
-    CHAPTER V
-
-    Solomon and the Satans                                   34
-
-    CHAPTER VI
-
-    Solomon in the Hexateuch                                 41
-
-    CHAPTER VII
-
-    Solomonic Antijahvism                                    51
-
-    CHAPTER VIII
-
-    The Book of Proverbs and the Avesta                      59
-
-    CHAPTER IX
-
-    The Song of Songs                                        89
-
-    CHAPTER X
-
-    Koheleth (Ecclesiastes)                                 104
-
-    CHAPTER XI
-
-    Wisdom (Ecclesiasticus)                                 111
-
-    CHAPTER XII
-
-    The Wisdom of Solomon                                   118
-
-    CHAPTER XIII
-
-    Epistle to the Hebrews (A Sequel to Sophia Solomontos)  129
-
-    CHAPTER XIV
-
-    Solomon Melchizedek                                     150
-
-    CHAPTER XV
-
-    The Pauline Dehumanization of Jesus                     164
-
-    CHAPTER XVI
-
-    The Mythological Mantle of Solomon Fallen on Jesus      176
-
-    CHAPTER XVII
-
-    The Heir of Solomon's Godhead                           194
-
-    CHAPTER XVIII
-
-    The Last Solomon                                        207
-
-    CHAPTER XIX
-
-    Postscripta                                             234
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE.
-
-
-An English lady of my acquaintance, sojourning at Baalbek, was
-conversing with an humble stonecutter, and pointing to the grand
-ruins inquired, "Why do you not occupy yourself with magnificent work
-like that?" "Ah," he said, "those edifices were built by no mortal,
-but by genii."
-
-These genii now represent the demons which in ancient legends were
-enslaved by the potency of Solomon's ring. Some of these folk-tales
-suggest the ingenuity of a fabulist. According to one, Solomon
-outwitted the devils even after his death, which occurred while he was
-leaning on his staff and superintending the reluctant labors of the
-demons on some sacred edifice. In that posture his form remained for
-a year after his death, and it was not until a worm gnawed the end
-of his staff, causing his body to fall, that the demons discovered
-their freedom.
-
-If this be a fable, a modern moral may be found by reversing the
-delusion. The general world has for ages been working on under the
-spell of Solomon while believing him to be dead. Solomon is very much
-alive. Many witnesses of his talismanic might can be summoned from
-the homes and schools wherein the rod is not spared, however much
-it spoils the child, and where youth's "flower of age" bleaches in a
-puritan cell because the "wisest of men" is supposed to have testified
-that all earth's pleasures are vanity. And how many parents are in
-their turn feeling the recoil of the rod, and live to deplore the
-intemperate thirst for "vanities" stimulated in homes overshadowed by
-the fear-of-God wisdom for which Solomon is also held responsible? On
-the other hand, what parson has not felt the rod bequeathed to the
-sceptic by the king whom Biblical authority pronounces at once the
-worldliest and the wisest of mankind?
-
-More imposing, if not more significant, are certain picturesque
-phenomena which to-day represent the bifold evolution of the Solomonic
-legend. While in various parts of Europe "Solomon's Seal," survival
-from his magic ring, is the token of conjuring and fortune-telling
-impostors, the knightly Order of Solomon's Seal in Abyssinia has been
-raised to moral dignity by an emperor (Menelik) who has given European
-monarchs a lesson in magnanimity and gallantry by presenting to a
-"Queen of the South" (Margharita), on her birthday, release of the
-captives who had invaded his country. While this is the tradition
-of nobility which has accompanied that of lineal descent from the
-Wise Man, his name lingers in the rest of Christendom in proverbial
-connexion with any kind of sagacity, while as a Biblical personality
-he is virtually suppressed.
-
-In one line of evolution,--whose historic factors have been Jahvism,
-Pharisaism, and Puritanism,--Solomon has been made the Adam of
-a second fall. His Eves gave him the fruit that was pleasant and
-desirable to make one wise, and he did eat. Jahveh retracts his
-compliments to Solomon, and makes the naïve admission that deity
-itself cannot endow a man with the wisdom that can ensure orthodoxy,
-or with knowledge impregnable by feminine charms (Nehemiah xiii.);
-and from that time Solomon disappears from canonical Hebrew books
-except those ascribed to his own authorship.
-
-That some writings attributed to Solomon,--especially the "Song of
-Songs" and "Koheleth" (Ecclesiastes),--were included in the canon,
-may be ascribed to a superstitious fear of suppressing utterances
-of a supernatural wisdom, set as an oracle in the king and never
-revoked. This view is confirmed and illustrated in several further
-pages, but it may be added here that the very idolatries and alleged
-sins of Solomon led to the detachment from his personal self of his
-divinely-conferred Wisdom, and her personification as something apart
-from him in various avatars (preserving his glory while disguising
-his name), an evolution culminating in ideals and creeds that have
-largely moulded Christendom.
-
-The two streams of evolution here suggested, one issuing from
-the wisdom books, the other from the law books, are traceable
-in their collisions, their periods of parallelism, and their
-convergence,--where, however, their respective inspirations continue
-distinguishable, like the waters of the Missouri and the Mississippi
-after they flow between the same banks.
-
-The present essays by no means claim to have fully traced these lines
-of evolution, but aim at their indication. The only critique to which
-it pretends is literary. The studies and experiences of many years
-have left me without any bias concerning the contents of the Bible, or
-any belief, ethical or religious, that can be affected by the fate of
-any scripture under the higher or other criticism. But my interest in
-Biblical literature has increased with the perception of its composite
-character ethnically. I believe that I have made a few discoveries in
-it; and a volume adopted as an educational text-book requires every ray
-of light which any man feels able to contribute to its interpretation.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-SOLOMONIC LITERATURE.
-
-
-CHAPTER I.
-
-SOLOMON.
-
-
-There is a vast Solomon mythology: in Palestine, Abyssinia, Arabia,
-Persia, India, and Europe, the myths and legends concerning the
-traditional Wisest Man are various, and merit a comparative study they
-have not received. As the name Solomon seems to be allegorical, it is
-not possible to discover whether he is mentioned in any contemporary
-inscription by a real name, and the external and historical data
-are insufficient to prove certainly that an individual Solomon ever
-existed. [1] But that a great personality now known under that name did
-exist, about three thousand years ago, will, I believe, be recognised
-by those who study the ancient literature relating to him. The
-earliest and most useful documents for such an investigation are:
-the first collection of Proverbs, x-xxii. 16; the second collection,
-xxv-xxix. 27; Psalms ii., xlv., lxxii., evidently Solomonic; 2 Samuel
-xii. 24, 25; and 1 Kings iv. 29-34.
-
-As, however, the object of this essay is not to prove the existence
-of Solomon, but to study the evolution of the human heart and mind
-under influences of which a peculiar series is historically associated
-with his name, he will be spoken of as a genuine figure, the reader
-being left to form his own conclusion as to whether he was such,
-if that incidental point interests him.
-
-The indirect intimations concerning Solomon in the Proverbs and
-Psalms may be better understood if we first consider the historical
-books which profess to give an account of his career. And the search
-naturally begins with the passage in the Book of Kings just referred
-to:
-
-
-    "And God gave Solomon wisdom and intelligence exceeding much,
-    and largeness of heart, even as the sand on the seashore. And
-    Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the
-    East, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men;
-    than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Calcol, and Darda, the
-    sons of Mahol; and his fame was in all the surrounding nations. He
-    spake three thousand parables, and his songs were a thousand
-    and five. He spake of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon to the
-    hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts,
-    birds, reptiles, fishes. And there came people of all countries to
-    hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth,
-    which had heard of his wisdom."
-
-
-This passage is Elohist: it is the Elohim--perhaps here the gods--who
-gave Solomon wisdom. The introduction of Jahveh as the giver, in
-the dramatic dream of Chapter iii., alters the nature of the gift,
-which from the Elohim is scientific and literary wisdom, but from
-Jahveh is political, related to government and judgment.
-
-As for Mahol and his four sons, the despair of Biblical historians,
-they are now witnesses that this passage was written when those
-men,--or perhaps masculine Muses,--were famous, though they are unknown
-within any period that can be called historical. As intimated, they may
-be figures from some vanished mythology Hebraised into Mahol (dance),
-Ethan (the imperishable), Heman (faithful), Calcol (sustenance),
-Darda (pearl of knowledge).
-
-In speaking of 1 Kings iv. 29-34 as substantially historical it is not
-meant, of course, that it is free from the extravagance characteristic
-of ancient annals, but that it is the nearest approach to Solomon's
-era in the so-called historical books, and, although the stage of
-idealisation has been reached, is free from the mythology which grew
-around the name of Solomon.
-
-But while we have thus only one small scrap of even quasi-historical
-writing that can be regarded as approaching Solomon's era, the
-traditions concerning him preserved in the Book of Kings yield
-much that is of value when comparatively studied with annals of the
-chroniclers, who modify, and in some cases omit, not to say suppress,
-the earlier record. Such modifications and omissions, while interesting
-indications of Jahvist influences, are also testimonies to the strength
-of the traditions they overlay. The pure and simple literary touchstone
-can alone be trusted amid such traditions; it alone can distinguish the
-narratives that have basis, that could not have been entirely invented.
-
-In the Book of Chronicles,--for the division into two books was by
-Christians, as also was the division of the Book of Kings,--we find
-an ecclesiastical work written after the captivity, but at different
-periods and by different hands; it is in the historic form, but really
-does not aim at history. The main purpose of the first chronicler is to
-establish certain genealogies and conquests related to the consecration
-of the house and lineage of David. Solomon's greatness and his building
-of the temple are here transferred as far as possible to David. [2]
-David captures from various countries the gold, silver, and brass,
-and dedicates them for use in the temple, which he plans in detail,
-but which Jahveh forbade him to build himself. The reason of this
-prohibition is far from clear to the first writer on the compilation,
-but apparently it was because David was not sufficiently highborn and
-renowned. "I took thee from the sheepcote," says Jahveh, but adds,
-"I will make thee a name like unto the name of the great ones that are
-in the earth;" also, says Jahveh, "I will subdue all thine enemies." So
-it is written in 1 Chronicles xvii., and it could hardly have been
-by the same hand that in xxii. wrote David's words to Solomon:
-
-
-    "It was in my heart to build an house to the name of Jahveh my
-    God; but the word of Jahveh came to me, saying: 'Thou shalt not
-    build an house unto my name, because thou hast shed much blood
-    upon the earth in my sight; behold a son shall be born unto thee
-    who shall be a man of rest, and I will give him rest from all his
-    enemies round about: for his name shall be Solomon [Peaceful],
-    and I will give peace and quietness unto Israel in his days:
-    he shall build an house for my name: and he shall be my son,
-    and I will be his father; and I will establish the throne of his
-    kingdom over Israel for ever.'"
-
-
-In Chapter xvii. Jahveh claims that it is he who has subdued and
-cut off David's enemies; his long speech is that of a war-god;
-but in the xxii. it is the God of Peace who speaks; and in harmony
-with this character all the bloodshed by which Solomon's succession
-was accompanied, as recorded in the Book of Kings, is suppressed,
-and he stands to the day of his death the Prince of Peace. To him
-(1 Chron. xxviii., xxix.) from the first all the other sons of David
-bow submissively, and the people by a solemn election confirm David's
-appointment and make Solomon their king.
-
-Thus, 1 Chron. xvii., which is identical with 2 Sam. vii., clearly
-represents a second Chronicler. The hand of the same writer is found
-in 1 Chron. xviii., xix., xx., and the chapters partly identical in 2
-Samuel, namely viii., x., xi.; the offence of David then being narrated
-in 2 Samuel xii. as the wrong done Uriah, whereas in 1 Chron. xxi. the
-sin is numbering Israel. The Chroniclers know nothing of the Uriah
-and Bathsheba story, but the onomatopoeists may take note of the fact
-that David's order was to number Israel "from Beer-sheba unto Dan."
-
-The first ten chapters of 2 Chronicles seem to represent a third
-chronicler. Here we find David in the background, and Solomon
-completely conventionalised, as the Peaceful Prince of the Golden
-Age. All is prosperity and happiness. Solomon even anticipates
-the silver millennium: "The king made silver to be in Jerusalem as
-stones." It is only when the fourth chronicler begins (2 Chron. x.),
-with the succession of Solomon's son Rehoboam, that we are told
-anything against Solomon. Then all Israel come to the new king,
-saying, "Thy father made our yoke grievous," and he answers, "My
-father chastised you with whips, but I with scorpions."
-
-All this is so inconsistent with the accounts in the earlier books
-of both David and Solomon, that it is charitable to believe that the
-third chronicler had never heard the ugly stories about these two
-canonised kings.
-
-In the First Book of Kings, Solomon is made king against the rightful
-heir, by an ingenious conspiracy between a wily prophet, Nathan, and
-a wily beauty, Bathsheba,--Solomon's mother, whom David had obtained
-by murdering her husband.
-
-It may be remembered here that David had by Bathsheba a son named
-Nathan (2 Sam. v. 14; 1 Chron. iii. 5), elder brother of Solomon,
-from whom Luke traces the genealogy of Joseph, father of Jesus,
-while Matthew traces it from Solomon. It appears curious that the
-prophet Nathan should have intrigued for the accession of the younger
-brother rather than the one bearing his own name. It will be seen,
-however, by reference to 2 Samuel xii. 24, that Solomon was the first
-legitimate child of David and Bathsheba, the son of their adultery
-having died. John Calvin having laid it down very positively that
-"if Jesus was not descended from Solomon, he was not the Christ,"
-some theologians have resorted to the hypothesis that Nathan married
-an ancestress of the Virgin Mary, and that Luke gives her descent,
-not that of Joseph; but apart from the fact that Luke (iii. 23)
-begins with Joseph, it is difficult to see how the requirement of
-Calvin, that Solomon should be the ancestor of Jesus, is met by his
-mother's descent from Solomon's brother. It is clear, however, from
-2 Sam. xii. 24, 25, that this elder brother of Solomon, Nathan, is a
-myth. Otherwise he, and not Solomon, was the lawful heir to the throne
-(legitimacy being confined to the sons of David born in Jerusalem),
-and Jesus would not have been "born King of the Jews" (Matt, i. 2),
-nor fulfilled the Messianic conditions. It is even possible that
-Luke wished to escape the implication of illegitimacy by tracing
-the descent of Jesus from Solomon's elder brother. But the writer
-of 1 Kings i. had no knowledge of the Christian discovery that, in
-the order of legal succession to the throne, the sons of David born
-before he reigned in Jerusalem were excluded. Adonijah's legal right
-of succession was not questioned by David (1 Kings i. 6).
-
-When David was in his dotage and near his end this eldest son (by
-Haggith), Adonijah, began to consult leading men about his accession,
-but unfortunately for himself, did not summon Nathan. This slighted
-"prophet" proposed to Bathsheba that she should go to David and tell
-him the falsehood that he (David) had once sworn before Jahveh that
-her son Solomon should reign; "and while you are talking," says
-Nathan, "I will enter and fulfil" (that was his significant word)
-"your declaration." The royal dotard could not gainsay two seemingly
-independent witnesses, and helplessly kept the alleged oath. David
-announced this oath as his reason,--apparently the only one,--for
-appointing Solomon. The prince may be credited with being too young
-to participate in this scheme.
-
-Irregularity of succession and of birth in princes appeals to
-popular superstition. The legal heir, regularly born, seems to
-come by mere human arrangement, but the God-appointed chieftain is
-expected in unexpected ways and in defiance of human laws and even
-moralities. David, or some one speaking for him, said, "In sin did
-my mother conceive me," and the contempt in which he was held by
-his father's other children, and his father's keeping him out of
-sight till the prophet demanded him (1 Sam. xvi. 11), look as if he,
-also, may have been illegitimate. Solomon may have been technically
-legitimate, but in any case he was the son of an immoral marriage,
-sealed by a husband's blood. The populace would easily see the divine
-hand in the elevation of this youth, who seems to have been himself
-impressed with the like superstition.
-
-Unfortunately, Solomon received his father's last injunctions as divine
-commands. At the very time when David is pictured by the Chronicler
-in such a saintly death-bed scene, parting so pathetically with his
-people, and giving such unctuous and virtuous last counsels to Solomon,
-he is shown by the historian of Kings pouring into his successor's ear
-the most treacherous and atrocious directions for the murder of certain
-persons; among others, of Shimei, whose life he had sworn should not
-be taken. Shimei had once called David what Jahveh also called him,
-a man of blood, but afterwards asked his forgiveness. Under a pretence
-of forgiveness, David nursed his vengeance through many years, and
-Shimei was now a white-haired man. David's last words addressed to
-Solomon were these:
-
-
-    "He (Shimei) came down to meet me at Jordan, and I sware to him by
-    Jahveh, saying, 'I will not put thee to death with the sword.' Now
-    therefore hold him not guiltless, for thou art a wise man, and
-    wilt know what thou oughtest to do unto him; and thou shalt bring
-    his hoar head down to the grave in blood."
-
-
-Such, according to an admiring annalist, were the last words uttered
-by David on earth. He died with a lie in his mouth (for he had sworn
-to Shimei, plainly, "Thy life shall not be taken"), and with murder
-(personal and vindictive) in his heart. The book opens with a record
-that they had tried to revive the aged king by bringing to him a
-beautiful damsel; but lust was gone; the only passion that survived
-even his lust, and could give one more glow to this "man of blood,"
-was vengeance. Two aged men were named by him for death at the hands of
-Solomon, who could not disobey, this being the last act of the forty
-years of reign of King David. His dying word was "blood." One would
-be glad to believe these things mythical, but they are contained in
-a record which says:
-
-
-    "David did that which was right in the sight of Jahveh and turned
-    not aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of
-    his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite."
-
-
-This traditional incident of getting Uriah slain in order to
-appropriate his wife, made a deep impression on the historian of
-Samuel, and suspicious pains are taken (2 Sam. xii.) to prove that the
-illegitimate son of David and Bathsheba was "struck by Jahveh" for his
-parents' sin, and that Solomon was born only after the marriage. Even
-if the youth was legitimate, the adherents of the king's eldest son,
-Adonijah, would not fail to recall the lust and murder from which
-Solomon sprang, though the populace might regard these as signs of
-Jahveh's favor. In the coronation ode (Psalm ii.) the young king is
-represented as if answering the Legitimists who spoke of his birth
-not only from an adulteress, but one with a foreign name:
-
-
-    "I will proclaim the decree:
-    The Lord said unto me, 'Thou art my son;
-    This day have I begotten thee.'"
-
-
-(It is probable that the name Jahveh was inserted in this song in
-place of Elohim, and in several other phrases there are indications
-that the original has been tampered with.) The lines--
-
-
-    "Kiss the son lest he be angry
-    And ye perish straightway."
-
-
-and others, may have originated the legendary particulars of plots
-caused by Solomon's accession, recorded in the Book of Kings, but
-at any rate the emphatic claim to his adoption by God as His son, by
-the anointing received at coronation, suggests some trouble arising
-out of his birth. There is also a confidence and enthusiasm in the
-language of the court laureate, as the writer of Psalm ii. appears
-to have been, which conveys an impression of popular sympathy.
-
-It is not improbable that the superstition about illegitimacy, as
-under some conditions a sign of a hero's heavenly origin, may have
-had some foundation in the facts of heredity. In times when love or
-even passion had little connexion with any marriage, and none with
-royal marriages, the offspring of an amour might naturally manifest
-more force of character than the legitimate, and the inherited sensual
-impulses, often displayed in noble energies, might prove of enormous
-importance in breaking down an old oppression continued by an automatic
-legitimacy of succession.
-
-In Talmudic books (Moed Katon, Vol. 9, col. 2, and Midrash Rabbah,
-ch. 15) it is related that when Solomon was conveying the ark into the
-temple, the doors shut themselves against him of their own accord. He
-recited twenty-four psalms, but they opened not. In vain he cried,
-"Lift up your heads, O ye gates!" But when he prayed, "O Lord God,
-turn not Thy face from Thine anointed; remember the mercies of David
-thy servant" (2 Chron. vi. 42), the gates flew open. "Then the enemies
-of David turned black in the face, for all knew that God had pardoned
-David's transgression with Bathsheba." This legend curiously ignores
-1 Chron. xxii., which shows that Jahveh had prearranged Solomon's
-birth and name, and had adopted him before birth. It is one of many
-rabbinical intimations that David, Bathsheba, Uriah, and Solomon, had
-become popular divinities,--much like Vulcan, Venus, Mars,--and as such
-relieved from moral obligations. Jewish theology had to accommodate
-itself ethically to this popular mythology, and did so by a theory
-of divine forgiveness; but really the position of Hebrew, as well as
-Christian, orthodoxy was that lustful David and Bathsheba were mere
-puppets in the divine plan, and their actions quite consistent with
-their being souls after Jahveh's own heart.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II.
-
-THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.
-
-
-It may occur to mythographers that I treat as historical narratives and
-names that cannot be taken so seriously; but in a study of primitive
-culture, fables become facts and evidences. A grand harvest awaits that
-master of mythology and folklore who shall bravely explore the legends
-of David and Solomon, but in the present essay mythical details can
-only be dealt with incidentally. Some of these may be considered at
-the outset.
-
-It is said in 1 Kings i.:
-
-
-    "Now King David was old and stricken in years; and they covered
-    him with clothes, but he gat no heat. Wherefore his servants said
-    unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin:
-    and let her stand before the king, and cherish him; and let her
-    lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat. So they
-    sought for a fair damsel throughout all the coasts of Israel, and
-    found Abishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king. And the
-    damsel was very fair; and she cherished the king and ministered
-    to him; but the king knew her not."
-
-
-That this story is characteristic of lustful David cannot blind us to
-the fact of its improbability. Whatever may be meant by "the coasts
-of Israel," the impression is conveyed of a long journey, and it
-is hardly credible that so much time should be taken for a moribund
-monarch. Many interpretations are possible of the name Abishag, but
-it is usually translated "Father (or source) of error." However this
-may be, the story bears a close resemblance to the search for a wife
-for Isaac. When Abraham sent out this commission he also "was old
-and well stricken in age," and of Rebekah it is said, "The damsel
-was very fair to look upon, a virgin, neither had any man known
-her." (Gen. xxiv.) Rebekah means "ensnarer," and Abishag "father
-(source) of error"; and both women cause trouble between two brothers.
-
-There is an Oriental accent about both of these stories. In ancient
-Indian literature there are several instances of servants sent out
-to search the world for a damsel fair and wise enough to wed the
-son and heir of some grand personage. Maya, the mother of Buddha,
-was sought for in the same way. This of itself is not enough to prove
-that the Biblical narratives in question are of Oriental origin, but
-there is a Tibetan tale which contains several details which seem to
-bear on this point. The tale is that of Visakha, and it is accessible
-to English readers in a translation by Schiefner and Ralston of the
-"Kah-Gyur." (Trübner's Oriental Series.)
-
-Visakha was the seventh son of Mrgadhara, prime minister of the
-king of Kosala. For this youth a bride was sought by a Brahman, who
-in the land of Champa found a beautiful maiden whose name was also
-Visakha. She was, with other girls, entering a park, where they all
-bathed in a tank,--her companions taking off their clothes, but Visakha
-lifting her dress by degrees as she entered the water. Besides showing
-decorum, this maiden conducted herself differently from the others
-in everything, some of her actions being mysterious. The Brahman,
-having contrived to meet her alone, questioned her concerning these
-peculiarities, for all of which she gave reasons implying exceptional
-wisdom and virtue. On his return the Brahman described this maiden
-to the prime minister, who set forth and asked her hand for his son,
-and she was brought to Kosala on a ship with great pomp. The maiden
-then for a long time gives evidence of extraordinary wisdom, one
-example being of special importance to our inquiry. She determines
-which of two women claiming a child is the real mother. The king and
-his ministers being unable to settle the dispute, Visakha said:
-
-
-    "Speak to the two women thus: 'As we do not know to which of
-    you two the boy belongs, let her who is the strongest take the
-    boy.' When each of them has taken hold of one of the boy's hands,
-    and he begins to cry out on account of the pain, the real mother
-    will let go, being full of compassion for him, and knowing that
-    if her child remains alive she will be able to see it again; but
-    the other, who has no compassion for him, will not let go. Then
-    beat her with a switch, and she will thereupon confess the truth
-    of the whole matter."
-
-
-In comparing this with the famous judgment of Solomon there appear
-some reasons for believing the Oriental tale to be the earlier. In
-the Biblical tale there is evidently a missing link. Why should the
-false mother, who had so desired the child, consent to have it cut
-in two? What motive could she have? But in the Tibetan tale one of
-the women is the wife, the other the concubine, of a householder. The
-wife bore him no child, and was jealous of the concubine on account of
-her babe. The concubine, feeling certain that the wife would kill the
-child, gave it to her, with her lord's approval; but after his death
-possession of the house had to follow motherhood of the child. If,
-however, the child were dead, the false claimant would be mistress of
-the house. Here, then, is a motive wanting in the story of Solomon,
-and suggesting that the latter is not the original.
-
-In the ancient "Mahosadha Jataka" the false claimant proves to be a
-Yakshini (a sort of siren and vampire) who wishes to eat the child. To
-Buddha himself is here ascribed the judgment, which is much the same
-as that of the "wise Champa maiden," Visakha. Here, also, is a motive
-for assenting to the child's death or injury which is lacking in the
-Biblical story.
-
-Here, then, we find in ancient Indian literature a tale which may be
-fairly regarded as the origin of the "Judgment of Solomon." And it
-belongs to a large number of Oriental tales in which the situations
-and accents of the Biblical narratives concerning David and Solomon
-often occur. There is a cave-born youth, Asuga, son of a Brahman and
-a bird-fairy, with a magic lute which accompanies his verses, and
-who dallies with Brahmadetta's wife. A king, enamored of a beautiful
-foreign woman beneath him in rank, obtains her by a promise that
-her son, if one is born, shall succeed him on the throne, to the
-exclusion of his existing heir by his wife of equal birth; but he
-permits arrangements for his elder son's succession to go on until
-induced by a threat of war from the new wife's father and country
-to fulfil his promise. A prime minister, Mahaushadha, travels, in
-disguise of a Brahman, in order to find a true wife; he meets with
-a witty maiden (Visakha), who directs him to her village by a road
-where he will see her naked at a bathing tank, though she had taken
-another road. This minister was, like David, lowly born; a "deity"
-revealed him to the king, as Jahveh revealed David to Samuel; he was
-a seventh minister, as David was a seventh son, and Solomon also.
-
-Although the number seven was sacred among the ancient Hebrews,
-it does not appear to have been connected by them with exceptional
-wisdom or occult powers in man or woman. The ideas in which such
-legends as "The Seven Wise Masters," "The Seven Sages," and the
-superstition about a seventh son's second-sight, originate, are
-traceable to ancient Indo-Iranian theosophy. It may be useful here
-to read the subjoined extract from Darmesteter's introduction to the
-"Vendîdâd." Having explained that the religion of the Persian Magi is
-derived from the same source as that of the Indian Rishis, that is,
-from the common forefathers of both Iranian and Indian, he says:
-
-
-    "The Indo-Iranian Asura (the supreme but not the only god) was
-    often conceived as sevenfold: by the play of certain mythical
-    formulæ and the strength of certain mythical numbers, the ancestors
-    of the Indo-Iranians had been led to speak of seven worlds, and
-    the supreme god was often made sevenfold, as well as the worlds
-    over which he ruled. The names and the attributes of the seven
-    gods had not been as yet defined, nor could they be then; after
-    the separation of the two religions, these gods, named Aditya,
-    'the infinite ones,' in India, were by and by identified there
-    with the sun, and their number was afterward raised to twelve, to
-    correspond to the twelve aspects of the sun. In Persia, the seven
-    gods are known as Amesha Spentas, 'the undying and well-doing one';
-    they by and by, according to the new spirit that breathed in the
-    religion, received the names of the deified abstractions, Vohu-manô
-    (good thought), Asha Vahista (excellent holiness), Khshathra Vairya
-    (perfect sovereignty), Spenta Armaîti (divine piety), Haurvatât
-    and Ameretâot (health and immortality). The first of them all
-    was and remained Ahura Mazda; but whereas formerly he had been
-    only the first of them, he was now their father. 'I invoke the
-    glory of the Amesha Spentas, who all seven have one and the same
-    thinking, one and the same speaking, one and the same father and
-    lord, Ahura Mazda,'" (Yast xix. 16.) [3]
-
-
-In Persian religion the Seven are always wise and beneficent. The vast
-folklore derived from this Parsî religion included the Babylonian
-belief in seven powerful spirits, associated with the Pleiades,
-beneficent at certain seasons, but normally malevolent: they all
-move together, taking possession of human beings, as in the case of
-the seven demons cast out of Mary Magdalene. In Egypt the seven are
-always evil. But neither of these sevens are especially clever. In
-Buddhist legends they are not so carefully classified, the seventh
-son or daughter manifesting exceptional powers, sometimes of good,
-sometimes of evil, but they are usually referred to for this wit or
-wisdom. In the Davidian and Solomonic legends these notions are found
-as if merely adhering to some importation, and without any perception
-of the significance of the number seven. David is an eighth son in
-1 Sam. xvi. 10-13, but a seventh son in 1 Chron. ii. 16. Solomon is
-a tenth son in 1 Chron. iii. 1-6, but the seventh legitimate son
-in 2 Sam. xii. 24-25. The word Sheba means "the seven," but the
-early scribes appear to have understood it as shaba, "he swears,"
-as in Gen. xxi. 30-31, where after the seven ewe lambs have given
-the well its name, Beersheba, it is ascribed the significance of
-an oath. Bathsheba is commonly translated "Daughter of the Oath,"
-but there can be little doubt that the name means "Daughter of the
-Seven," and that it originated in the astute tricks by which that
-fair foreigner made herself queen-mother and her son king, above the
-lawful heir, whom she was instrumental (perhaps purposely) in getting
-out of the way by furthering his wishes.
-
-Moral obliquities are little considered in these fair favorites of
-translunary powers. Visakha, in one Buddhist tale, gets herself chosen
-by the Brahman as bride of a great man by her care to veil her charms
-at the bath; in another tale she attracts a prime minister in disguise,
-and becomes his wife, partly by laying aside all of her clothing at
-a bathing tank where she knows he will see her. Bathsheba's fame is
-similarly various. Her nudity and ready adultery with the king did
-not prevent her from passing into Talmudic tradition as "blessed among
-women," and to her was even ascribed the beautiful chapter of Proverbs
-(xxxi.) in praise of the virtuous wife! In the "Wisdom of Solomon"
-she is described as the "handmaiden" of the Lord in anticipation of
-the Christian ideal of immaculate womanhood.
-
-A similar development might no doubt be traced in the beautiful
-story of Vi[']s[=]akh[=]a of Shravasti, the most famous of the
-female lay-disciples of Buddha. The queries put to her by Buddha
-and her explanations of her petitions, which had appeared enigmatic,
-are related in Carus's Gospel of Buddha, and in form correspond with
-the very different questions and solutions that passed between the
-Brahman and the Tibetan Visakha, already mentioned. The name Visakha,
-from a Sanskrit root, meaning to divide, came to mean selection and
-intelligence, of all kinds, but in the matron of Shravastî wit becomes
-the genius of charity, and cleverness expands to enlightenment.
-
-The Queen of Sheba,--"Queen of the Seven,"--is a sister spirit of this
-lay-disciple. Whatever truth may underlie the legends of this lady,
-there is little doubt of her legendary relation to the Wise Women of
-Buddhist parables,--to Visakha of the sevenfold wisdom; and of her who
-decided between the rival claimants to the same child; to Ambapali,
-the courtesan, who journeyed to hear Buddha's wisdom and presented
-to him and his disciples her park and mansion; and to the Queen of
-Glory, whose story belongs "to a very early period in the history of
-Buddhism." Such is the opinion of Mr. Rhys Davids, whose translation of
-the Mahásudassana-Sutta, containing an account of the queen's visit to
-the King of Glory, in his Palace of Justice, attended by her fourfold
-army, may be read in Vol. XI., p. 276, of Sacred Books of the East.
-
-This exaltation of human knowledge and wisdom, travelling to find it,
-testing it with riddles and questions, belongs to the cult of the
-Magus and the Pundit.
-
-With reference to the seventh son Visakha (all-potential) and
-his all-wise bride Visakha, a notable parallelism is found in the
-substantial identity of "Solomon" and "the Shunnamite," on account
-of whom he slew his brother Adonijah. Shunnamite is equivalent to
-Shulamite, substantially the same as Solomon (peaceful), but here
-probably meaning that she was a "Solomoness," a very wise woman. That
-such was her reputation appears by the "Song of Songs."
-
-An equally striking comparison may be made between the naming of
-Solomon and the naming of Mahaushadha, the Tibetan "Solomon" already
-mentioned as having married a wise Visakha. Among the many proofs of
-wisdom given by this village-born youth was the discovery of the real
-husband of a woman claimed by two men. One of the men being much the
-weaker, there could be no such trial as that proposed in the child's
-case by Visakha. Mahaushadha questioned the two men as to what they
-had last eaten, then made them vomit, and so found out which had
-told the truth. Let us compare this Tibetan minister's birth with
-that of Solomon:
-
-
-    "When the boy came into the world and his birth-feast was
-    celebrated, the name of Mahaushadha (Great Remedy) was given
-    to him at the request of his mother, inasmuch as she, who
-    had long suffered from illness, and had been unable to obtain
-    relief from the time of the boy's conception, had been cured by
-    him." (Tib. Tales, p. 133)
-
-    "And Jahveh struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto David,
-    and ... on the seventh day [it was the seventh son] the child
-    died.... And David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went in unto
-    her, and lay with her; and she bare a son, and she called his name
-    Solomon. And Jahveh loved him; and he sent by the hand of Nathan
-    the prophet, and he called his name Jedidiah [Beloved of Jah]
-    for Jahveh's sake." (2 Sam. xii.)
-
-
-In the Revised Version "she called" is given in the margin as "another
-reading," but that it is the right reading appears by the context: it
-was she that was "comforted," and in her babe she found "rest"--which
-"Solomon" strictly means. Among the Hebrews the naming of a child
-was an act of authority, and it is difficult to believe that in any
-purely Hebrew narrative a woman would be described as setting aside
-the name given by Jahveh himself. But the high position of woman in
-the Iranian and the Buddhist religions is well known.
-
-In comparative studies the questions to be determined concerning
-parallel incidents are--whether they are trivial coincidences; whether
-they are not based in such universal beliefs or simple facts that they
-may have been of independent origin; whether the historic conditions of
-time and place admit of any supposed borrowing; if borrowing occurred,
-which is the original? With regard to the above parallelisms I submit
-that one of them, at least,--the Judgment of Solomon,--is neither
-trivial nor based in simple facts, and could not have originated
-independently of the Indian tale; that the others, though each, if it
-stood alone, might be a mere coincidence, are too numerous to be so
-explained; that the time and conditions which rendered it possible that
-the names of the apes and peacocks (1 Kings x. 22) imported by Solomon
-should be Indian proves the possibility of importations of tales from
-the same country. (See Rhys David's Buddhist Birth Stories, p. xlvii.)
-
-The question remaining to be determined--which region was the
-borrower--cannot be settled, in the present cases, by the relative
-antiquity of the books in which they are found; not only are the ages
-of all the books, Hebrew and Oriental, doubtful, but they are all
-largely made up of narratives long anterior to their compilation. The
-safest method, therefore, must be study of the intrinsic character
-of each narrative with a view to discovering the country to whose
-intellectual and social fauna and flora, so to say, it is most related,
-and which of the stories bears least of the faults incidental to
-translation. I have applied this touchstone to the above examples, and
-believe that the Oriental stories are the originals. The Judgment of
-Solomon appears to me to have lost an essential link, a motif, which
-it retains in Buddhist versions. And I do not believe that any Hebrew
-Bathsheba could have set aside a name given her child by a prophet,
-in the name of Jahveh, in order to celebrate by another name the
-"rest" she found from her sorrows.
-
-On the other hand, the borrowings by other countries from the legend
-of Solomon appear much more numerous. In some cases, as the legend
-of Jemshîd, there appear to have been exchanges between the two great
-sages, but the Solomonic traditions seem preponderant in Vikramadatsya,
-the demon-commanding hero of India. Solomon became a proverb of wisdom
-and liberality in Abyssinia, Arabia, and Persia. Ideal Sulaimans and
-Solimas abound. Solomon has influenced the legends of many heroes,
-such as Haroun-Alraschid and Charlemagne, and I will even venture
-a suspicion that the fame, and perhaps the name, of Solon have been
-influenced by the legend of Solomon. Lexicographers give no account of
-Solon's name; he is assigned to a conjectural period before written
-Greek existed; his interviews with Croesus, given in Herodotus,
-are hopelessly unhistorical, and his moralisings to the rich man
-recall the book of Proverbs. The Solon of Plato's Critias is already a
-mythological voyager, a Sindebad-Solomon, and his romance of the lost
-Atlantis is like an idealised rumour of the Wise Man's Kingdom. Solon's
-"history" was developed by Plutarch, seven centuries after the era
-assigned to the sage, out of poetical fragments ascribed to him,
-and he is represented as a great trader and traveller in the regions
-associated with Solomon. It is doubtful whether this chief of the Seven
-Sages, whose Solomonic motto was "Know Thyself" (cf. Prov. xiv. 8),
-could he reappear, would know himself as historically costumed by
-writers in our era, from Plutarch to Grote.
-
-At any rate there is little doubt of a reference to the Seven Spentas
-or to the Seven Sages in Proverbs ix. 1:
-
-
-    "Wisdom hath builded her house,
-    She hath hewn out her seven pillars."
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III.
-
-THE WIVES OF SOLOMON.
-
-
-According to the first book of Kings, Solomon's half-brother, Adonijah,
-after the defeat of an alleged (perhaps mythical) effort to recover the
-throne of which he had been defrauded, submitted himself to Solomon. He
-had become enamored of the virgin who had been brought to the aged King
-David to try to revive some vitality in him; and he came to Bathsheba
-asking her to request her son the king to give him this damsel as
-his wife. Bathsheba proffered this "small petition" for Adonijah,
-but Solomon was enraged, and ironically suggested that she should
-ask the kingdom itself for Adonijah, whom he straightway ordered to
-execution. The immediate context indicates that Solomon suspected
-in this petition a plot against his throne. A royal father's harem
-was inherited by a royal son, and its possession is supposed to have
-involved certain rights of succession: this is the only interpretation
-I have ever heard of the extreme violence of Solomon. But I have never
-been satisfied with this explanation. Would Adonijah have requested, or
-Bathsheba asked as a "small" thing, a favor touching the king's tenure?
-
-The story as told in the Book of Kings appears diplomatic, and several
-details suggest that in some earlier legend the strife between the
-half-brothers had a more romantic relation to "Abishag the Shunammite,"
-who is described as "very fair."
-
-Abishag is interpreted as meaning "father of error," and though that
-translation is of doubtful accuracy, its persistence indicates the
-place occupied by her in early tradition. According to Yalkut Reubeni
-the soul of Eve transmigrated into her. She caused trouble between
-the brothers, whose Jahvist names, Adonijah and Jedidiah,--strength of
-Jah, and love of Jah,--seem to have been at some time related. However
-this may be, the fair Shunammite, as represented in the Shulamite of
-the Song of Songs, fills pretty closely the outlines set forth in the
-famous epithalamium (Psalm xlv.) which all critics, I believe, refer
-to Solomon's marriage with a bride brought from some far country. I
-quote (with a few alterations hereafter discussed) the late Professor
-Newman's translation, in which it will be seen that several lines are
-applicable to the Shunammite, whose humble position is alluded to,
-separated from her "people," and her "father's house":
-
-
-   "My heart boils up with goodly matter.
-    I ponder; and my verse concerns the King.
-    Let my tongue be a ready writer's pen.
-
-   "Fairer art thou than all the sons of men.
-    Over thy lips delightsomeness is poured:
-    Therefore hath God forever blessed thee.
-
-   "Gird at thy hip thy hero sword,
-    Thy glory and thy majesty:
-    And forth victorious ride majestic,
-    For truth and meekness, righteously;
-    And let thy right hand teach the wondrous deeds.
-    Beneath thy feet the peoples fall;
-    For in the heart of the king's enemies
-    Sharp are thy arrows.
-
-   "Thy throne, O God, ever and always stands;
-    A righteous sceptre is thy royal sceptre.
-    Thou lovest right and hatest evil;
-    Therefore, O God, thy God hath anointed thee
-    With oil of joy above thy fellow-kings.
-    Myrrh, aloes, cassia, all thy raiment is.
-    From ivory palaces the viols gladden thee.
-    King's daughters count among thy favorites;
-    And at thy right hand stands the Queen
-        In Gold of Ophir.
-
-   "O daughter, hark! behold and bend thy ear:
-    Forget thy people and thy father's house.
-    Win thou the King thy beauty to desire;
-    He is thy lord; do homage unto him.
-    So Tyrus's daughter and the sons of wealth
-        With gifts shall court thee.
-
-   "Right glorious is the royal damsel;
-    Wrought of gold is her apparel.
-    In broidered tissues to the King she is led:
-    Her maiden-friends, behind, are brought to thee.
-    They come with joy and gladness,
-    They enter the royal palace.
-
-   "Thy fathers by their sons shall be replaced;
-    As princes o'er the land shalt thou exalt them.
-    So will I publish to all times thy name;
-    So shall the nations praise thee, now and always."
-
-
-In this epithalamium the name of Jahveh does not occur, and Solomon
-himself is twice addressed as God (Elohim). This lack of anticipation
-was avenged by Jahvism when it arrived; the Song was put among the
-Psalms and transmitted to British Jahvism, which has headed it:
-"The majesty and grace of Christ's kingdom. The duty of the Church
-and the benefits thereof." Such is the chapter-heading to a song
-of bridesmaids,--described in the original as "a song of loves" and
-"set to lilies" (a tune of the time).
-
-There are no indications in the Solomon legend, apart from some
-mistranslations, until the time of Ecclesiasticus (B. C. 180), that
-Solomon was a sensualist, or that there were any moral objections to
-the extent of his harem, which indeed is expanded by his historians
-with evident pride.
-
-As to this, our own monogamic ideas are quite inapplicable to a
-period when personal affection had nothing to do with marriage,
-when women had no means of independent subsistence, and the size of
-a man's harem was the measure of his benevolence. Probably there was
-then no place more enviable for a woman than Solomon's seraglio.
-
-The sin was not in the size of the seraglio but in its foreign and
-idolatrous wives. (Here our translators again get in an innuendo
-against Solomon by turning "foreign" into "strange women.") Before
-a religious notion can get itself fixed as law it is apt to be
-enforced by an extra amount of odium. Solomon's mother had married
-a Hittite, and presumably he would have imbibed liberal ideas on
-such subjects. The round number of a thousand ladies in his harem is
-unhistorical, but that the chief princesses were of Gentile origin
-and religion is clear. The second writer in the first Book of Kings
-begins (xi.) with this gravamen:
-
-
-   "Now King Solomon loved many foreign women besides the daughter of
-    Pharaoh,--Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Zidonian, and Hittite women,
-    nations concerning which Jahveh said to the children of Israel,
-    Ye shall not go among them, neither shall they come among you:
-    for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods:
-    Solomon clave to these in love."
-
-
-The wisest of men could hardly attend to rules which an unconceived
-Jahveh would lay down for an unborn nation centuries later. We
-must, however, as we are not on racial problems, consent to a few
-anachronisms in names if we are to discover any credible traditions
-in the Biblical books relating to Solomon. As Mr. Flinders Petrie
-has discovered something like the word "Israel" in ancient Egypt,
-it may be as well to use that word tentatively for the tribe we are
-considering. No Israelite, then, is mentioned among Solomon's wives,
-and one can hardly imagine such a man finding a bride among devotees
-of an altar of unhewn stones piled in a tent.
-
-As our cosmopolitan prince had to send abroad for workmen of skill,
-he may also have had to seek abroad for ladies accomplished enough
-to be his princesses. That, however, does not explain the number and
-variety of the countries from which the wives seem to have come. The
-theory of many scholars that this Prince of Peace substituted
-alliances by marriage for military conquests is confirmed in at
-least one instance. The mother of his only son, Rehoboam, was Naamah
-the Ammonitess (1 Kings xiv. 31), and the Septuagint preserves an
-addition to this verse that she was the "daughter of Ana, the son of
-Nahash,"--a king (Hanum) with whom David had waged furious war. The
-reference in the epithalamium (Psalms xlv.) to "Tyrus's daughter,"
-in connexion with 1 Kings v. 12, "there was peace between Hiram and
-Solomon," suggests that there also marriage was the peacemaker.
-
-The phrase in 1 Kings iii. 1, "Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh and
-took Pharaoh's daughter" suggests, though less clearly, that some
-feud may have been settled in that case also. That Solomon should
-have espoused as his first and pre-eminent queen the daughter of a
-Pharaoh is very picturesque if set beside the legend of the "Land of
-Bondage," but the narrative could hardly have been given without any
-allusion to bygones had the story in Exodus been known. Yet the words
-"made affinity" may refer to a racial feud in that direction. This
-princess brought as her dowry the important frontier city of Gezer,
-and her palace appears to have been the first fine edifice erected
-in Jerusalem.
-
-The commercial régime established by Solomon could hardly have been
-possible but for his intermarriages. Perhaps if the Christian ban
-had not been fixed against polygamy, and European princes had been
-permitted to marry in several countries, there might have been fewer
-wars, as well as fewer illicit connexions. The intermarriages of the
-large English royal family with most of the reigning houses of Europe,
-have been for many years a security of peace, and it is not improbable
-that our industrial and democratic age, wherein the working man's
-welfare depends on peace, may find in the undemocratic institution
-of royalty a certain utility in its power to be prolific in such ties
-of peace.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV.
-
-SOLOMON'S IDOLATRY.
-
-
-Bathsheba's function at Solomon's marriage is celebrated in the Song
-of Songs:
-
-
-   "Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold King Solomon,
-    With the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of
-    his espousals."
-
-
-Bathsheba, as we have seen, was said to have written Proverbs
-xxxi. as an admonition or reproof to her son on his betrothal with the
-daughter of Pharaoh. The words of David, "Send me Uriah the Hittite"
-(2 Sam. xi. 6), and the emphasis laid on Uriah's being a Hittite (a
-race with which intermarriage was prohibited, Deut. vii. 1-5) might
-have been meant as some legal excuse for David's conduct. He rescued
-Bathsheba, Hebraised (1 Chr. iii. 5), from unlawful wedlock, it might
-be said, and her exaltation in Talmudic tradition may have been meant
-to guard the purity of David's lineage. But the ascription to Bathsheba
-of especial opposition to her son's marriage with the daughter of
-Pharaoh indicates that the gravamen in Solomon's posthumous offence
-lay less in his intermarriage with foreigners than in building for
-them shrines of their several deities,--Istar, Chemosh, Milcom, and
-the rest. Against Pharaoh's daughter the Talmud manifests a special
-animus: she is said to have introduced to Solomon a thousand musical
-instruments, and taught him chants to the various idols. (Shabbath,
-56, col. 2.)
-
-There is a bit of Solomonic folklore according to which the Devil
-tempted him with a taunt that he would be but an ordinary person
-but for his magic ring, in which lay all his wisdom. Solomon being
-piqued into a denial, was challenged to remove his ring, but no
-sooner had he done so than the Devil seized it, and, having by its
-might metamorphosed the king beyond recognition, himself assumed
-the appearance of Solomon and for some time resided in the royal
-seraglio. The more familiar legend is that Solomon was cajoled into
-parting with his signet ring by a promise of the demon to reveal
-to him the secret of demonic superiority over man in power. Having
-transformed Solomon and transported him four hundred miles away,
-the demon (Asmodeus) threw the ring into the sea. Solomon, after long
-vagrancy, became the cook of the king of Ammon (Ano Hanun), with whose
-daughter, Naamah, he eloped. [4] One day in dressing a fish for dinner
-Naamah found in it the signet ring which Asmodeus had thrown into the
-sea, and Solomon thus recovered his palace and harem from the demon.
-
-The connexion of this fish-and-ring legend,--known in several versions,
-from the Ring of Polycrates (Herodotus III.) to the heraldic legend
-of Glasgow,--with the Solomonic demonology, looks as if it may once
-have been part of a theory that the idolatrous shrines were built for
-the princesses while the Devil was personating their lord. In truth,
-however, all of these animadversions belong to a comparatively late
-period. Many struggles had to precede even the recognition of the
-idolatrous character of the shrines, and to the last the Jews were
-generally proud of the "graven images" in their temple,--including
-brazen reproductions of the terrible Golden Calf. At the same time
-there were no doubt some old priests and soothsayers to whom these
-new-fangled things were injurious and odious, and superstitious
-people enough to cling to their ancient unhewn altar rather than to
-the brilliant cherubim, just as in Catholic countries the devotees
-cannot be drawn from their age-blackened Madonnas and time-stained
-crucifixes by the most attractive works of modern art.
-
-Although there is no evidence that the God of Israel was known under
-the name of either Jah or Jahveh in Solomon's time, there is little
-doubt that the rudimentary forces of Jahvism were felt in the Solomonic
-age. The furious prophetic denunciations of the wise and learned which
-echoed on through the centuries, and made the burden of St. Paul,
-indicate that there was from the first much superstition among the
-peasantry, which might easily in times of distress be fanned into
-fanaticism. The special denunciation of Solomon by Jahveh, and his
-suppression during the prophetic age, could hardly have been possible
-but for some extreme defiance on his part of the primitive priesthood
-and the soothsayers. The temple was dedicated by the king himself
-without the help of any priest, and the monopoly of the prophet was
-taken away by the establishment of an oracle in the temple. And the
-worst was that these things indicated a genuine liberation of the king,
-intellectually, from the superstitions out of which Jahvism grew. This
-was especially proved by his disregard of the sanctuary claimed by
-the murderer Joab, who had laid hold of the horns of the altar. The
-altar was the precinct of deity, and beyond the jurisdiction of civil
-or military authority; yet when the "man of blood" refused to leave
-the altar our royal forerunner of Erastus compelled the reluctant
-executioner to slay him at the altar,--even the sacred altar of
-unhewn stone. As no thunderbolt fell from heaven on the king for this
-sacrilege, the act could not fail to be a thunderbolt from earth
-striking the phantasmal heaven of the priest. The Judgment Day for
-settlement of such accounts was not yet invented, and injuries of
-the gods were left to the vengeance of their priests and prophets.
-
-There is an unconscious humour in the solemn reading by English
-clergymen of Jahvist rebukes of Solomon for his tolerance towards
-idolatry, at a time when the Queen of England and Empress of India is
-protecting temples and idols throughout her realm, and has just rebuilt
-the ancient temple of Buddha at Gâya; while the sacred laws of Brahman,
-Buddhist, Parsee, Moslem, are used in English courts of justice. If
-any modern Josiah should insult a shrine of Vishnu, or of any Hindu
-deity, he would have to study his exemplar inside a British prison.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V.
-
-SOLOMON AND THE SATANS.
-
-
-When Solomon ascended the throne, Jerusalem must have been a wretched
-place, without any art or architecture, with a swarming mongrel
-population, mainly of paupers. The holy ark was kept in a tent, and
-the altar of unhewn stone accurately symbolised the rude condition of
-the people, among whom Solomon could find no workmen of skill enough
-to build a temple. It is not easy to forgive him for compelling a
-good many of them into the public works; but it was probably no more
-than a national conscription of the unemployed paupers in Jerusalem,
-chiefly on fortifications for their own defence. There was apparently
-no slave-mart, and it seems rather better to conscript people for
-public industries than, in our modern way, for cutting their neighbors'
-throats. Most of them were the remnants of tribes that once occupied
-the region, much despised by the Israelites, and probably they looked
-on Solomon's plan of building Jerusalem into a city of magnificence,
-giving everybody employment and support, as a grand socialistic
-movement. An Ephraimite, Jeroboam, who tried to get up a revolt in
-Jerusalem does not seem to have found any adherents. The only people
-who complained of any yoke--and their complaint is only heard of after
-some centuries--were the priest-ridden and prophet-ridden Israelites
-who had become fanatically excited about the strange shrines built for
-the king's foreign wives, and the splendid carvings and forms in the
-temple itself. Probably the first two commandments in the decalogue
-were put there with special reference to some Solomonic cult with an
-æsthetic taste for graven images and foreign shrines.
-
-There can be little doubt that Solomon, by his patronage of these
-foreign religions, detached them from the cruel rites traditionally
-associated with them. Among all the censures pronounced against
-him none attributes to him any human sacrifices, though such are
-ascribed to David and Samuel, (1 Sam. xv. 33, 2 Sam. xxi. 9). The
-earliest rebukes of sacrifice in the Bible are those attributed
-to Solomon. "To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the
-Lord than sacrifice" (Prov. xxi. 3). "By mercy and truth iniquity
-is atoned for" (Prov. xvi. 6). "Mercy and truth preserve the king;
-he upholdeth his throne by mercy" (Prov. xx. 28). "Deliver them that
-are carried away to death: those that are ready to be slain forbear
-not thou to save" (Prov. xxiv. 11). "Love covereth all transgressions"
-(Prov. x. 12).
-
-Solomon may not indeed have written these and the many similar maxims
-ascribed to him, but they are among the most ancient sentences in the
-Bible, and they would not have been attributed to any man who had not
-left among the people a tradition of humanity and benevolence. Had
-the royal "idolator" or his wives stained their shrines with human
-blood the prophets would have been eager to declare it. Two acts of
-cruelty are ascribed to Solomon's youth, in the book of Kings: one of
-these, the execution of Shimei, carried out his father's order, but
-only after Shimei had been given fair warning with means of escape;
-while the other, the execution of Adonijah (Solomon's brother), if
-true, is too much wrapped up in obscurity to enable us to judge its
-motives; but it cannot be regarded as historical.
-
-The second historiographer of Kings, setting out to record Jahveh's
-anger about Solomon's foreign wives and shrines (1 Kings xi) says,
-with unconscious humour, that Jahveh raised Satan against him,--two
-Satans. One of these was Hadad, an Edomite, the other Rezon,
-a Syrian. The writer says that this was when Solomon was old, his
-wives having then turned away his heart after other gods. Fortunately,
-however, this writer has embodied in his record some items, evidently
-borrowed, which contradict his Jahvistic legend. One of these tells us
-that Hadad had been carried away from Edom to Egypt, when David and his
-Captain Joab massacred all the males in Edom; that he there married
-the sister of Pharaoh; and that he returned to his own country on
-hearing of the death of David and Joab. When this occurred, Solomon,
-so far from being old, was about eighteen. The Septuagint (Vatican
-MS.) says that Hadad "reigned in the land of Edom." We may conclude
-then that on the return of this heir to the throne Edom declared
-its independence, nor is there any indication that Solomon tried to
-prevent this. Another contradiction of this writer is a note inserted
-about Rezon the Syrian,--"He was an adversary of Israel all the days
-of Solomon." Not, therefore, a Satan raised up by Jahveh against
-Solomon when in old age he had turned to other gods. Rezon "reigned
-over Syria," and there is no indication of any expedition against him
-sent out by Solomon. Bishop Colenso (Pentateuch, Vol. III., p. 101),
-in referring to these points remarks that we do not read of a single
-warlike expedition undertaken by Solomon. [5]
-
-The remark (1 Kings xi.) about the Satans set against Solomon is more
-applicable to the Shiloh traitors, Ahijah and Jeroboam. Jeroboam,--a
-servant whom Solomon had raised to high office,--was instigated
-by Ahijah, a "prophet" neglected by Solomon, to his ungrateful
-treason. Ahijah pretended that he had a divine revelation that he
-(Jeroboam) was to succeed Solomon on account (of course!) of the king's
-shrines to Istar, Chemosh, and Milcom. If the narrative were really
-historic nothing could be more "Satanic" than the lies and treacheries
-related of those self-seekers. Were the story true, the failure of
-these divinely appointed "Satans" to overthrow the kingdom of Solomon,
-who did not arm against them, must have been due to his popularity. In
-after times this impunity of the glorious "idolator" would have to be
-explained; consequently we find Jahveh telling Solomon that, offended
-as he was by the shrines, he would spare him for his father's sake,
-but would rend the kingdom, save one tribe, from his (Solomon's)
-son. That this should be immediately followed by the raising up of
-"Satans" to harass Solomon and Israel, Jahveh having just said the
-trouble should be postponed till after the king's death, suggests that
-the whole account of these quarrels (1 Kings xi. 14-40) is a late
-interpolation. Up to that point the old record is unbroken. "He had
-peace on all sides round about him. And Judah and Israel dwelt safely,
-every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, from Dan to Beersheba,
-all the days of Solomon" (1 Kings iv. 24-25).
-
-Jahveh, in his personal interview with Solomon (1 Kings xi. 11-13),
-said, "I will surely rend the kingdom from thee and will give it
-to thy servant." That is, as explained by the "prophet" Ahijah,
-to Jeroboam. As a retribution and check on idolatry the selection,
-besides violating Jahveh's promise to David (1 Chron. xxii), was not
-successful: after the sundering of Israel and Judah into internecine
-kingdoms, Jeroboam, King of Israel, established idolatry more actively
-than either Solomon or his son Rehoboam. On Jeroboam, his selected
-Nemesis, Jahveh inflicted his characteristic punishment of visiting the
-sins of the fathers on the children; as David was left the seduced wife
-whose husband he had murdered, while his son was executed; as Solomon
-was left in peaceful enjoyment of his kingdom and none of the sinful
-shrines destroyed, while his son bore the penalty; so now Jeroboam,
-elect of Jahveh, built golden calves, surpassed Solomon's offences,
-and vengeance was taken on his son Abijah, who died. This Abijah left
-a son, Baasha, who, undeterred by these fatalities, continued the
-"idolatries" with impunity for the twenty-four years of his reign,
-the punishment falling on his son Elah, who was slain after only two
-years' reign by his military servant, Zimri. And this Zimri, who thus
-carried on Jahveh's decree against idolatry, himself continued "in the
-ways of Jeroboam," the shrines and idols themselves being meanwhile
-unvisited by any executioner or iconoclast until some centuries later.
-
-In Josiah there arrived a king, of the line of David, who might
-seem by his fury against idolatry to be another "man after God's
-own heart." He pulverised the images and the shrines, he "sacrificed
-the priests on their own altars," he even dug up the bones of those
-who had ministered at such altars and burnt them. He trusted Jahveh
-absolutely. He went to the prophetess, Hulda, who told him that he
-should be "gathered to his grave in peace." He was slain miserably,
-by the King of Egypt, to whom the country then became subject.
-
-Josephus ascribed the act of Josiah, in hurling himself against an
-army that was not attacking him, to fate. The fate was that Josiah,
-having exterminated the wizards and fortune-tellers, repaired to
-the only dangerous one among them, because she pretended to be a
-"prophetess," inspired by Jahveh. Her assurances led him to believe
-himself invulnerable, personally, and that in his life-time Jerusalem
-would not suffer the woes she predicted. Josiah, "of the house
-of David," seems to have thought that his zeal in destroying the
-shrines which his ancestor Solomon had introduced, mainly Egyptian,
-would be so grandly consummated if he could destroy a Pharaoh,
-that he insisted on a combat. Pharaoh-Necho sent an embassy to say
-that he was not his enemy, but on his way to fight the Assyrian:
-"God commanded me to hasten; forbear thou from opposing God, who is
-with me, that he destroy thee not." Here, however, was the fanatic's
-opportunity for an Armageddon: Pharaoh had appealed to what Solomon
-would have regarded as their common deity, but which to Josiah meant a
-chance to pit Jahveh against the God of Egypt. On Jahveh's invisible
-forces he must have depended for victory. So perished Josiah, and
-with him the independence of his country.
-
-Solomon, the Prince of Peace, had made the house of Pharaoh the
-ally of his country. Josiah carries his people back under Egyptian
-bondage. Solomon had built the metropolitan Temple, whose shrines,
-symbols, works of art, represented a catholicity to all races and
-religions,--peace on earth, good will to man. Josiah, panic-stricken
-about a holy book purporting to have been found in the Temple,
-concerning which the king by his counsellors consulted a female
-fortune-teller, makes a holocaust of all that Solomon had built up.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI.
-
-SOLOMON IN THE HEXATEUCH.
-
-
-"And when they brought out the money that was brought into the house of
-Jahveh, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of Jahveh given
-by Moses. And Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the scribe, I have
-found the book of the law in the house of Jahveh." (2 Chron. xxxiv. 14,
-15.) The Chronicler adds to the earlier account (2 Kings xxii. 8) the
-words "given by Moses," which looks as if the authenticity of the book
-(Deuteronomy) had not been without question. The finding of the Book
-is set forth in a sort of picture, wherein are grouped the priest,
-the theologian, the phantom prophet, the deity, the temple, and the
-contribution-box. Every part of the ecclesiastical machine is present.
-
-One is irresistibly reminded of the finding of the Book of Mormon by
-Joseph Smith, although it would be unfair to ascribe Deuteronomist
-atrocities to the revelations of the American phantom, Mormon. Nor is
-this a mere coincidence. There are lists of the early Mormons which
-show a large proportion of them to have borne Old Testament names,
-derived from Puritan ancestors. When Solomon set up his philosophic
-throne at Harvard University, and the parishes of the Pilgrims
-became Unitarian, and Boston became artistic, literary, and worldly,
-the Jahvists began to migrate, carrying with them their Sabbatarian
-Ark, in which so many frontier communities are imprisoned "unto this
-day." Some of them have become conquerors of Hawaiian "Canaanites,"
-appropriating their lands. But the Vermont Hilkiah, Joseph Smith,
-discerned that a new Deuteronomy was needed to deal with the many
-American sects, and was guided by an Angel of the Lord to a spot in
-Ontario County, New York, where the Book was found (1827), which
-he was enabled to translate by the aid of his "Urim and Thummim"
-spectacles, found beside the Book. In the Book were discussed the
-principles of all the sects, though not by name, as in Deuteronomy
-Moses is made to deal with the conditions which had arisen since
-the time of Solomon. Unfortunately for these American Jahvists, they
-had left the New English brains behind, with Channing and Emerson,
-and had not carried with them enough to produce a western Jeremiah
-to save their movement from ridicule and popular hatred.
-
-"Thy words were found and I did eat them," says Jeremiah
-(xv. 16). Whether, as some scholars think, Jeremiah had any part in
-the composition of the Book "found," or not, his rage attests the
-existence at the time of an important Solomonic School. "How say you,
-We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us? Behold the lying
-pen of the scribes has turned it to a fiction." (viii. 8.) "They are
-grown strong in the land but not for the faith." (ix. 3.) "Thus saith
-the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the
-mighty man glory in his might." (ix. 23.)
-
-The Deuteronomist especially aims at suppression of the Solomonic
-cult and régime. The law, not found in Exodus, against marriage with
-foreigners (Deut. vii. 3) is especially turned against Solomon's
-example by the addition that such a marriage will "turn away thy son
-from following me, that they may serve other gods." The wife, or other
-member of a man's family, who entices him to serve other gods, is to
-be stoned to death. (xiii. 6-11.) Moses is represented as anticipating
-the setting up of kings, and even the particular events of Solomon's
-reign. Solomon's "forty thousand stalls of horses" (1 Kings iv. 26),
-his horses brought out of Egypt (1 Kings x. 28), his wives, his silver
-and gold, are all foreseen by the ancient lawgiver, who provides that:
-"He [your king] shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the
-people to return to Egypt to the end that he should multiply horses
-... neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn
-not away; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and
-gold." (Deut. xvii. 16, 17.)
-
-This Deuteronomist Moses foresaw, too, that some check on the divine
-appointments to the throne would be needed. "Thou shalt in any wise
-set him king over thee whom thy God shall choose: one from among thy
-brethren shalt thou set over thee: thou mayest not put a foreigner
-over thee." As all of these commandments were received by Moses from
-Jahveh himself (Deut. vi. 1, and elsewhere), it is worthy of remark
-that there should be no trace of that anger with which Jahveh met the
-proposal for a monarchy: "they have rejected me, that I should not be
-king over them." (1 Sam. viii.) In 1776 Thomas Paine, in his Common
-Sense, used this scriptural denunciation of kings with much effect, and
-it no doubt contributed much to overthrow British monarchy in America.
-
-The special denunciations of sun-worship in Deuteronomy (iv. 19,
-xvii. 3) suggest a probability that Solomon's allusion to the sun,
-when dedicating the temple, may have been popularly associated with
-the punishable practice alluded to in Job xxxi. 26, of kissing the
-hand to the sun and moon. The words of Solomon are cancelled in the
-Massoretic text, and do not appear in any English version, but they
-are preserved by the LXX., and there declared to be in the book of
-Jasher. "They are," says Dr. Briggs, "recognised by the best modern
-critics as belonging to the original text [of 1 Kings viii. 12, 13]
-which then would read:
-
-
-   "The sun is known in the heavens,
-        But Jahveh said that he would dwell in thick darkness.
-        I have built up a house of habitation for thee,
-        A place for thee to dwell in forever.
-    Lo, is it not written in the book of Jasher?" [6]
-
-
-This suppression of the opening line of the Dedication, at cost
-of a grand poetic antithesis, reveals the hand of mere bigoted
-ignorance. How many other fine things have been eliminated, how
-many reduced to commonplaces, we know not, but the additions and
-interpolations in the Old Testament have been nearly all traced. Many
-of these are novelettes more prurient than the tales forbidden in
-families when found in the pages of Boccaccio and Balzac, and it is
-a notable evidence of the mere fetish that the Bible has become to
-most sects, that a chorus of abuse instead of welcome still meets the
-scholars who prove the quasi-spurious character of the most odious
-stories in Genesis.
-
-Bishop Colenso seems to have found in such tales only the work of a
-Jahvist with a taste for obscene details, but too little attention has
-been paid to the investigations of Bernstein, who discovers in many
-of these legends a late Ephraimic effort to blacken the character of
-the whole house and line of Judah. [7] Bernstein does not deal with
-the story of Adonijah and Jedidiah (Solomon), whose relative antiquity
-is shown, I think, in the fact that no shameful action is ascribed to
-the elder brother to account for the deprivation of his primogenitive
-right. After Solomon's accession, however, Adonijah proposed to marry
-the maiden Abishag, who technically belonged to his father's harem,
-and probably this tradition gave a cue to the inventor of the story
-of Absalom's having gone to his father's concubines in order to base
-on the act a claim to the kingdom while his father was yet alive.
-
-Absalom's shameful action is supposed to be a fulfilment of the
-sentence pronounced against David because of his crime against
-Uriah. A close examination of that passage (2 Sam. xii. 10-14) must
-suggest doubts about verses 11, 12, but at any rate the sentence is
-not fulfilled by Absalom's alleged act: David's "wives" were not
-taken away "before his eyes," and given "unto his neighbor," but
-some of his concubines were appropriated by his son. Absalom's act
-(2 Sam. xvi. 20-23) and that of David's consigning the concubines to
-perpetual isolation or imprisonment (2 Sam. xx. 3) are not alluded
-to in David's mourning for Absalom, nor in Joab's rebuke of this
-grief. In these strange incoherent items one seems to find the debris,
-so to say, of some masterly work, picturing a sort of Nemesis pursuing
-David and his family for the crime against Uriah. Ahithophel, who is
-described as "the word of God," was the grandfather of Bathsheba and
-the chief friend and counsellor of David, yet it was he who suddenly
-becomes a traitor to the King, foreshadowing Judas--as his sinister
-name ("brother of lies") implies--even to the extent of hanging
-himself. It was Bathsheba's grandfather who moved Absalom to dishonor
-his father's concubines. But were they only concubines in the original
-story, or were they David's wives, as predicted in the verses 11, 12
-(2 Sam. xii.) which seem misplaced and unfulfilled? It may have been
-that some of the details of the story were too gross for preservation,
-or too disgraceful to David, but I cannot think that we possess in its
-original form the tragedy suggested by the presence of an ancestor
-of seduced Bathsheba,--the sinister "word of God" Ahithophel,--and
-the death of the child of that adultery, the deflowering of Tamar,
-David's daughter, the disgrace and violent death of Amnon, Absalom,
-apparently of Daniel also, and finally of Adonijah. What became of
-the eight wives of David? Was that prediction ascribed to Nathan,
-of their defilement, without any corresponding narrative?
-
-In a previous chapter I have pointed out the improbability that the
-fatal wrath of Solomon against Adonijah could have been excited by
-his brother's proposal of honorable wedlock with the maiden Abishag,
-and conjectured that there may have been a story, now lost, of rivalry
-between the brothers for this "very fair" damsel. Whatever may have
-been the real history there is little doubt that there was substituted
-for it some real offence by Adonijah, perhaps such as that afterwards
-ascribed to Absalom. Bathsheba herself is here the Nemesis, as her
-grandfather is in the case of Absalom.
-
-It must be borne in mind that we are dealing with the age which
-produced the thrilling story of Joseph and his brothers, and Potiphar's
-wife, and the contrast with his chastity represented in the profligacy
-of Judah. Indications have been left in Gen. xxxv. at the end of
-verse 22 of the suppression of a story of Reuben and Bilhah, and no
-doubt there were other suppressions. How very bad the story of Reuben
-was we may judge, as Bernstein points out, by the severity of his
-condemnation by Jacob (Gen. xlix.) and by the shocking things about
-Judah (Gen. xxxviii.) allowed to remain in the text. In the latter
-chapter Bernstein finds the same personages,--David, Bathsheba,
-Solomon,--acting in a similar drama to that presented in the Samuel
-fragments, and under their disguises may perhaps be discovered some
-of the details suppressed in the Davidic records. Bernstein says:
-
-"In Genesis xxxviii. Judah, the fourth son of the patriarch, is shown
-in a light which is to lay bare the stain of his existence. Judah went
-to Adullam, where lived his friend 'Chirah.' He married a Canaanite,
-the daughter of Shuah. [8] His eldest son was called Er. He (Er) was
-displeasing in the eyes of Jahveh, therefore Jahveh slew him. His
-second son was called Onan: he died in consequence of his sexual
-sins. The third son's name was Shelah, and, as it is mysteriously
-stated after his name, 'he was at Chezib when his mother bare
-him.' Chezib is certainly the name of a place, and the addition may
-therefore signify that the mother had named the boy Shelah because the
-father happened to be in Chezib at the time, absent from home. Chezib
-has, however, a second meaning.... Chezib means 'deception, lie,' and
-is used by the prophet Micah in this sense (i. 4). Now as Shelah, in
-our narrative, serves to deceive Tamar's hopes, held out by Judah, the
-allusion to Chezib is appropriate. However this may be, Judah's sons
-are all represented as despicable. Even Judah himself fell into bad
-ways and was trapped into the snares laid by his daughter-in-law Tamar,
-who played the prostitute. Thus only did Judah found a generation,
-from which King David is said to descend, from a son of Judah called
-Paretz, meaning 'breaking through,' in which manner he is supposed
-to have behaved towards his brother at his birth.
-
-"Veiled as the libel is here, it becomes apparent as soon as we cast
-a glance upon David's family. The picture which this libel draws of
-Judah hits David himself sharply. The 'Canaanite'--namely, whom Judah
-marries [?]--is no other than the wife of Uriah the Hittite (murdered
-at David's command) whom David himself married adulterously. This
-wife of Judah is said to have been the daughter of a man named
-Shuah. Therefore she is a Bath-shua, and is thus called (verse
-12). But Bathshua is also Bathsheba herself, as one may conclude from 1
-Chron. iii. 5. The eldest son died, hateful in the sight of God, just
-like the first son of Bathsheba (2 Sam. xii. 15). The son of Judah is
-alleged to have been called Er; why? because reading it backwards
-(rea, wrong) it means 'bad,' 'wicked.' The second son is called Onan,
-and dies for sexual sins. He is no other than David's son Amnon, who
-meets his death on account of his sexual sins (2 Sam. xiii). The Tamar
-of Judah's story is the same as the Tamar dishonored by Amnon,--the
-daughter of David, who, in spite of her misfortune and her purity, is,
-to the entire ruin of her good name, humiliated to a person who plays
-the prostitute. And Shelah who does not die,--add to his name only the
-letter m, and you have Solomon."
-
-If in the light of these facts, which reveal the mythical character
-of some of the worst things told of Judah and David, the blessings
-of Jacob (Gen. xlix.) be carefully read, the blessing on Judah will
-be found rather equivocal. Colenso translates:
-
-
-   "A lion's whelp is Judah,
-    Ravaging the young of the suckling ewes."
-
-
-Is this couplet related to Nathan's parable of the rich man taking away
-the poor man's one little ewe lamb which smote the conscience of David?
-
-
-   "The staff shall not depart from Judah,
-    Nor the rod from between his feet
-    Until Shiloh come."
-
-
-Is this merely a device of the Ephraimite rebels, Jeroboamites,
-pretending to find in a patriarchal prophecy a prediction that Judah
-is to be superseded by the descendants of Joseph (on whom Jacob's
-encomiums and blessings are unstinted)? Shiloh was always their
-headquarters.
-
-It is probable, however, that there is here a play upon words. The
-words "Until Shiloh come" are rendered by some scholars "Till he
-(Judah) come to Shiloh," and interpreted as meaning "Till he come
-to rest." The Samaritan version ("donec veniat Pacificus") seems to
-identify Shiloh with Solomon. (Colenso, Pent. iii. p. 127.) But this
-is transparently Shelah over again. Shelomoh (Solomon), Shelah, and
-Shiloh are substantially of the same etymological significance. It
-will be observed that in Gen. xxxviii. Shelah is the only person
-whose character is not blackened. The Ephraimic poem, the "Blessings
-of Jacob,"--each blessing a vaticinium ex evento,--could well afford
-a half-disguised compliment to Solomon who had made no attempt to
-suppress the rebels of Shiloh,--the city of Abijah, who originated
-the Jeroboamic revolution which divided the Davidic kingdom. Jacob's
-blessing on Joseph is of course a blessing on Ephraim: it closes with
-a transfer of the crown (from Judah) to "him that is a prince among
-his brethren." This is "rest" from the arrows of David, this is the
-coming of Shiloh; it occurred under the reign of the Prince of Peace,
-Solomon, and it could not be undone by Solomon's son Rehoboam.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII.
-
-SOLOMONIC ANTIJAHVISM.
-
-
-The ferocities of Josiah and his Jahvists indicate the presence of
-an important Solomonist School. Their culture and tendencies are
-reflected, as we have seen, in the rage of prophets against them,
-and the continuance of their strength is shown in the preservation
-of Agur's Voltairian satire on Jahvism, and Job's avowed blasphemies:
-
-
-   "If indeed ye will glorify yourselves above me,
-    And prove me guilty of blasphemy--
-    Know then, that God hath wronged me!"
-
-
-This translation from Job, quoted from Professor Dillon, need only
-be compared with that of the authorised and the revised versions
-to show us the causa causans to-day which of old added four hundred
-interpolations to the Book of Job to soften its criticism.
-
-It appears strange, however, that Professor Dillon has not included
-among The Sceptics of the Old Testament three writers in the
-composite eighty-ninth Psalm, nor remarked its relation to the Book
-of Job. At the head of this wonderful composition the mythical wise
-man of 1 Kings iv. 31, Ethan, rises ("Maschil of Ethan the Ezrahite,"
-perhaps meaning Wisdom of the Everlasting Helper) to attest the divine
-mercies and faithfulness in all generations. This is in two verses,
-evidently ancient, which a later hand, apparently, has pointed with
-a specification of the covenant with David. After the "Selah" which
-ends these four verses come fourteen verses of sermonising upon them,
-in which nearly all of the points made by Job's "comforters" are put
-in a nutshell. The sons of God who presented themselves, Satan among
-them, in his council (Job i. 6) appear here also (Ps. lxxxix. 6):
-
-
-   "Who among the sons of the gods is like unto Jahveh,
-    A God very terrible in the council of the holy ones."
-
-
-After the mighty things that "Jah" had done to his enemies have been
-affirmed an Elohist takes up the burden and a "vision" like that of
-Eliphaz (Job iv. 13) is appealed to:
-
-
-   "Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy ones."
-
-
-The vision's revelation (Job v. 17) "Happy is the man whom God
-correcteth" is also in this psalm (32, 33): "Then will I visit their
-transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes, but
-my mercy will I not utterly take from him." And Eliphaz's assurance
-"thy seed will be great" (v. 25) corresponds with that in our psalm
-(verse 36), "His seed shall endure forever."
-
-When the psalmist of the vision has pictured, as if in dissolving
-views, the military renown of David, God's "servant," and his "horn,"
-pointing to Solomon, God's "first-born," the transgressions of the
-latter are intimated (30-33), but the seer continues to utter the
-divine promises:
-
-
-   "My covenant will I not break,
-    Nor alter the thing that has gone out of my lips.
-    One thing have I sworn by my holiness;
-    I will not lie unto David:
-    His seed shall endure forever,
-    And his throne as the sun before me;
-    As the moon which is established forever:
-    Faithful is the witness in the sky. Selah."
-
-
-Then breaks out the indignant accuser:
-
-
-   "But thou HAST cast off and rejected!
-    Thou hast been wroth with thine 'anointed';
-    Thou hast broken the covenant with thy 'servant,'
-    Thou hast profaned his crown to the very dust;
-    Thou hast broken down all his defences;
-    Thou hast brought his strongholds to ruin!
-    All the wayfarers that pass by despoil him;
-    He is become a reproach to his neighbors.
-    Thou hast exalted the right-hand of his adversaries,
-    Thou hast made all his enemies to rejoice.
-    Yea, thou turnest back the edge of his sword,
-    And hast not enabled him to stand in battle.
-    Thou hast made his brightness to cease,
-    And hurled his throne down to the ground.
-    The days of his youth thou hast shortened:
-    Thou hast covered him with shame! Selah."
-
-
-A sarcastic "Selah," or "so it is!"--if Eben Ezra's definition of
-Selah be correct.
-
-Then follow four verses by a more timid plaintiff, who, almost in the
-words of Job (e.g., x. 20), reminds Jahveh of the shortness of life,
-and the impossibility of any return from the grave, and asks how long
-he intends to wait before fulfilling his promises. He also supplies
-Koheleth with a text by the pessimistic exclamation, "For what vanity
-hast thou created all the children of men"!
-
-After this writer has sounded his "Selah," another rather more bitterly
-reminds Jahveh, in three verses, that not only his chosen people are
-in disgrace, but his own enemies are triumphant.
-
-(These two are much like the writer of Psalms xliv. 9-26, who almost
-repeats the points made by the above three remonstrants, and asks
-Jahveh, "Why sleepest thou?")
-
-Finally a Jahvist doxology, fainter than any appended to the other
-four books, completes this strange eighty-ninth psalm:
-
-
-   "Praised be Jahveh for evermore!
-    Amen, and Amen!"
-
-
-Great is Diana of the Ephesians! Or is this the half-sardonic
-submission of Job under the whirlwind-answer, which extorted from him
-no tribute except a virtual admission that when the ethical debate
-became a question of which could wield the loudest whirlwinds,
-he surrendered!
-
-In Job's case the only recantation is that of Jahveh himself, who
-admits (xlii. 7) that Job had all along spoken the right thing about
-him (Jahveh). The epilogue is a complete denial of Jahvist theology.
-
-Job's small voice of scepticism which followed the whirlwind was
-never silenced. The fragment of Agur (Proverbs xxx. 1-4) appears to
-have been written as the alternative reply of Job to Jahveh. Job had
-said, "I am vile, I will lay my hand upon my mouth, I have uttered
-that I understand not." Agur adds ironically, "I am more stupid
-than other men, in me is no human understanding nor yet the wisdom
-to comprehend the science of sacred things." Then quoting Jahveh's
-boast about distributing the wind (Job xxxviii. 24), about his "sons
-shouting for joy" (Ibid. 7), and giving the sea its garment of cloud
-(Ibid. 9), Agur, the "Hebrew Voltaire," as Professor Dillon aptly
-styles him, asks:
-
-
-   "Who has ascended into heaven and come down again?
-    Who can gather the wind in his fists?
-    Who can bind the seas in a garment?
-    Who can grasp all the ends of the earth?
-    Such an one I would question about God: 'What is his name?
-    And what the name of his sons, if thou knowest?'"
-
-
-The stupid Jahvist commentator who follows Agur (Proverbs xxx. 5-14)
-and in the same chapter interpolates 17 and 20, has the indirect value
-of rendering it probable that there were a great many "Agurites" (a
-"bad generation" he calls them) and that they were rather aristocratic
-and distrustful of the masses. This commentator, who cannot understand
-the Agur fragments, also shows us, side by side with the brilliant
-genius, lines revealing the mentally pauperised condition into which
-Jahvism must have fallen when such a writer was its champion.
-
-It is tolerably certain that such fragments as those of Agur imply a
-literary atmosphere, a cultured philosophic constituency, and a long
-precedent evolution of rationalism. Such peaks are not solitary, but
-rise from mountain ranges. Professor Dillon, whose admirable volume
-merits study, finds Buddhistic influence in Agur's fragments. [9]
-But I cannot find in them any trace of the recluse or of the mystic;
-he does not appear to be even an "agnostic," for when he says "I
-have worried myself about God and succeeded not," the vein is too
-satirical for a mind interested in theistic speculations. He is a man
-of the world,--more of a Goethe than a Voltaire; he regards Jahveh as
-a phantasm, is well domesticated in his planet, and does not moralise
-on the facts of nature in the Oriental any more than in the Pharisaic
-way. He appears to be a true Solomonic philosopher and naturalist. I
-cannot agree to Professor Dillon's omission of the "Four Cunning Ones"
-(Proverbs xxx. 24-28), because they are not of the same metrical form
-as the others, and lead "nowhither." The lines
-
-
-   "The ants are a people not strong,
-    Yet they provide their meat in the summer,"
-
-
-no doubt led to the famous parable of Proverbs vi. 6-11, "Go to the
-ant, thou sluggard." Being there imbedded in an otherwise commonplace
-editorial chapter, they may have been derived from some commentator
-on Agur.
-
-Agur apparently represents the Solomonic thinkers brought with
-the rest of the people under the trials that made Israel the Job
-of nations. They are such as those who led astonished Jeremiah to
-ask "what kind of wisdom is in them?" (Jeremiah viii.) They "do not
-recognise Jahveh's judgments"; in "shame, dismay, captivity, they have
-rejected Jahveh's word." The exquisite humor of Agur shows that these
-philosophers did not lose their serenity. Agur sees man passing his
-life between two insatiable daughters of the ghoul, "the Grave and
-the Womb,"--Birth and Death,--and amid the inevitable evils of life
-he will be wise to refrain from rage and lay his hand upon his lips.
-
-But silence was just what the Jahvist omniscients could not attain
-to. Notwithstanding Jahveh's confession that Job was right in his
-position, and the orthodox wrong in their theory that all evil is
-providential, the "comforters" rise again in the commentator who begins
-(Proverbs xxx. 5):
-
-
-   "Every word of God is perfected.
-    He is a shield to them that trust in Him,"
-
-
-and proceeds in verse 14 with his inanities. And these have prevailed
-ever since. Even Jesus, when he took up the burden of Wisdom, and
-rebuked the Jahvist superstition that those on whom a tower fell
-were subjects of a judgment, must have his stupid corrector to add,
-"Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish." This simpleton's
-superstition has taken the place of the great successor of Solomon,
-and to-day, amid all the learning of Christendom, is proclaiming
-that the Father is "permitting" all the Satans,--war, disease,
-earthquake, famine,--to harry his children just to test them or to
-chasten them. Why should omnipotence create a race requiring worse than
-inquisitorial tortures for its discipline? In all the literature of
-Christendom there is not one honest attempt to deal with the evils and
-agonies of nature; and at this moment we find theists apotheosizing the
-"Unknowable from which all things proceed," without any appreciation
-of the fact that in the remote past Jahvism sought the same refuge,
-and that it was proved by Job a refuge of fallacies. In an awakening
-moral and humane sentiment Job stands in this latter day upon the
-earth, and again steadily repeats his demand why one should respect
-an Unknowable from whom all things,--all horrors and agonies,--proceed.
-
-Ethically we are required to do no evil that good may come;
-theologically, to worship a deity who is doing just that all the
-time. This is no doubt a convenient doctrine for the Christian
-nations that wish to preserve their own property and peace at home,
-while acting as banditti in remote continents and islands. All such
-atrocities are enacted and adopted as part of the providential plan of
-spreading the Gospel, latterly "civilisation"; but it is very certain
-that there can be no such thing as national civilisation until evil is
-recognised as evil, good as good,--the one to be abhorred, the other
-loved,--and no deity respected whose government would wrong a worm.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII.
-
-THE BOOK OF PROVERBS AND THE AVESTA.
-
-
-The legend of the Queen of Sheba forms not only a poetic prologue
-to the epical tradition of Solomon's wisdom, but has a substantial
-connexion with the character of that wisdom, to whose final
-personification she contributed.
-
-The corresponding Oriental stories do not necessarily deprive this
-legend of historic basis, but point to the region of this "Queen
-of the Seven (Sheba)." Those Oriental pilgrimages of eminent women
-to great sages, however invested with magnificence, are natural;
-even such romances could not have been invented unless in accordance
-with the genius of the country in which they were written. There is
-no antecedent improbability that a queen, belonging to a region in
-which her sex enjoyed large freedom, should have made a journey to
-meet Solomon.
-
-The Abyssinians, who regard her as the founder of their dynasty, at the
-same time show how little characteristic of their country the legend
-was, by their ancient tradition, that it was the Queen of Sheba who
-provided that no woman should sit on the throne, forever! They claim
-that this Queen is referred to in Psalm xlv.--"At thy right hand
-doth stand the Queen, in gold of Ophir." This psalm is Solomonic,
-but the reference is no doubt to the Queen Mother, Bathsheba (whose
-throne was on his "right hand," 1 Kings ii. 19). Neither Naamah
-the Ammonitess, mother of Solomon's successor, nor the daughter of
-Pharaoh, who was his especially distinguished wife, is described as
-a queen,--this indeed not being a Jewish title for a king's wife. The
-psalm indicates much glory to be conferred on a woman by wedlock with
-Solomon, but not that he was to derive any honor from either or all of
-the "threescore queens" assigned him in later times (Cant. vi. 8). In
-another Solomonic Psalm (lxxii.) it is said:
-
-
-   "The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents:
-    The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts,
-    Yea, all kings shall fall down before him."
-
-
-No glory is here supposed to be derivable from a woman, and an inventor
-would probably have merely devised a saga on the last of the lines
-just quoted, which is adapted in 1 Kings iv. 34, to Solomon's wisdom,
-or he would have imagined some instance of a particularly illustrious
-monarch coming to pay homage to Solomon. That the only example
-particularized is that of a woman carries some signs of reality.
-
-Assuming that there was ever any King Solomon at all, this Psalm
-lxxii., whose Hebrew title is "Of Solomon," might have been written
-in the height of his reign. The title of "God" given him in Psalm
-xlv. is here approximated in the opening line, "Give the King thy
-judgments, O Elohim," and in the ascription to him of such virtues and
-such beneficent dominion, "from the river (Euphrates) to the ends of
-the earth," without any further reference to God, that an indignant
-Jahvist expands the doxology (18, 19) to include a reclamation for
-Jahveh. The ancient lyric closes with verse 17, which says of Solomon:
-
-
-    "His name shall endure forever;
-    His name shall have emanations as long as the sun;
-    Men shall bless themselves in him;
-    All nations shall call him The Happy."
-
-
-The Jahvist answers:
-
-
-   "Blessed be Jahveh Elohim, the Elohim of Israel,
-    Who alone doeth wondrous things,
-    And blessed be His glorious name forever;
-    And let the whole earth be filled with His glory.
-    Amen, and Amen."
-
-
-Now in this beautiful poem (omitting the doxology) the elation is
-especially concerning some connexion with Sheba. In verse 10 it is
-said "The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts"; in verse 15,
-"To him shall be given of the gold of Sheba." These lines might have
-been written on the announcement of a royal visit, or meeting, which
-had not mentioned a queen. But what country is indicated by Sheba (the
-Seven)? In India there are seven holy rivers, and seven holy Rishis,
-represented by the seven stars of the Great Bear. But these correspond
-with the Seven Rivers of Persia which enter into the Persian Gulf, in
-the Avesta called Satavæsa, a star-deity. In the Yîr Yast 9 it is said:
-
-
-   "Satavæsa makes those waters flow down to the seven Karshvares of
-    the earth, and when he has arrived down there he stands, beautiful,
-    spreading ease and joy on the fertile countries, thinking in
-    himself, 'How shall the countries of the Aryas grow fertile?'"
-
-
-As there are seven heavens, there are seven earths (Karshvares),
-and these, as already shown (ante II.), are presided over by the
-"seven infinite ones" (Amesha-Spentas). Of these seven the first is
-Ahura Mazda himself, and of the others only one is female--Armaîti,
-genius of the earth. Of this wonderful and beautiful personification
-more must be said presently, but it may be said here that Armaîti
-was the spouse of Ahura Mazda, and Queen of the Seven,--the seven
-Ameshi-Spentas who preside respectively over the seven karshvares of
-the earth.
-
-The function of Armaîti being to win men from nomadic life and warfare,
-to foster peace and tillage, she was a type of "the eternal feminine";
-and such an ideal could hardly have been developed except in a region
-where women were held in great honour, nor could it fail to produce
-women worthy of honor. That such was the fact in Zoroastrian Persia
-is proved by many passages in the Avesta, wherein we find eminent
-women among the first disciples of Zoroaster. There is a litany to the
-Fravashis, or ever living and working spirits, of twenty-seven women,
-whose names are given in Favardîn Yast (139-142). Among these was
-the Queen Hutaosa, converted by Zoroaster, the wife of King Vîstâspa,
-the Constantine of Zoroastrianism. Hutaosa was naturally a visible and
-royal representative of Armaîti, "Queen of the Seven," a princess of
-peace, a patroness of culture, to be imitated by other Persian queens.
-
-That the sanctity of "seven" was impressed on all usages of life in
-Persia is shown in the story of Esther. King Ahasuerus feasts on the
-seventh day, has seven chamberlains, and consults the seven princes
-of Media and Persia ("wise men which knew the times"). When Esther
-finds favor of the King above all other maidens, as successor to
-deposed Vashti, she is at once given "the seven maidens, which were
-meet to be given her, out of the King's house; and he removed her
-and her maidens to the best place of the house of the women." Esther
-was thus a Queen of the Seven,--of Sheba, in Hebrew,--and although
-this was some centuries after Solomon's time, there is every reason
-to suppose that the Zoroastrian social usages in Persia prevailed
-in Solomon's time. At any rate we find in the ancient Psalm lxxii.,
-labeled "Of Solomon," Kings of Sheba (the Seven) mentioned along
-with the Euphrates, chief of the Seven Rivers (Zend Haptaheando); and
-remembering also the "sevens" of Esther, we may safely infer that a
-"Queen of Sheba" connoted a Persian or Median Queen.
-
-We may also fairly infer, from the emphasis laid on "sevens" in Esther,
-in connexion with her wit and wisdom, that a Queen of the Seven had
-come to mean a wise woman, whether of Jewish or Persian origin, a
-woman instructed among the Magi, and enjoying the freedom allowed by
-them to women. There is no geographical difficulty in supposing that a
-Persian queen like Hutaosa, a devotee of Armaîti (Queen of the Seven,
-genius of Peace and Agriculture), might not have heard of Salem, the
-City of Peace, of its king whose title was the Peaceful (Solomon),
-and visited that city,--though of course the location of the meeting
-may have been only a later tradition. [10]
-
-The object of the Queen's visit to Solomon was "to test him with hard
-questions" as to his wisdom. It was not to discover or pay court to his
-wisdom, though he received from her "of the gold of Sheba" spoken of
-in the psalm. As a royal missionary of the Magi her ability and title
-to prove Solomon's knowledge, and decide on it, are assumed in the
-narrative (1 Kings x.). Several sentences in her tribute to Solomon's
-"wisdom and goodness" recall passages in the Psalm (lxxii.). There is
-here an intimation of some prevailing belief that Solomon's wisdom
-was harmonious with the Zoroastrian wisdom. Whether the visit of
-the Queen be mythical or not, and even if both she and Solomon are
-regarded as mythical, the legend would none the less be an expression
-of a popular perception of elements not Jewish in Solomonic literature.
-
-Of course only Biblical mythology is here referred to. The Moslem
-mythology of Solomon and the Queen (Balkis) has taken from the
-Avesta Wise King Yima's potent ring, and his power over demons, and
-other fables, in most instances to be noted only as an unconscious
-recognition of a certain general accent common to the narratives of
-the two great kings. Yet it can hardly be said that the stories of Yima
-in the Avesta and of Solomon in the Bible are entirely independent of
-each other,--as in Yima's being given by the deity a sort of choice
-and selecting the political career, Ahura Mazda saying: "Since thou
-wanted not to be the preacher and the bearer of my law, then make thou
-my worlds thrive, make my worlds increase: undertake thou to nourish,
-to rule, and to watch over my world." Ahura Mazda requests Yima to
-build an enclosure for the preservation of the seeds of life (men,
-animals, and plants) during a succession of fatal winters, and some
-of the particulars resemble both the legend of the ark and that of
-building the temple. Yima was, like Solomon, a priest-king (he is also
-called "the good shepherd"); he was, like Solomon, beset by satans
-(daêvas), and after a reign of fabulous prosperity he finally fell by
-uttering falsehood. What the falsehood was is told in the Bundahis:
-the good part of creation was ascribed to the evil creator.
-
-Several other heroes of the Avesta have assisted in the idealisation
-of Solomon, notably King Vîstâspa, already mentioned. Like Solomon,
-he is famous for his horses and his wealth. Zoroaster exhorts him,
-"All night long address the heavenly Wisdom; all night long call for
-the Wisdom that will keep thee awake." From Zoroaster the "Young King"
-learned "how the worlds were arranged"; and he is advised "have no
-bad priests or unfriendly priests."
-
-It is now necessary to inquire whether there is anything corresponding
-to these facts in the ancient writings ascribed to Solomon. The
-lower criticism has little liking for Solomon, and makes but a feeble
-struggle for the genuineness of his canonical books against the higher
-criticism, which forbids us to assign any word to Solomon. But these
-higher critics acquired their learning while lower critics, and it
-is difficult to repress an occasional suspicion of the survival of
-an unconscious prejudice against the royal secularist, apparent in
-their unwillingness to admit any participation at all of Solomon in
-the wisdom books. Is this quite reasonable?
-
-It is of course clear that Solomon cannot be described as the author of
-any book or compilation that we now possess. But neither did Boccaccio
-write Shakespeare's "Cymbeline," nor Dryden's "Cymon and Iphigenia,"
-nor the apologue of the Ring in Lessing's "Nathan the Wise," nor
-Tennyson's "Falcon," all of which, however, are his tales. I select
-Boccaccio for the illustration because his defiance of "the moralities"
-led to his suppression in most European homes, thus facilitating the
-utilization of his ideas by others who derive credit from his genius,
-this being precisely what might be expected in the case of the great
-secularist of Jerusalem. For no one can carefully study the Book
-of Proverbs without perceiving that a large number of them never
-could have been popular proverbs, but are terse little essays and
-fables, some of them highly artistic, which indicate the presence
-at some remote epoch of a man of genius. And I cannot conceive any
-fair reason for setting aside the tradition of many centuries which
-steadily united the name of Solomon with much of this kind of writing,
-or for believing that every sentence he ever uttered or wrote is lost.
-
-It would require a separate work to pick out from the two Anthologies
-ascribed to Solomon (the First, Proverbs x. i-xxii. 16; the Second,
-xxv-xxix), the more elaborate thoughts, and piece together those that
-represent one mind, even were I competent for that work. But this
-fine task awaits some scholar, and, indeed, the whole Book of Proverbs
-needs a more thorough treatment in this direction than it has received.
-
-Of the last seven chapters of the Book of Proverbs, one (xxx.),
-containing the fragments of Agur and his angry antagonist, has been
-(vii.) considered. Chapters xxv., xxvi., xxvii., and xxxi. 10-31, may
-with but little elimination fairly come under their general heading,
-"These are also proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, King
-of Judah, copied out." Chapters xxviii. and xxix., with their flings
-at princes and wealth, contain many Jahvist insertions. The admirable
-verses in xxiv. 23-34, and those in xxxi. 10-29, 31, represent the
-high secular ethics of the Solomonic school.
-
-The verses last mentioned (exaltation of the virtuous woman) are,
-curiously enough, blended with "The words of King Lemuel, the oracle
-which his mother taught him." The ancient Rabbins identify Lemuel
-with Solomon, and relate that when, on the day of the dedication
-of the temple, he married Pharaoh's daughter, he drank too much at
-the wedding feast, and slept until the fourth hour of the next day,
-with the keys of the temple under his pillow. Whereupon his mother,
-Bathsheba, entered and reproved him with this oracle. Bathsheba's
-own amour with Solomon's father does not appear to have excited any
-rabbinical suspicion that the description of the virtuous wife with
-which the Book of Proverbs closes is hardly characteristic of the
-woman. She was the "Queen Mother," a part of the divine scheme, her
-conception of the builder of the temple immaculate, predetermined in
-the counsels of Jahveh.
-
-The first nine verses of this last chapter in the Book of Proverbs
-certainly appear as if written at a later day, perhaps even so late as
-the third century before our era, and aimed at the Jahvist tradition
-of Solomon. Lemuel seems to be allegorical, and we here have an
-early instance of the mysterious disinclination to mention the great
-King's name. His name, Renan assures us, is hidden under "Koheleth,"
-but he is not named in the text of that book or even in that of the
-"Wisdom of Solomon." In Ezra v. 11 the mention of the temple as the
-house "which a great king of Israel builded and finished" seems to
-indicate a purposed suppression of Solomon's name, which continued
-(Jeremiah lii. 20 is barely an exception) until this silence was
-broken by Jesus Ben Sira, and again by Jesus of Nazareth.
-
-The removal of verse 30 (Proverbs xxxi.), clearly a late Jahvist
-protest, leaves the praise of the virtuous woman with which the book
-closes without any suggestion of piety. Yet we find here that "her
-price is far above rubies," "she openeth her mouth with wisdom," and
-one or two other tropes which probably united with some in the First
-Anthology to evolve more distinctly the goddess Wisdom. Some sentences
-of the First Anthology grew like mustard seed. "Wisdom resteth in the
-heart of him who hath understanding" (Proverbs xiv. 33), reappears
-in 1 Kings iii. 12, and in x. 24 it is definitely stated that it was
-the wisdom which God had put into Solomon's heart that made all the
-earth seek his presence. It was a miracle they went to see; the glory
-is not that of Solomon, but that of God. [11]
-
-The nearest approach to a personification of Wisdom in the First
-Anthology is Proverb xx. 15: "There is gold and abundance of pearls,
-but the lips of knowledge are a (more) precious jewel." This expands in
-Job to a long list of precious things--gold, coral, topaz, pearls--all
-surpassed by Wisdom, and the similitudes journey on to the parables
-of Jesus, wherein the woman sweeps for the lost silver, and the
-man sells all he has for the pearl of price. This, however, was a
-comparatively simple and human development. And the first complete
-personification of Wisdom, growing out of "the lips of knowledge," and
-perhaps influenced by the portraiture of "the virtuous woman," is an
-expression of philosophical and poetic religion. This personification
-is in Proverbs viii. and ix., which are evidently far more ancient
-than the seven chapters preceding them, and no doubt constitute the
-original editorial Prologue to the so-called "Proverbs of Solomon,"
-with the exception of some Jahvist cant about "the fear of Jahveh." We
-hear from "the lips of knowledge" a reaffirmation of the "excellent
-things" said in the Anthologies about the superiority of Wisdom to
-gems. (The word "ancient" given by the revisers in the margin to
-viii. 18 may possibly signify the antiquity of the Anthologies when
-this Prologue was written.) The scholarly writer of the Prologue had
-closely studied the ancient proverbs, and occasionally gives good hints
-for the interpretation of some that puzzle modern translators. Thus
-Wisdom, in describing herself as "sporting" (viii. 30), indicates the
-right meaning of x. 23 to be that while the fool finds his sport in
-mischief, the wise man finds his sport with wisdom. (This proverb may
-also have suggested the laughter of the "virtuous woman" in xxxi. 25.)
-
-In viii. 22-31, Wisdom becomes more than a personification, and takes
-her place in cosmogony. This passage, which contains germs of much
-of our latter-day theology, must be quoted in full, and comparatively
-studied. Wisdom speaks:
-
-
-    22. Jahveh acquired me in the outset of his way,
-        Before his works, from of old.
-
-    23. From eternity was I existent,
-        From the first, before the earth.
-
-    24. When no deep seas I was brought forward,
-        When no fountains abounding with water.
-
-    25. Before the mountains were fixed,
-        Before the hills, was I brought forward:
-
-    26. When he had not fashioned the earth and the fields,
-        And the consummate part of the dust of the world.
-
-    27. When he established the heavens, I was there;
-        When he set a boundary on the face of the deep;
-
-    28. When he made firm the clouds above;
-        When the fountains of the deep became strong;
-
-    29. When he gave to the sea its limit,
-        That the waters should not pass over their coast;
-        When he marked out the foundation pillars of the earth:
-
-    30. Then was I near him, as a master builder:
-        And I was his delight continually,
-        Sporting before him at all times;
-
-    31. Sporting in the habitable part of his earth,
-        And my delight was with the sons of men.
-
-
-Let us compare with this picture of Wisdom that of Armaîti, genius of
-the Earth, in the sacred Zoroastrian books. In the Gâtha Ahunavaiti,
-7, it is said: "To succor this life (to increase it) Armaîti came
-with wealth, and good and true mind: she, the everlasting one,
-created the material world; but the soul, as to time, the first
-cause among created beings, was with thee" (Ahura Mazda). Thus, like
-Wisdom, Armaîti is everlasting: she was not created, but "acquired,"
-by the deity. When Ahura Mazda, as chief of the seven Amesha-spentas,
-ideally designed the world, she gave it reality, as master-builder,
-and, like Wisdom, hewed out the foundation pillars he had marked
-out,--namely, the Seven Karshvares of the earth. The opening lines
-of Proverbs ix. read almost like a quotation from some Gâtha:
-
-
-   "Wisdom hath builded her house,
-    She hath hewn out her seven pillars."
-
-
-Like Wisdom, Armaîti was the continual delight of the supreme God. In
-an ancient Pâli MS., it is said that Zoroaster saw the supreme being in
-heaven, with Armaîti seated at his side, her hand caressing his neck,
-and said: "Thou, who art Ahura Mazda, turnest not thy eyes away from
-her, and she turns not away from thee." Ahura Mazda tells Zoroaster
-that she is "the house mistress of my heaven, and mother of the
-creatures." [12] Like Wisdom, Armaîti has joy in the "habitable part"
-of the earth, and the "sons of men," from whom she receives especial
-delight ("the greatest joy"), are enumerated in the Vendîdâd, also
-the places in which she has such delight. They are the faithful who
-cultivate the earth morally and physically, and the places so watered
-or drained, and homes "with wife, children, and good herds within."
-
-Armaîti has a daughter, "the good Ashi," whose function is to pass
-between earth and heaven and bring the heavenly wisdom (Vohu-Mano,
-"Good Thought") to mankind. The soul of the world thus reaches, and
-is reached by, heaven, and Armaîti thus becomes a personification
-of the combined human and superhuman Wisdom ascribed to great men,
-such as Solomon. At the same time the "sons of men" are all the
-children of Armaîti, and she finds delight among them. Even the
-rudest are restrained by her culture. "By the eyes of Armaîti the
-(demonic) ruffian was made powerless," says Zoroaster. The spirit of
-the Earth, laughing with her flowers and fruits, survived in Persia
-the sombre reign of Islam, to sing in the quatrain of Omar Khayyám:
-"I asked my fair bride--the World--what was her dower: she answered,
-'My dower is in the joy of thy heart.'"
-
-"The sons of men" is not an Avestan phrase, for to Armaîti her
-daughters are as dear as her sons, but we find in the Vendîdâd "the
-seeds of men and women." These are sprung from those who were selected
-for preservation in the Vara, or enclosure, of the first man, Yimi,
-made by direction of the deity, when the evil powers brought fatal
-winters on the world. The deformed, diseased, wicked, were excluded;
-the chosen people were those formed of "the best of the earth." From
-long and prosperous life on earth, the Amesha of immortality, the
-good angel of death, conducted them to eternal happiness; they are the
-immortals, children of the demons being mortals. There was something
-corresponding to this in the Jewish idea of their being a chosen
-people, as distinguished from the Gentile world (see Deut. xxxii. 8),
-and no doubt the phrase "sons of men" represented a divine dignity
-afterwards expressed in the title, "Son of Man." [13]
-
-The Solomonic hymn of Wisdom at the creation (Proverbs viii. 22-31)
-contains other Avestan phrases. "From eternity was I existent," recalls
-Zervan akarana, "boundless time," and verse 26, relating to the earth,
-is still more significant: in it "the sum" has been suggested by the
-Revisers for (E. V.) "the highest part" (of the earth), but in either
-rendering it is near to the Avestan phrase, "the best of Armaîti"
-(Earth). This phrase is reproduced in the Bundahis (xv. 6), where the
-creator, Ahura Mazda, says to the first pair, "You are men (cf. Genesis
-v. 2, he 'called their name Adam'), you are the ancestry of the world,
-and you are created the best of Armaîti (the Earth) by me." (West's
-translation. Sacred Books of the East. Vol. V., p. 54, n. 2.) The
-word for Earth in Proverb 26 is adamah, and in the Septuagint (various
-reading) it is actually translated Armaith,--Armaîti's very name. We
-may thus find in Proverb 26 (viii.) the idea of Omar Khayyám, "Man
-is the whole creation's summary."
-
-Whether there is any connexion between the Sanskrit Adima and
-Hebrew Adam is still under philological discussion: probably not,
-for their meaning is different, Adima meaning "the first," and
-Adam relating to the material out of which he is said to have been
-formed. Adam is derived from Adamah: after all, man came from the
-great Woman--"the Mother of all living." [14] Adamah, according to
-Sale, is a Persian word meaning "red earth," and in Hebrew also it
-connotes redness. Armaîti might have acquired an epithet of ruddiness
-from her union with Âtar, the genius of Fire (Fargard xviii. 51,
-52. Darmesteter. Introduction, iv. 30). In Hebrew adamah combines
-three senses--a fortress, redness, and cultivated ground. In Proverbs
-(viii. 31) we have the fortress or enclosure, "the habitable part of
-his earth"; in verse 26 the cultivated earth, "the highest part (or
-sum, or best) of the dust of the earth." The "delight" in which Wisdom
-dwelt (verse 30) is Eden, the garden of delight, and in verse 31 this
-delight associated with the human children of the earth. Here we have
-the elements of the narrative of the creation of Adam in Genesis,
-and of the garden, though clearly not derived from Genesis. And in
-Genesis we find something like a personification of the earth, as in
-ix. 13, "It (the rainbow) shall be a token of a covenant between me
-and the earth."
-
-The idea of a creative deity requiring, as in Proverbs viii., the
-assistance of another personal being, is foreign to Jahvism, but it
-is of the very substance of Zoroastrianism, and it reappears in the
-Elohism of Genesis. Another important and fundamental fact is, that we
-find in the prologue to Proverbs a deity contending against something,
-circumscribing forces that need control, not of his creation. It is
-plain that the conception of monotheistic omnipotence had not yet
-been formed. There are higher and lower parts of the earth.
-
-Although there is no evidence that any such compilation as our
-"Genesis" existed at the time when the prologue (viii., ix.) to the
-"Proverbs of Solomon" was composed, the Elohistic opening of Genesis,
-especially in its original form, harmonises with the Parsi conflict
-between Light and Darkness.
-
-
-   "When of old Elohim separated heaven and earth--when the earth was
-    desolation and emptiness--darkness on the face of the deep, and
-    the spirit of Elohim brooding on the face of the waters,--Elohim
-    said, Be Light; Light was." [15]
-
-
-The spirit of God "brooding" over the waters (Genesis i. 1) may
-be identified with the Wisdom of Proverbs ix. 1, who "builds her
-house" as the Elohim built the universe, and "hath hewn out her
-seven pillars" like a true Armaîti, "Queen of the Seven." She is
-the Spirit of Light. And perhaps the darkness that was on the face
-of the abyss suggested the antagonistic personification in the next
-chapter (ix.) named by Professor Cheyne "Dame Folly." Wisdom, having
-builded her house, spread her table, mingled her wine, sends forth her
-maidens to invite the simple to forsake Folly, enjoy her feast, and
-"live." Dame Folly,--who though she has "a seat in high places" is
-"silly,"--clamours to every wayfarer that even the bread and water
-of her table, being surreptitious, are sweeter than the luxuries
-and wine offered by Wisdom. This appears to be the meaning of Dame
-Folly's somewhat obscure invitation.
-
-
-  "'Waters stolen are sweet!
-    Forbidden bread is pleasant!'
-    He knoweth not her phantoms are there,
-    That her guests are in the underworld."
-
-
-In this contrast between Wisdom inviting all to enter her house,
-drink her wine, and "live," and Folly inviting them to her "Sheol,"
-we have nearly a quatrain of Omar Khayyám: "Since from the beginning
-of life to its end there is for thee only this earth, at least live
-as one who is on it and not under it."
-
-In the Avesta the good and wise Mother Earth (Armaîti) is opposed by
-a malign female "Drug" (demoness), whose paramours are described in
-Fargard xviii. (Vendîdâd). These two are fairly represented by Wisdom
-and Folly as personified in Proverbs viii. and ix.
-
-The Jahvist who in Proverbs i. 1-7 (excepting the first six verses)
-undertakes to edit the original and ancient editor as well as Solomon,
-presents the curious case of one of Dame Folly's phantoms interpreting
-the words of Wisdom's guests. Unable to comprehend their portraiture
-of Dame Folly, he imagines that the allusion must be to harlotry,
-admonishes his "son" that "Jahveh giveth wisdom," which among other
-things will "deliver thee from the strange woman," whose "house sinketh
-down to the underworld and her paths unto phantoms." Which recalls
-the pious lady who on hearing her ritualistic pastor accused by a
-dissenter of leanings toward the Scarlet Woman, anxiously inquired
-of a friend whether she had ever heard any scandal connected with
-their vicar's name!
-
-Our Jahvist editor seems to be one who would often say of laughter
-"it is mad"; and naturally could not imagine how Wisdom could "sport"
-before the Lord (viii. 30) unless she were in some sense mad. The
-sport before Jahveh could only be in mockery of some sinner's torment,
-like the derision ascribed to Jahveh (Psalm ii. 4); consequently our
-editor represents Wisdom crying abroad in the streets:
-
-
-   "Because I have called and ye refused....
-    I also will laugh in the day of your calamity,
-    I will mock when your fear cometh."
-
-
-But Pliny mentions the Mazdean belief, confirmed by Parsi tradition,
-that Zoroaster was born laughing. To him Ahura Mazda says: "Do thou
-proclaim, O pure Zoroaster, the vigor, the glory, the help and the
-joy that are in the Fravashis (souls) of the faithful."
-
-However, we may see in these first seven chapters of Proverbs that
-Wisdom had become detached from the sons of men, in whom she had
-once found delight, was no longer in the human heart, but had finally
-ascended to wield the heavenly thunderbolts. And yet it is probable
-that we owe to this vindictive and menacing attitude of deified Wisdom
-the preservation of so many witty and sceptical things in books
-traditionally ascribed to Solomon. The orthodox legend being that
-the Lord had put supernatural wisdom into Solomon's heart, and never
-revoked it despite his "idolatry" and secularism, it followed that the
-naughty man could not help continuing to be a medium of this divine
-person, Wisdom, and that it might be a dangerous thing to suppress
-any utterance of hers through Solomon,--unwitting blasphemy. However
-profane or worldly the writings might appear to the Jahvist mind,
-there was no knowing what occult inspiration there might be in them,
-and the only thing editors could venture was to sprinkle through them
-plenteous disinfectants in the way of "Fear-of-the-Lord" wisdom.
-
-The proverbs in which the name Jahveh appears are not, of course, to
-be indiscriminately rejected as entirely Jahvist interpolations. It
-seems probable that little more than the word Jahveh has been supplied
-in some of these,--e. g., xix. 3, xx. 27, xxi. 1, 3, xxviii. 5,
-xxix. 26. But in a majority of cases the proverbs containing the name
-Jahveh are ethically and radically inharmonious with the substance
-and spirit of the book as a whole, which is founded on the supremacy
-of human "merits" as fully as Zoroastrianism, in which salvation
-depends absolutely on Good Thought, Good Word, Good Deed. In dynamic
-monotheism (as distinguished from ethical) of which Jahvism is the
-ancient and Islam the modern type, the doctrine of human "merits"
-is inadmissible: a man's virtues are not his own, and in Jahveh's
-sight they are but "filthy rags," except so far as they are given by
-Jahveh. But in the Solomonic proverbs the highest virtues, and the
-supreme blessings of the universe, are obtained by a man's own wisdom,
-character, and deeds. And in some cases the claims for Jahveh appear
-to have been inserted as if in answer or retort to proverbs ignoring
-the participation of any deity in such high matters. I quote a few
-instances, in which the antithesis turns to antagonism:
-
-
-    Solomon--By kindness and truth iniquity is atoned for.
-
-    Jahvist--By the fear of Jahveh men turn away from evil. (xvi. 6.)
-
-    Solomon--He who is skilful in a matter findeth good.
-
-    Jahvist--Whoso trusteth in Jahveh, happy is he! (xvi. 20.)
-
-
-In several other cases entire proverbs seem to be inserted for the
-correction of preceding ones,--these being not always understood by
-the interpolator:
-
-
-    Solomon--Treasures of evil profit not,
-    But virtue delivereth from death.
-
-    Jahvist--Jahveh will not suffer the righteous man to be famished,
-    But the desires of the unrighteous he thrusteth away. (x. 2, 3.)
-
-    Solomon--The tongue of the just is choice silver;
-    The heart of the evil is little worth:
-    The lips of the just feed many,
-    But fools die through heartlessness.
-
-    Jahvist--The blessing of Jahveh, that maketh rich,
-    And work addeth nothing thereto. (x. 20-22.)
-
-    Solomon--The virtuous man hath an everlasting foundation. (x. 25.)
-
-    Jahvist--The fear of Jahveh prolongeth days. (x. 27.)
-
-    Solomon--Hear counsel, receive correction,
-    That thou mayst be wise in thy future.
-
-    Jahvist--Many are the purposes in a man's heart,
-    But the counsel of Jahveh, that shall stand. (xix. 20-1.)
-
-    Solomon--The acceptableness of a man is his kindness:
-    Better off the poor than the treacherous man.
-
-    Jahvist--The fear of Jahveh addeth to life;
-    Whoso is filled therewith shall abide, he shall not be visited
-    by evil. (xix. 22-3.)
-
-    Solomon--The upright man considereth his way.
-
-    Jahvist--Wisdom is nothing, heart nothing,
-    Counsel nothing, against Jahveh. (xxi. 29, 30.)
-
-
-In one instance the Jahvist has made a slip by which his hand is
-confessed. In xvii. 3 we find:
-
-
-    The fining-pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold,
-    But Jahveh trieth hearts.
-
-
-But he omitted to notice the repetition in xxvii. 21, where we find
-the profound sentence which the Jahvist had reduced to commonplace:
-
-
-    The fining-pot for silver and the furnace for gold,
-    And a man is proved by that which he praiseth.
-
-
-The Jahvist spirit is also discoverable in xx. 22:
-
-
-    Solomon--Say not "I will retaliate evil";
-
-    Jahvist--Wait for Jahveh and he will save thee.
-
-
-Also in xxv. 21-2:
-
-
-    Solomon--If he that hateth thee be hungry, give him bread to eat,
-    If he be athirst give him water to drink.
-
-    Jahvist--For thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head,
-    And Jahveh shall reward thee.
-
-
-A similar mean and vindictive spirit is shown in xxiv. 18, following
-a magnanimous proverb; but in verse 29, probably more ancient than 18,
-we find the unqualified rebuke of retaliation:
-
-
-    Say not "As he hath done to me, so will I do to him,
-    I will render to the man according to his work."
-
-
-It was this generosity that Buddha exercised, [16] and Jesus; and it
-was left to Paul to recover the Jahvist modifications of Solomon's
-wisdom in order to adulterate for hard Romans the humane spirit of
-Jesus (Romans xii. 19, 20). The Solomonic sentences are normally so
-magnanimous as to throw suspicion on any clause tainted with smallness
-or vulgarity. The pervading spirit is, "The benevolent heart shall
-be enriched, and he who watereth shall himself be watered."
-
-There is one proverb (xiv. 32) which suggests a belief in immortality,
-or possibly in the Angel of Death:
-
-
-    By his evil deeds the evil man is thrust downward,
-    But the virtuous man hath confidence in his death.
-
-
-According to the Avesta every man is born with an invisible noose
-around his neck. When a good man dies the noose falls, and he passes
-to a beautiful region where he is met by a maid, to whom he says, "Who
-art thou, who art the fairest I have ever seen?" She answers, "O thou
-of good thoughts, good words, good deeds, I am thy actions." The evil
-man meets a leprous hag, embodiment of his actions, who by his noose
-drags him down through the evil-thought hell, the evil-word hell, the
-evil-deed hell, to the region of "Endless Darkness" (Yast xxii.). This
-darkness may be metaphorically spoken of in Proverbs xx. 20:
-
-
-    He that curseth his father and mother,
-    His lamp shall be put out in the blackest darkness.
-
-
-But generally the allusions to death in the Solomonic proverbs do not
-seem to allude to physical death. In x. 2 "virtue delivereth from
-death" is in antithesis to the unprofitableness of evil treasures,
-and in 16:
-
-
-    The reward of a virtuous man is life;
-    The gain of the wicked is sin.
-
-
-Here "life" and "sin" are in opposition. Other sentences to be
-compared are:
-
-
-    The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life,
-    To avoid the snares of death. (xiii. 14, cf. the Jahvist xiv. 27.)
-    Understanding is a fountain of life to those who possess it,
-    But the snare of fools is Folly. (xvi. 22.)
-    He that hateth reproof shall die. (xv. 10.)
-    The way of life is upward to the wise,
-    So as to turn away from the grave (sheol) beneath. (xv. 24.)
-    Death and life are in the power of the tongue,
-    And they who love it shall eat its fruit. (xviii. 21.)
-
-
-(In the last clause "it" probably refers to "life," unless the pronoun
-be cancelled altogether.)
-
-
-    The getting of treasures by a tongue of falsehood
-    Is getting a fleeting vapour, delusions of death. (xxi. 6.)
-    In the way of virtue is life,
-    But the way of the by-path leadeth to death. (xii. 28.)
-    The man who wandereth from the way of instruction
-    Shall rest in the congregation of the phantoms. (xxi. 16.)
-
-
-The two proverbs last quoted may be usefully compared with the ancient
-Prologue (viii. ix.) already referred to in this chapter, as they
-are there reproduced pictorially in Wisdom and Dame Folly sitting at
-their respective doors. Wisdom offers long life and happiness:
-
-
-    But he who wandereth from me doeth violence to his own life,
-    All who hate me love death. (viii. 36.)
-
-
-Dame Folly tries to turn into her by-path those who are "proceeding
-straight in their course" (ix. 15), but her victim--
-
-
-    He knoweth not her phantoms are there,
-    That her guests are in the underworld. (ix. 18.)
-
-
-The same Hebrew word Rephaim (phantoms or shades) is used here and
-in xxi. 16.
-
-All of these references to death and the underworld (sheol), except
-perhaps xiv. 32, refer to the living death, moral and spiritual,
-which is of such vast and fundamental significance in Zoroastrian
-religion. In this religion the evil power is "all death." The universe
-is divided by and into "the living and the not living." [17] "When
-these two Spirits came together they made first Life and Death,"--words
-sometimes used as synonymous with the "Good and the Evil Mind." Ahura
-Mazda representing all the forces that work for health and life,
-Angromainyu (Ahriman) all that work for disease and destruction, have
-ranged with them all animals and plants, on one side or the other, in
-this great conflict. The life of an Ahrimanian creature is "incarnate
-death." (Darmesteter's Introduction to the Vendîdâd, v. 11.) His
-destructiveness is equally against virtue, wisdom, peace, health,
-happiness, life, and all of these, not merely physical dissolution,
-are included in his Avestan title, "The Fiend who is all death." He
-is the Abaddon of Revelation ix. 11, also he "that had the power of
-death" in Hebrews ii. 14, and probably came into both of these from
-Proverbs xxvii. 20:
-
-
-    Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied,
-    And the eyes of man are never satisfied.
-
-
-Dr. Inman (Ancient Faiths, i., p. 180) connects Abaddon with "Abadan
-(cuneiform), the lost one, the sun in winter, or darkness," which
-conforms with the Avestan Ahriman, who is emphatically a winter-demon,
-his hell being in the north (cf. Jeremiah i. 14 and elsewhere),
-and is the natural adversary of the Fire-worshipper.
-
-Among the Zoroastrians there were not only Towers of Silence (Dakhma)
-for the literally dead, but also for the confinement of those tainted
-by carrying corpses, or by any contact with the death-fiend's empire,
-such as being struck with temporary death. "The unclean," says
-Darmesteter, "are confined in a particular place, apart from all clean
-persons and objects, the Armêst-gâh, which may be described, therefore,
-as the Dakhma for the living." Here then are the dead-alive guests of
-Dame Folly (Proverbs ix. 15), who opposes Wisdom, as Ahriman created
-Akem-Mano (evil thought) to oppose Vohu-Mano (good thought), and here
-is the assembly that might give the Solomonic proverb its metaphor:
-
-
-    The man who wandereth from the way of instruction
-    Shall rest in the congregation of the phantoms (or shades,
-    Rephaim).
-
-
-The Zoroastrian books from which I have been quoting contain passages
-of very unequal date, but it is the opinion of Avestan scholars that
-most of them are from very ancient sources, pre-Solomonic, and there
-is no chronological difficulty in supposing that such institutions
-as the Armêst-gâh, for the separation of the unclean, should not
-have been well known in ancient Jerusalem before the corresponding
-levitical laws concerning the unclean and the leprous existed.
-
-The Book of Proverbs was also a growth, and although, as has been
-stated, there is reason to regard as later additions most of the
-proverbs containing the word Jahveh, as they are inconsistent with the
-general ethical tenor of the book, there are several in which that
-name is evidently out of place. Even in the editorial Prologue we
-can hardly recognize orthodox Jahvism in the conception of a being,
-Wisdom, not created by Jahveh yet giving him delight and some kind
-of assistance at the creation; and nowhere else in the Old Testament
-do we find such an idea as that of xx. 27, "The spirit of a man is
-Jahveh's lamp," or in xix. 17:
-
-
-    He who is kind to the poor lendeth to Jahveh,
-    And his good deed shall be recompensed to him.
-
-
-But in the Zoroastrian religion men and women render assistance and
-encouragement to the gods, and we find the chief deity, Ahura Mazda,
-saying to Zoroaster concerning the Fravashis, or souls, of holy
-men and women: "Do thou proclaim, O pure Zoroaster, the vigor and
-strength, the glory, the help and the joy, that are in the Fravashis
-of the faithful ... do thou tell how they came to help me, how they
-bring assistance unto me.... Through their brightness and glory,
-O Zoroaster, I maintain that sky there above." Favardîn Yast, 1,
-2.) As Frederick the Great said, "a king is the chief of subjects,"
-so with Zoroaster Ahura Mazda is the chief of the faithful; or,
-as Luther said, "God is strong, but he likes to be helped."
-
-The similitude in Proverbs xx. 27 is especially important in our
-inquiry:
-
-
-    The spirit of man is the lamp of Jahveh,
-    Searching all the chambers of the body.
-
-
-The word for "spirit" here is Nishma, which occurs in but one other
-instance in the Bible, namely, in Job xxvi. 4. Job asks:
-
-
-    To whom hast thou uttered words?
-    And whose spirit came forth from thee?
-
-
-This chapter of Job (xxvi.) is closely related to Proverbs viii. and
-ix., both in thought and phraseology: the Rephaim, or phantoms,
-the "pillars," the ordering of earth and clouds, the boundary on
-the deep; and there is an allusion to "the confines of Light and
-Darkness," which point to the domains of Wisdom and Dame Folly. Job
-and the proverbialist surely got these ideas from the same source,
-and also the word nishma, translated "spirit," which throughout the
-Old Testament is ruach, save in the two texts indicated. But there
-is no text in the Bible where ruach, spirit, or soul, is associated
-with light like the nishma of the proverb, and in Job nishma evidently
-means a superhuman spirit. Now there is a Chaldean word, nisma, which
-in the Persian Bundahis appears as nismô, and is translated by West,
-"living soul." The ordinary word for soul in the Parsi scriptures
-seems to be rûbân, and West regards the two words as meaning the same
-thing, the breath, or soul, basing this on the following passage of
-the Bundahis, representing the separation of the first mortal into
-the first human pair, Mâshya and Mâshyoi:
-
-
-    "And the waists of both were brought close, and so connected
-    together that it was not clear which is the male and which the
-    female, and which is the one whose living soul (nismô) of Aûharmazd
-    (God) is not away (lacking). As it is said thus: 'Which is created
-    before, the soul (nismô) or the body? And Aûharmazd said that
-    the soul is created before, and the body after, for him who was
-    created; it is given unto the body to produce activity, and the
-    body is created only for activity; hence the conclusion is this,
-    that the soul (rûbân) is created before and the body after. And
-    both of them changed from the shape of a plant into the shape of
-    man, and the breath (nismô) went spiritually into them, which is
-    the soul (rûbân)." [18]
-
-
-With all deference to the learned translator, I cannot think his
-exegesis here quite satisfactory. In the first sentence nismô is the
-breath of God; and although in the second the same word is used for
-the human soul, the writer seems to have aimed in the last sentence
-at a distinction: the divine breath or spirit (nismô) creates a soul
-(rûbân), to receive which the plant is transformed into a body fitted
-for the "activity" of an imbreathed soul. West twice translates nismô
-"living soul," but rûbân only "soul." Does not this indicate Ahura
-Mazda as the source of divine life, as in Genesis ii. 7, where
-Jahveh-Elohim breathes into man, who becomes a "living soul,"--a
-being within the domain of the god of life, not subject to the god of
-death? Is it not his rûbân that is the image of nismô? (Cf. Genesis
-ix. 5, 6.)
-
-Turning now to the Avesta, we find the famous Favardin Yast,
-a collection of litanies and ascriptions to the Fravashis. "The
-Fravashi," says Darmesteter, "is the inner power in every being that
-maintains it and makes it grow and subsist. Originally the Fravashis
-were the same as the Pitris of the Hindus or the Manes of the Latins,
-that is to say, the everlasting and deified souls of the dead;
-but in course of time they gained a wider domain, and not only men,
-but gods and even physical objects, like the sky and the earth, had
-each a Fravashi." "The Fravashi was independent of the circumstances
-of life or death, an immortal part of the individual which existed
-before man and outlived him."
-
-In Yast xxii. 39, 40, it is said: "O Maker, how do the souls of the
-dead, the Fravashis of the holy Ones, manifest themselves?" Ahura
-Mazda answered: "They manifest themselves from goodness of spirit
-and excellence of mind."
-
-Favardin Yast, 9: "Through their brightness and glory, O Zarathrustra,
-I maintain the wide earth," etc. 12: "Had not the awful Fravashis
-of the faithful given help unto me, those animals and men of mine,
-of which there are such excellent kinds, would not subsist; strength
-would belong to the fiend."
-
-In other verses these Fravashis (the word means "protectors") help
-the children unborn, nourish health, develop the wise. The imagery
-relating to them is largely related to the stars, of which many are
-guardians. These are probably the origin of the Solomonic similitude
-of reason, "The spirit (nishma) of man is the lamp of----?"
-
-With all of these correspondences between the Solomonic proverbs,
-nothing is more remarkable than their originality, so far as
-any ancient scriptures are concerned. While they are totally
-different from the Psalms, in showing man as a citizen of the world,
-relying on himself and those around him for happiness, and exalting
-nothing above human virtue and intelligence, without any religious
-fervor or wrath, the proverbialist is equally far from the ethical
-superstitions of Zoroastrian religion, which abounds in fictitious
-"merits" and anathematises fictitious immoralities. It is as if
-some sublime Eastern pedlar and banker of ethical and poetic gems,
-who had come in contact with Oriental literatures, had separated
-from their liturgies and prophecies the nuggets of gold and the
-precious stones, polishing, resetting, and exciting others to do the
-like. At the same time many of the sentences are the expressions of
-an original mind, a man of letters, neither Eastern nor Oriental,
-and these may be labelled with the line of the Persian poet Faizi:
-"Take Faizi's Díwán to bear witness to the wonderful speeches of a
-freethinker who belongs to a thousand sects."
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX.
-
-THE SONG OF SONGS.
-
-
-The praise of the virtuous woman, at the close of the Proverbs,
-is given a Jahvist turn by verse 30: "Favour is deceitful and beauty
-vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised." But the
-Solomonists also had their ideas of the virtuous woman, and of beauty,
-these being beautifully expressed in a series of dramatic idylls
-entitled The Song of Songs. To this latter, in the original title,
-is added, "which is Solomon's"; and it confirms what has been said
-concerning the superstitious awe of everything proceeding from Solomon,
-and the dread of insulting the Holy Spirit of Wisdom supernaturally
-lodged in him, that we find in the Bible these passionate love
-songs. And indeed Solomon must have been superlatively wise to have
-written poems in which his greatness is slightly ridiculed. That of
-course would be by no means incredible in a man of genuine wisdom--on
-the contrary would be characteristic--if other conditions were met
-by the tradition of his authorship.
-
-At the outset, however, we are confronted by the question whether
-the Song of Songs has any general coherency or dramatic character
-at all. Several modern critics of learning, among them Prof. Karl
-Budde and the late Edward Reuss, find the book a collection of
-unconnected lyrics, and Professor Cornill of Königsberg has added
-the great weight of his name to that opinion (Einleitung in das Alte
-Testament. 1891). Unfortunately Professor Cornill's treatment is brief,
-and not accompanied by a complete analysis of the book. He favors as
-a principle Reuss's division of Canticles into separate idylls, and
-thinks most readers import into this collection of songs an imaginary
-system and significance. This is certainly true of the "allegorical"
-purport, aim, and religious ideas ascribed to the book, but Professor
-Cornill's reference to Herder seems to leave the door open for further
-treatment of the Song of Songs from a purely literary standpoint. He
-praises Herder's discernment in describing the book as a string of
-pearls, but passes without criticism or denial Herder's further view
-that there are indications of editorial modifications of some of
-the lyrics. For what purpose? Herder also pointed out that various
-individualities and conditions are represented. This indeed appears
-undeniable: here are prince and shepherd, the tender mother, the cruel
-brothers, the rough watchman, the dancer, the bride and bridegroom. The
-dramatis personæ are certainly present: but is there any drama?
-
-Admitting that there was no ancient Hebrew theatre, the question
-remains whether among the later Hellenic Jews the old songs were
-not arranged, and new ones added, in some kind of Singspiele or
-vaudeville. There seems to be a chorus. It is hardly consistent
-with the general artistic quality of the compilation that the lady
-should say "I am swarthy but comely," or "I am a lily of the valley"
-(a gorgeous flower). Surely the compliments are ejaculations of the
-chorus. And may we not ascribe to a chorus the questions, "Who is
-this that cometh up out of the wilderness?" etc. (iii. 6-10.) "What
-is thy beloved more than another beloved"? (v. 9.) "Who is this that
-cometh up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved"? (viii. 5).
-
-As in the modern vaudeville songs are often introduced without
-any special relation to the play, so we find in Canticles some
-songs that might be transposed from one chapter to another without
-marring the work, but is this the case with all of them? The song
-in the first chapter, for instance, in which the damsel, brought by
-the King into his palace, tells the ladies of the home she left,
-and of maltreatment by her brothers, who took her from her own
-vineyard and made her work in theirs, where she was sunburnt,--this
-could not be placed effectively at the end of the book, nor the
-triumphant line, "My vineyard, which is mine own, is before me,"
-be set at the beginning. This is but one of several instances that
-might be quoted. Even pearls may be strung with definite purpose,
-as in a rosary, and how perfectly set is the great rose,--the hymn
-to Love in the final chapter! Or to remember Professor Cornill's word
-Scenenwechsel, along with his affirmation that the love of human lovers
-is the burden of the "unrivalled" book, there are some sequences
-and contrasts which do convey an impression of dissolving views,
-and occasionally reveal a connexion between separate tableaux. For
-example the same words (which I conjecture to be those of a chorus)
-are used to introduce Solomon in pompous palanquin with grand escort,
-that are presently used to greet the united lovers.
-
-
-   "Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness like pillars of
-    smoke?" (iii. 6.)
-
-    "Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness
-    Leaning on her beloved?" (viii. 5.)
-
-
-These are five chapters apart, yet surely they may be supposed
-connected without Hineininterpretation. Any single contrast of this
-kind might be supposed a mere coincidence, but there are two others
-drawn between the swarthy maiden and the monarch. The tableau of
-Solomon in his splendor dissolves into another of his Queen Mother
-crowning him on the day of his espousal: that of Shulamith leaning on
-her beloved dissolves into another of her mother pledging her to her
-lover in espousals under an apple tree. And then we find (viii. 11,
-12) Solomon's distant vineyards tended by many hirelings contrasted
-with Shulamith's own little vineyard tended by herself.
-
-The theory that the book is a collection of bridal songs, and that
-the mention of Solomon is due to an eastern custom of designating
-the bridegroom and bride as Solomon and Queen Shulamith, during
-their honeymoon, does not seem consistent with the fact that in
-several allusions to Solomon his royal state is slighted, whereas only
-compliments would be paid to a bridegroom. Moreover the two--Shulamith
-and Solomon--are not as persons named together. It will, I think,
-appear as we proceed that the Shelomoh (Solomon) of Canticles
-represents a conventionalisation of the monarch, with some traits
-not found in any other book in the Bible. A verse near the close,
-presently considered, suggests that the bride and bridegroom are at
-that one point metaphorically pictured as a Solomon and Solomona,
-indicating one feature of the Wise Man's conventionalization.
-
-Renan assigned Canticles the date B. C. 992-952, mainly because in
-it Tirza is coupled with Jerusalem. Tirza was a capital only during
-those years, and at any later period was too insignificant a town to
-be spoken of as in the Song vi. 4:
-
-
-   "Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah,
-    Comely as Jerusalem,
-    Dazzling as bannered ranks."
-
-
-But the late Russell Martineau, a thorough and unbiassed scholar,
-points out in the work phrases from Greek authors of the third
-century B. C., and assigns a date not earlier than 247-222. [19]
-But may it not be that the Alexandrian of the third century built on
-some earlier foundation, as Shakespeare adapted the "Pound of Flesh"
-and the "Three Caskets" (Merchant of Venice) from tales traceable as
-far back as early Buddhist literature? or as Marlowe and Goethe used
-the mediæval legend of Faustus?
-
-The several songs can hardly be assigned to one and the same
-century. The coupling of Tirza and Jerusalem points to a remote past
-for that particular lyric, and is it credible that any Jew after
-Josiah's time could have written the figleafless songs so minutely
-descriptive of Shulamith's physical charms? Could any Jewish writer of
-the third century before our era have written iv. 1-7 or vii. 1-9,
-regarding no name or place as too sacred to be pressed into his
-hyperboles of rapture at every detail of the maiden's form, and
-have done this in perfect innocency, without a blush? Or if such a
-poet could have existed in the later Jahvist times, would his songs
-have found their place in the Jewish canon? As it was the book was
-admitted only with a provision that no Jew under thirty years of age
-should read it. That it was included at all was due to the occult
-pious meanings read into it by rabbins, while it is tolerably certain
-that the realistic flesh-painting would have been expunged but for
-sanctions of antiquity similar to those which now protect so many
-old classics from expurgation by the Vice Societies. These songs,
-sensuous without sensuality, with their Oriental accent, seem ancient
-enough to have been brought by Solomon from Ophir.
-
-On the other hand a critical reader can hardly ascribe the whole book
-to the Solomonic period. The exquisite exaltation of Love, as a human
-passion (viii. 6, 7), brings us into the refined atmosphere amid which
-Eros was developed, and it is immediately followed by a song that
-hardly rises above doggerel (viii. 8, 9). This is an interruption
-of the poem that looks as if suggested by the line that follows it
-(first line of verse 10) and meant to be comic. It impresses me as
-a very late interpolation, and by a hand inferior to the Alexandrian
-artist who in style has so well matched the more ancient pieces in his
-literary mosaic. Herder finds the collection as a whole Solomonic,
-and makes the striking suggestion that its author at a more mature
-age would take the tone of Ecclesiasticus.
-
-Considered simply as a literary production, the composition makes
-on my own mind the impression of a romance conveyed in idylls, each
-presenting a picturesque situation or a scene, the general theme and
-motif being that of the great Solomonic Psalm.
-
-This psalm (xlv.), quoted and discussed in chapter III., brings
-before us a beautiful maiden brought from a distant region to
-the court, but not quite happy: she is entreated to forget her
-people and enjoy the dignities and luxuries offered by her lord,
-the King. This psalm is remarkable in its intimations of a freedom
-of sentiment accorded to the ladies wooed by Solomon, and the same
-spirit pervades Canticles. Its chief refrain is that love must not be
-coerced or awakened until it please. This magnanimity might naturally
-connect the name of Solomon with old songs of love and courtship such
-as those utilised and multiplied in this book, whose composition might
-be naturally entitled "A Song (made) of Songs which are Solomon's."
-
-The heroine, whose name is Shulamith,--(feminine of Shelomoh,
-Solomon) [20]--is an only daughter, cherished by her apparently
-widowed mother but maltreated by her brothers. Incensed against her,
-they compel Shulamith to keep their vineyards to the neglect of her
-own. She becomes sunburnt, "swarthy," but is very "attractive," and
-is brought by Solomon to his palace, where she delights the ladies
-by her beauty and dances. In what I suppose to be one of the ancient
-Solomonic Songs embodied in the work it is said:
-
-
-   "There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines,
-    And maidens without number:
-    Beyond compare is my dove, my unsoiled;
-    She is the only one of her mother,
-    The cherished one of her that bare her:
-    The daughters saw her and called her blessed,
-    Yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her." [21]
-
-
-Thus far the motif seems to be that of a Cinderella oppressed by
-brothers but exalted by the most magnificent of princes. But here
-the plot changes. The magnificence of Solomon cannot allure from her
-shepherd lover this "lily of the valley." Her lover visits her in
-the palace, where her now relenting brothers (vi. 12) seem to appear
-(though this is doubtful) and witness her triumphs; and all are in
-raptures at her dancing and her amply displayed charms--all unless
-one (perhaps the lover) who, according to a doubtful interpretation,
-complains that they should gaze at her as at dancers in the camps
-(vi. 13). [22]
-
-Although Russell Martineau maintained, against most other commentators,
-that Solomon is only a part of the scene, and not among the dramatis
-personæ, the King certainly seems to be occasionally present, as in
-the following dialogue, where I give the probable, though of course
-conjectural, names. The dancer has approached the King while at table.
-
-
-Solomon--
-
-   "I have compared thee, O my love,
-    To my steed in Pharaoh's chariot.
-    Thy cheeks are comely with plaits of hair,
-    Thy neck with strings of jewels.
-    We will make thee plaits of gold
-    With studs of silver."
-
-
-Shulamith, who, on leaving the King, meets her jealous lover--
-
-   "While the King sat at his table
-    My spikenard sent forth its odor.
-    My beloved is unto me as a bag of myrrh
-    That lieth between my breasts,
-    My beloved is unto me as a cluster of henna-flowers
-    In the vineyards of En-gedi."
-
-
-Shepherd Lover--
-
-   "Behold thou art fair, my love, behold thou art fair;
-    Thine eyes are as doves,
-    Behold thou art fair, my beloved, yea pleasant:
-    Also our couch is green.
-    The beams of our house are of cedar,
-    And our rafters are of fir."
-
-
-Shulamith--
-
-   "I am a (mere) crocus of the plain."
-
-
-Chorus, or perhaps the Lover--
-
-   "A lily of the valleys."
-
-
-Shepherd Lover--
-
-   "As a lily among thorns
-    So is my love among the daughters."
-
-
-Shulamith--
-
-   "As the apple tree among forest trees
-    So is my beloved among the sons.
-    I sat down under his shadow with great delight,
-    And his fruit was sweet to my taste."
-
-
-Thus we find the damsel anointing the king with her spikenard, but
-for her the precious fragrance is her shepherd. Against the plaits of
-gold and studs of silver offered in the palace (i. 2) her lover can
-only point to his cottage of cedar and fir, and a couch of grass. She
-is content to be only a flower of the plain and valley, not for the
-seraglio. Nevertheless she remains to dance in the palace; a sufficient
-time there is needed by the poet to illustrate the impregnability of
-true love against all other splendors and attractions, even those of
-the Flower of Kings. He however puts no constraint on her, one song,
-thrice repeated, saying to the ladies of the harem--
-
-
-   "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
-    By the (free) gazelles, by the hinds in the field,
-    That ye stir not up, nor awaken love,
-    Until it please."
-
-
-This refrain is repeated the second time just before a picture of
-Solomon's glory, shaded by a suggestion that all is not brightness even
-around this Prince of Peace. The ladies of the seraglio are summoned
-to look out and see the passing of the King in state, seated on his
-palanquin of purple and gold, but escorted by armed men "because of
-fear in the night." In immediate contrast with that scene, we see
-Shulamith going off with her humble lover, now his bride, to his field
-and to her vineyard, and singing a beautiful song of love, strong as
-death, flame-tipped arrow of a god, unquenchable, unpurchaseable.
-
-Though according to the revised version of vi. 12 her relatives are
-princely, and it may be they who invite her to return (vi. 13), she
-says, "I am my beloved's." With him she will go into the field and
-lodge in the village (vii. 10, 11). She finds her own little garden
-and does not envy Solomon.
-
-
-   "Solomon hath a vineyard at Baalhamon;
-    He hath let out the vineyard to keepers;
-    Each for the fruit thereof was to bring a thousand pieces of
-    silver:
-    My vineyard, which is mine, is before me:
-    Thou, O Solomon, shall have the thousand,
-    And those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred."
-
-
-There was, as we see in Koheleth, a prevailing tradition that Solomon
-felt the hollowness of his palatial life. "See life with a woman thou
-lovest." The wife is the fountain:
-
-
-   "Bethink thee of thy fountain
-    In the days of thy youth."
-
-
-This perhaps gave rise to a theory that the shepherd lover was Solomon
-himself in disguise, like the god Krishna among the cow-maidens. It
-does not appear probable that any thought of that kind was in
-the writer of this Song. Certainly there appears not to be any
-purpose of lowering Solomon personally in enthroning Love above
-him. There is no hint of any religious or moral objection to him,
-and indeed throughout the work Solomon appears in a favourable
-light personally,--he is beloved by the daughters of Jerusalem
-(v. 10)--though his royal estate is, as we have seen, shown in a light
-not altogether enviable. Threescore mighty men guard him: "every man
-hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night," and the
-day of his heart's gladness was the day of his espousals (iii. 8, 11).
-
-It is not improbable that there is an allusion to Solomon's magic seal
-in the first lines of the hymn to Love (viii. 6). The legend of the
-Ring must have been long in growing to the form in which it is found in
-the Talmud, where it is said that Solomon's "fear in the night" arose
-from his apprehension that the Devil might again get hold of his Ring,
-with which he (Aschmedai) once wrought much mischief. (Gittin. Vol. 68,
-col. 1, 2). The hymn strikes me as late Alexandrian:
-
-
-   "Wear me as a seal on thy breast
-    As a seal-ring on thine arm:
-    For love is strong as death,
-    Its passion unappeasable as the grave;
-    Its shafts are arrows of fire,
-    The lightnings of a god. [Jah.]
-    Many waters cannot quench love,
-    Deluges cannot overwhelm it.
-    Should a noble offer all the wealth of his house for love
-    It would be utterly spurned."
-
-
-Excluding the interrupting verses 8 and 9, the hymn is followed by a
-song about Solomon's vineyard, preceded by two lines which appear to
-me to possess a significance overlooked by commentators. Shulamith
-(evidently) speaks:
-
-
-   "I was a wall, my breasts like its towers:
-    Thus have I been in his eyes as one finding peace.
-    Solomon hath a vineyard," etc. [as above.]
-
-
-The word "peace" is Shalôm; it is immediately followed by Shelomoh
-(Solomon, "peaceful"); and Shulamith (also meaning "peaceful"), thus
-brings together the fortress of her lover's peace, her own breast,
-and the fortifications built by the peaceful King (who never attacked
-but was always prepared for defence). Here surely, at the close of
-Canticles, is a sort of tableau: Shalôm, Shulamith, Shelomoh: Peace,
-the prince of Peace, the queen of Peace. If this were the only lyric
-one would surely infer that these were the bride and bridegroom, under
-the benediction of Peace. It is not improbable that at this climax of
-the poem Shulamith means that in her lover she has found her Solomon,
-and he found in her his Solomona,--their reciprocal strongholds of
-Shalôm or Peace.
-
-Of course my interpretations of the Song of Songs are largely
-conjectural, as all other interpretations necessarily are. The songs
-are there to be somehow explained, and it is of importance that every
-unbiassed student of the book should state his conjectures, these
-being based on the contents of the book, and not on the dogmatic
-theories which have been projected into it. I have been compelled,
-under the necessary limitations of an essay like the present, to omit
-interesting details in the work, but have endeavoured to convey the
-impression left on my own mind by a totally unprejudiced study. The
-conviction has grown upon me with every step that, even at the lowest
-date ever assigned it, the work represents the earliest full expression
-of romantic love known in any language. It is so entirely free from
-fabulous, supernatural, or even pious incidents and accents, so human
-and realistic, that its having escaped the modern playwright can only
-be attributed to the superstitious encrustations by which its beauty
-has been concealed for many centuries.
-
-This process of perversion was begun by Jewish Jahvists, but they have
-been far surpassed by our A. S. version, whose solemn nonsense at
-most of the chapter heads in the Bible here reached its climax. It
-is a remarkable illustration of the depths of fatuity to which
-clerical minds may be brought by prepossession, that the closing
-chapter of Canticles, with its beautiful exaltation of romantic love,
-could be headed: "The love of the Church to Christ. The vehemency of
-Love. The calling of the Gentiles. The Church Prayeth for Christ's
-coming." The "Higher Criticism" is now turning the headings into
-comedy, but they have done--nay, are continuing--their very serious
-work of misdirection.
-
-It has already been noted that the Jewish doctors exalted Bathsheba,
-adulteress as she was, into a blessed woman, probably because of the
-allusion to her in the Song (iii. 2) as having crowned her royal Son,
-who had become mystical; and it can only be ascribed to Protestantism
-that, instead of the Queen-Mother Mary, the Church becomes Bathsheba's
-successor in our version: "The Church glorieth in Christ." And of
-course the shepherd lover's feeding (his flock) among the lilies
-becomes "Christ's care of the Church."
-
-But for such fantasies the beautiful Song of Songs might indeed never
-have been preserved at all, yet is it a scandal that Bibles containing
-chapter-headings known by all educated Christians to be falsifications,
-should be circulated in every part of the world, and chiefly among
-ignorant and easily misled minds. These simple people, reading the
-anathemas pronounced in their Bibles on those who add anything to the
-book given them as the "Word of God" (Deuteronomy iv. 2, xii. 32,
-Proverbs xxx. 6, Revelation xxii. 18), cannot imagine that these
-chapter-headings are not in the original books, but forged. And what
-can be more brazenly fraudulent than the chapter-heading to one of
-these very passages (Revelation xxii. 18, 19), where nothing is said
-of the "Word of God," but over which is printed: "18. Nothing may be
-added to the word of God, nor taken therefrom." But even the learned
-cannot quite escape the effect of these perversions. How far they reach
-is illustrated in the fate of Mary Magdalen, a perfectly innocent woman
-according to the New Testament, yet by a single chapter-heading in Luke
-branded for all time as the "sinner" who anointed Jesus,--"Magdalen"
-being now in our dictionaries as a repentant prostitute. Yet there are
-hundreds of additions to the Bible more harmful than this,--additions
-which, whether honestly made or not originally, are now notoriously
-fraudulent. It is especially necessary in the interest of the Solomonic
-and secular literature in the Bible that Truth shall be liberated from
-the malarious well--Jahvist and ecclesiastical--in which she has long
-been sunk by mistranslation, interpolation, and chapter-headings. The
-Christian churches are to be credited with having produced critics
-brave enough to expose most of these impositions, and it is now the
-manifest duty of all public teachers and literary leaders to uphold
-those scholars, to protest against the continuance of the propaganda
-of pious frauds, and to insist upon the supremacy of truth.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X.
-
-KOHELETH (ECCLESIASTES).
-
-
-In the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1897, a writer, in giving his
-personal reminiscences of Tennyson, relates an anecdote concerning the
-poet and the Rev. F. D. Maurice. Speaking of Ecclesiastes (Koheleth),
-Tennyson said it was the one book the admission of which into the
-canon he could not understand, it was so utterly pessimistic--of the
-earth, earthy. Maurice fired up. "Yes, if you leave out the last two
-verses. But the conclusion of the whole matter is, 'Fear God and keep
-His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall
-bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it
-be good or whether it be evil.' So long as you look only down upon
-earth, all is 'vanity of vanities.' But if you look up there is a God,
-the judge of good and evil." Tennyson said he would think over the
-matter from that point of view.
-
-This amusing incident must have caused a ripple of laughter in
-scholastic circles, now that the labors of Cheyne, Renan, Dillon,
-and others, have left little doubt that both of the verses cited
-by Maurice are later editorial additions. They alone, he admitted,
-could save the book, and the charm of the incident is that the verses
-were placed there by ancient Maurices to induce ancient Tennysons to
-"think over the matter from that point of view." The result was that
-the previously rejected book was admitted into the canon by precisely
-the same force which continued its work at Faringford, and continues
-it to this day. Only one must not suppose that Mr. Maurice was aware
-of the ungenuineness of the verses. He was an honest gentleman,
-but so ingeniously mystical that had the two verses not been there
-he could readily have found others of equally transcendant and holy
-significance, without even resorting to other pious interpolations
-in the book.
-
-Tennyson was curiously unconscious of his own pessimism. When any one
-questioned the belief in a future life in his presence his vehemence
-without argument betrayed his sub-conscious misgivings, while his
-indignation ran over all the conditional resentments of Job. I have
-heard that he said to Tyndall that if he knew there was no future
-life he would regard the creator of human beings as a demon, and
-shake his fist in His eternal face. This rage was based in a more
-profoundly pessimistic view of the present life than anything even
-in Ecclesiastes,--by which name may be happily distinguished the
-disordered, perverted, and mistranslated Koheleth.
-
-It appears evident that the sentence which opens Koheleth,--in our
-Bibles "All is vanity, saith the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all
-is vanity,"--is as mere a Jahvist chapter-heading as that of our
-A. S. translators: "The Preacher showeth that all human courses are
-vain." It is repeated as the second of the eight verses added at the
-end of the work. Koheleth does not label the whole of things vanity;
-in a majority of cases the things he calls vain are vain; and some
-things he finds not vanity,--youth, and wedded love, and work that
-is congenial.
-
-Renan (Histoire du Peuple d'Israël, Tome 5, p. 158) has shown
-conclusively, as I think, that the signature on this book, QHLT,
-is a mere letter-play on the word "Solomon," and the eagerness
-with which the letters were turned into Koheleth (which really
-means Preacheress), and to make Solomon's inner spouse a preacher
-of the vanities of pleasure and the wisdom of fearing God, is thus
-naively indicated in the successive names of the book, "Koheleth"
-and "Ecclesiastes." We are thus warned by the title to pick our way
-carefully where the Jahvist and the Ecclesiastic have been before us;
-remembering especially that though piety may induce men to forge
-things, this is never done lightly. As people now do not commit
-forgery for a shilling, so neither did those who placed spurious
-sentences or phrases in nearly every chapter of the Bible do so for
-anything they did not consider vital to morality or to salvation. In
-Ecclesiastes we must be especially suspicious of the very serious
-religious points. Fortunately the style of the book renders it
-particularly subject to the critical and literary touchstone.
-
-Is it necessary to point out to any man of literary instinct the
-interpolation bracketed in the following verses? "Rejoice, O young
-man, in thy youth, and let thy heart gladden thee in the flower of thy
-age, and walk in the paths of thy heart, and according to the vision
-of thine eyes [but know thou that for all these things God will bring
-thee into judgment], and banish discontent from thy heart, and put away
-evil from thy flesh; for youth and dawn are fleeting. Remember also
-thy fountain in the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days come or
-the years draw nigh in which thou shalt say I have no delight in them."
-
-It is only by removing the bracketed clause that any consistency can be
-found in the lyric, which Professor Cheyne compares with the following
-song by the ancient Egyptian harper at the funeral feast of Neferhotap:
-
-
-   "Make a good day, O holy fathers!
-    Let odors and oils stand before thy nostril;
-    Wreaths and lotus are on the arms and bosom of thy sister
-    Dwelling in thy heart, sitting beside thee.
-    Let song and music be before thy face,
-    And leave behind thee all evil dirges!
-    Mind thee of joy, till cometh the day of pilgrimage,
-    When we draw near the land that loveth silence." [23]
-
-
-There is no historical means of determining what writings of Solomon
-are preserved in the Bible and even in the apocryphal books. One may
-feel that Goethe recognised a brother spirit in that far epoch when
-he selected for his proverb:
-
-
-   "Apples of gold in chased work of silver,
-    A word smoothly spoken."
-
-
-Koheleth too appreciated this, and also (x. 12) uses almost literally
-Proverbs xii. 18, "The tongue of the wise is gentleness." (Compare
-Shakespeare's words, "Let gentleness my strong enforcement be.") The
-lines previously cited, "Rejoice O young man, etc.," are also probably
-quoted, as they are given in poetical quatrains. There are many of
-these quatrains introduced into the book, from the prose context of
-which they differ in style and sometimes in sense.
-
-In none of these metrical quotations (as I believe them to be) is
-there any belief in God, the only instance in which the word "God"
-is mentioned being an ironical maxim about the danger coming from
-monarchs because of their oaths to their God, with whom they identify
-their own ways and wishes. Such seems to me the meaning of the lines
-(viii. 2, 4) which Dillon translates--
-
-
-   "The wise man harkens to the king's command,
-    By reason of the oath to God.
-    Mighty is the word of the monarch:
-    Who dares ask him, 'What dost thou?'"
-
-
-With this compare Proverbs xxi. 1, "The king's heart is in the hand
-of the Lord (Jahveh) as the water-courses; he turneth it whithersoever
-he will." This proverb is evidently by a Jahvist, and Koheleth quotes
-another which signifies rather "Jahveh is in the king's caprice." But
-he adopts the neighbouring proverb, "To do justice and judgment is
-more acceptable to Jahveh than sacrifice." Koheleth says, and this
-is not quoted--"To draw near to (God) in order to learn, is better
-than the offering of sacrifices by fools."
-
-Although the verses quoted by Maurice to Tennyson (xii. 13, 14) are not
-genuinely in Koheleth they correspond with sentences in the genuine
-text of very different import. Koheleth, though his quotations are
-godless, believes there is a God, and a formidable one. Sometimes he
-refers to him as Fate, sometimes as the unknowable, but as without
-moral quality. "To the just men that happeneth which should befall
-wrong-doers; and that happeneth for criminals which should be the lot
-of the upright" (viii. 14), and "neither (God's) love nor hatred doth
-a man foresee" (ix. 1). God has set prosperity and adversity side by
-side for the express purpose of hiding Himself from human knowledge
-(vii. 14); not, alas, as the Yalkut Koheleth suggests, in order that
-one may help the other. God does benefit those who please him, and
-punish those who displease him; this is 'good' and 'evil' to Him; but
-it has no relation with the humanly good and evil (viii. 11-14). As
-it is evident that God's favor is not secured by good works nor his
-disfavor incurred by evil works, a prudent man will consider that
-it may perhaps be a matter of etiquette, and will be punctilious,
-especially "in the house of God"; he will not speak rashly and then
-hope to escape by saying "it was rashness." His words had better be
-few, and if he makes any vow (which may well be avoided) he should
-perform it. But as for practical life and conduct, God, or fate,
-is clearly indifferent to it, consequently let a man eat his bread
-and quaff his wine with joy, love his wife,--the best portion of
-his lot,--and whatever his hand findeth to do that do with vigor,
-remembering that "there is no work, nor thought, nor knowledge,
-nor wisdom, in the inevitable grave."
-
-Such is Koheleth's conception of life, which, except so far as it
-is marred by a vague notion of Fate which is fatal to philanthropy,
-is not very different from the idea growing in our own time. "The
-All is a never-ceasing whirl" (i. 8), and Koheleth advises that each
-individual man try to make what little circle of happiness he can
-around him. "O my heart!" says Omar Khayyám, "thou wilt never penetrate
-the mysteries of the heavens; thou wilt never reach that culminating
-point of wisdom which the intrepid omniscients have attained. Resign
-thyself then to make what little paradise thou canst here below. As
-for that close-barred seraglio beyond thou shalt arrive there--or
-thou shalt not!"
-
-It is, however, impossible for any church or priesthood to be
-maintained on any such principles. Where mankind believe with Koheleth
-that whatever God does is forever, that nothing can be superadded
-to it nor aught be taken away; and that God has so contrived that
-man must fear Him; they will have no use for any paraphernalia for
-softening the irrevocable decrees of a Judgment Day already past. But
-Koheleth's arrows, feathered with wit and eloquence, were logically
-shot from the Jahvist arquebus. It was Jahveh himself who proudly
-claimed that he created good and evil, and that if there were evil in
-a city it was his work. It was Jahveh's own prophet, Isaiah, who cried
-(lxiii. 17), "O Lord, why dost Thou make us to err from Thy ways,
-and hardenest our heart from Thy fear?"
-
-What then could Jahvism say when a time arrived wherein it must defend
-itself against a Jahveh-created world?
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-WISDOM (ECCLESIASTICUS).
-
-
-It was necessary that Koheleth should be answered, but who was
-competent for this? A fable had been invented of a Solomonic serpent
-who had tempted Eve to taste the fruit of knowledge which, when the
-man shared it, brought a curse on the earth, but the canonical prophets
-do not appear to have heard of it, and at any rate it was too late in
-the day to meet fact with fable. Nor had Jahveh's whirlwind-answer
-to Job proved effectual. However, some sort of answer did come,
-and significantly enough it had to come from Koheleth's own quarter,
-the Wisdom school. Pure Jahvism had not brains enough for the task.
-
-The apocryphal book "Ecclesiasticus" is the antidote to
-Ecclesiastes. (These are the Christian names given to the two
-books.) This book, bearing the simple title "Wisdom," compiled and
-partly written by Jesus Ben Sira early in the second century B. C.,
-is as a whole much more than an offset to Koheleth. It is a great
-though unintentional literary monument to Solomon, and it is the book
-of reconciliation, or so intended, between Solomonism and Jahvism,--or,
-as we should now say, between philosophy and theology.
-
-The newly discovered original Hebrew of Ecclesiasticus xxxix. 15,
-xlix. 11, published by the Clarendon Press in 1897, enables us to read
-correctly for the first time the portraiture of Solomon in xlvii.,
-with the assistance of Wace and other scholars:
-
-
-    12. After him [David] rose up a wise son, and for his [David's]
-    sake he dwelt in quiet.
-
-    13. Solomon reigned in days of prosperity, and was honoured, and
-    God gave rest to him round about that he might build an house in
-    his name, and prepare his sanctuary for ever.
-
-    14. How wast thou wise in thy youth, and didst overflow with
-    instruction like the Nile!
-
-    15. The earth (was covered by thy soul) and thou didst celebrate
-    song in the height.
-
-    16. Thy name went far unto the islands, and for thy peace thou
-    wast beloved.
-
-    17. The countries marvelled at thee for thy songs, and proverbs,
-    and parables, and interpretations.
-
-    18. Thou wast called by the glorious name which is called over
-    Israel.
-
-    18a. Thou didst gather gold as tin, and didst gather silver
-    as lead.
-
-    19. But thou gavest thy loins unto women, and lettest them have
-    dominion over thy body.
-
-    20. Thou didst stain thy honour and pollute thy seed; so that
-    thou broughtest wrath upon thy children, that they should groan
-    in their beds.
-
-    21. That the kingdom should be divided: and out of Ephraim ruled
-    a rebel kingdom.
-
-    22. But the Lord will never leave off his mercy, neither shall
-    any of his words perish, neither will he abolish the posterity of
-    his elect, and the seed of him that loveth him he will not take
-    away: wherefore he gave a remnant unto Jacob, and out of him a
-    root unto David.
-
-    23. Thus rested Solomon with his fathers, and of his seed he left
-    behind him Rehoboam [of the lineage of Ammon], ample in foolishness
-    and lacking understanding, who by his council let loose the people.
-
-
-In the last sentence I have inserted in crochets an alternative
-reading of Fritzsche for the three words that follow. (Rehoboam's
-Ammonite mother was Naamah.)
-
-It will be noticed that early in the second century B. C. there
-remained no trace of the anathemas on Solomon for his foreign or
-his idolatrous wives. He is now simply accused of being too fond of
-women,--a charge not known to the canonical books.
-
-The verse 18 attests the correctness of the view taken of the
-forty-fifth Psalm in chapter III., written before this Clarendon
-Press volume appeared. It thus becomes certain that the Psalm was
-recognised as written in Solomon's time, and that it was he who was
-there addressed as "God" ("the glorious name").
-
-The mention of this fact in "Wisdom," and the enthusiasm pervading
-every sentence of the tribute to Solomon, despite his alleged
-sensuality, supply conclusive evidence that the cult of Solomon had
-for more than eight centuries been continuous, that it was at length
-prevailing, and that it had become necessary for a broad wing of
-Jahvism to include the Solomonic worldly wisdom and ethics.
-
-Jesus Ben Sira states that he found a book written by his learned
-grandfather, whose name was also Jesus, who had studied many works of
-"our fathers," and added to them writings of his own. The anonymous
-preface states that Sira, son of the first Jesus, left it to his son,
-and that "this Jesus did imitate Solomon."
-
-It is not said that Sira contributed anything to this composite work,
-yet there appear to be three minds in it. There is a fine and free
-philosophy which savors of the earliest traditions of the Solomonic
-School; there is an exceptionally morose Jahvism; and there is also
-mysticism, an attempt to rationalise and soften the Jahvism, and to
-solemnise the philosophy, so as to blend them in a kind of harmonious
-religion. I cannot help feeling that Sira or some friend of his must
-have inserted the Jahvism between the grandfather and the grandson.
-
-However this may be, it is evident that Jesus Ben Sira was too
-reverent to seriously alter anything in the volume before him,
-for the contrast is startling between the hard Jahvism and the
-philosophy of life. Their inclusion in one work is like the union
-of oil and vinegar. The Jahvism is curiously bald: fear Jahveh, keep
-his commandments, pay your tithes, say your prayers, be severe with
-your children (especially daughters), never play with them, guard
-your wife vigilantly, flog your servants. The philosophy is quite
-incongruous with this formalism and rigidity, most of the maxims
-being elaborated with care, and only proverbs in form. Some of them
-are almost Shakespearian in artistic expression:
-
-
-    "Pipe and harp make sweet the song, but a sincere tongue is above
-    them both."
-
-    "Wisdom hid, and treasure hoarded, what value is in either?"
-
-    "The fool's heart is in his mouth, the wise man's mouth is in
-    his heart."
-
-    "There is no riches above a sound body, and no joy above that of
-    the heart."
-
-    "Whoso regardeth dreams is as one who grasps at his shadow."
-
-    "The evil man cursing Satan is but cursing himself."
-
-    "The bars of Wisdom shall be thy fortress, her chains thy robe
-    of honour."
-
-
-About the rendering of xli. 15 there is some doubt, and I give this
-conjecture:
-
-
-    Better the (ignorant) that hideth his folly, than the (learned)
-    who hideth his wisdom.
-
-
-In the Bible which belonged to the historian Gibbon, loaned by
-the late General Meredith Read to the Gibbon exhibition in London,
-I observed a pencil mark around these sentences in "Wisdom":
-
-
-   "He that buildeth his house with other men's money, is like one
-    that gathereth stones for the tomb of his own burial."
-
-   "He that is not wise will not be taught, but there is a wisdom
-    that multiplieth bitterness."
-
-
-To Jesus Ben Sira we may, I believe, ascribe the following:
-
-
-   "Glorifying God, exalt him as far as your thought can reach, yet
-    you will never attain to his height: praising him, put forth all
-    your powers, be not weary, yet ever will they fall short. Who hath
-    seen him that he can tell us? Who can describe him as he is? Let
-    us still be rejoicing in him, for we shall not search him out:
-    he is great beyond his works."
-
-
-This has an interesting correspondence with the beautiful rapture of
-the Persian Sâdi:
-
-
-   "They who pretend to be informed are ignorant, for they who have
-    known him have not recovered their senses. O thou who towerest
-    above the heights of imagination, thought, or conjecture,
-    surpassing all that has been related, and excelling all that we
-    have heard or read, the banquet is ended, the congregation is
-    dismissed, and life draws to a close, and we still rest in our
-    first encomium of thee!"
-
-
-To Jesus Ben Sira may be safely ascribed the passages that bear
-witness to the pressure of problems which, though old, appear in
-new forms under Hellenic influences. They grow urgent and threaten
-the foundations of Jahvism. It was no longer sufficient to say that
-Jahveh rewarded virtue and piety, and punished vice and impiety in
-this world. Job had demanded the evidence for this, and the centuries
-had brought none. Job was awarded some recompense in this world,
-but that happy experience did not attend other virtuous sufferers.
-
-The doctrine of one writer in "Wisdom" is simply predestination. Paul's
-potter-and-clay similitude is anticipated, and the Parsi dualism
-curiously adapted to Jahvist monotheism: "Good is set against evil,
-life against death, the godly against the sinner and the sinner
-against the godly: look through all the works of the Most High and
-there are two and two, one against another." But the liberal son of
-Sira is more optimist: "All things are double, one against another,
-but he hath made nothing imperfect: one thing establisheth the good of
-another." Freedom of the will is asserted: "Say not, he hath caused
-me to err, for he hath no need of the evildoer. He made man from the
-beginning and left him in the hand of his (own) counsel.... He hath
-set fire and water before thee, stretch forth thy hand to whichever
-thou wilt. Before man is the living and the not-living, and whichever
-he liketh shall be given him."
-
-But the doctrine of human free agency is pregnant with polemics;
-it has so been in Christian history, as is proved by the Pelagian,
-Arminian, Jesuit, and Wesleyan movements. There are indications in
-Ben Sira's work that the foundations of Jahvism were threatened by
-a moral scepticism. His own celebration of the Fathers was enough to
-bring into dreary contrast the tragedies of his own time and glories
-of the Past, when "Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under
-his vine and fig-tree, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, all the days
-of Solomon." What shelter now in the divine fig-tree, which could
-bear nothing but legendary or predictive leaves? The curse on the
-barren tree was near at hand when Jesus Ben Sira uttered his pathetic
-complaint, veiled in prayer:
-
-
-   "Have mercy on us, O Lord God of all, and regard us! Send thy
-    fear on all the nations that seek thee not; lift thy hand against
-    them, let them see thy power! As thou wast (of old) sanctified
-    in us before them, be thou (now) magnified among them before us;
-    and let them know thee, as we have known thee,--that there is, O
-    God, no God but thou alone! Show new signs, more strange wonders;
-    glorify thy hand and thy right arm, that they may publish thy
-    wondrous works! Raise up indignation, pour out wrath, remove
-    the adversary, destroy the enemy: hasten! remember thy covenant,
-    and let them witness thy wonderful works!"
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII.
-
-THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON.
-
-
-Somewhat more than a century after Jesus Ben Sira's work, came
-an answer to his prayer, not from above but from beneath, in the
-so-called "Psalter of Solomon." This is no wisdom book, and need not
-detain us. It is mainly a hash--one may say a mess--made up out of
-the Psalms; and though some of the allusions, apparently to Pompey
-and others, may possess value in other connexions, the work need
-only be mentioned here as an indication of the fate which Solomon
-met at the hands of Jahvism. The name of the Wisest of his race on
-this vulgar production is like the doggerel on Shakespeare's tomb,
-and the fling at England's greatest poet written on the tomb of his
-daughter,--"Wise to salvation was good Mistriss Hall," etc.
-
-Before passing, it may be remarked that the obvious allusions to Christ
-in this Psalter seem clearly spurious, and for one I cannot regard
-as other than a late interpolation verse 24 of Psalter-Psalm xvii.:
-"Behold, O God, and raise up unto them their king, the Son of David,
-in the time which thou, O God, knowest, that he may reign over Israel
-thy servant." There is nothing in the literature of the time before or
-after that would warrant the concession to this ranting Salvationist
-(B. C. 70-60) of an idea which would then have been original. The
-verse has the accent of a Second Adventist a century later. The title
-"Son of David" occurs even in the New Testament but sixteen times.
-
-The Psalter is in spirit thoroughly Jahvist, narrow, hard, without
-one ray of Solomonic wisdom or wit. It may fairly be regarded as
-the sepulchre of the wise man whose name it bears (though not in its
-text). Jahvism has here triumphed over the whole cult of Wisdom.
-
-But Solomon is not to rest there. He is again evoked, though not
-yet in his ancient secular greatness, by the next work that claims
-our attention.
-
-This last of the Wisdom Books bears the heading "Wisdom of Solomon"
-(Sophia Solomontos) and gives unmistakable identifications of the
-King, though herein also the name "Solomon" appears only in the
-title. Perhaps the writer may have wished to avoid exciting the
-ridicule or resentment of the Solomonists by plainly connecting the
-name of their founder with a retractation of all the secularism and the
-heresies anciently associated with him. The aristocratic Sadducees,
-who believed not in immortality, derived their name from Solomon's
-famous chaplain, Zadok.
-
-This "Wisdom of Solomon" probably appeared not far from the first
-year of our era. It is written in almost classical Greek, is full of
-striking and poetic interpretations and spiritualisations of Jewish
-legends, and transfused with a piety at once warm and mystical. Solomon
-is summoned much in the way that the "Wandering Jew," Ahasuerus, is
-called up in Shelley's "Prometheus," yet not quite allegorically,
-to testify concerning the Past, and concerning the mysteries of
-the invisible world. He has left behind his secularist Proverbs
-and his worldly wisdom; but though he now rises as a prophet of
-otherworldliness, not a word is uttered inconsistent with his having
-been a saint from the beginning, albeit "chastised" and "proved." In
-fact he gives his spiritual autobiography, which is that of a Son
-of God wise and "undefiled" from childhood. His burden is to warn
-the kings and judges of the world of the blessedness that awaits the
-righteous,--the misery that awaits the unrighteous,--beyond the grave.
-
-The work impresses me as having been written by one who had long
-been an enthusiastic Solomonist, but who had been spiritually
-revolutionised by attaining the new belief of immortality. It does
-not appear as if the apparition of Solomon was to this writer a
-simple imagination. Solomon seems to be alive, or rather as if never
-dead. "For thou (God) hast power of life and death: thou leadest to
-the gates of Hades, and bringest up again." "The giving heed unto her
-(Wisdom's) laws is the assurance of incorruption; and incorruption
-maketh us near unto God: therefore the desire of Wisdom bringeth to
-a Kingdom."
-
-The Jewish people idealised Solomon's reign long before they idealised
-the man himself; and indeed he had to reach his halo under personified
-epithets derived from his fame,--as "Melchizedek," and "Prince of
-Peace." The nation sighed for the restoration of his splendid empire,
-but could not describe their Coming Man as a returning Solomon,
-because the priests and prophets,--a gentry little respected by
-the Wise Man,--steadily ascribed all the national misfortunes to the
-shrines built to other deities than Jahveh by the royal Citizen of the
-World. Thus grew such prophetic indirections as "the House of David,"
-"Jesse's branch," and finally "Son of David."
-
-But this idea of the returning hero does not appear to have been
-original with any Semitic people; it is first found among them in the
-Oriental book of Job, who longs to sleep in some cavern for ages,
-then reappear, and, even if his flesh were shrivelled, find that
-his good name was vindicated (xiv.). This idea of the Sleeping Hero
-(which is traced in many examples in my work on The Wandering Jew)
-appears to have gained its earliest expression in the legend of King
-Yima, in Persia,--the original of such sleepers as Barbarossa and
-King Arthur, as well as of the legendary Enoch, Moses, and Elias, who
-were to precede or attend the revived Son of David. Solomon, whose
-name probably gave Jerusalem the peaceful half of its name (Salem)
-would no doubt have been central among the "Undying Ones" had it not
-been for the Parliament of Religions he set up in that city. But he
-had to wait a thousand years for his honorable fame to awaken.
-
-In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the Queen of Sheba is also recalled into
-life. She is, as Renan pointed out, transfigured in the personified
-Wisdom, and her gifts become mystical. "All good things together came
-to me with her," and "Wisdom goeth before them: and I knew not that
-she was the mother of them." She is amiable, beautiful, and gave him
-his knowledge:
-
-"All such things as are secret or manifest, them I knew. For Wisdom,
-which is the worker of all things, taught me: for in her is an
-understanding spirit, holy, one only, manifold; subtle, lively,
-clear, undefiled, plain, not subject to hurt, loving the thing that
-is good, quick, which cannot be letted, ready to do good, kind to
-man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power, overseeing
-all things, and pervading all intellectual, pure, and most subtle
-spirits. For Wisdom is more moving than motion itself; she passeth
-and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness. For she is the
-breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory
-of the Almighty: therefore can no impure thing fall into her. For she
-is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of
-the power of God, and the image of his goodness. And alone, she can
-do all things; herself unchanged, she maketh all things new; and in
-all ages, entering into holy souls, she maketh them intimates of God,
-and prophets. For God loveth only him who dwelleth with Wisdom. She
-is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of stars;
-compared with the light she is found before it,--for after light
-cometh night, but evil shall not prevail against Wisdom." (vii. 21-30.)
-
-In Sophia Solomontos Solomon relates his espousal of Wisdom,
-who sat beside the throne of God (ix. 4). But there remains with
-God a detective Wisdom called the Holy Spirit. Wisdom and the Holy
-Spirit have different functions. "Thy counsel who hath known except
-thou give Wisdom, and send thy Holy Spirit from above?" This verse
-(ix. 17) is followed by two chapters (x., xi.) relating the work of
-Wisdom through past ages as a Saviour. But then comes an account
-of the severe chastening functions of the Holy Spirit. "For thine
-incorruptible Spirit is in all things (i. e., nothing is concealed
-from her), therefore chastenest thou them by little and little that
-offend," etc. (xii. 1, 2.)
-
-There is here a slight variation in the historic development of the
-Spirit of God, and one so pregnant with results that it may be well
-to refer to some of the earlier Hebrew conceptions. The Spirit of
-God described in Genesis i. 2, as "brooding" over the waters was
-evidently meant to represent a detached agent of the deity. The
-legend is obviously related to that of the dove going forth over
-the waters of the deluge. The dove probably acquired its symbolical
-character as a messenger between earth and heaven from the marvellous
-powers of the carrier pigeon--powers well known in ancient Egypt--it
-also appears that its cooing was believed to be an echo on earth
-of the voice of God. [24] We have already seen (viii.) that Wisdom,
-when first personified, was identified with this "brooding" spirit
-over the surface of the waters, and also that in a second (Jahvist)
-personification she is a severe and reproving agent. But in the
-second verse of Genesis there is a darkness on the abyss, and both
-darkness and abyss were personified. In the rigid development of
-monotheism all of these beings were necessarily regarded as agents
-of Jahveh--monopolist of all powers. We thus find such accounts as
-that in 1 Samuel 16, where the Spirit of Jahveh departed from Saul
-and an evil Spirit from Jahveh troubled him.
-
-Although the Spirit of God was generally supposed to convey miraculous
-knowledge, especially of future events, and superior skill, it is
-not, I believe, in any book earlier than Sophia Solomontos definitely
-ascribed the function of a detective. There is in Ecclesiastes (x. 20)
-a passage which suggests the carrier: "Curse not the King, no, not
-in thy thought; and curse not the rich even in thy bedchamber; for
-a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings
-shall tell the matter." [25] This was evidently in the mind of the
-writer of Sophia Solomontos in the following verses:
-
-Wisdom is a loving Spirit, and will not (cannot?) acquit a blasphemer
-of his words: for God is a witness of his reins, and a true beholder
-of his heart, and a hearer of his tongue; for the Spirit of the
-Lord filleth the world, and that which containeth all things hath
-knowledge of the voice; therefore he that speaketh unrighteous things
-cannot be hid, neither shall vengeance when it punisheth, pass by
-him. For inquisition shall be made into the counsels of the ungodly;
-the sound of his words shall come unto the Lord for the disclosure
-of his wickedness, the ear of jealousy heareth all things, and the
-sound even of murmurings is not secret."
-
-Here we have the origin of the "unpardonable sin." The Holy Spirit
-detects and informs, Jahveh avenges, and if the offence is blasphemy,
-Wisdom, the Saviour, cannot acquit (as the "Loving Spirit" of God
-it is for her ultra vires). This detective Holy Spirit appears to
-be an evolution from both Wisdom and Satan the Accuser, in Job a Son
-of God. By associating with Solomon on earth, Wisdom was without the
-severe holiness essential to Jahvist conceptions of divine government;
-in other words, personified Wisdom, whose "delight was with the sons
-of men" (Prov. viii. 31) was too humanized to fulfil the conditions
-necessary for upholding the temple at a time when penal sanctions
-were withdrawn from the priesthood. A celestial spy was needed, and
-also an uncomfortable Sheol, if the ancient ordinances and sacrifices
-were to be preserved at all under the rule of Roman liberty, and amid
-the cosmopolitan conditions prevailing at Jerusalem, and still more
-at Alexandria. [26]
-
-With regard to Wisdom herself, there is a sentence which requires
-notice, especially as no unweighed word is written in the work
-under notice. It is said, "In that she is conversant with God,
-she magnifieth her nobility; yea, the Lord of all things himself
-loved her." (viii. 3). [27] This seems to be the germ of Philo's
-idea of Wisdom as the Mother: "And she, receiving the seed of God,
-with beautiful birth-pangs brought forth this world, His visible Son,
-only and well-beloved." The writer of Sophia Solomontos is very careful
-to be vague in speculations of this kind, while suggesting inferences
-with regard to them. Thus, alluding to Moses before Pharaoh, he says,
-"She (Wisdom) entered into the servant of the Lord, and withstood
-dreadful kings in wonders and signs" (x. 16), but leaves us to mere
-conjecture as to whether he (the writer) still had Wisdom in mind
-when writing (xvii. 13) of the failure of these enchantments and the
-descent of the Almighty Word, for the destruction of the first-born:
-
-"For while all things are quiet silence, and that night was in the
-midst of her swift course, thine Almighty Word leaped down from Heaven
-out of thy Royal throne, as a fierce man of war into the midst of
-a land of destruction; and brought thine unfeigned commandment as
-a sharp sword, and standing up filled all things with death; and it
-touched the heaven, but it stood upon the earth." [28]
-
-The Word in this place (ho pantodynamos sou logos) is clearly
-reproduced in the Epistle to the Hebrews (iv. 12). "The Word of God
-is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword;" and
-the same military metaphor accompanies this "Word" into Revelation
-xix. 13. This continuity of metaphor has apparently been overlooked
-by Alford (Greek Testament, vol. iv., p. 226) who regards the use of
-the phrase "Word of God" (ho logos tou theou) as linking Revelation
-to the author of the fourth Gospel, whereas in this Gospel Logos is
-never followed by "of God," while it is so followed in Hebrews iv. 12.
-
-This evolution of the "Word" is clear. In the "Wisdom of Solomon"
-Wisdom is the creative Word and the Saviour. The Word leaping down from
-the divine throne and bearing the sword of vengeance is more like the
-son of the celestial counterpart of Wisdom, namely, the detective Holy
-Spirit (called in i. 5 "the Holy Spirit of Discipline"). But in the
-era we are studying, all words by able writers were living things,
-and were two-edged swords, and long after they who wrote them were
-dead went on with active and sundering work undreamed of by those
-who first uttered them.
-
-The Zoroastrian elements which we remarked in Jesus Ben Sira's
-"Wisdom" are even more pronounced in the "Wisdom of Solomon." The
-Persian worshippers are so mildly rebuked (xiii.) for not passing
-beyond fire and star to the "origin of beauty," that one may suppose
-the author, probably an Alexandrian, must have had friends among
-them. At any rate his conception of a resplendent God is Mazdean,
-his all-seeing Holy Spirit is the Parsî "Anahita," and his Wisdom
-is Armaîti, the "loving spirit" on earth, the saviour of men. [29]
-The opposing kingdoms of Ahuramazda and Angromainyu, and especially
-Zoroaster's original division of the universe into "the living and
-the not-living," are reflected in the "Wisdom of Solomon," i. 13-16:
-
-"God made not death: neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of
-the living. He created all things that they might have their being;
-and the generations of the world were healthful; and there (was)
-no poison of destruction in them, nor (any) kingdom of death on the
-earth: (for righteousness is immortal): but ungodly men with their
-deeds and words evoked Death to them: when they thought to have it
-their friend they consumed to naught, and made a covenant with Death,
-being fit to take sides with it."
-
-In the moral and religious evolution which we have been tracing it
-has been seen that the utter indifference of the Cosmos to human good
-and evil, right and wrong, was the theme of Job; that in Ecclesiastes
-the same was again declared, and the suggestion made that if God
-helped or afflicted men it must depend on some point of etiquette or
-observance unconnected with moral considerations, so that man need
-not omit pleasure but only be punctilious when in the temple; that
-in Jesus Ben Sira's contribution to his fathers' "Wisdom," the moral
-character of God was maintained, moral evil regarded as hostile to God,
-and imaginary sanctions invented, accompanied by pleadings with God
-to indorse them by new signs and wonders. Such signs not appearing,
-and no rewards and punishments being manifested in human life, the
-next step was to assign them to a future existence, and this step was
-taken in "Wisdom of Solomon."  There remained but one more necessity,
-namely, that there should be some actual evidence of that future
-existence. Agur's question had remained unanswered--
-
-
-   "Who has ascended into heaven and come down again?
-    Such an one would I question about God."
-
-
-To this the reply was to be the resurrection from death claimed for
-the greatest of the spiritual race of Solomon.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII.
-
-EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS (A SEQUEL TO SOPHIA SOLOMONTOS).
-
-
-In a Theocracy the birth of a new God was not the mere new
-generalization that it might be in our secularized century,--a
-deification of the Unknowable, for instance,--of not the slightest
-practical or moral interest to any human being. Judea was the bodily
-incarnation, even more than Islam is now, of a deity who said,
-"I am the Lord and there is none else; I form the light and create
-darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I the Lord do all these
-things." The denial of such a deity, the substitution of one who
-required neither prayers, sacrifices, nor intercessions, could not
-be merely theoretical. It must involve the overthrow of a nationality
-which had no bond of unity except a book, and the institutions founded
-on that book.
-
-Nor did the theocratic principle admit of a mere philosophical
-opposition to its institutions. He who touched that system was dealing
-with people who, in the language of "Sophia Solomontos" were "shut up
-in a prison without iron bars." The natural advent of the anti-Jahvist
-was in the Temple and with the words--
-
-
-    He hath sent me to herald glad news to the poor,
-    He hath sent me to proclaim deliverance to captives,
-    And recovering of sight to the blind,
-    To set at liberty them that are bruised.
-
-
-These miseries had no real relation to the social or political
-conditions amid which their phrases and hymns were born, but to a
-burden of debts to a jealous and vindictive omnipotence; a burden
-not of actions really wrong, but of mysterious offences, related to
-incomprehensible ordinances and heavenly etiquette. No human vices
-are so malignant as inhuman virtues.
-
-Bunyan, in depicting Christian's burden, has, with a felicity
-perhaps unconscious, made it a pack strapped on. It is not a hunch,
-not any part of the pilgrim, and had he possessed the courage to
-examine it there must have been found many spiritual nightmares
-of the race, and many robust English virtues turned to sins when
-the merry and honest tinker turned retrospective Rip Van Winkle,
-and dreamed himself back into the year One. The burden of sins on
-the poor Israelites had been gradually getting lighter under the
-scepticism of the Wisdom school, in view of the failure of Jahveh to
-fulfil the menaces and sentences of the priesthood. Conformity was
-secured mainly for actual advantages bestowed by the synagogue, or its
-terrors. But the discovery of the doctrine of a future life and a day
-of judgment, when all the mysterious "sins" were to be settled for,
-while smiled at by the Saducees, made the burden of the ignorant poor
-intolerable. Life was passed under suspended swords. The priesthood
-had a cowering vassal in every ignorant human being. The time, the
-labour, the flocks of the peasantry were devoted, but it was all a
-"sweating" process,--the debts were never paid, and there was always
-that "certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of
-fire which shall devour the adversaries." No doubt even the learned
-supposed these superstitions useful to keep the "masses" in order.
-
-But one day a scholarly gentleman, a man of genius, was moved with
-compassion for these poor lost and priest-harried sheep: he turned
-aside from his college and his rank, and became their shepherd;
-he declared they owed no duties to any deity, and that the heavenly
-despot they so dreaded had no existence.
-
-A modern gentleman in a fine mansion and estate may be amused at
-Bunyan's quaint pilgrim, reading in a book and discovering that he
-was in a City of Destruction, fleeing with a burden on his back, and
-rejoicing when it rolls off at the cross. But if this gentleman should
-suddenly receive from some distant personage papers showing that his
-estate had been entirely mortgaged by his father, that it would soon
-be claimed and his family reduced to beggary, he might understand
-the City of Destruction. And if, soon after, some visitor arrived to
-state that the holder of the mortgages was dead; that those claims had
-all legally fallen into his own hands, and that he had burnt them,
-the rolling off of Christian's burden might be appreciated,--also
-the enthusiasm of the personal followers of Jesus.
-
-But one might further imagine a host of hungry lawyers, living on
-large retainers, not being quite happy at such easy settlements,
-especially if the generous visitor were found wealthy enough to go
-about buying up and burning claims, and ending litigation. This, to
-us hardly imaginable, was, however, actually the condition of things
-reflected in parts of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Therein the bond
-under which man suffers is clearly to him who hath the Power of Death,
-the Devil: Jesus ransomed man from the Devil.
-
-The anonymous tractate superscribed solely "To the Hebrews," though
-the last admitted into the New Testament, is probably the earliest
-document it contains. It has no doubt been tampered with, but the
-evidences of the early date of its conception of Christ remain. Not
-only was it evidently written before the destruction of the temple
-(anno 70), but before there was any thought of a mission to the
-Gentiles, who, with Paul their apostle, are ignored. Some of its
-phrases and illustrations are found in epistles of Paul, but, as
-Dr. Davidson pointed out in his Introduction to the New Testament,
-the general doctrine of this treatise is far from Pauline, and
-it is difficult to find any reason for supposing that the few
-borrowings were not by Paul, other than a preference for Paul, and
-disinclination to admit that there is any anonymous work in the New
-Testament. The treatise is without Paul's egotism, or his fatalism,
-and its conception of the new movement seems decidedly more primitive
-than that in the recognised Pauline epistles. The sagacious Eusebius,
-"father of church history," connects the Epistle "To the Hebrews"
-with the "Wisdom of Solomon," and it seems clear that we have here the
-bridge between the last abutment of philosophic or "broad" Jahvism,
-and its "new departure" as Christism.
-
-It is not of especial importance to the present inquiry to determine
-that Paul might not at some youthful period have written this work,
-though I cannot see how any critical reader can so imagine; but
-it will bear indirectly on that point if we read successively the
-following corresponding passages:
-
-
-    Wisdom of Solomon.--"For Wisdom, which is the worker of all things,
-    taught me ... she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure
-    influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty; therefore can
-    no unclean thing fall into her. For she is the brightness of
-    the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God,
-    and the image of his goodness. And alone she can do all things;
-    herself unchanged, she maketh all things new: and in all ages
-    entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God and
-    prophets."--(vii. 25-27.) "And Wisdom was with thee: which knoweth
-    thy works, and was present when thou madest the world." (ix. 9.)
-
-    Epistle to the Hebrews.--"God, having in time past spoken to the
-    fathers by many fragments and divers ways in the prophets, at the
-    end of these days spake unto us in Son whom he constituted heir
-    of all things, by whom also he fashioned the ages; who, being the
-    brightness of his light and the image of his substance, and guiding
-    all things by the word of his authority, having made purification
-    of sins, sat on the right of majesty in high places." (i. 1-3.)
-
-    Epistle to the Colossians.--"Who (the Father) delivered us out of
-    the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of his
-    son of love, in whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of
-    our sins: who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of
-    all creation; for in him were all things created, in the heavens
-    and above the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether
-    thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have
-    been created through him and unto him; and he is before all things,
-    and in him all things hold together." (i. 13-17.)
-
-    Fourth Gospel.--"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
-    with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning
-    with God. All things were made through him, and without him was
-    not anything made. That which hath been made was life in him,
-    and the life was the light of men. And the Word became flesh
-    and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory--glory as of an only
-    begotten of a Father full of grace and truth." (i. 1-15.)
-
-
-It appears to me that the evolution is represented in the
-order given. Paul's phrase, "first-born of all creation,"  is an
-amplification of the word "first-born" used in the Epistle to the
-Hebrews, but there used in another connection,--and not solely,
-as we shall see, relating to Christ. Paul's phrase corresponds with
-"the only-begotten," etc., of John, and with the "son constituted
-heir" of the Epistle to the Hebrews, though the latter is a different
-Christological conception. When this writer's doctrinal statement is
-finished, and after his argument is begun, he says (i. 6), "But when
-of old bringing the first-born into the inhabited earth, he saith,
-And pay homage to him all angels of God." The word "first-born" here is
-probably the seed from which Paul develops his full flower of doctrine,
-given above. Paul's conception of a creative Christ seems later than
-the "guiding" Christ (Heb. i. 3), which recalls the function of Wisdom
-as "director" at the creation (Prov. viii. 30); and the idea in this
-epistle to the Hebrews of a previous and historical Christophany,
-while harmonious with that of the "Wisdom of Solomon" (vii. 27),--that
-she (Wisdom) "in all ages enters into holy souls,"--is so primitive,
-unique, and so foreign to Paul, that the writer may have been one of
-those accused by him of preaching "another Jesus" (2 Cor. ii. 4). [30]
-
-Although this Epistle contains the principle ascribed to Jesus,
-"charity and not sacrifice" (xiii. 9) and substitutes for beasts the
-"sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips harmonious with his good
-name" (verse 15), the letter that killeth brought forth from the same
-chapter the fatal doctrine that the body of Jesus was a sacrifice to be
-eaten. And although this emphasizes the completeness of his humanity
-to an extent inconsistent with his deity, it is on the letter of this
-Epistle that the deification of Christ is founded.
-
-
-    V. 7-9. "Who in the days of his flesh, having offered up
-    entreaties with vehement crying and tears to him able to save
-    him out of death, and although inclined to because of his piety,
-    yet, albeit a son, learned obedience by the things he suffered;
-    and having been made perfect, became unto all that follow him
-    the author of eternal salvation." [31]
-
-
-He is represented as "made perfect through sufferings," as "tempted
-in all points like (?others) without sin," and as having without
-assistance of temple or sacrifices, "obtained eternal redemption"
-(ix. 12). Thus he also needed redemption.
-
-The new covenant of which Jesus was the founder is described in the
-words of Jeremiah (xxxi.):
-
-
-    I will put my laws into their mind,
-    And on their heart will I write them
-    And I will be to them a God,
-    And they shall be to me a people:
-    And they shall not teach every man his fellow-citizen,
-    And every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord:
-    For all shall know me,
-    From the least unto the greatest.
-
-
-In quoting this the writer to the Hebrews adds: "In that he saith,
-'A new (covenant) he hath made the first old. But that which is
-becoming old and waxeth aged is near unto vanishing entirely.'" Here
-is a primitive Quakerism, but more conservative; not like George Fox
-at once sweeping away priesthood sacraments and ecclesiastical laws
-before the Inner Light, but pointing to their near vanishing.
-
-The writer of this Epistle is a philosophical conservative; he shudders
-at the idea of a swift and complete overthrow of the traditional
-system, and even borrows its old thunders against levitical sin
-to menace offences against the new moral God. "Our God [also] is
-a consuming fire." It is evident by his very warnings that a great
-anti-sacerdotal and anti-levitical revolution had taken place, and
-that the free spirit was burgeoning out in excesses. But such is
-his culture that one may suspect his thunders of being theatrical,
-and that he thinks some superstition necessary for the masses.
-
-The fatal and subtle character of the detective Holy Spirit is imported
-into this Epistle from the "Wisdom of Solomon" (i. 6), though not
-so distinctly personified. The sin afterwards called "unpardonable"
-is here a sin against Christ for which repentance, not pardon, is
-impossible. We may perhaps find in some of the expressions germs of
-the legend of Judas. "As touching those who were once enlightened,
-and tasted the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy
-Spirit, and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age
-that is come, and fell away, it is impossible to renew them again to
-repentance, seeing they individually impale the Son of God afresh
-and put him to open shame" (vi. 5, 6). The believers are "not of
-them that shrink back into perdition" (x. 39); and they are warned
-to look carefully "whether there be any man that falleth back from
-the grace of God,... like Esau, who for one mess of meat sold his own
-birthright" (xii. 15, 16). The words "tasted," "perdition," "sold,"
-might start a legend of the betrayal, first alluded to by Paul (if 1
-Cor. xi. 23 be genuine, which is doubtful), though had the legend of
-Judas then existed this writer would naturally have alluded to him
-along with Esau.
-
-This Epistle is the nursery of the titles of Christ; he is Apostle,
-Son of God, Son of Man, Great Shepherd, Captain of Salvation, Mediator,
-Great High Priest; and here alone is found the now familiar endearing
-phrase "Our Lord." These titles represent the functions of different
-beings in the Avesta. The conception of the work of Jesus on earth
-is largely Zoroastrian. The Majesty on high has a colony and a people
-on earth, which otherwise is under the supremacy of the Evil One. As
-we have seen the Avestan definitions of Ahuramazda and Angra Mainyu,
-"the Living and the Not Living," are reflected in the phrases of this
-Epistle,--the "Power of Imperishable Life" (vii. 16) and the "Power of
-Death" (ii. 14). Ahuramazda, when his "habitable earth" was prepared,
-brought into it his "first-born," Yima, and wished him to propagate
-the divine law which should destroy the power of Angra Mainyu on earth
-and confine him in the underworld. Yima replied, "I was not born,
-I was not taught, to be the preacher and the bearer of thy law." He
-engaged, however, to enlarge and nourish the garden of God on earth,
-of which he was king, and entitled "the good shepherd." He obtained
-from the Holy Spirit, Anâhita, the powers thus enumerated in Abân
-Yast 26: "He begged of her a boon, saying, 'Grant me this, O good,
-most beneficent Ardvi Sûra Anâhita, that I may become the sovereign
-lord of all countries, of the dævas [devils] and men, of the Yâtus
-[sorcerers] and Pairkas [seducing nymphs], of the oppressors [who
-afflict] the blind and the deaf; and that I may take from the dævas
-[devils] both riches and welfare, both fatness and flocks, both weal
-and glory" [hvarenô, "the glory from above which makes the king an
-earthly god"]. [32] This "firstborn" reigned a thousand years, but
-then, having ascribed his "glory" to the demons from whom he obtained
-wealth and material benefits, his "glory" was lost, and secured by
-the Devil, who reigned in his place a thousand years, blighting the
-world, when Zoroaster was born to undertake the establishment of the
-divine Law on earth. Yima was ultimately developed into the Jamshid
-of Persian mythology, whose power over demons, fabulous wealth, and
-ultimate fall (through declaring himself a god, according to Firdusi)
-invested the legend of Solomon.
-
-From the legend of Solomon and the Solomonic Psalms the Epistle to
-the Hebrews brings its exaltation of Christ. From Ps. lxxxix. 26-7,
-as reproduced in 2 Sam. vii. 14, is quoted (i. 5) the divine promise,
-"I will be to him (Solomon) a Father and he shall be my Son," along
-with the manifesto at Solomon's enthronement (Ps. ii. 7), "Thou art
-my Son; this day have I begotten thee." Solomon is the "first-born"
-alluded to in Heb. i. 6: "When of old bringing the first-born into
-the inhabited earth (oikoumenên) he saith, And pay homage to him all
-angels of God?"
-
-And here we have an interesting example of evolution in the Solomon
-legend. The term "first-born," as indicating the relation of a human
-being to the deity, occurs but once in the Old Testament, namely, in
-Psalm lxxxix. 27. It occurs in a strange passage that must be quoted:
-
-
-    19. Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy ones,
-        And saidst, I have laid help upon a youth;
-        I have raised one elected out of the people.
-    20. I have discovered David, my servant:
-        With my holy oil have I anointed him,
-    21. By whom my hand shall be established,
-        Whom also mine arm shall strengthen.
-    22. The enemy shall not do him violence,
-        Nor the son of evil afflict him.
-    23. I will beat down his adversaries before him
-        And smite them that hate him.
-    24. But my faithfulness and my mercy end not with him,
-        And in my name shall his horn be exalted.
-    25. I will extend his hand on the sea also,
-        And his right hand on the rivers:
-    26. He shall address me, "Thou, my father,
-        My God, and the rock of my support";
-    27. In answer I constitute him first-born,
-        Elyon of the kings of the earth.
-
-
-Although in all of these verses the Davidic royalty is exalted, the
-reference to David's own reign passes at verse 24 into a celebration of
-Solomon. Here, as in Psalm cxxxii. 17, Solomon is the "horn" of David:
-he was distinctively the power on sea and river, phrases inapplicable
-to David, and there is a contrast between the anointed "servant"
-(verse 20) and the "first-born" (verse 27). The next title, "Elyon"
-(Most High), comes very near to that of the deity (El Elyon) of the
-mysterious priest-king of Salem, Melchizedek, whose mythical character
-and identity with the legendary Solomon will be hereafter considered.
-
-Here we have no doubt the germs of the narrative in 2 Sam. vii. of
-the formal adoption of Solomon as Jahveh's son, with the addition of a
-metaphysical connotation of the sonship not found in the Psalm. In the
-Psalm the fatherhood is that of support, the position of "first-born"
-is that of chieftainship among kings; and it is further said (31,
-32) that if any of the sons of the Davidic line profane the divine
-statutes, "Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and
-their iniquity with stripes." But in 2 Sam. vii. 14, Jahveh applies
-this warning to Solomon alone, and with a remarkable modification:
-"I will be his father and he shall be my son: if he commit iniquity
-I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of
-the sons of men; but my mercy shall not depart from him." That is,
-though a son of God he may be chastened like the sons of men,--an
-intimation of a difference between Solomon and ordinary human nature
-not intended in the words of the Psalm.
-
-The Epistle to the Hebrews, finding in this Psalm an introduction of
-"first-born" into the world, for there is no article preceding the
-word, follows it so closely as to omit any article before "son"
-(i. 2). He finds this in an address of the deity to his angels
-("holy ones" or saints), and understands verse 27 of the Psalm to
-mean that they, the angels, are to worship the "first-born" as the
-Elyon, or Most High on earth. From 2 Sam. vii. the Epistle gets
-sufficient authority for ascribing an eternal personality to the
-sonship, anciently represented by Solomon, and we may thus see that
-the gesture of Hebrew religion towards a doctrine of incarnation was
-much earlier than is generally supposed. And this, too, is the Hebrew
-contribution to a Psalm which, in the nine verses above quoted, imports
-ideas foreign to Judaism. The reciprocal help of the deity and the king
-(19-21) is Avestan, and inconsistent with monotheism. Elyon is the
-name of an ancient Phoenician god, slain by his son El, no doubt the
-"first-born of death" in Job xviii. 13, and the violent "son of evil,"
-in verse 22 of our Psalm. The exaltation of both David and Solomon in
-the Psalm is primarily in reference to service and deeds, not majesty,
-essence, or title; of these Avestan religion made little, but Hebraism
-made much, and the deification of Solomon, though warranted by other
-Psalms, is added to this eighty-ninth by Samuel and the Epistle to
-the Hebrews.
-
-In Ecclesiasticus it is written: "In the division of the nations of the
-whole earth he set a ruler over every people; but Israel is the Lord's
-portion: whom, being his first-born, he nourisheth with discipline,
-and giving him the light of his love doth not forsake him.... For all
-things cannot be in men, because the son of man is not immortal. What
-is brighter than the sun? Yet the light thereof faileth; and flesh
-and blood will imagine evil" (xvii.). Now in the Zoroastrian theology
-there could be no direct contact of God with matter: the devil's
-empire could be invaded and death conquered only by a perfectly
-"blameless" MAN. (Cf. "Wisdom of Solomon," xviii. 21, with the
-"sinless" of Heb. iv. 15, the "guileless" of vii. 26, and "without
-blemish," ix. 14). The spotless one can use no carnal weapon. In
-the Zoroastrian theology the divine potency is that of the Word, and
-formulas exist to be wielded against every variety of demon. So in
-this Epistle the supremacy of the Son is by "the word of his power",
-(i. 3), and "the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword"
-(iv. 12).
-
-The enterprise of the Son of God was to fulfil these conditions. He
-must become a complete man, share all the infirmities of man, all his
-liabilities to temptation, receive no assistance from his Father,
-no angelic help,--placed lower than the angels,--and confront the
-powers of Death and Hell without any material weapon. If he succeeded
-in remaining sinless, faithful to the divine law, even unto death,
-even while in hell, unshaken by threats, sufferings, or seductions,
-it must be a purely human achievement. There was no miracle; even the
-suspicion of using supernatural power would have tainted the whole
-work of Jesus as conceived in this Epistle.
-
-This undertaking was not simply for the sake of mankind. All things
-are not yet subjected to the divine sway (Heb. ii. 8). Heaven itself
-was shaken, when the old covenant failed, and trembled for the result
-of the tremendous conflict of the Son of Man on earth with its Prince
-and his hosts (Heb. xii. 25-29). This was "the joy in front of him"
-(xii. 2), as well as the rescue of men.
-
-Thus was the man left entirely to the devil, not even his life
-being reserved, as in the case of Job. He loudly cries for help,
-even with tears, at the sight of Death; he is heard, pitied, but no
-help comes. He must trust to his human merits, and not miracles,
-for his Sonship is of no value in this conflict. By his obedience
-learned in his sufferings, by his sinlessness under all trials and
-temptations, he fulfilled the conditions of deathlessness. By his
-own heart's blood, not by offerings of bloody sacrifices, not by
-supernatural power, he reached the place of holiness, "having obtained
-eternal redemption." From first to last there was no divine aid. His
-unanswered loud cries (Heb. v. 7) may be connected with the legend
-of his expiring cry, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
-
-Much of the thought here is similar to the "Wisdom of Solomon"
-(ii. 22-4, iii. 1-9), where however the ideas are conflicting. It is
-said, "God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of
-his own eternity: nevertheless, through the devil's envy came death
-into the world, and they that hold of his side do find it." But then
-Jahvism puts in with the declaration that the seeming destruction
-of the righteous is God's chastisement and probation of them. The
-Epistle to the Hebrews does not regard the sufferings and death of
-Jesus as God's work at all, but all from the devil. Though God spoke
-by him there is no suggestion that he sent Jesus, or that his coming
-was not voluntary.
-
-With this reservation, and a large one it is, that Jesus was not
-delivered up to Satan by God, but left to confront his torments in an
-effort to subdue him, "bring him to nought," the central idea of the
-Epistle is a doctrinal transfiguration of Job, who being delivered up
-to Satan, triumphs over the tempter and tormentor, and through all
-preserves his sinlessness and loyalty to God. The result being that
-those who had denied Job's merits, his sinlessness, had to secure Job's
-intercession in order to escape the penalty of having ascribed his
-sufferings to God (Job xlii. 8). [33] This relationship of ideas is all
-the more interesting because apparently unconscious in the writer of
-the Epistle, and thus revealing the extent to which Oriental religion
-had remoulded Judaism among the educated Jews of his time. Monotheism
-is strictly inconsistent with the supremacy of "merits" which is the
-very soul of Oriental religion. The sacred books of India contain
-records of saints or Rishis who by extraordinary austerities,
-sacrifices, and virtues so piled up their "merits" that the gods
-were frightened, as they were at the tower of Babel; and sometimes
-the gods tempted these powerful saints to commit some sin that would
-reduce their "merits." The Solomonic "Proverbs" are pervaded by the
-Oriental doctrine of "merits": a man is proved by test of his merits,
-as gold passing through the furnace (xxvii. 21); the perfect inherit
-good (xxviii. 10); and perhaps that sublime pedlar of transcendent
-gems imported along with the gold of Ophir some version of the Puranic
-legend of Harischandra, "the Hindu Job." All the Jahvist adulterations
-of the biblical version do not conceal the fact that when Jahveh,
-by delivering the meritorious man up to Satan, delivered himself also
-into the hands of Satan, he (Jahveh) was compelled to surrender before
-the merits on which the man had planted himself. Jahveh reclaimed his
-sovereignty, but agreed that Job, who had said "God hath wronged me,"
-had spoken of him "the thing that is right" (xlii. 8). In the same
-way the storm-god Indra (the Hindu Jahveh) accompanied by all the
-gods, headed by Dharma (Justice), appears to Harischandra after his
-trials, and tells him that he, his wife and son, had, by their merits,
-"conquered heaven" (Markandeya Purana). The completion of these merits
-was when Harischandra resolved with his wife to die on the funeral
-pyre of their son, who, as a result of their torments, had died by a
-serpent's bite. It was then that the god Indra appeared to restore
-the son, and admit that the just and faithful king, his wife and
-son, had "conquered heaven." We are thus carried to the Solomonic
-affirmations that "when the whirlwind passeth the just man is on
-an everlasting foundation" (Prov. x. 25), that "justice delivereth
-from death" (x. 2), that "the just man finds a refuge in death"
-(xiv. 32); and we are carried forward to the Epistle to the Hebrews,
-where, after the last ordeal, death, the son of the heavenly king
-is restored to life, and Satan, who had over him the power of death,
-"brought to nought" (ii. 14). But further, in the Puranic legend, which
-from time immemorial has been a passion-play in India, Harischandra,
-when told that he, his wife and son, had "conquered heaven," refused
-to ascend to heaven without his "faithful subjects." "This request
-was granted by Indra, and after Viswamitra had inaugurated Rohitaswa,
-the king's son, to be his successor, Harischandra, his friends and
-followers, all ascended to heaven." Thus, in our Epistle, the son,
-having "learned obedience by the things which he suffered, and having
-been made perfect, became unto all them that obeyed him the author
-of eternal salvation." "For in that he hath himself suffered being
-tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted." The subjects of
-King Harischandra who remained faithful to him after he was reduced
-to beggary, ascended with him. Faith is declared in our Epistle to be
-"the testing of things not seen" (xi. 1), and faithfulness is to "run
-with patience the course that is set before us, looking unto Jesus,
-the captain and perfector of faithfulness, who for the joy set before
-him endured the stake (stauron), despising shame, and hath sat down
-at the right hand of the throne of God" (xi. 1, xii. 1, 2).
-
-And there is also, I believe, in the scheme of redemption set forth
-in this Epistle, an influence from the story of King Usinára in the
-Mahábhárata, of which there were various versions which must have
-been familiar to the Buddhists in Alexandria. A dove pursued by a
-falcon takes refuge in the bosom of Usinára; the falcon demands its
-surrender. The King quotes the law of Manu that it is a great sin to
-abandon any being that has taken asylum with one. The falcon urges that
-it is the law of nature that falcons shall feed on doves, and that
-unless this dove is surrendered its little falcons must starve. The
-King offers other food, but the only substitute that is adapted to
-the falcon's nature is a quantity of Usinára's own flesh equal to the
-weight of the dove. To this the King agrees. Balances are produced,
-and the dove placed in one scale, in the other a piece of the King's
-flesh, which seems large enough, but is insufficient. Though the
-King cuts off piece by piece all of his flesh, the dove outweighs it,
-until at length Usinára gets into the scale HIMSELF. That outweighs
-the dove, which is really Agni, the falcon being Indra. The gods
-who had assumed these forms in order to test Usinára's fidelity
-to the law of sanctuary, resume their shape, and the King ascends
-transfigured to paradise. In one version a King (Givi) sacrifices
-his son, Vrihad-Gasbha in obedience to sacred requirements, the story
-resembling that of Abraham and Isaac. Alford calls attention to the
-emphasis on the word "himself" in the Epistle of the Hebrews ix. 14:
-"How much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal
-Spirit offered HIMSELF, without blemish, unto God, cleanse our
-conscience from dead works to serve the living God."
-
-Without blemish! That was the great point. The champion of the Good
-confronts the champion of Evil, his purpose being to conquer the last
-enemy, Death, by unarmed human virtue. This was the central idea
-in the Passion, a drama gone to pieces in the Gospels. Therefore,
-he did not summon legions of angels, and said to Peter, "Sheath
-thy sword." Therefore, the mere lynching of Jesus, for such it was,
-is given the formalities of judicial procedure, in order to impress
-an official character on the testimonies to his innocence: Pilate,
-Caiaphas, Pilate's wife, Judas, Herod, all bear witness that no evil
-is in him, and he challenges the High Priest's court, "If I have
-uttered evil bear witness of the evil." [34] In this passion-drama
-Jesus Barabbas is set beside Jesus the Christ,--officially proclaimed
-guilt beside officially proclaimed innocence,--and Wrath selects guilt,
-condemns innocence. But it was thus the first-born of Life prevailed
-over the first-born of Death. In that crisis the blameless man swerving
-not from his rectitude, established the "assembly of the first-born,"
-who can dwell with the living God because they have learned from their
-Captain how to get rid of the defilement of mortality. There is nothing
-vicarious in his service. The Captain represented the human race in
-a single combat with Satan, and he discovered for all the vulnerable
-point of that Adversary,--that he could not hold in sheol a perfectly
-sinless human being. But it still remained that without holiness no
-man could see the Lord. Another advantage secured by Jesus for men
-was that after his victory was achieved the heroic man, on resuming
-his previous position as Son of God, was able to add thereto what
-he had won as Son of Man,--the office of high priest or intercessor,
-who could take good care that every man who fulfilled the condition
-of holiness got his reward. Satan should not cheat. Nevertheless
-Jesus had been his own saviour, and every man must be his own saviour.
-
-Pulpit ignorance has wrested from the Epistle to the Hebrews
-fragments of texts, in support of a dogma of atonement which only
-a fortunate lack of logic prevents from amounting to a doctrine of
-human sacrifice. A favorite clause is, "Without the shedding of blood
-there in no remission,"--which is really this epistle's stigma on
-the system it is abolishing! The sacredness of the blood of Jesus
-was that it was the price he had to pay to the devil in order to
-preserve his sinlessness, and so rise from death, and demonstrate to
-others that they also could rise by sinlessness to eternal life. It
-might cost their blood also, but would be lost if they "resisted unto
-blood." Jesus thus brought life and incorruption, as distinguished
-from living-death in sheol, to light. And the devotion to Jesus for
-this was due to the belief that he had laid aside his heavenly glory
-and become a complete man, and had thus risked his all, his greatness,
-his very immortality, to make for both heaven and earth the tremendous
-venture; the slightest misstep, the least sin, or wrath, or impatience,
-and he would have had his abode in sheol, in bonds of Satan, through
-all eternity.
-
-When this Epistle was written the believers already found immortality
-in such faith; with such hope and joy before them they were able to
-despise sensual joys, to conquer temptations, and to fulfill those
-duties and conditions of personal holiness which are described in this
-Epistle,--"Peace with all men, and holiness without which no man can
-see the Lord." The ecstasy did not last long, but it was a marvellous
-phenomenon while it lasted, and the most complete reflection of it may
-be found in this Epistle to the Hebrews, especially if it be approached
-by its prologue,--the "Wisdom of Solomon,"--but it is subtle, and
-can only be comprehended by patient and comparative studies.
-
-At the heart of this earliest and swiftly lost Christianity was a
-sublime effort to humanize God.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV.
-
-SOLOMON MELCHIZEDEK.
-
-
-It is possible that the genealogies of Jesus started from no other
-basis than Hebrews vii. 14: "It is clear beforehand that our Lord
-hath arisen out of Judah." [35] Yet nothing could be more subversive
-of the Epistle than a claim of any hereditary authority or advantage
-for Jesus.
-
-The author of the Epistle, if he ever heard the phrase "Son of David,"
-avoided it, for David is here in the background, and in a quotation
-from one of his Psalms his name is passed over, with the vague words,
-"one hath testified somewhere, saying," etc. It is an essential part
-of the writer's argument that Christ is "without genealogy" of that
-kind. To some it was no doubt grateful to be told that Jesus was not
-of the priestly tribe, not of that "apostolic succession," so to say;
-but it was more important to convince the conservative that their
-sacred history sanctioned faith in a high priest approved as such not
-by carnal descent, but by his sinlessness and by his resurrection. But
-it was not agreeable to any Jewish party to suppose that the new
-dominion was to be altogether in the heavens, or detached from the
-Solomonic Golden Age for whose return they were hoping. The writer
-therefore connects Jesus with a "first-born" forerunner, namely, with
-Melchizedek, concerning whom he "has many things to say, and hard
-of interpretation." So Christian commentators have to this day found
-what he does say, and Melchizedek is not surrounded by any dogmatic
-fence that can turn a new hypothesis into a trespass.
-
-The Epistle applies to Jesus lines from Psalm cx.:
-
-
-    Thou art a priest for ever,
-    After the order of Melchizedek.
-
-
-But in this anonymous Psalm there is reason to believe that Melchizedek
-is not a proper name at all. It is admittedly a combination of
-malki'-tzedek, "king of justice," and in the Jewish Family Bible
-(Deusch) the above lines are translated, "Thou art my priest for ever,
-my king in righteousness, by my word." The Septuagint, regularly
-followed by the Epistle to the Hebrews, has Melchizedek in this Psalm
-cx., which was also messianized by the LXX. in its very first line,
-"The Lord said unto my Lord," Kyrios being the word for Lord in
-both cases, whereas in the original the words are different ("Jahveh
-declared to my Adonai"). And it is notable that Matthew xxii. whose
-Hebraic character is so marked, and Mark xii., both make Jesus follow
-the Septuagint in quoting these words.
-
-In both of these Gospels the incident is evidently, in Mark clumsily,
-interpolated, and it would appear to have belonged to some legend
-of the Infancy, such as that of the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy,
-where it occurs naturally:
-
-
-   "And when he was twelve years old they took him to Jerusalem
-    to the feast. But when the feast was over they indeed returned,
-    but the Lord Jesus remained in the temple among the doctors and
-    elders and learned men of Jerusalem, and he asked them sundry
-    questions about the sciences and they answered him in turn. Now
-    he said to them, Whose son is Messiah? They answered him, The son
-    of David. Wherefore, then, said he, Doth he in spirit call him
-    Lord, when he saith the Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my
-    right hand, that I may bring down thy enemies to the footprints
-    of thy feet?"
-
-
-It is probable that this anecdote had floated down from an early
-period when the notion of a royal descent of Jesus had not arisen.
-
-Obviously a tremendous question arises here as to how a story should
-be found in Genesis xiv. about Melchizedek, which as a proper name
-really occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, [36] and the mystery
-is increased by the absence of any allusion to such a personage
-in Jesus Ben Sira's enumeration of "famous men" (Ecclus. xliv.),
-or elsewhere. It almost looks as if Jesus Ben Sira had not read, or
-else had cancelled as spurious, the strange passage in Genesis--which
-is as follows:
-
-
-   "And Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought forth bread and wine;
-    and he was priest of El-Elyôn. And he blessed him and said,
-    Blessed be Abram of El-Elyôn, purchaser of heaven and earth;
-    and blessed be El-Elyôn, which hath delivered thine enemies into
-    thy hand. And he (Abram) gave him a tenth of all."
-
-
-Professor Max Müller, in his third lecture on the "Science of
-Religion," gives some useful information concerning this peculiar
-name, "El-Elyôn," after consulting his contemporaries at Oxford and
-in Germany:
-
-"One of the oldest names of the deity among the ancestors of the
-Semitic nations was El. It meant Strong. It occurs in the Babylonian
-inscriptions as Ilu, God, and in the very name of Bab-il, the gate
-or temple of Il.... The same El was worshipped at Byblus by the
-Phoenicians, and he was called there the Son of Heaven and Earth. His
-father was the son of Eliun, the most high God, who had been killed
-by wild animals. The Son of Eliun, who succeeded him, was dethroned,
-and at last slain by his own son, El, whom Philo identifies with the
-Greek Kronos, and represents as the presiding deity of the planet
-Saturn.... Elyôn, which, in Hebrew, means the Highest is used in the
-Old Testament as a predicate of God.... It occurs in the Phoenician
-cosmogony as Eliun, the highest God, the Father of Heaven, who was
-the father of El."
-
-According to Sanchunvaton (Euseb. Proep. i. 10) the Phoenicians called
-God Elioun.
-
-The combination El Elyôn occurs in but two chapters in the
-Bible,--Genesis xiv. and Psalm lxxviii. (The Revisers translate it
-in Genesis, "God Most High," but in the Psalm (verse 35), "Most High
-God.") That the name was imported from the earlier into the later
-chapter is suggested by a similar association of each with the idea of
-purchase or redemption: "God Most High, purchaser of heaven and earth"
-(Genesis), "God Most High, their redeemer" (Psalm). But which is the
-earlier? Probably the Psalm; for it is a long résumé of the traditional
-history of Israel, but contains no allusion to Abraham. Had its unique
-name, "El Elyôn," been derived from any such traditional source surely
-some mention of Abraham would have been made.
-
-The Psalm is Elohistic. Possibly the Phoenician name for God, Elioun,
-was used in order to set "El" above it. Or it may be that as Solomon
-had been declared "Elyôn of Kings" (Psalm lxxxix. 27) it was important
-to recall that he at the same time said, "My Elohim," and to place "El"
-before his title. This conjecture is warranted by the fact that in
-both of the Psalms, and in the corresponding passages, God is spoken
-of as a "Rock." There are other resemblances between the two Psalms,
-one very striking:
-
-Psalm lxxviii. 70--"He chose David also, his servant, and took him
-from the sheepfolds."
-
-Psalm lxxxix. 19, 20--"I have raised one elected out of the people;
-I have discovered David, my servant."
-
-The Psalm in which the Septuagint personalises malki'-tzedek (cx.) into
-"Melchizedek" is a fragmentary little piece, with two incomprehensible
-verses at the end which seem to allude to some legend or folklore
-now lost. These verses (6 and 7) are incongruous with the preceding
-ones and must be detached, and perhaps verse 5 also, as this seems an
-anti-climax. These closing verses look as if they may have been added
-by some admirer of Joshua's slaughter of kings, and it is probable
-that the legend of Joshua's making his captains tread on the necks
-of the five kings (Joshua x.) was developed out of the opening verse
-of this Psalm:
-
-
-   "Jahveh said to my lord [Adonai], Sit thou at my right hand,
-    Until I make thine enemies thy footstool."
-
-
-The leader of these kings was Adonai-Zedek, who, like Melchizedek, was
-King of Jerusalem; they are certainly mythical relatives, their names
-meaning "Lord of Justice" and "King of Justice." It is philologically
-impossible that any persons with those proper names could have existed
-in Jerusalem before the invasion of the Hebrews. And "Adonai-bezek,"
-the "radiant lord," whose thumbs and toes Joshua cut off when he
-captured Jerusalem, is a transparent variant of Adonai-zedek.
-
-When the city, originally named Jebus, began to be called Salem (see
-Psalm lxxvi. 2), the aboriginal people who continued to dwell there
-might naturally dream of their ancient kings, as the Welch and Bretons
-so long did of Arthur, "flower of kings," and perhaps similarly expect
-their return to restore their ancient freedom; and it may have become
-a useful political device to find beyond the ugly legends of Joshua's
-cruelty to their "just" and "shining" lords a prettier one, made out
-of an old song, of an earlier "King of Justice," whose bread and wine
-Abraham had eaten, to whom he had paid tithes, whose deity, El Elyôn,
-the father of Israel had recognized as his own, and with whom he had
-made a treaty of salem, or peace,--Jebus thus becoming Jebus-Salem
-(Jerusalem).
-
-Josephus records the legend as it was no doubt generally accepted among
-the Jews in the first century of our era: "Now, the King of Sodom met
-him (Abram) at a certain place which they called the King's Dale,
-where Melchizedek, King of the City of Salem, received him. That
-name signifies the righteous king, and such he was without dispute,
-insomuch that on that account he was made the priest of God. However,
-they afterward called Salem Jerusalem." (Antiq. Bk. i. ch. 10.)
-
-Josephus is careful to identify Salem as Jerusalem, and in vi. ch. 10
-of the same work states that the King's Dale (identified as the Shaveh
-where Abraham met Melchizedek, Genesis xiv.) is "two furlongs distant
-from Jerusalem." This carefulness may have been intended to distinguish
-Melchizedek's Salem from the northern Shalem (Genesis xxxiii. 18), a
-place associated with Jacob, and apparently representing an attempt to
-set up a rival temple to that in Jerusalem. It was an old competition
-about tithes. Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek, King of Salem,
-but Jacob, after his vision at Bethel, recognized that as the "house
-of God," and vowed to give to God a tenth of all that was given him
-(Genesis xxviii). [37] This quarrel between rival towns and temples,
-trying each to draw all tithes to themselves, harmonized in the later
-legends of the Bible, need not detain us, but it is of importance
-to remark that the story of Abram meeting the King of Justice and
-Peace near Jerusalem, and establishing the sanctity of that city,
-corresponds with, and is counterbalanced by, Jacob's meeting with
-angels, and wrestling with a mysterious "man," who, it is hinted, was
-some form of God himself. This reply to the story of Abram suggests
-that at the time of that tithe controversy between Bethel and Sion
-Melchizedek was not thought of as a flesh-and-blood king or a mere
-man, but as a shadowy shape, evoked from actual conditions for certain
-purposes, and named in accordance with the history or traditions out
-of which the conditions and the aims were evolved.
-
-In investigations of this kind, concerned with ages really prehistoric,
-it is necessary to remember at every step that our search is amid eras
-when words and names were at once counters of actual forces and factors
-of history. How serious a play on words may be even in historic times
-is illustrated by a Papacy founded on the double meaning of Peter--a
-man's name and a rock,--and as we approach earlier epochs, whose
-issues and struggles have long passed away, and their once antagonistic
-leaders harmonised by pious legends, it is largely by the aid of words
-and names that we are enabled to reach even historic probabilities.
-
-As to Melchizedek, my inference above stated, derived from the two
-tithe legends, that his supernatural character is reflected in that
-of the corresponding phantoms met by Jacob may not be generally
-accepted, but that he (Melchizedek) was so understood by the writer
-to the Hebrews can hardly be disputed. Melchizedek is there (Hebrews
-vii.) declared to have been "without father, without mother, without
-genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, being
-assimilated unto the Son of God."
-
-In the third century the Melchizedekian sect maintained that
-Melchizedek was not a man but a heavenly power superior to Jesus,
-and the Hieracites held similar views. Some eminent theologians have
-believed that Melchizedek was Christ himself. Most of the Christian
-theories concerning the mysterious king are virtual admissions that
-only the eye of faith can see in him any actual being at all. How
-then was this mythical being formed? [38]
-
-1. A suitable nest for the Melchizedek Saga existed near Jerusalem,
-in a vale called the King's Dale. It seems to have been a royal
-racing ground (Targum of Onkelos, Gen. xiv. 17) or hippodrome
-(lxx. xlviii. 7), and its name in Hebrew was Emek-ham-Melech.
-
-2. In the ancient Psalm cx. 1 we have Adonai (Lord), and in verse 4
-Melchi-Melech (or Moloch) king, combined with tsedek, justice.
-
-3. Tzedek (Tsaydoc or Zadok), the priest who anointed Solomon to
-be king. Tsaydoc supplanted the legitimate High Priest Abiathar
-who had taken the side of the legitimate heir to David's throne,
-Adonijah, supplanted by Solomon. The deprivation of Abiathar, and
-exaltation of Tsaydoc to be High Priest is said (1 Kings ii. 27)
-to have been in fulfillment of "the word of Jahveh, which he spake
-concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh." The reference is to the
-sentence passed on Eli and his house, to which Abiathar belonged,
-when Jahveh said, "And I will raise me up a faithful priest, etc.,"
-(1 Sam. ii. 35). Faithful priests were called "sons of Zadok," the
-phrase having apparently become proverbial (Ezek. xliv. 15).
-
-4. In 1 Chron. iii. there appear, among the descendants of Solomon,
-"Amaziah, Azariah his son, Jotham his son." In 1 Chron. vi. we
-find among descendants of Zadok, Ahimaaz, Azariah his son, Johanan
-his son. Johanan is also among Solomon's descendants, and among the
-descendants of both Solomon and Zadok is Shallum,--written by Josephus
-Salloumos (Bk. x. ch. 8). Josephus also says that Zadok was the first
-High Priest of Solomon's Temple. But Solomon himself, without the
-assistance of any priest, dedicated the Temple, offered the sacrifices
-on that occasion, and so continued: "three times in a year did Solomon
-offer burnt offerings and peace offerings upon the altar which he built
-to Jahveh." (1 Kings ix. 25). These statements establish a probability
-that no such person as Zadok existed at all, and that the development
-of this personification of justice (zedek) into a priestly personage
-was due to an ecclesiastical necessity of introducing a priest among
-the provisions of Solomon for the temple. Zadok is thus a detachment
-from King Solomon of the priestly functions he had discharged in the
-temple, according to the book of Kings; and in 1 Chron. vi., where this
-personification is completed, the Solomonic family names are found,
-as above, recurring as descendants of the personification,--Zadok.
-
-These names are the fossil remains of controversies with Shilonite
-and Samaritan pretensions, which ended in consecrating the throne and
-altar at Jerusalem, and they prove that the consecration was that of
-justice and peace. Of these the Wise Man was typical. Solomon was the
-model from whom all of these ideals were painted. His title, Adonai,
-and his equity (Psalm xlv. 7, 11) are combined in Adonizedek, his glory
-(Psalm xlv. 3, 4) is in Adonibezek; his high priesthood is allegorized
-in Zadok; and in "Melchizedek, King of Salem," his supreme characters
-are summed up, "King of Justice, Prince of Peace."
-
-In a warlike age this peacefulness of a monarch was the great and
-supernatural phenomenon. It is the very central idea of the whole
-Solomonic legend. Solomon got his name from it, even the name with
-Jahveh in it (Jedediah) being set aside; he was preferred above David
-to build the temple, because David was a warrior; in building the
-temple the peace was not broken even by the noise of a hammer, the
-stones being all in shape, it seems by supernatural power, when taken
-from the quarry, so as to be noiselessly fitted together; he would not
-fight even those who were rending parts of his kingdom away. He was
-the hero of the Beatitudes,--the gentle one who inherited the earth,
-the one who hungered and thirsted for justice and was filled, the
-peacemaker called the Son of God. It was he who first said, If thine
-enemy hunger give him food, if he thirst give him drink. And all this
-was allegorized in Melchizedek, who, when his country was invaded,
-instead of joining the five kings who resisted, loved his enemy,
-gave the invader food and drink.
-
-We thus find Solomon,--the glorious cosmopolitan and secularist,
-whose name Jahvism could not utter without a shudder,--distributed in
-fable, legend, psalm, through Hexateuch and Hagiographa, and finally
-transfigured into a type of divine and eternal Sonship. Thus he
-appears in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to which we now return.
-
-In the Epistle to the Hebrews Christ is invested with the mystical
-robes of Solomon. To Christ are applied the words, "I will be to him
-a Father, and he shall be to me a Son," quoted from Jahveh's promise
-to David concerning Solomon (2 Sam. vii. 14). To Christ are twice
-applied the words, "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee,"
-quoted from Psalm ii. 7, admittedly Solomonic. From Psalm xlv.,
-verses 6 and 7, ascriptions to Solomon, are applied to Christ in
-this Epistle. And Melchizedek is here declared to be "a great man,"
-"assimilated unto the Son of God."
-
-We may here recall the words of Josephus, a contemporary of our
-writer, who says that Melchizedek was made the priest of God on
-account of his righteousness (Ant., Bk. i. ch. 10). It may have
-been that there was a popular belief in the time of Josephus that
-Melchizedek received his ordination from Abram himself, but there is
-no doubt that the mysterious king's priesthood was believed to rest
-upon his righteousness and above all his peacefulness.
-
-With these preliminaries we may find the Epistle's argument about
-Melchizedek less "hard of interpretation" than the writer says it
-is. After speaking of Abraham as having "obtained" the promise,
-not merely because it was God's promise, but because he "patiently
-endured," having argued that Christ, "though he was a Son, yet learned
-obedience by the things that he suffered", this Epistle maintains
-(vi. 20) that this is the believer's hope, whereby he enters within
-the veil, "whither as a forerunner Jesus entered for us, having
-become a high priest forever after the manner of Melchizedek." (The
-sense of this is lost in the E. V. by rendering genomenos "made":
-the argument is that though he was a Son of God even that could not
-make him a high priest; this he had to "become" by his own merits,
-uninheritable even from God, as was the case with Melchizedek.) "For
-this Melchizedek, being of Salem, priest of God Most High, who met
-Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him,
-to whom also Abraham divided a tenth part of all (being first by
-interpretation King of Righteousness, and next also King of Salem,
-that is Prince of Peace; being without father, without mother,
-without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life,
-but assimilated (echôn aphômoiômenos) unto the Son of God), abideth
-a priest perpetually" (vii. 1-3).
-
-The mystical clauses of verse 3 have for centuries been an unsolved
-enigma to exegetists; and Alford, after summing up the many conjectures
-as to their meaning, expresses his feeling that the writer had
-a thought which he did not intend us to comprehend! Probably,
-however, the writer was using language understood in his time, and
-which may be interpreted by comparison with expressions familiar
-in Jewish folklore. Some of these are preserved in the apocryphal
-gospels. Thus, in the Pseudo-Matthew, Levi, the teacher of Jesus,
-astounded by the Child's learning, says, "I think he was born before
-the flood." In the gospel of Thomas, the teacher Zacchæus says,
-"This child is not of earthly parents, he is able to subdue even
-fire. Perhaps he was begotten before the world was made." These
-ideas, which correspond somewhat to the Teutonic superstition of
-the "changeling," are traceable in the Fourth Gospel (viii. 56-59),
-where Jesus is stoned for saying, "Before Abraham was I am."
-
-It will be seen that by this early writer "to the Hebrews"  Jesus was
-not thought of in connection with David, but bore Solomon's preëminent
-title, King of Peace, and that conferred on him by the Queen of
-Sheba, King of Justice. In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the Prince of the
-Golden Age, historically associated with idolatrous shrines, had been
-rehabilitated, even apotheosized; he was now a sort of rival of Jesus
-in divine sonship. The writer of our Epistle therefore artistically,
-not to say artfully, utilizes a composite word made into a proper name
-under which Solomon's combined royalty and priesthood, his peace and
-justice, had been detached from his personality and personified. The
-new exaltation of Solomon personally was thus ignored, while his
-essential glories, his wisdom, and his reclaimed virtues, were woven
-into the celestial mantle of mysterious Melchizedek, and through him
-passed to the shoulders of the risen Christ.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV.
-
-THE PAULINE DEHUMANIZATION OF JESUS.
-
-
-The Queen of Sheba certainly deserved her exaltation as the Hebrew
-Athena, and the homage paid to her by Jesus, for journeying so
-far simply to hear the wisdom of Solomon. In Jewish and Christian
-folklore are many miraculous tales about the Queen's visit, but in
-the Biblical records, in the books of "Kings" and "Chronicles," the
-only miracle is the entire absence of anything marvellous, magical,
-or even occult. The Queen was impressed by Solomon's science, wisdom,
-the edifices he had built, the civilization he had brought about;
-they exchanged gifts, and she departed. It is a strangely rational
-history to find in any ancient annals.
-
-The saying of Jesus cited by Clement of Alexandria, "He that hath
-marvelled shall reign," uttered perhaps with a sigh, tells too
-faithfully how small has been the interest of grand people in the
-wisdom that is "clear, undefiled, plain." They are represented rather
-by the beautiful and wealthy Marchioness in "Gil Blas," whose favour
-was sought by the nobleman, the ecclesiastic, the philosopher, the
-dramatist, by all the brilliant people, but who set them all aside
-for an ape-like hunchback, with whom she passed many hours, to the
-wonder of all, until it was discovered that the repulsive creature
-was instructing her ladyship in cabalistic lore and magic.
-
-There is much human pathos in this longing of mortals to attain
-to some kind of real and intimate perception beyond the phenomenal
-universe, and to some personal assurance of a future existence; but
-it has cost much to the true wisdom of this world. Some realization
-of this may have caused the sorrow of Jesus at Dalmanutha, as related
-in Mark. "The Pharisees came forth and began to question with him,
-seeking of him a sign from heaven, testing him. And he sighed deeply
-in his spirit, and saith, Why does this people seek a sign? I say
-plainly unto you no sign will be given them. And he left them, and
-reëntering the boat departed to the other side."
-
-They who now long to know the real mind of Jesus are often constrained
-to repeat his deep sigh when they find the most probable utterances
-ascribed to him perverted by the marvel-mongers, insomuch that to the
-protest just quoted Matthew adds a self-contradictory sentence about
-Jonah. That this unqualified repudiation by Jesus of miracles should
-have been preserved at all in Mark, a gospel full of miracles, is a
-guarantee of the genuineness of the incident, and of the comparative
-earliness of some parts of that gospel. The period of sophistication
-was not far advanced. Miracles require time to grow. But the deep sigh
-and the words of Jesus, taken in connection with the entire absence
-from the Epistles--the earliest New Testament documents--of any hint of
-a miracle wrought by him, is sufficient to bring us into the presence
-of a man totally different from the "Christ" of the four Gospels. [39]
-
-Those who seek the real Jesus will find it the least part of their
-task to clear away the particular miracles ascribed to him; that is
-easy enough; the critical and difficult thing is to detach from the
-anecdotes and language connected with him every admixture derived
-from the belief in his resurrection. To do this completely is indeed
-impossible.
-
-Paul, probably a contemporary of Jesus, knew well enough the
-vast difference between the man "Jesus" and the risen "Christ";
-he insisted that the man should be ignored, and supplanted by the
-risen Christ, as revealed by private revelations received by himself
-after the resurrection. The student must now reverse that: he must
-ignore those post-resurrectional revelations if he would know Jesus
-"after the flesh"--that is, the real Jesus.
-
-In an age when immortality is a familiar religious belief we can hardly
-realize the agitation, among a people to whom life after death was a
-vague, imported philosophy, excited by the belief that a man had been
-raised bodily from the grave. Immortality was no longer hypothesis. If
-to this belief be added the further conviction that this resurrection
-was preliminary to his speedy reappearance, and the world's sudden
-transformation, a mental condition could not fail to arise in which
-any ethical or philosophical ideas he might have uttered while "in
-the flesh" must be thrown into the background, as of merely casual
-or temporary importance. Such is the state of mind reflected in the
-Pauline Epistles. In them is found no reference whatever to any moral
-instructions by Jesus. And when after some two generations had passed,
-and they who had expected while yet living to meet their returning Lord
-had died, those who had heard oral reports and legends concerning him
-and his teachings began to write the memoranda on which our Synoptical
-Gospels are based, it was too late to give these without adulterations
-from the apostolic ecstasy. His casual or playful remarks were by this
-time discoloured and distorted, and enormously swollen, as if under a
-solar microscope, by the overwhelming conceptions of a resurrection, an
-approaching advent, a subversion of all nationalities and institutions.
-
-The most serious complication arises from the extent to which the
-pretended revelations of Paul have been built into the Gospels. The
-so-called "conversion of Paul" was really the conversion of Jesus. The
-facts can only be gathered from Paul's letters, the book of "Acts"
-being hardly more historical than "Robinson Crusoe." The account in
-"Acts" of Paul's "conversion" is, however, of interest as indicating
-a purpose in its writers to raise Paul into a supernatural authority
-equivalent to that ascribed to Christ, in order that he might set
-aside the man Jesus. The story is a travesty of that related in the
-"Gospel According to the Hebrews," concerning the baptism of Jesus:
-"And a voice out of the heaven saying, 'Thou art my beloved Son,
-in thee I am well pleased': and again, 'I have this day begotten
-thee.' And straightway a great light shone around the place. And
-when John saw it he saith to him, 'Who art thou, Lord?'" John fell
-down before Jesus as did Paul before Christ. "At midday, O King,
-I saw on the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the
-sun, shining round about me, and them that journeyed with me. And
-when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice saying to me
-in the Hebrew language, 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is
-hard for thee to kick against the goad.' And I said, 'Who art thou,
-Lord?'" (Precisely what John said to Jesus at the baptism.)
-
-This story (Acts xxvi. 13-15), quite inconsistent with Paul's
-letters, is throughout very ingenious. Besides associating Paul
-with the supernatural consecration of Jesus, it replies, by calling
-him Saul, to the Ebionite declaration that Paul had been a pagan,
-who had become a Jewish proselyte with the intention of marrying the
-High Priest's daughter. There is no reason to suppose that Paul was
-ever called Saul during his life, and his salutation of two kinsmen in
-Rome with Latin names, Andronicus and Junias (Romans xvi. 7), renders
-it probable that he was not entirely if at all Hebrew. The sentence,
-"It is hard for thee to kick against the goad," is a subtle answer
-to any who might think it curious that the story of the resurrection
-carried no conviction to Paul's mind at the time of its occurrence by
-suggesting that in continuing his persecutions he was going against
-his real belief--kicking against the goad.
-
-Paul, however, knows nothing of this theatrical conversion in his
-letters. But in severe competition with other "preëminent apostles,"
-who were preaching "another Christ" from his, he pronounces them
-accursed, supporting an authority above theirs by declaring that he had
-repeated interviews with the risen Christ, and on one occasion had been
-taken up into the third heaven and even into Paradise! The extremes
-to which Paul was driven by the opposing apostles are illustrated
-in his intimidation of dissenting converts by his pretence to an
-occult power of withering up the flesh of those whom he disapproves
-(1 Cor. v. 5). He tells Timothy of two men, Hymenoeus and Alexander,
-whom he thus "delivered over to Satan" that "they may be taught not
-to blaspheme"--the blasphemy in this case being the belief (now become
-orthodoxy) that the dead were not sleeping in their graves but passed
-into heaven or hell at death. In the book of "Acts" (xiii.) this claim
-of Paul's seems to have been developed into the Evil Eye (which he
-fastened on Bar Jesus, whose eyes thereon went out), and may perhaps
-account for the similar sinister power ascribed to some of the Popes.
-
-In this story of Bar Jesus, Christ is associated with Paul in
-striking the learned man blind (xiii. 11), and the development of
-such a legend reveals the extent to which Jesus had been converted
-by Paul. In 1 Cor. ii. he presents a Christ whose body and blood,
-being not precisely discriminated in the sacramental bread and wine,
-had made some participants sickly and killed others, in addition to
-the damnation they had eaten and drank. He does not mention that any
-who communicated correctly had been physically benefited thereby;
-only the malignant powers appear to have had any utility for Paul.
-
-That this menacing Christ may have been needed to intimidate converts
-and build up churches is probable; that such a being was nothing like
-Jesus in the flesh, but had to come by pretended posthumous revelation,
-as an awful potentate whose human flesh had been but a disguise,
-is certain. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find that nearly
-everything pharisaic, cruel, and ungentlemanly, ascribed to Jesus in
-the synoptical Gospels, is fabricated out of Paul's Epistles. Paul
-compares rival apostles to the serpent that beguiled Eve (2 Cor. xi. 3,
-4), and Christ calls his opponents offspring of vipers. The fourth
-Gospel, apostolic in spirit, degrades Jesus independently, but it also
-borrows from Paul. Paul personally delivered some over to Satan, and
-the intimation in John xiii. 27, "after the sop, then entered Satan
-into Judas," accords well with what Paul says about the unworthy
-communicant eating and drinking damnation (1 Cor. xi. 29).
-
-The Eucharist itself was probably Paul's own adaptation of a Mithraic
-rite to Christian purposes. There is no reason to suppose that there
-was anything sanctimonious in the wine supper which Jesus took with his
-friends at the time of the Passover, and Paul's testimony concerning
-the way it had been observed is against any   over with you?" [40]
-Had it been other than a pleasant Epiphanius from the Gospel according
-to the Hebrews show that he desired to draw his friends away from
-the sacrificial feature of the festival: "Where wilt thou that we
-prepare for the passover to eat?" ... "Have I desired with desire to
-eat this flesh, the passover with you?" [41] Had it been other than a
-pleasant wine supper it could not in so short a time have become the
-jovial festival which Paul describes (1 Cor. xi. 20), nor, in order
-to reform it, would he have needed the pretence that he had received
-from Christ the special revelation of details of the Supper which
-he gives, and which the Gospels have followed. Having substituted a
-human for an animal sacrifice ("our passover also hath been sacrificed,
-Christ," 1 Cor. v. 7), he restores precisely that sacrificial feature
-to which Jesus had objected; and in harmony with this goes on to show
-that human lives have been sacrificed to the majestic real presence
-(1 Cor. xi. 30). He had learned, perhaps by "pagan" experiences,
-what power such a sacrament might put into the priestly hand. [42]
-
-It is Paul who first appointed Christ the judge of quick and dead
-(1 Tim. iv. 1). He describes to the Thessalonians (2 Thes. i.) "the
-revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of his power
-in flaming fire, rendering vengeance to them that know not God," and
-the "eternal destruction" of these. Hence, "I never knew you" becomes
-a formula of damnation put into the mouth of Christ. "I know you not"
-is the brutal reply of the bridegroom to the five virgins, whose lamps
-were not ready on the moment of his arrival. The picturesque incidents
-of this parable have caused its representation in pretty pictures,
-which blind many to its essential heartlessness. It is curious that
-it should be preserved in a Gospel which contains the words, "Knock,
-and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth,
-and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be
-opened." The parable is fabricated out of 1 Thes. v., where Paul warns
-the converts that the Lord cometh as a thief in the night, that there
-will be no escape for those who then slumber, that they must not sleep
-like the rest, but watch, "for God hath appointed us not unto wrath."
-
-The Christian dogma of the unpardonable sin, substituted for the
-earlier idea of an unrepentable sin, was developed out of Paul's
-fatalism. He writes, "For this cause God sendeth them a strong delusion
-that they should believe a lie" (2 Thes. ii). Although this is not
-connected in any Gospel with the inexpiable sin, we find its spirit
-animating the Paul-created Christ in Mark iv. 11: "Unto them that are
-without all these things are done in parables, that seeing they may
-see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand:
-lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should
-be forgiven them." This is imported from Paul (Rom. xi. 7, 8):
-"That which Israel seeketh for, that he obtained not; but the elect
-obtained it and the rest were hardened; according as it is written,
-God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see,
-and ears that they should not hear, unto this very day."
-
-Whence came this Christ who, in the very chapter where Jesus warns
-men against hiding their lamp under a bushel, carefully hides his
-teaching under a parable for the express purpose of preventing some
-outsiders from being enlightened and obtaining forgiveness?
-
-Jesus could not have said these things unless he plagiarized from
-Paul by anticipation. Deduct from the Gospels all that has been
-fabricated out of Paul (I have given only the more salient examples)
-and there will be found little or nothing morally revolting, nothing
-heartless. Superstitions abound, but so far as Jesus is concerned
-they are nearly all benevolent in their spirit.
-
-But even after we have removed from the Gospels the immoralities of
-Paul and the pharisaisms so profound as to suggest the proselyte, after
-we have turned from his Christ to seek Jesus, we have yet to divest
-him of the sombre vestments of a supernatural being, who could not
-open his lips or perform any action but in relation to a resurrection
-and a heavenly office of which he could never have dreamed. Was he
-
-
-    "The faultless monster whom the world ne'er saw"?
-
-
-Did he never laugh? Did he eat with sinners only to call
-them to repentance? Did he get the name of wine-bibber for his
-"salvationism,"--or was it because, like Omar Khayyám, he defied the
-sanctimonious and the puritanical by gathering with the intellectual,
-the scholarly, the Solomonic clubs?
-
-To Paul we owe one credible item concerning Jesus, that he was
-originally wealthy (2 Cor. viii. 9), and as Paul mentioned this to
-inculcate liberality in contributors, it is not necessary to suppose
-that he alluded to his heavenly riches. At any rate, the few sayings
-that may be reasonably ascribed to Jesus are those of an educated
-gentleman, and strongly suggest his instruction in the college of
-Hillel, whose spirit remained there after his death, which occurred
-when Jesus was at least ten years old.
-
-To a pagan who asked Hillel concerning the law, he answered: "That
-which you like not for yourself do not to thy neighbour, that is the
-whole law; the rest is but commentary." It will be observed that Hillel
-humanizes the law laid down in Lev. xix. 18, where the Israelites
-are to love each his neighbour among "the children of thy people" as
-himself. Even Paul (Rom. xiii. 8, Gal. v. 14) quotes it for a rule
-among the believers, while hurling anathema on others. But Jesus
-is made (Matt. vii. 12) to inflate the rule into the impracticable
-form of "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you,
-even so do ye also unto them." By which rule a wealthy Christian would
-give at least half his property to the first beggar, as he would wish
-the beggar to do to him were their situations reversed. This might
-be natural enough in a community hourly expecting the end of the
-world and their own instalment in palaces whose splendour would be
-proportioned to their poverty in this world. But when this delusion
-faded the rule reverted to what Hillel said, and no doubt Jesus also,
-as we find it in the second verse of "Didache," the Teaching of the
-Twelve Apostles. It is a principle laid down by Confucius, Buddha,
-and all the human "prophets," and one followed by every gentleman, not
-to do to his neighbour what he would not like if done to himself. But
-it is removed out of human ethics and strained ad absurdum by the
-second-adventist version put into the mouth of Jesus by Matthew. I
-have dwelt on this as an illustration of how irrecoverably a man
-loses his manhood when he is made a God.
-
-Irrecoverably! In the second Clementine Epistle (xii. 2) it is said,
-"For the Lord himself, having been asked by some one when his kingdom
-should come, said, When the two shall be one, and the outside as the
-inside, and the male with the female neither male nor female." Perhaps
-a humorous way of saying Never. Equally remote appears the prospect
-of recovering the man Jesus from his Christ-sepulchre. Even among
-rationalists there are probably but few who would not be scandalized
-by any thorough test such as Jesus is said, in the Nazarene Gospel,
-to have requested of his disciples after his resurrection, "Take, feel
-me, and see that I am not a bodiless demon!" Without blood, without
-passion, he remains without the experiences and faults that mould
-best men, as Shakespeare tells us; he so remains in the nerves where
-no longer in the intellect, insomuch that even many an agnostic would
-shudder if any heretic, taking his life in his hand, should maintain
-that Jesus had fallen in love, or was a married man, or had children.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI.
-
-THE MYTHOLOGICAL MANTLE OF SOLOMON FALLEN ON JESUS.
-
-
-It is no part of my aim to prove miracles impossible, nor to consider
-whether one or another alleged wonder might not be really within
-the powers of an exceptional man. In the absence of any apostolic
-allusion to any extraordinary incident in the life of Jesus, and his
-own declaration (for the evangelists could not have invented a rebuke
-to their own narratives) that miracles were the vain expectation of
-a people in distress and degradation, such records have lost their
-historic character. As Gibbon said in the last century, it requires
-a miracle of grace to make a believer in miracles, and even among the
-uncritical that miracle is not frequent. In the New Testament belief
-in miracle has its natural corollary in a miraculous morality,--a
-dissolution of earthly ties, a severance from worldly affairs, a
-non-resistance and passiveness under wrongs, which are in perfect
-accord with persons moving in an apocalyptic dream, but not with a
-world awakened from that dream.
-
-But at the root of the unnatural miracles is the natural miracle--the
-heart of man. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, as the
-miracle-working poet reminds us; our little life is surrounded with a
-sleep, a realm of dreams,--visions that give poetic fulfilment to hopes
-born of hard experience. No biblical miracle in its literal form is so
-beautiful and impressive as the history of its origin and development
-as traced by the student of mythology. The growth, for example, of
-a simple proverb ascribed to Solomon "He that trusteth in his riches
-shall fall, but the just shall flourish as a green leaf" into a hymn
-(Ps. lii.); the association of this Psalm, by its Hebrew caption,
-with hungry David eating the shewbread of the temple, and the king's
-slaying the priests who permitted it; the use of this legend by Jesus
-when his disciples were censured for plucking the corn on the Sabbath
-(with perhaps some humorous picture of a great king in Heaven angry
-because hungry men ate a few grains of corn, crumbs from his royal
-table) pointed with advice that the censors should learn that God
-desires charity and not sacrifice; the development of this into an
-early Christian burden against the rich, which took the form of an
-old Oriental fable, [43] to which a Jewish connotation was given by
-giving the poor man in Paradise the name of Lazarus (i.e. Eleazar,
-who risked his life to obtain water for famished David, a story that
-may have been referred to by Jesus along with that of the shewbread);
-the transformation of this parable into a quasi-historical narrative
-representing the return of Lazarus from Abraham's bosom, his poverty
-omitted; the European combination of the parable and the history
-by creating a St. Lazarus ("one helped by God"), yet appointing him
-the helper of beggars (lazzaroni): these items together represent a
-continuity of the human spirit through thousands of years, surmounting
-obstructive superstitions, holding still the guiding thread of humanity
-through long labyrinths of legend.
-
-To fix on any one stage in such an evolution, detach it, affirm it,
-is to wrest a true scripture to its destruction. Few can really
-be interested in Abimelech and the shewbread; no one now believes
-that a rich man must go to hell because he is rich, nor a pauper to
-Paradise because of his pauperism; and none can intelligently believe
-the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus without believing that
-in Jesus miraculous power was associated with the unveracity and
-vanity ascribed to him in that narrative. But take the legends all
-together, and in them is visible the supersacred heart of humanity
-steadily developing through manifold symbols and fables the religion
-of human helpfulness and happiness. The study of mythology is the
-study of nature.
-
-The theory already stated (ante I), that illegitimacy or irregularity
-of birth was a sign of authentication for "the God-anointed," finds
-some corroboration in the claim of the Epistle to the Hebrews that
-Jesus, like Melchizedek, was without father, mother, or genealogy. His
-double nature is suggested: "Our Lord sprung out of Judah" (vii. 14),
-yet (verse 16), as priest, he has arisen "not after the law of a
-carnal commandment, but after the power of an indissoluble life." The
-writer admits that what he writes about Melchizedek is "hard of
-interpretation," and perhaps it so proved to the genealogist (Matt,
-i.) who apparently was animated by a desire to make out a carnal-law
-inheritance of the throne, yet not so legitimate as to exclude divine
-interference at various stages. In the forty-two generations only
-five mothers are named,--all associated either with sexual immorality
-or some kind of irregularity in their matrimonial relations. Tamar,
-through whose adultery with her father-in-law, Judah, his almost
-extinct line was preserved, is already a holy woman in the book of
-Ruth (iv. 12), and the association there of Ruth's name with this
-particular one of the many female ancestors of her son, and her mention
-in Matthew, look as if some editor of Ruth as well as the genealogist
-desired to cast suspicion on her midnight visit to Boaz. "The Lord
-gave Tamar conception, and she bore a son"--grandfather of David. It
-is also doubtful whether Rahab, who comes next to Tamar in Matthew's
-list, is called a harlot in the book of Joshua: Zuneh is said to mean
-"hostess" or "tavern-keeper." But in the Epistle to the Hebrews and in
-that of James she becomes a glorified harlot. The next female ancestor
-of Jesus mentioned is "her of Uriah." The name of the woman is not
-given,--the important fact being apparently that she was somebody's
-wife. Our translators have supplied no fewer than five words to save
-this text from signifying that Bathsheba was still Uriah's wife when
-Solomon was born.
-
-The next ancestress named after the mother of Solomon is the mother of
-Jesus, Mary, in whom Bathsheba finds transfiguration. The exaltation
-of the adulterous mother of Solomon has already been referred to
-(ante II.), and the traditional ascription to her of the authorship
-of the last chapter of Proverbs. She was also supposed to be the
-original or model of "the Virtuous Woman" therein portrayed! Now,
-in that same chapter she is pronounced "blessed," and excelling all
-the daughters who have done virtuously (Cf. Luke i. 28, 42). In the
-"Wisdom of Solomon" (ix. 5) a phrase is used by Solomon which is also
-used by his mother (Bathsheba) when she conjured from David the decree
-for his succession,--"thine handmaiden" (1 Kings i.). Solomon says,
-"For I, thy servant, and son of thy handmaiden," etc. This was written
-in a popular work about the time of the birth of Jesus. We find the
-"blessed" of Proverbs xxxi. 28, and the "handmaiden" of the "Wisdom
-of Solomon" both in Mary's magnificat: "For he hath regarded the low
-estate of his handmaiden; for behold, from henceforth all generations
-shall call me blessed."
-
-In Ecclesiasticus (xv. 2) we find the enigmatic clause concerning
-Solomonic "Sophia," personified Wisdom: kai hypantêsetai autô hôs
-mêtêr, kai hôs gynê parthenias prosdexetai auoton.
-
-The Vulgate translates: "Et obviabit illi quasi mater honorificata,
-et quasi mulier a virginitate suscipiet illum."
-
-Wycliffe translates the Vulgate: "And it as a modir onourid schal
-meete hym, and as a womman fro virgynyte schal take him."
-
-The Authorised Version has: "And as a mother shall she meet him,
-and receive him as a wife married of a virgin."
-
-In the Variorum Teacher's Bible the reading "maiden wife" is suggested,
-and reference is made to Leviticus xxi. 13, "And he shall take a wife
-in her virginity." But the Septuagint, which Jesus Ben Sira would
-follow were he quoting, uses simple words there: hautos gynaika
-parthenon [ek tou genous autou] lêpsetai.
-
-(The words in crochets are added by the LXX.)
-
-The clause in Ecclus. xv. 2, taken with the chapter it continues,
-conveys to me an impression of rhapsodical paradox, as when Dante
-apostrophises Mary: "O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy son!" The Semitic
-goddess is born, Wisdom, sister of virginal Athena of the Parthenon,
-yet fulfilling the Solomonic exaltation of the Virtuous Woman, who
-is also a wife. She is therefore the Virgin Bride.
-
-But whether this interpretation is correct or not, it cannot be
-doubted that this strange phrase in a household book might easily
-convey that impression, and that to believers in the resurrection
-of Jesus the feeling that he must also have entered the world in a
-supernatural way might naturally have associated Miriam his mother
-with the virgin bride, Wisdom.
-
-The evolution of Wisdom into the Holy Spirit has been traced (ante
-XII.), and it is sufficient to mention here that in the "Gospel
-according to the Hebrews," Jesus uses the phrase "My mother the
-Holy Spirit."
-
-In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the resurrected Solomon says, "I was
-nursed in swaddling clothes, and that with cares" (vii. 4, cf. Luke
-ii. 7). This might be said of every babe, but the King, having begun by
-saying "I myself also am a mortal man," mentions the swaddling clothes
-as a sign of lowliness; and the impression made by this item in the
-Birth-legend of Jesus is shown by a passage in the Arabic Gospel of
-the Infancy. It is said that when the Wise Men came, in obedience to
-a prophecy of Zoroaster, Mary rewarded their gifts with one of the
-child's "Swaddling bands," which on their return to their own land
-withstood the power of fire, in which it was tested.
-
-The infant Jesus receives gifts of the Wise Men, traceable to the gold,
-silver, and spices brought by the Queen of Sheba (afterwards "Sophia")
-to Solomon. (Cf. also Psalm lxxii. 8-11.) As Solomon to the Queen,
-so Jesus gives proofs of astounding wisdom to the woman of Samaria.
-
-In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the returned king proceeds: "I was a witty
-child, and had a good spirit. Yea rather, being good, I came into a
-body undefiled" (viii. 19, 20). In Luke it is said, "And the child
-grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom." "And Jesus
-increased in wisdom and stature."
-
-The word "undefiled" was a special title of Wisdom. In the "Wisdom of
-Solomon" (vii.) the King, having described his birth, "like to all,"
-and his "swaddling clothes," follows this immediately by saying,
-"I prayed, and understanding was given me; I called, and the spirit
-of Wisdom came to me." This is the new and the spiritual birth. Among
-the titles ascribed in the same chapter to Wisdom is "Undefiled," this
-being emphasized three verses lower by the declaration that being a
-pure emanation from God "no defiled thing can fall into her." These
-ideas, so far as Solomon is concerned, are referable to his prayer
-for wisdom (1 Kings iii. 9) and to Jahveh's adoption of him (Psalm
-ii. 7). "Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee."
-
-These ideas all reappear at the baptism of Jesus, as related in the
-"Gospel according to Hebrews":
-
-
-   "Behold the mother of the Lord and his brethren said to him,
-    'John the Baptist baptizeth for remission of sins: let us go and
-    be baptized by him.' But he said to them, 'Wherein have I sinned
-    that I should go and be baptized by him? except perchance this very
-    thing that I have said is ignorance.' And when the people had been
-    baptized Jesus also came and was baptized by John. And as he went
-    up the heavens were opened, and he saw the Holy Spirit in shape
-    of a Dove descending and entering him. And a voice out of heaven,
-    saying, 'Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased';
-    and again, 'I have this day begotten thee.'" (Cf. Jahveh's promise
-    concerning Solomon, 1 Chron. xvii. 13, "I will be his father and
-    he shall be my son.")
-
-
-It is important to recall that this all occurred before baptism. The
-suggestion that he should be baptized for remission of sins, is met by
-Jesus as a challenge of his sinlessness. It is submitted to the test,
-and before he enters the water the "Undefiled" (the dove) enters
-him, and the deity announces him as then and there begotten. When
-"straightway a great light shone around the place"--ultimately the Star
-of Bethlehem. John the Baptist is here the shepherd: seeing the light,
-he asks, "Who art thou, Lord?" The heavenly voice replies, "This is my
-beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Then John fell down before
-him and said, "I pray thee, Lord, baptize thou me." But he prevented
-him, saying, "Let be; for thus it is becoming that all things should
-be fulfilled." Then follows the baptism, and the account continues:
-
-
-   "And it came to pass, when the Lord had come up from the water,
-    the entire fountain of the Holy Spirit descended and rested upon
-    him and said to him, 'My Son, in all the prophets did I await thee,
-    that thou mightest come and I might rest in thee; for thou art
-    my rest; thou art my first-born Son that reignest forever.'" [44]
-
-
-The phrase "entire fountain of the Holy Spirit" is Parsî. Anâhita
-is the Holy Spirit; her influence is always described as a fountain
-descending on the saints or heroes to whom she gives strength. It
-will be remembered that in this Gospel the Holy Spirit is also
-feminine. The use of the words "fountain" and "rest in thee" are
-interesting in connection with the account of John the Baptizer
-and Jesus in the fourth gospel, which differs so widely from the
-Synoptical narratives. It is in John (iii.) left doubtful whether
-Jesus accepted any baptismal rite at all. John was baptizing at
-a large pool called Ænon-by-Saleim,--probably allegorical, meaning
-"Fountain of Repose." Jesus and his friends came there and plunged in
-(ebaptixonto), but they seem to have been a distinct party from
-that of John.
-
-After the supposed resurrection of Jesus everything he did, even
-taking a bath, became mystical. Jerome says that in his time there
-was a place called Salumias, and he maintained that it was there that
-Melchizedek refreshed Abraham. There are various readings of this
-Saleim in the New Testament, all, no doubt, variants of Solomon,
-all meaning "rest"; and the fourth Gospel supplies in 'Ainôn engys
-Salêm' the basis of the legend in the Aramaic Gospel of the "rest"
-which the Holy Spirit found in her son, on whom her "entire fountain"
-was poured. And with this legend may also be read the words of "Wisdom
-of Solomon," vii. 27, 28: "She (Wisdom) maketh all things new; and in
-all ages entering into holy souls she maketh them friends of God and
-prophets. For God loveth none but him that dwelleth with Wisdom." The
-representation in this Aramaic Gospel of the Holy Spirit as "entering
-into" Jesus is especially interesting in connection with the use of
-the same phrase in "Wisdom of Solomon,"--into whose heart Wisdom was
-put by God (1 Kings x. 24).
-
-It is only after Wisdom has entered into Jesus that the voice is
-heard, "This is my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased." This
-accords with Solomon's words, "God loveth none but him that dwelleth
-with Wisdom." The angelic song at the birth (Luke ii. 14) preserves
-the heavenly voice at the baptism concerning "peace." The "peace"
-is Solomon's own name, associated with the "rest" given to his reign
-in order that he might build the temple (1 Kings v. 4, Ecclesiasticus
-xlvii. 13). "My Son," says the spirit from within Jesus, "Thou art
-my rest."
-
-It is remarkable that the title preëminently belonging to Solomon,
-"Prince of Peace," and unknown to the Gospels as a title of Jesus,
-should be traditionally given to one said to have declared that
-he had come on earth to bring not peace but a sword, and bids his
-disciples arm themselves. No doubt the religious instinct tells true
-in this; it is tolerably plain that the warlike words were ascribed
-to Jesus not because he said them, but to adapt him to the "Word"
-as described in the "Wisdom of Solomon": "While all things were in
-quiet silence ... thine Almighty Word leaped down from heaven out
-of thy royal throne as a fierce man of war ... and brought thine
-unfeigned commandment as a sharp sword," etc. The fierce metaphor
-was, as we have seen, caught up and spiritualized in the Epistle to
-the Hebrews, and passed on to be literalized for the risen Christ,
-so that the consecration of the sword by the Prince of Peace is writ
-large in the Christian wars of many centuries.
-
-To the tests and proofs of Solomon's wisdom recorded in 1 Kings
-iii. and x. many additions were made by rabbinical tradition, mostly
-derived from Parsî scriptures. The famous Ring of Solomon is the symbol
-of sovereignty over the part of the earth owned by God given by him to
-the first man King Yima--"Then I, Ahura Mazda, brought two implements
-unto him, a golden ring and a poniard inlaid with gold. Behold,
-here Yima bears the royal sway!" (Vendîdâd, Farg. ii. 5). When Yima
-pressed the earth with this ring, the genius of the Earth, Aramaîti,
-responded to his wish and order. The ring represented Yima's "glory"
-(in Avestan phrase), his divine potency, lost when he yielded to a
-temptation of the devil, and Solomon also lost his ring with which,
-as we have seen (ante IV.) his "glory" and royal sway passed to the
-(Persian) devil Asmodeus. This occurred in a trial of wits, Asmodeus
-propounding hard questions, which Solomon was able to answer until,
-proudly thinking he could answer by his unaided intellect, he laid
-aside his ring, at the challenge of Asmodeus. These hard questions
-are found in an ancient legend of a similar contest between the devil
-and Zoroaster, and are alluded to as "malignant riddles." Zoroaster
-met the devil "unshaken by the hardness of his malignant riddles,"
-and swinging "stones as big as a house," which he had obtained from
-the Maker,--tables of the divine law, and possibly origin of the
-stones which the devil challenged Jesus to turn into bread.
-
-There are Avestan elements in the legend of the temptation of Jesus
-that do not appear in the legends of Solomon. In Parsî belief the land
-of demons on earth is Mâzana. From that region they issue to inflict
-diseases, especially blindness and deafness. In that region is an
-"exceeding high mountain," Damâvand, to which the great demon Azi
-Dahâka was bound by Feridun who overcame him. This demon was called
-"the murderer,"--the epithet mysteriously applied by Jesus to the
-devil (John viii. 44). After tempting and supplanting King Yima he
-ruled over the world for a millennium in great splendour, and the
-chief of devils tempts Zoroaster with that glory.
-
-"Renounce the good law of the worshippers of Mazda, and thou shalt
-gain such a boon as the Murderer gained, the ruler of nations." Thus
-in answer to him said Zoroaster, "No, never will I renounce the good
-law of the worshippers of Mazda, though my body, my life, my soul,
-should burst." Again said the guileful one, the Maker of the evil
-world, "By whose word wilt thou strike, by whose word wilt thou
-repel, by whose weapon will the good creatures (strike and repel)
-my creation?" Thus, in answer, said Zoroaster, "The sacred mortar,
-the sacred cup, the Haoma [the sacramental juice] the Words taught
-by Mazda, these are my weapons." [45]
-
-After this, Zoroaster "on the mountain" conversed with Ahura Mazda,
-and invoked the beneficent beings who preside over the seven Karshvares
-of the earth. We thus have here the mountain, the stones, the Word
-from the mouth of God, the offer of the kingdoms of the world, and
-the ministering angels, which reappear in the temptation of Jesus.
-
-After his baptism, Jesus repudiates his human parentage ("who is my
-mother?" etc.), and was led up by his new mother--the Spirit--into
-the wilderness to be tested by the devil. To this no doubt relate
-the words of Jesus preserved by Origen from the "Gospel according
-to the Hebrews": "Just now my mother the Holy Spirit took me by one
-of my hairs and bore me up on the great mountain Tabor." [46] Here
-the Solomonic kingdom and glory were offered by the devil if Jesus
-would worship him. According to Luke iv. he was tempted forty days
-(the number of the years of Solomon's reign). The first incident
-thereafter was his announcement that the Spirit of the Lord was
-upon him, and the second was an exhibition of his Solomonic power
-over devils. This, in Luke, is his first miracle. His first titular
-recognition was this surrender of the devil, who cried, "I know thee
-who them art, the Holy One of Israel!"
-
-In Matthew also the devils first give him the divine title "Son of God"
-(vii. 29). In the next chapter he gives his twelve disciples authority
-over demons. That this was well understood by the people is shown
-in Matthew xii. 23, where, on seeing demons mastered, they cry,
-"Is this the Son of David?" that is, is this Solomon, the famous
-enslaver of demons?
-
-It may be noted in passing that in the three miracles in Matthew of
-exorcising a blinding demon the title "Son of David" is used. Alford
-speaks of this as remarkable; but vision is the especial promise of
-Wisdom, therefore of Solomon, son of David.
-
-It may be remembered in this connection that in "Wisdom"
-(Ecclus. iv.) the trial by Wisdom is set forth:
-
-
-   "Whoso giveth ear unto her shall judge the nations. * * *
-    If a man commit himself unto her, he shall inherit her. * * *
-    At the first she will walk with him by crooked ways and bring
-    fear and dread upon him, and torment him with her discipline,
-    until she may trust his soul, and try him by her laws. Then
-    she will return the straight way unto him, and comfort him, and
-    shew him her secrets. But if he go wrong she will forsake him,
-    and give him over to his own ruin."
-
-
-This, which reappears in the parable of the broad and the narrow ways,
-seems to have determined the part which the Holy Spirit performs in
-the temptation of Jesus. According to Matthew he was by the Spirit
-carried involuntarily, "driven," says Mark, the Hebrew Gospel says,
-"borne by the hair" into the wilderness: as Jahveh "raised a Satan
-unto Solomon," and left Job to Satan, the Holy Spirit carries Jesus to
-Satan, the same Evil One; and after his triumph the promise in "Wisdom"
-(she will "comfort him") is fulfilled: "Angels came and ministered unto
-him." Luke says he "returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee;
-and a fame went out concerning him through all the region round about:
-he taught in their synagogues and was glorified of all."
-
-Nevertheless it may be remarked that the peculiar language in Luke
-(iv. 1) "led in the spirit" suggests that the whole story is a late
-literalization of some vision, partly based on v. 7 of the Epistle
-to the Hebrews, but originally on Solomon's dream (1 Kings iii.),
-in which Jahveh offers him any gift, and he asks only for Wisdom. Or,
-as he (Solomon) says in "Wisdom of Solomon," "I preferred her before
-sceptres and thrones" (vii. 8). But all of these were remotely
-influenced by the trial of Zoroaster, and the attempts of the devil
-to terrify Zoroaster before tempting him may be hinted in Mark i. 13,
-"He was with the wild beasts." These, however, are more prominent in
-the temptation of Buddha.
-
-Paul appears to have considered it an important apostolic credential
-to have had to contend with a Satan (2 Cor. xii. 7-10), and Peter
-was honoured by a special request made by Satan, and conceded, that
-he should be for a time under his diabolical control. (Luke xxii. 31.)
-
-As in the case of Solomon, the tests and trials of the superhuman
-wisdom and power of Jesus are found chiefly in tradition and
-folklore. The apocryphal gospels contain many, and some are
-preserved by Persian and Arabian poets. In the New Testament a few
-examples appear in which his utterances are given a quasi-judicial
-tone. There are several points of resemblance between the famous
-judgment of Solomon on the two harlots contending for the child, and
-the sentence of Jesus in favour of "sinful Mary," sister of Martha,
-accused by Simon the Pharisee. In both cases the decision was made
-at a feast, and in favour of the one who "loved much." It is not,
-however, the incident in itself that is now referred to, but only
-the formality ascribed to it in the narrative. And this adheres to
-the entire story. The anointing of Jesus may have occurred, but the
-scenic touches recall lines in the Solomonic "Song of Songs":
-
-
-   "While the King sat at his table,
-    My spikenard sent forth its fragrance."
-
-
-It is not impossible, by the way, that it was from chaste Shulamith
-of the Song ascribed to Solomon that a bad reputation was fixed on
-Mary Magdalene, against whose virginal purity no word is said in the
-Bible, the chapter heading to Luke vii. alone identifying her, in
-contradiction to John xi. 2, as the woman who anointed Jesus. This
-libel seems to come from a far antiquity,--as far probably as
-the Talmudic "Miriam Magdala" (i. e., Braided-hair Mary); and
-this epithet might have been derived from Shulamith's "ringlets"
-which were "tied up in folds," and whose spikenard sent forth its
-odours while Solomon was at the table. The later Jahvism must have
-considered such attention by ladies to their hair as an evidence of
-wickedness. Paul, while recognizing that long hair is a woman's "glory"
-(1 Cor. xi.) dangerously fascinating even to the angels, testifies
-against "braided hair" (1 Tim. ii.), an instruction repeated in 1
-Peter iii. Whether this lady of means who helped to support Jesus was
-from Magdala or not, it is nearly certain that her legend was derived
-from another sense of "Magdalene," and it is not improbable that the
-friendship of Jesus for her was in keeping with his Solomonic defiance
-of the Pharisaic.
-
-The Eastern tales of monarchs in disguise, derived from a legend
-of Solomon, may have prepared the popular mind for the double rôle
-performed by Jesus in the Gospels, for the earlier writers do not
-suggest any lowliness in his position beyond the humiliation of taking
-on human flesh and dying. In the Gospels we find him now an hungered,
-now dining with the Pharisee and anointed with precious ointment,
-again multiplying food; an humble-son of man who has not where to lay
-his head, a son of God with legions of angels at his command; purifying
-the temple with violence, and predicting its destruction; a peacemaker
-bringing a sword; telling his disciples to resist not evil, and arming
-them; enjoining secrecy about his miracles, presently parading them;
-prostrate with anguish in a garden, presently shining with unmasked
-splendour. Solomon never arrayed himself in any such brilliant
-raiment as that of the transfiguration, nor was his environment finer
-than the scenes imaged in some of these parables,--the prodigal's
-ring and robe, the king going to war and sending his ambassadors,
-the masters of fields and vineyards, the momentous wedding dress,
-the importance of rank and precedence at a feast. In miracles, too,
-we have the grand wedding at Cana, and the homage of the centurion
-deferentially rewarded. [47]
-
-In the Hebrew Gospel Jesus says, "I will that ye be twelve apostles
-for a testimony to Israel"; with which we may compare the "twelve
-officers over all Israel" appointed by Solomon (1 Kings iv. 7). In
-Mark the first bestowal on Jesus of his Solomonic title "Son of
-David" (x.) is immediately followed by his Solomonic entry into
-Jerusalem. In Matthew the blind man's tribute is followed by the cry
-of multitudes, "Hosanna to the Son of David"; and the whole scene
-is obviously from the narrative in 1 Kings i. of the procession of
-Solomon, seated on David's mule, on the occasion of the anointing
-which made him the model Messiah, in virtue of which he was King
-and Priest in combination. Solomon dedicated the temple himself, as
-High Priest, and to him, as King-Priest, the privilege of sanctuary
-was subordinate. Wherefore he had an offender executed while holding
-the horns of the altar. The titular Son of David, on the morrow of
-his triumphal entry, assumes authority in the temple, and scourges
-out of it the sellers of things used in the sacrifices,--especially
-Doves. These his human mother had sacrificed after his birth for
-purification, but by this time they symbolized his divine mother,
-the Holy Spirit, and were not to be sold.
-
-Who can suppose that this violence, which were as if one assaulted
-those who sell holy candles and pictures in a church vestibule,
-really occurred? At Oberammergau the whole tragedy of the Passion
-Play hinges on the resentment of these merchants, who appeal to the
-Sanhedrim for protection from the violence of one man armed with a
-whip! The story (John ii.) is an epitaph of the primitive Christ,
-the value of whose blood was its proof that his victory over the
-Adversary was that of a Man, unaided by a divine, unblemished by a
-carnal, weapon: triumph by either would have been defeat.
-
-The bread and wine offered to Abraham by the mythical king-priest
-of Salem (Solomon disguised as Melchizedek) may have been suggested
-by the bread and wine offered by Wisdom to her guests, in Proverbs
-ix. However this may be, there is clearly discoverable at the Last
-Supper of Jesus the Satan that Jahveh raised up against Solomon in
-the presence of mythical Judas ("Satan entered into him," says John),
-and in the whole scene the table of Wisdom. "She hath mingled her wine,
-she hath furnished her table," and cries--
-
-
-    "Come, eat ye of my bread,
-    And drink of the wine which I have mingled."
-
-
-That Jesus supped with his disciples, at the Passover time, is very
-probable, but that the bread and wine alone should have been selected
-for symbolical usage (a point unknown to the fourth gospel) conforms
-too closely with the Solomonic prologue to be a mere coincidence. The
-words "Take, eat," "Drink ye all of it," recall also the Song of
-Songs--
-
-
-    Eat, O friends!
-    Drink, yea abundantly, O beloved!
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII.
-
-THE HEIR OF SOLOMON'S GODHEAD.
-
-
-The anger of Jahveh against Solomon (1 Kings xi.) is, of course, the
-outcome of late theological explanations of how the ancient and much
-idealised kingdom could have been divided after divine promises of its
-protection. The interview with Solomon is a sort of dramatization,
-in which the anachronism of making Jahveh a historic contemporary
-of the Wise King represents the fact that when the tribal deity was
-evolved it was in antagonism to a Solomon who, though his body had long
-mouldered, was still "marching on." That Solomon had to contend with
-the hard and fanatical elements afterwards consolidated in Jahvism is
-pretty clear, and we may see in him a primitive Akbar. A century after
-Akbar's death the Rajah of Joudpoor said to the emperor Aurungzebe:
-"Your ancestor Akbar, whose throne is now in heaven, conducted the
-affairs of his empire in equity and security for the period of fifty
-years. He preserved every tribe of men in repose and happiness, whether
-they were followers of Jesus or of Moses, of Brahma or Mohammed. Of
-whatever sect or creed they might be, they all equally enjoyed his
-countenance and favour, insomuch that his people, in gratitude for
-the indiscriminate protection which he afforded them, distinguished
-him by the appellation of The Guardian of Mankind." Moslem fanaticism
-could not tolerate such toleration, and Akbar's reign was followed
-by conflicts very similar to those which followed Solomon's reign,
-leading to the Mogul empire, but ultimately to the reign of an "Empress
-of India," under whom we now see the same toleration of all religions
-which prevailed in the fifty years of Akbar.
-
-The Moslem saw in Akbar's liberality and toleration the supreme
-offence of putting other gods--Jesus, Brahma, Ahuramazda--beside
-Allah. The Jahvist saw retrospectively in Solomon's liberality the
-putting of Moloch, Ashera, and other gods beside Jahveh. It was
-therefore recorded that Jahveh determined to rend all the tribes
-save one from Solomon's son (a vaticinium ex evento). But that one
-was enough to preserve the Solomon cult.
-
-Anankê oude Theoi machontai. This Necessity, which the Greeks saw
-working above all the gods, is man himself, and worked also above Jah
-and Jahvism, nay, by means of them. Gradually they seemed to prevail
-over Solomonism. The Proverbs and Solomonic Psalms were transfused with
-Jahvism, but by this process the heavenly and the terrestrial kings
-were confused, and the idea of a human heir to the throne of Jahveh
-was conceived. As when, in our own era, Islam swallowed Zoroaster,
-with the result of bringing forth the great literary age of Persia,
-with Parsaism rationalized under a transparent veil of Moslem phrase
-and fable, so anciently arose the Hebrew Faizis and Saadis and Omar
-Khayyáms. Of these was the Isaiah who, with pigments of the Solomonic
-sunset, painted the sunrise of a new day, and a new earth-born God.
-
-
-   "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the
-    government shall rest on his shoulder; and his name shall be
-    called Counsellor of Wonders, God-hero, Father of Spoil, Prince of
-    Peace. Enlarged shall be dominion, and without cessation of peace,
-    on the throne of David, and throughout his kingdom, to establish
-    it and uphold it by justice and righteousness from henceforth
-    and forever."
-
-
-Every title, every tint, in this gorgeous vision is taken from the
-nuptial song for Solomon (Ps. xlv.) and Solomon's Psalm (lxxii.) The
-"delightsomeness poured over (Solomon's) lips" (Ps. xlv. 2) makes
-the Counsellor of Wonders; his deification (verses 6, 7) makes the
-God-hero; the tributes of Tarshish, and Sheba make him father of
-spoil (Ps. lxxii.); his "mildness" (Ps. xlv. 4) his abundant "peace"
-(Ps. lxxii. 3, 7) make the Prince of Peace; and the rest is a general
-refrain for both of the Psalms.
-
-Psalm xlv. opens with the words, "My verse concerns the King," and
-there is a fair consensus of the learned that the king is Solomon. It
-has been found impossible to fix upon any other monarch to whom the
-eulogia would be applicable, and the resemblance of the theme to the
-Song of Solomon proves that at an early period writers connected the
-Psalm with Solomon and one of his espousals.
-
-In quoting Professor Newman's translation of this Psalm (ante II)
-I alluded to my slight alterations. These are few and verbal, but
-momentous, and were not made without consultation of many critical
-authorities and versions. Professor Newman was unable to believe
-that the poet really meant to address Solomon as God, and in verse
-6 translates "Thy throne divine," in verse 7, "Therefore hath God,
-thy God, etc." Others, with similar theistic bias, have shrunk from
-what, according to the balance of critical interpretation, is the
-clear sense of the original:
-
-
-   "Thy throne, O God, ever and always stands;
-    A righteous sceptre is thy royal sceptre:
-    Thou lovest right and hatest evil;
-    Therefore, O God, hath thy God anointed thee
-    With oil of joy above thy fellow-kings."
-
-
-When these verses were written--and verse 11, where after Adonai
-the Vulgate has Elohim, "He is thy Lord God, worship thou him"--the
-rigid Jewish monotheism did not exist; and the apostrophe might have
-continued without special notice had not the psalm been included in
-the Jewish hymnology and thus given the solemnity and consecration
-ascribed by Jahvism to its canonical Book of Psalms. But ultimately
-it made a tremendous and even revolutionary impression; and that the
-verses were interpreted as bestowing the divine name on Solomon, by
-those most jealous of that name, is proved, I think, by the following
-considerations:
-
-1. Isaiah, in his vision quoted above (Is. ix.) combines the
-phraseology of Ps. xlv. with that of Ps. lxxii. (which bears Solomon's
-name as its author), and ascribes to a new-born child the title
-"God-hero."
-
-2. The recently discovered original of a fragment of Ecclesiasticus
-includes the passage about Solomon in xlvii., and it is said in
-verse 18: "Thou (Solomon) wast called by the glorious name which
-is called over Israel." This seems to be a plain reference to the
-ascriptions in Ps. xlv., where alone the divine name is applied to
-any individual mortal. Ecclesiasticus was compiled early in the second
-century before our era, and on the basis of much earlier compilations,
-as its prologue states.
-
-3. In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the monarch is represented as a mortal
-who by the divine gift of supernatural Wisdom had gained immortality;
-he had become privy to the mysteries of God, was his Beloved, his
-Son. This was written about the first year of our era.
-
-4. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews translates the Psalm
-xlv. as it is translated above, interpreting the words of deification
-as meant for the Firstborn of God at his ancient appearance on earth
-(i. 6), and applicable to his reappearance as Christ; arguing from
-such language of deification the superiority of the Son of God over
-the angels, who were never so addressed.
-
-A court poet addresses a princely bridegroom as Elohim, as a god--as
-it were, an Apollo. Had more songs of like antiquity by poets of his
-race been preserved, no doubt other instances of such rhapsody might
-be found, but it happens that this is the only instance in Hebrew
-literature where an individual man is clearly addressed as God (for
-Exod. vii. 1 and 1 Sam. xxviii. 13 are not really exceptions). As in
-the Psalm that is the only instance in which an individual man is,
-in the Old Testament, addressed as God, so is its application in the
-Epistle to the Hebrews the only indisputable instance in which an
-individual is addressed as God in the New Testament.
-
-"Thy throne, O God." Fateful words! The word of God, says this Epistle,
-is sharper than any two-edged sword, but its writer himself unwittingly
-unsheathed from a courtier's compliment just such a sword. One edge
-has slaughtered innumerable Jews, Moslems, Arians, Socinians, mingling
-their blood with that of the humane Jesus himself on the sacrificial
-altar he tried so hard to exchange for mercifulness. The other edge
-turned against the moral heart of Jesus himself, lowering the tone of
-all narratives and utterances ascribed to him after his connection
-with Jahveh, and consequently lowering all Christendom under its
-dishonourable burden of accommodating human veracity and kindness to
-the bad heavenly manners that were acquired by the deified Christ. For
-there was no other God to adopt him but a particularly rude one.
-
-Theological scholars who have compared the Epistle to the Hebrews
-with the Epistles of Paul have dwelt on the theological differences,
-but the moral differences are greater. In the Epistle to the Hebrews
-the emphasis is laid on the service of Jesus to mankind: it is this
-that makes him, as it made Solomon, worthy of worship as a God,
-and the ancient God with his sacrifices is virtually represented as
-transforming himself and his government to the measure of Jesus. Jesus
-is complete and perfect man, no part or power of his divine nature
-accompanying him on earth. But we see in Philippians ii. 7, and other
-passages, the primitive idea fading away, and Jesus pictured as a
-divine being in the mere semblance and disguise of a man, no real man
-at all; a theory which prevails in the story of the transfiguration,
-where the disguise is for a moment thrown aside. The earlier idea of
-his genuine humanity was still strong enough to prevent any stories
-of miracles wrought by Jesus from arising, the resurrection being a
-miracle wrought by God after the work of Jesus was "finished," as he
-is said to have proclaimed from the stake. But legends of miracles
-became inevitable after the theory of his disguise was diffused,
-and also stories of the vituperation, anathemas, and attitudinizings,
-which are so offensive in a man, but so characteristic of the whole
-history of Jahveh, with whom he was gradually identified. A gentleman
-does not call his opponents vipers and consign them to hell, but
-Jahveh is not under any such obligations. And, alas, disregard of
-the humanities did not, as we have seen, stop there even in Paul's
-time. In the further development, that of Jesus the magician, the
-personal character of Jesus was sadly sacrificed, and it is only
-due to the superstition that prevents the New Testament narratives
-from being read in a common sense way that people generally are not
-shocked by some of the representations.
-
-When the second Solomon was born in Bethlehem, as the Gospel carols
-tell, Wise Men came to worship him, but Jahveh had already fixed
-his own star above the cradle, and his angels contended for the
-great man, as for centuries the wisdom of the first Solomon had been
-jahvized. It was, however, the opinion of some ancient commentators
-that the cry of the angels, "Glory to God in the highest" meant that
-the birth of Jesus was to operate in the heavenly heights, and work
-changes there also. One may indeed dream of a deity longing for a human
-love,--grieving at being through ages an object of fear, personified as
-Wrath,--rejoicing in the birth of any new interpreter who should free
-him from the despot glory, "I create evil," and reconcile the human
-heart to him as eternal love--love ever burdened with the griefs of
-humanity, ever seeking to be born of woman, and to struggle against the
-dark and evil forces of nature. So one may dream, and it is a pathetic
-fact that the contention between humanity and heaven for the new-born
-Saviour is traceable in varying versions of the Angels' song. While
-half of Christendom sing "On earth peace, good will toward men," the
-other half sing, "On earth peace to men of good will." Our Revisers
-find the balance of authorities on the side of authority, and translate
-
-
-    Glory to God in the highest,
-    And on earth peace among men in whom he is well pleased.
-
-
-Although the "higher criticism" appears to treat with a certain
-contempt the birth-legends and carols in Matthew and Luke, and
-the genealogies, beyond the letter of these is visible more of the
-vanishing Jesus "after the flesh," the real and great man, than of
-the risen Christ in whom his humanity was lost. The "shepherd of my
-people," he who is to absolve them from their nightmare "sins," make
-crooked ways straight, rough places smooth, and free them from fear,
-is remembered in these rhapsodies of the Infancy, in the terrors of
-Herod, and gifts of the Wise. They have a certain evolution in the
-benevolent teachings and healing miracles of the Synoptics, easily
-discriminated from the competing Jahveh-Christ. (Think of a teacher
-urging his friends to forgive offenders seventy times seven and then
-promising them a "Comforter" who will never forgive the slightest
-offence, though merely verbal, either in this world or in the next!)
-
-The extent to which the man was lowered and lost in the risen Lord is
-especially revealed in the fourth Gospel. Except for the story of the
-woman taken in adultery, admittedly interpolated from another Gospel,
-the fourth Gospel may be regarded as perhaps the only book in the
-Bible without recognition of humanity. "I pray not for the world,
-but for those whom thou hast given me," is the keynote. In this work
-there is no text for the reformer and the philanthropist, unless
-perhaps the retreat of Jesus from a prospect of being made king. What
-inferences of benevolence might be made even from the miracles related
-have to be strained through the arrogance, self-aggrandizement,
-attitudinizing, as of a showman, with which they are wrought. [48] A
-rudeness to his mother precedes the turning of water to wine (ii. 4);
-the nobleman's son is healed because the aristocrat will not believe
-without a miracle (iv. 48); the infirm man at Bethesda is healed only
-after a sham question, "Wouldest thou be made whole?" and threatened
-afterwards (v. 6, 14); feeding the multitude is attended with another
-sham question (vi. 5), and a parade of the fragments (13); the man
-born blind is declared to have been so born solely for the sign and
-wonder manifested in his cure (ix. 3).
-
-But the supremacy of a new Jahveh over all moral obligations and all
-truthfulness is especially displayed in the resurrection of Lazarus
-(xi.). Here Jesus is represented as staying away from the sick man, in
-order that he may die; he affects to believe Lazarus is only asleep,
-but finding his disciples pleased with the prospect of recovery, in
-which case there would be no miracle, he becomes frank (parrhêsia)
-and assures them Lazarus is dead; he tells his disciples privately he
-is glad Lazarus is dead; he tells Martha, when she comes out to him
-alone, that her brother shall rise; but when her sister Mary comes out,
-accompanied by her Jewish consolers, Jesus breaks out into vehement
-groans and lamentations, lashing himself (etaraxen eauton) into this
-sham grief over a man at whose death he has connived and who would
-presently be alive! Even in his prayer over Lazarus the pretence is
-kept up, and his Father is informed, in an aside, "I know that thou
-hearest me always, but because of the multitude around I said it,
-that they may believe that thou didst send me." Thus does the fourth
-Gospel sink Jesus morally into the grave of Lazarus, leaving in his
-place an embodiment of the Jahveh who had lying spirits to send out
-into his prophets on occasion.
-
-The resurrection of Lazarus is a transparent fabrication out of
-the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Abraham's words to the rich
-man,--"neither will they be persuaded if one rose from the dead,"--were
-not adapted to a faith built on a resurrection, so that parable is
-suppressed in the fourth Gospel. The resurrection of a supernatural
-man is not quite sufficient for people not supernatural. Those who
-had been looking for a returning Christ had died, just like the
-unbelievers. There was a tremendous necessity for an example of the
-resurrection of an ordinary man. Shocking as are the immoral details
-of the story, there is audible in it the pathetic cry of the suffering
-human heart, and the demand that must be met by any Gospel claiming
-the faith of humanity. "Lord, if thou hadst been here my brother had
-not died!" Through what ages has that declaration, not to be denied,
-ascended to cold and cruel skies? It is found in the Vedas, in Job,
-in the Psalms. If there is a Heart up there why are we tortured? To the
-many apologies and explanations and pretences which imperilled systems
-had given, Christianity had to support itself by something more than
-Egyptian dreams and Platonic speculations. A dead man must arise;
-it must be done dramatically, amid domestic grief and neighbourly
-sympathy; it must be done doctrinally, with funeral sermon turned to
-rejoicings. And this was all done in the story of Lazarus in such a way
-that it might surround every grave with illusions for centuries. For
-who, while tears are falling, will pause to handle the wreaths, and
-find whether they are genuine? Who, while the service is proceeding,
-will analyze the details, and ask whether it is possible that the good
-Jesus could have practiced such deception and assumed such theatrical
-attitudes? [49]
-
-The indifference of the fourth Gospel to such moral considerations as
-those found in the Synoptics is so apostolic that I am inclined
-to place much of it nearer to the first century than I once
-supposed. Paul's rage against the "wisdom of this world," and his
-fulminations against the learned because they are not "called,"
-are fully adopted by the Johannine Christ, who says to the blind man
-whose eyes he had opened, and who was worshipping him: "For judgment
-came I into this world, that they that see not may see, and they that
-see may become blind." And these ideas are represented in a legend
-related in the book of Acts which is really allegorical, though our
-translators have manipulated it into serious history.
-
-A persecutor of Christians, on whom the spirit "came mightily," as
-on King Saul, so that he was a new "Saul among the prophets," sought
-to convert to his new faith a Roman Proconsul, Sergius Paul. But
-with this Consul was a learned man of the Jewish Wisdom School,
-Bar-Jesus Elymas,--i. e., Dr. Anti-Jesus Wise Man. Like Michael and
-Satan contending for the body of Moses, Prophet Saul and Anti-Jesus
-Wise Man contended for the Roman Paul's soul. Prophet Saul prevailed
-by calling Anti-Jesus Wise Man a child of the devil, and striking
-him blind. Thereupon Consul Paul believed, being "astonished at the
-teaching of the Lord." Whereupon Prophet Saul triumphantly carries
-off the Roman's name as a trophy. [50]
-
-Beginning in this conclusive way, by striking human Wisdom sightless
-("that they that see may become blind," John ix. 39), the Anti-Wisdom
-propaganda, which began with identifying Wisdom with the serpent
-in Eden, passed on to inspire the Church Fathers who gloated over
-the eternal tortures of the poets and philosophers of Greece and
-Rome. Alas for the philosophers not in their graves, but in their
-cradles, or in the womb of the future! For torments are nearest
-"eternal" when they begin at once on earth.
-
-One may readily understand how it was that personal traditions of Jesus
-and his teachings remained unwritten until his contemporaries were
-dead (although this may not have been the case with the suppressed
-"Gospel according to the Hebrews"); the hourly expected return of
-Christ rendered such memoirs unimportant until it became clear that
-the expectation was erroneous. The age of John, of whom Jesus was
-rumoured to have predicted survival till his return (John xxi. 22),
-was stretched out to a mythical extent; he became an undying sleeper
-at Ephesus, and finally a pious "Wandering Jew"; but when at length
-such fables lost their strength, some imaginative impersonator brought
-forth an apocalyptic bequest of John postponing the second advent
-a thousand years. The conventicles had thus no resource but to turn
-into orthodoxy the heresy of Hymenoeus and Alexander, for which Paul
-delivered them over to Satan, that the resurrection occurs at death;
-to collect the traditional sayings of Jesus; and to adapt these to the
-new situation. A thousand years later, when the expected catastrophe
-did not occur, the substantial churches and cathedrals were built,
-as the Gospels had been built after the first-century disappointment.
-
-These Gospels contain things from which some of the real teachings
-of the wise man of Nazareth may be fairly conjectured. That the
-synoptical records are palimpsests, though denied by the prudent, is
-a truth felt by the unsophisticated who, in their use of such words
-as "Christian" and "a Christian spirit," quite ignore the fearful
-anathemas and damnatory language ascribed to Jesus.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII.
-
-THE LAST SOLOMON.
-
-
-Every race has a pride in its great men which ultimately prevails over
-any pious taboo imposed on them in life or by tradition. Some years
-ago it was announced that a German scholar was about to publish proofs
-that Jesus was not of the Hebrew race, and while Christendom showed
-little concern, all Israel sat upon that German almost furiously. It
-is an old story. Banished Buddha becomes an avatar of Vishnu, and
-his image now appears in India beside Jagenath. For the heresiarch
-must be adapted before adoption. So Solomon returns as a preacher of
-orthodox Jahvism, in the "Wisdom of Solomon," but so rigid had been
-the taboo in his case that the writer did not venture to insert the
-name of so famous a liberal and secularist.
-
-That was about the first year of our era. But presently we hear about
-the "Son of David." Was that because of David himself? Interest in
-David had so receded that in the "Wisdom of Solomon" the resuscitated
-Wise Man barely alludes (once) to his "father's seat." Was it because
-of any popular interest in the legendary throne or house of David? That
-old "covenant" is not alluded to by the resuscitated monarch, and in
-the apostolic writings nothing is said about it. In the Gospels the
-title "Son of David" is generally connected with certain alleged
-miracles of Jesus, which recalled legends of Solomon, and it is
-only in the account of the entry into Jerusalem that it carries any
-connotation of royalty corresponding to the genealogies afterwards
-elaborated. Unless these narratives are accepted as historical
-they must be regarded as phenomena, and, taken in connection with
-what may be reasonably regarded as genuine teachings of Jesus, the
-phenomena point to a probability that he had reawakened interest in
-the Wise Man's teachings, and that this interest, by a compromise
-with Jahvist prejudices, coined the expression "Son of David" as an
-alias of Solomon.
-
-However this may be, it appears certain that there was in the
-teachings of Jesus some substantial recovery of the ancient and
-unconverted Solomon, the proverbial philosopher, the man of the
-world. How much Jesus may have said to revive interest in Solomon,
-and how many of his secular utterances have been hidden in the grave
-of his humanity, can only be conjectured; but there are two direct
-sayings concerning Solomon ascribed to him which may be regarded
-as the only unreserved tributes to the Wise Man that had ever been
-uttered since his idealization in Chronicles. And our own Protestant
-Jahvism has tried so hard to manipulate these tributes into partial
-disparagements that we may easily imagine early Christian Jahvism
-destroying similar testimonies altogether.
-
-A. S. V. Luke xi. 31: "The Queen of the South shall rise up in judgment
-with the men of this generation and condemn them: for she came from
-the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon,
-and behold a greater than Solomon is here."
-
-True rendering: "The Queen of the South shall stand in the judgment
-with the men of this [Abrahamic]  brood, and condemn them; for she came
-from the farthest parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and
-behold something more than Solomon is here." (pleion Solomônos hôde)
-
-The word mistranslated "greater," pleion, is neuter and cannot be
-applied to a man. Jesus is not speaking of himself, but of the new
-Spirit animating a whole movement.
-
-The word "generation" as a translation of genea is, in this connection,
-misleading. No one English word can convey the satire on people who
-regarded themselves as holy by generation from Abraham (cf. Luke
-iii. 8), which is in the vein of Carlyle's ridicule of English
-"Paper Nobility." Above these self-satisfied claimants of inherited
-wisdom Jesus sets the Gentile Queen journeying to sit at the feet
-of Solomon. At the feet of Solomon Jesus also was sitting, and he
-certainly did not call himself personally greater than Solomon.
-
-The other allusion to Solomon (Matt. vi. 28, 29) is rendered thus:
-"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not,
-neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in
-all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
-
-Here "glory," which when applied to a man has a connotation of pride
-and pomp, is made to translate doxê, which means honour in its best
-sense, as preserved in "doxology." Jesus really says, "Solomon amid all
-his honours never arrayed himself (periebaleto) like one of these." The
-greatest and wisest of men did not affect display in dress. [51]
-
-The apparent slightness of these English changes reveals their
-deliberate subtlety. Puritanism, taking its cue from King James's
-translators, has bettered the instruction, and steadily pictured
-Jesus pointing to a lily,--white emblem of purity,--and censuring
-(implicitly) the ostentation of Solomon. Even in rationalistic
-hymn-books is found the pretty hymn of Agnes Strickland, beginning:
-
-
-    "Fair lilies of Jerusalem,
-        Ye wear the same array
-    As when imperial Judah's stem
-        Maintained its regal sway:
-    By sacred Jordan's desert tide
-        As bright ye blossom on
-    As when your simple charms outvied
-        The pride of Solomon."
-
-
-Very sweet! But the "lilies of the field" in Palestine are not "fair,"
-their charms are not "simple"; they are large and gorgeous combinations
-of red and gold; and Solomon, so far from being proud in the contrast,
-"outvied" in simplicity the pride of the lily.
-
-Jesus may not indeed have said these things concerning Solomon, but
-the probability that he did say something of the kind is suggested
-by the adroit mistranslations. The same puritanical spirit, the
-same prejudice against human wisdom and love of beauty, prevailed
-even more when the Gospels were written. The Jahvist jealousy of
-the wisdom of the world which in a Targum added to Jeremiah ix. 23
-a fling at Solomon,--"Let not Solomon the Son of David, the Wise
-Man, glory in his Wisdom,"--screamed on in Christian anathemas
-on science, and laudations of the silly. (For "silly" is of pious
-derivation, from German selig--blessed.) Solomon had not been named
-in any canonical scripture for centuries, and even in apocryphal
-"Wisdom" (Ecclesiasticus) he appears as if a brilliant but fallen
-Lucifer. The cult of Solomon continued no doubt, in a sense, among the
-Sadducees (respectfully treated, by the way, by Jesus), but they were
-comparatively few, and like the rationalists of the English Church,
-cautious about outside heresies. It was probably characteristic that
-their name is derived from Solomon's priest, Zadok, instead of from
-Solomon himself. As for the Gentile Queen, she is not named in the
-Bible after the record of her visit to Solomon until the homage of
-Jesus was given her. It appears, therefore, very unlikely that such
-homage and the unqualified tributes to Solomon, would have been put
-into the mouth of Jesus.
-
-But why, it may be asked, were not these tributes suppressed? There is
-in one case a recognition of a Gentile lady which would recommend the
-text to the writer of Luke, and in the other a lesson against luxury
-which would recommend this to all believers. At any rate, whatever may
-have been the suppressions, and no doubt there were many, two of the
-Gospels have preserved these sentences, which, so far as the glorious
-"idolator" is concerned, neither of them would have invented. There
-are the words; somebody uttered them; and the question arises, who
-was that daring man who broke the severe silence or reservations of
-centuries and did honour to the king who built shrines to gods and
-goddesses? [52]
-
-As Solomon said, "A man is proved by what he praises." That Jesus did
-appreciate the greatness of the Solomonic literature is not a matter
-of conjecture. The sayings ascribed to him in the Gospels--apart from
-Pauline importations and quotations from Jahvist scriptures--are
-largely pervaded by the spirit and even by the phraseology of the
-Solomonic books. Remembering that the phrases "kingdom of heaven,"
-"kingdom of God," are post-resurrectional, and that Jesus could not,
-unless by miraculous foresight, use those phrases for any external
-dominion connected with himself, there is reason to believe that his
-conception was of a sway of Wisdom, and that Wisdom was to him the
-Saviour, as to Jesus Ben Sira, her realm "within," her leaven hid in
-the world, her advance without observation.
-
-Of course those who read the Bible in the light of a supernatural
-theory, see these things very differently, but considering the
-records as if they were those of uninspired people, one may say that
-some of the sayings ascribed to Jesus are, in their present form,
-meaningless. For example, what should we think if we found an ancient
-record of some poor Egyptian reported as saying, "Come unto me, all
-ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my
-yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart: and
-ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden
-is light." How incongruous the "I am meek" with "learn of me"! How
-could he give the heavy laden rest? And what rest? what yoke? But we
-would surely feel enlightened should we presently discover an Egyptian
-book of "Wisdom,"  with proof of its popularity when the mysterious
-words were orally repeated, containing such language as this from
-personified Wisdom: "Come unto me, all ye that be desirous of me,
-and fill yourselves with my fruits." And if we found in the same
-book a teacher saying: "I directed my soul unto Wisdom, and I found
-her in pureness.... Draw near unto me, ye unlearned, and dwell in
-the house of Wisdom.... Buy her for yourselves without money. Put
-your neck under her yoke, and let your life receive instruction:
-she is near at hand to find. Behold with your eyes that I have had
-but little labour, and have gotten unto me much rest."
-
-Here is sense. These are the words of Wisdom in Jesus Ben Sira
-(Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 19, li. 23-27). Can any unbiased mind fail to
-recognize in Matthew xi. 28-30 a mangled quotation from this Hebrew
-book of the second century, before Jesus of Nazareth was born, but
-in his time cherished in many Jewish households as much as any Gospel
-is cherished in Christian households?
-
-Consider the Sermon on the Mount. In the Proverbs ascribed to
-Solomon is found the beatitude pronounced by Jesus on the lowly,
-no doubt literally quoted by him: "With the lowly is wisdom"
-(Prov. xi. 2). The blessing of those who hunger for righteousness
-(justice) is in Prov. x. 24, where it is said their desire shall be
-granted. The blessing of the peacemakers is joy (Prov. xii. 20). The
-merciful man doeth good to his own life (Prov. xi. 17). The pure in
-heart shall have the King for his friend (Prov. xxii. 11). The house
-that stands and the house overthrown (Prov. x. 25; xii. 7; xiv. 11);
-the two ways (Prov. xii. 28, xiv. 12, xvi. 17); the tree known by
-its fruits (Prov. xi. 30, xii. 12); give and it shall be given you
-(Prov. xxii. 9); the sower (Prov. xi. 18, 24, 25); taking the lower
-place so as to be placed higher and not moved down (Prov. xxv. 6-8);
-searching for and buying Wisdom as the precious silver, the pearl,
-the treasure (Prov. vi. 11, 12, 17, 19, 35; xx. 15; xxiii. 23); the
-prodigal (Prov. xxix. 3); those who wrong parents (Prov. xx. 20;
-xxviii. 24; cf. Matt. xv. 5; Mark vii. 11). The lamps of the wise
-and foolish virgins are found in Prov. xiii. 9; also xxiv. 20.
-
-In Proverbs xx. 9, we have the words, "Who can say, 'I have made
-my heart clean, I am pure from sin?'" In Ecclesiastes iii. 16, it
-is said, "Moreover, I saw under the sun, in the place of judgment,
-that wickedness was there; and in the place of righteousness that
-wickedness was there." (Cf. also vii. 20.) In the "Gospel according
-to the Hebrews" Jesus, declaring that an offender should be forgiven
-seventy times seven, adds: "For in the prophets likewise, after they
-were anointed by the Holy Spirit, utterance of sin was found."
-
-Although in the language ascribed to Jesus in the fourth Gospel
-(iii. 1-10) there are post-resurrectional phrases, whatever he
-may have said about birth and about the wind-like spirit seems to
-have been what he expected Nicodemus, as a teacher in Israel, to
-understand. We may therefore suppose that it was substantially a
-quotation from Ecclesiastes xi. 5: "As thou knowest not the way of
-the wind, nor the growth of the bones in the mother's womb, even so
-thou canst not fathom the work of God, who compasseth all things."
-
-In relation to Woman Jesus seems to have appealed to Solomon against
-Ecclesiastes, where (vii. 25-29) it is said:
-
-
-    I have turned my heart to know,
-    And to explore, and search out wisdom and the reason of things;
-    And to know that wickedness is Folly, and Folly madness:
-    And I have found what is more bitter than death--
-    The Woman who is a snare, her heart nets, her hands chains:
-    He who pleases God shall be delivered from her,
-    But the offender shall be captured by her.
-        See, this have I found (saith the Speaker).
-    Adding one to another, to find out the account,
-    Which I am still searching after, but have not found--
-    One man in a thousand I have found,
-    But a woman among all these I have not found.
-    Look you, only this have I found--
-    That God made man upright,
-    But they have sought out many devices.
-
-
-In the first seven lines of this passage we may recognize the
-personification in Proverbs ix. 13-18. The Woman of the fifth line
-is "Dame Folly"; but the last eight lines relate to womankind. The
-assurance in the eighth line that it is Koheleth who speaks raises
-a suspicion that the last eight lines are commentary,--a suspicion
-further confirmed by the awkwardness of the writing. Strictly read,
-it is left uncertain whether no woman is ever captured by Dame Folly,
-or not one escapes. However, as commentators are generally men,
-the interpretation has been adverse to woman.
-
-But Jesus, perhaps remembering that Wisdom is as much a woman as Folly,
-is reported (Matthew xi. 19) to have said: "Wisdom is justified by
-her works." In Luke vii. 35 it is, "Wisdom is justified of all her
-children." Both of these readings appeal to the Solomonic portrait of
-the virtuous woman, in Proverbs xxxi. the last line of which says,
-"Let her works praise her," and verse 28, "her children rise up and
-call her blessed."
-
-In Luke the sentence is a verse by itself, and the word "all" renders
-it probable that the sentiment has a bearing on the story that follows
-of the anointing of Jesus by a sinful woman. [53] Some such incident
-may have occurred, but the address to Simon the Pharisee making him
-to be the offender, and the woman one delivered from Dame Folly by
-her faith ("pleasing God") looks like a criticism on the "fling" at
-woman in Ecclesiastes, with a proverb taken for text. This rebuke of
-the Pharisee, who thought "the prophet" ought to abhor the "sinner,"
-immediately precedes an account of the eminent women who supported
-Jesus by their means,--Mary, called Magdalene; Joanna, the wife of
-Herod's steward; Susanna, "and many others." They "ministered to him of
-their substance," and possibly the Pharisee and others might naturally
-suspect him of being among "the ensnared." The fact is strange enough
-to be genuine, and Luke thinks it important to say that Jesus had
-healed these ladies of bad spirits and infirmities. Of course it
-is necessary to divest Gospel anecdotes of much post-resurrectional
-vesture, and in this case it cannot be credited that Jesus said that
-the woman's sins were "many," which he could not have known, or that
-he gave her formal absolution.
-
-The indications of the study of Ecclesiasticus by Jesus are very
-remarkable. This book appears to have been a sort of nursery in
-which proverbs were trained for their fruitage in the last Solomon's
-religious testimonies. What those testimonies were we cannot easily
-gather, but it is useful for comparative study to remark the sentences
-in Ecclesiastictus which correspond, either in thought or phraseology,
-with those ascribed to Jesus. The broad and the narrow ways barely
-suggested in "Proverbs" are here developed (Ecclesiasticus iv. 17,
-18). "Hide not thy wisdom" (iv. 23, xx. 30). "Say not, 'I have enough
-(goods) for my life'" (v. 1, xi. 24). "Extol not thyself" (vi. 2). We
-find the exhortation to judge not (vii. 6); rebuke of much speaking in
-prayer (14); warning against the lustful gaze (ix. 5, 8); the night
-cometh when no man can work (xiv. 16-19; cf. Eccles. ix. 10); the
-proud cast down, the humble exalted (x. 14, xi. 5); one only is good
-(xviii. 2); swear not (xxiii. 9); forgiven as we forgive (xxviii. 2);
-treasure rusting and treasure laid up according to the commandments
-of the Most High (xxix. 10, 11); "Judge of thy neighbor by thyself"
-(xxxi. 15); the altar-gift and the wronged brother (xxxiv. 18-20);
-he that seeks the law shall be filled (xxxii. 15); charity and not
-sacrifice (xxxv. 2).
-
-These resemblances, of which more might be quoted, between teachings
-ascribed to Jesus and passages in the Wisdom Books, are so important
-that by the aid of these books some of the confused utterances
-attributed to him may be made clear. [54] Apart from the importations
-of Paul, and one or two from the epistle to the Hebrews, no reference
-by the Jesus of the Gospels to Jahvist books can be shown of similar
-significance. Combined as his Solomonic ideas are with his homage
-to Solomon and the Gentile Queen, and followed, as we shall see,
-by a resuscitation of Solomonic legends in connection with him, it
-appears clear that Jesus was of the Solomonic and anti-Jahvist school.
-
-It would, however, be a great mistake to suppose that Jesus
-was simply a philosophical and ethical teacher. He cannot be so
-explained. The fragmentary sayings, so far as discoverable amid their
-post-resurrectional perversions, have the air of obiter dicta from a
-man engaged in a local propaganda of subversive principles. What the
-propaganda really was is but dimly discernible under its own subsequent
-subversion by his ghost, but there are a few sayings not traceable
-to his predecessors, and beyond the capacity of his contemporaries
-or his successors, which bring us near to an individual mind, and
-suggest the general nature of the agitation he caused.
-
-The story of the woman taken in adultery, known to have been in the
-suppressed "Gospel according to the Hebrews," and by some strange
-chance preserved in the fourth gospel (viii), I believe to have really
-occurred. It would have required a first-century Boccaccio to invent
-such a story, and I cannot discover anything similar in Eastern or
-in Oriental books. Augustine says that some had removed it from their
-manuscripts, "I imagine, out of fear that impunity of sin was granted
-to their wives." It is not likely that any of the earlier fathers,
-any more than the later, would have invented so dangerous a story.
-
-Another anecdote, preserved only in the fourth Gospel, probably
-contains some elements of truth, namely, the words uttered to the
-Samaritan woman. Who would have been bold enough, even had he been
-liberal enough, to invent the words: "Neither in this mountain, nor
-in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father"? Even in the one Gospel
-that ventures to preserve it this noble catholicity is immediately
-retracted (John iv. 22) in a verse which obviously interrupts the
-idea. That the story is an early one is also suggested by the fact
-that no reproach to the woman on account of her many husbands is
-inserted. It is remarkable to find such a story related without any
-word about sin and forgiveness.
-
-The so-called "Sermon on the Mount" is well named: it is evidently
-made up of reports of sermons in amplification of sayings of Jesus
-in the style of the Wisdom Books, among which probably were:
-
-
-   "Let your light shine before men. A lamp is not lit to be put
-    under a bushel."
-
-   "The lamp of the body is the eye. If thine eye be sound the whole
-    body is illumined; if the eye be diseased the whole body is in
-    darkness. If the inner eye be darkened how great is the darkness."
-
-   "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
-
-   "By their fruits both trees and man are known."
-
-   "Each tree is known by its own fruit."
-
-   "Put not new wine into old wine-skins, lest they burst."
-
-   "Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves."
-
-   "Wisdom is justified by her children."
-
-   "If any man will be great, let him serve."
-
-   "The lowly shall be exalted, the proud humbled."
-
-   "Blind guides strain out the gnat, and swallow a camel."
-
-   "Give and it shall be given you."
-
-   "The measure ye mete shall be measured to you."
-
-   "Cast the beam from thine eye before noticing the mote in that
-    of thy neighbour."
-
-
-The following sentences in the "Gospel according to the Hebrews" do not
-appear to have been very seriously influenced by post-resurrectional
-ideas.
-
-
-   "He is a great criminal who hath grieved the spirit of his
-    brother."
-
-   "No thank to you if you love them that love you, but
-    there is thank if ye love your enemies and them that hate
-    you." (Cf. Prov. xxix. 17, 29.)
-
-   "Be ye never joyful save when you have looked upon your brother
-    in charity."
-
-   "Be as lambkins in midst of wolves."
-
-   "The son and the daughter shall inherit alike."
-
-   "It is happy rather to give than to receive."
-
-   "No servant can serve two masters."
-
-   "Out of entire heart and out of entire mind."
-
-   "What is the profit if a man gain the entire world, and lose
-    his life?"
-
-   "Seek from little to wax great, and not from greater to become
-    less."
-
-   "Become proved bankers."
-
-   "If ye have not been faithful in the little who will give you
-    the great?"
-
-
-These instructions have no connotations of the end of the world. They
-appear like the words of a man of the world, but not a man of the
-people. There is a certain unity in them, indicating a mind more
-developed than the semi-Jahvist Alexandrian philosophers of the later
-Wisdom cult, as represented by Jesus Ben Sira's "Wisdom," and by the
-"Wisdom of Solomon"; also a mind more practical.
-
-But these wise sayings do not convey the full idea of a man whose
-execution the Sanhedrim would require, nor a man whose resurrection
-from the grave would be looked for by the populace. These two
-phenomenal facts imply some strong antagonism to the priesthood and
-their system. Martyrdoms do not occur for ethical generalizations,
-much less for philosophical affirmations. The faith that strikes deep
-is that which speaks in great denials.
-
-Trying to follow his advice to "Become proved bankers," we may detect
-in some probable sayings of Jesus a transitional ring, e. g., "The
-Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." The effort
-at self-emancipation is still more traceable in certain incidents
-related in the "Gospel according to the Hebrews":
-
-
-   "He saith, 'If thy brother hath offended in anything and hath
-    made thee amends, seven times in a day receive him,' Simon his
-    disciple said unto him, 'Seven times in a day?' The Lord answered
-    and said unto him, 'I tell thee also unto seventy times seven;
-    for in the prophets likewise, after that they were anointed by
-    the Holy Spirit, utterance of sin was found.'"
-
-   "The same day, having beheld a man working on the Sabbath, he said
-    to him, 'Man, if thou knowest what thou dost, blessed art thou: but
-    if thou knowest not, thou art under a curse, and a law-breaker.'"
-
-
-That a man should regard the Holy Spirit as unable to make men
-infallible; that he should have discovered immoral utterances in
-the prophets; that he should regard it as a sign of enlightenment to
-disregard the Sabbath deliberately and intelligently--this is surely
-all very striking.
-
-Who, in the second century, could have invented these anecdotes
-about Jesus? They are not harmonious with the Pauline Epistles;
-their heretical character is proved by the repudiation of the Gospel
-containing them, while their genuineness is implicitly confessed
-by the ultimate suppression of that Gospel. For surely it cannot be
-supposed that such a work, well known in the fifth century, was lost;
-nor is there much doubt that any learned rationalist, if permitted
-the free range of all the libraries in Rome, without the presence of
-polite librarians, could bring to light that first-century Gospel,
-the only one written in Aramaic, the language of Jesus.
-
-But, when we come to consider the mature and positive teachings of
-Jesus, there may be placed in the front a sentence preserved from
-the suppressed Gospel by Epiphanius, who writes (Haer. xxx. 16):
-"And they say that he both came, and (as their so-called Gospel has
-it) instructed them that he had come to dissolve the Sacrifices:
-'and unless ye cease from sacrificing the wrath shall not cease
-from you.'" Dr. Nicholson is shocked at this threat, and suspects
-the Ebionites of having altered what Jesus said. But surely it
-is a true and grand admonition by one superseding a phantasm of
-heavenly Egoism, demanding gifts from men for pacification, with
-the idea of a Father. Dr. Nicholson connects it, no doubt rightly,
-with Luke xiii. 1-3, which should probably read: "There were some
-present at that very season who told him of the Galileans whose
-blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered,
-Think ye these Galileans were sinners rather than all other Galileans
-because they suffered these things? I tell you, No! And unless ye
-cease from sacrificing, the Wrath will not cease from you." That is,
-they would always be haunted by the delusion of a bloodthirsty god,
-a god of Wrath, and see a judgment, not only in every accident,
-but in every calamity wrought by fiendish men.
-
-In his quotation from Hosea--"I desire charity, and not
-sacrifice"--Jesus speaks as if with a transitional accent,
-as compared with the declaration that sacrifices imply deified
-Wrath. The contempt of Ecclesiastes for "the sacrifice of fools
-who know not that they are doing evil" (v. 1), has here become
-a great and far-reaching affirmation, which must have impressed
-the orthodox Jews as atheism. For, although there are passages in
-several psalms and in the prophets which disparage sacrifice, they
-were all interpreted by the Rabbins, as now by Christian theologians,
-as meaning their purification and spiritualization--by no means their
-abolition. Indeed, this higher interpretation of sacrifices appears
-to have given them fresh lease; and in the time of Jesus, when to
-the priesthood remained only control over their religious ordinances,
-the sacrifices were apparently preserved with increased rigour. Jesus
-himself, unless the gospeller (Matt. v. 23, 24) has softened his
-language, had at one time only demanded that none should offer a gift
-at the altar until he had done justice to any who had aught against
-him. But a remarkable passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews (x. 5)
-represents Jesus as going to the world with a quotation from Psalm
-xl. 6, 7, for a clause of which a parenthesis is given, saying:
-
-
-   "Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not
-    (Thou hast furnished me this body)--
-    In whole burnt offerings and sin offerings thou delighted not:
-    Then said I (in that chapter of the book it is written for me),
-    'Lo, I come to do thy will, O God.'"
-
-
-The sentence preserved by Eusebius, however, shows that his attitude
-toward sacrifices was not merely to "lift" from men (Heb. x. 9,
-anairei) the burden of sacrifice, but to denounce it as an offering
-to the devil. "Unless ye cease from sacrificing, the Wrath shall not
-cease from you."
-
-In this sentence "the Wrath" (hê orgê) is clearly a personification. It
-does not in the same form occur elsewhere in the Bible. Matthew and
-Mark report John the Baptist as speaking of "the impending wrath,"
-and Paul occasionally gives "Wrath" a quasi-personification (e. g.,
-"children of Wrath," Eph. ii. 1-3). These expressions, and the
-"destroyer" Abaddon or Apollyon, of Revelations ix. and (xii. 12)
-the devil "in great temper" (thymon), all show that the Jewish mind
-had become familiar with the idea of a dark and evil power quite
-detached from official relation to Jahveh, no longer "the wrath of
-God" executing divine judgments, but organized Violence, eager to
-afflict mankind as the creation of his enemy.
-
-In the "Wisdom of Solomon" (xviii.) there is a complete picture of
-the two opposing Destroyers. The divine destroyer ("thine Almighty
-Word") leaps down with his sword and slays the firstborn of Egypt; the
-antagonist Destroyer begins the same kind of work among the Israelites
-in Egypt, but Moses by prayer and the "propitiation of incense" sets
-himself "against the Wrath" and overcomes him,--"not with physical
-strength, nor force of arms, but with a word." The incense used by
-Moses to put the demon to flight recalls the "perfume" used by Tobit,
-on the advice of the angel, to put to flight Asmodeus; and Asmodeus is
-notoriously the Persian Aêshma, a name meaning "Wrath," who occupies
-so large space in the Parsî scriptures. [55] The especial antagonist
-of Aêshma "of the wounding spear," is Sraosha, "the incarnate Word,
-a mighty-speared god." (Farvardin Yast, 85.) As Moses overcomes "the
-Wrath" "with a word," Zoroaster is given a form of words to conquer
-Aêshma ("Praise to Armaîti, the propitious!") and the Vendîdâd says,
-"The fiend becomes weaker and weaker at every one [repetition] of
-those words." The Zamyâd Yast says, "The Word of falsehood smites,
-but the Word of truth shall smite it." Aêshma is the child of Ahriman,
-the Deceiver of the World, and a Parsî would recognize him in the
-declaration ascribed to Jesus, "The devil is a liar and so is his
-father." (John viii. 44.)
-
-That Jesus regarded the whole realm of evil as absolutely antagonistic
-to the Good is reflected in the epistle "To the Hebrews." There his
-mission is to abolish the devil (ii. 14), which is very different
-from abolishing death (2 Tim. i. 10). For a long time the devil was
-suppressed in the "Lord's Prayer," but in that brief collection of
-Talmudic ejaculations the only original thing is, "Deliver us from the
-evil one." In the Clementine Homilies Jesus is quoted as having said,
-"The evil one is the tempter," and "Give not a pretext to the evil
-one." Nay, the single clause preserved in Matthew, that it is an enemy
-that sows tares,--these being as much parts of nature as corn,--is
-a sentence that divides the Ahrimanic creation from the Ahuramazdean
-creation as clearly and profoundly as anything ascribed to Zoroaster.
-
-Theological harmonists have for centuries been at work on the
-contrarious doctrines of all scriptures, and even among the Parsîs
-some kind of metaphysical alliance has taken place between the Kingdoms
-of Good and Evil. Devout Christians find it quite consistent that one
-person of the trinity should say, "I create good and I create evil,"
-and another person of the trinity should say of natural evil, "An
-enemy hath done this." But no such harmony existed in the Jerusalem
-of Jesus. Under a teaching that symbolized the deity as the Sun,
-shining alike on the thankful and thankless, individually, desiring no
-sacrifices, and concentrating human effort against the forces of evil
-in nature, in society--the evil principle--Jahveh falls like lightning
-from heaven. Like "the blameless man" of the "Wisdom of Solomon," Jesus
-"sets himself against the Wrath," however sanctified as the Wrath of
-God, and sees all sacrifices as eucharists of the Adversary. He not
-only repudiates the name "Jahveh," but tells the official agents of
-Jahvism that their god is his devil. (John viii. 44).
-
-Of course one can only refer cautiously to anything in the fourth
-Gospel, for it is a composite book, but it contains, as I believe,
-passages or fragments of the early apostolic theology, wherein dualism,
-until crushed by Paul, was prominent, and the good God represented
-in hard struggle with Satan for the rescue of mankind.
-
-This aspect of the teaching of Jesus cannot be dealt with here as its
-importance deserves. We live in an age whose clergy deal apologetically
-with the prominence of the Adversary of Man in the teachings of
-Jesus. For this fundamental principle of Jesus Jewish monotheism
-has been substituted. But there are many records to attest that the
-moral perfection and benevolence of the deity, which is certainly
-inconsistent with his omnipotence, or his "permission" of the tares in
-nature, was the only new principle of religion affirmed by Jesus; and,
-also, that it was so subversive of sacrifices, priesthood, and the very
-foundations of the temple--all dependent on Jahveh's menaces--that
-the execution of Jesus appears more rationally explicable by this
-dualistic propaganda than by any other ascribed to him.
-
-It was the birth of a new God that moved Jerusalem: a unique God
-in Judea--and almost unknown in modern Christendom--namely, a GOOD
-God. As the Arabian gospel significantly relates, the Eastern Wise
-Men came to the cradle of Jesus as that of a saviour "prophesied
-by Zoroaster,"--the one prophet who separated deity from the realm
-of evil.
-
-It is now even unorthodox to deny that the agonies of nature are part
-of the providence of God: but herein orthodoxy is in direct antagonism
-to what it maintains as the authentic teaching of Jesus. "Then was
-brought unto him one possessed of a devil, blind and dumb; and he
-healed him, insomuch that the dumb man spake and saw. And all the
-multitudes were amazed and said, Is this the Son of David? But when
-the Pharisees heard it, they said, This man doth not cast out devils
-but by Beelzebub, the prince of devils. And knowing their thoughts he
-said, Every dominion divided against itself is brought to desolation;
-and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand; and
-if Satan casteth out Satan, he is divided against himself: how then
-shall his dominion stand?"
-
-Those therefore who believe these to be the words of Jesus, and yet
-believe blindness, dumbness, and other physical diseases to be in
-any sense of divine providence or even permission, are believing in
-a God whom Jesus implicitly pronounced to be Satan.
-
-And those who do not believe that Jesus healed such diseases, nor
-believe in a personal Satan, may still regard the above legend as
-characteristic. The separation of Good and Evil into eternally
-antagonistic dominions could not have been affirmed by any Jew
-other than Jesus (or John the Baptist, probably however an Oriental
-dervish). Though the Jews popularly believed in Beelzebub and other
-devils, they were all regarded as under the omnipotence and control
-of Jahveh, who proudly claimed that he was the creator of all evil,
-and who even had lying spirits in his employ.
-
-Whether Jesus believed in the personality of the evil principle, in
-any strict sense, may be questioned. He may have meant no more than
-Emerson, who pictured ill health as a ghoul preying on the heart and
-life of its victims. Memories of similar teachings may have given
-rise to the tales of healing afterwards associated with Jesus. But
-the personality of evil is a more philosophical generalization than
-the personification of a power representing both the good and the
-evil phenomena of nature. Evil acts in concrete forms, and often
-in combinations of forces which can not be analysed and distributed
-into particular causes. History records instances of moral epidemics
-driving whole peoples as if down a steep place into seas of blood,
-as if by some pandemoniac possession, impressing the ordinarily humane
-along with the vindictive, the lawless and destructive. A great deal
-of crime seems disinterested, and still more is due to the fanatical
-inspiration of cruel deities, whose names become in other religions
-the names of devils. Out of manifold experiences in the tragical
-annals of mankind came the terrible Ahriman.
-
-That Jesus did not adopt the Zoroastrian theology is shown in his
-hostility to sacrifices which are of vital importance in the Parsî
-system, though they were not of the cruel kind; nor, as we have
-seen, were they to propitiate gods, but to assist them. Moreover,
-belief in Ahriman had naturally evoked a militant spirit in the war
-against evil, and Jesus seems to have for this reason separated himself
-from the dervish, John the Baptist, whose violence had landed him in
-prison. The incident (Matt. xi.) is so wrapped in post-resurrectional
-phraseology that any rational interpretation must be conjectural;
-but there is a certain accent about it which can hardly be explained
-as part of the evangelical doctrine that the Baptist was a mere
-preface to Christ. Jesus seems to regard John the Baptizer as the
-ablest man of his time (verse 11), but as of a revolutionary spirit,
-as if the reformation were a siege against some political kingdom or
-throne. Violent people had been pressing around John, and the cause of
-spiritual liberation had suffered. There was too much of the old law
-with its thunders, too much of fiery Elijah, surviving in John. The
-ideal is not a thing to be clutched at, or taken by force, but all
-of the conditions--every tittle--must be fulfilled. (Luke xvi. 17.)
-
-This is in substance a doctrine of evolution as opposed to revolution,
-and my interpretation may be suspected of rationalistic anachronism;
-but it must be remembered that the Golden Age behind Israel was an
-epoch of Peace, which was represented in the ancient name of their
-city (Salem), and of its greatest monarch, Solomon. The prophets had
-long been painting the visionary dawn with pigments of that glorious
-sunset. Solomon, true to his name, had allowed dismemberment of his
-kingdom rather than go to war against rebellion; and it is noticeable
-that in the apostolic age there was a principle against carnal
-weapons, the Epistle to the Hebrews (xii. 3, 4) especially reminding
-the brethren of the patient endurance of Jesus, and commending their
-not having "resisted unto blood." This peacefulness of Jesus had indeed
-become a basis of the doctrine that the triumph of Jesus over Satan was
-conditioned on his not using any force, or other satanic weapon. Those
-who took to the sword would perish thereby--i. e., remain in sheol.
-
-But in a realm of practically oppressive and cruel superstitions,
-established and consecrated, an absolute appeal to the moral sentiment
-cannot escape being revolutionary. The American Anti-Slavery Society
-were non-resistants; their great leader, William Lloyd Garrison,
-thus apostrophised his "elder brother" of Jerusalem:
-
-"O Jesus! noblest of patriots, greatest of heroes, most glorious of
-all martyrs! Thine is the spirit of universal liberty and love--of
-uncompromising hostility to every form of injustice and wrong. But not
-with weapons of death dost thou assault thy enemies, that they may be
-vanquished or destroyed; for thou dost not wrestle against flesh and
-blood, but against 'principalities, against powers, against the rulers
-of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high
-places'; therefore hast thou put on the whole armor of God, having
-the loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of
-righteousness, and thy feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of
-peace, and going forth to battle with the shield of faith, the helmet
-of salvation, the sword of the Spirit! Worthy of imitation art thou,
-in overcoming the evil that is in the world; for by the shedding of
-thine own blood, but not even the blood of thy bitterest foe, shalt
-thou at last obtain a universal victory."
-
-So, across the ages, does deep answer unto deep. But all the same
-Garrison's feet were unconsciously shod with the preparation of the
-gospel of war, even as those of Jesus were. In a realm of consecrated
-wrong every appeal to the moral sentiment is necessarily revolutionary;
-far more so than physical rebellion, against which preponderant moral
-forces combine with the immoral, as being a greater evil than the
-orderly wrong assailed. Satan cannot be cast out by Beelzebub. A
-god of wrath, enthroned on reeking altars, could better stand the
-axe of the Baptist than the sunbeam of Jesus, the arrow feathered
-with gentleness and culture. John the Baptist was not a religious
-martyr; he suffered from a ruler quite indifferent to his religion,
-with whose personal affairs he had interfered. But Jesus suffered
-because he proclaimed, with irresistible eloquence, a new religion,
-one involving practically the existing institutions of the priesthood,
-and their whole moral system. It was virtually the setting up of
-a new deity in place of Jahveh, reason in place of the Bible, the
-heart worshipping in spirit and in truth in place of the temple, and
-humanizing the moral sentiment--turning the conventional morality to
-"dead works" (Heb. vi. 1). He expected the reform to be peaceful!
-
-Rousseau's remark that Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus like
-a god, has in it a truth more important than those who often quote
-it recognise. Jesus died, legendarily, so much like a god that it is
-difficult to make out just what happened to the man. Strong arguments
-have been made to prove that he did not die at all on "the cross"
-(a word unknown to the New Testament), [56] and that Pilate not only
-"set himself" to save Jesus (John xix. 12), but succeeded. There may
-have been from the stake a despairing cry, afterwards shaped after a
-line from a psalm, but it can hardly be determined whether this may
-not have been part of the first post-resurrectional doctrine that the
-Son must be absolutely left by his divine Father, and pass unaided
-through the ordeal of Satan, in order to fulfil the conditions of a
-return from death. It is true, however, that this primitive idea had
-almost vanished when the earliest Gospel was written, and, although a
-relic of it may have been preserved by tradition, there is an equal
-probability that Jesus did utter at the stake a cry of despair. The
-whole miserable murderous affair, unforeseen and disappointing, must
-have appeared to him a horrible display of diabolism; and even after
-his friends believed in his resurrection, and saw in the tragedy
-a sacrifice, they regarded it a sacrifice hateful to his Father,
-and exacted only by the Devil.
-
-Did he pray, "Father forgive them, they know not what they do"? Only
-Luke reports this; its suppression by the other Gospels suggests
-that its doctrinal significance was perceived. I heard a preacher
-in the church of the Jesuits at Rome argue that Judas himself is
-now in Paradise, because Jesus thus prayed for those who slew him,
-and the prayer of the Son of God must have been answered. There is
-no apparent dogmatic purpose in this incident, and it may be true.
-
-The story of his confiding his mother to the disciple "whom he loved,"
-told only by John, is evidently meant to complete the assumption of a
-special favoritism towards that disciple, who is the type of the good
-Spirit on one side of Jesus in contrast with Judas, Satan's agent,
-on the other. The two are equally unhistorical and allegorical. John
-and Judas became the good and evil Wandering Jews of mediæval folklore.
-
-The first Solomon had perished as a teacher of wisdom when he was
-summoned from his tomb to utter the Jahvism of the "Wisdom of Solomon":
-the second and last Solomon was forever buried on the day when Mary
-Magdalene saw his apparition, and cried, "My master!" From that time
-may be dated the loss of the man Jesus, and restoration in Christ of
-the Jahvism whose burden the wise teacher had endeavored to lift from
-the heart and mind of the people. Vicisti Jahveh!
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX.
-
-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.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Solomon and Solomonic Literature, by 
-Moncure Daniel Conway
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Solomon and Solomonic Literature, by
-Moncure Daniel Conway
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: Solomon and Solomonic Literature
-
-Author: Moncure Daniel Conway
-
-Release Date: October 19, 2012 [EBook #41115]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOLOMON AND SOLOMONIC LITERATURE ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net/ for Project
-Gutenberg (This book was produced from scanned images of
-public domain material from the Google Print project.)
-
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-
-
-
-
-
-                                SOLOMON
-                                  AND
-                          SOLOMONIC LITERATURE
-
-                                   BY
-                         MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY
-
-
-
-                                CHICAGO
-                   THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
-            London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co., Ltd.
-                                  1899
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-                               INSCRIBED
-                         TO MY BROTHER OMARIANS
-                                 OF THE
-                           OMAR KHAYYAM CLUB
-                                 LONDON
-
-
-    "Seek the circle of the wise: flee a thousand leagues from men
-    without wit. If a wise man give thee poison, drink it without fear;
-    if a fool proffer an antidote, spill it on the ground."
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-                                                           Page
-    Preface                                                   v
-
-    CHAPTER I
-
-    Solomon                                                   1
-
-    CHAPTER II
-
-    The Judgment of Solomon                                  12
-
-    CHAPTER III
-
-    The Wives of Solomon                                     24
-
-    CHAPTER IV
-
-    Solomon's Idolatry                                       30
-
-    CHAPTER V
-
-    Solomon and the Satans                                   34
-
-    CHAPTER VI
-
-    Solomon in the Hexateuch                                 41
-
-    CHAPTER VII
-
-    Solomonic Antijahvism                                    51
-
-    CHAPTER VIII
-
-    The Book of Proverbs and the Avesta                      59
-
-    CHAPTER IX
-
-    The Song of Songs                                        89
-
-    CHAPTER X
-
-    Koheleth (Ecclesiastes)                                 104
-
-    CHAPTER XI
-
-    Wisdom (Ecclesiasticus)                                 111
-
-    CHAPTER XII
-
-    The Wisdom of Solomon                                   118
-
-    CHAPTER XIII
-
-    Epistle to the Hebrews (A Sequel to Sophia Solomontos)  129
-
-    CHAPTER XIV
-
-    Solomon Melchizedek                                     150
-
-    CHAPTER XV
-
-    The Pauline Dehumanization of Jesus                     164
-
-    CHAPTER XVI
-
-    The Mythological Mantle of Solomon Fallen on Jesus      176
-
-    CHAPTER XVII
-
-    The Heir of Solomon's Godhead                           194
-
-    CHAPTER XVIII
-
-    The Last Solomon                                        207
-
-    CHAPTER XIX
-
-    Postscripta                                             234
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE.
-
-
-An English lady of my acquaintance, sojourning at Baalbek, was
-conversing with an humble stonecutter, and pointing to the grand
-ruins inquired, "Why do you not occupy yourself with magnificent work
-like that?" "Ah," he said, "those edifices were built by no mortal,
-but by genii."
-
-These genii now represent the demons which in ancient legends were
-enslaved by the potency of Solomon's ring. Some of these folk-tales
-suggest the ingenuity of a fabulist. According to one, Solomon
-outwitted the devils even after his death, which occurred while he was
-leaning on his staff and superintending the reluctant labors of the
-demons on some sacred edifice. In that posture his form remained for
-a year after his death, and it was not until a worm gnawed the end
-of his staff, causing his body to fall, that the demons discovered
-their freedom.
-
-If this be a fable, a modern moral may be found by reversing the
-delusion. The general world has for ages been working on under the
-spell of Solomon while believing him to be dead. Solomon is very much
-alive. Many witnesses of his talismanic might can be summoned from
-the homes and schools wherein the rod is not spared, however much
-it spoils the child, and where youth's "flower of age" bleaches in a
-puritan cell because the "wisest of men" is supposed to have testified
-that all earth's pleasures are vanity. And how many parents are in
-their turn feeling the recoil of the rod, and live to deplore the
-intemperate thirst for "vanities" stimulated in homes overshadowed by
-the fear-of-God wisdom for which Solomon is also held responsible? On
-the other hand, what parson has not felt the rod bequeathed to the
-sceptic by the king whom Biblical authority pronounces at once the
-worldliest and the wisest of mankind?
-
-More imposing, if not more significant, are certain picturesque
-phenomena which to-day represent the bifold evolution of the Solomonic
-legend. While in various parts of Europe "Solomon's Seal," survival
-from his magic ring, is the token of conjuring and fortune-telling
-impostors, the knightly Order of Solomon's Seal in Abyssinia has been
-raised to moral dignity by an emperor (Menelik) who has given European
-monarchs a lesson in magnanimity and gallantry by presenting to a
-"Queen of the South" (Margharita), on her birthday, release of the
-captives who had invaded his country. While this is the tradition
-of nobility which has accompanied that of lineal descent from the
-Wise Man, his name lingers in the rest of Christendom in proverbial
-connexion with any kind of sagacity, while as a Biblical personality
-he is virtually suppressed.
-
-In one line of evolution,--whose historic factors have been Jahvism,
-Pharisaism, and Puritanism,--Solomon has been made the Adam of
-a second fall. His Eves gave him the fruit that was pleasant and
-desirable to make one wise, and he did eat. Jahveh retracts his
-compliments to Solomon, and makes the naive admission that deity
-itself cannot endow a man with the wisdom that can ensure orthodoxy,
-or with knowledge impregnable by feminine charms (Nehemiah xiii.);
-and from that time Solomon disappears from canonical Hebrew books
-except those ascribed to his own authorship.
-
-That some writings attributed to Solomon,--especially the "Song of
-Songs" and "Koheleth" (Ecclesiastes),--were included in the canon,
-may be ascribed to a superstitious fear of suppressing utterances
-of a supernatural wisdom, set as an oracle in the king and never
-revoked. This view is confirmed and illustrated in several further
-pages, but it may be added here that the very idolatries and alleged
-sins of Solomon led to the detachment from his personal self of his
-divinely-conferred Wisdom, and her personification as something apart
-from him in various avatars (preserving his glory while disguising
-his name), an evolution culminating in ideals and creeds that have
-largely moulded Christendom.
-
-The two streams of evolution here suggested, one issuing from
-the wisdom books, the other from the law books, are traceable
-in their collisions, their periods of parallelism, and their
-convergence,--where, however, their respective inspirations continue
-distinguishable, like the waters of the Missouri and the Mississippi
-after they flow between the same banks.
-
-The present essays by no means claim to have fully traced these lines
-of evolution, but aim at their indication. The only critique to which
-it pretends is literary. The studies and experiences of many years
-have left me without any bias concerning the contents of the Bible, or
-any belief, ethical or religious, that can be affected by the fate of
-any scripture under the higher or other criticism. But my interest in
-Biblical literature has increased with the perception of its composite
-character ethnically. I believe that I have made a few discoveries in
-it; and a volume adopted as an educational text-book requires every ray
-of light which any man feels able to contribute to its interpretation.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-SOLOMONIC LITERATURE.
-
-
-CHAPTER I.
-
-SOLOMON.
-
-
-There is a vast Solomon mythology: in Palestine, Abyssinia, Arabia,
-Persia, India, and Europe, the myths and legends concerning the
-traditional Wisest Man are various, and merit a comparative study they
-have not received. As the name Solomon seems to be allegorical, it is
-not possible to discover whether he is mentioned in any contemporary
-inscription by a real name, and the external and historical data
-are insufficient to prove certainly that an individual Solomon ever
-existed. [1] But that a great personality now known under that name did
-exist, about three thousand years ago, will, I believe, be recognised
-by those who study the ancient literature relating to him. The
-earliest and most useful documents for such an investigation are:
-the first collection of Proverbs, x-xxii. 16; the second collection,
-xxv-xxix. 27; Psalms ii., xlv., lxxii., evidently Solomonic; 2 Samuel
-xii. 24, 25; and 1 Kings iv. 29-34.
-
-As, however, the object of this essay is not to prove the existence
-of Solomon, but to study the evolution of the human heart and mind
-under influences of which a peculiar series is historically associated
-with his name, he will be spoken of as a genuine figure, the reader
-being left to form his own conclusion as to whether he was such,
-if that incidental point interests him.
-
-The indirect intimations concerning Solomon in the Proverbs and
-Psalms may be better understood if we first consider the historical
-books which profess to give an account of his career. And the search
-naturally begins with the passage in the Book of Kings just referred
-to:
-
-
-    "And God gave Solomon wisdom and intelligence exceeding much,
-    and largeness of heart, even as the sand on the seashore. And
-    Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the
-    East, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men;
-    than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Calcol, and Darda, the
-    sons of Mahol; and his fame was in all the surrounding nations. He
-    spake three thousand parables, and his songs were a thousand
-    and five. He spake of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon to the
-    hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts,
-    birds, reptiles, fishes. And there came people of all countries to
-    hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth,
-    which had heard of his wisdom."
-
-
-This passage is Elohist: it is the Elohim--perhaps here the gods--who
-gave Solomon wisdom. The introduction of Jahveh as the giver, in
-the dramatic dream of Chapter iii., alters the nature of the gift,
-which from the Elohim is scientific and literary wisdom, but from
-Jahveh is political, related to government and judgment.
-
-As for Mahol and his four sons, the despair of Biblical historians,
-they are now witnesses that this passage was written when those
-men,--or perhaps masculine Muses,--were famous, though they are unknown
-within any period that can be called historical. As intimated, they may
-be figures from some vanished mythology Hebraised into Mahol (dance),
-Ethan (the imperishable), Heman (faithful), Calcol (sustenance),
-Darda (pearl of knowledge).
-
-In speaking of 1 Kings iv. 29-34 as substantially historical it is not
-meant, of course, that it is free from the extravagance characteristic
-of ancient annals, but that it is the nearest approach to Solomon's
-era in the so-called historical books, and, although the stage of
-idealisation has been reached, is free from the mythology which grew
-around the name of Solomon.
-
-But while we have thus only one small scrap of even quasi-historical
-writing that can be regarded as approaching Solomon's era, the
-traditions concerning him preserved in the Book of Kings yield
-much that is of value when comparatively studied with annals of the
-chroniclers, who modify, and in some cases omit, not to say suppress,
-the earlier record. Such modifications and omissions, while interesting
-indications of Jahvist influences, are also testimonies to the strength
-of the traditions they overlay. The pure and simple literary touchstone
-can alone be trusted amid such traditions; it alone can distinguish the
-narratives that have basis, that could not have been entirely invented.
-
-In the Book of Chronicles,--for the division into two books was by
-Christians, as also was the division of the Book of Kings,--we find
-an ecclesiastical work written after the captivity, but at different
-periods and by different hands; it is in the historic form, but really
-does not aim at history. The main purpose of the first chronicler is to
-establish certain genealogies and conquests related to the consecration
-of the house and lineage of David. Solomon's greatness and his building
-of the temple are here transferred as far as possible to David. [2]
-David captures from various countries the gold, silver, and brass,
-and dedicates them for use in the temple, which he plans in detail,
-but which Jahveh forbade him to build himself. The reason of this
-prohibition is far from clear to the first writer on the compilation,
-but apparently it was because David was not sufficiently highborn and
-renowned. "I took thee from the sheepcote," says Jahveh, but adds,
-"I will make thee a name like unto the name of the great ones that are
-in the earth;" also, says Jahveh, "I will subdue all thine enemies." So
-it is written in 1 Chronicles xvii., and it could hardly have been
-by the same hand that in xxii. wrote David's words to Solomon:
-
-
-    "It was in my heart to build an house to the name of Jahveh my
-    God; but the word of Jahveh came to me, saying: 'Thou shalt not
-    build an house unto my name, because thou hast shed much blood
-    upon the earth in my sight; behold a son shall be born unto thee
-    who shall be a man of rest, and I will give him rest from all his
-    enemies round about: for his name shall be Solomon [Peaceful],
-    and I will give peace and quietness unto Israel in his days:
-    he shall build an house for my name: and he shall be my son,
-    and I will be his father; and I will establish the throne of his
-    kingdom over Israel for ever.'"
-
-
-In Chapter xvii. Jahveh claims that it is he who has subdued and
-cut off David's enemies; his long speech is that of a war-god;
-but in the xxii. it is the God of Peace who speaks; and in harmony
-with this character all the bloodshed by which Solomon's succession
-was accompanied, as recorded in the Book of Kings, is suppressed,
-and he stands to the day of his death the Prince of Peace. To him
-(1 Chron. xxviii., xxix.) from the first all the other sons of David
-bow submissively, and the people by a solemn election confirm David's
-appointment and make Solomon their king.
-
-Thus, 1 Chron. xvii., which is identical with 2 Sam. vii., clearly
-represents a second Chronicler. The hand of the same writer is found
-in 1 Chron. xviii., xix., xx., and the chapters partly identical in 2
-Samuel, namely viii., x., xi.; the offence of David then being narrated
-in 2 Samuel xii. as the wrong done Uriah, whereas in 1 Chron. xxi. the
-sin is numbering Israel. The Chroniclers know nothing of the Uriah
-and Bathsheba story, but the onomatopoeists may take note of the fact
-that David's order was to number Israel "from Beer-sheba unto Dan."
-
-The first ten chapters of 2 Chronicles seem to represent a third
-chronicler. Here we find David in the background, and Solomon
-completely conventionalised, as the Peaceful Prince of the Golden
-Age. All is prosperity and happiness. Solomon even anticipates
-the silver millennium: "The king made silver to be in Jerusalem as
-stones." It is only when the fourth chronicler begins (2 Chron. x.),
-with the succession of Solomon's son Rehoboam, that we are told
-anything against Solomon. Then all Israel come to the new king,
-saying, "Thy father made our yoke grievous," and he answers, "My
-father chastised you with whips, but I with scorpions."
-
-All this is so inconsistent with the accounts in the earlier books
-of both David and Solomon, that it is charitable to believe that the
-third chronicler had never heard the ugly stories about these two
-canonised kings.
-
-In the First Book of Kings, Solomon is made king against the rightful
-heir, by an ingenious conspiracy between a wily prophet, Nathan, and
-a wily beauty, Bathsheba,--Solomon's mother, whom David had obtained
-by murdering her husband.
-
-It may be remembered here that David had by Bathsheba a son named
-Nathan (2 Sam. v. 14; 1 Chron. iii. 5), elder brother of Solomon,
-from whom Luke traces the genealogy of Joseph, father of Jesus,
-while Matthew traces it from Solomon. It appears curious that the
-prophet Nathan should have intrigued for the accession of the younger
-brother rather than the one bearing his own name. It will be seen,
-however, by reference to 2 Samuel xii. 24, that Solomon was the first
-legitimate child of David and Bathsheba, the son of their adultery
-having died. John Calvin having laid it down very positively that
-"if Jesus was not descended from Solomon, he was not the Christ,"
-some theologians have resorted to the hypothesis that Nathan married
-an ancestress of the Virgin Mary, and that Luke gives her descent,
-not that of Joseph; but apart from the fact that Luke (iii. 23)
-begins with Joseph, it is difficult to see how the requirement of
-Calvin, that Solomon should be the ancestor of Jesus, is met by his
-mother's descent from Solomon's brother. It is clear, however, from
-2 Sam. xii. 24, 25, that this elder brother of Solomon, Nathan, is a
-myth. Otherwise he, and not Solomon, was the lawful heir to the throne
-(legitimacy being confined to the sons of David born in Jerusalem),
-and Jesus would not have been "born King of the Jews" (Matt, i. 2),
-nor fulfilled the Messianic conditions. It is even possible that
-Luke wished to escape the implication of illegitimacy by tracing
-the descent of Jesus from Solomon's elder brother. But the writer
-of 1 Kings i. had no knowledge of the Christian discovery that, in
-the order of legal succession to the throne, the sons of David born
-before he reigned in Jerusalem were excluded. Adonijah's legal right
-of succession was not questioned by David (1 Kings i. 6).
-
-When David was in his dotage and near his end this eldest son (by
-Haggith), Adonijah, began to consult leading men about his accession,
-but unfortunately for himself, did not summon Nathan. This slighted
-"prophet" proposed to Bathsheba that she should go to David and tell
-him the falsehood that he (David) had once sworn before Jahveh that
-her son Solomon should reign; "and while you are talking," says
-Nathan, "I will enter and fulfil" (that was his significant word)
-"your declaration." The royal dotard could not gainsay two seemingly
-independent witnesses, and helplessly kept the alleged oath. David
-announced this oath as his reason,--apparently the only one,--for
-appointing Solomon. The prince may be credited with being too young
-to participate in this scheme.
-
-Irregularity of succession and of birth in princes appeals to
-popular superstition. The legal heir, regularly born, seems to
-come by mere human arrangement, but the God-appointed chieftain is
-expected in unexpected ways and in defiance of human laws and even
-moralities. David, or some one speaking for him, said, "In sin did
-my mother conceive me," and the contempt in which he was held by
-his father's other children, and his father's keeping him out of
-sight till the prophet demanded him (1 Sam. xvi. 11), look as if he,
-also, may have been illegitimate. Solomon may have been technically
-legitimate, but in any case he was the son of an immoral marriage,
-sealed by a husband's blood. The populace would easily see the divine
-hand in the elevation of this youth, who seems to have been himself
-impressed with the like superstition.
-
-Unfortunately, Solomon received his father's last injunctions as divine
-commands. At the very time when David is pictured by the Chronicler
-in such a saintly death-bed scene, parting so pathetically with his
-people, and giving such unctuous and virtuous last counsels to Solomon,
-he is shown by the historian of Kings pouring into his successor's ear
-the most treacherous and atrocious directions for the murder of certain
-persons; among others, of Shimei, whose life he had sworn should not
-be taken. Shimei had once called David what Jahveh also called him,
-a man of blood, but afterwards asked his forgiveness. Under a pretence
-of forgiveness, David nursed his vengeance through many years, and
-Shimei was now a white-haired man. David's last words addressed to
-Solomon were these:
-
-
-    "He (Shimei) came down to meet me at Jordan, and I sware to him by
-    Jahveh, saying, 'I will not put thee to death with the sword.' Now
-    therefore hold him not guiltless, for thou art a wise man, and
-    wilt know what thou oughtest to do unto him; and thou shalt bring
-    his hoar head down to the grave in blood."
-
-
-Such, according to an admiring annalist, were the last words uttered
-by David on earth. He died with a lie in his mouth (for he had sworn
-to Shimei, plainly, "Thy life shall not be taken"), and with murder
-(personal and vindictive) in his heart. The book opens with a record
-that they had tried to revive the aged king by bringing to him a
-beautiful damsel; but lust was gone; the only passion that survived
-even his lust, and could give one more glow to this "man of blood,"
-was vengeance. Two aged men were named by him for death at the hands of
-Solomon, who could not disobey, this being the last act of the forty
-years of reign of King David. His dying word was "blood." One would
-be glad to believe these things mythical, but they are contained in
-a record which says:
-
-
-    "David did that which was right in the sight of Jahveh and turned
-    not aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of
-    his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite."
-
-
-This traditional incident of getting Uriah slain in order to
-appropriate his wife, made a deep impression on the historian of
-Samuel, and suspicious pains are taken (2 Sam. xii.) to prove that the
-illegitimate son of David and Bathsheba was "struck by Jahveh" for his
-parents' sin, and that Solomon was born only after the marriage. Even
-if the youth was legitimate, the adherents of the king's eldest son,
-Adonijah, would not fail to recall the lust and murder from which
-Solomon sprang, though the populace might regard these as signs of
-Jahveh's favor. In the coronation ode (Psalm ii.) the young king is
-represented as if answering the Legitimists who spoke of his birth
-not only from an adulteress, but one with a foreign name:
-
-
-    "I will proclaim the decree:
-    The Lord said unto me, 'Thou art my son;
-    This day have I begotten thee.'"
-
-
-(It is probable that the name Jahveh was inserted in this song in
-place of Elohim, and in several other phrases there are indications
-that the original has been tampered with.) The lines--
-
-
-    "Kiss the son lest he be angry
-    And ye perish straightway."
-
-
-and others, may have originated the legendary particulars of plots
-caused by Solomon's accession, recorded in the Book of Kings, but
-at any rate the emphatic claim to his adoption by God as His son, by
-the anointing received at coronation, suggests some trouble arising
-out of his birth. There is also a confidence and enthusiasm in the
-language of the court laureate, as the writer of Psalm ii. appears
-to have been, which conveys an impression of popular sympathy.
-
-It is not improbable that the superstition about illegitimacy, as
-under some conditions a sign of a hero's heavenly origin, may have
-had some foundation in the facts of heredity. In times when love or
-even passion had little connexion with any marriage, and none with
-royal marriages, the offspring of an amour might naturally manifest
-more force of character than the legitimate, and the inherited sensual
-impulses, often displayed in noble energies, might prove of enormous
-importance in breaking down an old oppression continued by an automatic
-legitimacy of succession.
-
-In Talmudic books (Moed Katon, Vol. 9, col. 2, and Midrash Rabbah,
-ch. 15) it is related that when Solomon was conveying the ark into the
-temple, the doors shut themselves against him of their own accord. He
-recited twenty-four psalms, but they opened not. In vain he cried,
-"Lift up your heads, O ye gates!" But when he prayed, "O Lord God,
-turn not Thy face from Thine anointed; remember the mercies of David
-thy servant" (2 Chron. vi. 42), the gates flew open. "Then the enemies
-of David turned black in the face, for all knew that God had pardoned
-David's transgression with Bathsheba." This legend curiously ignores
-1 Chron. xxii., which shows that Jahveh had prearranged Solomon's
-birth and name, and had adopted him before birth. It is one of many
-rabbinical intimations that David, Bathsheba, Uriah, and Solomon, had
-become popular divinities,--much like Vulcan, Venus, Mars,--and as such
-relieved from moral obligations. Jewish theology had to accommodate
-itself ethically to this popular mythology, and did so by a theory
-of divine forgiveness; but really the position of Hebrew, as well as
-Christian, orthodoxy was that lustful David and Bathsheba were mere
-puppets in the divine plan, and their actions quite consistent with
-their being souls after Jahveh's own heart.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II.
-
-THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.
-
-
-It may occur to mythographers that I treat as historical narratives and
-names that cannot be taken so seriously; but in a study of primitive
-culture, fables become facts and evidences. A grand harvest awaits that
-master of mythology and folklore who shall bravely explore the legends
-of David and Solomon, but in the present essay mythical details can
-only be dealt with incidentally. Some of these may be considered at
-the outset.
-
-It is said in 1 Kings i.:
-
-
-    "Now King David was old and stricken in years; and they covered
-    him with clothes, but he gat no heat. Wherefore his servants said
-    unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin:
-    and let her stand before the king, and cherish him; and let her
-    lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat. So they
-    sought for a fair damsel throughout all the coasts of Israel, and
-    found Abishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king. And the
-    damsel was very fair; and she cherished the king and ministered
-    to him; but the king knew her not."
-
-
-That this story is characteristic of lustful David cannot blind us to
-the fact of its improbability. Whatever may be meant by "the coasts
-of Israel," the impression is conveyed of a long journey, and it
-is hardly credible that so much time should be taken for a moribund
-monarch. Many interpretations are possible of the name Abishag, but
-it is usually translated "Father (or source) of error." However this
-may be, the story bears a close resemblance to the search for a wife
-for Isaac. When Abraham sent out this commission he also "was old
-and well stricken in age," and of Rebekah it is said, "The damsel
-was very fair to look upon, a virgin, neither had any man known
-her." (Gen. xxiv.) Rebekah means "ensnarer," and Abishag "father
-(source) of error"; and both women cause trouble between two brothers.
-
-There is an Oriental accent about both of these stories. In ancient
-Indian literature there are several instances of servants sent out
-to search the world for a damsel fair and wise enough to wed the
-son and heir of some grand personage. Maya, the mother of Buddha,
-was sought for in the same way. This of itself is not enough to prove
-that the Biblical narratives in question are of Oriental origin, but
-there is a Tibetan tale which contains several details which seem to
-bear on this point. The tale is that of Visakha, and it is accessible
-to English readers in a translation by Schiefner and Ralston of the
-"Kah-Gyur." (Truebner's Oriental Series.)
-
-Visakha was the seventh son of Mrgadhara, prime minister of the
-king of Kosala. For this youth a bride was sought by a Brahman, who
-in the land of Champa found a beautiful maiden whose name was also
-Visakha. She was, with other girls, entering a park, where they all
-bathed in a tank,--her companions taking off their clothes, but Visakha
-lifting her dress by degrees as she entered the water. Besides showing
-decorum, this maiden conducted herself differently from the others
-in everything, some of her actions being mysterious. The Brahman,
-having contrived to meet her alone, questioned her concerning these
-peculiarities, for all of which she gave reasons implying exceptional
-wisdom and virtue. On his return the Brahman described this maiden
-to the prime minister, who set forth and asked her hand for his son,
-and she was brought to Kosala on a ship with great pomp. The maiden
-then for a long time gives evidence of extraordinary wisdom, one
-example being of special importance to our inquiry. She determines
-which of two women claiming a child is the real mother. The king and
-his ministers being unable to settle the dispute, Visakha said:
-
-
-    "Speak to the two women thus: 'As we do not know to which of
-    you two the boy belongs, let her who is the strongest take the
-    boy.' When each of them has taken hold of one of the boy's hands,
-    and he begins to cry out on account of the pain, the real mother
-    will let go, being full of compassion for him, and knowing that
-    if her child remains alive she will be able to see it again; but
-    the other, who has no compassion for him, will not let go. Then
-    beat her with a switch, and she will thereupon confess the truth
-    of the whole matter."
-
-
-In comparing this with the famous judgment of Solomon there appear
-some reasons for believing the Oriental tale to be the earlier. In
-the Biblical tale there is evidently a missing link. Why should the
-false mother, who had so desired the child, consent to have it cut
-in two? What motive could she have? But in the Tibetan tale one of
-the women is the wife, the other the concubine, of a householder. The
-wife bore him no child, and was jealous of the concubine on account of
-her babe. The concubine, feeling certain that the wife would kill the
-child, gave it to her, with her lord's approval; but after his death
-possession of the house had to follow motherhood of the child. If,
-however, the child were dead, the false claimant would be mistress of
-the house. Here, then, is a motive wanting in the story of Solomon,
-and suggesting that the latter is not the original.
-
-In the ancient "Mahosadha Jataka" the false claimant proves to be a
-Yakshini (a sort of siren and vampire) who wishes to eat the child. To
-Buddha himself is here ascribed the judgment, which is much the same
-as that of the "wise Champa maiden," Visakha. Here, also, is a motive
-for assenting to the child's death or injury which is lacking in the
-Biblical story.
-
-Here, then, we find in ancient Indian literature a tale which may be
-fairly regarded as the origin of the "Judgment of Solomon." And it
-belongs to a large number of Oriental tales in which the situations
-and accents of the Biblical narratives concerning David and Solomon
-often occur. There is a cave-born youth, Asuga, son of a Brahman and
-a bird-fairy, with a magic lute which accompanies his verses, and
-who dallies with Brahmadetta's wife. A king, enamored of a beautiful
-foreign woman beneath him in rank, obtains her by a promise that
-her son, if one is born, shall succeed him on the throne, to the
-exclusion of his existing heir by his wife of equal birth; but he
-permits arrangements for his elder son's succession to go on until
-induced by a threat of war from the new wife's father and country
-to fulfil his promise. A prime minister, Mahaushadha, travels, in
-disguise of a Brahman, in order to find a true wife; he meets with
-a witty maiden (Visakha), who directs him to her village by a road
-where he will see her naked at a bathing tank, though she had taken
-another road. This minister was, like David, lowly born; a "deity"
-revealed him to the king, as Jahveh revealed David to Samuel; he was
-a seventh minister, as David was a seventh son, and Solomon also.
-
-Although the number seven was sacred among the ancient Hebrews,
-it does not appear to have been connected by them with exceptional
-wisdom or occult powers in man or woman. The ideas in which such
-legends as "The Seven Wise Masters," "The Seven Sages," and the
-superstition about a seventh son's second-sight, originate, are
-traceable to ancient Indo-Iranian theosophy. It may be useful here
-to read the subjoined extract from Darmesteter's introduction to the
-"Vendidad." Having explained that the religion of the Persian Magi is
-derived from the same source as that of the Indian Rishis, that is,
-from the common forefathers of both Iranian and Indian, he says:
-
-
-    "The Indo-Iranian Asura (the supreme but not the only god) was
-    often conceived as sevenfold: by the play of certain mythical
-    formulae and the strength of certain mythical numbers, the ancestors
-    of the Indo-Iranians had been led to speak of seven worlds, and
-    the supreme god was often made sevenfold, as well as the worlds
-    over which he ruled. The names and the attributes of the seven
-    gods had not been as yet defined, nor could they be then; after
-    the separation of the two religions, these gods, named Aditya,
-    'the infinite ones,' in India, were by and by identified there
-    with the sun, and their number was afterward raised to twelve, to
-    correspond to the twelve aspects of the sun. In Persia, the seven
-    gods are known as Amesha Spentas, 'the undying and well-doing one';
-    they by and by, according to the new spirit that breathed in the
-    religion, received the names of the deified abstractions, Vohu-mano
-    (good thought), Asha Vahista (excellent holiness), Khshathra Vairya
-    (perfect sovereignty), Spenta Armaiti (divine piety), Haurvatat
-    and Ameretaot (health and immortality). The first of them all
-    was and remained Ahura Mazda; but whereas formerly he had been
-    only the first of them, he was now their father. 'I invoke the
-    glory of the Amesha Spentas, who all seven have one and the same
-    thinking, one and the same speaking, one and the same father and
-    lord, Ahura Mazda,'" (Yast xix. 16.) [3]
-
-
-In Persian religion the Seven are always wise and beneficent. The vast
-folklore derived from this Parsi religion included the Babylonian
-belief in seven powerful spirits, associated with the Pleiades,
-beneficent at certain seasons, but normally malevolent: they all
-move together, taking possession of human beings, as in the case of
-the seven demons cast out of Mary Magdalene. In Egypt the seven are
-always evil. But neither of these sevens are especially clever. In
-Buddhist legends they are not so carefully classified, the seventh
-son or daughter manifesting exceptional powers, sometimes of good,
-sometimes of evil, but they are usually referred to for this wit or
-wisdom. In the Davidian and Solomonic legends these notions are found
-as if merely adhering to some importation, and without any perception
-of the significance of the number seven. David is an eighth son in
-1 Sam. xvi. 10-13, but a seventh son in 1 Chron. ii. 16. Solomon is
-a tenth son in 1 Chron. iii. 1-6, but the seventh legitimate son
-in 2 Sam. xii. 24-25. The word Sheba means "the seven," but the
-early scribes appear to have understood it as shaba, "he swears,"
-as in Gen. xxi. 30-31, where after the seven ewe lambs have given
-the well its name, Beersheba, it is ascribed the significance of
-an oath. Bathsheba is commonly translated "Daughter of the Oath,"
-but there can be little doubt that the name means "Daughter of the
-Seven," and that it originated in the astute tricks by which that
-fair foreigner made herself queen-mother and her son king, above the
-lawful heir, whom she was instrumental (perhaps purposely) in getting
-out of the way by furthering his wishes.
-
-Moral obliquities are little considered in these fair favorites of
-translunary powers. Visakha, in one Buddhist tale, gets herself chosen
-by the Brahman as bride of a great man by her care to veil her charms
-at the bath; in another tale she attracts a prime minister in disguise,
-and becomes his wife, partly by laying aside all of her clothing at
-a bathing tank where she knows he will see her. Bathsheba's fame is
-similarly various. Her nudity and ready adultery with the king did
-not prevent her from passing into Talmudic tradition as "blessed among
-women," and to her was even ascribed the beautiful chapter of Proverbs
-(xxxi.) in praise of the virtuous wife! In the "Wisdom of Solomon"
-she is described as the "handmaiden" of the Lord in anticipation of
-the Christian ideal of immaculate womanhood.
-
-A similar development might no doubt be traced in the beautiful
-story of Vi[']s[=]akh[=]a of Shravasti, the most famous of the
-female lay-disciples of Buddha. The queries put to her by Buddha
-and her explanations of her petitions, which had appeared enigmatic,
-are related in Carus's Gospel of Buddha, and in form correspond with
-the very different questions and solutions that passed between the
-Brahman and the Tibetan Visakha, already mentioned. The name Visakha,
-from a Sanskrit root, meaning to divide, came to mean selection and
-intelligence, of all kinds, but in the matron of Shravasti wit becomes
-the genius of charity, and cleverness expands to enlightenment.
-
-The Queen of Sheba,--"Queen of the Seven,"--is a sister spirit of this
-lay-disciple. Whatever truth may underlie the legends of this lady,
-there is little doubt of her legendary relation to the Wise Women of
-Buddhist parables,--to Visakha of the sevenfold wisdom; and of her who
-decided between the rival claimants to the same child; to Ambapali,
-the courtesan, who journeyed to hear Buddha's wisdom and presented
-to him and his disciples her park and mansion; and to the Queen of
-Glory, whose story belongs "to a very early period in the history of
-Buddhism." Such is the opinion of Mr. Rhys Davids, whose translation of
-the Mahasudassana-Sutta, containing an account of the queen's visit to
-the King of Glory, in his Palace of Justice, attended by her fourfold
-army, may be read in Vol. XI., p. 276, of Sacred Books of the East.
-
-This exaltation of human knowledge and wisdom, travelling to find it,
-testing it with riddles and questions, belongs to the cult of the
-Magus and the Pundit.
-
-With reference to the seventh son Visakha (all-potential) and
-his all-wise bride Visakha, a notable parallelism is found in the
-substantial identity of "Solomon" and "the Shunnamite," on account
-of whom he slew his brother Adonijah. Shunnamite is equivalent to
-Shulamite, substantially the same as Solomon (peaceful), but here
-probably meaning that she was a "Solomoness," a very wise woman. That
-such was her reputation appears by the "Song of Songs."
-
-An equally striking comparison may be made between the naming of
-Solomon and the naming of Mahaushadha, the Tibetan "Solomon" already
-mentioned as having married a wise Visakha. Among the many proofs of
-wisdom given by this village-born youth was the discovery of the real
-husband of a woman claimed by two men. One of the men being much the
-weaker, there could be no such trial as that proposed in the child's
-case by Visakha. Mahaushadha questioned the two men as to what they
-had last eaten, then made them vomit, and so found out which had
-told the truth. Let us compare this Tibetan minister's birth with
-that of Solomon:
-
-
-    "When the boy came into the world and his birth-feast was
-    celebrated, the name of Mahaushadha (Great Remedy) was given
-    to him at the request of his mother, inasmuch as she, who
-    had long suffered from illness, and had been unable to obtain
-    relief from the time of the boy's conception, had been cured by
-    him." (Tib. Tales, p. 133)
-
-    "And Jahveh struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto David,
-    and ... on the seventh day [it was the seventh son] the child
-    died.... And David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went in unto
-    her, and lay with her; and she bare a son, and she called his name
-    Solomon. And Jahveh loved him; and he sent by the hand of Nathan
-    the prophet, and he called his name Jedidiah [Beloved of Jah]
-    for Jahveh's sake." (2 Sam. xii.)
-
-
-In the Revised Version "she called" is given in the margin as "another
-reading," but that it is the right reading appears by the context: it
-was she that was "comforted," and in her babe she found "rest"--which
-"Solomon" strictly means. Among the Hebrews the naming of a child
-was an act of authority, and it is difficult to believe that in any
-purely Hebrew narrative a woman would be described as setting aside
-the name given by Jahveh himself. But the high position of woman in
-the Iranian and the Buddhist religions is well known.
-
-In comparative studies the questions to be determined concerning
-parallel incidents are--whether they are trivial coincidences; whether
-they are not based in such universal beliefs or simple facts that they
-may have been of independent origin; whether the historic conditions of
-time and place admit of any supposed borrowing; if borrowing occurred,
-which is the original? With regard to the above parallelisms I submit
-that one of them, at least,--the Judgment of Solomon,--is neither
-trivial nor based in simple facts, and could not have originated
-independently of the Indian tale; that the others, though each, if it
-stood alone, might be a mere coincidence, are too numerous to be so
-explained; that the time and conditions which rendered it possible that
-the names of the apes and peacocks (1 Kings x. 22) imported by Solomon
-should be Indian proves the possibility of importations of tales from
-the same country. (See Rhys David's Buddhist Birth Stories, p. xlvii.)
-
-The question remaining to be determined--which region was the
-borrower--cannot be settled, in the present cases, by the relative
-antiquity of the books in which they are found; not only are the ages
-of all the books, Hebrew and Oriental, doubtful, but they are all
-largely made up of narratives long anterior to their compilation. The
-safest method, therefore, must be study of the intrinsic character
-of each narrative with a view to discovering the country to whose
-intellectual and social fauna and flora, so to say, it is most related,
-and which of the stories bears least of the faults incidental to
-translation. I have applied this touchstone to the above examples, and
-believe that the Oriental stories are the originals. The Judgment of
-Solomon appears to me to have lost an essential link, a motif, which
-it retains in Buddhist versions. And I do not believe that any Hebrew
-Bathsheba could have set aside a name given her child by a prophet,
-in the name of Jahveh, in order to celebrate by another name the
-"rest" she found from her sorrows.
-
-On the other hand, the borrowings by other countries from the legend
-of Solomon appear much more numerous. In some cases, as the legend
-of Jemshid, there appear to have been exchanges between the two great
-sages, but the Solomonic traditions seem preponderant in Vikramadatsya,
-the demon-commanding hero of India. Solomon became a proverb of wisdom
-and liberality in Abyssinia, Arabia, and Persia. Ideal Sulaimans and
-Solimas abound. Solomon has influenced the legends of many heroes,
-such as Haroun-Alraschid and Charlemagne, and I will even venture
-a suspicion that the fame, and perhaps the name, of Solon have been
-influenced by the legend of Solomon. Lexicographers give no account of
-Solon's name; he is assigned to a conjectural period before written
-Greek existed; his interviews with Croesus, given in Herodotus,
-are hopelessly unhistorical, and his moralisings to the rich man
-recall the book of Proverbs. The Solon of Plato's Critias is already a
-mythological voyager, a Sindebad-Solomon, and his romance of the lost
-Atlantis is like an idealised rumour of the Wise Man's Kingdom. Solon's
-"history" was developed by Plutarch, seven centuries after the era
-assigned to the sage, out of poetical fragments ascribed to him,
-and he is represented as a great trader and traveller in the regions
-associated with Solomon. It is doubtful whether this chief of the Seven
-Sages, whose Solomonic motto was "Know Thyself" (cf. Prov. xiv. 8),
-could he reappear, would know himself as historically costumed by
-writers in our era, from Plutarch to Grote.
-
-At any rate there is little doubt of a reference to the Seven Spentas
-or to the Seven Sages in Proverbs ix. 1:
-
-
-    "Wisdom hath builded her house,
-    She hath hewn out her seven pillars."
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III.
-
-THE WIVES OF SOLOMON.
-
-
-According to the first book of Kings, Solomon's half-brother, Adonijah,
-after the defeat of an alleged (perhaps mythical) effort to recover the
-throne of which he had been defrauded, submitted himself to Solomon. He
-had become enamored of the virgin who had been brought to the aged King
-David to try to revive some vitality in him; and he came to Bathsheba
-asking her to request her son the king to give him this damsel as
-his wife. Bathsheba proffered this "small petition" for Adonijah,
-but Solomon was enraged, and ironically suggested that she should
-ask the kingdom itself for Adonijah, whom he straightway ordered to
-execution. The immediate context indicates that Solomon suspected
-in this petition a plot against his throne. A royal father's harem
-was inherited by a royal son, and its possession is supposed to have
-involved certain rights of succession: this is the only interpretation
-I have ever heard of the extreme violence of Solomon. But I have never
-been satisfied with this explanation. Would Adonijah have requested, or
-Bathsheba asked as a "small" thing, a favor touching the king's tenure?
-
-The story as told in the Book of Kings appears diplomatic, and several
-details suggest that in some earlier legend the strife between the
-half-brothers had a more romantic relation to "Abishag the Shunammite,"
-who is described as "very fair."
-
-Abishag is interpreted as meaning "father of error," and though that
-translation is of doubtful accuracy, its persistence indicates the
-place occupied by her in early tradition. According to Yalkut Reubeni
-the soul of Eve transmigrated into her. She caused trouble between
-the brothers, whose Jahvist names, Adonijah and Jedidiah,--strength of
-Jah, and love of Jah,--seem to have been at some time related. However
-this may be, the fair Shunammite, as represented in the Shulamite of
-the Song of Songs, fills pretty closely the outlines set forth in the
-famous epithalamium (Psalm xlv.) which all critics, I believe, refer
-to Solomon's marriage with a bride brought from some far country. I
-quote (with a few alterations hereafter discussed) the late Professor
-Newman's translation, in which it will be seen that several lines are
-applicable to the Shunammite, whose humble position is alluded to,
-separated from her "people," and her "father's house":
-
-
-   "My heart boils up with goodly matter.
-    I ponder; and my verse concerns the King.
-    Let my tongue be a ready writer's pen.
-
-   "Fairer art thou than all the sons of men.
-    Over thy lips delightsomeness is poured:
-    Therefore hath God forever blessed thee.
-
-   "Gird at thy hip thy hero sword,
-    Thy glory and thy majesty:
-    And forth victorious ride majestic,
-    For truth and meekness, righteously;
-    And let thy right hand teach the wondrous deeds.
-    Beneath thy feet the peoples fall;
-    For in the heart of the king's enemies
-    Sharp are thy arrows.
-
-   "Thy throne, O God, ever and always stands;
-    A righteous sceptre is thy royal sceptre.
-    Thou lovest right and hatest evil;
-    Therefore, O God, thy God hath anointed thee
-    With oil of joy above thy fellow-kings.
-    Myrrh, aloes, cassia, all thy raiment is.
-    From ivory palaces the viols gladden thee.
-    King's daughters count among thy favorites;
-    And at thy right hand stands the Queen
-        In Gold of Ophir.
-
-   "O daughter, hark! behold and bend thy ear:
-    Forget thy people and thy father's house.
-    Win thou the King thy beauty to desire;
-    He is thy lord; do homage unto him.
-    So Tyrus's daughter and the sons of wealth
-        With gifts shall court thee.
-
-   "Right glorious is the royal damsel;
-    Wrought of gold is her apparel.
-    In broidered tissues to the King she is led:
-    Her maiden-friends, behind, are brought to thee.
-    They come with joy and gladness,
-    They enter the royal palace.
-
-   "Thy fathers by their sons shall be replaced;
-    As princes o'er the land shalt thou exalt them.
-    So will I publish to all times thy name;
-    So shall the nations praise thee, now and always."
-
-
-In this epithalamium the name of Jahveh does not occur, and Solomon
-himself is twice addressed as God (Elohim). This lack of anticipation
-was avenged by Jahvism when it arrived; the Song was put among the
-Psalms and transmitted to British Jahvism, which has headed it:
-"The majesty and grace of Christ's kingdom. The duty of the Church
-and the benefits thereof." Such is the chapter-heading to a song
-of bridesmaids,--described in the original as "a song of loves" and
-"set to lilies" (a tune of the time).
-
-There are no indications in the Solomon legend, apart from some
-mistranslations, until the time of Ecclesiasticus (B. C. 180), that
-Solomon was a sensualist, or that there were any moral objections to
-the extent of his harem, which indeed is expanded by his historians
-with evident pride.
-
-As to this, our own monogamic ideas are quite inapplicable to a
-period when personal affection had nothing to do with marriage,
-when women had no means of independent subsistence, and the size of
-a man's harem was the measure of his benevolence. Probably there was
-then no place more enviable for a woman than Solomon's seraglio.
-
-The sin was not in the size of the seraglio but in its foreign and
-idolatrous wives. (Here our translators again get in an innuendo
-against Solomon by turning "foreign" into "strange women.") Before
-a religious notion can get itself fixed as law it is apt to be
-enforced by an extra amount of odium. Solomon's mother had married
-a Hittite, and presumably he would have imbibed liberal ideas on
-such subjects. The round number of a thousand ladies in his harem is
-unhistorical, but that the chief princesses were of Gentile origin
-and religion is clear. The second writer in the first Book of Kings
-begins (xi.) with this gravamen:
-
-
-   "Now King Solomon loved many foreign women besides the daughter of
-    Pharaoh,--Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Zidonian, and Hittite women,
-    nations concerning which Jahveh said to the children of Israel,
-    Ye shall not go among them, neither shall they come among you:
-    for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods:
-    Solomon clave to these in love."
-
-
-The wisest of men could hardly attend to rules which an unconceived
-Jahveh would lay down for an unborn nation centuries later. We
-must, however, as we are not on racial problems, consent to a few
-anachronisms in names if we are to discover any credible traditions
-in the Biblical books relating to Solomon. As Mr. Flinders Petrie
-has discovered something like the word "Israel" in ancient Egypt,
-it may be as well to use that word tentatively for the tribe we are
-considering. No Israelite, then, is mentioned among Solomon's wives,
-and one can hardly imagine such a man finding a bride among devotees
-of an altar of unhewn stones piled in a tent.
-
-As our cosmopolitan prince had to send abroad for workmen of skill,
-he may also have had to seek abroad for ladies accomplished enough
-to be his princesses. That, however, does not explain the number and
-variety of the countries from which the wives seem to have come. The
-theory of many scholars that this Prince of Peace substituted
-alliances by marriage for military conquests is confirmed in at
-least one instance. The mother of his only son, Rehoboam, was Naamah
-the Ammonitess (1 Kings xiv. 31), and the Septuagint preserves an
-addition to this verse that she was the "daughter of Ana, the son of
-Nahash,"--a king (Hanum) with whom David had waged furious war. The
-reference in the epithalamium (Psalms xlv.) to "Tyrus's daughter,"
-in connexion with 1 Kings v. 12, "there was peace between Hiram and
-Solomon," suggests that there also marriage was the peacemaker.
-
-The phrase in 1 Kings iii. 1, "Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh and
-took Pharaoh's daughter" suggests, though less clearly, that some
-feud may have been settled in that case also. That Solomon should
-have espoused as his first and pre-eminent queen the daughter of a
-Pharaoh is very picturesque if set beside the legend of the "Land of
-Bondage," but the narrative could hardly have been given without any
-allusion to bygones had the story in Exodus been known. Yet the words
-"made affinity" may refer to a racial feud in that direction. This
-princess brought as her dowry the important frontier city of Gezer,
-and her palace appears to have been the first fine edifice erected
-in Jerusalem.
-
-The commercial regime established by Solomon could hardly have been
-possible but for his intermarriages. Perhaps if the Christian ban
-had not been fixed against polygamy, and European princes had been
-permitted to marry in several countries, there might have been fewer
-wars, as well as fewer illicit connexions. The intermarriages of the
-large English royal family with most of the reigning houses of Europe,
-have been for many years a security of peace, and it is not improbable
-that our industrial and democratic age, wherein the working man's
-welfare depends on peace, may find in the undemocratic institution
-of royalty a certain utility in its power to be prolific in such ties
-of peace.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV.
-
-SOLOMON'S IDOLATRY.
-
-
-Bathsheba's function at Solomon's marriage is celebrated in the Song
-of Songs:
-
-
-   "Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold King Solomon,
-    With the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of
-    his espousals."
-
-
-Bathsheba, as we have seen, was said to have written Proverbs
-xxxi. as an admonition or reproof to her son on his betrothal with the
-daughter of Pharaoh. The words of David, "Send me Uriah the Hittite"
-(2 Sam. xi. 6), and the emphasis laid on Uriah's being a Hittite (a
-race with which intermarriage was prohibited, Deut. vii. 1-5) might
-have been meant as some legal excuse for David's conduct. He rescued
-Bathsheba, Hebraised (1 Chr. iii. 5), from unlawful wedlock, it might
-be said, and her exaltation in Talmudic tradition may have been meant
-to guard the purity of David's lineage. But the ascription to Bathsheba
-of especial opposition to her son's marriage with the daughter of
-Pharaoh indicates that the gravamen in Solomon's posthumous offence
-lay less in his intermarriage with foreigners than in building for
-them shrines of their several deities,--Istar, Chemosh, Milcom, and
-the rest. Against Pharaoh's daughter the Talmud manifests a special
-animus: she is said to have introduced to Solomon a thousand musical
-instruments, and taught him chants to the various idols. (Shabbath,
-56, col. 2.)
-
-There is a bit of Solomonic folklore according to which the Devil
-tempted him with a taunt that he would be but an ordinary person
-but for his magic ring, in which lay all his wisdom. Solomon being
-piqued into a denial, was challenged to remove his ring, but no
-sooner had he done so than the Devil seized it, and, having by its
-might metamorphosed the king beyond recognition, himself assumed
-the appearance of Solomon and for some time resided in the royal
-seraglio. The more familiar legend is that Solomon was cajoled into
-parting with his signet ring by a promise of the demon to reveal
-to him the secret of demonic superiority over man in power. Having
-transformed Solomon and transported him four hundred miles away,
-the demon (Asmodeus) threw the ring into the sea. Solomon, after long
-vagrancy, became the cook of the king of Ammon (Ano Hanun), with whose
-daughter, Naamah, he eloped. [4] One day in dressing a fish for dinner
-Naamah found in it the signet ring which Asmodeus had thrown into the
-sea, and Solomon thus recovered his palace and harem from the demon.
-
-The connexion of this fish-and-ring legend,--known in several versions,
-from the Ring of Polycrates (Herodotus III.) to the heraldic legend
-of Glasgow,--with the Solomonic demonology, looks as if it may once
-have been part of a theory that the idolatrous shrines were built for
-the princesses while the Devil was personating their lord. In truth,
-however, all of these animadversions belong to a comparatively late
-period. Many struggles had to precede even the recognition of the
-idolatrous character of the shrines, and to the last the Jews were
-generally proud of the "graven images" in their temple,--including
-brazen reproductions of the terrible Golden Calf. At the same time
-there were no doubt some old priests and soothsayers to whom these
-new-fangled things were injurious and odious, and superstitious
-people enough to cling to their ancient unhewn altar rather than to
-the brilliant cherubim, just as in Catholic countries the devotees
-cannot be drawn from their age-blackened Madonnas and time-stained
-crucifixes by the most attractive works of modern art.
-
-Although there is no evidence that the God of Israel was known under
-the name of either Jah or Jahveh in Solomon's time, there is little
-doubt that the rudimentary forces of Jahvism were felt in the Solomonic
-age. The furious prophetic denunciations of the wise and learned which
-echoed on through the centuries, and made the burden of St. Paul,
-indicate that there was from the first much superstition among the
-peasantry, which might easily in times of distress be fanned into
-fanaticism. The special denunciation of Solomon by Jahveh, and his
-suppression during the prophetic age, could hardly have been possible
-but for some extreme defiance on his part of the primitive priesthood
-and the soothsayers. The temple was dedicated by the king himself
-without the help of any priest, and the monopoly of the prophet was
-taken away by the establishment of an oracle in the temple. And the
-worst was that these things indicated a genuine liberation of the king,
-intellectually, from the superstitions out of which Jahvism grew. This
-was especially proved by his disregard of the sanctuary claimed by
-the murderer Joab, who had laid hold of the horns of the altar. The
-altar was the precinct of deity, and beyond the jurisdiction of civil
-or military authority; yet when the "man of blood" refused to leave
-the altar our royal forerunner of Erastus compelled the reluctant
-executioner to slay him at the altar,--even the sacred altar of
-unhewn stone. As no thunderbolt fell from heaven on the king for this
-sacrilege, the act could not fail to be a thunderbolt from earth
-striking the phantasmal heaven of the priest. The Judgment Day for
-settlement of such accounts was not yet invented, and injuries of
-the gods were left to the vengeance of their priests and prophets.
-
-There is an unconscious humour in the solemn reading by English
-clergymen of Jahvist rebukes of Solomon for his tolerance towards
-idolatry, at a time when the Queen of England and Empress of India is
-protecting temples and idols throughout her realm, and has just rebuilt
-the ancient temple of Buddha at Gaya; while the sacred laws of Brahman,
-Buddhist, Parsee, Moslem, are used in English courts of justice. If
-any modern Josiah should insult a shrine of Vishnu, or of any Hindu
-deity, he would have to study his exemplar inside a British prison.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V.
-
-SOLOMON AND THE SATANS.
-
-
-When Solomon ascended the throne, Jerusalem must have been a wretched
-place, without any art or architecture, with a swarming mongrel
-population, mainly of paupers. The holy ark was kept in a tent, and
-the altar of unhewn stone accurately symbolised the rude condition of
-the people, among whom Solomon could find no workmen of skill enough
-to build a temple. It is not easy to forgive him for compelling a
-good many of them into the public works; but it was probably no more
-than a national conscription of the unemployed paupers in Jerusalem,
-chiefly on fortifications for their own defence. There was apparently
-no slave-mart, and it seems rather better to conscript people for
-public industries than, in our modern way, for cutting their neighbors'
-throats. Most of them were the remnants of tribes that once occupied
-the region, much despised by the Israelites, and probably they looked
-on Solomon's plan of building Jerusalem into a city of magnificence,
-giving everybody employment and support, as a grand socialistic
-movement. An Ephraimite, Jeroboam, who tried to get up a revolt in
-Jerusalem does not seem to have found any adherents. The only people
-who complained of any yoke--and their complaint is only heard of after
-some centuries--were the priest-ridden and prophet-ridden Israelites
-who had become fanatically excited about the strange shrines built for
-the king's foreign wives, and the splendid carvings and forms in the
-temple itself. Probably the first two commandments in the decalogue
-were put there with special reference to some Solomonic cult with an
-aesthetic taste for graven images and foreign shrines.
-
-There can be little doubt that Solomon, by his patronage of these
-foreign religions, detached them from the cruel rites traditionally
-associated with them. Among all the censures pronounced against
-him none attributes to him any human sacrifices, though such are
-ascribed to David and Samuel, (1 Sam. xv. 33, 2 Sam. xxi. 9). The
-earliest rebukes of sacrifice in the Bible are those attributed
-to Solomon. "To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the
-Lord than sacrifice" (Prov. xxi. 3). "By mercy and truth iniquity
-is atoned for" (Prov. xvi. 6). "Mercy and truth preserve the king;
-he upholdeth his throne by mercy" (Prov. xx. 28). "Deliver them that
-are carried away to death: those that are ready to be slain forbear
-not thou to save" (Prov. xxiv. 11). "Love covereth all transgressions"
-(Prov. x. 12).
-
-Solomon may not indeed have written these and the many similar maxims
-ascribed to him, but they are among the most ancient sentences in the
-Bible, and they would not have been attributed to any man who had not
-left among the people a tradition of humanity and benevolence. Had
-the royal "idolator" or his wives stained their shrines with human
-blood the prophets would have been eager to declare it. Two acts of
-cruelty are ascribed to Solomon's youth, in the book of Kings: one of
-these, the execution of Shimei, carried out his father's order, but
-only after Shimei had been given fair warning with means of escape;
-while the other, the execution of Adonijah (Solomon's brother), if
-true, is too much wrapped up in obscurity to enable us to judge its
-motives; but it cannot be regarded as historical.
-
-The second historiographer of Kings, setting out to record Jahveh's
-anger about Solomon's foreign wives and shrines (1 Kings xi) says,
-with unconscious humour, that Jahveh raised Satan against him,--two
-Satans. One of these was Hadad, an Edomite, the other Rezon,
-a Syrian. The writer says that this was when Solomon was old, his
-wives having then turned away his heart after other gods. Fortunately,
-however, this writer has embodied in his record some items, evidently
-borrowed, which contradict his Jahvistic legend. One of these tells us
-that Hadad had been carried away from Edom to Egypt, when David and his
-Captain Joab massacred all the males in Edom; that he there married
-the sister of Pharaoh; and that he returned to his own country on
-hearing of the death of David and Joab. When this occurred, Solomon,
-so far from being old, was about eighteen. The Septuagint (Vatican
-MS.) says that Hadad "reigned in the land of Edom." We may conclude
-then that on the return of this heir to the throne Edom declared
-its independence, nor is there any indication that Solomon tried to
-prevent this. Another contradiction of this writer is a note inserted
-about Rezon the Syrian,--"He was an adversary of Israel all the days
-of Solomon." Not, therefore, a Satan raised up by Jahveh against
-Solomon when in old age he had turned to other gods. Rezon "reigned
-over Syria," and there is no indication of any expedition against him
-sent out by Solomon. Bishop Colenso (Pentateuch, Vol. III., p. 101),
-in referring to these points remarks that we do not read of a single
-warlike expedition undertaken by Solomon. [5]
-
-The remark (1 Kings xi.) about the Satans set against Solomon is more
-applicable to the Shiloh traitors, Ahijah and Jeroboam. Jeroboam,--a
-servant whom Solomon had raised to high office,--was instigated
-by Ahijah, a "prophet" neglected by Solomon, to his ungrateful
-treason. Ahijah pretended that he had a divine revelation that he
-(Jeroboam) was to succeed Solomon on account (of course!) of the king's
-shrines to Istar, Chemosh, and Milcom. If the narrative were really
-historic nothing could be more "Satanic" than the lies and treacheries
-related of those self-seekers. Were the story true, the failure of
-these divinely appointed "Satans" to overthrow the kingdom of Solomon,
-who did not arm against them, must have been due to his popularity. In
-after times this impunity of the glorious "idolator" would have to be
-explained; consequently we find Jahveh telling Solomon that, offended
-as he was by the shrines, he would spare him for his father's sake,
-but would rend the kingdom, save one tribe, from his (Solomon's)
-son. That this should be immediately followed by the raising up of
-"Satans" to harass Solomon and Israel, Jahveh having just said the
-trouble should be postponed till after the king's death, suggests that
-the whole account of these quarrels (1 Kings xi. 14-40) is a late
-interpolation. Up to that point the old record is unbroken. "He had
-peace on all sides round about him. And Judah and Israel dwelt safely,
-every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, from Dan to Beersheba,
-all the days of Solomon" (1 Kings iv. 24-25).
-
-Jahveh, in his personal interview with Solomon (1 Kings xi. 11-13),
-said, "I will surely rend the kingdom from thee and will give it
-to thy servant." That is, as explained by the "prophet" Ahijah,
-to Jeroboam. As a retribution and check on idolatry the selection,
-besides violating Jahveh's promise to David (1 Chron. xxii), was not
-successful: after the sundering of Israel and Judah into internecine
-kingdoms, Jeroboam, King of Israel, established idolatry more actively
-than either Solomon or his son Rehoboam. On Jeroboam, his selected
-Nemesis, Jahveh inflicted his characteristic punishment of visiting the
-sins of the fathers on the children; as David was left the seduced wife
-whose husband he had murdered, while his son was executed; as Solomon
-was left in peaceful enjoyment of his kingdom and none of the sinful
-shrines destroyed, while his son bore the penalty; so now Jeroboam,
-elect of Jahveh, built golden calves, surpassed Solomon's offences,
-and vengeance was taken on his son Abijah, who died. This Abijah left
-a son, Baasha, who, undeterred by these fatalities, continued the
-"idolatries" with impunity for the twenty-four years of his reign,
-the punishment falling on his son Elah, who was slain after only two
-years' reign by his military servant, Zimri. And this Zimri, who thus
-carried on Jahveh's decree against idolatry, himself continued "in the
-ways of Jeroboam," the shrines and idols themselves being meanwhile
-unvisited by any executioner or iconoclast until some centuries later.
-
-In Josiah there arrived a king, of the line of David, who might
-seem by his fury against idolatry to be another "man after God's
-own heart." He pulverised the images and the shrines, he "sacrificed
-the priests on their own altars," he even dug up the bones of those
-who had ministered at such altars and burnt them. He trusted Jahveh
-absolutely. He went to the prophetess, Hulda, who told him that he
-should be "gathered to his grave in peace." He was slain miserably,
-by the King of Egypt, to whom the country then became subject.
-
-Josephus ascribed the act of Josiah, in hurling himself against an
-army that was not attacking him, to fate. The fate was that Josiah,
-having exterminated the wizards and fortune-tellers, repaired to
-the only dangerous one among them, because she pretended to be a
-"prophetess," inspired by Jahveh. Her assurances led him to believe
-himself invulnerable, personally, and that in his life-time Jerusalem
-would not suffer the woes she predicted. Josiah, "of the house
-of David," seems to have thought that his zeal in destroying the
-shrines which his ancestor Solomon had introduced, mainly Egyptian,
-would be so grandly consummated if he could destroy a Pharaoh,
-that he insisted on a combat. Pharaoh-Necho sent an embassy to say
-that he was not his enemy, but on his way to fight the Assyrian:
-"God commanded me to hasten; forbear thou from opposing God, who is
-with me, that he destroy thee not." Here, however, was the fanatic's
-opportunity for an Armageddon: Pharaoh had appealed to what Solomon
-would have regarded as their common deity, but which to Josiah meant a
-chance to pit Jahveh against the God of Egypt. On Jahveh's invisible
-forces he must have depended for victory. So perished Josiah, and
-with him the independence of his country.
-
-Solomon, the Prince of Peace, had made the house of Pharaoh the
-ally of his country. Josiah carries his people back under Egyptian
-bondage. Solomon had built the metropolitan Temple, whose shrines,
-symbols, works of art, represented a catholicity to all races and
-religions,--peace on earth, good will to man. Josiah, panic-stricken
-about a holy book purporting to have been found in the Temple,
-concerning which the king by his counsellors consulted a female
-fortune-teller, makes a holocaust of all that Solomon had built up.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI.
-
-SOLOMON IN THE HEXATEUCH.
-
-
-"And when they brought out the money that was brought into the house of
-Jahveh, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of Jahveh given
-by Moses. And Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the scribe, I have
-found the book of the law in the house of Jahveh." (2 Chron. xxxiv. 14,
-15.) The Chronicler adds to the earlier account (2 Kings xxii. 8) the
-words "given by Moses," which looks as if the authenticity of the book
-(Deuteronomy) had not been without question. The finding of the Book
-is set forth in a sort of picture, wherein are grouped the priest,
-the theologian, the phantom prophet, the deity, the temple, and the
-contribution-box. Every part of the ecclesiastical machine is present.
-
-One is irresistibly reminded of the finding of the Book of Mormon by
-Joseph Smith, although it would be unfair to ascribe Deuteronomist
-atrocities to the revelations of the American phantom, Mormon. Nor is
-this a mere coincidence. There are lists of the early Mormons which
-show a large proportion of them to have borne Old Testament names,
-derived from Puritan ancestors. When Solomon set up his philosophic
-throne at Harvard University, and the parishes of the Pilgrims
-became Unitarian, and Boston became artistic, literary, and worldly,
-the Jahvists began to migrate, carrying with them their Sabbatarian
-Ark, in which so many frontier communities are imprisoned "unto this
-day." Some of them have become conquerors of Hawaiian "Canaanites,"
-appropriating their lands. But the Vermont Hilkiah, Joseph Smith,
-discerned that a new Deuteronomy was needed to deal with the many
-American sects, and was guided by an Angel of the Lord to a spot in
-Ontario County, New York, where the Book was found (1827), which
-he was enabled to translate by the aid of his "Urim and Thummim"
-spectacles, found beside the Book. In the Book were discussed the
-principles of all the sects, though not by name, as in Deuteronomy
-Moses is made to deal with the conditions which had arisen since
-the time of Solomon. Unfortunately for these American Jahvists, they
-had left the New English brains behind, with Channing and Emerson,
-and had not carried with them enough to produce a western Jeremiah
-to save their movement from ridicule and popular hatred.
-
-"Thy words were found and I did eat them," says Jeremiah
-(xv. 16). Whether, as some scholars think, Jeremiah had any part in
-the composition of the Book "found," or not, his rage attests the
-existence at the time of an important Solomonic School. "How say you,
-We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us? Behold the lying
-pen of the scribes has turned it to a fiction." (viii. 8.) "They are
-grown strong in the land but not for the faith." (ix. 3.) "Thus saith
-the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the
-mighty man glory in his might." (ix. 23.)
-
-The Deuteronomist especially aims at suppression of the Solomonic
-cult and regime. The law, not found in Exodus, against marriage with
-foreigners (Deut. vii. 3) is especially turned against Solomon's
-example by the addition that such a marriage will "turn away thy son
-from following me, that they may serve other gods." The wife, or other
-member of a man's family, who entices him to serve other gods, is to
-be stoned to death. (xiii. 6-11.) Moses is represented as anticipating
-the setting up of kings, and even the particular events of Solomon's
-reign. Solomon's "forty thousand stalls of horses" (1 Kings iv. 26),
-his horses brought out of Egypt (1 Kings x. 28), his wives, his silver
-and gold, are all foreseen by the ancient lawgiver, who provides that:
-"He [your king] shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the
-people to return to Egypt to the end that he should multiply horses
-... neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn
-not away; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and
-gold." (Deut. xvii. 16, 17.)
-
-This Deuteronomist Moses foresaw, too, that some check on the divine
-appointments to the throne would be needed. "Thou shalt in any wise
-set him king over thee whom thy God shall choose: one from among thy
-brethren shalt thou set over thee: thou mayest not put a foreigner
-over thee." As all of these commandments were received by Moses from
-Jahveh himself (Deut. vi. 1, and elsewhere), it is worthy of remark
-that there should be no trace of that anger with which Jahveh met the
-proposal for a monarchy: "they have rejected me, that I should not be
-king over them." (1 Sam. viii.) In 1776 Thomas Paine, in his Common
-Sense, used this scriptural denunciation of kings with much effect, and
-it no doubt contributed much to overthrow British monarchy in America.
-
-The special denunciations of sun-worship in Deuteronomy (iv. 19,
-xvii. 3) suggest a probability that Solomon's allusion to the sun,
-when dedicating the temple, may have been popularly associated with
-the punishable practice alluded to in Job xxxi. 26, of kissing the
-hand to the sun and moon. The words of Solomon are cancelled in the
-Massoretic text, and do not appear in any English version, but they
-are preserved by the LXX., and there declared to be in the book of
-Jasher. "They are," says Dr. Briggs, "recognised by the best modern
-critics as belonging to the original text [of 1 Kings viii. 12, 13]
-which then would read:
-
-
-   "The sun is known in the heavens,
-        But Jahveh said that he would dwell in thick darkness.
-        I have built up a house of habitation for thee,
-        A place for thee to dwell in forever.
-    Lo, is it not written in the book of Jasher?" [6]
-
-
-This suppression of the opening line of the Dedication, at cost
-of a grand poetic antithesis, reveals the hand of mere bigoted
-ignorance. How many other fine things have been eliminated, how
-many reduced to commonplaces, we know not, but the additions and
-interpolations in the Old Testament have been nearly all traced. Many
-of these are novelettes more prurient than the tales forbidden in
-families when found in the pages of Boccaccio and Balzac, and it is
-a notable evidence of the mere fetish that the Bible has become to
-most sects, that a chorus of abuse instead of welcome still meets the
-scholars who prove the quasi-spurious character of the most odious
-stories in Genesis.
-
-Bishop Colenso seems to have found in such tales only the work of a
-Jahvist with a taste for obscene details, but too little attention has
-been paid to the investigations of Bernstein, who discovers in many
-of these legends a late Ephraimic effort to blacken the character of
-the whole house and line of Judah. [7] Bernstein does not deal with
-the story of Adonijah and Jedidiah (Solomon), whose relative antiquity
-is shown, I think, in the fact that no shameful action is ascribed to
-the elder brother to account for the deprivation of his primogenitive
-right. After Solomon's accession, however, Adonijah proposed to marry
-the maiden Abishag, who technically belonged to his father's harem,
-and probably this tradition gave a cue to the inventor of the story
-of Absalom's having gone to his father's concubines in order to base
-on the act a claim to the kingdom while his father was yet alive.
-
-Absalom's shameful action is supposed to be a fulfilment of the
-sentence pronounced against David because of his crime against
-Uriah. A close examination of that passage (2 Sam. xii. 10-14) must
-suggest doubts about verses 11, 12, but at any rate the sentence is
-not fulfilled by Absalom's alleged act: David's "wives" were not
-taken away "before his eyes," and given "unto his neighbor," but
-some of his concubines were appropriated by his son. Absalom's act
-(2 Sam. xvi. 20-23) and that of David's consigning the concubines to
-perpetual isolation or imprisonment (2 Sam. xx. 3) are not alluded
-to in David's mourning for Absalom, nor in Joab's rebuke of this
-grief. In these strange incoherent items one seems to find the debris,
-so to say, of some masterly work, picturing a sort of Nemesis pursuing
-David and his family for the crime against Uriah. Ahithophel, who is
-described as "the word of God," was the grandfather of Bathsheba and
-the chief friend and counsellor of David, yet it was he who suddenly
-becomes a traitor to the King, foreshadowing Judas--as his sinister
-name ("brother of lies") implies--even to the extent of hanging
-himself. It was Bathsheba's grandfather who moved Absalom to dishonor
-his father's concubines. But were they only concubines in the original
-story, or were they David's wives, as predicted in the verses 11, 12
-(2 Sam. xii.) which seem misplaced and unfulfilled? It may have been
-that some of the details of the story were too gross for preservation,
-or too disgraceful to David, but I cannot think that we possess in its
-original form the tragedy suggested by the presence of an ancestor
-of seduced Bathsheba,--the sinister "word of God" Ahithophel,--and
-the death of the child of that adultery, the deflowering of Tamar,
-David's daughter, the disgrace and violent death of Amnon, Absalom,
-apparently of Daniel also, and finally of Adonijah. What became of
-the eight wives of David? Was that prediction ascribed to Nathan,
-of their defilement, without any corresponding narrative?
-
-In a previous chapter I have pointed out the improbability that the
-fatal wrath of Solomon against Adonijah could have been excited by
-his brother's proposal of honorable wedlock with the maiden Abishag,
-and conjectured that there may have been a story, now lost, of rivalry
-between the brothers for this "very fair" damsel. Whatever may have
-been the real history there is little doubt that there was substituted
-for it some real offence by Adonijah, perhaps such as that afterwards
-ascribed to Absalom. Bathsheba herself is here the Nemesis, as her
-grandfather is in the case of Absalom.
-
-It must be borne in mind that we are dealing with the age which
-produced the thrilling story of Joseph and his brothers, and Potiphar's
-wife, and the contrast with his chastity represented in the profligacy
-of Judah. Indications have been left in Gen. xxxv. at the end of
-verse 22 of the suppression of a story of Reuben and Bilhah, and no
-doubt there were other suppressions. How very bad the story of Reuben
-was we may judge, as Bernstein points out, by the severity of his
-condemnation by Jacob (Gen. xlix.) and by the shocking things about
-Judah (Gen. xxxviii.) allowed to remain in the text. In the latter
-chapter Bernstein finds the same personages,--David, Bathsheba,
-Solomon,--acting in a similar drama to that presented in the Samuel
-fragments, and under their disguises may perhaps be discovered some
-of the details suppressed in the Davidic records. Bernstein says:
-
-"In Genesis xxxviii. Judah, the fourth son of the patriarch, is shown
-in a light which is to lay bare the stain of his existence. Judah went
-to Adullam, where lived his friend 'Chirah.' He married a Canaanite,
-the daughter of Shuah. [8] His eldest son was called Er. He (Er) was
-displeasing in the eyes of Jahveh, therefore Jahveh slew him. His
-second son was called Onan: he died in consequence of his sexual
-sins. The third son's name was Shelah, and, as it is mysteriously
-stated after his name, 'he was at Chezib when his mother bare
-him.' Chezib is certainly the name of a place, and the addition may
-therefore signify that the mother had named the boy Shelah because the
-father happened to be in Chezib at the time, absent from home. Chezib
-has, however, a second meaning.... Chezib means 'deception, lie,' and
-is used by the prophet Micah in this sense (i. 4). Now as Shelah, in
-our narrative, serves to deceive Tamar's hopes, held out by Judah, the
-allusion to Chezib is appropriate. However this may be, Judah's sons
-are all represented as despicable. Even Judah himself fell into bad
-ways and was trapped into the snares laid by his daughter-in-law Tamar,
-who played the prostitute. Thus only did Judah found a generation,
-from which King David is said to descend, from a son of Judah called
-Paretz, meaning 'breaking through,' in which manner he is supposed
-to have behaved towards his brother at his birth.
-
-"Veiled as the libel is here, it becomes apparent as soon as we cast
-a glance upon David's family. The picture which this libel draws of
-Judah hits David himself sharply. The 'Canaanite'--namely, whom Judah
-marries [?]--is no other than the wife of Uriah the Hittite (murdered
-at David's command) whom David himself married adulterously. This
-wife of Judah is said to have been the daughter of a man named
-Shuah. Therefore she is a Bath-shua, and is thus called (verse
-12). But Bathshua is also Bathsheba herself, as one may conclude from 1
-Chron. iii. 5. The eldest son died, hateful in the sight of God, just
-like the first son of Bathsheba (2 Sam. xii. 15). The son of Judah is
-alleged to have been called Er; why? because reading it backwards
-(rea, wrong) it means 'bad,' 'wicked.' The second son is called Onan,
-and dies for sexual sins. He is no other than David's son Amnon, who
-meets his death on account of his sexual sins (2 Sam. xiii). The Tamar
-of Judah's story is the same as the Tamar dishonored by Amnon,--the
-daughter of David, who, in spite of her misfortune and her purity, is,
-to the entire ruin of her good name, humiliated to a person who plays
-the prostitute. And Shelah who does not die,--add to his name only the
-letter m, and you have Solomon."
-
-If in the light of these facts, which reveal the mythical character
-of some of the worst things told of Judah and David, the blessings
-of Jacob (Gen. xlix.) be carefully read, the blessing on Judah will
-be found rather equivocal. Colenso translates:
-
-
-   "A lion's whelp is Judah,
-    Ravaging the young of the suckling ewes."
-
-
-Is this couplet related to Nathan's parable of the rich man taking away
-the poor man's one little ewe lamb which smote the conscience of David?
-
-
-   "The staff shall not depart from Judah,
-    Nor the rod from between his feet
-    Until Shiloh come."
-
-
-Is this merely a device of the Ephraimite rebels, Jeroboamites,
-pretending to find in a patriarchal prophecy a prediction that Judah
-is to be superseded by the descendants of Joseph (on whom Jacob's
-encomiums and blessings are unstinted)? Shiloh was always their
-headquarters.
-
-It is probable, however, that there is here a play upon words. The
-words "Until Shiloh come" are rendered by some scholars "Till he
-(Judah) come to Shiloh," and interpreted as meaning "Till he come
-to rest." The Samaritan version ("donec veniat Pacificus") seems to
-identify Shiloh with Solomon. (Colenso, Pent. iii. p. 127.) But this
-is transparently Shelah over again. Shelomoh (Solomon), Shelah, and
-Shiloh are substantially of the same etymological significance. It
-will be observed that in Gen. xxxviii. Shelah is the only person
-whose character is not blackened. The Ephraimic poem, the "Blessings
-of Jacob,"--each blessing a vaticinium ex evento,--could well afford
-a half-disguised compliment to Solomon who had made no attempt to
-suppress the rebels of Shiloh,--the city of Abijah, who originated
-the Jeroboamic revolution which divided the Davidic kingdom. Jacob's
-blessing on Joseph is of course a blessing on Ephraim: it closes with
-a transfer of the crown (from Judah) to "him that is a prince among
-his brethren." This is "rest" from the arrows of David, this is the
-coming of Shiloh; it occurred under the reign of the Prince of Peace,
-Solomon, and it could not be undone by Solomon's son Rehoboam.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII.
-
-SOLOMONIC ANTIJAHVISM.
-
-
-The ferocities of Josiah and his Jahvists indicate the presence of
-an important Solomonist School. Their culture and tendencies are
-reflected, as we have seen, in the rage of prophets against them,
-and the continuance of their strength is shown in the preservation
-of Agur's Voltairian satire on Jahvism, and Job's avowed blasphemies:
-
-
-   "If indeed ye will glorify yourselves above me,
-    And prove me guilty of blasphemy--
-    Know then, that God hath wronged me!"
-
-
-This translation from Job, quoted from Professor Dillon, need only
-be compared with that of the authorised and the revised versions
-to show us the causa causans to-day which of old added four hundred
-interpolations to the Book of Job to soften its criticism.
-
-It appears strange, however, that Professor Dillon has not included
-among The Sceptics of the Old Testament three writers in the
-composite eighty-ninth Psalm, nor remarked its relation to the Book
-of Job. At the head of this wonderful composition the mythical wise
-man of 1 Kings iv. 31, Ethan, rises ("Maschil of Ethan the Ezrahite,"
-perhaps meaning Wisdom of the Everlasting Helper) to attest the divine
-mercies and faithfulness in all generations. This is in two verses,
-evidently ancient, which a later hand, apparently, has pointed with
-a specification of the covenant with David. After the "Selah" which
-ends these four verses come fourteen verses of sermonising upon them,
-in which nearly all of the points made by Job's "comforters" are put
-in a nutshell. The sons of God who presented themselves, Satan among
-them, in his council (Job i. 6) appear here also (Ps. lxxxix. 6):
-
-
-   "Who among the sons of the gods is like unto Jahveh,
-    A God very terrible in the council of the holy ones."
-
-
-After the mighty things that "Jah" had done to his enemies have been
-affirmed an Elohist takes up the burden and a "vision" like that of
-Eliphaz (Job iv. 13) is appealed to:
-
-
-   "Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy ones."
-
-
-The vision's revelation (Job v. 17) "Happy is the man whom God
-correcteth" is also in this psalm (32, 33): "Then will I visit their
-transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes, but
-my mercy will I not utterly take from him." And Eliphaz's assurance
-"thy seed will be great" (v. 25) corresponds with that in our psalm
-(verse 36), "His seed shall endure forever."
-
-When the psalmist of the vision has pictured, as if in dissolving
-views, the military renown of David, God's "servant," and his "horn,"
-pointing to Solomon, God's "first-born," the transgressions of the
-latter are intimated (30-33), but the seer continues to utter the
-divine promises:
-
-
-   "My covenant will I not break,
-    Nor alter the thing that has gone out of my lips.
-    One thing have I sworn by my holiness;
-    I will not lie unto David:
-    His seed shall endure forever,
-    And his throne as the sun before me;
-    As the moon which is established forever:
-    Faithful is the witness in the sky. Selah."
-
-
-Then breaks out the indignant accuser:
-
-
-   "But thou HAST cast off and rejected!
-    Thou hast been wroth with thine 'anointed';
-    Thou hast broken the covenant with thy 'servant,'
-    Thou hast profaned his crown to the very dust;
-    Thou hast broken down all his defences;
-    Thou hast brought his strongholds to ruin!
-    All the wayfarers that pass by despoil him;
-    He is become a reproach to his neighbors.
-    Thou hast exalted the right-hand of his adversaries,
-    Thou hast made all his enemies to rejoice.
-    Yea, thou turnest back the edge of his sword,
-    And hast not enabled him to stand in battle.
-    Thou hast made his brightness to cease,
-    And hurled his throne down to the ground.
-    The days of his youth thou hast shortened:
-    Thou hast covered him with shame! Selah."
-
-
-A sarcastic "Selah," or "so it is!"--if Eben Ezra's definition of
-Selah be correct.
-
-Then follow four verses by a more timid plaintiff, who, almost in the
-words of Job (e.g., x. 20), reminds Jahveh of the shortness of life,
-and the impossibility of any return from the grave, and asks how long
-he intends to wait before fulfilling his promises. He also supplies
-Koheleth with a text by the pessimistic exclamation, "For what vanity
-hast thou created all the children of men"!
-
-After this writer has sounded his "Selah," another rather more bitterly
-reminds Jahveh, in three verses, that not only his chosen people are
-in disgrace, but his own enemies are triumphant.
-
-(These two are much like the writer of Psalms xliv. 9-26, who almost
-repeats the points made by the above three remonstrants, and asks
-Jahveh, "Why sleepest thou?")
-
-Finally a Jahvist doxology, fainter than any appended to the other
-four books, completes this strange eighty-ninth psalm:
-
-
-   "Praised be Jahveh for evermore!
-    Amen, and Amen!"
-
-
-Great is Diana of the Ephesians! Or is this the half-sardonic
-submission of Job under the whirlwind-answer, which extorted from him
-no tribute except a virtual admission that when the ethical debate
-became a question of which could wield the loudest whirlwinds,
-he surrendered!
-
-In Job's case the only recantation is that of Jahveh himself, who
-admits (xlii. 7) that Job had all along spoken the right thing about
-him (Jahveh). The epilogue is a complete denial of Jahvist theology.
-
-Job's small voice of scepticism which followed the whirlwind was
-never silenced. The fragment of Agur (Proverbs xxx. 1-4) appears to
-have been written as the alternative reply of Job to Jahveh. Job had
-said, "I am vile, I will lay my hand upon my mouth, I have uttered
-that I understand not." Agur adds ironically, "I am more stupid
-than other men, in me is no human understanding nor yet the wisdom
-to comprehend the science of sacred things." Then quoting Jahveh's
-boast about distributing the wind (Job xxxviii. 24), about his "sons
-shouting for joy" (Ibid. 7), and giving the sea its garment of cloud
-(Ibid. 9), Agur, the "Hebrew Voltaire," as Professor Dillon aptly
-styles him, asks:
-
-
-   "Who has ascended into heaven and come down again?
-    Who can gather the wind in his fists?
-    Who can bind the seas in a garment?
-    Who can grasp all the ends of the earth?
-    Such an one I would question about God: 'What is his name?
-    And what the name of his sons, if thou knowest?'"
-
-
-The stupid Jahvist commentator who follows Agur (Proverbs xxx. 5-14)
-and in the same chapter interpolates 17 and 20, has the indirect value
-of rendering it probable that there were a great many "Agurites" (a
-"bad generation" he calls them) and that they were rather aristocratic
-and distrustful of the masses. This commentator, who cannot understand
-the Agur fragments, also shows us, side by side with the brilliant
-genius, lines revealing the mentally pauperised condition into which
-Jahvism must have fallen when such a writer was its champion.
-
-It is tolerably certain that such fragments as those of Agur imply a
-literary atmosphere, a cultured philosophic constituency, and a long
-precedent evolution of rationalism. Such peaks are not solitary, but
-rise from mountain ranges. Professor Dillon, whose admirable volume
-merits study, finds Buddhistic influence in Agur's fragments. [9]
-But I cannot find in them any trace of the recluse or of the mystic;
-he does not appear to be even an "agnostic," for when he says "I
-have worried myself about God and succeeded not," the vein is too
-satirical for a mind interested in theistic speculations. He is a man
-of the world,--more of a Goethe than a Voltaire; he regards Jahveh as
-a phantasm, is well domesticated in his planet, and does not moralise
-on the facts of nature in the Oriental any more than in the Pharisaic
-way. He appears to be a true Solomonic philosopher and naturalist. I
-cannot agree to Professor Dillon's omission of the "Four Cunning Ones"
-(Proverbs xxx. 24-28), because they are not of the same metrical form
-as the others, and lead "nowhither." The lines
-
-
-   "The ants are a people not strong,
-    Yet they provide their meat in the summer,"
-
-
-no doubt led to the famous parable of Proverbs vi. 6-11, "Go to the
-ant, thou sluggard." Being there imbedded in an otherwise commonplace
-editorial chapter, they may have been derived from some commentator
-on Agur.
-
-Agur apparently represents the Solomonic thinkers brought with
-the rest of the people under the trials that made Israel the Job
-of nations. They are such as those who led astonished Jeremiah to
-ask "what kind of wisdom is in them?" (Jeremiah viii.) They "do not
-recognise Jahveh's judgments"; in "shame, dismay, captivity, they have
-rejected Jahveh's word." The exquisite humor of Agur shows that these
-philosophers did not lose their serenity. Agur sees man passing his
-life between two insatiable daughters of the ghoul, "the Grave and
-the Womb,"--Birth and Death,--and amid the inevitable evils of life
-he will be wise to refrain from rage and lay his hand upon his lips.
-
-But silence was just what the Jahvist omniscients could not attain
-to. Notwithstanding Jahveh's confession that Job was right in his
-position, and the orthodox wrong in their theory that all evil is
-providential, the "comforters" rise again in the commentator who begins
-(Proverbs xxx. 5):
-
-
-   "Every word of God is perfected.
-    He is a shield to them that trust in Him,"
-
-
-and proceeds in verse 14 with his inanities. And these have prevailed
-ever since. Even Jesus, when he took up the burden of Wisdom, and
-rebuked the Jahvist superstition that those on whom a tower fell
-were subjects of a judgment, must have his stupid corrector to add,
-"Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish." This simpleton's
-superstition has taken the place of the great successor of Solomon,
-and to-day, amid all the learning of Christendom, is proclaiming
-that the Father is "permitting" all the Satans,--war, disease,
-earthquake, famine,--to harry his children just to test them or to
-chasten them. Why should omnipotence create a race requiring worse than
-inquisitorial tortures for its discipline? In all the literature of
-Christendom there is not one honest attempt to deal with the evils and
-agonies of nature; and at this moment we find theists apotheosizing the
-"Unknowable from which all things proceed," without any appreciation
-of the fact that in the remote past Jahvism sought the same refuge,
-and that it was proved by Job a refuge of fallacies. In an awakening
-moral and humane sentiment Job stands in this latter day upon the
-earth, and again steadily repeats his demand why one should respect
-an Unknowable from whom all things,--all horrors and agonies,--proceed.
-
-Ethically we are required to do no evil that good may come;
-theologically, to worship a deity who is doing just that all the
-time. This is no doubt a convenient doctrine for the Christian
-nations that wish to preserve their own property and peace at home,
-while acting as banditti in remote continents and islands. All such
-atrocities are enacted and adopted as part of the providential plan of
-spreading the Gospel, latterly "civilisation"; but it is very certain
-that there can be no such thing as national civilisation until evil is
-recognised as evil, good as good,--the one to be abhorred, the other
-loved,--and no deity respected whose government would wrong a worm.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII.
-
-THE BOOK OF PROVERBS AND THE AVESTA.
-
-
-The legend of the Queen of Sheba forms not only a poetic prologue
-to the epical tradition of Solomon's wisdom, but has a substantial
-connexion with the character of that wisdom, to whose final
-personification she contributed.
-
-The corresponding Oriental stories do not necessarily deprive this
-legend of historic basis, but point to the region of this "Queen
-of the Seven (Sheba)." Those Oriental pilgrimages of eminent women
-to great sages, however invested with magnificence, are natural;
-even such romances could not have been invented unless in accordance
-with the genius of the country in which they were written. There is
-no antecedent improbability that a queen, belonging to a region in
-which her sex enjoyed large freedom, should have made a journey to
-meet Solomon.
-
-The Abyssinians, who regard her as the founder of their dynasty, at the
-same time show how little characteristic of their country the legend
-was, by their ancient tradition, that it was the Queen of Sheba who
-provided that no woman should sit on the throne, forever! They claim
-that this Queen is referred to in Psalm xlv.--"At thy right hand
-doth stand the Queen, in gold of Ophir." This psalm is Solomonic,
-but the reference is no doubt to the Queen Mother, Bathsheba (whose
-throne was on his "right hand," 1 Kings ii. 19). Neither Naamah
-the Ammonitess, mother of Solomon's successor, nor the daughter of
-Pharaoh, who was his especially distinguished wife, is described as
-a queen,--this indeed not being a Jewish title for a king's wife. The
-psalm indicates much glory to be conferred on a woman by wedlock with
-Solomon, but not that he was to derive any honor from either or all of
-the "threescore queens" assigned him in later times (Cant. vi. 8). In
-another Solomonic Psalm (lxxii.) it is said:
-
-
-   "The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents:
-    The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts,
-    Yea, all kings shall fall down before him."
-
-
-No glory is here supposed to be derivable from a woman, and an inventor
-would probably have merely devised a saga on the last of the lines
-just quoted, which is adapted in 1 Kings iv. 34, to Solomon's wisdom,
-or he would have imagined some instance of a particularly illustrious
-monarch coming to pay homage to Solomon. That the only example
-particularized is that of a woman carries some signs of reality.
-
-Assuming that there was ever any King Solomon at all, this Psalm
-lxxii., whose Hebrew title is "Of Solomon," might have been written
-in the height of his reign. The title of "God" given him in Psalm
-xlv. is here approximated in the opening line, "Give the King thy
-judgments, O Elohim," and in the ascription to him of such virtues and
-such beneficent dominion, "from the river (Euphrates) to the ends of
-the earth," without any further reference to God, that an indignant
-Jahvist expands the doxology (18, 19) to include a reclamation for
-Jahveh. The ancient lyric closes with verse 17, which says of Solomon:
-
-
-    "His name shall endure forever;
-    His name shall have emanations as long as the sun;
-    Men shall bless themselves in him;
-    All nations shall call him The Happy."
-
-
-The Jahvist answers:
-
-
-   "Blessed be Jahveh Elohim, the Elohim of Israel,
-    Who alone doeth wondrous things,
-    And blessed be His glorious name forever;
-    And let the whole earth be filled with His glory.
-    Amen, and Amen."
-
-
-Now in this beautiful poem (omitting the doxology) the elation is
-especially concerning some connexion with Sheba. In verse 10 it is
-said "The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts"; in verse 15,
-"To him shall be given of the gold of Sheba." These lines might have
-been written on the announcement of a royal visit, or meeting, which
-had not mentioned a queen. But what country is indicated by Sheba (the
-Seven)? In India there are seven holy rivers, and seven holy Rishis,
-represented by the seven stars of the Great Bear. But these correspond
-with the Seven Rivers of Persia which enter into the Persian Gulf, in
-the Avesta called Satavaesa, a star-deity. In the Yir Yast 9 it is said:
-
-
-   "Satavaesa makes those waters flow down to the seven Karshvares of
-    the earth, and when he has arrived down there he stands, beautiful,
-    spreading ease and joy on the fertile countries, thinking in
-    himself, 'How shall the countries of the Aryas grow fertile?'"
-
-
-As there are seven heavens, there are seven earths (Karshvares),
-and these, as already shown (ante II.), are presided over by the
-"seven infinite ones" (Amesha-Spentas). Of these seven the first is
-Ahura Mazda himself, and of the others only one is female--Armaiti,
-genius of the earth. Of this wonderful and beautiful personification
-more must be said presently, but it may be said here that Armaiti
-was the spouse of Ahura Mazda, and Queen of the Seven,--the seven
-Ameshi-Spentas who preside respectively over the seven karshvares of
-the earth.
-
-The function of Armaiti being to win men from nomadic life and warfare,
-to foster peace and tillage, she was a type of "the eternal feminine";
-and such an ideal could hardly have been developed except in a region
-where women were held in great honour, nor could it fail to produce
-women worthy of honor. That such was the fact in Zoroastrian Persia
-is proved by many passages in the Avesta, wherein we find eminent
-women among the first disciples of Zoroaster. There is a litany to the
-Fravashis, or ever living and working spirits, of twenty-seven women,
-whose names are given in Favardin Yast (139-142). Among these was
-the Queen Hutaosa, converted by Zoroaster, the wife of King Vistaspa,
-the Constantine of Zoroastrianism. Hutaosa was naturally a visible and
-royal representative of Armaiti, "Queen of the Seven," a princess of
-peace, a patroness of culture, to be imitated by other Persian queens.
-
-That the sanctity of "seven" was impressed on all usages of life in
-Persia is shown in the story of Esther. King Ahasuerus feasts on the
-seventh day, has seven chamberlains, and consults the seven princes
-of Media and Persia ("wise men which knew the times"). When Esther
-finds favor of the King above all other maidens, as successor to
-deposed Vashti, she is at once given "the seven maidens, which were
-meet to be given her, out of the King's house; and he removed her
-and her maidens to the best place of the house of the women." Esther
-was thus a Queen of the Seven,--of Sheba, in Hebrew,--and although
-this was some centuries after Solomon's time, there is every reason
-to suppose that the Zoroastrian social usages in Persia prevailed
-in Solomon's time. At any rate we find in the ancient Psalm lxxii.,
-labeled "Of Solomon," Kings of Sheba (the Seven) mentioned along
-with the Euphrates, chief of the Seven Rivers (Zend Haptaheando); and
-remembering also the "sevens" of Esther, we may safely infer that a
-"Queen of Sheba" connoted a Persian or Median Queen.
-
-We may also fairly infer, from the emphasis laid on "sevens" in Esther,
-in connexion with her wit and wisdom, that a Queen of the Seven had
-come to mean a wise woman, whether of Jewish or Persian origin, a
-woman instructed among the Magi, and enjoying the freedom allowed by
-them to women. There is no geographical difficulty in supposing that a
-Persian queen like Hutaosa, a devotee of Armaiti (Queen of the Seven,
-genius of Peace and Agriculture), might not have heard of Salem, the
-City of Peace, of its king whose title was the Peaceful (Solomon),
-and visited that city,--though of course the location of the meeting
-may have been only a later tradition. [10]
-
-The object of the Queen's visit to Solomon was "to test him with hard
-questions" as to his wisdom. It was not to discover or pay court to his
-wisdom, though he received from her "of the gold of Sheba" spoken of
-in the psalm. As a royal missionary of the Magi her ability and title
-to prove Solomon's knowledge, and decide on it, are assumed in the
-narrative (1 Kings x.). Several sentences in her tribute to Solomon's
-"wisdom and goodness" recall passages in the Psalm (lxxii.). There is
-here an intimation of some prevailing belief that Solomon's wisdom
-was harmonious with the Zoroastrian wisdom. Whether the visit of
-the Queen be mythical or not, and even if both she and Solomon are
-regarded as mythical, the legend would none the less be an expression
-of a popular perception of elements not Jewish in Solomonic literature.
-
-Of course only Biblical mythology is here referred to. The Moslem
-mythology of Solomon and the Queen (Balkis) has taken from the
-Avesta Wise King Yima's potent ring, and his power over demons, and
-other fables, in most instances to be noted only as an unconscious
-recognition of a certain general accent common to the narratives of
-the two great kings. Yet it can hardly be said that the stories of Yima
-in the Avesta and of Solomon in the Bible are entirely independent of
-each other,--as in Yima's being given by the deity a sort of choice
-and selecting the political career, Ahura Mazda saying: "Since thou
-wanted not to be the preacher and the bearer of my law, then make thou
-my worlds thrive, make my worlds increase: undertake thou to nourish,
-to rule, and to watch over my world." Ahura Mazda requests Yima to
-build an enclosure for the preservation of the seeds of life (men,
-animals, and plants) during a succession of fatal winters, and some
-of the particulars resemble both the legend of the ark and that of
-building the temple. Yima was, like Solomon, a priest-king (he is also
-called "the good shepherd"); he was, like Solomon, beset by satans
-(daevas), and after a reign of fabulous prosperity he finally fell by
-uttering falsehood. What the falsehood was is told in the Bundahis:
-the good part of creation was ascribed to the evil creator.
-
-Several other heroes of the Avesta have assisted in the idealisation
-of Solomon, notably King Vistaspa, already mentioned. Like Solomon,
-he is famous for his horses and his wealth. Zoroaster exhorts him,
-"All night long address the heavenly Wisdom; all night long call for
-the Wisdom that will keep thee awake." From Zoroaster the "Young King"
-learned "how the worlds were arranged"; and he is advised "have no
-bad priests or unfriendly priests."
-
-It is now necessary to inquire whether there is anything corresponding
-to these facts in the ancient writings ascribed to Solomon. The
-lower criticism has little liking for Solomon, and makes but a feeble
-struggle for the genuineness of his canonical books against the higher
-criticism, which forbids us to assign any word to Solomon. But these
-higher critics acquired their learning while lower critics, and it
-is difficult to repress an occasional suspicion of the survival of
-an unconscious prejudice against the royal secularist, apparent in
-their unwillingness to admit any participation at all of Solomon in
-the wisdom books. Is this quite reasonable?
-
-It is of course clear that Solomon cannot be described as the author of
-any book or compilation that we now possess. But neither did Boccaccio
-write Shakespeare's "Cymbeline," nor Dryden's "Cymon and Iphigenia,"
-nor the apologue of the Ring in Lessing's "Nathan the Wise," nor
-Tennyson's "Falcon," all of which, however, are his tales. I select
-Boccaccio for the illustration because his defiance of "the moralities"
-led to his suppression in most European homes, thus facilitating the
-utilization of his ideas by others who derive credit from his genius,
-this being precisely what might be expected in the case of the great
-secularist of Jerusalem. For no one can carefully study the Book
-of Proverbs without perceiving that a large number of them never
-could have been popular proverbs, but are terse little essays and
-fables, some of them highly artistic, which indicate the presence
-at some remote epoch of a man of genius. And I cannot conceive any
-fair reason for setting aside the tradition of many centuries which
-steadily united the name of Solomon with much of this kind of writing,
-or for believing that every sentence he ever uttered or wrote is lost.
-
-It would require a separate work to pick out from the two Anthologies
-ascribed to Solomon (the First, Proverbs x. i-xxii. 16; the Second,
-xxv-xxix), the more elaborate thoughts, and piece together those that
-represent one mind, even were I competent for that work. But this
-fine task awaits some scholar, and, indeed, the whole Book of Proverbs
-needs a more thorough treatment in this direction than it has received.
-
-Of the last seven chapters of the Book of Proverbs, one (xxx.),
-containing the fragments of Agur and his angry antagonist, has been
-(vii.) considered. Chapters xxv., xxvi., xxvii., and xxxi. 10-31, may
-with but little elimination fairly come under their general heading,
-"These are also proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, King
-of Judah, copied out." Chapters xxviii. and xxix., with their flings
-at princes and wealth, contain many Jahvist insertions. The admirable
-verses in xxiv. 23-34, and those in xxxi. 10-29, 31, represent the
-high secular ethics of the Solomonic school.
-
-The verses last mentioned (exaltation of the virtuous woman) are,
-curiously enough, blended with "The words of King Lemuel, the oracle
-which his mother taught him." The ancient Rabbins identify Lemuel
-with Solomon, and relate that when, on the day of the dedication
-of the temple, he married Pharaoh's daughter, he drank too much at
-the wedding feast, and slept until the fourth hour of the next day,
-with the keys of the temple under his pillow. Whereupon his mother,
-Bathsheba, entered and reproved him with this oracle. Bathsheba's
-own amour with Solomon's father does not appear to have excited any
-rabbinical suspicion that the description of the virtuous wife with
-which the Book of Proverbs closes is hardly characteristic of the
-woman. She was the "Queen Mother," a part of the divine scheme, her
-conception of the builder of the temple immaculate, predetermined in
-the counsels of Jahveh.
-
-The first nine verses of this last chapter in the Book of Proverbs
-certainly appear as if written at a later day, perhaps even so late as
-the third century before our era, and aimed at the Jahvist tradition
-of Solomon. Lemuel seems to be allegorical, and we here have an
-early instance of the mysterious disinclination to mention the great
-King's name. His name, Renan assures us, is hidden under "Koheleth,"
-but he is not named in the text of that book or even in that of the
-"Wisdom of Solomon." In Ezra v. 11 the mention of the temple as the
-house "which a great king of Israel builded and finished" seems to
-indicate a purposed suppression of Solomon's name, which continued
-(Jeremiah lii. 20 is barely an exception) until this silence was
-broken by Jesus Ben Sira, and again by Jesus of Nazareth.
-
-The removal of verse 30 (Proverbs xxxi.), clearly a late Jahvist
-protest, leaves the praise of the virtuous woman with which the book
-closes without any suggestion of piety. Yet we find here that "her
-price is far above rubies," "she openeth her mouth with wisdom," and
-one or two other tropes which probably united with some in the First
-Anthology to evolve more distinctly the goddess Wisdom. Some sentences
-of the First Anthology grew like mustard seed. "Wisdom resteth in the
-heart of him who hath understanding" (Proverbs xiv. 33), reappears
-in 1 Kings iii. 12, and in x. 24 it is definitely stated that it was
-the wisdom which God had put into Solomon's heart that made all the
-earth seek his presence. It was a miracle they went to see; the glory
-is not that of Solomon, but that of God. [11]
-
-The nearest approach to a personification of Wisdom in the First
-Anthology is Proverb xx. 15: "There is gold and abundance of pearls,
-but the lips of knowledge are a (more) precious jewel." This expands in
-Job to a long list of precious things--gold, coral, topaz, pearls--all
-surpassed by Wisdom, and the similitudes journey on to the parables
-of Jesus, wherein the woman sweeps for the lost silver, and the
-man sells all he has for the pearl of price. This, however, was a
-comparatively simple and human development. And the first complete
-personification of Wisdom, growing out of "the lips of knowledge," and
-perhaps influenced by the portraiture of "the virtuous woman," is an
-expression of philosophical and poetic religion. This personification
-is in Proverbs viii. and ix., which are evidently far more ancient
-than the seven chapters preceding them, and no doubt constitute the
-original editorial Prologue to the so-called "Proverbs of Solomon,"
-with the exception of some Jahvist cant about "the fear of Jahveh." We
-hear from "the lips of knowledge" a reaffirmation of the "excellent
-things" said in the Anthologies about the superiority of Wisdom to
-gems. (The word "ancient" given by the revisers in the margin to
-viii. 18 may possibly signify the antiquity of the Anthologies when
-this Prologue was written.) The scholarly writer of the Prologue had
-closely studied the ancient proverbs, and occasionally gives good hints
-for the interpretation of some that puzzle modern translators. Thus
-Wisdom, in describing herself as "sporting" (viii. 30), indicates the
-right meaning of x. 23 to be that while the fool finds his sport in
-mischief, the wise man finds his sport with wisdom. (This proverb may
-also have suggested the laughter of the "virtuous woman" in xxxi. 25.)
-
-In viii. 22-31, Wisdom becomes more than a personification, and takes
-her place in cosmogony. This passage, which contains germs of much
-of our latter-day theology, must be quoted in full, and comparatively
-studied. Wisdom speaks:
-
-
-    22. Jahveh acquired me in the outset of his way,
-        Before his works, from of old.
-
-    23. From eternity was I existent,
-        From the first, before the earth.
-
-    24. When no deep seas I was brought forward,
-        When no fountains abounding with water.
-
-    25. Before the mountains were fixed,
-        Before the hills, was I brought forward:
-
-    26. When he had not fashioned the earth and the fields,
-        And the consummate part of the dust of the world.
-
-    27. When he established the heavens, I was there;
-        When he set a boundary on the face of the deep;
-
-    28. When he made firm the clouds above;
-        When the fountains of the deep became strong;
-
-    29. When he gave to the sea its limit,
-        That the waters should not pass over their coast;
-        When he marked out the foundation pillars of the earth:
-
-    30. Then was I near him, as a master builder:
-        And I was his delight continually,
-        Sporting before him at all times;
-
-    31. Sporting in the habitable part of his earth,
-        And my delight was with the sons of men.
-
-
-Let us compare with this picture of Wisdom that of Armaiti, genius of
-the Earth, in the sacred Zoroastrian books. In the Gatha Ahunavaiti,
-7, it is said: "To succor this life (to increase it) Armaiti came
-with wealth, and good and true mind: she, the everlasting one,
-created the material world; but the soul, as to time, the first
-cause among created beings, was with thee" (Ahura Mazda). Thus, like
-Wisdom, Armaiti is everlasting: she was not created, but "acquired,"
-by the deity. When Ahura Mazda, as chief of the seven Amesha-spentas,
-ideally designed the world, she gave it reality, as master-builder,
-and, like Wisdom, hewed out the foundation pillars he had marked
-out,--namely, the Seven Karshvares of the earth. The opening lines
-of Proverbs ix. read almost like a quotation from some Gatha:
-
-
-   "Wisdom hath builded her house,
-    She hath hewn out her seven pillars."
-
-
-Like Wisdom, Armaiti was the continual delight of the supreme God. In
-an ancient Pali MS., it is said that Zoroaster saw the supreme being in
-heaven, with Armaiti seated at his side, her hand caressing his neck,
-and said: "Thou, who art Ahura Mazda, turnest not thy eyes away from
-her, and she turns not away from thee." Ahura Mazda tells Zoroaster
-that she is "the house mistress of my heaven, and mother of the
-creatures." [12] Like Wisdom, Armaiti has joy in the "habitable part"
-of the earth, and the "sons of men," from whom she receives especial
-delight ("the greatest joy"), are enumerated in the Vendidad, also
-the places in which she has such delight. They are the faithful who
-cultivate the earth morally and physically, and the places so watered
-or drained, and homes "with wife, children, and good herds within."
-
-Armaiti has a daughter, "the good Ashi," whose function is to pass
-between earth and heaven and bring the heavenly wisdom (Vohu-Mano,
-"Good Thought") to mankind. The soul of the world thus reaches, and
-is reached by, heaven, and Armaiti thus becomes a personification
-of the combined human and superhuman Wisdom ascribed to great men,
-such as Solomon. At the same time the "sons of men" are all the
-children of Armaiti, and she finds delight among them. Even the
-rudest are restrained by her culture. "By the eyes of Armaiti the
-(demonic) ruffian was made powerless," says Zoroaster. The spirit of
-the Earth, laughing with her flowers and fruits, survived in Persia
-the sombre reign of Islam, to sing in the quatrain of Omar Khayyam:
-"I asked my fair bride--the World--what was her dower: she answered,
-'My dower is in the joy of thy heart.'"
-
-"The sons of men" is not an Avestan phrase, for to Armaiti her
-daughters are as dear as her sons, but we find in the Vendidad "the
-seeds of men and women." These are sprung from those who were selected
-for preservation in the Vara, or enclosure, of the first man, Yimi,
-made by direction of the deity, when the evil powers brought fatal
-winters on the world. The deformed, diseased, wicked, were excluded;
-the chosen people were those formed of "the best of the earth." From
-long and prosperous life on earth, the Amesha of immortality, the
-good angel of death, conducted them to eternal happiness; they are the
-immortals, children of the demons being mortals. There was something
-corresponding to this in the Jewish idea of their being a chosen
-people, as distinguished from the Gentile world (see Deut. xxxii. 8),
-and no doubt the phrase "sons of men" represented a divine dignity
-afterwards expressed in the title, "Son of Man." [13]
-
-The Solomonic hymn of Wisdom at the creation (Proverbs viii. 22-31)
-contains other Avestan phrases. "From eternity was I existent," recalls
-Zervan akarana, "boundless time," and verse 26, relating to the earth,
-is still more significant: in it "the sum" has been suggested by the
-Revisers for (E. V.) "the highest part" (of the earth), but in either
-rendering it is near to the Avestan phrase, "the best of Armaiti"
-(Earth). This phrase is reproduced in the Bundahis (xv. 6), where the
-creator, Ahura Mazda, says to the first pair, "You are men (cf. Genesis
-v. 2, he 'called their name Adam'), you are the ancestry of the world,
-and you are created the best of Armaiti (the Earth) by me." (West's
-translation. Sacred Books of the East. Vol. V., p. 54, n. 2.) The
-word for Earth in Proverb 26 is adamah, and in the Septuagint (various
-reading) it is actually translated Armaith,--Armaiti's very name. We
-may thus find in Proverb 26 (viii.) the idea of Omar Khayyam, "Man
-is the whole creation's summary."
-
-Whether there is any connexion between the Sanskrit Adima and
-Hebrew Adam is still under philological discussion: probably not,
-for their meaning is different, Adima meaning "the first," and
-Adam relating to the material out of which he is said to have been
-formed. Adam is derived from Adamah: after all, man came from the
-great Woman--"the Mother of all living." [14] Adamah, according to
-Sale, is a Persian word meaning "red earth," and in Hebrew also it
-connotes redness. Armaiti might have acquired an epithet of ruddiness
-from her union with Atar, the genius of Fire (Fargard xviii. 51,
-52. Darmesteter. Introduction, iv. 30). In Hebrew adamah combines
-three senses--a fortress, redness, and cultivated ground. In Proverbs
-(viii. 31) we have the fortress or enclosure, "the habitable part of
-his earth"; in verse 26 the cultivated earth, "the highest part (or
-sum, or best) of the dust of the earth." The "delight" in which Wisdom
-dwelt (verse 30) is Eden, the garden of delight, and in verse 31 this
-delight associated with the human children of the earth. Here we have
-the elements of the narrative of the creation of Adam in Genesis,
-and of the garden, though clearly not derived from Genesis. And in
-Genesis we find something like a personification of the earth, as in
-ix. 13, "It (the rainbow) shall be a token of a covenant between me
-and the earth."
-
-The idea of a creative deity requiring, as in Proverbs viii., the
-assistance of another personal being, is foreign to Jahvism, but it
-is of the very substance of Zoroastrianism, and it reappears in the
-Elohism of Genesis. Another important and fundamental fact is, that we
-find in the prologue to Proverbs a deity contending against something,
-circumscribing forces that need control, not of his creation. It is
-plain that the conception of monotheistic omnipotence had not yet
-been formed. There are higher and lower parts of the earth.
-
-Although there is no evidence that any such compilation as our
-"Genesis" existed at the time when the prologue (viii., ix.) to the
-"Proverbs of Solomon" was composed, the Elohistic opening of Genesis,
-especially in its original form, harmonises with the Parsi conflict
-between Light and Darkness.
-
-
-   "When of old Elohim separated heaven and earth--when the earth was
-    desolation and emptiness--darkness on the face of the deep, and
-    the spirit of Elohim brooding on the face of the waters,--Elohim
-    said, Be Light; Light was." [15]
-
-
-The spirit of God "brooding" over the waters (Genesis i. 1) may
-be identified with the Wisdom of Proverbs ix. 1, who "builds her
-house" as the Elohim built the universe, and "hath hewn out her
-seven pillars" like a true Armaiti, "Queen of the Seven." She is
-the Spirit of Light. And perhaps the darkness that was on the face
-of the abyss suggested the antagonistic personification in the next
-chapter (ix.) named by Professor Cheyne "Dame Folly." Wisdom, having
-builded her house, spread her table, mingled her wine, sends forth her
-maidens to invite the simple to forsake Folly, enjoy her feast, and
-"live." Dame Folly,--who though she has "a seat in high places" is
-"silly,"--clamours to every wayfarer that even the bread and water
-of her table, being surreptitious, are sweeter than the luxuries
-and wine offered by Wisdom. This appears to be the meaning of Dame
-Folly's somewhat obscure invitation.
-
-
-  "'Waters stolen are sweet!
-    Forbidden bread is pleasant!'
-    He knoweth not her phantoms are there,
-    That her guests are in the underworld."
-
-
-In this contrast between Wisdom inviting all to enter her house,
-drink her wine, and "live," and Folly inviting them to her "Sheol,"
-we have nearly a quatrain of Omar Khayyam: "Since from the beginning
-of life to its end there is for thee only this earth, at least live
-as one who is on it and not under it."
-
-In the Avesta the good and wise Mother Earth (Armaiti) is opposed by
-a malign female "Drug" (demoness), whose paramours are described in
-Fargard xviii. (Vendidad). These two are fairly represented by Wisdom
-and Folly as personified in Proverbs viii. and ix.
-
-The Jahvist who in Proverbs i. 1-7 (excepting the first six verses)
-undertakes to edit the original and ancient editor as well as Solomon,
-presents the curious case of one of Dame Folly's phantoms interpreting
-the words of Wisdom's guests. Unable to comprehend their portraiture
-of Dame Folly, he imagines that the allusion must be to harlotry,
-admonishes his "son" that "Jahveh giveth wisdom," which among other
-things will "deliver thee from the strange woman," whose "house sinketh
-down to the underworld and her paths unto phantoms." Which recalls
-the pious lady who on hearing her ritualistic pastor accused by a
-dissenter of leanings toward the Scarlet Woman, anxiously inquired
-of a friend whether she had ever heard any scandal connected with
-their vicar's name!
-
-Our Jahvist editor seems to be one who would often say of laughter
-"it is mad"; and naturally could not imagine how Wisdom could "sport"
-before the Lord (viii. 30) unless she were in some sense mad. The
-sport before Jahveh could only be in mockery of some sinner's torment,
-like the derision ascribed to Jahveh (Psalm ii. 4); consequently our
-editor represents Wisdom crying abroad in the streets:
-
-
-   "Because I have called and ye refused....
-    I also will laugh in the day of your calamity,
-    I will mock when your fear cometh."
-
-
-But Pliny mentions the Mazdean belief, confirmed by Parsi tradition,
-that Zoroaster was born laughing. To him Ahura Mazda says: "Do thou
-proclaim, O pure Zoroaster, the vigor, the glory, the help and the
-joy that are in the Fravashis (souls) of the faithful."
-
-However, we may see in these first seven chapters of Proverbs that
-Wisdom had become detached from the sons of men, in whom she had
-once found delight, was no longer in the human heart, but had finally
-ascended to wield the heavenly thunderbolts. And yet it is probable
-that we owe to this vindictive and menacing attitude of deified Wisdom
-the preservation of so many witty and sceptical things in books
-traditionally ascribed to Solomon. The orthodox legend being that
-the Lord had put supernatural wisdom into Solomon's heart, and never
-revoked it despite his "idolatry" and secularism, it followed that the
-naughty man could not help continuing to be a medium of this divine
-person, Wisdom, and that it might be a dangerous thing to suppress
-any utterance of hers through Solomon,--unwitting blasphemy. However
-profane or worldly the writings might appear to the Jahvist mind,
-there was no knowing what occult inspiration there might be in them,
-and the only thing editors could venture was to sprinkle through them
-plenteous disinfectants in the way of "Fear-of-the-Lord" wisdom.
-
-The proverbs in which the name Jahveh appears are not, of course, to
-be indiscriminately rejected as entirely Jahvist interpolations. It
-seems probable that little more than the word Jahveh has been supplied
-in some of these,--e. g., xix. 3, xx. 27, xxi. 1, 3, xxviii. 5,
-xxix. 26. But in a majority of cases the proverbs containing the name
-Jahveh are ethically and radically inharmonious with the substance
-and spirit of the book as a whole, which is founded on the supremacy
-of human "merits" as fully as Zoroastrianism, in which salvation
-depends absolutely on Good Thought, Good Word, Good Deed. In dynamic
-monotheism (as distinguished from ethical) of which Jahvism is the
-ancient and Islam the modern type, the doctrine of human "merits"
-is inadmissible: a man's virtues are not his own, and in Jahveh's
-sight they are but "filthy rags," except so far as they are given by
-Jahveh. But in the Solomonic proverbs the highest virtues, and the
-supreme blessings of the universe, are obtained by a man's own wisdom,
-character, and deeds. And in some cases the claims for Jahveh appear
-to have been inserted as if in answer or retort to proverbs ignoring
-the participation of any deity in such high matters. I quote a few
-instances, in which the antithesis turns to antagonism:
-
-
-    Solomon--By kindness and truth iniquity is atoned for.
-
-    Jahvist--By the fear of Jahveh men turn away from evil. (xvi. 6.)
-
-    Solomon--He who is skilful in a matter findeth good.
-
-    Jahvist--Whoso trusteth in Jahveh, happy is he! (xvi. 20.)
-
-
-In several other cases entire proverbs seem to be inserted for the
-correction of preceding ones,--these being not always understood by
-the interpolator:
-
-
-    Solomon--Treasures of evil profit not,
-    But virtue delivereth from death.
-
-    Jahvist--Jahveh will not suffer the righteous man to be famished,
-    But the desires of the unrighteous he thrusteth away. (x. 2, 3.)
-
-    Solomon--The tongue of the just is choice silver;
-    The heart of the evil is little worth:
-    The lips of the just feed many,
-    But fools die through heartlessness.
-
-    Jahvist--The blessing of Jahveh, that maketh rich,
-    And work addeth nothing thereto. (x. 20-22.)
-
-    Solomon--The virtuous man hath an everlasting foundation. (x. 25.)
-
-    Jahvist--The fear of Jahveh prolongeth days. (x. 27.)
-
-    Solomon--Hear counsel, receive correction,
-    That thou mayst be wise in thy future.
-
-    Jahvist--Many are the purposes in a man's heart,
-    But the counsel of Jahveh, that shall stand. (xix. 20-1.)
-
-    Solomon--The acceptableness of a man is his kindness:
-    Better off the poor than the treacherous man.
-
-    Jahvist--The fear of Jahveh addeth to life;
-    Whoso is filled therewith shall abide, he shall not be visited
-    by evil. (xix. 22-3.)
-
-    Solomon--The upright man considereth his way.
-
-    Jahvist--Wisdom is nothing, heart nothing,
-    Counsel nothing, against Jahveh. (xxi. 29, 30.)
-
-
-In one instance the Jahvist has made a slip by which his hand is
-confessed. In xvii. 3 we find:
-
-
-    The fining-pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold,
-    But Jahveh trieth hearts.
-
-
-But he omitted to notice the repetition in xxvii. 21, where we find
-the profound sentence which the Jahvist had reduced to commonplace:
-
-
-    The fining-pot for silver and the furnace for gold,
-    And a man is proved by that which he praiseth.
-
-
-The Jahvist spirit is also discoverable in xx. 22:
-
-
-    Solomon--Say not "I will retaliate evil";
-
-    Jahvist--Wait for Jahveh and he will save thee.
-
-
-Also in xxv. 21-2:
-
-
-    Solomon--If he that hateth thee be hungry, give him bread to eat,
-    If he be athirst give him water to drink.
-
-    Jahvist--For thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head,
-    And Jahveh shall reward thee.
-
-
-A similar mean and vindictive spirit is shown in xxiv. 18, following
-a magnanimous proverb; but in verse 29, probably more ancient than 18,
-we find the unqualified rebuke of retaliation:
-
-
-    Say not "As he hath done to me, so will I do to him,
-    I will render to the man according to his work."
-
-
-It was this generosity that Buddha exercised, [16] and Jesus; and it
-was left to Paul to recover the Jahvist modifications of Solomon's
-wisdom in order to adulterate for hard Romans the humane spirit of
-Jesus (Romans xii. 19, 20). The Solomonic sentences are normally so
-magnanimous as to throw suspicion on any clause tainted with smallness
-or vulgarity. The pervading spirit is, "The benevolent heart shall
-be enriched, and he who watereth shall himself be watered."
-
-There is one proverb (xiv. 32) which suggests a belief in immortality,
-or possibly in the Angel of Death:
-
-
-    By his evil deeds the evil man is thrust downward,
-    But the virtuous man hath confidence in his death.
-
-
-According to the Avesta every man is born with an invisible noose
-around his neck. When a good man dies the noose falls, and he passes
-to a beautiful region where he is met by a maid, to whom he says, "Who
-art thou, who art the fairest I have ever seen?" She answers, "O thou
-of good thoughts, good words, good deeds, I am thy actions." The evil
-man meets a leprous hag, embodiment of his actions, who by his noose
-drags him down through the evil-thought hell, the evil-word hell, the
-evil-deed hell, to the region of "Endless Darkness" (Yast xxii.). This
-darkness may be metaphorically spoken of in Proverbs xx. 20:
-
-
-    He that curseth his father and mother,
-    His lamp shall be put out in the blackest darkness.
-
-
-But generally the allusions to death in the Solomonic proverbs do not
-seem to allude to physical death. In x. 2 "virtue delivereth from
-death" is in antithesis to the unprofitableness of evil treasures,
-and in 16:
-
-
-    The reward of a virtuous man is life;
-    The gain of the wicked is sin.
-
-
-Here "life" and "sin" are in opposition. Other sentences to be
-compared are:
-
-
-    The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life,
-    To avoid the snares of death. (xiii. 14, cf. the Jahvist xiv. 27.)
-    Understanding is a fountain of life to those who possess it,
-    But the snare of fools is Folly. (xvi. 22.)
-    He that hateth reproof shall die. (xv. 10.)
-    The way of life is upward to the wise,
-    So as to turn away from the grave (sheol) beneath. (xv. 24.)
-    Death and life are in the power of the tongue,
-    And they who love it shall eat its fruit. (xviii. 21.)
-
-
-(In the last clause "it" probably refers to "life," unless the pronoun
-be cancelled altogether.)
-
-
-    The getting of treasures by a tongue of falsehood
-    Is getting a fleeting vapour, delusions of death. (xxi. 6.)
-    In the way of virtue is life,
-    But the way of the by-path leadeth to death. (xii. 28.)
-    The man who wandereth from the way of instruction
-    Shall rest in the congregation of the phantoms. (xxi. 16.)
-
-
-The two proverbs last quoted may be usefully compared with the ancient
-Prologue (viii. ix.) already referred to in this chapter, as they
-are there reproduced pictorially in Wisdom and Dame Folly sitting at
-their respective doors. Wisdom offers long life and happiness:
-
-
-    But he who wandereth from me doeth violence to his own life,
-    All who hate me love death. (viii. 36.)
-
-
-Dame Folly tries to turn into her by-path those who are "proceeding
-straight in their course" (ix. 15), but her victim--
-
-
-    He knoweth not her phantoms are there,
-    That her guests are in the underworld. (ix. 18.)
-
-
-The same Hebrew word Rephaim (phantoms or shades) is used here and
-in xxi. 16.
-
-All of these references to death and the underworld (sheol), except
-perhaps xiv. 32, refer to the living death, moral and spiritual,
-which is of such vast and fundamental significance in Zoroastrian
-religion. In this religion the evil power is "all death." The universe
-is divided by and into "the living and the not living." [17] "When
-these two Spirits came together they made first Life and Death,"--words
-sometimes used as synonymous with the "Good and the Evil Mind." Ahura
-Mazda representing all the forces that work for health and life,
-Angromainyu (Ahriman) all that work for disease and destruction, have
-ranged with them all animals and plants, on one side or the other, in
-this great conflict. The life of an Ahrimanian creature is "incarnate
-death." (Darmesteter's Introduction to the Vendidad, v. 11.) His
-destructiveness is equally against virtue, wisdom, peace, health,
-happiness, life, and all of these, not merely physical dissolution,
-are included in his Avestan title, "The Fiend who is all death." He
-is the Abaddon of Revelation ix. 11, also he "that had the power of
-death" in Hebrews ii. 14, and probably came into both of these from
-Proverbs xxvii. 20:
-
-
-    Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied,
-    And the eyes of man are never satisfied.
-
-
-Dr. Inman (Ancient Faiths, i., p. 180) connects Abaddon with "Abadan
-(cuneiform), the lost one, the sun in winter, or darkness," which
-conforms with the Avestan Ahriman, who is emphatically a winter-demon,
-his hell being in the north (cf. Jeremiah i. 14 and elsewhere),
-and is the natural adversary of the Fire-worshipper.
-
-Among the Zoroastrians there were not only Towers of Silence (Dakhma)
-for the literally dead, but also for the confinement of those tainted
-by carrying corpses, or by any contact with the death-fiend's empire,
-such as being struck with temporary death. "The unclean," says
-Darmesteter, "are confined in a particular place, apart from all clean
-persons and objects, the Armest-gah, which may be described, therefore,
-as the Dakhma for the living." Here then are the dead-alive guests of
-Dame Folly (Proverbs ix. 15), who opposes Wisdom, as Ahriman created
-Akem-Mano (evil thought) to oppose Vohu-Mano (good thought), and here
-is the assembly that might give the Solomonic proverb its metaphor:
-
-
-    The man who wandereth from the way of instruction
-    Shall rest in the congregation of the phantoms (or shades,
-    Rephaim).
-
-
-The Zoroastrian books from which I have been quoting contain passages
-of very unequal date, but it is the opinion of Avestan scholars that
-most of them are from very ancient sources, pre-Solomonic, and there
-is no chronological difficulty in supposing that such institutions
-as the Armest-gah, for the separation of the unclean, should not
-have been well known in ancient Jerusalem before the corresponding
-levitical laws concerning the unclean and the leprous existed.
-
-The Book of Proverbs was also a growth, and although, as has been
-stated, there is reason to regard as later additions most of the
-proverbs containing the word Jahveh, as they are inconsistent with the
-general ethical tenor of the book, there are several in which that
-name is evidently out of place. Even in the editorial Prologue we
-can hardly recognize orthodox Jahvism in the conception of a being,
-Wisdom, not created by Jahveh yet giving him delight and some kind
-of assistance at the creation; and nowhere else in the Old Testament
-do we find such an idea as that of xx. 27, "The spirit of a man is
-Jahveh's lamp," or in xix. 17:
-
-
-    He who is kind to the poor lendeth to Jahveh,
-    And his good deed shall be recompensed to him.
-
-
-But in the Zoroastrian religion men and women render assistance and
-encouragement to the gods, and we find the chief deity, Ahura Mazda,
-saying to Zoroaster concerning the Fravashis, or souls, of holy
-men and women: "Do thou proclaim, O pure Zoroaster, the vigor and
-strength, the glory, the help and the joy, that are in the Fravashis
-of the faithful ... do thou tell how they came to help me, how they
-bring assistance unto me.... Through their brightness and glory,
-O Zoroaster, I maintain that sky there above." Favardin Yast, 1,
-2.) As Frederick the Great said, "a king is the chief of subjects,"
-so with Zoroaster Ahura Mazda is the chief of the faithful; or,
-as Luther said, "God is strong, but he likes to be helped."
-
-The similitude in Proverbs xx. 27 is especially important in our
-inquiry:
-
-
-    The spirit of man is the lamp of Jahveh,
-    Searching all the chambers of the body.
-
-
-The word for "spirit" here is Nishma, which occurs in but one other
-instance in the Bible, namely, in Job xxvi. 4. Job asks:
-
-
-    To whom hast thou uttered words?
-    And whose spirit came forth from thee?
-
-
-This chapter of Job (xxvi.) is closely related to Proverbs viii. and
-ix., both in thought and phraseology: the Rephaim, or phantoms,
-the "pillars," the ordering of earth and clouds, the boundary on
-the deep; and there is an allusion to "the confines of Light and
-Darkness," which point to the domains of Wisdom and Dame Folly. Job
-and the proverbialist surely got these ideas from the same source,
-and also the word nishma, translated "spirit," which throughout the
-Old Testament is ruach, save in the two texts indicated. But there
-is no text in the Bible where ruach, spirit, or soul, is associated
-with light like the nishma of the proverb, and in Job nishma evidently
-means a superhuman spirit. Now there is a Chaldean word, nisma, which
-in the Persian Bundahis appears as nismo, and is translated by West,
-"living soul." The ordinary word for soul in the Parsi scriptures
-seems to be ruban, and West regards the two words as meaning the same
-thing, the breath, or soul, basing this on the following passage of
-the Bundahis, representing the separation of the first mortal into
-the first human pair, Mashya and Mashyoi:
-
-
-    "And the waists of both were brought close, and so connected
-    together that it was not clear which is the male and which the
-    female, and which is the one whose living soul (nismo) of Auharmazd
-    (God) is not away (lacking). As it is said thus: 'Which is created
-    before, the soul (nismo) or the body? And Auharmazd said that
-    the soul is created before, and the body after, for him who was
-    created; it is given unto the body to produce activity, and the
-    body is created only for activity; hence the conclusion is this,
-    that the soul (ruban) is created before and the body after. And
-    both of them changed from the shape of a plant into the shape of
-    man, and the breath (nismo) went spiritually into them, which is
-    the soul (ruban)." [18]
-
-
-With all deference to the learned translator, I cannot think his
-exegesis here quite satisfactory. In the first sentence nismo is the
-breath of God; and although in the second the same word is used for
-the human soul, the writer seems to have aimed in the last sentence
-at a distinction: the divine breath or spirit (nismo) creates a soul
-(ruban), to receive which the plant is transformed into a body fitted
-for the "activity" of an imbreathed soul. West twice translates nismo
-"living soul," but ruban only "soul." Does not this indicate Ahura
-Mazda as the source of divine life, as in Genesis ii. 7, where
-Jahveh-Elohim breathes into man, who becomes a "living soul,"--a
-being within the domain of the god of life, not subject to the god of
-death? Is it not his ruban that is the image of nismo? (Cf. Genesis
-ix. 5, 6.)
-
-Turning now to the Avesta, we find the famous Favardin Yast,
-a collection of litanies and ascriptions to the Fravashis. "The
-Fravashi," says Darmesteter, "is the inner power in every being that
-maintains it and makes it grow and subsist. Originally the Fravashis
-were the same as the Pitris of the Hindus or the Manes of the Latins,
-that is to say, the everlasting and deified souls of the dead;
-but in course of time they gained a wider domain, and not only men,
-but gods and even physical objects, like the sky and the earth, had
-each a Fravashi." "The Fravashi was independent of the circumstances
-of life or death, an immortal part of the individual which existed
-before man and outlived him."
-
-In Yast xxii. 39, 40, it is said: "O Maker, how do the souls of the
-dead, the Fravashis of the holy Ones, manifest themselves?" Ahura
-Mazda answered: "They manifest themselves from goodness of spirit
-and excellence of mind."
-
-Favardin Yast, 9: "Through their brightness and glory, O Zarathrustra,
-I maintain the wide earth," etc. 12: "Had not the awful Fravashis
-of the faithful given help unto me, those animals and men of mine,
-of which there are such excellent kinds, would not subsist; strength
-would belong to the fiend."
-
-In other verses these Fravashis (the word means "protectors") help
-the children unborn, nourish health, develop the wise. The imagery
-relating to them is largely related to the stars, of which many are
-guardians. These are probably the origin of the Solomonic similitude
-of reason, "The spirit (nishma) of man is the lamp of----?"
-
-With all of these correspondences between the Solomonic proverbs,
-nothing is more remarkable than their originality, so far as
-any ancient scriptures are concerned. While they are totally
-different from the Psalms, in showing man as a citizen of the world,
-relying on himself and those around him for happiness, and exalting
-nothing above human virtue and intelligence, without any religious
-fervor or wrath, the proverbialist is equally far from the ethical
-superstitions of Zoroastrian religion, which abounds in fictitious
-"merits" and anathematises fictitious immoralities. It is as if
-some sublime Eastern pedlar and banker of ethical and poetic gems,
-who had come in contact with Oriental literatures, had separated
-from their liturgies and prophecies the nuggets of gold and the
-precious stones, polishing, resetting, and exciting others to do the
-like. At the same time many of the sentences are the expressions of
-an original mind, a man of letters, neither Eastern nor Oriental,
-and these may be labelled with the line of the Persian poet Faizi:
-"Take Faizi's Diwan to bear witness to the wonderful speeches of a
-freethinker who belongs to a thousand sects."
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX.
-
-THE SONG OF SONGS.
-
-
-The praise of the virtuous woman, at the close of the Proverbs,
-is given a Jahvist turn by verse 30: "Favour is deceitful and beauty
-vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised." But the
-Solomonists also had their ideas of the virtuous woman, and of beauty,
-these being beautifully expressed in a series of dramatic idylls
-entitled The Song of Songs. To this latter, in the original title,
-is added, "which is Solomon's"; and it confirms what has been said
-concerning the superstitious awe of everything proceeding from Solomon,
-and the dread of insulting the Holy Spirit of Wisdom supernaturally
-lodged in him, that we find in the Bible these passionate love
-songs. And indeed Solomon must have been superlatively wise to have
-written poems in which his greatness is slightly ridiculed. That of
-course would be by no means incredible in a man of genuine wisdom--on
-the contrary would be characteristic--if other conditions were met
-by the tradition of his authorship.
-
-At the outset, however, we are confronted by the question whether
-the Song of Songs has any general coherency or dramatic character
-at all. Several modern critics of learning, among them Prof. Karl
-Budde and the late Edward Reuss, find the book a collection of
-unconnected lyrics, and Professor Cornill of Koenigsberg has added
-the great weight of his name to that opinion (Einleitung in das Alte
-Testament. 1891). Unfortunately Professor Cornill's treatment is brief,
-and not accompanied by a complete analysis of the book. He favors as
-a principle Reuss's division of Canticles into separate idylls, and
-thinks most readers import into this collection of songs an imaginary
-system and significance. This is certainly true of the "allegorical"
-purport, aim, and religious ideas ascribed to the book, but Professor
-Cornill's reference to Herder seems to leave the door open for further
-treatment of the Song of Songs from a purely literary standpoint. He
-praises Herder's discernment in describing the book as a string of
-pearls, but passes without criticism or denial Herder's further view
-that there are indications of editorial modifications of some of
-the lyrics. For what purpose? Herder also pointed out that various
-individualities and conditions are represented. This indeed appears
-undeniable: here are prince and shepherd, the tender mother, the cruel
-brothers, the rough watchman, the dancer, the bride and bridegroom. The
-dramatis personae are certainly present: but is there any drama?
-
-Admitting that there was no ancient Hebrew theatre, the question
-remains whether among the later Hellenic Jews the old songs were
-not arranged, and new ones added, in some kind of Singspiele or
-vaudeville. There seems to be a chorus. It is hardly consistent
-with the general artistic quality of the compilation that the lady
-should say "I am swarthy but comely," or "I am a lily of the valley"
-(a gorgeous flower). Surely the compliments are ejaculations of the
-chorus. And may we not ascribe to a chorus the questions, "Who is
-this that cometh up out of the wilderness?" etc. (iii. 6-10.) "What
-is thy beloved more than another beloved"? (v. 9.) "Who is this that
-cometh up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved"? (viii. 5).
-
-As in the modern vaudeville songs are often introduced without
-any special relation to the play, so we find in Canticles some
-songs that might be transposed from one chapter to another without
-marring the work, but is this the case with all of them? The song
-in the first chapter, for instance, in which the damsel, brought by
-the King into his palace, tells the ladies of the home she left,
-and of maltreatment by her brothers, who took her from her own
-vineyard and made her work in theirs, where she was sunburnt,--this
-could not be placed effectively at the end of the book, nor the
-triumphant line, "My vineyard, which is mine own, is before me,"
-be set at the beginning. This is but one of several instances that
-might be quoted. Even pearls may be strung with definite purpose,
-as in a rosary, and how perfectly set is the great rose,--the hymn
-to Love in the final chapter! Or to remember Professor Cornill's word
-Scenenwechsel, along with his affirmation that the love of human lovers
-is the burden of the "unrivalled" book, there are some sequences
-and contrasts which do convey an impression of dissolving views,
-and occasionally reveal a connexion between separate tableaux. For
-example the same words (which I conjecture to be those of a chorus)
-are used to introduce Solomon in pompous palanquin with grand escort,
-that are presently used to greet the united lovers.
-
-
-   "Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness like pillars of
-    smoke?" (iii. 6.)
-
-    "Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness
-    Leaning on her beloved?" (viii. 5.)
-
-
-These are five chapters apart, yet surely they may be supposed
-connected without Hineininterpretation. Any single contrast of this
-kind might be supposed a mere coincidence, but there are two others
-drawn between the swarthy maiden and the monarch. The tableau of
-Solomon in his splendor dissolves into another of his Queen Mother
-crowning him on the day of his espousal: that of Shulamith leaning on
-her beloved dissolves into another of her mother pledging her to her
-lover in espousals under an apple tree. And then we find (viii. 11,
-12) Solomon's distant vineyards tended by many hirelings contrasted
-with Shulamith's own little vineyard tended by herself.
-
-The theory that the book is a collection of bridal songs, and that
-the mention of Solomon is due to an eastern custom of designating
-the bridegroom and bride as Solomon and Queen Shulamith, during
-their honeymoon, does not seem consistent with the fact that in
-several allusions to Solomon his royal state is slighted, whereas only
-compliments would be paid to a bridegroom. Moreover the two--Shulamith
-and Solomon--are not as persons named together. It will, I think,
-appear as we proceed that the Shelomoh (Solomon) of Canticles
-represents a conventionalisation of the monarch, with some traits
-not found in any other book in the Bible. A verse near the close,
-presently considered, suggests that the bride and bridegroom are at
-that one point metaphorically pictured as a Solomon and Solomona,
-indicating one feature of the Wise Man's conventionalization.
-
-Renan assigned Canticles the date B. C. 992-952, mainly because in
-it Tirza is coupled with Jerusalem. Tirza was a capital only during
-those years, and at any later period was too insignificant a town to
-be spoken of as in the Song vi. 4:
-
-
-   "Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah,
-    Comely as Jerusalem,
-    Dazzling as bannered ranks."
-
-
-But the late Russell Martineau, a thorough and unbiassed scholar,
-points out in the work phrases from Greek authors of the third
-century B. C., and assigns a date not earlier than 247-222. [19]
-But may it not be that the Alexandrian of the third century built on
-some earlier foundation, as Shakespeare adapted the "Pound of Flesh"
-and the "Three Caskets" (Merchant of Venice) from tales traceable as
-far back as early Buddhist literature? or as Marlowe and Goethe used
-the mediaeval legend of Faustus?
-
-The several songs can hardly be assigned to one and the same
-century. The coupling of Tirza and Jerusalem points to a remote past
-for that particular lyric, and is it credible that any Jew after
-Josiah's time could have written the figleafless songs so minutely
-descriptive of Shulamith's physical charms? Could any Jewish writer of
-the third century before our era have written iv. 1-7 or vii. 1-9,
-regarding no name or place as too sacred to be pressed into his
-hyperboles of rapture at every detail of the maiden's form, and
-have done this in perfect innocency, without a blush? Or if such a
-poet could have existed in the later Jahvist times, would his songs
-have found their place in the Jewish canon? As it was the book was
-admitted only with a provision that no Jew under thirty years of age
-should read it. That it was included at all was due to the occult
-pious meanings read into it by rabbins, while it is tolerably certain
-that the realistic flesh-painting would have been expunged but for
-sanctions of antiquity similar to those which now protect so many
-old classics from expurgation by the Vice Societies. These songs,
-sensuous without sensuality, with their Oriental accent, seem ancient
-enough to have been brought by Solomon from Ophir.
-
-On the other hand a critical reader can hardly ascribe the whole book
-to the Solomonic period. The exquisite exaltation of Love, as a human
-passion (viii. 6, 7), brings us into the refined atmosphere amid which
-Eros was developed, and it is immediately followed by a song that
-hardly rises above doggerel (viii. 8, 9). This is an interruption
-of the poem that looks as if suggested by the line that follows it
-(first line of verse 10) and meant to be comic. It impresses me as
-a very late interpolation, and by a hand inferior to the Alexandrian
-artist who in style has so well matched the more ancient pieces in his
-literary mosaic. Herder finds the collection as a whole Solomonic,
-and makes the striking suggestion that its author at a more mature
-age would take the tone of Ecclesiasticus.
-
-Considered simply as a literary production, the composition makes
-on my own mind the impression of a romance conveyed in idylls, each
-presenting a picturesque situation or a scene, the general theme and
-motif being that of the great Solomonic Psalm.
-
-This psalm (xlv.), quoted and discussed in chapter III., brings
-before us a beautiful maiden brought from a distant region to
-the court, but not quite happy: she is entreated to forget her
-people and enjoy the dignities and luxuries offered by her lord,
-the King. This psalm is remarkable in its intimations of a freedom
-of sentiment accorded to the ladies wooed by Solomon, and the same
-spirit pervades Canticles. Its chief refrain is that love must not be
-coerced or awakened until it please. This magnanimity might naturally
-connect the name of Solomon with old songs of love and courtship such
-as those utilised and multiplied in this book, whose composition might
-be naturally entitled "A Song (made) of Songs which are Solomon's."
-
-The heroine, whose name is Shulamith,--(feminine of Shelomoh,
-Solomon) [20]--is an only daughter, cherished by her apparently
-widowed mother but maltreated by her brothers. Incensed against her,
-they compel Shulamith to keep their vineyards to the neglect of her
-own. She becomes sunburnt, "swarthy," but is very "attractive," and
-is brought by Solomon to his palace, where she delights the ladies
-by her beauty and dances. In what I suppose to be one of the ancient
-Solomonic Songs embodied in the work it is said:
-
-
-   "There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines,
-    And maidens without number:
-    Beyond compare is my dove, my unsoiled;
-    She is the only one of her mother,
-    The cherished one of her that bare her:
-    The daughters saw her and called her blessed,
-    Yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her." [21]
-
-
-Thus far the motif seems to be that of a Cinderella oppressed by
-brothers but exalted by the most magnificent of princes. But here
-the plot changes. The magnificence of Solomon cannot allure from her
-shepherd lover this "lily of the valley." Her lover visits her in
-the palace, where her now relenting brothers (vi. 12) seem to appear
-(though this is doubtful) and witness her triumphs; and all are in
-raptures at her dancing and her amply displayed charms--all unless
-one (perhaps the lover) who, according to a doubtful interpretation,
-complains that they should gaze at her as at dancers in the camps
-(vi. 13). [22]
-
-Although Russell Martineau maintained, against most other commentators,
-that Solomon is only a part of the scene, and not among the dramatis
-personae, the King certainly seems to be occasionally present, as in
-the following dialogue, where I give the probable, though of course
-conjectural, names. The dancer has approached the King while at table.
-
-
-Solomon--
-
-   "I have compared thee, O my love,
-    To my steed in Pharaoh's chariot.
-    Thy cheeks are comely with plaits of hair,
-    Thy neck with strings of jewels.
-    We will make thee plaits of gold
-    With studs of silver."
-
-
-Shulamith, who, on leaving the King, meets her jealous lover--
-
-   "While the King sat at his table
-    My spikenard sent forth its odor.
-    My beloved is unto me as a bag of myrrh
-    That lieth between my breasts,
-    My beloved is unto me as a cluster of henna-flowers
-    In the vineyards of En-gedi."
-
-
-Shepherd Lover--
-
-   "Behold thou art fair, my love, behold thou art fair;
-    Thine eyes are as doves,
-    Behold thou art fair, my beloved, yea pleasant:
-    Also our couch is green.
-    The beams of our house are of cedar,
-    And our rafters are of fir."
-
-
-Shulamith--
-
-   "I am a (mere) crocus of the plain."
-
-
-Chorus, or perhaps the Lover--
-
-   "A lily of the valleys."
-
-
-Shepherd Lover--
-
-   "As a lily among thorns
-    So is my love among the daughters."
-
-
-Shulamith--
-
-   "As the apple tree among forest trees
-    So is my beloved among the sons.
-    I sat down under his shadow with great delight,
-    And his fruit was sweet to my taste."
-
-
-Thus we find the damsel anointing the king with her spikenard, but
-for her the precious fragrance is her shepherd. Against the plaits of
-gold and studs of silver offered in the palace (i. 2) her lover can
-only point to his cottage of cedar and fir, and a couch of grass. She
-is content to be only a flower of the plain and valley, not for the
-seraglio. Nevertheless she remains to dance in the palace; a sufficient
-time there is needed by the poet to illustrate the impregnability of
-true love against all other splendors and attractions, even those of
-the Flower of Kings. He however puts no constraint on her, one song,
-thrice repeated, saying to the ladies of the harem--
-
-
-   "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
-    By the (free) gazelles, by the hinds in the field,
-    That ye stir not up, nor awaken love,
-    Until it please."
-
-
-This refrain is repeated the second time just before a picture of
-Solomon's glory, shaded by a suggestion that all is not brightness even
-around this Prince of Peace. The ladies of the seraglio are summoned
-to look out and see the passing of the King in state, seated on his
-palanquin of purple and gold, but escorted by armed men "because of
-fear in the night." In immediate contrast with that scene, we see
-Shulamith going off with her humble lover, now his bride, to his field
-and to her vineyard, and singing a beautiful song of love, strong as
-death, flame-tipped arrow of a god, unquenchable, unpurchaseable.
-
-Though according to the revised version of vi. 12 her relatives are
-princely, and it may be they who invite her to return (vi. 13), she
-says, "I am my beloved's." With him she will go into the field and
-lodge in the village (vii. 10, 11). She finds her own little garden
-and does not envy Solomon.
-
-
-   "Solomon hath a vineyard at Baalhamon;
-    He hath let out the vineyard to keepers;
-    Each for the fruit thereof was to bring a thousand pieces of
-    silver:
-    My vineyard, which is mine, is before me:
-    Thou, O Solomon, shall have the thousand,
-    And those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred."
-
-
-There was, as we see in Koheleth, a prevailing tradition that Solomon
-felt the hollowness of his palatial life. "See life with a woman thou
-lovest." The wife is the fountain:
-
-
-   "Bethink thee of thy fountain
-    In the days of thy youth."
-
-
-This perhaps gave rise to a theory that the shepherd lover was Solomon
-himself in disguise, like the god Krishna among the cow-maidens. It
-does not appear probable that any thought of that kind was in
-the writer of this Song. Certainly there appears not to be any
-purpose of lowering Solomon personally in enthroning Love above
-him. There is no hint of any religious or moral objection to him,
-and indeed throughout the work Solomon appears in a favourable
-light personally,--he is beloved by the daughters of Jerusalem
-(v. 10)--though his royal estate is, as we have seen, shown in a light
-not altogether enviable. Threescore mighty men guard him: "every man
-hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night," and the
-day of his heart's gladness was the day of his espousals (iii. 8, 11).
-
-It is not improbable that there is an allusion to Solomon's magic seal
-in the first lines of the hymn to Love (viii. 6). The legend of the
-Ring must have been long in growing to the form in which it is found in
-the Talmud, where it is said that Solomon's "fear in the night" arose
-from his apprehension that the Devil might again get hold of his Ring,
-with which he (Aschmedai) once wrought much mischief. (Gittin. Vol. 68,
-col. 1, 2). The hymn strikes me as late Alexandrian:
-
-
-   "Wear me as a seal on thy breast
-    As a seal-ring on thine arm:
-    For love is strong as death,
-    Its passion unappeasable as the grave;
-    Its shafts are arrows of fire,
-    The lightnings of a god. [Jah.]
-    Many waters cannot quench love,
-    Deluges cannot overwhelm it.
-    Should a noble offer all the wealth of his house for love
-    It would be utterly spurned."
-
-
-Excluding the interrupting verses 8 and 9, the hymn is followed by a
-song about Solomon's vineyard, preceded by two lines which appear to
-me to possess a significance overlooked by commentators. Shulamith
-(evidently) speaks:
-
-
-   "I was a wall, my breasts like its towers:
-    Thus have I been in his eyes as one finding peace.
-    Solomon hath a vineyard," etc. [as above.]
-
-
-The word "peace" is Shalom; it is immediately followed by Shelomoh
-(Solomon, "peaceful"); and Shulamith (also meaning "peaceful"), thus
-brings together the fortress of her lover's peace, her own breast,
-and the fortifications built by the peaceful King (who never attacked
-but was always prepared for defence). Here surely, at the close of
-Canticles, is a sort of tableau: Shalom, Shulamith, Shelomoh: Peace,
-the prince of Peace, the queen of Peace. If this were the only lyric
-one would surely infer that these were the bride and bridegroom, under
-the benediction of Peace. It is not improbable that at this climax of
-the poem Shulamith means that in her lover she has found her Solomon,
-and he found in her his Solomona,--their reciprocal strongholds of
-Shalom or Peace.
-
-Of course my interpretations of the Song of Songs are largely
-conjectural, as all other interpretations necessarily are. The songs
-are there to be somehow explained, and it is of importance that every
-unbiassed student of the book should state his conjectures, these
-being based on the contents of the book, and not on the dogmatic
-theories which have been projected into it. I have been compelled,
-under the necessary limitations of an essay like the present, to omit
-interesting details in the work, but have endeavoured to convey the
-impression left on my own mind by a totally unprejudiced study. The
-conviction has grown upon me with every step that, even at the lowest
-date ever assigned it, the work represents the earliest full expression
-of romantic love known in any language. It is so entirely free from
-fabulous, supernatural, or even pious incidents and accents, so human
-and realistic, that its having escaped the modern playwright can only
-be attributed to the superstitious encrustations by which its beauty
-has been concealed for many centuries.
-
-This process of perversion was begun by Jewish Jahvists, but they have
-been far surpassed by our A. S. version, whose solemn nonsense at
-most of the chapter heads in the Bible here reached its climax. It
-is a remarkable illustration of the depths of fatuity to which
-clerical minds may be brought by prepossession, that the closing
-chapter of Canticles, with its beautiful exaltation of romantic love,
-could be headed: "The love of the Church to Christ. The vehemency of
-Love. The calling of the Gentiles. The Church Prayeth for Christ's
-coming." The "Higher Criticism" is now turning the headings into
-comedy, but they have done--nay, are continuing--their very serious
-work of misdirection.
-
-It has already been noted that the Jewish doctors exalted Bathsheba,
-adulteress as she was, into a blessed woman, probably because of the
-allusion to her in the Song (iii. 2) as having crowned her royal Son,
-who had become mystical; and it can only be ascribed to Protestantism
-that, instead of the Queen-Mother Mary, the Church becomes Bathsheba's
-successor in our version: "The Church glorieth in Christ." And of
-course the shepherd lover's feeding (his flock) among the lilies
-becomes "Christ's care of the Church."
-
-But for such fantasies the beautiful Song of Songs might indeed never
-have been preserved at all, yet is it a scandal that Bibles containing
-chapter-headings known by all educated Christians to be falsifications,
-should be circulated in every part of the world, and chiefly among
-ignorant and easily misled minds. These simple people, reading the
-anathemas pronounced in their Bibles on those who add anything to the
-book given them as the "Word of God" (Deuteronomy iv. 2, xii. 32,
-Proverbs xxx. 6, Revelation xxii. 18), cannot imagine that these
-chapter-headings are not in the original books, but forged. And what
-can be more brazenly fraudulent than the chapter-heading to one of
-these very passages (Revelation xxii. 18, 19), where nothing is said
-of the "Word of God," but over which is printed: "18. Nothing may be
-added to the word of God, nor taken therefrom." But even the learned
-cannot quite escape the effect of these perversions. How far they reach
-is illustrated in the fate of Mary Magdalen, a perfectly innocent woman
-according to the New Testament, yet by a single chapter-heading in Luke
-branded for all time as the "sinner" who anointed Jesus,--"Magdalen"
-being now in our dictionaries as a repentant prostitute. Yet there are
-hundreds of additions to the Bible more harmful than this,--additions
-which, whether honestly made or not originally, are now notoriously
-fraudulent. It is especially necessary in the interest of the Solomonic
-and secular literature in the Bible that Truth shall be liberated from
-the malarious well--Jahvist and ecclesiastical--in which she has long
-been sunk by mistranslation, interpolation, and chapter-headings. The
-Christian churches are to be credited with having produced critics
-brave enough to expose most of these impositions, and it is now the
-manifest duty of all public teachers and literary leaders to uphold
-those scholars, to protest against the continuance of the propaganda
-of pious frauds, and to insist upon the supremacy of truth.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X.
-
-KOHELETH (ECCLESIASTES).
-
-
-In the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1897, a writer, in giving his
-personal reminiscences of Tennyson, relates an anecdote concerning the
-poet and the Rev. F. D. Maurice. Speaking of Ecclesiastes (Koheleth),
-Tennyson said it was the one book the admission of which into the
-canon he could not understand, it was so utterly pessimistic--of the
-earth, earthy. Maurice fired up. "Yes, if you leave out the last two
-verses. But the conclusion of the whole matter is, 'Fear God and keep
-His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall
-bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it
-be good or whether it be evil.' So long as you look only down upon
-earth, all is 'vanity of vanities.' But if you look up there is a God,
-the judge of good and evil." Tennyson said he would think over the
-matter from that point of view.
-
-This amusing incident must have caused a ripple of laughter in
-scholastic circles, now that the labors of Cheyne, Renan, Dillon,
-and others, have left little doubt that both of the verses cited
-by Maurice are later editorial additions. They alone, he admitted,
-could save the book, and the charm of the incident is that the verses
-were placed there by ancient Maurices to induce ancient Tennysons to
-"think over the matter from that point of view." The result was that
-the previously rejected book was admitted into the canon by precisely
-the same force which continued its work at Faringford, and continues
-it to this day. Only one must not suppose that Mr. Maurice was aware
-of the ungenuineness of the verses. He was an honest gentleman,
-but so ingeniously mystical that had the two verses not been there
-he could readily have found others of equally transcendant and holy
-significance, without even resorting to other pious interpolations
-in the book.
-
-Tennyson was curiously unconscious of his own pessimism. When any one
-questioned the belief in a future life in his presence his vehemence
-without argument betrayed his sub-conscious misgivings, while his
-indignation ran over all the conditional resentments of Job. I have
-heard that he said to Tyndall that if he knew there was no future
-life he would regard the creator of human beings as a demon, and
-shake his fist in His eternal face. This rage was based in a more
-profoundly pessimistic view of the present life than anything even
-in Ecclesiastes,--by which name may be happily distinguished the
-disordered, perverted, and mistranslated Koheleth.
-
-It appears evident that the sentence which opens Koheleth,--in our
-Bibles "All is vanity, saith the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all
-is vanity,"--is as mere a Jahvist chapter-heading as that of our
-A. S. translators: "The Preacher showeth that all human courses are
-vain." It is repeated as the second of the eight verses added at the
-end of the work. Koheleth does not label the whole of things vanity;
-in a majority of cases the things he calls vain are vain; and some
-things he finds not vanity,--youth, and wedded love, and work that
-is congenial.
-
-Renan (Histoire du Peuple d'Israel, Tome 5, p. 158) has shown
-conclusively, as I think, that the signature on this book, QHLT,
-is a mere letter-play on the word "Solomon," and the eagerness
-with which the letters were turned into Koheleth (which really
-means Preacheress), and to make Solomon's inner spouse a preacher
-of the vanities of pleasure and the wisdom of fearing God, is thus
-naively indicated in the successive names of the book, "Koheleth"
-and "Ecclesiastes." We are thus warned by the title to pick our way
-carefully where the Jahvist and the Ecclesiastic have been before us;
-remembering especially that though piety may induce men to forge
-things, this is never done lightly. As people now do not commit
-forgery for a shilling, so neither did those who placed spurious
-sentences or phrases in nearly every chapter of the Bible do so for
-anything they did not consider vital to morality or to salvation. In
-Ecclesiastes we must be especially suspicious of the very serious
-religious points. Fortunately the style of the book renders it
-particularly subject to the critical and literary touchstone.
-
-Is it necessary to point out to any man of literary instinct the
-interpolation bracketed in the following verses? "Rejoice, O young
-man, in thy youth, and let thy heart gladden thee in the flower of thy
-age, and walk in the paths of thy heart, and according to the vision
-of thine eyes [but know thou that for all these things God will bring
-thee into judgment], and banish discontent from thy heart, and put away
-evil from thy flesh; for youth and dawn are fleeting. Remember also
-thy fountain in the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days come or
-the years draw nigh in which thou shalt say I have no delight in them."
-
-It is only by removing the bracketed clause that any consistency can be
-found in the lyric, which Professor Cheyne compares with the following
-song by the ancient Egyptian harper at the funeral feast of Neferhotap:
-
-
-   "Make a good day, O holy fathers!
-    Let odors and oils stand before thy nostril;
-    Wreaths and lotus are on the arms and bosom of thy sister
-    Dwelling in thy heart, sitting beside thee.
-    Let song and music be before thy face,
-    And leave behind thee all evil dirges!
-    Mind thee of joy, till cometh the day of pilgrimage,
-    When we draw near the land that loveth silence." [23]
-
-
-There is no historical means of determining what writings of Solomon
-are preserved in the Bible and even in the apocryphal books. One may
-feel that Goethe recognised a brother spirit in that far epoch when
-he selected for his proverb:
-
-
-   "Apples of gold in chased work of silver,
-    A word smoothly spoken."
-
-
-Koheleth too appreciated this, and also (x. 12) uses almost literally
-Proverbs xii. 18, "The tongue of the wise is gentleness." (Compare
-Shakespeare's words, "Let gentleness my strong enforcement be.") The
-lines previously cited, "Rejoice O young man, etc.," are also probably
-quoted, as they are given in poetical quatrains. There are many of
-these quatrains introduced into the book, from the prose context of
-which they differ in style and sometimes in sense.
-
-In none of these metrical quotations (as I believe them to be) is
-there any belief in God, the only instance in which the word "God"
-is mentioned being an ironical maxim about the danger coming from
-monarchs because of their oaths to their God, with whom they identify
-their own ways and wishes. Such seems to me the meaning of the lines
-(viii. 2, 4) which Dillon translates--
-
-
-   "The wise man harkens to the king's command,
-    By reason of the oath to God.
-    Mighty is the word of the monarch:
-    Who dares ask him, 'What dost thou?'"
-
-
-With this compare Proverbs xxi. 1, "The king's heart is in the hand
-of the Lord (Jahveh) as the water-courses; he turneth it whithersoever
-he will." This proverb is evidently by a Jahvist, and Koheleth quotes
-another which signifies rather "Jahveh is in the king's caprice." But
-he adopts the neighbouring proverb, "To do justice and judgment is
-more acceptable to Jahveh than sacrifice." Koheleth says, and this
-is not quoted--"To draw near to (God) in order to learn, is better
-than the offering of sacrifices by fools."
-
-Although the verses quoted by Maurice to Tennyson (xii. 13, 14) are not
-genuinely in Koheleth they correspond with sentences in the genuine
-text of very different import. Koheleth, though his quotations are
-godless, believes there is a God, and a formidable one. Sometimes he
-refers to him as Fate, sometimes as the unknowable, but as without
-moral quality. "To the just men that happeneth which should befall
-wrong-doers; and that happeneth for criminals which should be the lot
-of the upright" (viii. 14), and "neither (God's) love nor hatred doth
-a man foresee" (ix. 1). God has set prosperity and adversity side by
-side for the express purpose of hiding Himself from human knowledge
-(vii. 14); not, alas, as the Yalkut Koheleth suggests, in order that
-one may help the other. God does benefit those who please him, and
-punish those who displease him; this is 'good' and 'evil' to Him; but
-it has no relation with the humanly good and evil (viii. 11-14). As
-it is evident that God's favor is not secured by good works nor his
-disfavor incurred by evil works, a prudent man will consider that
-it may perhaps be a matter of etiquette, and will be punctilious,
-especially "in the house of God"; he will not speak rashly and then
-hope to escape by saying "it was rashness." His words had better be
-few, and if he makes any vow (which may well be avoided) he should
-perform it. But as for practical life and conduct, God, or fate,
-is clearly indifferent to it, consequently let a man eat his bread
-and quaff his wine with joy, love his wife,--the best portion of
-his lot,--and whatever his hand findeth to do that do with vigor,
-remembering that "there is no work, nor thought, nor knowledge,
-nor wisdom, in the inevitable grave."
-
-Such is Koheleth's conception of life, which, except so far as it
-is marred by a vague notion of Fate which is fatal to philanthropy,
-is not very different from the idea growing in our own time. "The
-All is a never-ceasing whirl" (i. 8), and Koheleth advises that each
-individual man try to make what little circle of happiness he can
-around him. "O my heart!" says Omar Khayyam, "thou wilt never penetrate
-the mysteries of the heavens; thou wilt never reach that culminating
-point of wisdom which the intrepid omniscients have attained. Resign
-thyself then to make what little paradise thou canst here below. As
-for that close-barred seraglio beyond thou shalt arrive there--or
-thou shalt not!"
-
-It is, however, impossible for any church or priesthood to be
-maintained on any such principles. Where mankind believe with Koheleth
-that whatever God does is forever, that nothing can be superadded
-to it nor aught be taken away; and that God has so contrived that
-man must fear Him; they will have no use for any paraphernalia for
-softening the irrevocable decrees of a Judgment Day already past. But
-Koheleth's arrows, feathered with wit and eloquence, were logically
-shot from the Jahvist arquebus. It was Jahveh himself who proudly
-claimed that he created good and evil, and that if there were evil in
-a city it was his work. It was Jahveh's own prophet, Isaiah, who cried
-(lxiii. 17), "O Lord, why dost Thou make us to err from Thy ways,
-and hardenest our heart from Thy fear?"
-
-What then could Jahvism say when a time arrived wherein it must defend
-itself against a Jahveh-created world?
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-WISDOM (ECCLESIASTICUS).
-
-
-It was necessary that Koheleth should be answered, but who was
-competent for this? A fable had been invented of a Solomonic serpent
-who had tempted Eve to taste the fruit of knowledge which, when the
-man shared it, brought a curse on the earth, but the canonical prophets
-do not appear to have heard of it, and at any rate it was too late in
-the day to meet fact with fable. Nor had Jahveh's whirlwind-answer
-to Job proved effectual. However, some sort of answer did come,
-and significantly enough it had to come from Koheleth's own quarter,
-the Wisdom school. Pure Jahvism had not brains enough for the task.
-
-The apocryphal book "Ecclesiasticus" is the antidote to
-Ecclesiastes. (These are the Christian names given to the two
-books.) This book, bearing the simple title "Wisdom," compiled and
-partly written by Jesus Ben Sira early in the second century B. C.,
-is as a whole much more than an offset to Koheleth. It is a great
-though unintentional literary monument to Solomon, and it is the book
-of reconciliation, or so intended, between Solomonism and Jahvism,--or,
-as we should now say, between philosophy and theology.
-
-The newly discovered original Hebrew of Ecclesiasticus xxxix. 15,
-xlix. 11, published by the Clarendon Press in 1897, enables us to read
-correctly for the first time the portraiture of Solomon in xlvii.,
-with the assistance of Wace and other scholars:
-
-
-    12. After him [David] rose up a wise son, and for his [David's]
-    sake he dwelt in quiet.
-
-    13. Solomon reigned in days of prosperity, and was honoured, and
-    God gave rest to him round about that he might build an house in
-    his name, and prepare his sanctuary for ever.
-
-    14. How wast thou wise in thy youth, and didst overflow with
-    instruction like the Nile!
-
-    15. The earth (was covered by thy soul) and thou didst celebrate
-    song in the height.
-
-    16. Thy name went far unto the islands, and for thy peace thou
-    wast beloved.
-
-    17. The countries marvelled at thee for thy songs, and proverbs,
-    and parables, and interpretations.
-
-    18. Thou wast called by the glorious name which is called over
-    Israel.
-
-    18a. Thou didst gather gold as tin, and didst gather silver
-    as lead.
-
-    19. But thou gavest thy loins unto women, and lettest them have
-    dominion over thy body.
-
-    20. Thou didst stain thy honour and pollute thy seed; so that
-    thou broughtest wrath upon thy children, that they should groan
-    in their beds.
-
-    21. That the kingdom should be divided: and out of Ephraim ruled
-    a rebel kingdom.
-
-    22. But the Lord will never leave off his mercy, neither shall
-    any of his words perish, neither will he abolish the posterity of
-    his elect, and the seed of him that loveth him he will not take
-    away: wherefore he gave a remnant unto Jacob, and out of him a
-    root unto David.
-
-    23. Thus rested Solomon with his fathers, and of his seed he left
-    behind him Rehoboam [of the lineage of Ammon], ample in foolishness
-    and lacking understanding, who by his council let loose the people.
-
-
-In the last sentence I have inserted in crochets an alternative
-reading of Fritzsche for the three words that follow. (Rehoboam's
-Ammonite mother was Naamah.)
-
-It will be noticed that early in the second century B. C. there
-remained no trace of the anathemas on Solomon for his foreign or
-his idolatrous wives. He is now simply accused of being too fond of
-women,--a charge not known to the canonical books.
-
-The verse 18 attests the correctness of the view taken of the
-forty-fifth Psalm in chapter III., written before this Clarendon
-Press volume appeared. It thus becomes certain that the Psalm was
-recognised as written in Solomon's time, and that it was he who was
-there addressed as "God" ("the glorious name").
-
-The mention of this fact in "Wisdom," and the enthusiasm pervading
-every sentence of the tribute to Solomon, despite his alleged
-sensuality, supply conclusive evidence that the cult of Solomon had
-for more than eight centuries been continuous, that it was at length
-prevailing, and that it had become necessary for a broad wing of
-Jahvism to include the Solomonic worldly wisdom and ethics.
-
-Jesus Ben Sira states that he found a book written by his learned
-grandfather, whose name was also Jesus, who had studied many works of
-"our fathers," and added to them writings of his own. The anonymous
-preface states that Sira, son of the first Jesus, left it to his son,
-and that "this Jesus did imitate Solomon."
-
-It is not said that Sira contributed anything to this composite work,
-yet there appear to be three minds in it. There is a fine and free
-philosophy which savors of the earliest traditions of the Solomonic
-School; there is an exceptionally morose Jahvism; and there is also
-mysticism, an attempt to rationalise and soften the Jahvism, and to
-solemnise the philosophy, so as to blend them in a kind of harmonious
-religion. I cannot help feeling that Sira or some friend of his must
-have inserted the Jahvism between the grandfather and the grandson.
-
-However this may be, it is evident that Jesus Ben Sira was too
-reverent to seriously alter anything in the volume before him,
-for the contrast is startling between the hard Jahvism and the
-philosophy of life. Their inclusion in one work is like the union
-of oil and vinegar. The Jahvism is curiously bald: fear Jahveh, keep
-his commandments, pay your tithes, say your prayers, be severe with
-your children (especially daughters), never play with them, guard
-your wife vigilantly, flog your servants. The philosophy is quite
-incongruous with this formalism and rigidity, most of the maxims
-being elaborated with care, and only proverbs in form. Some of them
-are almost Shakespearian in artistic expression:
-
-
-    "Pipe and harp make sweet the song, but a sincere tongue is above
-    them both."
-
-    "Wisdom hid, and treasure hoarded, what value is in either?"
-
-    "The fool's heart is in his mouth, the wise man's mouth is in
-    his heart."
-
-    "There is no riches above a sound body, and no joy above that of
-    the heart."
-
-    "Whoso regardeth dreams is as one who grasps at his shadow."
-
-    "The evil man cursing Satan is but cursing himself."
-
-    "The bars of Wisdom shall be thy fortress, her chains thy robe
-    of honour."
-
-
-About the rendering of xli. 15 there is some doubt, and I give this
-conjecture:
-
-
-    Better the (ignorant) that hideth his folly, than the (learned)
-    who hideth his wisdom.
-
-
-In the Bible which belonged to the historian Gibbon, loaned by
-the late General Meredith Read to the Gibbon exhibition in London,
-I observed a pencil mark around these sentences in "Wisdom":
-
-
-   "He that buildeth his house with other men's money, is like one
-    that gathereth stones for the tomb of his own burial."
-
-   "He that is not wise will not be taught, but there is a wisdom
-    that multiplieth bitterness."
-
-
-To Jesus Ben Sira we may, I believe, ascribe the following:
-
-
-   "Glorifying God, exalt him as far as your thought can reach, yet
-    you will never attain to his height: praising him, put forth all
-    your powers, be not weary, yet ever will they fall short. Who hath
-    seen him that he can tell us? Who can describe him as he is? Let
-    us still be rejoicing in him, for we shall not search him out:
-    he is great beyond his works."
-
-
-This has an interesting correspondence with the beautiful rapture of
-the Persian Sadi:
-
-
-   "They who pretend to be informed are ignorant, for they who have
-    known him have not recovered their senses. O thou who towerest
-    above the heights of imagination, thought, or conjecture,
-    surpassing all that has been related, and excelling all that we
-    have heard or read, the banquet is ended, the congregation is
-    dismissed, and life draws to a close, and we still rest in our
-    first encomium of thee!"
-
-
-To Jesus Ben Sira may be safely ascribed the passages that bear
-witness to the pressure of problems which, though old, appear in
-new forms under Hellenic influences. They grow urgent and threaten
-the foundations of Jahvism. It was no longer sufficient to say that
-Jahveh rewarded virtue and piety, and punished vice and impiety in
-this world. Job had demanded the evidence for this, and the centuries
-had brought none. Job was awarded some recompense in this world,
-but that happy experience did not attend other virtuous sufferers.
-
-The doctrine of one writer in "Wisdom" is simply predestination. Paul's
-potter-and-clay similitude is anticipated, and the Parsi dualism
-curiously adapted to Jahvist monotheism: "Good is set against evil,
-life against death, the godly against the sinner and the sinner
-against the godly: look through all the works of the Most High and
-there are two and two, one against another." But the liberal son of
-Sira is more optimist: "All things are double, one against another,
-but he hath made nothing imperfect: one thing establisheth the good of
-another." Freedom of the will is asserted: "Say not, he hath caused
-me to err, for he hath no need of the evildoer. He made man from the
-beginning and left him in the hand of his (own) counsel.... He hath
-set fire and water before thee, stretch forth thy hand to whichever
-thou wilt. Before man is the living and the not-living, and whichever
-he liketh shall be given him."
-
-But the doctrine of human free agency is pregnant with polemics;
-it has so been in Christian history, as is proved by the Pelagian,
-Arminian, Jesuit, and Wesleyan movements. There are indications in
-Ben Sira's work that the foundations of Jahvism were threatened by
-a moral scepticism. His own celebration of the Fathers was enough to
-bring into dreary contrast the tragedies of his own time and glories
-of the Past, when "Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under
-his vine and fig-tree, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, all the days
-of Solomon." What shelter now in the divine fig-tree, which could
-bear nothing but legendary or predictive leaves? The curse on the
-barren tree was near at hand when Jesus Ben Sira uttered his pathetic
-complaint, veiled in prayer:
-
-
-   "Have mercy on us, O Lord God of all, and regard us! Send thy
-    fear on all the nations that seek thee not; lift thy hand against
-    them, let them see thy power! As thou wast (of old) sanctified
-    in us before them, be thou (now) magnified among them before us;
-    and let them know thee, as we have known thee,--that there is, O
-    God, no God but thou alone! Show new signs, more strange wonders;
-    glorify thy hand and thy right arm, that they may publish thy
-    wondrous works! Raise up indignation, pour out wrath, remove
-    the adversary, destroy the enemy: hasten! remember thy covenant,
-    and let them witness thy wonderful works!"
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII.
-
-THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON.
-
-
-Somewhat more than a century after Jesus Ben Sira's work, came
-an answer to his prayer, not from above but from beneath, in the
-so-called "Psalter of Solomon." This is no wisdom book, and need not
-detain us. It is mainly a hash--one may say a mess--made up out of
-the Psalms; and though some of the allusions, apparently to Pompey
-and others, may possess value in other connexions, the work need
-only be mentioned here as an indication of the fate which Solomon
-met at the hands of Jahvism. The name of the Wisest of his race on
-this vulgar production is like the doggerel on Shakespeare's tomb,
-and the fling at England's greatest poet written on the tomb of his
-daughter,--"Wise to salvation was good Mistriss Hall," etc.
-
-Before passing, it may be remarked that the obvious allusions to Christ
-in this Psalter seem clearly spurious, and for one I cannot regard
-as other than a late interpolation verse 24 of Psalter-Psalm xvii.:
-"Behold, O God, and raise up unto them their king, the Son of David,
-in the time which thou, O God, knowest, that he may reign over Israel
-thy servant." There is nothing in the literature of the time before or
-after that would warrant the concession to this ranting Salvationist
-(B. C. 70-60) of an idea which would then have been original. The
-verse has the accent of a Second Adventist a century later. The title
-"Son of David" occurs even in the New Testament but sixteen times.
-
-The Psalter is in spirit thoroughly Jahvist, narrow, hard, without
-one ray of Solomonic wisdom or wit. It may fairly be regarded as
-the sepulchre of the wise man whose name it bears (though not in its
-text). Jahvism has here triumphed over the whole cult of Wisdom.
-
-But Solomon is not to rest there. He is again evoked, though not
-yet in his ancient secular greatness, by the next work that claims
-our attention.
-
-This last of the Wisdom Books bears the heading "Wisdom of Solomon"
-(Sophia Solomontos) and gives unmistakable identifications of the
-King, though herein also the name "Solomon" appears only in the
-title. Perhaps the writer may have wished to avoid exciting the
-ridicule or resentment of the Solomonists by plainly connecting the
-name of their founder with a retractation of all the secularism and the
-heresies anciently associated with him. The aristocratic Sadducees,
-who believed not in immortality, derived their name from Solomon's
-famous chaplain, Zadok.
-
-This "Wisdom of Solomon" probably appeared not far from the first
-year of our era. It is written in almost classical Greek, is full of
-striking and poetic interpretations and spiritualisations of Jewish
-legends, and transfused with a piety at once warm and mystical. Solomon
-is summoned much in the way that the "Wandering Jew," Ahasuerus, is
-called up in Shelley's "Prometheus," yet not quite allegorically,
-to testify concerning the Past, and concerning the mysteries of
-the invisible world. He has left behind his secularist Proverbs
-and his worldly wisdom; but though he now rises as a prophet of
-otherworldliness, not a word is uttered inconsistent with his having
-been a saint from the beginning, albeit "chastised" and "proved." In
-fact he gives his spiritual autobiography, which is that of a Son
-of God wise and "undefiled" from childhood. His burden is to warn
-the kings and judges of the world of the blessedness that awaits the
-righteous,--the misery that awaits the unrighteous,--beyond the grave.
-
-The work impresses me as having been written by one who had long
-been an enthusiastic Solomonist, but who had been spiritually
-revolutionised by attaining the new belief of immortality. It does
-not appear as if the apparition of Solomon was to this writer a
-simple imagination. Solomon seems to be alive, or rather as if never
-dead. "For thou (God) hast power of life and death: thou leadest to
-the gates of Hades, and bringest up again." "The giving heed unto her
-(Wisdom's) laws is the assurance of incorruption; and incorruption
-maketh us near unto God: therefore the desire of Wisdom bringeth to
-a Kingdom."
-
-The Jewish people idealised Solomon's reign long before they idealised
-the man himself; and indeed he had to reach his halo under personified
-epithets derived from his fame,--as "Melchizedek," and "Prince of
-Peace." The nation sighed for the restoration of his splendid empire,
-but could not describe their Coming Man as a returning Solomon,
-because the priests and prophets,--a gentry little respected by
-the Wise Man,--steadily ascribed all the national misfortunes to the
-shrines built to other deities than Jahveh by the royal Citizen of the
-World. Thus grew such prophetic indirections as "the House of David,"
-"Jesse's branch," and finally "Son of David."
-
-But this idea of the returning hero does not appear to have been
-original with any Semitic people; it is first found among them in the
-Oriental book of Job, who longs to sleep in some cavern for ages,
-then reappear, and, even if his flesh were shrivelled, find that
-his good name was vindicated (xiv.). This idea of the Sleeping Hero
-(which is traced in many examples in my work on The Wandering Jew)
-appears to have gained its earliest expression in the legend of King
-Yima, in Persia,--the original of such sleepers as Barbarossa and
-King Arthur, as well as of the legendary Enoch, Moses, and Elias, who
-were to precede or attend the revived Son of David. Solomon, whose
-name probably gave Jerusalem the peaceful half of its name (Salem)
-would no doubt have been central among the "Undying Ones" had it not
-been for the Parliament of Religions he set up in that city. But he
-had to wait a thousand years for his honorable fame to awaken.
-
-In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the Queen of Sheba is also recalled into
-life. She is, as Renan pointed out, transfigured in the personified
-Wisdom, and her gifts become mystical. "All good things together came
-to me with her," and "Wisdom goeth before them: and I knew not that
-she was the mother of them." She is amiable, beautiful, and gave him
-his knowledge:
-
-"All such things as are secret or manifest, them I knew. For Wisdom,
-which is the worker of all things, taught me: for in her is an
-understanding spirit, holy, one only, manifold; subtle, lively,
-clear, undefiled, plain, not subject to hurt, loving the thing that
-is good, quick, which cannot be letted, ready to do good, kind to
-man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power, overseeing
-all things, and pervading all intellectual, pure, and most subtle
-spirits. For Wisdom is more moving than motion itself; she passeth
-and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness. For she is the
-breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory
-of the Almighty: therefore can no impure thing fall into her. For she
-is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of
-the power of God, and the image of his goodness. And alone, she can
-do all things; herself unchanged, she maketh all things new; and in
-all ages, entering into holy souls, she maketh them intimates of God,
-and prophets. For God loveth only him who dwelleth with Wisdom. She
-is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of stars;
-compared with the light she is found before it,--for after light
-cometh night, but evil shall not prevail against Wisdom." (vii. 21-30.)
-
-In Sophia Solomontos Solomon relates his espousal of Wisdom,
-who sat beside the throne of God (ix. 4). But there remains with
-God a detective Wisdom called the Holy Spirit. Wisdom and the Holy
-Spirit have different functions. "Thy counsel who hath known except
-thou give Wisdom, and send thy Holy Spirit from above?" This verse
-(ix. 17) is followed by two chapters (x., xi.) relating the work of
-Wisdom through past ages as a Saviour. But then comes an account
-of the severe chastening functions of the Holy Spirit. "For thine
-incorruptible Spirit is in all things (i. e., nothing is concealed
-from her), therefore chastenest thou them by little and little that
-offend," etc. (xii. 1, 2.)
-
-There is here a slight variation in the historic development of the
-Spirit of God, and one so pregnant with results that it may be well
-to refer to some of the earlier Hebrew conceptions. The Spirit of
-God described in Genesis i. 2, as "brooding" over the waters was
-evidently meant to represent a detached agent of the deity. The
-legend is obviously related to that of the dove going forth over
-the waters of the deluge. The dove probably acquired its symbolical
-character as a messenger between earth and heaven from the marvellous
-powers of the carrier pigeon--powers well known in ancient Egypt--it
-also appears that its cooing was believed to be an echo on earth
-of the voice of God. [24] We have already seen (viii.) that Wisdom,
-when first personified, was identified with this "brooding" spirit
-over the surface of the waters, and also that in a second (Jahvist)
-personification she is a severe and reproving agent. But in the
-second verse of Genesis there is a darkness on the abyss, and both
-darkness and abyss were personified. In the rigid development of
-monotheism all of these beings were necessarily regarded as agents
-of Jahveh--monopolist of all powers. We thus find such accounts as
-that in 1 Samuel 16, where the Spirit of Jahveh departed from Saul
-and an evil Spirit from Jahveh troubled him.
-
-Although the Spirit of God was generally supposed to convey miraculous
-knowledge, especially of future events, and superior skill, it is
-not, I believe, in any book earlier than Sophia Solomontos definitely
-ascribed the function of a detective. There is in Ecclesiastes (x. 20)
-a passage which suggests the carrier: "Curse not the King, no, not
-in thy thought; and curse not the rich even in thy bedchamber; for
-a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings
-shall tell the matter." [25] This was evidently in the mind of the
-writer of Sophia Solomontos in the following verses:
-
-Wisdom is a loving Spirit, and will not (cannot?) acquit a blasphemer
-of his words: for God is a witness of his reins, and a true beholder
-of his heart, and a hearer of his tongue; for the Spirit of the
-Lord filleth the world, and that which containeth all things hath
-knowledge of the voice; therefore he that speaketh unrighteous things
-cannot be hid, neither shall vengeance when it punisheth, pass by
-him. For inquisition shall be made into the counsels of the ungodly;
-the sound of his words shall come unto the Lord for the disclosure
-of his wickedness, the ear of jealousy heareth all things, and the
-sound even of murmurings is not secret."
-
-Here we have the origin of the "unpardonable sin." The Holy Spirit
-detects and informs, Jahveh avenges, and if the offence is blasphemy,
-Wisdom, the Saviour, cannot acquit (as the "Loving Spirit" of God
-it is for her ultra vires). This detective Holy Spirit appears to
-be an evolution from both Wisdom and Satan the Accuser, in Job a Son
-of God. By associating with Solomon on earth, Wisdom was without the
-severe holiness essential to Jahvist conceptions of divine government;
-in other words, personified Wisdom, whose "delight was with the sons
-of men" (Prov. viii. 31) was too humanized to fulfil the conditions
-necessary for upholding the temple at a time when penal sanctions
-were withdrawn from the priesthood. A celestial spy was needed, and
-also an uncomfortable Sheol, if the ancient ordinances and sacrifices
-were to be preserved at all under the rule of Roman liberty, and amid
-the cosmopolitan conditions prevailing at Jerusalem, and still more
-at Alexandria. [26]
-
-With regard to Wisdom herself, there is a sentence which requires
-notice, especially as no unweighed word is written in the work
-under notice. It is said, "In that she is conversant with God,
-she magnifieth her nobility; yea, the Lord of all things himself
-loved her." (viii. 3). [27] This seems to be the germ of Philo's
-idea of Wisdom as the Mother: "And she, receiving the seed of God,
-with beautiful birth-pangs brought forth this world, His visible Son,
-only and well-beloved." The writer of Sophia Solomontos is very careful
-to be vague in speculations of this kind, while suggesting inferences
-with regard to them. Thus, alluding to Moses before Pharaoh, he says,
-"She (Wisdom) entered into the servant of the Lord, and withstood
-dreadful kings in wonders and signs" (x. 16), but leaves us to mere
-conjecture as to whether he (the writer) still had Wisdom in mind
-when writing (xvii. 13) of the failure of these enchantments and the
-descent of the Almighty Word, for the destruction of the first-born:
-
-"For while all things are quiet silence, and that night was in the
-midst of her swift course, thine Almighty Word leaped down from Heaven
-out of thy Royal throne, as a fierce man of war into the midst of
-a land of destruction; and brought thine unfeigned commandment as
-a sharp sword, and standing up filled all things with death; and it
-touched the heaven, but it stood upon the earth." [28]
-
-The Word in this place (ho pantodynamos sou logos) is clearly
-reproduced in the Epistle to the Hebrews (iv. 12). "The Word of God
-is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword;" and
-the same military metaphor accompanies this "Word" into Revelation
-xix. 13. This continuity of metaphor has apparently been overlooked
-by Alford (Greek Testament, vol. iv., p. 226) who regards the use of
-the phrase "Word of God" (ho logos tou theou) as linking Revelation
-to the author of the fourth Gospel, whereas in this Gospel Logos is
-never followed by "of God," while it is so followed in Hebrews iv. 12.
-
-This evolution of the "Word" is clear. In the "Wisdom of Solomon"
-Wisdom is the creative Word and the Saviour. The Word leaping down from
-the divine throne and bearing the sword of vengeance is more like the
-son of the celestial counterpart of Wisdom, namely, the detective Holy
-Spirit (called in i. 5 "the Holy Spirit of Discipline"). But in the
-era we are studying, all words by able writers were living things,
-and were two-edged swords, and long after they who wrote them were
-dead went on with active and sundering work undreamed of by those
-who first uttered them.
-
-The Zoroastrian elements which we remarked in Jesus Ben Sira's
-"Wisdom" are even more pronounced in the "Wisdom of Solomon." The
-Persian worshippers are so mildly rebuked (xiii.) for not passing
-beyond fire and star to the "origin of beauty," that one may suppose
-the author, probably an Alexandrian, must have had friends among
-them. At any rate his conception of a resplendent God is Mazdean,
-his all-seeing Holy Spirit is the Parsi "Anahita," and his Wisdom
-is Armaiti, the "loving spirit" on earth, the saviour of men. [29]
-The opposing kingdoms of Ahuramazda and Angromainyu, and especially
-Zoroaster's original division of the universe into "the living and
-the not-living," are reflected in the "Wisdom of Solomon," i. 13-16:
-
-"God made not death: neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of
-the living. He created all things that they might have their being;
-and the generations of the world were healthful; and there (was)
-no poison of destruction in them, nor (any) kingdom of death on the
-earth: (for righteousness is immortal): but ungodly men with their
-deeds and words evoked Death to them: when they thought to have it
-their friend they consumed to naught, and made a covenant with Death,
-being fit to take sides with it."
-
-In the moral and religious evolution which we have been tracing it
-has been seen that the utter indifference of the Cosmos to human good
-and evil, right and wrong, was the theme of Job; that in Ecclesiastes
-the same was again declared, and the suggestion made that if God
-helped or afflicted men it must depend on some point of etiquette or
-observance unconnected with moral considerations, so that man need
-not omit pleasure but only be punctilious when in the temple; that
-in Jesus Ben Sira's contribution to his fathers' "Wisdom," the moral
-character of God was maintained, moral evil regarded as hostile to God,
-and imaginary sanctions invented, accompanied by pleadings with God
-to indorse them by new signs and wonders. Such signs not appearing,
-and no rewards and punishments being manifested in human life, the
-next step was to assign them to a future existence, and this step was
-taken in "Wisdom of Solomon."  There remained but one more necessity,
-namely, that there should be some actual evidence of that future
-existence. Agur's question had remained unanswered--
-
-
-   "Who has ascended into heaven and come down again?
-    Such an one would I question about God."
-
-
-To this the reply was to be the resurrection from death claimed for
-the greatest of the spiritual race of Solomon.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII.
-
-EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS (A SEQUEL TO SOPHIA SOLOMONTOS).
-
-
-In a Theocracy the birth of a new God was not the mere new
-generalization that it might be in our secularized century,--a
-deification of the Unknowable, for instance,--of not the slightest
-practical or moral interest to any human being. Judea was the bodily
-incarnation, even more than Islam is now, of a deity who said,
-"I am the Lord and there is none else; I form the light and create
-darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I the Lord do all these
-things." The denial of such a deity, the substitution of one who
-required neither prayers, sacrifices, nor intercessions, could not
-be merely theoretical. It must involve the overthrow of a nationality
-which had no bond of unity except a book, and the institutions founded
-on that book.
-
-Nor did the theocratic principle admit of a mere philosophical
-opposition to its institutions. He who touched that system was dealing
-with people who, in the language of "Sophia Solomontos" were "shut up
-in a prison without iron bars." The natural advent of the anti-Jahvist
-was in the Temple and with the words--
-
-
-    He hath sent me to herald glad news to the poor,
-    He hath sent me to proclaim deliverance to captives,
-    And recovering of sight to the blind,
-    To set at liberty them that are bruised.
-
-
-These miseries had no real relation to the social or political
-conditions amid which their phrases and hymns were born, but to a
-burden of debts to a jealous and vindictive omnipotence; a burden
-not of actions really wrong, but of mysterious offences, related to
-incomprehensible ordinances and heavenly etiquette. No human vices
-are so malignant as inhuman virtues.
-
-Bunyan, in depicting Christian's burden, has, with a felicity
-perhaps unconscious, made it a pack strapped on. It is not a hunch,
-not any part of the pilgrim, and had he possessed the courage to
-examine it there must have been found many spiritual nightmares
-of the race, and many robust English virtues turned to sins when
-the merry and honest tinker turned retrospective Rip Van Winkle,
-and dreamed himself back into the year One. The burden of sins on
-the poor Israelites had been gradually getting lighter under the
-scepticism of the Wisdom school, in view of the failure of Jahveh to
-fulfil the menaces and sentences of the priesthood. Conformity was
-secured mainly for actual advantages bestowed by the synagogue, or its
-terrors. But the discovery of the doctrine of a future life and a day
-of judgment, when all the mysterious "sins" were to be settled for,
-while smiled at by the Saducees, made the burden of the ignorant poor
-intolerable. Life was passed under suspended swords. The priesthood
-had a cowering vassal in every ignorant human being. The time, the
-labour, the flocks of the peasantry were devoted, but it was all a
-"sweating" process,--the debts were never paid, and there was always
-that "certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of
-fire which shall devour the adversaries." No doubt even the learned
-supposed these superstitions useful to keep the "masses" in order.
-
-But one day a scholarly gentleman, a man of genius, was moved with
-compassion for these poor lost and priest-harried sheep: he turned
-aside from his college and his rank, and became their shepherd;
-he declared they owed no duties to any deity, and that the heavenly
-despot they so dreaded had no existence.
-
-A modern gentleman in a fine mansion and estate may be amused at
-Bunyan's quaint pilgrim, reading in a book and discovering that he
-was in a City of Destruction, fleeing with a burden on his back, and
-rejoicing when it rolls off at the cross. But if this gentleman should
-suddenly receive from some distant personage papers showing that his
-estate had been entirely mortgaged by his father, that it would soon
-be claimed and his family reduced to beggary, he might understand
-the City of Destruction. And if, soon after, some visitor arrived to
-state that the holder of the mortgages was dead; that those claims had
-all legally fallen into his own hands, and that he had burnt them,
-the rolling off of Christian's burden might be appreciated,--also
-the enthusiasm of the personal followers of Jesus.
-
-But one might further imagine a host of hungry lawyers, living on
-large retainers, not being quite happy at such easy settlements,
-especially if the generous visitor were found wealthy enough to go
-about buying up and burning claims, and ending litigation. This, to
-us hardly imaginable, was, however, actually the condition of things
-reflected in parts of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Therein the bond
-under which man suffers is clearly to him who hath the Power of Death,
-the Devil: Jesus ransomed man from the Devil.
-
-The anonymous tractate superscribed solely "To the Hebrews," though
-the last admitted into the New Testament, is probably the earliest
-document it contains. It has no doubt been tampered with, but the
-evidences of the early date of its conception of Christ remain. Not
-only was it evidently written before the destruction of the temple
-(anno 70), but before there was any thought of a mission to the
-Gentiles, who, with Paul their apostle, are ignored. Some of its
-phrases and illustrations are found in epistles of Paul, but, as
-Dr. Davidson pointed out in his Introduction to the New Testament,
-the general doctrine of this treatise is far from Pauline, and
-it is difficult to find any reason for supposing that the few
-borrowings were not by Paul, other than a preference for Paul, and
-disinclination to admit that there is any anonymous work in the New
-Testament. The treatise is without Paul's egotism, or his fatalism,
-and its conception of the new movement seems decidedly more primitive
-than that in the recognised Pauline epistles. The sagacious Eusebius,
-"father of church history," connects the Epistle "To the Hebrews"
-with the "Wisdom of Solomon," and it seems clear that we have here the
-bridge between the last abutment of philosophic or "broad" Jahvism,
-and its "new departure" as Christism.
-
-It is not of especial importance to the present inquiry to determine
-that Paul might not at some youthful period have written this work,
-though I cannot see how any critical reader can so imagine; but
-it will bear indirectly on that point if we read successively the
-following corresponding passages:
-
-
-    Wisdom of Solomon.--"For Wisdom, which is the worker of all things,
-    taught me ... she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure
-    influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty; therefore can
-    no unclean thing fall into her. For she is the brightness of
-    the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God,
-    and the image of his goodness. And alone she can do all things;
-    herself unchanged, she maketh all things new: and in all ages
-    entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God and
-    prophets."--(vii. 25-27.) "And Wisdom was with thee: which knoweth
-    thy works, and was present when thou madest the world." (ix. 9.)
-
-    Epistle to the Hebrews.--"God, having in time past spoken to the
-    fathers by many fragments and divers ways in the prophets, at the
-    end of these days spake unto us in Son whom he constituted heir
-    of all things, by whom also he fashioned the ages; who, being the
-    brightness of his light and the image of his substance, and guiding
-    all things by the word of his authority, having made purification
-    of sins, sat on the right of majesty in high places." (i. 1-3.)
-
-    Epistle to the Colossians.--"Who (the Father) delivered us out of
-    the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of his
-    son of love, in whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of
-    our sins: who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of
-    all creation; for in him were all things created, in the heavens
-    and above the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether
-    thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have
-    been created through him and unto him; and he is before all things,
-    and in him all things hold together." (i. 13-17.)
-
-    Fourth Gospel.--"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
-    with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning
-    with God. All things were made through him, and without him was
-    not anything made. That which hath been made was life in him,
-    and the life was the light of men. And the Word became flesh
-    and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory--glory as of an only
-    begotten of a Father full of grace and truth." (i. 1-15.)
-
-
-It appears to me that the evolution is represented in the
-order given. Paul's phrase, "first-born of all creation,"  is an
-amplification of the word "first-born" used in the Epistle to the
-Hebrews, but there used in another connection,--and not solely,
-as we shall see, relating to Christ. Paul's phrase corresponds with
-"the only-begotten," etc., of John, and with the "son constituted
-heir" of the Epistle to the Hebrews, though the latter is a different
-Christological conception. When this writer's doctrinal statement is
-finished, and after his argument is begun, he says (i. 6), "But when
-of old bringing the first-born into the inhabited earth, he saith,
-And pay homage to him all angels of God." The word "first-born" here is
-probably the seed from which Paul develops his full flower of doctrine,
-given above. Paul's conception of a creative Christ seems later than
-the "guiding" Christ (Heb. i. 3), which recalls the function of Wisdom
-as "director" at the creation (Prov. viii. 30); and the idea in this
-epistle to the Hebrews of a previous and historical Christophany,
-while harmonious with that of the "Wisdom of Solomon" (vii. 27),--that
-she (Wisdom) "in all ages enters into holy souls,"--is so primitive,
-unique, and so foreign to Paul, that the writer may have been one of
-those accused by him of preaching "another Jesus" (2 Cor. ii. 4). [30]
-
-Although this Epistle contains the principle ascribed to Jesus,
-"charity and not sacrifice" (xiii. 9) and substitutes for beasts the
-"sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips harmonious with his good
-name" (verse 15), the letter that killeth brought forth from the same
-chapter the fatal doctrine that the body of Jesus was a sacrifice to be
-eaten. And although this emphasizes the completeness of his humanity
-to an extent inconsistent with his deity, it is on the letter of this
-Epistle that the deification of Christ is founded.
-
-
-    V. 7-9. "Who in the days of his flesh, having offered up
-    entreaties with vehement crying and tears to him able to save
-    him out of death, and although inclined to because of his piety,
-    yet, albeit a son, learned obedience by the things he suffered;
-    and having been made perfect, became unto all that follow him
-    the author of eternal salvation." [31]
-
-
-He is represented as "made perfect through sufferings," as "tempted
-in all points like (?others) without sin," and as having without
-assistance of temple or sacrifices, "obtained eternal redemption"
-(ix. 12). Thus he also needed redemption.
-
-The new covenant of which Jesus was the founder is described in the
-words of Jeremiah (xxxi.):
-
-
-    I will put my laws into their mind,
-    And on their heart will I write them
-    And I will be to them a God,
-    And they shall be to me a people:
-    And they shall not teach every man his fellow-citizen,
-    And every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord:
-    For all shall know me,
-    From the least unto the greatest.
-
-
-In quoting this the writer to the Hebrews adds: "In that he saith,
-'A new (covenant) he hath made the first old. But that which is
-becoming old and waxeth aged is near unto vanishing entirely.'" Here
-is a primitive Quakerism, but more conservative; not like George Fox
-at once sweeping away priesthood sacraments and ecclesiastical laws
-before the Inner Light, but pointing to their near vanishing.
-
-The writer of this Epistle is a philosophical conservative; he shudders
-at the idea of a swift and complete overthrow of the traditional
-system, and even borrows its old thunders against levitical sin
-to menace offences against the new moral God. "Our God [also] is
-a consuming fire." It is evident by his very warnings that a great
-anti-sacerdotal and anti-levitical revolution had taken place, and
-that the free spirit was burgeoning out in excesses. But such is
-his culture that one may suspect his thunders of being theatrical,
-and that he thinks some superstition necessary for the masses.
-
-The fatal and subtle character of the detective Holy Spirit is imported
-into this Epistle from the "Wisdom of Solomon" (i. 6), though not
-so distinctly personified. The sin afterwards called "unpardonable"
-is here a sin against Christ for which repentance, not pardon, is
-impossible. We may perhaps find in some of the expressions germs of
-the legend of Judas. "As touching those who were once enlightened,
-and tasted the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy
-Spirit, and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age
-that is come, and fell away, it is impossible to renew them again to
-repentance, seeing they individually impale the Son of God afresh
-and put him to open shame" (vi. 5, 6). The believers are "not of
-them that shrink back into perdition" (x. 39); and they are warned
-to look carefully "whether there be any man that falleth back from
-the grace of God,... like Esau, who for one mess of meat sold his own
-birthright" (xii. 15, 16). The words "tasted," "perdition," "sold,"
-might start a legend of the betrayal, first alluded to by Paul (if 1
-Cor. xi. 23 be genuine, which is doubtful), though had the legend of
-Judas then existed this writer would naturally have alluded to him
-along with Esau.
-
-This Epistle is the nursery of the titles of Christ; he is Apostle,
-Son of God, Son of Man, Great Shepherd, Captain of Salvation, Mediator,
-Great High Priest; and here alone is found the now familiar endearing
-phrase "Our Lord." These titles represent the functions of different
-beings in the Avesta. The conception of the work of Jesus on earth
-is largely Zoroastrian. The Majesty on high has a colony and a people
-on earth, which otherwise is under the supremacy of the Evil One. As
-we have seen the Avestan definitions of Ahuramazda and Angra Mainyu,
-"the Living and the Not Living," are reflected in the phrases of this
-Epistle,--the "Power of Imperishable Life" (vii. 16) and the "Power of
-Death" (ii. 14). Ahuramazda, when his "habitable earth" was prepared,
-brought into it his "first-born," Yima, and wished him to propagate
-the divine law which should destroy the power of Angra Mainyu on earth
-and confine him in the underworld. Yima replied, "I was not born,
-I was not taught, to be the preacher and the bearer of thy law." He
-engaged, however, to enlarge and nourish the garden of God on earth,
-of which he was king, and entitled "the good shepherd." He obtained
-from the Holy Spirit, Anahita, the powers thus enumerated in Aban
-Yast 26: "He begged of her a boon, saying, 'Grant me this, O good,
-most beneficent Ardvi Sura Anahita, that I may become the sovereign
-lord of all countries, of the daevas [devils] and men, of the Yatus
-[sorcerers] and Pairkas [seducing nymphs], of the oppressors [who
-afflict] the blind and the deaf; and that I may take from the daevas
-[devils] both riches and welfare, both fatness and flocks, both weal
-and glory" [hvareno, "the glory from above which makes the king an
-earthly god"]. [32] This "firstborn" reigned a thousand years, but
-then, having ascribed his "glory" to the demons from whom he obtained
-wealth and material benefits, his "glory" was lost, and secured by
-the Devil, who reigned in his place a thousand years, blighting the
-world, when Zoroaster was born to undertake the establishment of the
-divine Law on earth. Yima was ultimately developed into the Jamshid
-of Persian mythology, whose power over demons, fabulous wealth, and
-ultimate fall (through declaring himself a god, according to Firdusi)
-invested the legend of Solomon.
-
-From the legend of Solomon and the Solomonic Psalms the Epistle to
-the Hebrews brings its exaltation of Christ. From Ps. lxxxix. 26-7,
-as reproduced in 2 Sam. vii. 14, is quoted (i. 5) the divine promise,
-"I will be to him (Solomon) a Father and he shall be my Son," along
-with the manifesto at Solomon's enthronement (Ps. ii. 7), "Thou art
-my Son; this day have I begotten thee." Solomon is the "first-born"
-alluded to in Heb. i. 6: "When of old bringing the first-born into
-the inhabited earth (oikoumenen) he saith, And pay homage to him all
-angels of God?"
-
-And here we have an interesting example of evolution in the Solomon
-legend. The term "first-born," as indicating the relation of a human
-being to the deity, occurs but once in the Old Testament, namely, in
-Psalm lxxxix. 27. It occurs in a strange passage that must be quoted:
-
-
-    19. Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy ones,
-        And saidst, I have laid help upon a youth;
-        I have raised one elected out of the people.
-    20. I have discovered David, my servant:
-        With my holy oil have I anointed him,
-    21. By whom my hand shall be established,
-        Whom also mine arm shall strengthen.
-    22. The enemy shall not do him violence,
-        Nor the son of evil afflict him.
-    23. I will beat down his adversaries before him
-        And smite them that hate him.
-    24. But my faithfulness and my mercy end not with him,
-        And in my name shall his horn be exalted.
-    25. I will extend his hand on the sea also,
-        And his right hand on the rivers:
-    26. He shall address me, "Thou, my father,
-        My God, and the rock of my support";
-    27. In answer I constitute him first-born,
-        Elyon of the kings of the earth.
-
-
-Although in all of these verses the Davidic royalty is exalted, the
-reference to David's own reign passes at verse 24 into a celebration of
-Solomon. Here, as in Psalm cxxxii. 17, Solomon is the "horn" of David:
-he was distinctively the power on sea and river, phrases inapplicable
-to David, and there is a contrast between the anointed "servant"
-(verse 20) and the "first-born" (verse 27). The next title, "Elyon"
-(Most High), comes very near to that of the deity (El Elyon) of the
-mysterious priest-king of Salem, Melchizedek, whose mythical character
-and identity with the legendary Solomon will be hereafter considered.
-
-Here we have no doubt the germs of the narrative in 2 Sam. vii. of
-the formal adoption of Solomon as Jahveh's son, with the addition of a
-metaphysical connotation of the sonship not found in the Psalm. In the
-Psalm the fatherhood is that of support, the position of "first-born"
-is that of chieftainship among kings; and it is further said (31,
-32) that if any of the sons of the Davidic line profane the divine
-statutes, "Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and
-their iniquity with stripes." But in 2 Sam. vii. 14, Jahveh applies
-this warning to Solomon alone, and with a remarkable modification:
-"I will be his father and he shall be my son: if he commit iniquity
-I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of
-the sons of men; but my mercy shall not depart from him." That is,
-though a son of God he may be chastened like the sons of men,--an
-intimation of a difference between Solomon and ordinary human nature
-not intended in the words of the Psalm.
-
-The Epistle to the Hebrews, finding in this Psalm an introduction of
-"first-born" into the world, for there is no article preceding the
-word, follows it so closely as to omit any article before "son"
-(i. 2). He finds this in an address of the deity to his angels
-("holy ones" or saints), and understands verse 27 of the Psalm to
-mean that they, the angels, are to worship the "first-born" as the
-Elyon, or Most High on earth. From 2 Sam. vii. the Epistle gets
-sufficient authority for ascribing an eternal personality to the
-sonship, anciently represented by Solomon, and we may thus see that
-the gesture of Hebrew religion towards a doctrine of incarnation was
-much earlier than is generally supposed. And this, too, is the Hebrew
-contribution to a Psalm which, in the nine verses above quoted, imports
-ideas foreign to Judaism. The reciprocal help of the deity and the king
-(19-21) is Avestan, and inconsistent with monotheism. Elyon is the
-name of an ancient Phoenician god, slain by his son El, no doubt the
-"first-born of death" in Job xviii. 13, and the violent "son of evil,"
-in verse 22 of our Psalm. The exaltation of both David and Solomon in
-the Psalm is primarily in reference to service and deeds, not majesty,
-essence, or title; of these Avestan religion made little, but Hebraism
-made much, and the deification of Solomon, though warranted by other
-Psalms, is added to this eighty-ninth by Samuel and the Epistle to
-the Hebrews.
-
-In Ecclesiasticus it is written: "In the division of the nations of the
-whole earth he set a ruler over every people; but Israel is the Lord's
-portion: whom, being his first-born, he nourisheth with discipline,
-and giving him the light of his love doth not forsake him.... For all
-things cannot be in men, because the son of man is not immortal. What
-is brighter than the sun? Yet the light thereof faileth; and flesh
-and blood will imagine evil" (xvii.). Now in the Zoroastrian theology
-there could be no direct contact of God with matter: the devil's
-empire could be invaded and death conquered only by a perfectly
-"blameless" MAN. (Cf. "Wisdom of Solomon," xviii. 21, with the
-"sinless" of Heb. iv. 15, the "guileless" of vii. 26, and "without
-blemish," ix. 14). The spotless one can use no carnal weapon. In
-the Zoroastrian theology the divine potency is that of the Word, and
-formulas exist to be wielded against every variety of demon. So in
-this Epistle the supremacy of the Son is by "the word of his power",
-(i. 3), and "the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword"
-(iv. 12).
-
-The enterprise of the Son of God was to fulfil these conditions. He
-must become a complete man, share all the infirmities of man, all his
-liabilities to temptation, receive no assistance from his Father,
-no angelic help,--placed lower than the angels,--and confront the
-powers of Death and Hell without any material weapon. If he succeeded
-in remaining sinless, faithful to the divine law, even unto death,
-even while in hell, unshaken by threats, sufferings, or seductions,
-it must be a purely human achievement. There was no miracle; even the
-suspicion of using supernatural power would have tainted the whole
-work of Jesus as conceived in this Epistle.
-
-This undertaking was not simply for the sake of mankind. All things
-are not yet subjected to the divine sway (Heb. ii. 8). Heaven itself
-was shaken, when the old covenant failed, and trembled for the result
-of the tremendous conflict of the Son of Man on earth with its Prince
-and his hosts (Heb. xii. 25-29). This was "the joy in front of him"
-(xii. 2), as well as the rescue of men.
-
-Thus was the man left entirely to the devil, not even his life
-being reserved, as in the case of Job. He loudly cries for help,
-even with tears, at the sight of Death; he is heard, pitied, but no
-help comes. He must trust to his human merits, and not miracles,
-for his Sonship is of no value in this conflict. By his obedience
-learned in his sufferings, by his sinlessness under all trials and
-temptations, he fulfilled the conditions of deathlessness. By his
-own heart's blood, not by offerings of bloody sacrifices, not by
-supernatural power, he reached the place of holiness, "having obtained
-eternal redemption." From first to last there was no divine aid. His
-unanswered loud cries (Heb. v. 7) may be connected with the legend
-of his expiring cry, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
-
-Much of the thought here is similar to the "Wisdom of Solomon"
-(ii. 22-4, iii. 1-9), where however the ideas are conflicting. It is
-said, "God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of
-his own eternity: nevertheless, through the devil's envy came death
-into the world, and they that hold of his side do find it." But then
-Jahvism puts in with the declaration that the seeming destruction
-of the righteous is God's chastisement and probation of them. The
-Epistle to the Hebrews does not regard the sufferings and death of
-Jesus as God's work at all, but all from the devil. Though God spoke
-by him there is no suggestion that he sent Jesus, or that his coming
-was not voluntary.
-
-With this reservation, and a large one it is, that Jesus was not
-delivered up to Satan by God, but left to confront his torments in an
-effort to subdue him, "bring him to nought," the central idea of the
-Epistle is a doctrinal transfiguration of Job, who being delivered up
-to Satan, triumphs over the tempter and tormentor, and through all
-preserves his sinlessness and loyalty to God. The result being that
-those who had denied Job's merits, his sinlessness, had to secure Job's
-intercession in order to escape the penalty of having ascribed his
-sufferings to God (Job xlii. 8). [33] This relationship of ideas is all
-the more interesting because apparently unconscious in the writer of
-the Epistle, and thus revealing the extent to which Oriental religion
-had remoulded Judaism among the educated Jews of his time. Monotheism
-is strictly inconsistent with the supremacy of "merits" which is the
-very soul of Oriental religion. The sacred books of India contain
-records of saints or Rishis who by extraordinary austerities,
-sacrifices, and virtues so piled up their "merits" that the gods
-were frightened, as they were at the tower of Babel; and sometimes
-the gods tempted these powerful saints to commit some sin that would
-reduce their "merits." The Solomonic "Proverbs" are pervaded by the
-Oriental doctrine of "merits": a man is proved by test of his merits,
-as gold passing through the furnace (xxvii. 21); the perfect inherit
-good (xxviii. 10); and perhaps that sublime pedlar of transcendent
-gems imported along with the gold of Ophir some version of the Puranic
-legend of Harischandra, "the Hindu Job." All the Jahvist adulterations
-of the biblical version do not conceal the fact that when Jahveh,
-by delivering the meritorious man up to Satan, delivered himself also
-into the hands of Satan, he (Jahveh) was compelled to surrender before
-the merits on which the man had planted himself. Jahveh reclaimed his
-sovereignty, but agreed that Job, who had said "God hath wronged me,"
-had spoken of him "the thing that is right" (xlii. 8). In the same
-way the storm-god Indra (the Hindu Jahveh) accompanied by all the
-gods, headed by Dharma (Justice), appears to Harischandra after his
-trials, and tells him that he, his wife and son, had, by their merits,
-"conquered heaven" (Markandeya Purana). The completion of these merits
-was when Harischandra resolved with his wife to die on the funeral
-pyre of their son, who, as a result of their torments, had died by a
-serpent's bite. It was then that the god Indra appeared to restore
-the son, and admit that the just and faithful king, his wife and
-son, had "conquered heaven." We are thus carried to the Solomonic
-affirmations that "when the whirlwind passeth the just man is on
-an everlasting foundation" (Prov. x. 25), that "justice delivereth
-from death" (x. 2), that "the just man finds a refuge in death"
-(xiv. 32); and we are carried forward to the Epistle to the Hebrews,
-where, after the last ordeal, death, the son of the heavenly king
-is restored to life, and Satan, who had over him the power of death,
-"brought to nought" (ii. 14). But further, in the Puranic legend, which
-from time immemorial has been a passion-play in India, Harischandra,
-when told that he, his wife and son, had "conquered heaven," refused
-to ascend to heaven without his "faithful subjects." "This request
-was granted by Indra, and after Viswamitra had inaugurated Rohitaswa,
-the king's son, to be his successor, Harischandra, his friends and
-followers, all ascended to heaven." Thus, in our Epistle, the son,
-having "learned obedience by the things which he suffered, and having
-been made perfect, became unto all them that obeyed him the author
-of eternal salvation." "For in that he hath himself suffered being
-tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted." The subjects of
-King Harischandra who remained faithful to him after he was reduced
-to beggary, ascended with him. Faith is declared in our Epistle to be
-"the testing of things not seen" (xi. 1), and faithfulness is to "run
-with patience the course that is set before us, looking unto Jesus,
-the captain and perfector of faithfulness, who for the joy set before
-him endured the stake (stauron), despising shame, and hath sat down
-at the right hand of the throne of God" (xi. 1, xii. 1, 2).
-
-And there is also, I believe, in the scheme of redemption set forth
-in this Epistle, an influence from the story of King Usinara in the
-Mahabharata, of which there were various versions which must have
-been familiar to the Buddhists in Alexandria. A dove pursued by a
-falcon takes refuge in the bosom of Usinara; the falcon demands its
-surrender. The King quotes the law of Manu that it is a great sin to
-abandon any being that has taken asylum with one. The falcon urges that
-it is the law of nature that falcons shall feed on doves, and that
-unless this dove is surrendered its little falcons must starve. The
-King offers other food, but the only substitute that is adapted to
-the falcon's nature is a quantity of Usinara's own flesh equal to the
-weight of the dove. To this the King agrees. Balances are produced,
-and the dove placed in one scale, in the other a piece of the King's
-flesh, which seems large enough, but is insufficient. Though the
-King cuts off piece by piece all of his flesh, the dove outweighs it,
-until at length Usinara gets into the scale HIMSELF. That outweighs
-the dove, which is really Agni, the falcon being Indra. The gods
-who had assumed these forms in order to test Usinara's fidelity
-to the law of sanctuary, resume their shape, and the King ascends
-transfigured to paradise. In one version a King (Givi) sacrifices
-his son, Vrihad-Gasbha in obedience to sacred requirements, the story
-resembling that of Abraham and Isaac. Alford calls attention to the
-emphasis on the word "himself" in the Epistle of the Hebrews ix. 14:
-"How much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal
-Spirit offered HIMSELF, without blemish, unto God, cleanse our
-conscience from dead works to serve the living God."
-
-Without blemish! That was the great point. The champion of the Good
-confronts the champion of Evil, his purpose being to conquer the last
-enemy, Death, by unarmed human virtue. This was the central idea
-in the Passion, a drama gone to pieces in the Gospels. Therefore,
-he did not summon legions of angels, and said to Peter, "Sheath
-thy sword." Therefore, the mere lynching of Jesus, for such it was,
-is given the formalities of judicial procedure, in order to impress
-an official character on the testimonies to his innocence: Pilate,
-Caiaphas, Pilate's wife, Judas, Herod, all bear witness that no evil
-is in him, and he challenges the High Priest's court, "If I have
-uttered evil bear witness of the evil." [34] In this passion-drama
-Jesus Barabbas is set beside Jesus the Christ,--officially proclaimed
-guilt beside officially proclaimed innocence,--and Wrath selects guilt,
-condemns innocence. But it was thus the first-born of Life prevailed
-over the first-born of Death. In that crisis the blameless man swerving
-not from his rectitude, established the "assembly of the first-born,"
-who can dwell with the living God because they have learned from their
-Captain how to get rid of the defilement of mortality. There is nothing
-vicarious in his service. The Captain represented the human race in
-a single combat with Satan, and he discovered for all the vulnerable
-point of that Adversary,--that he could not hold in sheol a perfectly
-sinless human being. But it still remained that without holiness no
-man could see the Lord. Another advantage secured by Jesus for men
-was that after his victory was achieved the heroic man, on resuming
-his previous position as Son of God, was able to add thereto what
-he had won as Son of Man,--the office of high priest or intercessor,
-who could take good care that every man who fulfilled the condition
-of holiness got his reward. Satan should not cheat. Nevertheless
-Jesus had been his own saviour, and every man must be his own saviour.
-
-Pulpit ignorance has wrested from the Epistle to the Hebrews
-fragments of texts, in support of a dogma of atonement which only
-a fortunate lack of logic prevents from amounting to a doctrine of
-human sacrifice. A favorite clause is, "Without the shedding of blood
-there in no remission,"--which is really this epistle's stigma on
-the system it is abolishing! The sacredness of the blood of Jesus
-was that it was the price he had to pay to the devil in order to
-preserve his sinlessness, and so rise from death, and demonstrate to
-others that they also could rise by sinlessness to eternal life. It
-might cost their blood also, but would be lost if they "resisted unto
-blood." Jesus thus brought life and incorruption, as distinguished
-from living-death in sheol, to light. And the devotion to Jesus for
-this was due to the belief that he had laid aside his heavenly glory
-and become a complete man, and had thus risked his all, his greatness,
-his very immortality, to make for both heaven and earth the tremendous
-venture; the slightest misstep, the least sin, or wrath, or impatience,
-and he would have had his abode in sheol, in bonds of Satan, through
-all eternity.
-
-When this Epistle was written the believers already found immortality
-in such faith; with such hope and joy before them they were able to
-despise sensual joys, to conquer temptations, and to fulfill those
-duties and conditions of personal holiness which are described in this
-Epistle,--"Peace with all men, and holiness without which no man can
-see the Lord." The ecstasy did not last long, but it was a marvellous
-phenomenon while it lasted, and the most complete reflection of it may
-be found in this Epistle to the Hebrews, especially if it be approached
-by its prologue,--the "Wisdom of Solomon,"--but it is subtle, and
-can only be comprehended by patient and comparative studies.
-
-At the heart of this earliest and swiftly lost Christianity was a
-sublime effort to humanize God.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV.
-
-SOLOMON MELCHIZEDEK.
-
-
-It is possible that the genealogies of Jesus started from no other
-basis than Hebrews vii. 14: "It is clear beforehand that our Lord
-hath arisen out of Judah." [35] Yet nothing could be more subversive
-of the Epistle than a claim of any hereditary authority or advantage
-for Jesus.
-
-The author of the Epistle, if he ever heard the phrase "Son of David,"
-avoided it, for David is here in the background, and in a quotation
-from one of his Psalms his name is passed over, with the vague words,
-"one hath testified somewhere, saying," etc. It is an essential part
-of the writer's argument that Christ is "without genealogy" of that
-kind. To some it was no doubt grateful to be told that Jesus was not
-of the priestly tribe, not of that "apostolic succession," so to say;
-but it was more important to convince the conservative that their
-sacred history sanctioned faith in a high priest approved as such not
-by carnal descent, but by his sinlessness and by his resurrection. But
-it was not agreeable to any Jewish party to suppose that the new
-dominion was to be altogether in the heavens, or detached from the
-Solomonic Golden Age for whose return they were hoping. The writer
-therefore connects Jesus with a "first-born" forerunner, namely, with
-Melchizedek, concerning whom he "has many things to say, and hard
-of interpretation." So Christian commentators have to this day found
-what he does say, and Melchizedek is not surrounded by any dogmatic
-fence that can turn a new hypothesis into a trespass.
-
-The Epistle applies to Jesus lines from Psalm cx.:
-
-
-    Thou art a priest for ever,
-    After the order of Melchizedek.
-
-
-But in this anonymous Psalm there is reason to believe that Melchizedek
-is not a proper name at all. It is admittedly a combination of
-malki'-tzedek, "king of justice," and in the Jewish Family Bible
-(Deusch) the above lines are translated, "Thou art my priest for ever,
-my king in righteousness, by my word." The Septuagint, regularly
-followed by the Epistle to the Hebrews, has Melchizedek in this Psalm
-cx., which was also messianized by the LXX. in its very first line,
-"The Lord said unto my Lord," Kyrios being the word for Lord in
-both cases, whereas in the original the words are different ("Jahveh
-declared to my Adonai"). And it is notable that Matthew xxii. whose
-Hebraic character is so marked, and Mark xii., both make Jesus follow
-the Septuagint in quoting these words.
-
-In both of these Gospels the incident is evidently, in Mark clumsily,
-interpolated, and it would appear to have belonged to some legend
-of the Infancy, such as that of the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy,
-where it occurs naturally:
-
-
-   "And when he was twelve years old they took him to Jerusalem
-    to the feast. But when the feast was over they indeed returned,
-    but the Lord Jesus remained in the temple among the doctors and
-    elders and learned men of Jerusalem, and he asked them sundry
-    questions about the sciences and they answered him in turn. Now
-    he said to them, Whose son is Messiah? They answered him, The son
-    of David. Wherefore, then, said he, Doth he in spirit call him
-    Lord, when he saith the Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my
-    right hand, that I may bring down thy enemies to the footprints
-    of thy feet?"
-
-
-It is probable that this anecdote had floated down from an early
-period when the notion of a royal descent of Jesus had not arisen.
-
-Obviously a tremendous question arises here as to how a story should
-be found in Genesis xiv. about Melchizedek, which as a proper name
-really occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, [36] and the mystery
-is increased by the absence of any allusion to such a personage
-in Jesus Ben Sira's enumeration of "famous men" (Ecclus. xliv.),
-or elsewhere. It almost looks as if Jesus Ben Sira had not read, or
-else had cancelled as spurious, the strange passage in Genesis--which
-is as follows:
-
-
-   "And Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought forth bread and wine;
-    and he was priest of El-Elyon. And he blessed him and said,
-    Blessed be Abram of El-Elyon, purchaser of heaven and earth;
-    and blessed be El-Elyon, which hath delivered thine enemies into
-    thy hand. And he (Abram) gave him a tenth of all."
-
-
-Professor Max Mueller, in his third lecture on the "Science of
-Religion," gives some useful information concerning this peculiar
-name, "El-Elyon," after consulting his contemporaries at Oxford and
-in Germany:
-
-"One of the oldest names of the deity among the ancestors of the
-Semitic nations was El. It meant Strong. It occurs in the Babylonian
-inscriptions as Ilu, God, and in the very name of Bab-il, the gate
-or temple of Il.... The same El was worshipped at Byblus by the
-Phoenicians, and he was called there the Son of Heaven and Earth. His
-father was the son of Eliun, the most high God, who had been killed
-by wild animals. The Son of Eliun, who succeeded him, was dethroned,
-and at last slain by his own son, El, whom Philo identifies with the
-Greek Kronos, and represents as the presiding deity of the planet
-Saturn.... Elyon, which, in Hebrew, means the Highest is used in the
-Old Testament as a predicate of God.... It occurs in the Phoenician
-cosmogony as Eliun, the highest God, the Father of Heaven, who was
-the father of El."
-
-According to Sanchunvaton (Euseb. Proep. i. 10) the Phoenicians called
-God Elioun.
-
-The combination El Elyon occurs in but two chapters in the
-Bible,--Genesis xiv. and Psalm lxxviii. (The Revisers translate it
-in Genesis, "God Most High," but in the Psalm (verse 35), "Most High
-God.") That the name was imported from the earlier into the later
-chapter is suggested by a similar association of each with the idea of
-purchase or redemption: "God Most High, purchaser of heaven and earth"
-(Genesis), "God Most High, their redeemer" (Psalm). But which is the
-earlier? Probably the Psalm; for it is a long resume of the traditional
-history of Israel, but contains no allusion to Abraham. Had its unique
-name, "El Elyon," been derived from any such traditional source surely
-some mention of Abraham would have been made.
-
-The Psalm is Elohistic. Possibly the Phoenician name for God, Elioun,
-was used in order to set "El" above it. Or it may be that as Solomon
-had been declared "Elyon of Kings" (Psalm lxxxix. 27) it was important
-to recall that he at the same time said, "My Elohim," and to place "El"
-before his title. This conjecture is warranted by the fact that in
-both of the Psalms, and in the corresponding passages, God is spoken
-of as a "Rock." There are other resemblances between the two Psalms,
-one very striking:
-
-Psalm lxxviii. 70--"He chose David also, his servant, and took him
-from the sheepfolds."
-
-Psalm lxxxix. 19, 20--"I have raised one elected out of the people;
-I have discovered David, my servant."
-
-The Psalm in which the Septuagint personalises malki'-tzedek (cx.) into
-"Melchizedek" is a fragmentary little piece, with two incomprehensible
-verses at the end which seem to allude to some legend or folklore
-now lost. These verses (6 and 7) are incongruous with the preceding
-ones and must be detached, and perhaps verse 5 also, as this seems an
-anti-climax. These closing verses look as if they may have been added
-by some admirer of Joshua's slaughter of kings, and it is probable
-that the legend of Joshua's making his captains tread on the necks
-of the five kings (Joshua x.) was developed out of the opening verse
-of this Psalm:
-
-
-   "Jahveh said to my lord [Adonai], Sit thou at my right hand,
-    Until I make thine enemies thy footstool."
-
-
-The leader of these kings was Adonai-Zedek, who, like Melchizedek, was
-King of Jerusalem; they are certainly mythical relatives, their names
-meaning "Lord of Justice" and "King of Justice." It is philologically
-impossible that any persons with those proper names could have existed
-in Jerusalem before the invasion of the Hebrews. And "Adonai-bezek,"
-the "radiant lord," whose thumbs and toes Joshua cut off when he
-captured Jerusalem, is a transparent variant of Adonai-zedek.
-
-When the city, originally named Jebus, began to be called Salem (see
-Psalm lxxvi. 2), the aboriginal people who continued to dwell there
-might naturally dream of their ancient kings, as the Welch and Bretons
-so long did of Arthur, "flower of kings," and perhaps similarly expect
-their return to restore their ancient freedom; and it may have become
-a useful political device to find beyond the ugly legends of Joshua's
-cruelty to their "just" and "shining" lords a prettier one, made out
-of an old song, of an earlier "King of Justice," whose bread and wine
-Abraham had eaten, to whom he had paid tithes, whose deity, El Elyon,
-the father of Israel had recognized as his own, and with whom he had
-made a treaty of salem, or peace,--Jebus thus becoming Jebus-Salem
-(Jerusalem).
-
-Josephus records the legend as it was no doubt generally accepted among
-the Jews in the first century of our era: "Now, the King of Sodom met
-him (Abram) at a certain place which they called the King's Dale,
-where Melchizedek, King of the City of Salem, received him. That
-name signifies the righteous king, and such he was without dispute,
-insomuch that on that account he was made the priest of God. However,
-they afterward called Salem Jerusalem." (Antiq. Bk. i. ch. 10.)
-
-Josephus is careful to identify Salem as Jerusalem, and in vi. ch. 10
-of the same work states that the King's Dale (identified as the Shaveh
-where Abraham met Melchizedek, Genesis xiv.) is "two furlongs distant
-from Jerusalem." This carefulness may have been intended to distinguish
-Melchizedek's Salem from the northern Shalem (Genesis xxxiii. 18), a
-place associated with Jacob, and apparently representing an attempt to
-set up a rival temple to that in Jerusalem. It was an old competition
-about tithes. Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek, King of Salem,
-but Jacob, after his vision at Bethel, recognized that as the "house
-of God," and vowed to give to God a tenth of all that was given him
-(Genesis xxviii). [37] This quarrel between rival towns and temples,
-trying each to draw all tithes to themselves, harmonized in the later
-legends of the Bible, need not detain us, but it is of importance
-to remark that the story of Abram meeting the King of Justice and
-Peace near Jerusalem, and establishing the sanctity of that city,
-corresponds with, and is counterbalanced by, Jacob's meeting with
-angels, and wrestling with a mysterious "man," who, it is hinted, was
-some form of God himself. This reply to the story of Abram suggests
-that at the time of that tithe controversy between Bethel and Sion
-Melchizedek was not thought of as a flesh-and-blood king or a mere
-man, but as a shadowy shape, evoked from actual conditions for certain
-purposes, and named in accordance with the history or traditions out
-of which the conditions and the aims were evolved.
-
-In investigations of this kind, concerned with ages really prehistoric,
-it is necessary to remember at every step that our search is amid eras
-when words and names were at once counters of actual forces and factors
-of history. How serious a play on words may be even in historic times
-is illustrated by a Papacy founded on the double meaning of Peter--a
-man's name and a rock,--and as we approach earlier epochs, whose
-issues and struggles have long passed away, and their once antagonistic
-leaders harmonised by pious legends, it is largely by the aid of words
-and names that we are enabled to reach even historic probabilities.
-
-As to Melchizedek, my inference above stated, derived from the two
-tithe legends, that his supernatural character is reflected in that
-of the corresponding phantoms met by Jacob may not be generally
-accepted, but that he (Melchizedek) was so understood by the writer
-to the Hebrews can hardly be disputed. Melchizedek is there (Hebrews
-vii.) declared to have been "without father, without mother, without
-genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, being
-assimilated unto the Son of God."
-
-In the third century the Melchizedekian sect maintained that
-Melchizedek was not a man but a heavenly power superior to Jesus,
-and the Hieracites held similar views. Some eminent theologians have
-believed that Melchizedek was Christ himself. Most of the Christian
-theories concerning the mysterious king are virtual admissions that
-only the eye of faith can see in him any actual being at all. How
-then was this mythical being formed? [38]
-
-1. A suitable nest for the Melchizedek Saga existed near Jerusalem,
-in a vale called the King's Dale. It seems to have been a royal
-racing ground (Targum of Onkelos, Gen. xiv. 17) or hippodrome
-(lxx. xlviii. 7), and its name in Hebrew was Emek-ham-Melech.
-
-2. In the ancient Psalm cx. 1 we have Adonai (Lord), and in verse 4
-Melchi-Melech (or Moloch) king, combined with tsedek, justice.
-
-3. Tzedek (Tsaydoc or Zadok), the priest who anointed Solomon to
-be king. Tsaydoc supplanted the legitimate High Priest Abiathar
-who had taken the side of the legitimate heir to David's throne,
-Adonijah, supplanted by Solomon. The deprivation of Abiathar, and
-exaltation of Tsaydoc to be High Priest is said (1 Kings ii. 27)
-to have been in fulfillment of "the word of Jahveh, which he spake
-concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh." The reference is to the
-sentence passed on Eli and his house, to which Abiathar belonged,
-when Jahveh said, "And I will raise me up a faithful priest, etc.,"
-(1 Sam. ii. 35). Faithful priests were called "sons of Zadok," the
-phrase having apparently become proverbial (Ezek. xliv. 15).
-
-4. In 1 Chron. iii. there appear, among the descendants of Solomon,
-"Amaziah, Azariah his son, Jotham his son." In 1 Chron. vi. we
-find among descendants of Zadok, Ahimaaz, Azariah his son, Johanan
-his son. Johanan is also among Solomon's descendants, and among the
-descendants of both Solomon and Zadok is Shallum,--written by Josephus
-Salloumos (Bk. x. ch. 8). Josephus also says that Zadok was the first
-High Priest of Solomon's Temple. But Solomon himself, without the
-assistance of any priest, dedicated the Temple, offered the sacrifices
-on that occasion, and so continued: "three times in a year did Solomon
-offer burnt offerings and peace offerings upon the altar which he built
-to Jahveh." (1 Kings ix. 25). These statements establish a probability
-that no such person as Zadok existed at all, and that the development
-of this personification of justice (zedek) into a priestly personage
-was due to an ecclesiastical necessity of introducing a priest among
-the provisions of Solomon for the temple. Zadok is thus a detachment
-from King Solomon of the priestly functions he had discharged in the
-temple, according to the book of Kings; and in 1 Chron. vi., where this
-personification is completed, the Solomonic family names are found,
-as above, recurring as descendants of the personification,--Zadok.
-
-These names are the fossil remains of controversies with Shilonite
-and Samaritan pretensions, which ended in consecrating the throne and
-altar at Jerusalem, and they prove that the consecration was that of
-justice and peace. Of these the Wise Man was typical. Solomon was the
-model from whom all of these ideals were painted. His title, Adonai,
-and his equity (Psalm xlv. 7, 11) are combined in Adonizedek, his glory
-(Psalm xlv. 3, 4) is in Adonibezek; his high priesthood is allegorized
-in Zadok; and in "Melchizedek, King of Salem," his supreme characters
-are summed up, "King of Justice, Prince of Peace."
-
-In a warlike age this peacefulness of a monarch was the great and
-supernatural phenomenon. It is the very central idea of the whole
-Solomonic legend. Solomon got his name from it, even the name with
-Jahveh in it (Jedediah) being set aside; he was preferred above David
-to build the temple, because David was a warrior; in building the
-temple the peace was not broken even by the noise of a hammer, the
-stones being all in shape, it seems by supernatural power, when taken
-from the quarry, so as to be noiselessly fitted together; he would not
-fight even those who were rending parts of his kingdom away. He was
-the hero of the Beatitudes,--the gentle one who inherited the earth,
-the one who hungered and thirsted for justice and was filled, the
-peacemaker called the Son of God. It was he who first said, If thine
-enemy hunger give him food, if he thirst give him drink. And all this
-was allegorized in Melchizedek, who, when his country was invaded,
-instead of joining the five kings who resisted, loved his enemy,
-gave the invader food and drink.
-
-We thus find Solomon,--the glorious cosmopolitan and secularist,
-whose name Jahvism could not utter without a shudder,--distributed in
-fable, legend, psalm, through Hexateuch and Hagiographa, and finally
-transfigured into a type of divine and eternal Sonship. Thus he
-appears in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to which we now return.
-
-In the Epistle to the Hebrews Christ is invested with the mystical
-robes of Solomon. To Christ are applied the words, "I will be to him
-a Father, and he shall be to me a Son," quoted from Jahveh's promise
-to David concerning Solomon (2 Sam. vii. 14). To Christ are twice
-applied the words, "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee,"
-quoted from Psalm ii. 7, admittedly Solomonic. From Psalm xlv.,
-verses 6 and 7, ascriptions to Solomon, are applied to Christ in
-this Epistle. And Melchizedek is here declared to be "a great man,"
-"assimilated unto the Son of God."
-
-We may here recall the words of Josephus, a contemporary of our
-writer, who says that Melchizedek was made the priest of God on
-account of his righteousness (Ant., Bk. i. ch. 10). It may have
-been that there was a popular belief in the time of Josephus that
-Melchizedek received his ordination from Abram himself, but there is
-no doubt that the mysterious king's priesthood was believed to rest
-upon his righteousness and above all his peacefulness.
-
-With these preliminaries we may find the Epistle's argument about
-Melchizedek less "hard of interpretation" than the writer says it
-is. After speaking of Abraham as having "obtained" the promise,
-not merely because it was God's promise, but because he "patiently
-endured," having argued that Christ, "though he was a Son, yet learned
-obedience by the things that he suffered", this Epistle maintains
-(vi. 20) that this is the believer's hope, whereby he enters within
-the veil, "whither as a forerunner Jesus entered for us, having
-become a high priest forever after the manner of Melchizedek." (The
-sense of this is lost in the E. V. by rendering genomenos "made":
-the argument is that though he was a Son of God even that could not
-make him a high priest; this he had to "become" by his own merits,
-uninheritable even from God, as was the case with Melchizedek.) "For
-this Melchizedek, being of Salem, priest of God Most High, who met
-Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him,
-to whom also Abraham divided a tenth part of all (being first by
-interpretation King of Righteousness, and next also King of Salem,
-that is Prince of Peace; being without father, without mother,
-without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life,
-but assimilated (echon aphomoiomenos) unto the Son of God), abideth
-a priest perpetually" (vii. 1-3).
-
-The mystical clauses of verse 3 have for centuries been an unsolved
-enigma to exegetists; and Alford, after summing up the many conjectures
-as to their meaning, expresses his feeling that the writer had
-a thought which he did not intend us to comprehend! Probably,
-however, the writer was using language understood in his time, and
-which may be interpreted by comparison with expressions familiar
-in Jewish folklore. Some of these are preserved in the apocryphal
-gospels. Thus, in the Pseudo-Matthew, Levi, the teacher of Jesus,
-astounded by the Child's learning, says, "I think he was born before
-the flood." In the gospel of Thomas, the teacher Zacchaeus says,
-"This child is not of earthly parents, he is able to subdue even
-fire. Perhaps he was begotten before the world was made." These
-ideas, which correspond somewhat to the Teutonic superstition of
-the "changeling," are traceable in the Fourth Gospel (viii. 56-59),
-where Jesus is stoned for saying, "Before Abraham was I am."
-
-It will be seen that by this early writer "to the Hebrews"  Jesus was
-not thought of in connection with David, but bore Solomon's preeminent
-title, King of Peace, and that conferred on him by the Queen of
-Sheba, King of Justice. In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the Prince of the
-Golden Age, historically associated with idolatrous shrines, had been
-rehabilitated, even apotheosized; he was now a sort of rival of Jesus
-in divine sonship. The writer of our Epistle therefore artistically,
-not to say artfully, utilizes a composite word made into a proper name
-under which Solomon's combined royalty and priesthood, his peace and
-justice, had been detached from his personality and personified. The
-new exaltation of Solomon personally was thus ignored, while his
-essential glories, his wisdom, and his reclaimed virtues, were woven
-into the celestial mantle of mysterious Melchizedek, and through him
-passed to the shoulders of the risen Christ.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV.
-
-THE PAULINE DEHUMANIZATION OF JESUS.
-
-
-The Queen of Sheba certainly deserved her exaltation as the Hebrew
-Athena, and the homage paid to her by Jesus, for journeying so
-far simply to hear the wisdom of Solomon. In Jewish and Christian
-folklore are many miraculous tales about the Queen's visit, but in
-the Biblical records, in the books of "Kings" and "Chronicles," the
-only miracle is the entire absence of anything marvellous, magical,
-or even occult. The Queen was impressed by Solomon's science, wisdom,
-the edifices he had built, the civilization he had brought about;
-they exchanged gifts, and she departed. It is a strangely rational
-history to find in any ancient annals.
-
-The saying of Jesus cited by Clement of Alexandria, "He that hath
-marvelled shall reign," uttered perhaps with a sigh, tells too
-faithfully how small has been the interest of grand people in the
-wisdom that is "clear, undefiled, plain." They are represented rather
-by the beautiful and wealthy Marchioness in "Gil Blas," whose favour
-was sought by the nobleman, the ecclesiastic, the philosopher, the
-dramatist, by all the brilliant people, but who set them all aside
-for an ape-like hunchback, with whom she passed many hours, to the
-wonder of all, until it was discovered that the repulsive creature
-was instructing her ladyship in cabalistic lore and magic.
-
-There is much human pathos in this longing of mortals to attain
-to some kind of real and intimate perception beyond the phenomenal
-universe, and to some personal assurance of a future existence; but
-it has cost much to the true wisdom of this world. Some realization
-of this may have caused the sorrow of Jesus at Dalmanutha, as related
-in Mark. "The Pharisees came forth and began to question with him,
-seeking of him a sign from heaven, testing him. And he sighed deeply
-in his spirit, and saith, Why does this people seek a sign? I say
-plainly unto you no sign will be given them. And he left them, and
-reentering the boat departed to the other side."
-
-They who now long to know the real mind of Jesus are often constrained
-to repeat his deep sigh when they find the most probable utterances
-ascribed to him perverted by the marvel-mongers, insomuch that to the
-protest just quoted Matthew adds a self-contradictory sentence about
-Jonah. That this unqualified repudiation by Jesus of miracles should
-have been preserved at all in Mark, a gospel full of miracles, is a
-guarantee of the genuineness of the incident, and of the comparative
-earliness of some parts of that gospel. The period of sophistication
-was not far advanced. Miracles require time to grow. But the deep sigh
-and the words of Jesus, taken in connection with the entire absence
-from the Epistles--the earliest New Testament documents--of any hint of
-a miracle wrought by him, is sufficient to bring us into the presence
-of a man totally different from the "Christ" of the four Gospels. [39]
-
-Those who seek the real Jesus will find it the least part of their
-task to clear away the particular miracles ascribed to him; that is
-easy enough; the critical and difficult thing is to detach from the
-anecdotes and language connected with him every admixture derived
-from the belief in his resurrection. To do this completely is indeed
-impossible.
-
-Paul, probably a contemporary of Jesus, knew well enough the
-vast difference between the man "Jesus" and the risen "Christ";
-he insisted that the man should be ignored, and supplanted by the
-risen Christ, as revealed by private revelations received by himself
-after the resurrection. The student must now reverse that: he must
-ignore those post-resurrectional revelations if he would know Jesus
-"after the flesh"--that is, the real Jesus.
-
-In an age when immortality is a familiar religious belief we can hardly
-realize the agitation, among a people to whom life after death was a
-vague, imported philosophy, excited by the belief that a man had been
-raised bodily from the grave. Immortality was no longer hypothesis. If
-to this belief be added the further conviction that this resurrection
-was preliminary to his speedy reappearance, and the world's sudden
-transformation, a mental condition could not fail to arise in which
-any ethical or philosophical ideas he might have uttered while "in
-the flesh" must be thrown into the background, as of merely casual
-or temporary importance. Such is the state of mind reflected in the
-Pauline Epistles. In them is found no reference whatever to any moral
-instructions by Jesus. And when after some two generations had passed,
-and they who had expected while yet living to meet their returning Lord
-had died, those who had heard oral reports and legends concerning him
-and his teachings began to write the memoranda on which our Synoptical
-Gospels are based, it was too late to give these without adulterations
-from the apostolic ecstasy. His casual or playful remarks were by this
-time discoloured and distorted, and enormously swollen, as if under a
-solar microscope, by the overwhelming conceptions of a resurrection, an
-approaching advent, a subversion of all nationalities and institutions.
-
-The most serious complication arises from the extent to which the
-pretended revelations of Paul have been built into the Gospels. The
-so-called "conversion of Paul" was really the conversion of Jesus. The
-facts can only be gathered from Paul's letters, the book of "Acts"
-being hardly more historical than "Robinson Crusoe." The account in
-"Acts" of Paul's "conversion" is, however, of interest as indicating
-a purpose in its writers to raise Paul into a supernatural authority
-equivalent to that ascribed to Christ, in order that he might set
-aside the man Jesus. The story is a travesty of that related in the
-"Gospel According to the Hebrews," concerning the baptism of Jesus:
-"And a voice out of the heaven saying, 'Thou art my beloved Son,
-in thee I am well pleased': and again, 'I have this day begotten
-thee.' And straightway a great light shone around the place. And
-when John saw it he saith to him, 'Who art thou, Lord?'" John fell
-down before Jesus as did Paul before Christ. "At midday, O King,
-I saw on the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the
-sun, shining round about me, and them that journeyed with me. And
-when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice saying to me
-in the Hebrew language, 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is
-hard for thee to kick against the goad.' And I said, 'Who art thou,
-Lord?'" (Precisely what John said to Jesus at the baptism.)
-
-This story (Acts xxvi. 13-15), quite inconsistent with Paul's
-letters, is throughout very ingenious. Besides associating Paul
-with the supernatural consecration of Jesus, it replies, by calling
-him Saul, to the Ebionite declaration that Paul had been a pagan,
-who had become a Jewish proselyte with the intention of marrying the
-High Priest's daughter. There is no reason to suppose that Paul was
-ever called Saul during his life, and his salutation of two kinsmen in
-Rome with Latin names, Andronicus and Junias (Romans xvi. 7), renders
-it probable that he was not entirely if at all Hebrew. The sentence,
-"It is hard for thee to kick against the goad," is a subtle answer
-to any who might think it curious that the story of the resurrection
-carried no conviction to Paul's mind at the time of its occurrence by
-suggesting that in continuing his persecutions he was going against
-his real belief--kicking against the goad.
-
-Paul, however, knows nothing of this theatrical conversion in his
-letters. But in severe competition with other "preeminent apostles,"
-who were preaching "another Christ" from his, he pronounces them
-accursed, supporting an authority above theirs by declaring that he had
-repeated interviews with the risen Christ, and on one occasion had been
-taken up into the third heaven and even into Paradise! The extremes
-to which Paul was driven by the opposing apostles are illustrated
-in his intimidation of dissenting converts by his pretence to an
-occult power of withering up the flesh of those whom he disapproves
-(1 Cor. v. 5). He tells Timothy of two men, Hymenoeus and Alexander,
-whom he thus "delivered over to Satan" that "they may be taught not
-to blaspheme"--the blasphemy in this case being the belief (now become
-orthodoxy) that the dead were not sleeping in their graves but passed
-into heaven or hell at death. In the book of "Acts" (xiii.) this claim
-of Paul's seems to have been developed into the Evil Eye (which he
-fastened on Bar Jesus, whose eyes thereon went out), and may perhaps
-account for the similar sinister power ascribed to some of the Popes.
-
-In this story of Bar Jesus, Christ is associated with Paul in
-striking the learned man blind (xiii. 11), and the development of
-such a legend reveals the extent to which Jesus had been converted
-by Paul. In 1 Cor. ii. he presents a Christ whose body and blood,
-being not precisely discriminated in the sacramental bread and wine,
-had made some participants sickly and killed others, in addition to
-the damnation they had eaten and drank. He does not mention that any
-who communicated correctly had been physically benefited thereby;
-only the malignant powers appear to have had any utility for Paul.
-
-That this menacing Christ may have been needed to intimidate converts
-and build up churches is probable; that such a being was nothing like
-Jesus in the flesh, but had to come by pretended posthumous revelation,
-as an awful potentate whose human flesh had been but a disguise,
-is certain. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find that nearly
-everything pharisaic, cruel, and ungentlemanly, ascribed to Jesus in
-the synoptical Gospels, is fabricated out of Paul's Epistles. Paul
-compares rival apostles to the serpent that beguiled Eve (2 Cor. xi. 3,
-4), and Christ calls his opponents offspring of vipers. The fourth
-Gospel, apostolic in spirit, degrades Jesus independently, but it also
-borrows from Paul. Paul personally delivered some over to Satan, and
-the intimation in John xiii. 27, "after the sop, then entered Satan
-into Judas," accords well with what Paul says about the unworthy
-communicant eating and drinking damnation (1 Cor. xi. 29).
-
-The Eucharist itself was probably Paul's own adaptation of a Mithraic
-rite to Christian purposes. There is no reason to suppose that there
-was anything sanctimonious in the wine supper which Jesus took with his
-friends at the time of the Passover, and Paul's testimony concerning
-the way it had been observed is against any   over with you?" [40]
-Had it been other than a pleasant Epiphanius from the Gospel according
-to the Hebrews show that he desired to draw his friends away from
-the sacrificial feature of the festival: "Where wilt thou that we
-prepare for the passover to eat?" ... "Have I desired with desire to
-eat this flesh, the passover with you?" [41] Had it been other than a
-pleasant wine supper it could not in so short a time have become the
-jovial festival which Paul describes (1 Cor. xi. 20), nor, in order
-to reform it, would he have needed the pretence that he had received
-from Christ the special revelation of details of the Supper which
-he gives, and which the Gospels have followed. Having substituted a
-human for an animal sacrifice ("our passover also hath been sacrificed,
-Christ," 1 Cor. v. 7), he restores precisely that sacrificial feature
-to which Jesus had objected; and in harmony with this goes on to show
-that human lives have been sacrificed to the majestic real presence
-(1 Cor. xi. 30). He had learned, perhaps by "pagan" experiences,
-what power such a sacrament might put into the priestly hand. [42]
-
-It is Paul who first appointed Christ the judge of quick and dead
-(1 Tim. iv. 1). He describes to the Thessalonians (2 Thes. i.) "the
-revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of his power
-in flaming fire, rendering vengeance to them that know not God," and
-the "eternal destruction" of these. Hence, "I never knew you" becomes
-a formula of damnation put into the mouth of Christ. "I know you not"
-is the brutal reply of the bridegroom to the five virgins, whose lamps
-were not ready on the moment of his arrival. The picturesque incidents
-of this parable have caused its representation in pretty pictures,
-which blind many to its essential heartlessness. It is curious that
-it should be preserved in a Gospel which contains the words, "Knock,
-and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth,
-and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be
-opened." The parable is fabricated out of 1 Thes. v., where Paul warns
-the converts that the Lord cometh as a thief in the night, that there
-will be no escape for those who then slumber, that they must not sleep
-like the rest, but watch, "for God hath appointed us not unto wrath."
-
-The Christian dogma of the unpardonable sin, substituted for the
-earlier idea of an unrepentable sin, was developed out of Paul's
-fatalism. He writes, "For this cause God sendeth them a strong delusion
-that they should believe a lie" (2 Thes. ii). Although this is not
-connected in any Gospel with the inexpiable sin, we find its spirit
-animating the Paul-created Christ in Mark iv. 11: "Unto them that are
-without all these things are done in parables, that seeing they may
-see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand:
-lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should
-be forgiven them." This is imported from Paul (Rom. xi. 7, 8):
-"That which Israel seeketh for, that he obtained not; but the elect
-obtained it and the rest were hardened; according as it is written,
-God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see,
-and ears that they should not hear, unto this very day."
-
-Whence came this Christ who, in the very chapter where Jesus warns
-men against hiding their lamp under a bushel, carefully hides his
-teaching under a parable for the express purpose of preventing some
-outsiders from being enlightened and obtaining forgiveness?
-
-Jesus could not have said these things unless he plagiarized from
-Paul by anticipation. Deduct from the Gospels all that has been
-fabricated out of Paul (I have given only the more salient examples)
-and there will be found little or nothing morally revolting, nothing
-heartless. Superstitions abound, but so far as Jesus is concerned
-they are nearly all benevolent in their spirit.
-
-But even after we have removed from the Gospels the immoralities of
-Paul and the pharisaisms so profound as to suggest the proselyte, after
-we have turned from his Christ to seek Jesus, we have yet to divest
-him of the sombre vestments of a supernatural being, who could not
-open his lips or perform any action but in relation to a resurrection
-and a heavenly office of which he could never have dreamed. Was he
-
-
-    "The faultless monster whom the world ne'er saw"?
-
-
-Did he never laugh? Did he eat with sinners only to call
-them to repentance? Did he get the name of wine-bibber for his
-"salvationism,"--or was it because, like Omar Khayyam, he defied the
-sanctimonious and the puritanical by gathering with the intellectual,
-the scholarly, the Solomonic clubs?
-
-To Paul we owe one credible item concerning Jesus, that he was
-originally wealthy (2 Cor. viii. 9), and as Paul mentioned this to
-inculcate liberality in contributors, it is not necessary to suppose
-that he alluded to his heavenly riches. At any rate, the few sayings
-that may be reasonably ascribed to Jesus are those of an educated
-gentleman, and strongly suggest his instruction in the college of
-Hillel, whose spirit remained there after his death, which occurred
-when Jesus was at least ten years old.
-
-To a pagan who asked Hillel concerning the law, he answered: "That
-which you like not for yourself do not to thy neighbour, that is the
-whole law; the rest is but commentary." It will be observed that Hillel
-humanizes the law laid down in Lev. xix. 18, where the Israelites
-are to love each his neighbour among "the children of thy people" as
-himself. Even Paul (Rom. xiii. 8, Gal. v. 14) quotes it for a rule
-among the believers, while hurling anathema on others. But Jesus
-is made (Matt. vii. 12) to inflate the rule into the impracticable
-form of "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you,
-even so do ye also unto them." By which rule a wealthy Christian would
-give at least half his property to the first beggar, as he would wish
-the beggar to do to him were their situations reversed. This might
-be natural enough in a community hourly expecting the end of the
-world and their own instalment in palaces whose splendour would be
-proportioned to their poverty in this world. But when this delusion
-faded the rule reverted to what Hillel said, and no doubt Jesus also,
-as we find it in the second verse of "Didache," the Teaching of the
-Twelve Apostles. It is a principle laid down by Confucius, Buddha,
-and all the human "prophets," and one followed by every gentleman, not
-to do to his neighbour what he would not like if done to himself. But
-it is removed out of human ethics and strained ad absurdum by the
-second-adventist version put into the mouth of Jesus by Matthew. I
-have dwelt on this as an illustration of how irrecoverably a man
-loses his manhood when he is made a God.
-
-Irrecoverably! In the second Clementine Epistle (xii. 2) it is said,
-"For the Lord himself, having been asked by some one when his kingdom
-should come, said, When the two shall be one, and the outside as the
-inside, and the male with the female neither male nor female." Perhaps
-a humorous way of saying Never. Equally remote appears the prospect
-of recovering the man Jesus from his Christ-sepulchre. Even among
-rationalists there are probably but few who would not be scandalized
-by any thorough test such as Jesus is said, in the Nazarene Gospel,
-to have requested of his disciples after his resurrection, "Take, feel
-me, and see that I am not a bodiless demon!" Without blood, without
-passion, he remains without the experiences and faults that mould
-best men, as Shakespeare tells us; he so remains in the nerves where
-no longer in the intellect, insomuch that even many an agnostic would
-shudder if any heretic, taking his life in his hand, should maintain
-that Jesus had fallen in love, or was a married man, or had children.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI.
-
-THE MYTHOLOGICAL MANTLE OF SOLOMON FALLEN ON JESUS.
-
-
-It is no part of my aim to prove miracles impossible, nor to consider
-whether one or another alleged wonder might not be really within
-the powers of an exceptional man. In the absence of any apostolic
-allusion to any extraordinary incident in the life of Jesus, and his
-own declaration (for the evangelists could not have invented a rebuke
-to their own narratives) that miracles were the vain expectation of
-a people in distress and degradation, such records have lost their
-historic character. As Gibbon said in the last century, it requires
-a miracle of grace to make a believer in miracles, and even among the
-uncritical that miracle is not frequent. In the New Testament belief
-in miracle has its natural corollary in a miraculous morality,--a
-dissolution of earthly ties, a severance from worldly affairs, a
-non-resistance and passiveness under wrongs, which are in perfect
-accord with persons moving in an apocalyptic dream, but not with a
-world awakened from that dream.
-
-But at the root of the unnatural miracles is the natural miracle--the
-heart of man. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, as the
-miracle-working poet reminds us; our little life is surrounded with a
-sleep, a realm of dreams,--visions that give poetic fulfilment to hopes
-born of hard experience. No biblical miracle in its literal form is so
-beautiful and impressive as the history of its origin and development
-as traced by the student of mythology. The growth, for example, of
-a simple proverb ascribed to Solomon "He that trusteth in his riches
-shall fall, but the just shall flourish as a green leaf" into a hymn
-(Ps. lii.); the association of this Psalm, by its Hebrew caption,
-with hungry David eating the shewbread of the temple, and the king's
-slaying the priests who permitted it; the use of this legend by Jesus
-when his disciples were censured for plucking the corn on the Sabbath
-(with perhaps some humorous picture of a great king in Heaven angry
-because hungry men ate a few grains of corn, crumbs from his royal
-table) pointed with advice that the censors should learn that God
-desires charity and not sacrifice; the development of this into an
-early Christian burden against the rich, which took the form of an
-old Oriental fable, [43] to which a Jewish connotation was given by
-giving the poor man in Paradise the name of Lazarus (i.e. Eleazar,
-who risked his life to obtain water for famished David, a story that
-may have been referred to by Jesus along with that of the shewbread);
-the transformation of this parable into a quasi-historical narrative
-representing the return of Lazarus from Abraham's bosom, his poverty
-omitted; the European combination of the parable and the history
-by creating a St. Lazarus ("one helped by God"), yet appointing him
-the helper of beggars (lazzaroni): these items together represent a
-continuity of the human spirit through thousands of years, surmounting
-obstructive superstitions, holding still the guiding thread of humanity
-through long labyrinths of legend.
-
-To fix on any one stage in such an evolution, detach it, affirm it,
-is to wrest a true scripture to its destruction. Few can really
-be interested in Abimelech and the shewbread; no one now believes
-that a rich man must go to hell because he is rich, nor a pauper to
-Paradise because of his pauperism; and none can intelligently believe
-the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus without believing that
-in Jesus miraculous power was associated with the unveracity and
-vanity ascribed to him in that narrative. But take the legends all
-together, and in them is visible the supersacred heart of humanity
-steadily developing through manifold symbols and fables the religion
-of human helpfulness and happiness. The study of mythology is the
-study of nature.
-
-The theory already stated (ante I), that illegitimacy or irregularity
-of birth was a sign of authentication for "the God-anointed," finds
-some corroboration in the claim of the Epistle to the Hebrews that
-Jesus, like Melchizedek, was without father, mother, or genealogy. His
-double nature is suggested: "Our Lord sprung out of Judah" (vii. 14),
-yet (verse 16), as priest, he has arisen "not after the law of a
-carnal commandment, but after the power of an indissoluble life." The
-writer admits that what he writes about Melchizedek is "hard of
-interpretation," and perhaps it so proved to the genealogist (Matt,
-i.) who apparently was animated by a desire to make out a carnal-law
-inheritance of the throne, yet not so legitimate as to exclude divine
-interference at various stages. In the forty-two generations only
-five mothers are named,--all associated either with sexual immorality
-or some kind of irregularity in their matrimonial relations. Tamar,
-through whose adultery with her father-in-law, Judah, his almost
-extinct line was preserved, is already a holy woman in the book of
-Ruth (iv. 12), and the association there of Ruth's name with this
-particular one of the many female ancestors of her son, and her mention
-in Matthew, look as if some editor of Ruth as well as the genealogist
-desired to cast suspicion on her midnight visit to Boaz. "The Lord
-gave Tamar conception, and she bore a son"--grandfather of David. It
-is also doubtful whether Rahab, who comes next to Tamar in Matthew's
-list, is called a harlot in the book of Joshua: Zuneh is said to mean
-"hostess" or "tavern-keeper." But in the Epistle to the Hebrews and in
-that of James she becomes a glorified harlot. The next female ancestor
-of Jesus mentioned is "her of Uriah." The name of the woman is not
-given,--the important fact being apparently that she was somebody's
-wife. Our translators have supplied no fewer than five words to save
-this text from signifying that Bathsheba was still Uriah's wife when
-Solomon was born.
-
-The next ancestress named after the mother of Solomon is the mother of
-Jesus, Mary, in whom Bathsheba finds transfiguration. The exaltation
-of the adulterous mother of Solomon has already been referred to
-(ante II.), and the traditional ascription to her of the authorship
-of the last chapter of Proverbs. She was also supposed to be the
-original or model of "the Virtuous Woman" therein portrayed! Now,
-in that same chapter she is pronounced "blessed," and excelling all
-the daughters who have done virtuously (Cf. Luke i. 28, 42). In the
-"Wisdom of Solomon" (ix. 5) a phrase is used by Solomon which is also
-used by his mother (Bathsheba) when she conjured from David the decree
-for his succession,--"thine handmaiden" (1 Kings i.). Solomon says,
-"For I, thy servant, and son of thy handmaiden," etc. This was written
-in a popular work about the time of the birth of Jesus. We find the
-"blessed" of Proverbs xxxi. 28, and the "handmaiden" of the "Wisdom
-of Solomon" both in Mary's magnificat: "For he hath regarded the low
-estate of his handmaiden; for behold, from henceforth all generations
-shall call me blessed."
-
-In Ecclesiasticus (xv. 2) we find the enigmatic clause concerning
-Solomonic "Sophia," personified Wisdom: kai hypantesetai auto hos
-meter, kai hos gyne parthenias prosdexetai auoton.
-
-The Vulgate translates: "Et obviabit illi quasi mater honorificata,
-et quasi mulier a virginitate suscipiet illum."
-
-Wycliffe translates the Vulgate: "And it as a modir onourid schal
-meete hym, and as a womman fro virgynyte schal take him."
-
-The Authorised Version has: "And as a mother shall she meet him,
-and receive him as a wife married of a virgin."
-
-In the Variorum Teacher's Bible the reading "maiden wife" is suggested,
-and reference is made to Leviticus xxi. 13, "And he shall take a wife
-in her virginity." But the Septuagint, which Jesus Ben Sira would
-follow were he quoting, uses simple words there: hautos gynaika
-parthenon [ek tou genous autou] lepsetai.
-
-(The words in crochets are added by the LXX.)
-
-The clause in Ecclus. xv. 2, taken with the chapter it continues,
-conveys to me an impression of rhapsodical paradox, as when Dante
-apostrophises Mary: "O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy son!" The Semitic
-goddess is born, Wisdom, sister of virginal Athena of the Parthenon,
-yet fulfilling the Solomonic exaltation of the Virtuous Woman, who
-is also a wife. She is therefore the Virgin Bride.
-
-But whether this interpretation is correct or not, it cannot be
-doubted that this strange phrase in a household book might easily
-convey that impression, and that to believers in the resurrection
-of Jesus the feeling that he must also have entered the world in a
-supernatural way might naturally have associated Miriam his mother
-with the virgin bride, Wisdom.
-
-The evolution of Wisdom into the Holy Spirit has been traced (ante
-XII.), and it is sufficient to mention here that in the "Gospel
-according to the Hebrews," Jesus uses the phrase "My mother the
-Holy Spirit."
-
-In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the resurrected Solomon says, "I was
-nursed in swaddling clothes, and that with cares" (vii. 4, cf. Luke
-ii. 7). This might be said of every babe, but the King, having begun by
-saying "I myself also am a mortal man," mentions the swaddling clothes
-as a sign of lowliness; and the impression made by this item in the
-Birth-legend of Jesus is shown by a passage in the Arabic Gospel of
-the Infancy. It is said that when the Wise Men came, in obedience to
-a prophecy of Zoroaster, Mary rewarded their gifts with one of the
-child's "Swaddling bands," which on their return to their own land
-withstood the power of fire, in which it was tested.
-
-The infant Jesus receives gifts of the Wise Men, traceable to the gold,
-silver, and spices brought by the Queen of Sheba (afterwards "Sophia")
-to Solomon. (Cf. also Psalm lxxii. 8-11.) As Solomon to the Queen,
-so Jesus gives proofs of astounding wisdom to the woman of Samaria.
-
-In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the returned king proceeds: "I was a witty
-child, and had a good spirit. Yea rather, being good, I came into a
-body undefiled" (viii. 19, 20). In Luke it is said, "And the child
-grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom." "And Jesus
-increased in wisdom and stature."
-
-The word "undefiled" was a special title of Wisdom. In the "Wisdom of
-Solomon" (vii.) the King, having described his birth, "like to all,"
-and his "swaddling clothes," follows this immediately by saying,
-"I prayed, and understanding was given me; I called, and the spirit
-of Wisdom came to me." This is the new and the spiritual birth. Among
-the titles ascribed in the same chapter to Wisdom is "Undefiled," this
-being emphasized three verses lower by the declaration that being a
-pure emanation from God "no defiled thing can fall into her." These
-ideas, so far as Solomon is concerned, are referable to his prayer
-for wisdom (1 Kings iii. 9) and to Jahveh's adoption of him (Psalm
-ii. 7). "Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee."
-
-These ideas all reappear at the baptism of Jesus, as related in the
-"Gospel according to Hebrews":
-
-
-   "Behold the mother of the Lord and his brethren said to him,
-    'John the Baptist baptizeth for remission of sins: let us go and
-    be baptized by him.' But he said to them, 'Wherein have I sinned
-    that I should go and be baptized by him? except perchance this very
-    thing that I have said is ignorance.' And when the people had been
-    baptized Jesus also came and was baptized by John. And as he went
-    up the heavens were opened, and he saw the Holy Spirit in shape
-    of a Dove descending and entering him. And a voice out of heaven,
-    saying, 'Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased';
-    and again, 'I have this day begotten thee.'" (Cf. Jahveh's promise
-    concerning Solomon, 1 Chron. xvii. 13, "I will be his father and
-    he shall be my son.")
-
-
-It is important to recall that this all occurred before baptism. The
-suggestion that he should be baptized for remission of sins, is met by
-Jesus as a challenge of his sinlessness. It is submitted to the test,
-and before he enters the water the "Undefiled" (the dove) enters
-him, and the deity announces him as then and there begotten. When
-"straightway a great light shone around the place"--ultimately the Star
-of Bethlehem. John the Baptist is here the shepherd: seeing the light,
-he asks, "Who art thou, Lord?" The heavenly voice replies, "This is my
-beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Then John fell down before
-him and said, "I pray thee, Lord, baptize thou me." But he prevented
-him, saying, "Let be; for thus it is becoming that all things should
-be fulfilled." Then follows the baptism, and the account continues:
-
-
-   "And it came to pass, when the Lord had come up from the water,
-    the entire fountain of the Holy Spirit descended and rested upon
-    him and said to him, 'My Son, in all the prophets did I await thee,
-    that thou mightest come and I might rest in thee; for thou art
-    my rest; thou art my first-born Son that reignest forever.'" [44]
-
-
-The phrase "entire fountain of the Holy Spirit" is Parsi. Anahita
-is the Holy Spirit; her influence is always described as a fountain
-descending on the saints or heroes to whom she gives strength. It
-will be remembered that in this Gospel the Holy Spirit is also
-feminine. The use of the words "fountain" and "rest in thee" are
-interesting in connection with the account of John the Baptizer
-and Jesus in the fourth gospel, which differs so widely from the
-Synoptical narratives. It is in John (iii.) left doubtful whether
-Jesus accepted any baptismal rite at all. John was baptizing at
-a large pool called AEnon-by-Saleim,--probably allegorical, meaning
-"Fountain of Repose." Jesus and his friends came there and plunged in
-(ebaptixonto), but they seem to have been a distinct party from
-that of John.
-
-After the supposed resurrection of Jesus everything he did, even
-taking a bath, became mystical. Jerome says that in his time there
-was a place called Salumias, and he maintained that it was there that
-Melchizedek refreshed Abraham. There are various readings of this
-Saleim in the New Testament, all, no doubt, variants of Solomon,
-all meaning "rest"; and the fourth Gospel supplies in 'Ainon engys
-Salem' the basis of the legend in the Aramaic Gospel of the "rest"
-which the Holy Spirit found in her son, on whom her "entire fountain"
-was poured. And with this legend may also be read the words of "Wisdom
-of Solomon," vii. 27, 28: "She (Wisdom) maketh all things new; and in
-all ages entering into holy souls she maketh them friends of God and
-prophets. For God loveth none but him that dwelleth with Wisdom." The
-representation in this Aramaic Gospel of the Holy Spirit as "entering
-into" Jesus is especially interesting in connection with the use of
-the same phrase in "Wisdom of Solomon,"--into whose heart Wisdom was
-put by God (1 Kings x. 24).
-
-It is only after Wisdom has entered into Jesus that the voice is
-heard, "This is my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased." This
-accords with Solomon's words, "God loveth none but him that dwelleth
-with Wisdom." The angelic song at the birth (Luke ii. 14) preserves
-the heavenly voice at the baptism concerning "peace." The "peace"
-is Solomon's own name, associated with the "rest" given to his reign
-in order that he might build the temple (1 Kings v. 4, Ecclesiasticus
-xlvii. 13). "My Son," says the spirit from within Jesus, "Thou art
-my rest."
-
-It is remarkable that the title preeminently belonging to Solomon,
-"Prince of Peace," and unknown to the Gospels as a title of Jesus,
-should be traditionally given to one said to have declared that
-he had come on earth to bring not peace but a sword, and bids his
-disciples arm themselves. No doubt the religious instinct tells true
-in this; it is tolerably plain that the warlike words were ascribed
-to Jesus not because he said them, but to adapt him to the "Word"
-as described in the "Wisdom of Solomon": "While all things were in
-quiet silence ... thine Almighty Word leaped down from heaven out
-of thy royal throne as a fierce man of war ... and brought thine
-unfeigned commandment as a sharp sword," etc. The fierce metaphor
-was, as we have seen, caught up and spiritualized in the Epistle to
-the Hebrews, and passed on to be literalized for the risen Christ,
-so that the consecration of the sword by the Prince of Peace is writ
-large in the Christian wars of many centuries.
-
-To the tests and proofs of Solomon's wisdom recorded in 1 Kings
-iii. and x. many additions were made by rabbinical tradition, mostly
-derived from Parsi scriptures. The famous Ring of Solomon is the symbol
-of sovereignty over the part of the earth owned by God given by him to
-the first man King Yima--"Then I, Ahura Mazda, brought two implements
-unto him, a golden ring and a poniard inlaid with gold. Behold,
-here Yima bears the royal sway!" (Vendidad, Farg. ii. 5). When Yima
-pressed the earth with this ring, the genius of the Earth, Aramaiti,
-responded to his wish and order. The ring represented Yima's "glory"
-(in Avestan phrase), his divine potency, lost when he yielded to a
-temptation of the devil, and Solomon also lost his ring with which,
-as we have seen (ante IV.) his "glory" and royal sway passed to the
-(Persian) devil Asmodeus. This occurred in a trial of wits, Asmodeus
-propounding hard questions, which Solomon was able to answer until,
-proudly thinking he could answer by his unaided intellect, he laid
-aside his ring, at the challenge of Asmodeus. These hard questions
-are found in an ancient legend of a similar contest between the devil
-and Zoroaster, and are alluded to as "malignant riddles." Zoroaster
-met the devil "unshaken by the hardness of his malignant riddles,"
-and swinging "stones as big as a house," which he had obtained from
-the Maker,--tables of the divine law, and possibly origin of the
-stones which the devil challenged Jesus to turn into bread.
-
-There are Avestan elements in the legend of the temptation of Jesus
-that do not appear in the legends of Solomon. In Parsi belief the land
-of demons on earth is Mazana. From that region they issue to inflict
-diseases, especially blindness and deafness. In that region is an
-"exceeding high mountain," Damavand, to which the great demon Azi
-Dahaka was bound by Feridun who overcame him. This demon was called
-"the murderer,"--the epithet mysteriously applied by Jesus to the
-devil (John viii. 44). After tempting and supplanting King Yima he
-ruled over the world for a millennium in great splendour, and the
-chief of devils tempts Zoroaster with that glory.
-
-"Renounce the good law of the worshippers of Mazda, and thou shalt
-gain such a boon as the Murderer gained, the ruler of nations." Thus
-in answer to him said Zoroaster, "No, never will I renounce the good
-law of the worshippers of Mazda, though my body, my life, my soul,
-should burst." Again said the guileful one, the Maker of the evil
-world, "By whose word wilt thou strike, by whose word wilt thou
-repel, by whose weapon will the good creatures (strike and repel)
-my creation?" Thus, in answer, said Zoroaster, "The sacred mortar,
-the sacred cup, the Haoma [the sacramental juice] the Words taught
-by Mazda, these are my weapons." [45]
-
-After this, Zoroaster "on the mountain" conversed with Ahura Mazda,
-and invoked the beneficent beings who preside over the seven Karshvares
-of the earth. We thus have here the mountain, the stones, the Word
-from the mouth of God, the offer of the kingdoms of the world, and
-the ministering angels, which reappear in the temptation of Jesus.
-
-After his baptism, Jesus repudiates his human parentage ("who is my
-mother?" etc.), and was led up by his new mother--the Spirit--into
-the wilderness to be tested by the devil. To this no doubt relate
-the words of Jesus preserved by Origen from the "Gospel according
-to the Hebrews": "Just now my mother the Holy Spirit took me by one
-of my hairs and bore me up on the great mountain Tabor." [46] Here
-the Solomonic kingdom and glory were offered by the devil if Jesus
-would worship him. According to Luke iv. he was tempted forty days
-(the number of the years of Solomon's reign). The first incident
-thereafter was his announcement that the Spirit of the Lord was
-upon him, and the second was an exhibition of his Solomonic power
-over devils. This, in Luke, is his first miracle. His first titular
-recognition was this surrender of the devil, who cried, "I know thee
-who them art, the Holy One of Israel!"
-
-In Matthew also the devils first give him the divine title "Son of God"
-(vii. 29). In the next chapter he gives his twelve disciples authority
-over demons. That this was well understood by the people is shown
-in Matthew xii. 23, where, on seeing demons mastered, they cry,
-"Is this the Son of David?" that is, is this Solomon, the famous
-enslaver of demons?
-
-It may be noted in passing that in the three miracles in Matthew of
-exorcising a blinding demon the title "Son of David" is used. Alford
-speaks of this as remarkable; but vision is the especial promise of
-Wisdom, therefore of Solomon, son of David.
-
-It may be remembered in this connection that in "Wisdom"
-(Ecclus. iv.) the trial by Wisdom is set forth:
-
-
-   "Whoso giveth ear unto her shall judge the nations. * * *
-    If a man commit himself unto her, he shall inherit her. * * *
-    At the first she will walk with him by crooked ways and bring
-    fear and dread upon him, and torment him with her discipline,
-    until she may trust his soul, and try him by her laws. Then
-    she will return the straight way unto him, and comfort him, and
-    shew him her secrets. But if he go wrong she will forsake him,
-    and give him over to his own ruin."
-
-
-This, which reappears in the parable of the broad and the narrow ways,
-seems to have determined the part which the Holy Spirit performs in
-the temptation of Jesus. According to Matthew he was by the Spirit
-carried involuntarily, "driven," says Mark, the Hebrew Gospel says,
-"borne by the hair" into the wilderness: as Jahveh "raised a Satan
-unto Solomon," and left Job to Satan, the Holy Spirit carries Jesus to
-Satan, the same Evil One; and after his triumph the promise in "Wisdom"
-(she will "comfort him") is fulfilled: "Angels came and ministered unto
-him." Luke says he "returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee;
-and a fame went out concerning him through all the region round about:
-he taught in their synagogues and was glorified of all."
-
-Nevertheless it may be remarked that the peculiar language in Luke
-(iv. 1) "led in the spirit" suggests that the whole story is a late
-literalization of some vision, partly based on v. 7 of the Epistle
-to the Hebrews, but originally on Solomon's dream (1 Kings iii.),
-in which Jahveh offers him any gift, and he asks only for Wisdom. Or,
-as he (Solomon) says in "Wisdom of Solomon," "I preferred her before
-sceptres and thrones" (vii. 8). But all of these were remotely
-influenced by the trial of Zoroaster, and the attempts of the devil
-to terrify Zoroaster before tempting him may be hinted in Mark i. 13,
-"He was with the wild beasts." These, however, are more prominent in
-the temptation of Buddha.
-
-Paul appears to have considered it an important apostolic credential
-to have had to contend with a Satan (2 Cor. xii. 7-10), and Peter
-was honoured by a special request made by Satan, and conceded, that
-he should be for a time under his diabolical control. (Luke xxii. 31.)
-
-As in the case of Solomon, the tests and trials of the superhuman
-wisdom and power of Jesus are found chiefly in tradition and
-folklore. The apocryphal gospels contain many, and some are
-preserved by Persian and Arabian poets. In the New Testament a few
-examples appear in which his utterances are given a quasi-judicial
-tone. There are several points of resemblance between the famous
-judgment of Solomon on the two harlots contending for the child, and
-the sentence of Jesus in favour of "sinful Mary," sister of Martha,
-accused by Simon the Pharisee. In both cases the decision was made
-at a feast, and in favour of the one who "loved much." It is not,
-however, the incident in itself that is now referred to, but only
-the formality ascribed to it in the narrative. And this adheres to
-the entire story. The anointing of Jesus may have occurred, but the
-scenic touches recall lines in the Solomonic "Song of Songs":
-
-
-   "While the King sat at his table,
-    My spikenard sent forth its fragrance."
-
-
-It is not impossible, by the way, that it was from chaste Shulamith
-of the Song ascribed to Solomon that a bad reputation was fixed on
-Mary Magdalene, against whose virginal purity no word is said in the
-Bible, the chapter heading to Luke vii. alone identifying her, in
-contradiction to John xi. 2, as the woman who anointed Jesus. This
-libel seems to come from a far antiquity,--as far probably as
-the Talmudic "Miriam Magdala" (i. e., Braided-hair Mary); and
-this epithet might have been derived from Shulamith's "ringlets"
-which were "tied up in folds," and whose spikenard sent forth its
-odours while Solomon was at the table. The later Jahvism must have
-considered such attention by ladies to their hair as an evidence of
-wickedness. Paul, while recognizing that long hair is a woman's "glory"
-(1 Cor. xi.) dangerously fascinating even to the angels, testifies
-against "braided hair" (1 Tim. ii.), an instruction repeated in 1
-Peter iii. Whether this lady of means who helped to support Jesus was
-from Magdala or not, it is nearly certain that her legend was derived
-from another sense of "Magdalene," and it is not improbable that the
-friendship of Jesus for her was in keeping with his Solomonic defiance
-of the Pharisaic.
-
-The Eastern tales of monarchs in disguise, derived from a legend
-of Solomon, may have prepared the popular mind for the double role
-performed by Jesus in the Gospels, for the earlier writers do not
-suggest any lowliness in his position beyond the humiliation of taking
-on human flesh and dying. In the Gospels we find him now an hungered,
-now dining with the Pharisee and anointed with precious ointment,
-again multiplying food; an humble-son of man who has not where to lay
-his head, a son of God with legions of angels at his command; purifying
-the temple with violence, and predicting its destruction; a peacemaker
-bringing a sword; telling his disciples to resist not evil, and arming
-them; enjoining secrecy about his miracles, presently parading them;
-prostrate with anguish in a garden, presently shining with unmasked
-splendour. Solomon never arrayed himself in any such brilliant
-raiment as that of the transfiguration, nor was his environment finer
-than the scenes imaged in some of these parables,--the prodigal's
-ring and robe, the king going to war and sending his ambassadors,
-the masters of fields and vineyards, the momentous wedding dress,
-the importance of rank and precedence at a feast. In miracles, too,
-we have the grand wedding at Cana, and the homage of the centurion
-deferentially rewarded. [47]
-
-In the Hebrew Gospel Jesus says, "I will that ye be twelve apostles
-for a testimony to Israel"; with which we may compare the "twelve
-officers over all Israel" appointed by Solomon (1 Kings iv. 7). In
-Mark the first bestowal on Jesus of his Solomonic title "Son of
-David" (x.) is immediately followed by his Solomonic entry into
-Jerusalem. In Matthew the blind man's tribute is followed by the cry
-of multitudes, "Hosanna to the Son of David"; and the whole scene
-is obviously from the narrative in 1 Kings i. of the procession of
-Solomon, seated on David's mule, on the occasion of the anointing
-which made him the model Messiah, in virtue of which he was King
-and Priest in combination. Solomon dedicated the temple himself, as
-High Priest, and to him, as King-Priest, the privilege of sanctuary
-was subordinate. Wherefore he had an offender executed while holding
-the horns of the altar. The titular Son of David, on the morrow of
-his triumphal entry, assumes authority in the temple, and scourges
-out of it the sellers of things used in the sacrifices,--especially
-Doves. These his human mother had sacrificed after his birth for
-purification, but by this time they symbolized his divine mother,
-the Holy Spirit, and were not to be sold.
-
-Who can suppose that this violence, which were as if one assaulted
-those who sell holy candles and pictures in a church vestibule,
-really occurred? At Oberammergau the whole tragedy of the Passion
-Play hinges on the resentment of these merchants, who appeal to the
-Sanhedrim for protection from the violence of one man armed with a
-whip! The story (John ii.) is an epitaph of the primitive Christ,
-the value of whose blood was its proof that his victory over the
-Adversary was that of a Man, unaided by a divine, unblemished by a
-carnal, weapon: triumph by either would have been defeat.
-
-The bread and wine offered to Abraham by the mythical king-priest
-of Salem (Solomon disguised as Melchizedek) may have been suggested
-by the bread and wine offered by Wisdom to her guests, in Proverbs
-ix. However this may be, there is clearly discoverable at the Last
-Supper of Jesus the Satan that Jahveh raised up against Solomon in
-the presence of mythical Judas ("Satan entered into him," says John),
-and in the whole scene the table of Wisdom. "She hath mingled her wine,
-she hath furnished her table," and cries--
-
-
-    "Come, eat ye of my bread,
-    And drink of the wine which I have mingled."
-
-
-That Jesus supped with his disciples, at the Passover time, is very
-probable, but that the bread and wine alone should have been selected
-for symbolical usage (a point unknown to the fourth gospel) conforms
-too closely with the Solomonic prologue to be a mere coincidence. The
-words "Take, eat," "Drink ye all of it," recall also the Song of
-Songs--
-
-
-    Eat, O friends!
-    Drink, yea abundantly, O beloved!
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII.
-
-THE HEIR OF SOLOMON'S GODHEAD.
-
-
-The anger of Jahveh against Solomon (1 Kings xi.) is, of course, the
-outcome of late theological explanations of how the ancient and much
-idealised kingdom could have been divided after divine promises of its
-protection. The interview with Solomon is a sort of dramatization,
-in which the anachronism of making Jahveh a historic contemporary
-of the Wise King represents the fact that when the tribal deity was
-evolved it was in antagonism to a Solomon who, though his body had long
-mouldered, was still "marching on." That Solomon had to contend with
-the hard and fanatical elements afterwards consolidated in Jahvism is
-pretty clear, and we may see in him a primitive Akbar. A century after
-Akbar's death the Rajah of Joudpoor said to the emperor Aurungzebe:
-"Your ancestor Akbar, whose throne is now in heaven, conducted the
-affairs of his empire in equity and security for the period of fifty
-years. He preserved every tribe of men in repose and happiness, whether
-they were followers of Jesus or of Moses, of Brahma or Mohammed. Of
-whatever sect or creed they might be, they all equally enjoyed his
-countenance and favour, insomuch that his people, in gratitude for
-the indiscriminate protection which he afforded them, distinguished
-him by the appellation of The Guardian of Mankind." Moslem fanaticism
-could not tolerate such toleration, and Akbar's reign was followed
-by conflicts very similar to those which followed Solomon's reign,
-leading to the Mogul empire, but ultimately to the reign of an "Empress
-of India," under whom we now see the same toleration of all religions
-which prevailed in the fifty years of Akbar.
-
-The Moslem saw in Akbar's liberality and toleration the supreme
-offence of putting other gods--Jesus, Brahma, Ahuramazda--beside
-Allah. The Jahvist saw retrospectively in Solomon's liberality the
-putting of Moloch, Ashera, and other gods beside Jahveh. It was
-therefore recorded that Jahveh determined to rend all the tribes
-save one from Solomon's son (a vaticinium ex evento). But that one
-was enough to preserve the Solomon cult.
-
-Ananke oude Theoi machontai. This Necessity, which the Greeks saw
-working above all the gods, is man himself, and worked also above Jah
-and Jahvism, nay, by means of them. Gradually they seemed to prevail
-over Solomonism. The Proverbs and Solomonic Psalms were transfused with
-Jahvism, but by this process the heavenly and the terrestrial kings
-were confused, and the idea of a human heir to the throne of Jahveh
-was conceived. As when, in our own era, Islam swallowed Zoroaster,
-with the result of bringing forth the great literary age of Persia,
-with Parsaism rationalized under a transparent veil of Moslem phrase
-and fable, so anciently arose the Hebrew Faizis and Saadis and Omar
-Khayyams. Of these was the Isaiah who, with pigments of the Solomonic
-sunset, painted the sunrise of a new day, and a new earth-born God.
-
-
-   "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the
-    government shall rest on his shoulder; and his name shall be
-    called Counsellor of Wonders, God-hero, Father of Spoil, Prince of
-    Peace. Enlarged shall be dominion, and without cessation of peace,
-    on the throne of David, and throughout his kingdom, to establish
-    it and uphold it by justice and righteousness from henceforth
-    and forever."
-
-
-Every title, every tint, in this gorgeous vision is taken from the
-nuptial song for Solomon (Ps. xlv.) and Solomon's Psalm (lxxii.) The
-"delightsomeness poured over (Solomon's) lips" (Ps. xlv. 2) makes
-the Counsellor of Wonders; his deification (verses 6, 7) makes the
-God-hero; the tributes of Tarshish, and Sheba make him father of
-spoil (Ps. lxxii.); his "mildness" (Ps. xlv. 4) his abundant "peace"
-(Ps. lxxii. 3, 7) make the Prince of Peace; and the rest is a general
-refrain for both of the Psalms.
-
-Psalm xlv. opens with the words, "My verse concerns the King," and
-there is a fair consensus of the learned that the king is Solomon. It
-has been found impossible to fix upon any other monarch to whom the
-eulogia would be applicable, and the resemblance of the theme to the
-Song of Solomon proves that at an early period writers connected the
-Psalm with Solomon and one of his espousals.
-
-In quoting Professor Newman's translation of this Psalm (ante II)
-I alluded to my slight alterations. These are few and verbal, but
-momentous, and were not made without consultation of many critical
-authorities and versions. Professor Newman was unable to believe
-that the poet really meant to address Solomon as God, and in verse
-6 translates "Thy throne divine," in verse 7, "Therefore hath God,
-thy God, etc." Others, with similar theistic bias, have shrunk from
-what, according to the balance of critical interpretation, is the
-clear sense of the original:
-
-
-   "Thy throne, O God, ever and always stands;
-    A righteous sceptre is thy royal sceptre:
-    Thou lovest right and hatest evil;
-    Therefore, O God, hath thy God anointed thee
-    With oil of joy above thy fellow-kings."
-
-
-When these verses were written--and verse 11, where after Adonai
-the Vulgate has Elohim, "He is thy Lord God, worship thou him"--the
-rigid Jewish monotheism did not exist; and the apostrophe might have
-continued without special notice had not the psalm been included in
-the Jewish hymnology and thus given the solemnity and consecration
-ascribed by Jahvism to its canonical Book of Psalms. But ultimately
-it made a tremendous and even revolutionary impression; and that the
-verses were interpreted as bestowing the divine name on Solomon, by
-those most jealous of that name, is proved, I think, by the following
-considerations:
-
-1. Isaiah, in his vision quoted above (Is. ix.) combines the
-phraseology of Ps. xlv. with that of Ps. lxxii. (which bears Solomon's
-name as its author), and ascribes to a new-born child the title
-"God-hero."
-
-2. The recently discovered original of a fragment of Ecclesiasticus
-includes the passage about Solomon in xlvii., and it is said in
-verse 18: "Thou (Solomon) wast called by the glorious name which
-is called over Israel." This seems to be a plain reference to the
-ascriptions in Ps. xlv., where alone the divine name is applied to
-any individual mortal. Ecclesiasticus was compiled early in the second
-century before our era, and on the basis of much earlier compilations,
-as its prologue states.
-
-3. In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the monarch is represented as a mortal
-who by the divine gift of supernatural Wisdom had gained immortality;
-he had become privy to the mysteries of God, was his Beloved, his
-Son. This was written about the first year of our era.
-
-4. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews translates the Psalm
-xlv. as it is translated above, interpreting the words of deification
-as meant for the Firstborn of God at his ancient appearance on earth
-(i. 6), and applicable to his reappearance as Christ; arguing from
-such language of deification the superiority of the Son of God over
-the angels, who were never so addressed.
-
-A court poet addresses a princely bridegroom as Elohim, as a god--as
-it were, an Apollo. Had more songs of like antiquity by poets of his
-race been preserved, no doubt other instances of such rhapsody might
-be found, but it happens that this is the only instance in Hebrew
-literature where an individual man is clearly addressed as God (for
-Exod. vii. 1 and 1 Sam. xxviii. 13 are not really exceptions). As in
-the Psalm that is the only instance in which an individual man is,
-in the Old Testament, addressed as God, so is its application in the
-Epistle to the Hebrews the only indisputable instance in which an
-individual is addressed as God in the New Testament.
-
-"Thy throne, O God." Fateful words! The word of God, says this Epistle,
-is sharper than any two-edged sword, but its writer himself unwittingly
-unsheathed from a courtier's compliment just such a sword. One edge
-has slaughtered innumerable Jews, Moslems, Arians, Socinians, mingling
-their blood with that of the humane Jesus himself on the sacrificial
-altar he tried so hard to exchange for mercifulness. The other edge
-turned against the moral heart of Jesus himself, lowering the tone of
-all narratives and utterances ascribed to him after his connection
-with Jahveh, and consequently lowering all Christendom under its
-dishonourable burden of accommodating human veracity and kindness to
-the bad heavenly manners that were acquired by the deified Christ. For
-there was no other God to adopt him but a particularly rude one.
-
-Theological scholars who have compared the Epistle to the Hebrews
-with the Epistles of Paul have dwelt on the theological differences,
-but the moral differences are greater. In the Epistle to the Hebrews
-the emphasis is laid on the service of Jesus to mankind: it is this
-that makes him, as it made Solomon, worthy of worship as a God,
-and the ancient God with his sacrifices is virtually represented as
-transforming himself and his government to the measure of Jesus. Jesus
-is complete and perfect man, no part or power of his divine nature
-accompanying him on earth. But we see in Philippians ii. 7, and other
-passages, the primitive idea fading away, and Jesus pictured as a
-divine being in the mere semblance and disguise of a man, no real man
-at all; a theory which prevails in the story of the transfiguration,
-where the disguise is for a moment thrown aside. The earlier idea of
-his genuine humanity was still strong enough to prevent any stories
-of miracles wrought by Jesus from arising, the resurrection being a
-miracle wrought by God after the work of Jesus was "finished," as he
-is said to have proclaimed from the stake. But legends of miracles
-became inevitable after the theory of his disguise was diffused,
-and also stories of the vituperation, anathemas, and attitudinizings,
-which are so offensive in a man, but so characteristic of the whole
-history of Jahveh, with whom he was gradually identified. A gentleman
-does not call his opponents vipers and consign them to hell, but
-Jahveh is not under any such obligations. And, alas, disregard of
-the humanities did not, as we have seen, stop there even in Paul's
-time. In the further development, that of Jesus the magician, the
-personal character of Jesus was sadly sacrificed, and it is only
-due to the superstition that prevents the New Testament narratives
-from being read in a common sense way that people generally are not
-shocked by some of the representations.
-
-When the second Solomon was born in Bethlehem, as the Gospel carols
-tell, Wise Men came to worship him, but Jahveh had already fixed
-his own star above the cradle, and his angels contended for the
-great man, as for centuries the wisdom of the first Solomon had been
-jahvized. It was, however, the opinion of some ancient commentators
-that the cry of the angels, "Glory to God in the highest" meant that
-the birth of Jesus was to operate in the heavenly heights, and work
-changes there also. One may indeed dream of a deity longing for a human
-love,--grieving at being through ages an object of fear, personified as
-Wrath,--rejoicing in the birth of any new interpreter who should free
-him from the despot glory, "I create evil," and reconcile the human
-heart to him as eternal love--love ever burdened with the griefs of
-humanity, ever seeking to be born of woman, and to struggle against the
-dark and evil forces of nature. So one may dream, and it is a pathetic
-fact that the contention between humanity and heaven for the new-born
-Saviour is traceable in varying versions of the Angels' song. While
-half of Christendom sing "On earth peace, good will toward men," the
-other half sing, "On earth peace to men of good will." Our Revisers
-find the balance of authorities on the side of authority, and translate
-
-
-    Glory to God in the highest,
-    And on earth peace among men in whom he is well pleased.
-
-
-Although the "higher criticism" appears to treat with a certain
-contempt the birth-legends and carols in Matthew and Luke, and
-the genealogies, beyond the letter of these is visible more of the
-vanishing Jesus "after the flesh," the real and great man, than of
-the risen Christ in whom his humanity was lost. The "shepherd of my
-people," he who is to absolve them from their nightmare "sins," make
-crooked ways straight, rough places smooth, and free them from fear,
-is remembered in these rhapsodies of the Infancy, in the terrors of
-Herod, and gifts of the Wise. They have a certain evolution in the
-benevolent teachings and healing miracles of the Synoptics, easily
-discriminated from the competing Jahveh-Christ. (Think of a teacher
-urging his friends to forgive offenders seventy times seven and then
-promising them a "Comforter" who will never forgive the slightest
-offence, though merely verbal, either in this world or in the next!)
-
-The extent to which the man was lowered and lost in the risen Lord is
-especially revealed in the fourth Gospel. Except for the story of the
-woman taken in adultery, admittedly interpolated from another Gospel,
-the fourth Gospel may be regarded as perhaps the only book in the
-Bible without recognition of humanity. "I pray not for the world,
-but for those whom thou hast given me," is the keynote. In this work
-there is no text for the reformer and the philanthropist, unless
-perhaps the retreat of Jesus from a prospect of being made king. What
-inferences of benevolence might be made even from the miracles related
-have to be strained through the arrogance, self-aggrandizement,
-attitudinizing, as of a showman, with which they are wrought. [48] A
-rudeness to his mother precedes the turning of water to wine (ii. 4);
-the nobleman's son is healed because the aristocrat will not believe
-without a miracle (iv. 48); the infirm man at Bethesda is healed only
-after a sham question, "Wouldest thou be made whole?" and threatened
-afterwards (v. 6, 14); feeding the multitude is attended with another
-sham question (vi. 5), and a parade of the fragments (13); the man
-born blind is declared to have been so born solely for the sign and
-wonder manifested in his cure (ix. 3).
-
-But the supremacy of a new Jahveh over all moral obligations and all
-truthfulness is especially displayed in the resurrection of Lazarus
-(xi.). Here Jesus is represented as staying away from the sick man, in
-order that he may die; he affects to believe Lazarus is only asleep,
-but finding his disciples pleased with the prospect of recovery, in
-which case there would be no miracle, he becomes frank (parrhesia)
-and assures them Lazarus is dead; he tells his disciples privately he
-is glad Lazarus is dead; he tells Martha, when she comes out to him
-alone, that her brother shall rise; but when her sister Mary comes out,
-accompanied by her Jewish consolers, Jesus breaks out into vehement
-groans and lamentations, lashing himself (etaraxen eauton) into this
-sham grief over a man at whose death he has connived and who would
-presently be alive! Even in his prayer over Lazarus the pretence is
-kept up, and his Father is informed, in an aside, "I know that thou
-hearest me always, but because of the multitude around I said it,
-that they may believe that thou didst send me." Thus does the fourth
-Gospel sink Jesus morally into the grave of Lazarus, leaving in his
-place an embodiment of the Jahveh who had lying spirits to send out
-into his prophets on occasion.
-
-The resurrection of Lazarus is a transparent fabrication out of
-the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Abraham's words to the rich
-man,--"neither will they be persuaded if one rose from the dead,"--were
-not adapted to a faith built on a resurrection, so that parable is
-suppressed in the fourth Gospel. The resurrection of a supernatural
-man is not quite sufficient for people not supernatural. Those who
-had been looking for a returning Christ had died, just like the
-unbelievers. There was a tremendous necessity for an example of the
-resurrection of an ordinary man. Shocking as are the immoral details
-of the story, there is audible in it the pathetic cry of the suffering
-human heart, and the demand that must be met by any Gospel claiming
-the faith of humanity. "Lord, if thou hadst been here my brother had
-not died!" Through what ages has that declaration, not to be denied,
-ascended to cold and cruel skies? It is found in the Vedas, in Job,
-in the Psalms. If there is a Heart up there why are we tortured? To the
-many apologies and explanations and pretences which imperilled systems
-had given, Christianity had to support itself by something more than
-Egyptian dreams and Platonic speculations. A dead man must arise;
-it must be done dramatically, amid domestic grief and neighbourly
-sympathy; it must be done doctrinally, with funeral sermon turned to
-rejoicings. And this was all done in the story of Lazarus in such a way
-that it might surround every grave with illusions for centuries. For
-who, while tears are falling, will pause to handle the wreaths, and
-find whether they are genuine? Who, while the service is proceeding,
-will analyze the details, and ask whether it is possible that the good
-Jesus could have practiced such deception and assumed such theatrical
-attitudes? [49]
-
-The indifference of the fourth Gospel to such moral considerations as
-those found in the Synoptics is so apostolic that I am inclined
-to place much of it nearer to the first century than I once
-supposed. Paul's rage against the "wisdom of this world," and his
-fulminations against the learned because they are not "called,"
-are fully adopted by the Johannine Christ, who says to the blind man
-whose eyes he had opened, and who was worshipping him: "For judgment
-came I into this world, that they that see not may see, and they that
-see may become blind." And these ideas are represented in a legend
-related in the book of Acts which is really allegorical, though our
-translators have manipulated it into serious history.
-
-A persecutor of Christians, on whom the spirit "came mightily," as
-on King Saul, so that he was a new "Saul among the prophets," sought
-to convert to his new faith a Roman Proconsul, Sergius Paul. But
-with this Consul was a learned man of the Jewish Wisdom School,
-Bar-Jesus Elymas,--i. e., Dr. Anti-Jesus Wise Man. Like Michael and
-Satan contending for the body of Moses, Prophet Saul and Anti-Jesus
-Wise Man contended for the Roman Paul's soul. Prophet Saul prevailed
-by calling Anti-Jesus Wise Man a child of the devil, and striking
-him blind. Thereupon Consul Paul believed, being "astonished at the
-teaching of the Lord." Whereupon Prophet Saul triumphantly carries
-off the Roman's name as a trophy. [50]
-
-Beginning in this conclusive way, by striking human Wisdom sightless
-("that they that see may become blind," John ix. 39), the Anti-Wisdom
-propaganda, which began with identifying Wisdom with the serpent
-in Eden, passed on to inspire the Church Fathers who gloated over
-the eternal tortures of the poets and philosophers of Greece and
-Rome. Alas for the philosophers not in their graves, but in their
-cradles, or in the womb of the future! For torments are nearest
-"eternal" when they begin at once on earth.
-
-One may readily understand how it was that personal traditions of Jesus
-and his teachings remained unwritten until his contemporaries were
-dead (although this may not have been the case with the suppressed
-"Gospel according to the Hebrews"); the hourly expected return of
-Christ rendered such memoirs unimportant until it became clear that
-the expectation was erroneous. The age of John, of whom Jesus was
-rumoured to have predicted survival till his return (John xxi. 22),
-was stretched out to a mythical extent; he became an undying sleeper
-at Ephesus, and finally a pious "Wandering Jew"; but when at length
-such fables lost their strength, some imaginative impersonator brought
-forth an apocalyptic bequest of John postponing the second advent
-a thousand years. The conventicles had thus no resource but to turn
-into orthodoxy the heresy of Hymenoeus and Alexander, for which Paul
-delivered them over to Satan, that the resurrection occurs at death;
-to collect the traditional sayings of Jesus; and to adapt these to the
-new situation. A thousand years later, when the expected catastrophe
-did not occur, the substantial churches and cathedrals were built,
-as the Gospels had been built after the first-century disappointment.
-
-These Gospels contain things from which some of the real teachings
-of the wise man of Nazareth may be fairly conjectured. That the
-synoptical records are palimpsests, though denied by the prudent, is
-a truth felt by the unsophisticated who, in their use of such words
-as "Christian" and "a Christian spirit," quite ignore the fearful
-anathemas and damnatory language ascribed to Jesus.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII.
-
-THE LAST SOLOMON.
-
-
-Every race has a pride in its great men which ultimately prevails over
-any pious taboo imposed on them in life or by tradition. Some years
-ago it was announced that a German scholar was about to publish proofs
-that Jesus was not of the Hebrew race, and while Christendom showed
-little concern, all Israel sat upon that German almost furiously. It
-is an old story. Banished Buddha becomes an avatar of Vishnu, and
-his image now appears in India beside Jagenath. For the heresiarch
-must be adapted before adoption. So Solomon returns as a preacher of
-orthodox Jahvism, in the "Wisdom of Solomon," but so rigid had been
-the taboo in his case that the writer did not venture to insert the
-name of so famous a liberal and secularist.
-
-That was about the first year of our era. But presently we hear about
-the "Son of David." Was that because of David himself? Interest in
-David had so receded that in the "Wisdom of Solomon" the resuscitated
-Wise Man barely alludes (once) to his "father's seat." Was it because
-of any popular interest in the legendary throne or house of David? That
-old "covenant" is not alluded to by the resuscitated monarch, and in
-the apostolic writings nothing is said about it. In the Gospels the
-title "Son of David" is generally connected with certain alleged
-miracles of Jesus, which recalled legends of Solomon, and it is
-only in the account of the entry into Jerusalem that it carries any
-connotation of royalty corresponding to the genealogies afterwards
-elaborated. Unless these narratives are accepted as historical
-they must be regarded as phenomena, and, taken in connection with
-what may be reasonably regarded as genuine teachings of Jesus, the
-phenomena point to a probability that he had reawakened interest in
-the Wise Man's teachings, and that this interest, by a compromise
-with Jahvist prejudices, coined the expression "Son of David" as an
-alias of Solomon.
-
-However this may be, it appears certain that there was in the
-teachings of Jesus some substantial recovery of the ancient and
-unconverted Solomon, the proverbial philosopher, the man of the
-world. How much Jesus may have said to revive interest in Solomon,
-and how many of his secular utterances have been hidden in the grave
-of his humanity, can only be conjectured; but there are two direct
-sayings concerning Solomon ascribed to him which may be regarded
-as the only unreserved tributes to the Wise Man that had ever been
-uttered since his idealization in Chronicles. And our own Protestant
-Jahvism has tried so hard to manipulate these tributes into partial
-disparagements that we may easily imagine early Christian Jahvism
-destroying similar testimonies altogether.
-
-A. S. V. Luke xi. 31: "The Queen of the South shall rise up in judgment
-with the men of this generation and condemn them: for she came from
-the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon,
-and behold a greater than Solomon is here."
-
-True rendering: "The Queen of the South shall stand in the judgment
-with the men of this [Abrahamic]  brood, and condemn them; for she came
-from the farthest parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and
-behold something more than Solomon is here." (pleion Solomonos hode)
-
-The word mistranslated "greater," pleion, is neuter and cannot be
-applied to a man. Jesus is not speaking of himself, but of the new
-Spirit animating a whole movement.
-
-The word "generation" as a translation of genea is, in this connection,
-misleading. No one English word can convey the satire on people who
-regarded themselves as holy by generation from Abraham (cf. Luke
-iii. 8), which is in the vein of Carlyle's ridicule of English
-"Paper Nobility." Above these self-satisfied claimants of inherited
-wisdom Jesus sets the Gentile Queen journeying to sit at the feet
-of Solomon. At the feet of Solomon Jesus also was sitting, and he
-certainly did not call himself personally greater than Solomon.
-
-The other allusion to Solomon (Matt. vi. 28, 29) is rendered thus:
-"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not,
-neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in
-all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
-
-Here "glory," which when applied to a man has a connotation of pride
-and pomp, is made to translate doxe, which means honour in its best
-sense, as preserved in "doxology." Jesus really says, "Solomon amid all
-his honours never arrayed himself (periebaleto) like one of these." The
-greatest and wisest of men did not affect display in dress. [51]
-
-The apparent slightness of these English changes reveals their
-deliberate subtlety. Puritanism, taking its cue from King James's
-translators, has bettered the instruction, and steadily pictured
-Jesus pointing to a lily,--white emblem of purity,--and censuring
-(implicitly) the ostentation of Solomon. Even in rationalistic
-hymn-books is found the pretty hymn of Agnes Strickland, beginning:
-
-
-    "Fair lilies of Jerusalem,
-        Ye wear the same array
-    As when imperial Judah's stem
-        Maintained its regal sway:
-    By sacred Jordan's desert tide
-        As bright ye blossom on
-    As when your simple charms outvied
-        The pride of Solomon."
-
-
-Very sweet! But the "lilies of the field" in Palestine are not "fair,"
-their charms are not "simple"; they are large and gorgeous combinations
-of red and gold; and Solomon, so far from being proud in the contrast,
-"outvied" in simplicity the pride of the lily.
-
-Jesus may not indeed have said these things concerning Solomon, but
-the probability that he did say something of the kind is suggested
-by the adroit mistranslations. The same puritanical spirit, the
-same prejudice against human wisdom and love of beauty, prevailed
-even more when the Gospels were written. The Jahvist jealousy of
-the wisdom of the world which in a Targum added to Jeremiah ix. 23
-a fling at Solomon,--"Let not Solomon the Son of David, the Wise
-Man, glory in his Wisdom,"--screamed on in Christian anathemas
-on science, and laudations of the silly. (For "silly" is of pious
-derivation, from German selig--blessed.) Solomon had not been named
-in any canonical scripture for centuries, and even in apocryphal
-"Wisdom" (Ecclesiasticus) he appears as if a brilliant but fallen
-Lucifer. The cult of Solomon continued no doubt, in a sense, among the
-Sadducees (respectfully treated, by the way, by Jesus), but they were
-comparatively few, and like the rationalists of the English Church,
-cautious about outside heresies. It was probably characteristic that
-their name is derived from Solomon's priest, Zadok, instead of from
-Solomon himself. As for the Gentile Queen, she is not named in the
-Bible after the record of her visit to Solomon until the homage of
-Jesus was given her. It appears, therefore, very unlikely that such
-homage and the unqualified tributes to Solomon, would have been put
-into the mouth of Jesus.
-
-But why, it may be asked, were not these tributes suppressed? There is
-in one case a recognition of a Gentile lady which would recommend the
-text to the writer of Luke, and in the other a lesson against luxury
-which would recommend this to all believers. At any rate, whatever may
-have been the suppressions, and no doubt there were many, two of the
-Gospels have preserved these sentences, which, so far as the glorious
-"idolator" is concerned, neither of them would have invented. There
-are the words; somebody uttered them; and the question arises, who
-was that daring man who broke the severe silence or reservations of
-centuries and did honour to the king who built shrines to gods and
-goddesses? [52]
-
-As Solomon said, "A man is proved by what he praises." That Jesus did
-appreciate the greatness of the Solomonic literature is not a matter
-of conjecture. The sayings ascribed to him in the Gospels--apart from
-Pauline importations and quotations from Jahvist scriptures--are
-largely pervaded by the spirit and even by the phraseology of the
-Solomonic books. Remembering that the phrases "kingdom of heaven,"
-"kingdom of God," are post-resurrectional, and that Jesus could not,
-unless by miraculous foresight, use those phrases for any external
-dominion connected with himself, there is reason to believe that his
-conception was of a sway of Wisdom, and that Wisdom was to him the
-Saviour, as to Jesus Ben Sira, her realm "within," her leaven hid in
-the world, her advance without observation.
-
-Of course those who read the Bible in the light of a supernatural
-theory, see these things very differently, but considering the
-records as if they were those of uninspired people, one may say that
-some of the sayings ascribed to Jesus are, in their present form,
-meaningless. For example, what should we think if we found an ancient
-record of some poor Egyptian reported as saying, "Come unto me, all
-ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my
-yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart: and
-ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden
-is light." How incongruous the "I am meek" with "learn of me"! How
-could he give the heavy laden rest? And what rest? what yoke? But we
-would surely feel enlightened should we presently discover an Egyptian
-book of "Wisdom,"  with proof of its popularity when the mysterious
-words were orally repeated, containing such language as this from
-personified Wisdom: "Come unto me, all ye that be desirous of me,
-and fill yourselves with my fruits." And if we found in the same
-book a teacher saying: "I directed my soul unto Wisdom, and I found
-her in pureness.... Draw near unto me, ye unlearned, and dwell in
-the house of Wisdom.... Buy her for yourselves without money. Put
-your neck under her yoke, and let your life receive instruction:
-she is near at hand to find. Behold with your eyes that I have had
-but little labour, and have gotten unto me much rest."
-
-Here is sense. These are the words of Wisdom in Jesus Ben Sira
-(Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 19, li. 23-27). Can any unbiased mind fail to
-recognize in Matthew xi. 28-30 a mangled quotation from this Hebrew
-book of the second century, before Jesus of Nazareth was born, but
-in his time cherished in many Jewish households as much as any Gospel
-is cherished in Christian households?
-
-Consider the Sermon on the Mount. In the Proverbs ascribed to
-Solomon is found the beatitude pronounced by Jesus on the lowly,
-no doubt literally quoted by him: "With the lowly is wisdom"
-(Prov. xi. 2). The blessing of those who hunger for righteousness
-(justice) is in Prov. x. 24, where it is said their desire shall be
-granted. The blessing of the peacemakers is joy (Prov. xii. 20). The
-merciful man doeth good to his own life (Prov. xi. 17). The pure in
-heart shall have the King for his friend (Prov. xxii. 11). The house
-that stands and the house overthrown (Prov. x. 25; xii. 7; xiv. 11);
-the two ways (Prov. xii. 28, xiv. 12, xvi. 17); the tree known by
-its fruits (Prov. xi. 30, xii. 12); give and it shall be given you
-(Prov. xxii. 9); the sower (Prov. xi. 18, 24, 25); taking the lower
-place so as to be placed higher and not moved down (Prov. xxv. 6-8);
-searching for and buying Wisdom as the precious silver, the pearl,
-the treasure (Prov. vi. 11, 12, 17, 19, 35; xx. 15; xxiii. 23); the
-prodigal (Prov. xxix. 3); those who wrong parents (Prov. xx. 20;
-xxviii. 24; cf. Matt. xv. 5; Mark vii. 11). The lamps of the wise
-and foolish virgins are found in Prov. xiii. 9; also xxiv. 20.
-
-In Proverbs xx. 9, we have the words, "Who can say, 'I have made
-my heart clean, I am pure from sin?'" In Ecclesiastes iii. 16, it
-is said, "Moreover, I saw under the sun, in the place of judgment,
-that wickedness was there; and in the place of righteousness that
-wickedness was there." (Cf. also vii. 20.) In the "Gospel according
-to the Hebrews" Jesus, declaring that an offender should be forgiven
-seventy times seven, adds: "For in the prophets likewise, after they
-were anointed by the Holy Spirit, utterance of sin was found."
-
-Although in the language ascribed to Jesus in the fourth Gospel
-(iii. 1-10) there are post-resurrectional phrases, whatever he
-may have said about birth and about the wind-like spirit seems to
-have been what he expected Nicodemus, as a teacher in Israel, to
-understand. We may therefore suppose that it was substantially a
-quotation from Ecclesiastes xi. 5: "As thou knowest not the way of
-the wind, nor the growth of the bones in the mother's womb, even so
-thou canst not fathom the work of God, who compasseth all things."
-
-In relation to Woman Jesus seems to have appealed to Solomon against
-Ecclesiastes, where (vii. 25-29) it is said:
-
-
-    I have turned my heart to know,
-    And to explore, and search out wisdom and the reason of things;
-    And to know that wickedness is Folly, and Folly madness:
-    And I have found what is more bitter than death--
-    The Woman who is a snare, her heart nets, her hands chains:
-    He who pleases God shall be delivered from her,
-    But the offender shall be captured by her.
-        See, this have I found (saith the Speaker).
-    Adding one to another, to find out the account,
-    Which I am still searching after, but have not found--
-    One man in a thousand I have found,
-    But a woman among all these I have not found.
-    Look you, only this have I found--
-    That God made man upright,
-    But they have sought out many devices.
-
-
-In the first seven lines of this passage we may recognize the
-personification in Proverbs ix. 13-18. The Woman of the fifth line
-is "Dame Folly"; but the last eight lines relate to womankind. The
-assurance in the eighth line that it is Koheleth who speaks raises
-a suspicion that the last eight lines are commentary,--a suspicion
-further confirmed by the awkwardness of the writing. Strictly read,
-it is left uncertain whether no woman is ever captured by Dame Folly,
-or not one escapes. However, as commentators are generally men,
-the interpretation has been adverse to woman.
-
-But Jesus, perhaps remembering that Wisdom is as much a woman as Folly,
-is reported (Matthew xi. 19) to have said: "Wisdom is justified by
-her works." In Luke vii. 35 it is, "Wisdom is justified of all her
-children." Both of these readings appeal to the Solomonic portrait of
-the virtuous woman, in Proverbs xxxi. the last line of which says,
-"Let her works praise her," and verse 28, "her children rise up and
-call her blessed."
-
-In Luke the sentence is a verse by itself, and the word "all" renders
-it probable that the sentiment has a bearing on the story that follows
-of the anointing of Jesus by a sinful woman. [53] Some such incident
-may have occurred, but the address to Simon the Pharisee making him
-to be the offender, and the woman one delivered from Dame Folly by
-her faith ("pleasing God") looks like a criticism on the "fling" at
-woman in Ecclesiastes, with a proverb taken for text. This rebuke of
-the Pharisee, who thought "the prophet" ought to abhor the "sinner,"
-immediately precedes an account of the eminent women who supported
-Jesus by their means,--Mary, called Magdalene; Joanna, the wife of
-Herod's steward; Susanna, "and many others." They "ministered to him of
-their substance," and possibly the Pharisee and others might naturally
-suspect him of being among "the ensnared." The fact is strange enough
-to be genuine, and Luke thinks it important to say that Jesus had
-healed these ladies of bad spirits and infirmities. Of course it
-is necessary to divest Gospel anecdotes of much post-resurrectional
-vesture, and in this case it cannot be credited that Jesus said that
-the woman's sins were "many," which he could not have known, or that
-he gave her formal absolution.
-
-The indications of the study of Ecclesiasticus by Jesus are very
-remarkable. This book appears to have been a sort of nursery in
-which proverbs were trained for their fruitage in the last Solomon's
-religious testimonies. What those testimonies were we cannot easily
-gather, but it is useful for comparative study to remark the sentences
-in Ecclesiastictus which correspond, either in thought or phraseology,
-with those ascribed to Jesus. The broad and the narrow ways barely
-suggested in "Proverbs" are here developed (Ecclesiasticus iv. 17,
-18). "Hide not thy wisdom" (iv. 23, xx. 30). "Say not, 'I have enough
-(goods) for my life'" (v. 1, xi. 24). "Extol not thyself" (vi. 2). We
-find the exhortation to judge not (vii. 6); rebuke of much speaking in
-prayer (14); warning against the lustful gaze (ix. 5, 8); the night
-cometh when no man can work (xiv. 16-19; cf. Eccles. ix. 10); the
-proud cast down, the humble exalted (x. 14, xi. 5); one only is good
-(xviii. 2); swear not (xxiii. 9); forgiven as we forgive (xxviii. 2);
-treasure rusting and treasure laid up according to the commandments
-of the Most High (xxix. 10, 11); "Judge of thy neighbor by thyself"
-(xxxi. 15); the altar-gift and the wronged brother (xxxiv. 18-20);
-he that seeks the law shall be filled (xxxii. 15); charity and not
-sacrifice (xxxv. 2).
-
-These resemblances, of which more might be quoted, between teachings
-ascribed to Jesus and passages in the Wisdom Books, are so important
-that by the aid of these books some of the confused utterances
-attributed to him may be made clear. [54] Apart from the importations
-of Paul, and one or two from the epistle to the Hebrews, no reference
-by the Jesus of the Gospels to Jahvist books can be shown of similar
-significance. Combined as his Solomonic ideas are with his homage
-to Solomon and the Gentile Queen, and followed, as we shall see,
-by a resuscitation of Solomonic legends in connection with him, it
-appears clear that Jesus was of the Solomonic and anti-Jahvist school.
-
-It would, however, be a great mistake to suppose that Jesus
-was simply a philosophical and ethical teacher. He cannot be so
-explained. The fragmentary sayings, so far as discoverable amid their
-post-resurrectional perversions, have the air of obiter dicta from a
-man engaged in a local propaganda of subversive principles. What the
-propaganda really was is but dimly discernible under its own subsequent
-subversion by his ghost, but there are a few sayings not traceable
-to his predecessors, and beyond the capacity of his contemporaries
-or his successors, which bring us near to an individual mind, and
-suggest the general nature of the agitation he caused.
-
-The story of the woman taken in adultery, known to have been in the
-suppressed "Gospel according to the Hebrews," and by some strange
-chance preserved in the fourth gospel (viii), I believe to have really
-occurred. It would have required a first-century Boccaccio to invent
-such a story, and I cannot discover anything similar in Eastern or
-in Oriental books. Augustine says that some had removed it from their
-manuscripts, "I imagine, out of fear that impunity of sin was granted
-to their wives." It is not likely that any of the earlier fathers,
-any more than the later, would have invented so dangerous a story.
-
-Another anecdote, preserved only in the fourth Gospel, probably
-contains some elements of truth, namely, the words uttered to the
-Samaritan woman. Who would have been bold enough, even had he been
-liberal enough, to invent the words: "Neither in this mountain, nor
-in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father"? Even in the one Gospel
-that ventures to preserve it this noble catholicity is immediately
-retracted (John iv. 22) in a verse which obviously interrupts the
-idea. That the story is an early one is also suggested by the fact
-that no reproach to the woman on account of her many husbands is
-inserted. It is remarkable to find such a story related without any
-word about sin and forgiveness.
-
-The so-called "Sermon on the Mount" is well named: it is evidently
-made up of reports of sermons in amplification of sayings of Jesus
-in the style of the Wisdom Books, among which probably were:
-
-
-   "Let your light shine before men. A lamp is not lit to be put
-    under a bushel."
-
-   "The lamp of the body is the eye. If thine eye be sound the whole
-    body is illumined; if the eye be diseased the whole body is in
-    darkness. If the inner eye be darkened how great is the darkness."
-
-   "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
-
-   "By their fruits both trees and man are known."
-
-   "Each tree is known by its own fruit."
-
-   "Put not new wine into old wine-skins, lest they burst."
-
-   "Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves."
-
-   "Wisdom is justified by her children."
-
-   "If any man will be great, let him serve."
-
-   "The lowly shall be exalted, the proud humbled."
-
-   "Blind guides strain out the gnat, and swallow a camel."
-
-   "Give and it shall be given you."
-
-   "The measure ye mete shall be measured to you."
-
-   "Cast the beam from thine eye before noticing the mote in that
-    of thy neighbour."
-
-
-The following sentences in the "Gospel according to the Hebrews" do not
-appear to have been very seriously influenced by post-resurrectional
-ideas.
-
-
-   "He is a great criminal who hath grieved the spirit of his
-    brother."
-
-   "No thank to you if you love them that love you, but
-    there is thank if ye love your enemies and them that hate
-    you." (Cf. Prov. xxix. 17, 29.)
-
-   "Be ye never joyful save when you have looked upon your brother
-    in charity."
-
-   "Be as lambkins in midst of wolves."
-
-   "The son and the daughter shall inherit alike."
-
-   "It is happy rather to give than to receive."
-
-   "No servant can serve two masters."
-
-   "Out of entire heart and out of entire mind."
-
-   "What is the profit if a man gain the entire world, and lose
-    his life?"
-
-   "Seek from little to wax great, and not from greater to become
-    less."
-
-   "Become proved bankers."
-
-   "If ye have not been faithful in the little who will give you
-    the great?"
-
-
-These instructions have no connotations of the end of the world. They
-appear like the words of a man of the world, but not a man of the
-people. There is a certain unity in them, indicating a mind more
-developed than the semi-Jahvist Alexandrian philosophers of the later
-Wisdom cult, as represented by Jesus Ben Sira's "Wisdom," and by the
-"Wisdom of Solomon"; also a mind more practical.
-
-But these wise sayings do not convey the full idea of a man whose
-execution the Sanhedrim would require, nor a man whose resurrection
-from the grave would be looked for by the populace. These two
-phenomenal facts imply some strong antagonism to the priesthood and
-their system. Martyrdoms do not occur for ethical generalizations,
-much less for philosophical affirmations. The faith that strikes deep
-is that which speaks in great denials.
-
-Trying to follow his advice to "Become proved bankers," we may detect
-in some probable sayings of Jesus a transitional ring, e. g., "The
-Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." The effort
-at self-emancipation is still more traceable in certain incidents
-related in the "Gospel according to the Hebrews":
-
-
-   "He saith, 'If thy brother hath offended in anything and hath
-    made thee amends, seven times in a day receive him,' Simon his
-    disciple said unto him, 'Seven times in a day?' The Lord answered
-    and said unto him, 'I tell thee also unto seventy times seven;
-    for in the prophets likewise, after that they were anointed by
-    the Holy Spirit, utterance of sin was found.'"
-
-   "The same day, having beheld a man working on the Sabbath, he said
-    to him, 'Man, if thou knowest what thou dost, blessed art thou: but
-    if thou knowest not, thou art under a curse, and a law-breaker.'"
-
-
-That a man should regard the Holy Spirit as unable to make men
-infallible; that he should have discovered immoral utterances in
-the prophets; that he should regard it as a sign of enlightenment to
-disregard the Sabbath deliberately and intelligently--this is surely
-all very striking.
-
-Who, in the second century, could have invented these anecdotes
-about Jesus? They are not harmonious with the Pauline Epistles;
-their heretical character is proved by the repudiation of the Gospel
-containing them, while their genuineness is implicitly confessed
-by the ultimate suppression of that Gospel. For surely it cannot be
-supposed that such a work, well known in the fifth century, was lost;
-nor is there much doubt that any learned rationalist, if permitted
-the free range of all the libraries in Rome, without the presence of
-polite librarians, could bring to light that first-century Gospel,
-the only one written in Aramaic, the language of Jesus.
-
-But, when we come to consider the mature and positive teachings of
-Jesus, there may be placed in the front a sentence preserved from
-the suppressed Gospel by Epiphanius, who writes (Haer. xxx. 16):
-"And they say that he both came, and (as their so-called Gospel has
-it) instructed them that he had come to dissolve the Sacrifices:
-'and unless ye cease from sacrificing the wrath shall not cease
-from you.'" Dr. Nicholson is shocked at this threat, and suspects
-the Ebionites of having altered what Jesus said. But surely it
-is a true and grand admonition by one superseding a phantasm of
-heavenly Egoism, demanding gifts from men for pacification, with
-the idea of a Father. Dr. Nicholson connects it, no doubt rightly,
-with Luke xiii. 1-3, which should probably read: "There were some
-present at that very season who told him of the Galileans whose
-blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered,
-Think ye these Galileans were sinners rather than all other Galileans
-because they suffered these things? I tell you, No! And unless ye
-cease from sacrificing, the Wrath will not cease from you." That is,
-they would always be haunted by the delusion of a bloodthirsty god,
-a god of Wrath, and see a judgment, not only in every accident,
-but in every calamity wrought by fiendish men.
-
-In his quotation from Hosea--"I desire charity, and not
-sacrifice"--Jesus speaks as if with a transitional accent,
-as compared with the declaration that sacrifices imply deified
-Wrath. The contempt of Ecclesiastes for "the sacrifice of fools
-who know not that they are doing evil" (v. 1), has here become
-a great and far-reaching affirmation, which must have impressed
-the orthodox Jews as atheism. For, although there are passages in
-several psalms and in the prophets which disparage sacrifice, they
-were all interpreted by the Rabbins, as now by Christian theologians,
-as meaning their purification and spiritualization--by no means their
-abolition. Indeed, this higher interpretation of sacrifices appears
-to have given them fresh lease; and in the time of Jesus, when to
-the priesthood remained only control over their religious ordinances,
-the sacrifices were apparently preserved with increased rigour. Jesus
-himself, unless the gospeller (Matt. v. 23, 24) has softened his
-language, had at one time only demanded that none should offer a gift
-at the altar until he had done justice to any who had aught against
-him. But a remarkable passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews (x. 5)
-represents Jesus as going to the world with a quotation from Psalm
-xl. 6, 7, for a clause of which a parenthesis is given, saying:
-
-
-   "Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not
-    (Thou hast furnished me this body)--
-    In whole burnt offerings and sin offerings thou delighted not:
-    Then said I (in that chapter of the book it is written for me),
-    'Lo, I come to do thy will, O God.'"
-
-
-The sentence preserved by Eusebius, however, shows that his attitude
-toward sacrifices was not merely to "lift" from men (Heb. x. 9,
-anairei) the burden of sacrifice, but to denounce it as an offering
-to the devil. "Unless ye cease from sacrificing, the Wrath shall not
-cease from you."
-
-In this sentence "the Wrath" (he orge) is clearly a personification. It
-does not in the same form occur elsewhere in the Bible. Matthew and
-Mark report John the Baptist as speaking of "the impending wrath,"
-and Paul occasionally gives "Wrath" a quasi-personification (e. g.,
-"children of Wrath," Eph. ii. 1-3). These expressions, and the
-"destroyer" Abaddon or Apollyon, of Revelations ix. and (xii. 12)
-the devil "in great temper" (thymon), all show that the Jewish mind
-had become familiar with the idea of a dark and evil power quite
-detached from official relation to Jahveh, no longer "the wrath of
-God" executing divine judgments, but organized Violence, eager to
-afflict mankind as the creation of his enemy.
-
-In the "Wisdom of Solomon" (xviii.) there is a complete picture of
-the two opposing Destroyers. The divine destroyer ("thine Almighty
-Word") leaps down with his sword and slays the firstborn of Egypt; the
-antagonist Destroyer begins the same kind of work among the Israelites
-in Egypt, but Moses by prayer and the "propitiation of incense" sets
-himself "against the Wrath" and overcomes him,--"not with physical
-strength, nor force of arms, but with a word." The incense used by
-Moses to put the demon to flight recalls the "perfume" used by Tobit,
-on the advice of the angel, to put to flight Asmodeus; and Asmodeus is
-notoriously the Persian Aeshma, a name meaning "Wrath," who occupies
-so large space in the Parsi scriptures. [55] The especial antagonist
-of Aeshma "of the wounding spear," is Sraosha, "the incarnate Word,
-a mighty-speared god." (Farvardin Yast, 85.) As Moses overcomes "the
-Wrath" "with a word," Zoroaster is given a form of words to conquer
-Aeshma ("Praise to Armaiti, the propitious!") and the Vendidad says,
-"The fiend becomes weaker and weaker at every one [repetition] of
-those words." The Zamyad Yast says, "The Word of falsehood smites,
-but the Word of truth shall smite it." Aeshma is the child of Ahriman,
-the Deceiver of the World, and a Parsi would recognize him in the
-declaration ascribed to Jesus, "The devil is a liar and so is his
-father." (John viii. 44.)
-
-That Jesus regarded the whole realm of evil as absolutely antagonistic
-to the Good is reflected in the epistle "To the Hebrews." There his
-mission is to abolish the devil (ii. 14), which is very different
-from abolishing death (2 Tim. i. 10). For a long time the devil was
-suppressed in the "Lord's Prayer," but in that brief collection of
-Talmudic ejaculations the only original thing is, "Deliver us from the
-evil one." In the Clementine Homilies Jesus is quoted as having said,
-"The evil one is the tempter," and "Give not a pretext to the evil
-one." Nay, the single clause preserved in Matthew, that it is an enemy
-that sows tares,--these being as much parts of nature as corn,--is
-a sentence that divides the Ahrimanic creation from the Ahuramazdean
-creation as clearly and profoundly as anything ascribed to Zoroaster.
-
-Theological harmonists have for centuries been at work on the
-contrarious doctrines of all scriptures, and even among the Parsis
-some kind of metaphysical alliance has taken place between the Kingdoms
-of Good and Evil. Devout Christians find it quite consistent that one
-person of the trinity should say, "I create good and I create evil,"
-and another person of the trinity should say of natural evil, "An
-enemy hath done this." But no such harmony existed in the Jerusalem
-of Jesus. Under a teaching that symbolized the deity as the Sun,
-shining alike on the thankful and thankless, individually, desiring no
-sacrifices, and concentrating human effort against the forces of evil
-in nature, in society--the evil principle--Jahveh falls like lightning
-from heaven. Like "the blameless man" of the "Wisdom of Solomon," Jesus
-"sets himself against the Wrath," however sanctified as the Wrath of
-God, and sees all sacrifices as eucharists of the Adversary. He not
-only repudiates the name "Jahveh," but tells the official agents of
-Jahvism that their god is his devil. (John viii. 44).
-
-Of course one can only refer cautiously to anything in the fourth
-Gospel, for it is a composite book, but it contains, as I believe,
-passages or fragments of the early apostolic theology, wherein dualism,
-until crushed by Paul, was prominent, and the good God represented
-in hard struggle with Satan for the rescue of mankind.
-
-This aspect of the teaching of Jesus cannot be dealt with here as its
-importance deserves. We live in an age whose clergy deal apologetically
-with the prominence of the Adversary of Man in the teachings of
-Jesus. For this fundamental principle of Jesus Jewish monotheism
-has been substituted. But there are many records to attest that the
-moral perfection and benevolence of the deity, which is certainly
-inconsistent with his omnipotence, or his "permission" of the tares in
-nature, was the only new principle of religion affirmed by Jesus; and,
-also, that it was so subversive of sacrifices, priesthood, and the very
-foundations of the temple--all dependent on Jahveh's menaces--that
-the execution of Jesus appears more rationally explicable by this
-dualistic propaganda than by any other ascribed to him.
-
-It was the birth of a new God that moved Jerusalem: a unique God
-in Judea--and almost unknown in modern Christendom--namely, a GOOD
-God. As the Arabian gospel significantly relates, the Eastern Wise
-Men came to the cradle of Jesus as that of a saviour "prophesied
-by Zoroaster,"--the one prophet who separated deity from the realm
-of evil.
-
-It is now even unorthodox to deny that the agonies of nature are part
-of the providence of God: but herein orthodoxy is in direct antagonism
-to what it maintains as the authentic teaching of Jesus. "Then was
-brought unto him one possessed of a devil, blind and dumb; and he
-healed him, insomuch that the dumb man spake and saw. And all the
-multitudes were amazed and said, Is this the Son of David? But when
-the Pharisees heard it, they said, This man doth not cast out devils
-but by Beelzebub, the prince of devils. And knowing their thoughts he
-said, Every dominion divided against itself is brought to desolation;
-and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand; and
-if Satan casteth out Satan, he is divided against himself: how then
-shall his dominion stand?"
-
-Those therefore who believe these to be the words of Jesus, and yet
-believe blindness, dumbness, and other physical diseases to be in
-any sense of divine providence or even permission, are believing in
-a God whom Jesus implicitly pronounced to be Satan.
-
-And those who do not believe that Jesus healed such diseases, nor
-believe in a personal Satan, may still regard the above legend as
-characteristic. The separation of Good and Evil into eternally
-antagonistic dominions could not have been affirmed by any Jew
-other than Jesus (or John the Baptist, probably however an Oriental
-dervish). Though the Jews popularly believed in Beelzebub and other
-devils, they were all regarded as under the omnipotence and control
-of Jahveh, who proudly claimed that he was the creator of all evil,
-and who even had lying spirits in his employ.
-
-Whether Jesus believed in the personality of the evil principle, in
-any strict sense, may be questioned. He may have meant no more than
-Emerson, who pictured ill health as a ghoul preying on the heart and
-life of its victims. Memories of similar teachings may have given
-rise to the tales of healing afterwards associated with Jesus. But
-the personality of evil is a more philosophical generalization than
-the personification of a power representing both the good and the
-evil phenomena of nature. Evil acts in concrete forms, and often
-in combinations of forces which can not be analysed and distributed
-into particular causes. History records instances of moral epidemics
-driving whole peoples as if down a steep place into seas of blood,
-as if by some pandemoniac possession, impressing the ordinarily humane
-along with the vindictive, the lawless and destructive. A great deal
-of crime seems disinterested, and still more is due to the fanatical
-inspiration of cruel deities, whose names become in other religions
-the names of devils. Out of manifold experiences in the tragical
-annals of mankind came the terrible Ahriman.
-
-That Jesus did not adopt the Zoroastrian theology is shown in his
-hostility to sacrifices which are of vital importance in the Parsi
-system, though they were not of the cruel kind; nor, as we have
-seen, were they to propitiate gods, but to assist them. Moreover,
-belief in Ahriman had naturally evoked a militant spirit in the war
-against evil, and Jesus seems to have for this reason separated himself
-from the dervish, John the Baptist, whose violence had landed him in
-prison. The incident (Matt. xi.) is so wrapped in post-resurrectional
-phraseology that any rational interpretation must be conjectural;
-but there is a certain accent about it which can hardly be explained
-as part of the evangelical doctrine that the Baptist was a mere
-preface to Christ. Jesus seems to regard John the Baptizer as the
-ablest man of his time (verse 11), but as of a revolutionary spirit,
-as if the reformation were a siege against some political kingdom or
-throne. Violent people had been pressing around John, and the cause of
-spiritual liberation had suffered. There was too much of the old law
-with its thunders, too much of fiery Elijah, surviving in John. The
-ideal is not a thing to be clutched at, or taken by force, but all
-of the conditions--every tittle--must be fulfilled. (Luke xvi. 17.)
-
-This is in substance a doctrine of evolution as opposed to revolution,
-and my interpretation may be suspected of rationalistic anachronism;
-but it must be remembered that the Golden Age behind Israel was an
-epoch of Peace, which was represented in the ancient name of their
-city (Salem), and of its greatest monarch, Solomon. The prophets had
-long been painting the visionary dawn with pigments of that glorious
-sunset. Solomon, true to his name, had allowed dismemberment of his
-kingdom rather than go to war against rebellion; and it is noticeable
-that in the apostolic age there was a principle against carnal
-weapons, the Epistle to the Hebrews (xii. 3, 4) especially reminding
-the brethren of the patient endurance of Jesus, and commending their
-not having "resisted unto blood." This peacefulness of Jesus had indeed
-become a basis of the doctrine that the triumph of Jesus over Satan was
-conditioned on his not using any force, or other satanic weapon. Those
-who took to the sword would perish thereby--i. e., remain in sheol.
-
-But in a realm of practically oppressive and cruel superstitions,
-established and consecrated, an absolute appeal to the moral sentiment
-cannot escape being revolutionary. The American Anti-Slavery Society
-were non-resistants; their great leader, William Lloyd Garrison,
-thus apostrophised his "elder brother" of Jerusalem:
-
-"O Jesus! noblest of patriots, greatest of heroes, most glorious of
-all martyrs! Thine is the spirit of universal liberty and love--of
-uncompromising hostility to every form of injustice and wrong. But not
-with weapons of death dost thou assault thy enemies, that they may be
-vanquished or destroyed; for thou dost not wrestle against flesh and
-blood, but against 'principalities, against powers, against the rulers
-of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high
-places'; therefore hast thou put on the whole armor of God, having
-the loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of
-righteousness, and thy feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of
-peace, and going forth to battle with the shield of faith, the helmet
-of salvation, the sword of the Spirit! Worthy of imitation art thou,
-in overcoming the evil that is in the world; for by the shedding of
-thine own blood, but not even the blood of thy bitterest foe, shalt
-thou at last obtain a universal victory."
-
-So, across the ages, does deep answer unto deep. But all the same
-Garrison's feet were unconsciously shod with the preparation of the
-gospel of war, even as those of Jesus were. In a realm of consecrated
-wrong every appeal to the moral sentiment is necessarily revolutionary;
-far more so than physical rebellion, against which preponderant moral
-forces combine with the immoral, as being a greater evil than the
-orderly wrong assailed. Satan cannot be cast out by Beelzebub. A
-god of wrath, enthroned on reeking altars, could better stand the
-axe of the Baptist than the sunbeam of Jesus, the arrow feathered
-with gentleness and culture. John the Baptist was not a religious
-martyr; he suffered from a ruler quite indifferent to his religion,
-with whose personal affairs he had interfered. But Jesus suffered
-because he proclaimed, with irresistible eloquence, a new religion,
-one involving practically the existing institutions of the priesthood,
-and their whole moral system. It was virtually the setting up of
-a new deity in place of Jahveh, reason in place of the Bible, the
-heart worshipping in spirit and in truth in place of the temple, and
-humanizing the moral sentiment--turning the conventional morality to
-"dead works" (Heb. vi. 1). He expected the reform to be peaceful!
-
-Rousseau's remark that Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus like
-a god, has in it a truth more important than those who often quote
-it recognise. Jesus died, legendarily, so much like a god that it is
-difficult to make out just what happened to the man. Strong arguments
-have been made to prove that he did not die at all on "the cross"
-(a word unknown to the New Testament), [56] and that Pilate not only
-"set himself" to save Jesus (John xix. 12), but succeeded. There may
-have been from the stake a despairing cry, afterwards shaped after a
-line from a psalm, but it can hardly be determined whether this may
-not have been part of the first post-resurrectional doctrine that the
-Son must be absolutely left by his divine Father, and pass unaided
-through the ordeal of Satan, in order to fulfil the conditions of a
-return from death. It is true, however, that this primitive idea had
-almost vanished when the earliest Gospel was written, and, although a
-relic of it may have been preserved by tradition, there is an equal
-probability that Jesus did utter at the stake a cry of despair. The
-whole miserable murderous affair, unforeseen and disappointing, must
-have appeared to him a horrible display of diabolism; and even after
-his friends believed in his resurrection, and saw in the tragedy
-a sacrifice, they regarded it a sacrifice hateful to his Father,
-and exacted only by the Devil.
-
-Did he pray, "Father forgive them, they know not what they do"? Only
-Luke reports this; its suppression by the other Gospels suggests
-that its doctrinal significance was perceived. I heard a preacher
-in the church of the Jesuits at Rome argue that Judas himself is
-now in Paradise, because Jesus thus prayed for those who slew him,
-and the prayer of the Son of God must have been answered. There is
-no apparent dogmatic purpose in this incident, and it may be true.
-
-The story of his confiding his mother to the disciple "whom he loved,"
-told only by John, is evidently meant to complete the assumption of a
-special favoritism towards that disciple, who is the type of the good
-Spirit on one side of Jesus in contrast with Judas, Satan's agent,
-on the other. The two are equally unhistorical and allegorical. John
-and Judas became the good and evil Wandering Jews of mediaeval folklore.
-
-The first Solomon had perished as a teacher of wisdom when he was
-summoned from his tomb to utter the Jahvism of the "Wisdom of Solomon":
-the second and last Solomon was forever buried on the day when Mary
-Magdalene saw his apparition, and cried, "My master!" From that time
-may be dated the loss of the man Jesus, and restoration in Christ of
-the Jahvism whose burden the wise teacher had endeavored to lift from
-the heart and mind of the people. Vicisti Jahveh!
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX.
-
-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 matinee 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 mediaeval 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 "Melibaeus" 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 Parsi 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 Parsi 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 Khayyam, 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 Mueller. Vol. IV. The
-Zend-Avesta. Part I. The Vendidad. Translated by James
-Darmesteter. P. lix., et seq.
-
-[4] "Ammon" probably developed the name "Amina," 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., Sirozah 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 gaosho-sruta khratu,
-the knowledge acquired by hearing and learning. There is between the
-two nearly the same relation as between the paravidya and aparavidya 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 Armaiti 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 Mara, 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 Mueller'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 (Zambad 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 ajyaiti, translated by Haug "reality and unreality"
-(Parsis, p. 303). The translation "living and not living" was sent
-me by Prof. Max Mueller 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 Fuerst, 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 mediaeval 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 Armaiti,
-genius of the earth, are referred to ante Chap. VIII., in a passage
-from West's Palahvi Texts. In the Vendidad 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 Armaiti (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 Buiti, 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-mano
-(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."--Vendidad, 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" (prodelon) 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-Elyon," 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 Elyon. 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 Hom 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 Aeshma 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 Aeshma 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 Aeshma, 'the raving,' 'a fiend with the wounding
-spear.' Originally a mere epithet of the storm fiend, Aeshma 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.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Solomon and Solomonic Literature, by
-Moncure Daniel Conway
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diff --git a/41115.zip b/41115.zip
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Solomon and Solomonic Literature, by 
-Moncure Daniel Conway
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: Solomon and Solomonic Literature
-
-Author: Moncure Daniel Conway
-
-Release Date: October 19, 2012 [EBook #41115]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOLOMON AND SOLOMONIC LITERATURE ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net/ for Project
-Gutenberg (This book was produced from scanned images of
-public domain material from the Google Print project.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-                                SOLOMON
-                                  AND
-                          SOLOMONIC LITERATURE
-
-                                   BY
-                         MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY
-
-
-
-                                CHICAGO
-                   THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
-            London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd.
-                                  1899
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-                               INSCRIBED
-                         TO MY BROTHER OMARIANS
-                                 OF THE
-                           OMAR KHAYYÁM CLUB
-                                 LONDON
-
-
-    "Seek the circle of the wise: flee a thousand leagues from men
-    without wit. If a wise man give thee poison, drink it without fear;
-    if a fool proffer an antidote, spill it on the ground."
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-                                                           Page
-    Preface                                                   v
-
-    CHAPTER I
-
-    Solomon                                                   1
-
-    CHAPTER II
-
-    The Judgment of Solomon                                  12
-
-    CHAPTER III
-
-    The Wives of Solomon                                     24
-
-    CHAPTER IV
-
-    Solomon's Idolatry                                       30
-
-    CHAPTER V
-
-    Solomon and the Satans                                   34
-
-    CHAPTER VI
-
-    Solomon in the Hexateuch                                 41
-
-    CHAPTER VII
-
-    Solomonic Antijahvism                                    51
-
-    CHAPTER VIII
-
-    The Book of Proverbs and the Avesta                      59
-
-    CHAPTER IX
-
-    The Song of Songs                                        89
-
-    CHAPTER X
-
-    Koheleth (Ecclesiastes)                                 104
-
-    CHAPTER XI
-
-    Wisdom (Ecclesiasticus)                                 111
-
-    CHAPTER XII
-
-    The Wisdom of Solomon                                   118
-
-    CHAPTER XIII
-
-    Epistle to the Hebrews (A Sequel to Sophia Solomontos)  129
-
-    CHAPTER XIV
-
-    Solomon Melchizedek                                     150
-
-    CHAPTER XV
-
-    The Pauline Dehumanization of Jesus                     164
-
-    CHAPTER XVI
-
-    The Mythological Mantle of Solomon Fallen on Jesus      176
-
-    CHAPTER XVII
-
-    The Heir of Solomon's Godhead                           194
-
-    CHAPTER XVIII
-
-    The Last Solomon                                        207
-
-    CHAPTER XIX
-
-    Postscripta                                             234
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE.
-
-
-An English lady of my acquaintance, sojourning at Baalbek, was
-conversing with an humble stonecutter, and pointing to the grand
-ruins inquired, "Why do you not occupy yourself with magnificent work
-like that?" "Ah," he said, "those edifices were built by no mortal,
-but by genii."
-
-These genii now represent the demons which in ancient legends were
-enslaved by the potency of Solomon's ring. Some of these folk-tales
-suggest the ingenuity of a fabulist. According to one, Solomon
-outwitted the devils even after his death, which occurred while he was
-leaning on his staff and superintending the reluctant labors of the
-demons on some sacred edifice. In that posture his form remained for
-a year after his death, and it was not until a worm gnawed the end
-of his staff, causing his body to fall, that the demons discovered
-their freedom.
-
-If this be a fable, a modern moral may be found by reversing the
-delusion. The general world has for ages been working on under the
-spell of Solomon while believing him to be dead. Solomon is very much
-alive. Many witnesses of his talismanic might can be summoned from
-the homes and schools wherein the rod is not spared, however much
-it spoils the child, and where youth's "flower of age" bleaches in a
-puritan cell because the "wisest of men" is supposed to have testified
-that all earth's pleasures are vanity. And how many parents are in
-their turn feeling the recoil of the rod, and live to deplore the
-intemperate thirst for "vanities" stimulated in homes overshadowed by
-the fear-of-God wisdom for which Solomon is also held responsible? On
-the other hand, what parson has not felt the rod bequeathed to the
-sceptic by the king whom Biblical authority pronounces at once the
-worldliest and the wisest of mankind?
-
-More imposing, if not more significant, are certain picturesque
-phenomena which to-day represent the bifold evolution of the Solomonic
-legend. While in various parts of Europe "Solomon's Seal," survival
-from his magic ring, is the token of conjuring and fortune-telling
-impostors, the knightly Order of Solomon's Seal in Abyssinia has been
-raised to moral dignity by an emperor (Menelik) who has given European
-monarchs a lesson in magnanimity and gallantry by presenting to a
-"Queen of the South" (Margharita), on her birthday, release of the
-captives who had invaded his country. While this is the tradition
-of nobility which has accompanied that of lineal descent from the
-Wise Man, his name lingers in the rest of Christendom in proverbial
-connexion with any kind of sagacity, while as a Biblical personality
-he is virtually suppressed.
-
-In one line of evolution,--whose historic factors have been Jahvism,
-Pharisaism, and Puritanism,--Solomon has been made the Adam of
-a second fall. His Eves gave him the fruit that was pleasant and
-desirable to make one wise, and he did eat. Jahveh retracts his
-compliments to Solomon, and makes the naïve admission that deity
-itself cannot endow a man with the wisdom that can ensure orthodoxy,
-or with knowledge impregnable by feminine charms (Nehemiah xiii.);
-and from that time Solomon disappears from canonical Hebrew books
-except those ascribed to his own authorship.
-
-That some writings attributed to Solomon,--especially the "Song of
-Songs" and "Koheleth" (Ecclesiastes),--were included in the canon,
-may be ascribed to a superstitious fear of suppressing utterances
-of a supernatural wisdom, set as an oracle in the king and never
-revoked. This view is confirmed and illustrated in several further
-pages, but it may be added here that the very idolatries and alleged
-sins of Solomon led to the detachment from his personal self of his
-divinely-conferred Wisdom, and her personification as something apart
-from him in various avatars (preserving his glory while disguising
-his name), an evolution culminating in ideals and creeds that have
-largely moulded Christendom.
-
-The two streams of evolution here suggested, one issuing from
-the wisdom books, the other from the law books, are traceable
-in their collisions, their periods of parallelism, and their
-convergence,--where, however, their respective inspirations continue
-distinguishable, like the waters of the Missouri and the Mississippi
-after they flow between the same banks.
-
-The present essays by no means claim to have fully traced these lines
-of evolution, but aim at their indication. The only critique to which
-it pretends is literary. The studies and experiences of many years
-have left me without any bias concerning the contents of the Bible, or
-any belief, ethical or religious, that can be affected by the fate of
-any scripture under the higher or other criticism. But my interest in
-Biblical literature has increased with the perception of its composite
-character ethnically. I believe that I have made a few discoveries in
-it; and a volume adopted as an educational text-book requires every ray
-of light which any man feels able to contribute to its interpretation.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-SOLOMONIC LITERATURE.
-
-
-CHAPTER I.
-
-SOLOMON.
-
-
-There is a vast Solomon mythology: in Palestine, Abyssinia, Arabia,
-Persia, India, and Europe, the myths and legends concerning the
-traditional Wisest Man are various, and merit a comparative study they
-have not received. As the name Solomon seems to be allegorical, it is
-not possible to discover whether he is mentioned in any contemporary
-inscription by a real name, and the external and historical data
-are insufficient to prove certainly that an individual Solomon ever
-existed. [1] But that a great personality now known under that name did
-exist, about three thousand years ago, will, I believe, be recognised
-by those who study the ancient literature relating to him. The
-earliest and most useful documents for such an investigation are:
-the first collection of Proverbs, x-xxii. 16; the second collection,
-xxv-xxix. 27; Psalms ii., xlv., lxxii., evidently Solomonic; 2 Samuel
-xii. 24, 25; and 1 Kings iv. 29-34.
-
-As, however, the object of this essay is not to prove the existence
-of Solomon, but to study the evolution of the human heart and mind
-under influences of which a peculiar series is historically associated
-with his name, he will be spoken of as a genuine figure, the reader
-being left to form his own conclusion as to whether he was such,
-if that incidental point interests him.
-
-The indirect intimations concerning Solomon in the Proverbs and
-Psalms may be better understood if we first consider the historical
-books which profess to give an account of his career. And the search
-naturally begins with the passage in the Book of Kings just referred
-to:
-
-
-    "And God gave Solomon wisdom and intelligence exceeding much,
-    and largeness of heart, even as the sand on the seashore. And
-    Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the
-    East, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men;
-    than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Calcol, and Darda, the
-    sons of Mahol; and his fame was in all the surrounding nations. He
-    spake three thousand parables, and his songs were a thousand
-    and five. He spake of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon to the
-    hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts,
-    birds, reptiles, fishes. And there came people of all countries to
-    hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth,
-    which had heard of his wisdom."
-
-
-This passage is Elohist: it is the Elohim--perhaps here the gods--who
-gave Solomon wisdom. The introduction of Jahveh as the giver, in
-the dramatic dream of Chapter iii., alters the nature of the gift,
-which from the Elohim is scientific and literary wisdom, but from
-Jahveh is political, related to government and judgment.
-
-As for Mahol and his four sons, the despair of Biblical historians,
-they are now witnesses that this passage was written when those
-men,--or perhaps masculine Muses,--were famous, though they are unknown
-within any period that can be called historical. As intimated, they may
-be figures from some vanished mythology Hebraised into Mahol (dance),
-Ethan (the imperishable), Heman (faithful), Calcol (sustenance),
-Darda (pearl of knowledge).
-
-In speaking of 1 Kings iv. 29-34 as substantially historical it is not
-meant, of course, that it is free from the extravagance characteristic
-of ancient annals, but that it is the nearest approach to Solomon's
-era in the so-called historical books, and, although the stage of
-idealisation has been reached, is free from the mythology which grew
-around the name of Solomon.
-
-But while we have thus only one small scrap of even quasi-historical
-writing that can be regarded as approaching Solomon's era, the
-traditions concerning him preserved in the Book of Kings yield
-much that is of value when comparatively studied with annals of the
-chroniclers, who modify, and in some cases omit, not to say suppress,
-the earlier record. Such modifications and omissions, while interesting
-indications of Jahvist influences, are also testimonies to the strength
-of the traditions they overlay. The pure and simple literary touchstone
-can alone be trusted amid such traditions; it alone can distinguish the
-narratives that have basis, that could not have been entirely invented.
-
-In the Book of Chronicles,--for the division into two books was by
-Christians, as also was the division of the Book of Kings,--we find
-an ecclesiastical work written after the captivity, but at different
-periods and by different hands; it is in the historic form, but really
-does not aim at history. The main purpose of the first chronicler is to
-establish certain genealogies and conquests related to the consecration
-of the house and lineage of David. Solomon's greatness and his building
-of the temple are here transferred as far as possible to David. [2]
-David captures from various countries the gold, silver, and brass,
-and dedicates them for use in the temple, which he plans in detail,
-but which Jahveh forbade him to build himself. The reason of this
-prohibition is far from clear to the first writer on the compilation,
-but apparently it was because David was not sufficiently highborn and
-renowned. "I took thee from the sheepcote," says Jahveh, but adds,
-"I will make thee a name like unto the name of the great ones that are
-in the earth;" also, says Jahveh, "I will subdue all thine enemies." So
-it is written in 1 Chronicles xvii., and it could hardly have been
-by the same hand that in xxii. wrote David's words to Solomon:
-
-
-    "It was in my heart to build an house to the name of Jahveh my
-    God; but the word of Jahveh came to me, saying: 'Thou shalt not
-    build an house unto my name, because thou hast shed much blood
-    upon the earth in my sight; behold a son shall be born unto thee
-    who shall be a man of rest, and I will give him rest from all his
-    enemies round about: for his name shall be Solomon [Peaceful],
-    and I will give peace and quietness unto Israel in his days:
-    he shall build an house for my name: and he shall be my son,
-    and I will be his father; and I will establish the throne of his
-    kingdom over Israel for ever.'"
-
-
-In Chapter xvii. Jahveh claims that it is he who has subdued and
-cut off David's enemies; his long speech is that of a war-god;
-but in the xxii. it is the God of Peace who speaks; and in harmony
-with this character all the bloodshed by which Solomon's succession
-was accompanied, as recorded in the Book of Kings, is suppressed,
-and he stands to the day of his death the Prince of Peace. To him
-(1 Chron. xxviii., xxix.) from the first all the other sons of David
-bow submissively, and the people by a solemn election confirm David's
-appointment and make Solomon their king.
-
-Thus, 1 Chron. xvii., which is identical with 2 Sam. vii., clearly
-represents a second Chronicler. The hand of the same writer is found
-in 1 Chron. xviii., xix., xx., and the chapters partly identical in 2
-Samuel, namely viii., x., xi.; the offence of David then being narrated
-in 2 Samuel xii. as the wrong done Uriah, whereas in 1 Chron. xxi. the
-sin is numbering Israel. The Chroniclers know nothing of the Uriah
-and Bathsheba story, but the onomatopoeists may take note of the fact
-that David's order was to number Israel "from Beer-sheba unto Dan."
-
-The first ten chapters of 2 Chronicles seem to represent a third
-chronicler. Here we find David in the background, and Solomon
-completely conventionalised, as the Peaceful Prince of the Golden
-Age. All is prosperity and happiness. Solomon even anticipates
-the silver millennium: "The king made silver to be in Jerusalem as
-stones." It is only when the fourth chronicler begins (2 Chron. x.),
-with the succession of Solomon's son Rehoboam, that we are told
-anything against Solomon. Then all Israel come to the new king,
-saying, "Thy father made our yoke grievous," and he answers, "My
-father chastised you with whips, but I with scorpions."
-
-All this is so inconsistent with the accounts in the earlier books
-of both David and Solomon, that it is charitable to believe that the
-third chronicler had never heard the ugly stories about these two
-canonised kings.
-
-In the First Book of Kings, Solomon is made king against the rightful
-heir, by an ingenious conspiracy between a wily prophet, Nathan, and
-a wily beauty, Bathsheba,--Solomon's mother, whom David had obtained
-by murdering her husband.
-
-It may be remembered here that David had by Bathsheba a son named
-Nathan (2 Sam. v. 14; 1 Chron. iii. 5), elder brother of Solomon,
-from whom Luke traces the genealogy of Joseph, father of Jesus,
-while Matthew traces it from Solomon. It appears curious that the
-prophet Nathan should have intrigued for the accession of the younger
-brother rather than the one bearing his own name. It will be seen,
-however, by reference to 2 Samuel xii. 24, that Solomon was the first
-legitimate child of David and Bathsheba, the son of their adultery
-having died. John Calvin having laid it down very positively that
-"if Jesus was not descended from Solomon, he was not the Christ,"
-some theologians have resorted to the hypothesis that Nathan married
-an ancestress of the Virgin Mary, and that Luke gives her descent,
-not that of Joseph; but apart from the fact that Luke (iii. 23)
-begins with Joseph, it is difficult to see how the requirement of
-Calvin, that Solomon should be the ancestor of Jesus, is met by his
-mother's descent from Solomon's brother. It is clear, however, from
-2 Sam. xii. 24, 25, that this elder brother of Solomon, Nathan, is a
-myth. Otherwise he, and not Solomon, was the lawful heir to the throne
-(legitimacy being confined to the sons of David born in Jerusalem),
-and Jesus would not have been "born King of the Jews" (Matt, i. 2),
-nor fulfilled the Messianic conditions. It is even possible that
-Luke wished to escape the implication of illegitimacy by tracing
-the descent of Jesus from Solomon's elder brother. But the writer
-of 1 Kings i. had no knowledge of the Christian discovery that, in
-the order of legal succession to the throne, the sons of David born
-before he reigned in Jerusalem were excluded. Adonijah's legal right
-of succession was not questioned by David (1 Kings i. 6).
-
-When David was in his dotage and near his end this eldest son (by
-Haggith), Adonijah, began to consult leading men about his accession,
-but unfortunately for himself, did not summon Nathan. This slighted
-"prophet" proposed to Bathsheba that she should go to David and tell
-him the falsehood that he (David) had once sworn before Jahveh that
-her son Solomon should reign; "and while you are talking," says
-Nathan, "I will enter and fulfil" (that was his significant word)
-"your declaration." The royal dotard could not gainsay two seemingly
-independent witnesses, and helplessly kept the alleged oath. David
-announced this oath as his reason,--apparently the only one,--for
-appointing Solomon. The prince may be credited with being too young
-to participate in this scheme.
-
-Irregularity of succession and of birth in princes appeals to
-popular superstition. The legal heir, regularly born, seems to
-come by mere human arrangement, but the God-appointed chieftain is
-expected in unexpected ways and in defiance of human laws and even
-moralities. David, or some one speaking for him, said, "In sin did
-my mother conceive me," and the contempt in which he was held by
-his father's other children, and his father's keeping him out of
-sight till the prophet demanded him (1 Sam. xvi. 11), look as if he,
-also, may have been illegitimate. Solomon may have been technically
-legitimate, but in any case he was the son of an immoral marriage,
-sealed by a husband's blood. The populace would easily see the divine
-hand in the elevation of this youth, who seems to have been himself
-impressed with the like superstition.
-
-Unfortunately, Solomon received his father's last injunctions as divine
-commands. At the very time when David is pictured by the Chronicler
-in such a saintly death-bed scene, parting so pathetically with his
-people, and giving such unctuous and virtuous last counsels to Solomon,
-he is shown by the historian of Kings pouring into his successor's ear
-the most treacherous and atrocious directions for the murder of certain
-persons; among others, of Shimei, whose life he had sworn should not
-be taken. Shimei had once called David what Jahveh also called him,
-a man of blood, but afterwards asked his forgiveness. Under a pretence
-of forgiveness, David nursed his vengeance through many years, and
-Shimei was now a white-haired man. David's last words addressed to
-Solomon were these:
-
-
-    "He (Shimei) came down to meet me at Jordan, and I sware to him by
-    Jahveh, saying, 'I will not put thee to death with the sword.' Now
-    therefore hold him not guiltless, for thou art a wise man, and
-    wilt know what thou oughtest to do unto him; and thou shalt bring
-    his hoar head down to the grave in blood."
-
-
-Such, according to an admiring annalist, were the last words uttered
-by David on earth. He died with a lie in his mouth (for he had sworn
-to Shimei, plainly, "Thy life shall not be taken"), and with murder
-(personal and vindictive) in his heart. The book opens with a record
-that they had tried to revive the aged king by bringing to him a
-beautiful damsel; but lust was gone; the only passion that survived
-even his lust, and could give one more glow to this "man of blood,"
-was vengeance. Two aged men were named by him for death at the hands of
-Solomon, who could not disobey, this being the last act of the forty
-years of reign of King David. His dying word was "blood." One would
-be glad to believe these things mythical, but they are contained in
-a record which says:
-
-
-    "David did that which was right in the sight of Jahveh and turned
-    not aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of
-    his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite."
-
-
-This traditional incident of getting Uriah slain in order to
-appropriate his wife, made a deep impression on the historian of
-Samuel, and suspicious pains are taken (2 Sam. xii.) to prove that the
-illegitimate son of David and Bathsheba was "struck by Jahveh" for his
-parents' sin, and that Solomon was born only after the marriage. Even
-if the youth was legitimate, the adherents of the king's eldest son,
-Adonijah, would not fail to recall the lust and murder from which
-Solomon sprang, though the populace might regard these as signs of
-Jahveh's favor. In the coronation ode (Psalm ii.) the young king is
-represented as if answering the Legitimists who spoke of his birth
-not only from an adulteress, but one with a foreign name:
-
-
-    "I will proclaim the decree:
-    The Lord said unto me, 'Thou art my son;
-    This day have I begotten thee.'"
-
-
-(It is probable that the name Jahveh was inserted in this song in
-place of Elohim, and in several other phrases there are indications
-that the original has been tampered with.) The lines--
-
-
-    "Kiss the son lest he be angry
-    And ye perish straightway."
-
-
-and others, may have originated the legendary particulars of plots
-caused by Solomon's accession, recorded in the Book of Kings, but
-at any rate the emphatic claim to his adoption by God as His son, by
-the anointing received at coronation, suggests some trouble arising
-out of his birth. There is also a confidence and enthusiasm in the
-language of the court laureate, as the writer of Psalm ii. appears
-to have been, which conveys an impression of popular sympathy.
-
-It is not improbable that the superstition about illegitimacy, as
-under some conditions a sign of a hero's heavenly origin, may have
-had some foundation in the facts of heredity. In times when love or
-even passion had little connexion with any marriage, and none with
-royal marriages, the offspring of an amour might naturally manifest
-more force of character than the legitimate, and the inherited sensual
-impulses, often displayed in noble energies, might prove of enormous
-importance in breaking down an old oppression continued by an automatic
-legitimacy of succession.
-
-In Talmudic books (Moed Katon, Vol. 9, col. 2, and Midrash Rabbah,
-ch. 15) it is related that when Solomon was conveying the ark into the
-temple, the doors shut themselves against him of their own accord. He
-recited twenty-four psalms, but they opened not. In vain he cried,
-"Lift up your heads, O ye gates!" But when he prayed, "O Lord God,
-turn not Thy face from Thine anointed; remember the mercies of David
-thy servant" (2 Chron. vi. 42), the gates flew open. "Then the enemies
-of David turned black in the face, for all knew that God had pardoned
-David's transgression with Bathsheba." This legend curiously ignores
-1 Chron. xxii., which shows that Jahveh had prearranged Solomon's
-birth and name, and had adopted him before birth. It is one of many
-rabbinical intimations that David, Bathsheba, Uriah, and Solomon, had
-become popular divinities,--much like Vulcan, Venus, Mars,--and as such
-relieved from moral obligations. Jewish theology had to accommodate
-itself ethically to this popular mythology, and did so by a theory
-of divine forgiveness; but really the position of Hebrew, as well as
-Christian, orthodoxy was that lustful David and Bathsheba were mere
-puppets in the divine plan, and their actions quite consistent with
-their being souls after Jahveh's own heart.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II.
-
-THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.
-
-
-It may occur to mythographers that I treat as historical narratives and
-names that cannot be taken so seriously; but in a study of primitive
-culture, fables become facts and evidences. A grand harvest awaits that
-master of mythology and folklore who shall bravely explore the legends
-of David and Solomon, but in the present essay mythical details can
-only be dealt with incidentally. Some of these may be considered at
-the outset.
-
-It is said in 1 Kings i.:
-
-
-    "Now King David was old and stricken in years; and they covered
-    him with clothes, but he gat no heat. Wherefore his servants said
-    unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin:
-    and let her stand before the king, and cherish him; and let her
-    lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat. So they
-    sought for a fair damsel throughout all the coasts of Israel, and
-    found Abishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king. And the
-    damsel was very fair; and she cherished the king and ministered
-    to him; but the king knew her not."
-
-
-That this story is characteristic of lustful David cannot blind us to
-the fact of its improbability. Whatever may be meant by "the coasts
-of Israel," the impression is conveyed of a long journey, and it
-is hardly credible that so much time should be taken for a moribund
-monarch. Many interpretations are possible of the name Abishag, but
-it is usually translated "Father (or source) of error." However this
-may be, the story bears a close resemblance to the search for a wife
-for Isaac. When Abraham sent out this commission he also "was old
-and well stricken in age," and of Rebekah it is said, "The damsel
-was very fair to look upon, a virgin, neither had any man known
-her." (Gen. xxiv.) Rebekah means "ensnarer," and Abishag "father
-(source) of error"; and both women cause trouble between two brothers.
-
-There is an Oriental accent about both of these stories. In ancient
-Indian literature there are several instances of servants sent out
-to search the world for a damsel fair and wise enough to wed the
-son and heir of some grand personage. Maya, the mother of Buddha,
-was sought for in the same way. This of itself is not enough to prove
-that the Biblical narratives in question are of Oriental origin, but
-there is a Tibetan tale which contains several details which seem to
-bear on this point. The tale is that of Visakha, and it is accessible
-to English readers in a translation by Schiefner and Ralston of the
-"Kah-Gyur." (Trübner's Oriental Series.)
-
-Visakha was the seventh son of Mrgadhara, prime minister of the
-king of Kosala. For this youth a bride was sought by a Brahman, who
-in the land of Champa found a beautiful maiden whose name was also
-Visakha. She was, with other girls, entering a park, where they all
-bathed in a tank,--her companions taking off their clothes, but Visakha
-lifting her dress by degrees as she entered the water. Besides showing
-decorum, this maiden conducted herself differently from the others
-in everything, some of her actions being mysterious. The Brahman,
-having contrived to meet her alone, questioned her concerning these
-peculiarities, for all of which she gave reasons implying exceptional
-wisdom and virtue. On his return the Brahman described this maiden
-to the prime minister, who set forth and asked her hand for his son,
-and she was brought to Kosala on a ship with great pomp. The maiden
-then for a long time gives evidence of extraordinary wisdom, one
-example being of special importance to our inquiry. She determines
-which of two women claiming a child is the real mother. The king and
-his ministers being unable to settle the dispute, Visakha said:
-
-
-    "Speak to the two women thus: 'As we do not know to which of
-    you two the boy belongs, let her who is the strongest take the
-    boy.' When each of them has taken hold of one of the boy's hands,
-    and he begins to cry out on account of the pain, the real mother
-    will let go, being full of compassion for him, and knowing that
-    if her child remains alive she will be able to see it again; but
-    the other, who has no compassion for him, will not let go. Then
-    beat her with a switch, and she will thereupon confess the truth
-    of the whole matter."
-
-
-In comparing this with the famous judgment of Solomon there appear
-some reasons for believing the Oriental tale to be the earlier. In
-the Biblical tale there is evidently a missing link. Why should the
-false mother, who had so desired the child, consent to have it cut
-in two? What motive could she have? But in the Tibetan tale one of
-the women is the wife, the other the concubine, of a householder. The
-wife bore him no child, and was jealous of the concubine on account of
-her babe. The concubine, feeling certain that the wife would kill the
-child, gave it to her, with her lord's approval; but after his death
-possession of the house had to follow motherhood of the child. If,
-however, the child were dead, the false claimant would be mistress of
-the house. Here, then, is a motive wanting in the story of Solomon,
-and suggesting that the latter is not the original.
-
-In the ancient "Mahosadha Jataka" the false claimant proves to be a
-Yakshini (a sort of siren and vampire) who wishes to eat the child. To
-Buddha himself is here ascribed the judgment, which is much the same
-as that of the "wise Champa maiden," Visakha. Here, also, is a motive
-for assenting to the child's death or injury which is lacking in the
-Biblical story.
-
-Here, then, we find in ancient Indian literature a tale which may be
-fairly regarded as the origin of the "Judgment of Solomon." And it
-belongs to a large number of Oriental tales in which the situations
-and accents of the Biblical narratives concerning David and Solomon
-often occur. There is a cave-born youth, Asuga, son of a Brahman and
-a bird-fairy, with a magic lute which accompanies his verses, and
-who dallies with Brahmadetta's wife. A king, enamored of a beautiful
-foreign woman beneath him in rank, obtains her by a promise that
-her son, if one is born, shall succeed him on the throne, to the
-exclusion of his existing heir by his wife of equal birth; but he
-permits arrangements for his elder son's succession to go on until
-induced by a threat of war from the new wife's father and country
-to fulfil his promise. A prime minister, Mahaushadha, travels, in
-disguise of a Brahman, in order to find a true wife; he meets with
-a witty maiden (Visakha), who directs him to her village by a road
-where he will see her naked at a bathing tank, though she had taken
-another road. This minister was, like David, lowly born; a "deity"
-revealed him to the king, as Jahveh revealed David to Samuel; he was
-a seventh minister, as David was a seventh son, and Solomon also.
-
-Although the number seven was sacred among the ancient Hebrews,
-it does not appear to have been connected by them with exceptional
-wisdom or occult powers in man or woman. The ideas in which such
-legends as "The Seven Wise Masters," "The Seven Sages," and the
-superstition about a seventh son's second-sight, originate, are
-traceable to ancient Indo-Iranian theosophy. It may be useful here
-to read the subjoined extract from Darmesteter's introduction to the
-"Vendîdâd." Having explained that the religion of the Persian Magi is
-derived from the same source as that of the Indian Rishis, that is,
-from the common forefathers of both Iranian and Indian, he says:
-
-
-    "The Indo-Iranian Asura (the supreme but not the only god) was
-    often conceived as sevenfold: by the play of certain mythical
-    formulæ and the strength of certain mythical numbers, the ancestors
-    of the Indo-Iranians had been led to speak of seven worlds, and
-    the supreme god was often made sevenfold, as well as the worlds
-    over which he ruled. The names and the attributes of the seven
-    gods had not been as yet defined, nor could they be then; after
-    the separation of the two religions, these gods, named Aditya,
-    'the infinite ones,' in India, were by and by identified there
-    with the sun, and their number was afterward raised to twelve, to
-    correspond to the twelve aspects of the sun. In Persia, the seven
-    gods are known as Amesha Spentas, 'the undying and well-doing one';
-    they by and by, according to the new spirit that breathed in the
-    religion, received the names of the deified abstractions, Vohu-manô
-    (good thought), Asha Vahista (excellent holiness), Khshathra Vairya
-    (perfect sovereignty), Spenta Armaîti (divine piety), Haurvatât
-    and Ameretâot (health and immortality). The first of them all
-    was and remained Ahura Mazda; but whereas formerly he had been
-    only the first of them, he was now their father. 'I invoke the
-    glory of the Amesha Spentas, who all seven have one and the same
-    thinking, one and the same speaking, one and the same father and
-    lord, Ahura Mazda,'" (Yast xix. 16.) [3]
-
-
-In Persian religion the Seven are always wise and beneficent. The vast
-folklore derived from this Parsî religion included the Babylonian
-belief in seven powerful spirits, associated with the Pleiades,
-beneficent at certain seasons, but normally malevolent: they all
-move together, taking possession of human beings, as in the case of
-the seven demons cast out of Mary Magdalene. In Egypt the seven are
-always evil. But neither of these sevens are especially clever. In
-Buddhist legends they are not so carefully classified, the seventh
-son or daughter manifesting exceptional powers, sometimes of good,
-sometimes of evil, but they are usually referred to for this wit or
-wisdom. In the Davidian and Solomonic legends these notions are found
-as if merely adhering to some importation, and without any perception
-of the significance of the number seven. David is an eighth son in
-1 Sam. xvi. 10-13, but a seventh son in 1 Chron. ii. 16. Solomon is
-a tenth son in 1 Chron. iii. 1-6, but the seventh legitimate son
-in 2 Sam. xii. 24-25. The word Sheba means "the seven," but the
-early scribes appear to have understood it as shaba, "he swears,"
-as in Gen. xxi. 30-31, where after the seven ewe lambs have given
-the well its name, Beersheba, it is ascribed the significance of
-an oath. Bathsheba is commonly translated "Daughter of the Oath,"
-but there can be little doubt that the name means "Daughter of the
-Seven," and that it originated in the astute tricks by which that
-fair foreigner made herself queen-mother and her son king, above the
-lawful heir, whom she was instrumental (perhaps purposely) in getting
-out of the way by furthering his wishes.
-
-Moral obliquities are little considered in these fair favorites of
-translunary powers. Visakha, in one Buddhist tale, gets herself chosen
-by the Brahman as bride of a great man by her care to veil her charms
-at the bath; in another tale she attracts a prime minister in disguise,
-and becomes his wife, partly by laying aside all of her clothing at
-a bathing tank where she knows he will see her. Bathsheba's fame is
-similarly various. Her nudity and ready adultery with the king did
-not prevent her from passing into Talmudic tradition as "blessed among
-women," and to her was even ascribed the beautiful chapter of Proverbs
-(xxxi.) in praise of the virtuous wife! In the "Wisdom of Solomon"
-she is described as the "handmaiden" of the Lord in anticipation of
-the Christian ideal of immaculate womanhood.
-
-A similar development might no doubt be traced in the beautiful
-story of Vi[']s[=]akh[=]a of Shravasti, the most famous of the
-female lay-disciples of Buddha. The queries put to her by Buddha
-and her explanations of her petitions, which had appeared enigmatic,
-are related in Carus's Gospel of Buddha, and in form correspond with
-the very different questions and solutions that passed between the
-Brahman and the Tibetan Visakha, already mentioned. The name Visakha,
-from a Sanskrit root, meaning to divide, came to mean selection and
-intelligence, of all kinds, but in the matron of Shravastî wit becomes
-the genius of charity, and cleverness expands to enlightenment.
-
-The Queen of Sheba,--"Queen of the Seven,"--is a sister spirit of this
-lay-disciple. Whatever truth may underlie the legends of this lady,
-there is little doubt of her legendary relation to the Wise Women of
-Buddhist parables,--to Visakha of the sevenfold wisdom; and of her who
-decided between the rival claimants to the same child; to Ambapali,
-the courtesan, who journeyed to hear Buddha's wisdom and presented
-to him and his disciples her park and mansion; and to the Queen of
-Glory, whose story belongs "to a very early period in the history of
-Buddhism." Such is the opinion of Mr. Rhys Davids, whose translation of
-the Mahásudassana-Sutta, containing an account of the queen's visit to
-the King of Glory, in his Palace of Justice, attended by her fourfold
-army, may be read in Vol. XI., p. 276, of Sacred Books of the East.
-
-This exaltation of human knowledge and wisdom, travelling to find it,
-testing it with riddles and questions, belongs to the cult of the
-Magus and the Pundit.
-
-With reference to the seventh son Visakha (all-potential) and
-his all-wise bride Visakha, a notable parallelism is found in the
-substantial identity of "Solomon" and "the Shunnamite," on account
-of whom he slew his brother Adonijah. Shunnamite is equivalent to
-Shulamite, substantially the same as Solomon (peaceful), but here
-probably meaning that she was a "Solomoness," a very wise woman. That
-such was her reputation appears by the "Song of Songs."
-
-An equally striking comparison may be made between the naming of
-Solomon and the naming of Mahaushadha, the Tibetan "Solomon" already
-mentioned as having married a wise Visakha. Among the many proofs of
-wisdom given by this village-born youth was the discovery of the real
-husband of a woman claimed by two men. One of the men being much the
-weaker, there could be no such trial as that proposed in the child's
-case by Visakha. Mahaushadha questioned the two men as to what they
-had last eaten, then made them vomit, and so found out which had
-told the truth. Let us compare this Tibetan minister's birth with
-that of Solomon:
-
-
-    "When the boy came into the world and his birth-feast was
-    celebrated, the name of Mahaushadha (Great Remedy) was given
-    to him at the request of his mother, inasmuch as she, who
-    had long suffered from illness, and had been unable to obtain
-    relief from the time of the boy's conception, had been cured by
-    him." (Tib. Tales, p. 133)
-
-    "And Jahveh struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto David,
-    and ... on the seventh day [it was the seventh son] the child
-    died.... And David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went in unto
-    her, and lay with her; and she bare a son, and she called his name
-    Solomon. And Jahveh loved him; and he sent by the hand of Nathan
-    the prophet, and he called his name Jedidiah [Beloved of Jah]
-    for Jahveh's sake." (2 Sam. xii.)
-
-
-In the Revised Version "she called" is given in the margin as "another
-reading," but that it is the right reading appears by the context: it
-was she that was "comforted," and in her babe she found "rest"--which
-"Solomon" strictly means. Among the Hebrews the naming of a child
-was an act of authority, and it is difficult to believe that in any
-purely Hebrew narrative a woman would be described as setting aside
-the name given by Jahveh himself. But the high position of woman in
-the Iranian and the Buddhist religions is well known.
-
-In comparative studies the questions to be determined concerning
-parallel incidents are--whether they are trivial coincidences; whether
-they are not based in such universal beliefs or simple facts that they
-may have been of independent origin; whether the historic conditions of
-time and place admit of any supposed borrowing; if borrowing occurred,
-which is the original? With regard to the above parallelisms I submit
-that one of them, at least,--the Judgment of Solomon,--is neither
-trivial nor based in simple facts, and could not have originated
-independently of the Indian tale; that the others, though each, if it
-stood alone, might be a mere coincidence, are too numerous to be so
-explained; that the time and conditions which rendered it possible that
-the names of the apes and peacocks (1 Kings x. 22) imported by Solomon
-should be Indian proves the possibility of importations of tales from
-the same country. (See Rhys David's Buddhist Birth Stories, p. xlvii.)
-
-The question remaining to be determined--which region was the
-borrower--cannot be settled, in the present cases, by the relative
-antiquity of the books in which they are found; not only are the ages
-of all the books, Hebrew and Oriental, doubtful, but they are all
-largely made up of narratives long anterior to their compilation. The
-safest method, therefore, must be study of the intrinsic character
-of each narrative with a view to discovering the country to whose
-intellectual and social fauna and flora, so to say, it is most related,
-and which of the stories bears least of the faults incidental to
-translation. I have applied this touchstone to the above examples, and
-believe that the Oriental stories are the originals. The Judgment of
-Solomon appears to me to have lost an essential link, a motif, which
-it retains in Buddhist versions. And I do not believe that any Hebrew
-Bathsheba could have set aside a name given her child by a prophet,
-in the name of Jahveh, in order to celebrate by another name the
-"rest" she found from her sorrows.
-
-On the other hand, the borrowings by other countries from the legend
-of Solomon appear much more numerous. In some cases, as the legend
-of Jemshîd, there appear to have been exchanges between the two great
-sages, but the Solomonic traditions seem preponderant in Vikramadatsya,
-the demon-commanding hero of India. Solomon became a proverb of wisdom
-and liberality in Abyssinia, Arabia, and Persia. Ideal Sulaimans and
-Solimas abound. Solomon has influenced the legends of many heroes,
-such as Haroun-Alraschid and Charlemagne, and I will even venture
-a suspicion that the fame, and perhaps the name, of Solon have been
-influenced by the legend of Solomon. Lexicographers give no account of
-Solon's name; he is assigned to a conjectural period before written
-Greek existed; his interviews with Croesus, given in Herodotus,
-are hopelessly unhistorical, and his moralisings to the rich man
-recall the book of Proverbs. The Solon of Plato's Critias is already a
-mythological voyager, a Sindebad-Solomon, and his romance of the lost
-Atlantis is like an idealised rumour of the Wise Man's Kingdom. Solon's
-"history" was developed by Plutarch, seven centuries after the era
-assigned to the sage, out of poetical fragments ascribed to him,
-and he is represented as a great trader and traveller in the regions
-associated with Solomon. It is doubtful whether this chief of the Seven
-Sages, whose Solomonic motto was "Know Thyself" (cf. Prov. xiv. 8),
-could he reappear, would know himself as historically costumed by
-writers in our era, from Plutarch to Grote.
-
-At any rate there is little doubt of a reference to the Seven Spentas
-or to the Seven Sages in Proverbs ix. 1:
-
-
-    "Wisdom hath builded her house,
-    She hath hewn out her seven pillars."
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III.
-
-THE WIVES OF SOLOMON.
-
-
-According to the first book of Kings, Solomon's half-brother, Adonijah,
-after the defeat of an alleged (perhaps mythical) effort to recover the
-throne of which he had been defrauded, submitted himself to Solomon. He
-had become enamored of the virgin who had been brought to the aged King
-David to try to revive some vitality in him; and he came to Bathsheba
-asking her to request her son the king to give him this damsel as
-his wife. Bathsheba proffered this "small petition" for Adonijah,
-but Solomon was enraged, and ironically suggested that she should
-ask the kingdom itself for Adonijah, whom he straightway ordered to
-execution. The immediate context indicates that Solomon suspected
-in this petition a plot against his throne. A royal father's harem
-was inherited by a royal son, and its possession is supposed to have
-involved certain rights of succession: this is the only interpretation
-I have ever heard of the extreme violence of Solomon. But I have never
-been satisfied with this explanation. Would Adonijah have requested, or
-Bathsheba asked as a "small" thing, a favor touching the king's tenure?
-
-The story as told in the Book of Kings appears diplomatic, and several
-details suggest that in some earlier legend the strife between the
-half-brothers had a more romantic relation to "Abishag the Shunammite,"
-who is described as "very fair."
-
-Abishag is interpreted as meaning "father of error," and though that
-translation is of doubtful accuracy, its persistence indicates the
-place occupied by her in early tradition. According to Yalkut Reubeni
-the soul of Eve transmigrated into her. She caused trouble between
-the brothers, whose Jahvist names, Adonijah and Jedidiah,--strength of
-Jah, and love of Jah,--seem to have been at some time related. However
-this may be, the fair Shunammite, as represented in the Shulamite of
-the Song of Songs, fills pretty closely the outlines set forth in the
-famous epithalamium (Psalm xlv.) which all critics, I believe, refer
-to Solomon's marriage with a bride brought from some far country. I
-quote (with a few alterations hereafter discussed) the late Professor
-Newman's translation, in which it will be seen that several lines are
-applicable to the Shunammite, whose humble position is alluded to,
-separated from her "people," and her "father's house":
-
-
-   "My heart boils up with goodly matter.
-    I ponder; and my verse concerns the King.
-    Let my tongue be a ready writer's pen.
-
-   "Fairer art thou than all the sons of men.
-    Over thy lips delightsomeness is poured:
-    Therefore hath God forever blessed thee.
-
-   "Gird at thy hip thy hero sword,
-    Thy glory and thy majesty:
-    And forth victorious ride majestic,
-    For truth and meekness, righteously;
-    And let thy right hand teach the wondrous deeds.
-    Beneath thy feet the peoples fall;
-    For in the heart of the king's enemies
-    Sharp are thy arrows.
-
-   "Thy throne, O God, ever and always stands;
-    A righteous sceptre is thy royal sceptre.
-    Thou lovest right and hatest evil;
-    Therefore, O God, thy God hath anointed thee
-    With oil of joy above thy fellow-kings.
-    Myrrh, aloes, cassia, all thy raiment is.
-    From ivory palaces the viols gladden thee.
-    King's daughters count among thy favorites;
-    And at thy right hand stands the Queen
-        In Gold of Ophir.
-
-   "O daughter, hark! behold and bend thy ear:
-    Forget thy people and thy father's house.
-    Win thou the King thy beauty to desire;
-    He is thy lord; do homage unto him.
-    So Tyrus's daughter and the sons of wealth
-        With gifts shall court thee.
-
-   "Right glorious is the royal damsel;
-    Wrought of gold is her apparel.
-    In broidered tissues to the King she is led:
-    Her maiden-friends, behind, are brought to thee.
-    They come with joy and gladness,
-    They enter the royal palace.
-
-   "Thy fathers by their sons shall be replaced;
-    As princes o'er the land shalt thou exalt them.
-    So will I publish to all times thy name;
-    So shall the nations praise thee, now and always."
-
-
-In this epithalamium the name of Jahveh does not occur, and Solomon
-himself is twice addressed as God (Elohim). This lack of anticipation
-was avenged by Jahvism when it arrived; the Song was put among the
-Psalms and transmitted to British Jahvism, which has headed it:
-"The majesty and grace of Christ's kingdom. The duty of the Church
-and the benefits thereof." Such is the chapter-heading to a song
-of bridesmaids,--described in the original as "a song of loves" and
-"set to lilies" (a tune of the time).
-
-There are no indications in the Solomon legend, apart from some
-mistranslations, until the time of Ecclesiasticus (B. C. 180), that
-Solomon was a sensualist, or that there were any moral objections to
-the extent of his harem, which indeed is expanded by his historians
-with evident pride.
-
-As to this, our own monogamic ideas are quite inapplicable to a
-period when personal affection had nothing to do with marriage,
-when women had no means of independent subsistence, and the size of
-a man's harem was the measure of his benevolence. Probably there was
-then no place more enviable for a woman than Solomon's seraglio.
-
-The sin was not in the size of the seraglio but in its foreign and
-idolatrous wives. (Here our translators again get in an innuendo
-against Solomon by turning "foreign" into "strange women.") Before
-a religious notion can get itself fixed as law it is apt to be
-enforced by an extra amount of odium. Solomon's mother had married
-a Hittite, and presumably he would have imbibed liberal ideas on
-such subjects. The round number of a thousand ladies in his harem is
-unhistorical, but that the chief princesses were of Gentile origin
-and religion is clear. The second writer in the first Book of Kings
-begins (xi.) with this gravamen:
-
-
-   "Now King Solomon loved many foreign women besides the daughter of
-    Pharaoh,--Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Zidonian, and Hittite women,
-    nations concerning which Jahveh said to the children of Israel,
-    Ye shall not go among them, neither shall they come among you:
-    for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods:
-    Solomon clave to these in love."
-
-
-The wisest of men could hardly attend to rules which an unconceived
-Jahveh would lay down for an unborn nation centuries later. We
-must, however, as we are not on racial problems, consent to a few
-anachronisms in names if we are to discover any credible traditions
-in the Biblical books relating to Solomon. As Mr. Flinders Petrie
-has discovered something like the word "Israel" in ancient Egypt,
-it may be as well to use that word tentatively for the tribe we are
-considering. No Israelite, then, is mentioned among Solomon's wives,
-and one can hardly imagine such a man finding a bride among devotees
-of an altar of unhewn stones piled in a tent.
-
-As our cosmopolitan prince had to send abroad for workmen of skill,
-he may also have had to seek abroad for ladies accomplished enough
-to be his princesses. That, however, does not explain the number and
-variety of the countries from which the wives seem to have come. The
-theory of many scholars that this Prince of Peace substituted
-alliances by marriage for military conquests is confirmed in at
-least one instance. The mother of his only son, Rehoboam, was Naamah
-the Ammonitess (1 Kings xiv. 31), and the Septuagint preserves an
-addition to this verse that she was the "daughter of Ana, the son of
-Nahash,"--a king (Hanum) with whom David had waged furious war. The
-reference in the epithalamium (Psalms xlv.) to "Tyrus's daughter,"
-in connexion with 1 Kings v. 12, "there was peace between Hiram and
-Solomon," suggests that there also marriage was the peacemaker.
-
-The phrase in 1 Kings iii. 1, "Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh and
-took Pharaoh's daughter" suggests, though less clearly, that some
-feud may have been settled in that case also. That Solomon should
-have espoused as his first and pre-eminent queen the daughter of a
-Pharaoh is very picturesque if set beside the legend of the "Land of
-Bondage," but the narrative could hardly have been given without any
-allusion to bygones had the story in Exodus been known. Yet the words
-"made affinity" may refer to a racial feud in that direction. This
-princess brought as her dowry the important frontier city of Gezer,
-and her palace appears to have been the first fine edifice erected
-in Jerusalem.
-
-The commercial régime established by Solomon could hardly have been
-possible but for his intermarriages. Perhaps if the Christian ban
-had not been fixed against polygamy, and European princes had been
-permitted to marry in several countries, there might have been fewer
-wars, as well as fewer illicit connexions. The intermarriages of the
-large English royal family with most of the reigning houses of Europe,
-have been for many years a security of peace, and it is not improbable
-that our industrial and democratic age, wherein the working man's
-welfare depends on peace, may find in the undemocratic institution
-of royalty a certain utility in its power to be prolific in such ties
-of peace.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV.
-
-SOLOMON'S IDOLATRY.
-
-
-Bathsheba's function at Solomon's marriage is celebrated in the Song
-of Songs:
-
-
-   "Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold King Solomon,
-    With the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of
-    his espousals."
-
-
-Bathsheba, as we have seen, was said to have written Proverbs
-xxxi. as an admonition or reproof to her son on his betrothal with the
-daughter of Pharaoh. The words of David, "Send me Uriah the Hittite"
-(2 Sam. xi. 6), and the emphasis laid on Uriah's being a Hittite (a
-race with which intermarriage was prohibited, Deut. vii. 1-5) might
-have been meant as some legal excuse for David's conduct. He rescued
-Bathsheba, Hebraised (1 Chr. iii. 5), from unlawful wedlock, it might
-be said, and her exaltation in Talmudic tradition may have been meant
-to guard the purity of David's lineage. But the ascription to Bathsheba
-of especial opposition to her son's marriage with the daughter of
-Pharaoh indicates that the gravamen in Solomon's posthumous offence
-lay less in his intermarriage with foreigners than in building for
-them shrines of their several deities,--Istar, Chemosh, Milcom, and
-the rest. Against Pharaoh's daughter the Talmud manifests a special
-animus: she is said to have introduced to Solomon a thousand musical
-instruments, and taught him chants to the various idols. (Shabbath,
-56, col. 2.)
-
-There is a bit of Solomonic folklore according to which the Devil
-tempted him with a taunt that he would be but an ordinary person
-but for his magic ring, in which lay all his wisdom. Solomon being
-piqued into a denial, was challenged to remove his ring, but no
-sooner had he done so than the Devil seized it, and, having by its
-might metamorphosed the king beyond recognition, himself assumed
-the appearance of Solomon and for some time resided in the royal
-seraglio. The more familiar legend is that Solomon was cajoled into
-parting with his signet ring by a promise of the demon to reveal
-to him the secret of demonic superiority over man in power. Having
-transformed Solomon and transported him four hundred miles away,
-the demon (Asmodeus) threw the ring into the sea. Solomon, after long
-vagrancy, became the cook of the king of Ammon (Ano Hanun), with whose
-daughter, Naamah, he eloped. [4] One day in dressing a fish for dinner
-Naamah found in it the signet ring which Asmodeus had thrown into the
-sea, and Solomon thus recovered his palace and harem from the demon.
-
-The connexion of this fish-and-ring legend,--known in several versions,
-from the Ring of Polycrates (Herodotus III.) to the heraldic legend
-of Glasgow,--with the Solomonic demonology, looks as if it may once
-have been part of a theory that the idolatrous shrines were built for
-the princesses while the Devil was personating their lord. In truth,
-however, all of these animadversions belong to a comparatively late
-period. Many struggles had to precede even the recognition of the
-idolatrous character of the shrines, and to the last the Jews were
-generally proud of the "graven images" in their temple,--including
-brazen reproductions of the terrible Golden Calf. At the same time
-there were no doubt some old priests and soothsayers to whom these
-new-fangled things were injurious and odious, and superstitious
-people enough to cling to their ancient unhewn altar rather than to
-the brilliant cherubim, just as in Catholic countries the devotees
-cannot be drawn from their age-blackened Madonnas and time-stained
-crucifixes by the most attractive works of modern art.
-
-Although there is no evidence that the God of Israel was known under
-the name of either Jah or Jahveh in Solomon's time, there is little
-doubt that the rudimentary forces of Jahvism were felt in the Solomonic
-age. The furious prophetic denunciations of the wise and learned which
-echoed on through the centuries, and made the burden of St. Paul,
-indicate that there was from the first much superstition among the
-peasantry, which might easily in times of distress be fanned into
-fanaticism. The special denunciation of Solomon by Jahveh, and his
-suppression during the prophetic age, could hardly have been possible
-but for some extreme defiance on his part of the primitive priesthood
-and the soothsayers. The temple was dedicated by the king himself
-without the help of any priest, and the monopoly of the prophet was
-taken away by the establishment of an oracle in the temple. And the
-worst was that these things indicated a genuine liberation of the king,
-intellectually, from the superstitions out of which Jahvism grew. This
-was especially proved by his disregard of the sanctuary claimed by
-the murderer Joab, who had laid hold of the horns of the altar. The
-altar was the precinct of deity, and beyond the jurisdiction of civil
-or military authority; yet when the "man of blood" refused to leave
-the altar our royal forerunner of Erastus compelled the reluctant
-executioner to slay him at the altar,--even the sacred altar of
-unhewn stone. As no thunderbolt fell from heaven on the king for this
-sacrilege, the act could not fail to be a thunderbolt from earth
-striking the phantasmal heaven of the priest. The Judgment Day for
-settlement of such accounts was not yet invented, and injuries of
-the gods were left to the vengeance of their priests and prophets.
-
-There is an unconscious humour in the solemn reading by English
-clergymen of Jahvist rebukes of Solomon for his tolerance towards
-idolatry, at a time when the Queen of England and Empress of India is
-protecting temples and idols throughout her realm, and has just rebuilt
-the ancient temple of Buddha at Gâya; while the sacred laws of Brahman,
-Buddhist, Parsee, Moslem, are used in English courts of justice. If
-any modern Josiah should insult a shrine of Vishnu, or of any Hindu
-deity, he would have to study his exemplar inside a British prison.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V.
-
-SOLOMON AND THE SATANS.
-
-
-When Solomon ascended the throne, Jerusalem must have been a wretched
-place, without any art or architecture, with a swarming mongrel
-population, mainly of paupers. The holy ark was kept in a tent, and
-the altar of unhewn stone accurately symbolised the rude condition of
-the people, among whom Solomon could find no workmen of skill enough
-to build a temple. It is not easy to forgive him for compelling a
-good many of them into the public works; but it was probably no more
-than a national conscription of the unemployed paupers in Jerusalem,
-chiefly on fortifications for their own defence. There was apparently
-no slave-mart, and it seems rather better to conscript people for
-public industries than, in our modern way, for cutting their neighbors'
-throats. Most of them were the remnants of tribes that once occupied
-the region, much despised by the Israelites, and probably they looked
-on Solomon's plan of building Jerusalem into a city of magnificence,
-giving everybody employment and support, as a grand socialistic
-movement. An Ephraimite, Jeroboam, who tried to get up a revolt in
-Jerusalem does not seem to have found any adherents. The only people
-who complained of any yoke--and their complaint is only heard of after
-some centuries--were the priest-ridden and prophet-ridden Israelites
-who had become fanatically excited about the strange shrines built for
-the king's foreign wives, and the splendid carvings and forms in the
-temple itself. Probably the first two commandments in the decalogue
-were put there with special reference to some Solomonic cult with an
-æsthetic taste for graven images and foreign shrines.
-
-There can be little doubt that Solomon, by his patronage of these
-foreign religions, detached them from the cruel rites traditionally
-associated with them. Among all the censures pronounced against
-him none attributes to him any human sacrifices, though such are
-ascribed to David and Samuel, (1 Sam. xv. 33, 2 Sam. xxi. 9). The
-earliest rebukes of sacrifice in the Bible are those attributed
-to Solomon. "To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the
-Lord than sacrifice" (Prov. xxi. 3). "By mercy and truth iniquity
-is atoned for" (Prov. xvi. 6). "Mercy and truth preserve the king;
-he upholdeth his throne by mercy" (Prov. xx. 28). "Deliver them that
-are carried away to death: those that are ready to be slain forbear
-not thou to save" (Prov. xxiv. 11). "Love covereth all transgressions"
-(Prov. x. 12).
-
-Solomon may not indeed have written these and the many similar maxims
-ascribed to him, but they are among the most ancient sentences in the
-Bible, and they would not have been attributed to any man who had not
-left among the people a tradition of humanity and benevolence. Had
-the royal "idolator" or his wives stained their shrines with human
-blood the prophets would have been eager to declare it. Two acts of
-cruelty are ascribed to Solomon's youth, in the book of Kings: one of
-these, the execution of Shimei, carried out his father's order, but
-only after Shimei had been given fair warning with means of escape;
-while the other, the execution of Adonijah (Solomon's brother), if
-true, is too much wrapped up in obscurity to enable us to judge its
-motives; but it cannot be regarded as historical.
-
-The second historiographer of Kings, setting out to record Jahveh's
-anger about Solomon's foreign wives and shrines (1 Kings xi) says,
-with unconscious humour, that Jahveh raised Satan against him,--two
-Satans. One of these was Hadad, an Edomite, the other Rezon,
-a Syrian. The writer says that this was when Solomon was old, his
-wives having then turned away his heart after other gods. Fortunately,
-however, this writer has embodied in his record some items, evidently
-borrowed, which contradict his Jahvistic legend. One of these tells us
-that Hadad had been carried away from Edom to Egypt, when David and his
-Captain Joab massacred all the males in Edom; that he there married
-the sister of Pharaoh; and that he returned to his own country on
-hearing of the death of David and Joab. When this occurred, Solomon,
-so far from being old, was about eighteen. The Septuagint (Vatican
-MS.) says that Hadad "reigned in the land of Edom." We may conclude
-then that on the return of this heir to the throne Edom declared
-its independence, nor is there any indication that Solomon tried to
-prevent this. Another contradiction of this writer is a note inserted
-about Rezon the Syrian,--"He was an adversary of Israel all the days
-of Solomon." Not, therefore, a Satan raised up by Jahveh against
-Solomon when in old age he had turned to other gods. Rezon "reigned
-over Syria," and there is no indication of any expedition against him
-sent out by Solomon. Bishop Colenso (Pentateuch, Vol. III., p. 101),
-in referring to these points remarks that we do not read of a single
-warlike expedition undertaken by Solomon. [5]
-
-The remark (1 Kings xi.) about the Satans set against Solomon is more
-applicable to the Shiloh traitors, Ahijah and Jeroboam. Jeroboam,--a
-servant whom Solomon had raised to high office,--was instigated
-by Ahijah, a "prophet" neglected by Solomon, to his ungrateful
-treason. Ahijah pretended that he had a divine revelation that he
-(Jeroboam) was to succeed Solomon on account (of course!) of the king's
-shrines to Istar, Chemosh, and Milcom. If the narrative were really
-historic nothing could be more "Satanic" than the lies and treacheries
-related of those self-seekers. Were the story true, the failure of
-these divinely appointed "Satans" to overthrow the kingdom of Solomon,
-who did not arm against them, must have been due to his popularity. In
-after times this impunity of the glorious "idolator" would have to be
-explained; consequently we find Jahveh telling Solomon that, offended
-as he was by the shrines, he would spare him for his father's sake,
-but would rend the kingdom, save one tribe, from his (Solomon's)
-son. That this should be immediately followed by the raising up of
-"Satans" to harass Solomon and Israel, Jahveh having just said the
-trouble should be postponed till after the king's death, suggests that
-the whole account of these quarrels (1 Kings xi. 14-40) is a late
-interpolation. Up to that point the old record is unbroken. "He had
-peace on all sides round about him. And Judah and Israel dwelt safely,
-every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, from Dan to Beersheba,
-all the days of Solomon" (1 Kings iv. 24-25).
-
-Jahveh, in his personal interview with Solomon (1 Kings xi. 11-13),
-said, "I will surely rend the kingdom from thee and will give it
-to thy servant." That is, as explained by the "prophet" Ahijah,
-to Jeroboam. As a retribution and check on idolatry the selection,
-besides violating Jahveh's promise to David (1 Chron. xxii), was not
-successful: after the sundering of Israel and Judah into internecine
-kingdoms, Jeroboam, King of Israel, established idolatry more actively
-than either Solomon or his son Rehoboam. On Jeroboam, his selected
-Nemesis, Jahveh inflicted his characteristic punishment of visiting the
-sins of the fathers on the children; as David was left the seduced wife
-whose husband he had murdered, while his son was executed; as Solomon
-was left in peaceful enjoyment of his kingdom and none of the sinful
-shrines destroyed, while his son bore the penalty; so now Jeroboam,
-elect of Jahveh, built golden calves, surpassed Solomon's offences,
-and vengeance was taken on his son Abijah, who died. This Abijah left
-a son, Baasha, who, undeterred by these fatalities, continued the
-"idolatries" with impunity for the twenty-four years of his reign,
-the punishment falling on his son Elah, who was slain after only two
-years' reign by his military servant, Zimri. And this Zimri, who thus
-carried on Jahveh's decree against idolatry, himself continued "in the
-ways of Jeroboam," the shrines and idols themselves being meanwhile
-unvisited by any executioner or iconoclast until some centuries later.
-
-In Josiah there arrived a king, of the line of David, who might
-seem by his fury against idolatry to be another "man after God's
-own heart." He pulverised the images and the shrines, he "sacrificed
-the priests on their own altars," he even dug up the bones of those
-who had ministered at such altars and burnt them. He trusted Jahveh
-absolutely. He went to the prophetess, Hulda, who told him that he
-should be "gathered to his grave in peace." He was slain miserably,
-by the King of Egypt, to whom the country then became subject.
-
-Josephus ascribed the act of Josiah, in hurling himself against an
-army that was not attacking him, to fate. The fate was that Josiah,
-having exterminated the wizards and fortune-tellers, repaired to
-the only dangerous one among them, because she pretended to be a
-"prophetess," inspired by Jahveh. Her assurances led him to believe
-himself invulnerable, personally, and that in his life-time Jerusalem
-would not suffer the woes she predicted. Josiah, "of the house
-of David," seems to have thought that his zeal in destroying the
-shrines which his ancestor Solomon had introduced, mainly Egyptian,
-would be so grandly consummated if he could destroy a Pharaoh,
-that he insisted on a combat. Pharaoh-Necho sent an embassy to say
-that he was not his enemy, but on his way to fight the Assyrian:
-"God commanded me to hasten; forbear thou from opposing God, who is
-with me, that he destroy thee not." Here, however, was the fanatic's
-opportunity for an Armageddon: Pharaoh had appealed to what Solomon
-would have regarded as their common deity, but which to Josiah meant a
-chance to pit Jahveh against the God of Egypt. On Jahveh's invisible
-forces he must have depended for victory. So perished Josiah, and
-with him the independence of his country.
-
-Solomon, the Prince of Peace, had made the house of Pharaoh the
-ally of his country. Josiah carries his people back under Egyptian
-bondage. Solomon had built the metropolitan Temple, whose shrines,
-symbols, works of art, represented a catholicity to all races and
-religions,--peace on earth, good will to man. Josiah, panic-stricken
-about a holy book purporting to have been found in the Temple,
-concerning which the king by his counsellors consulted a female
-fortune-teller, makes a holocaust of all that Solomon had built up.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI.
-
-SOLOMON IN THE HEXATEUCH.
-
-
-"And when they brought out the money that was brought into the house of
-Jahveh, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of Jahveh given
-by Moses. And Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the scribe, I have
-found the book of the law in the house of Jahveh." (2 Chron. xxxiv. 14,
-15.) The Chronicler adds to the earlier account (2 Kings xxii. 8) the
-words "given by Moses," which looks as if the authenticity of the book
-(Deuteronomy) had not been without question. The finding of the Book
-is set forth in a sort of picture, wherein are grouped the priest,
-the theologian, the phantom prophet, the deity, the temple, and the
-contribution-box. Every part of the ecclesiastical machine is present.
-
-One is irresistibly reminded of the finding of the Book of Mormon by
-Joseph Smith, although it would be unfair to ascribe Deuteronomist
-atrocities to the revelations of the American phantom, Mormon. Nor is
-this a mere coincidence. There are lists of the early Mormons which
-show a large proportion of them to have borne Old Testament names,
-derived from Puritan ancestors. When Solomon set up his philosophic
-throne at Harvard University, and the parishes of the Pilgrims
-became Unitarian, and Boston became artistic, literary, and worldly,
-the Jahvists began to migrate, carrying with them their Sabbatarian
-Ark, in which so many frontier communities are imprisoned "unto this
-day." Some of them have become conquerors of Hawaiian "Canaanites,"
-appropriating their lands. But the Vermont Hilkiah, Joseph Smith,
-discerned that a new Deuteronomy was needed to deal with the many
-American sects, and was guided by an Angel of the Lord to a spot in
-Ontario County, New York, where the Book was found (1827), which
-he was enabled to translate by the aid of his "Urim and Thummim"
-spectacles, found beside the Book. In the Book were discussed the
-principles of all the sects, though not by name, as in Deuteronomy
-Moses is made to deal with the conditions which had arisen since
-the time of Solomon. Unfortunately for these American Jahvists, they
-had left the New English brains behind, with Channing and Emerson,
-and had not carried with them enough to produce a western Jeremiah
-to save their movement from ridicule and popular hatred.
-
-"Thy words were found and I did eat them," says Jeremiah
-(xv. 16). Whether, as some scholars think, Jeremiah had any part in
-the composition of the Book "found," or not, his rage attests the
-existence at the time of an important Solomonic School. "How say you,
-We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us? Behold the lying
-pen of the scribes has turned it to a fiction." (viii. 8.) "They are
-grown strong in the land but not for the faith." (ix. 3.) "Thus saith
-the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the
-mighty man glory in his might." (ix. 23.)
-
-The Deuteronomist especially aims at suppression of the Solomonic
-cult and régime. The law, not found in Exodus, against marriage with
-foreigners (Deut. vii. 3) is especially turned against Solomon's
-example by the addition that such a marriage will "turn away thy son
-from following me, that they may serve other gods." The wife, or other
-member of a man's family, who entices him to serve other gods, is to
-be stoned to death. (xiii. 6-11.) Moses is represented as anticipating
-the setting up of kings, and even the particular events of Solomon's
-reign. Solomon's "forty thousand stalls of horses" (1 Kings iv. 26),
-his horses brought out of Egypt (1 Kings x. 28), his wives, his silver
-and gold, are all foreseen by the ancient lawgiver, who provides that:
-"He [your king] shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the
-people to return to Egypt to the end that he should multiply horses
-... neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn
-not away; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and
-gold." (Deut. xvii. 16, 17.)
-
-This Deuteronomist Moses foresaw, too, that some check on the divine
-appointments to the throne would be needed. "Thou shalt in any wise
-set him king over thee whom thy God shall choose: one from among thy
-brethren shalt thou set over thee: thou mayest not put a foreigner
-over thee." As all of these commandments were received by Moses from
-Jahveh himself (Deut. vi. 1, and elsewhere), it is worthy of remark
-that there should be no trace of that anger with which Jahveh met the
-proposal for a monarchy: "they have rejected me, that I should not be
-king over them." (1 Sam. viii.) In 1776 Thomas Paine, in his Common
-Sense, used this scriptural denunciation of kings with much effect, and
-it no doubt contributed much to overthrow British monarchy in America.
-
-The special denunciations of sun-worship in Deuteronomy (iv. 19,
-xvii. 3) suggest a probability that Solomon's allusion to the sun,
-when dedicating the temple, may have been popularly associated with
-the punishable practice alluded to in Job xxxi. 26, of kissing the
-hand to the sun and moon. The words of Solomon are cancelled in the
-Massoretic text, and do not appear in any English version, but they
-are preserved by the LXX., and there declared to be in the book of
-Jasher. "They are," says Dr. Briggs, "recognised by the best modern
-critics as belonging to the original text [of 1 Kings viii. 12, 13]
-which then would read:
-
-
-   "The sun is known in the heavens,
-        But Jahveh said that he would dwell in thick darkness.
-        I have built up a house of habitation for thee,
-        A place for thee to dwell in forever.
-    Lo, is it not written in the book of Jasher?" [6]
-
-
-This suppression of the opening line of the Dedication, at cost
-of a grand poetic antithesis, reveals the hand of mere bigoted
-ignorance. How many other fine things have been eliminated, how
-many reduced to commonplaces, we know not, but the additions and
-interpolations in the Old Testament have been nearly all traced. Many
-of these are novelettes more prurient than the tales forbidden in
-families when found in the pages of Boccaccio and Balzac, and it is
-a notable evidence of the mere fetish that the Bible has become to
-most sects, that a chorus of abuse instead of welcome still meets the
-scholars who prove the quasi-spurious character of the most odious
-stories in Genesis.
-
-Bishop Colenso seems to have found in such tales only the work of a
-Jahvist with a taste for obscene details, but too little attention has
-been paid to the investigations of Bernstein, who discovers in many
-of these legends a late Ephraimic effort to blacken the character of
-the whole house and line of Judah. [7] Bernstein does not deal with
-the story of Adonijah and Jedidiah (Solomon), whose relative antiquity
-is shown, I think, in the fact that no shameful action is ascribed to
-the elder brother to account for the deprivation of his primogenitive
-right. After Solomon's accession, however, Adonijah proposed to marry
-the maiden Abishag, who technically belonged to his father's harem,
-and probably this tradition gave a cue to the inventor of the story
-of Absalom's having gone to his father's concubines in order to base
-on the act a claim to the kingdom while his father was yet alive.
-
-Absalom's shameful action is supposed to be a fulfilment of the
-sentence pronounced against David because of his crime against
-Uriah. A close examination of that passage (2 Sam. xii. 10-14) must
-suggest doubts about verses 11, 12, but at any rate the sentence is
-not fulfilled by Absalom's alleged act: David's "wives" were not
-taken away "before his eyes," and given "unto his neighbor," but
-some of his concubines were appropriated by his son. Absalom's act
-(2 Sam. xvi. 20-23) and that of David's consigning the concubines to
-perpetual isolation or imprisonment (2 Sam. xx. 3) are not alluded
-to in David's mourning for Absalom, nor in Joab's rebuke of this
-grief. In these strange incoherent items one seems to find the debris,
-so to say, of some masterly work, picturing a sort of Nemesis pursuing
-David and his family for the crime against Uriah. Ahithophel, who is
-described as "the word of God," was the grandfather of Bathsheba and
-the chief friend and counsellor of David, yet it was he who suddenly
-becomes a traitor to the King, foreshadowing Judas--as his sinister
-name ("brother of lies") implies--even to the extent of hanging
-himself. It was Bathsheba's grandfather who moved Absalom to dishonor
-his father's concubines. But were they only concubines in the original
-story, or were they David's wives, as predicted in the verses 11, 12
-(2 Sam. xii.) which seem misplaced and unfulfilled? It may have been
-that some of the details of the story were too gross for preservation,
-or too disgraceful to David, but I cannot think that we possess in its
-original form the tragedy suggested by the presence of an ancestor
-of seduced Bathsheba,--the sinister "word of God" Ahithophel,--and
-the death of the child of that adultery, the deflowering of Tamar,
-David's daughter, the disgrace and violent death of Amnon, Absalom,
-apparently of Daniel also, and finally of Adonijah. What became of
-the eight wives of David? Was that prediction ascribed to Nathan,
-of their defilement, without any corresponding narrative?
-
-In a previous chapter I have pointed out the improbability that the
-fatal wrath of Solomon against Adonijah could have been excited by
-his brother's proposal of honorable wedlock with the maiden Abishag,
-and conjectured that there may have been a story, now lost, of rivalry
-between the brothers for this "very fair" damsel. Whatever may have
-been the real history there is little doubt that there was substituted
-for it some real offence by Adonijah, perhaps such as that afterwards
-ascribed to Absalom. Bathsheba herself is here the Nemesis, as her
-grandfather is in the case of Absalom.
-
-It must be borne in mind that we are dealing with the age which
-produced the thrilling story of Joseph and his brothers, and Potiphar's
-wife, and the contrast with his chastity represented in the profligacy
-of Judah. Indications have been left in Gen. xxxv. at the end of
-verse 22 of the suppression of a story of Reuben and Bilhah, and no
-doubt there were other suppressions. How very bad the story of Reuben
-was we may judge, as Bernstein points out, by the severity of his
-condemnation by Jacob (Gen. xlix.) and by the shocking things about
-Judah (Gen. xxxviii.) allowed to remain in the text. In the latter
-chapter Bernstein finds the same personages,--David, Bathsheba,
-Solomon,--acting in a similar drama to that presented in the Samuel
-fragments, and under their disguises may perhaps be discovered some
-of the details suppressed in the Davidic records. Bernstein says:
-
-"In Genesis xxxviii. Judah, the fourth son of the patriarch, is shown
-in a light which is to lay bare the stain of his existence. Judah went
-to Adullam, where lived his friend 'Chirah.' He married a Canaanite,
-the daughter of Shuah. [8] His eldest son was called Er. He (Er) was
-displeasing in the eyes of Jahveh, therefore Jahveh slew him. His
-second son was called Onan: he died in consequence of his sexual
-sins. The third son's name was Shelah, and, as it is mysteriously
-stated after his name, 'he was at Chezib when his mother bare
-him.' Chezib is certainly the name of a place, and the addition may
-therefore signify that the mother had named the boy Shelah because the
-father happened to be in Chezib at the time, absent from home. Chezib
-has, however, a second meaning.... Chezib means 'deception, lie,' and
-is used by the prophet Micah in this sense (i. 4). Now as Shelah, in
-our narrative, serves to deceive Tamar's hopes, held out by Judah, the
-allusion to Chezib is appropriate. However this may be, Judah's sons
-are all represented as despicable. Even Judah himself fell into bad
-ways and was trapped into the snares laid by his daughter-in-law Tamar,
-who played the prostitute. Thus only did Judah found a generation,
-from which King David is said to descend, from a son of Judah called
-Paretz, meaning 'breaking through,' in which manner he is supposed
-to have behaved towards his brother at his birth.
-
-"Veiled as the libel is here, it becomes apparent as soon as we cast
-a glance upon David's family. The picture which this libel draws of
-Judah hits David himself sharply. The 'Canaanite'--namely, whom Judah
-marries [?]--is no other than the wife of Uriah the Hittite (murdered
-at David's command) whom David himself married adulterously. This
-wife of Judah is said to have been the daughter of a man named
-Shuah. Therefore she is a Bath-shua, and is thus called (verse
-12). But Bathshua is also Bathsheba herself, as one may conclude from 1
-Chron. iii. 5. The eldest son died, hateful in the sight of God, just
-like the first son of Bathsheba (2 Sam. xii. 15). The son of Judah is
-alleged to have been called Er; why? because reading it backwards
-(rea, wrong) it means 'bad,' 'wicked.' The second son is called Onan,
-and dies for sexual sins. He is no other than David's son Amnon, who
-meets his death on account of his sexual sins (2 Sam. xiii). The Tamar
-of Judah's story is the same as the Tamar dishonored by Amnon,--the
-daughter of David, who, in spite of her misfortune and her purity, is,
-to the entire ruin of her good name, humiliated to a person who plays
-the prostitute. And Shelah who does not die,--add to his name only the
-letter m, and you have Solomon."
-
-If in the light of these facts, which reveal the mythical character
-of some of the worst things told of Judah and David, the blessings
-of Jacob (Gen. xlix.) be carefully read, the blessing on Judah will
-be found rather equivocal. Colenso translates:
-
-
-   "A lion's whelp is Judah,
-    Ravaging the young of the suckling ewes."
-
-
-Is this couplet related to Nathan's parable of the rich man taking away
-the poor man's one little ewe lamb which smote the conscience of David?
-
-
-   "The staff shall not depart from Judah,
-    Nor the rod from between his feet
-    Until Shiloh come."
-
-
-Is this merely a device of the Ephraimite rebels, Jeroboamites,
-pretending to find in a patriarchal prophecy a prediction that Judah
-is to be superseded by the descendants of Joseph (on whom Jacob's
-encomiums and blessings are unstinted)? Shiloh was always their
-headquarters.
-
-It is probable, however, that there is here a play upon words. The
-words "Until Shiloh come" are rendered by some scholars "Till he
-(Judah) come to Shiloh," and interpreted as meaning "Till he come
-to rest." The Samaritan version ("donec veniat Pacificus") seems to
-identify Shiloh with Solomon. (Colenso, Pent. iii. p. 127.) But this
-is transparently Shelah over again. Shelomoh (Solomon), Shelah, and
-Shiloh are substantially of the same etymological significance. It
-will be observed that in Gen. xxxviii. Shelah is the only person
-whose character is not blackened. The Ephraimic poem, the "Blessings
-of Jacob,"--each blessing a vaticinium ex evento,--could well afford
-a half-disguised compliment to Solomon who had made no attempt to
-suppress the rebels of Shiloh,--the city of Abijah, who originated
-the Jeroboamic revolution which divided the Davidic kingdom. Jacob's
-blessing on Joseph is of course a blessing on Ephraim: it closes with
-a transfer of the crown (from Judah) to "him that is a prince among
-his brethren." This is "rest" from the arrows of David, this is the
-coming of Shiloh; it occurred under the reign of the Prince of Peace,
-Solomon, and it could not be undone by Solomon's son Rehoboam.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII.
-
-SOLOMONIC ANTIJAHVISM.
-
-
-The ferocities of Josiah and his Jahvists indicate the presence of
-an important Solomonist School. Their culture and tendencies are
-reflected, as we have seen, in the rage of prophets against them,
-and the continuance of their strength is shown in the preservation
-of Agur's Voltairian satire on Jahvism, and Job's avowed blasphemies:
-
-
-   "If indeed ye will glorify yourselves above me,
-    And prove me guilty of blasphemy--
-    Know then, that God hath wronged me!"
-
-
-This translation from Job, quoted from Professor Dillon, need only
-be compared with that of the authorised and the revised versions
-to show us the causa causans to-day which of old added four hundred
-interpolations to the Book of Job to soften its criticism.
-
-It appears strange, however, that Professor Dillon has not included
-among The Sceptics of the Old Testament three writers in the
-composite eighty-ninth Psalm, nor remarked its relation to the Book
-of Job. At the head of this wonderful composition the mythical wise
-man of 1 Kings iv. 31, Ethan, rises ("Maschil of Ethan the Ezrahite,"
-perhaps meaning Wisdom of the Everlasting Helper) to attest the divine
-mercies and faithfulness in all generations. This is in two verses,
-evidently ancient, which a later hand, apparently, has pointed with
-a specification of the covenant with David. After the "Selah" which
-ends these four verses come fourteen verses of sermonising upon them,
-in which nearly all of the points made by Job's "comforters" are put
-in a nutshell. The sons of God who presented themselves, Satan among
-them, in his council (Job i. 6) appear here also (Ps. lxxxix. 6):
-
-
-   "Who among the sons of the gods is like unto Jahveh,
-    A God very terrible in the council of the holy ones."
-
-
-After the mighty things that "Jah" had done to his enemies have been
-affirmed an Elohist takes up the burden and a "vision" like that of
-Eliphaz (Job iv. 13) is appealed to:
-
-
-   "Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy ones."
-
-
-The vision's revelation (Job v. 17) "Happy is the man whom God
-correcteth" is also in this psalm (32, 33): "Then will I visit their
-transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes, but
-my mercy will I not utterly take from him." And Eliphaz's assurance
-"thy seed will be great" (v. 25) corresponds with that in our psalm
-(verse 36), "His seed shall endure forever."
-
-When the psalmist of the vision has pictured, as if in dissolving
-views, the military renown of David, God's "servant," and his "horn,"
-pointing to Solomon, God's "first-born," the transgressions of the
-latter are intimated (30-33), but the seer continues to utter the
-divine promises:
-
-
-   "My covenant will I not break,
-    Nor alter the thing that has gone out of my lips.
-    One thing have I sworn by my holiness;
-    I will not lie unto David:
-    His seed shall endure forever,
-    And his throne as the sun before me;
-    As the moon which is established forever:
-    Faithful is the witness in the sky. Selah."
-
-
-Then breaks out the indignant accuser:
-
-
-   "But thou HAST cast off and rejected!
-    Thou hast been wroth with thine 'anointed';
-    Thou hast broken the covenant with thy 'servant,'
-    Thou hast profaned his crown to the very dust;
-    Thou hast broken down all his defences;
-    Thou hast brought his strongholds to ruin!
-    All the wayfarers that pass by despoil him;
-    He is become a reproach to his neighbors.
-    Thou hast exalted the right-hand of his adversaries,
-    Thou hast made all his enemies to rejoice.
-    Yea, thou turnest back the edge of his sword,
-    And hast not enabled him to stand in battle.
-    Thou hast made his brightness to cease,
-    And hurled his throne down to the ground.
-    The days of his youth thou hast shortened:
-    Thou hast covered him with shame! Selah."
-
-
-A sarcastic "Selah," or "so it is!"--if Eben Ezra's definition of
-Selah be correct.
-
-Then follow four verses by a more timid plaintiff, who, almost in the
-words of Job (e.g., x. 20), reminds Jahveh of the shortness of life,
-and the impossibility of any return from the grave, and asks how long
-he intends to wait before fulfilling his promises. He also supplies
-Koheleth with a text by the pessimistic exclamation, "For what vanity
-hast thou created all the children of men"!
-
-After this writer has sounded his "Selah," another rather more bitterly
-reminds Jahveh, in three verses, that not only his chosen people are
-in disgrace, but his own enemies are triumphant.
-
-(These two are much like the writer of Psalms xliv. 9-26, who almost
-repeats the points made by the above three remonstrants, and asks
-Jahveh, "Why sleepest thou?")
-
-Finally a Jahvist doxology, fainter than any appended to the other
-four books, completes this strange eighty-ninth psalm:
-
-
-   "Praised be Jahveh for evermore!
-    Amen, and Amen!"
-
-
-Great is Diana of the Ephesians! Or is this the half-sardonic
-submission of Job under the whirlwind-answer, which extorted from him
-no tribute except a virtual admission that when the ethical debate
-became a question of which could wield the loudest whirlwinds,
-he surrendered!
-
-In Job's case the only recantation is that of Jahveh himself, who
-admits (xlii. 7) that Job had all along spoken the right thing about
-him (Jahveh). The epilogue is a complete denial of Jahvist theology.
-
-Job's small voice of scepticism which followed the whirlwind was
-never silenced. The fragment of Agur (Proverbs xxx. 1-4) appears to
-have been written as the alternative reply of Job to Jahveh. Job had
-said, "I am vile, I will lay my hand upon my mouth, I have uttered
-that I understand not." Agur adds ironically, "I am more stupid
-than other men, in me is no human understanding nor yet the wisdom
-to comprehend the science of sacred things." Then quoting Jahveh's
-boast about distributing the wind (Job xxxviii. 24), about his "sons
-shouting for joy" (Ibid. 7), and giving the sea its garment of cloud
-(Ibid. 9), Agur, the "Hebrew Voltaire," as Professor Dillon aptly
-styles him, asks:
-
-
-   "Who has ascended into heaven and come down again?
-    Who can gather the wind in his fists?
-    Who can bind the seas in a garment?
-    Who can grasp all the ends of the earth?
-    Such an one I would question about God: 'What is his name?
-    And what the name of his sons, if thou knowest?'"
-
-
-The stupid Jahvist commentator who follows Agur (Proverbs xxx. 5-14)
-and in the same chapter interpolates 17 and 20, has the indirect value
-of rendering it probable that there were a great many "Agurites" (a
-"bad generation" he calls them) and that they were rather aristocratic
-and distrustful of the masses. This commentator, who cannot understand
-the Agur fragments, also shows us, side by side with the brilliant
-genius, lines revealing the mentally pauperised condition into which
-Jahvism must have fallen when such a writer was its champion.
-
-It is tolerably certain that such fragments as those of Agur imply a
-literary atmosphere, a cultured philosophic constituency, and a long
-precedent evolution of rationalism. Such peaks are not solitary, but
-rise from mountain ranges. Professor Dillon, whose admirable volume
-merits study, finds Buddhistic influence in Agur's fragments. [9]
-But I cannot find in them any trace of the recluse or of the mystic;
-he does not appear to be even an "agnostic," for when he says "I
-have worried myself about God and succeeded not," the vein is too
-satirical for a mind interested in theistic speculations. He is a man
-of the world,--more of a Goethe than a Voltaire; he regards Jahveh as
-a phantasm, is well domesticated in his planet, and does not moralise
-on the facts of nature in the Oriental any more than in the Pharisaic
-way. He appears to be a true Solomonic philosopher and naturalist. I
-cannot agree to Professor Dillon's omission of the "Four Cunning Ones"
-(Proverbs xxx. 24-28), because they are not of the same metrical form
-as the others, and lead "nowhither." The lines
-
-
-   "The ants are a people not strong,
-    Yet they provide their meat in the summer,"
-
-
-no doubt led to the famous parable of Proverbs vi. 6-11, "Go to the
-ant, thou sluggard." Being there imbedded in an otherwise commonplace
-editorial chapter, they may have been derived from some commentator
-on Agur.
-
-Agur apparently represents the Solomonic thinkers brought with
-the rest of the people under the trials that made Israel the Job
-of nations. They are such as those who led astonished Jeremiah to
-ask "what kind of wisdom is in them?" (Jeremiah viii.) They "do not
-recognise Jahveh's judgments"; in "shame, dismay, captivity, they have
-rejected Jahveh's word." The exquisite humor of Agur shows that these
-philosophers did not lose their serenity. Agur sees man passing his
-life between two insatiable daughters of the ghoul, "the Grave and
-the Womb,"--Birth and Death,--and amid the inevitable evils of life
-he will be wise to refrain from rage and lay his hand upon his lips.
-
-But silence was just what the Jahvist omniscients could not attain
-to. Notwithstanding Jahveh's confession that Job was right in his
-position, and the orthodox wrong in their theory that all evil is
-providential, the "comforters" rise again in the commentator who begins
-(Proverbs xxx. 5):
-
-
-   "Every word of God is perfected.
-    He is a shield to them that trust in Him,"
-
-
-and proceeds in verse 14 with his inanities. And these have prevailed
-ever since. Even Jesus, when he took up the burden of Wisdom, and
-rebuked the Jahvist superstition that those on whom a tower fell
-were subjects of a judgment, must have his stupid corrector to add,
-"Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish." This simpleton's
-superstition has taken the place of the great successor of Solomon,
-and to-day, amid all the learning of Christendom, is proclaiming
-that the Father is "permitting" all the Satans,--war, disease,
-earthquake, famine,--to harry his children just to test them or to
-chasten them. Why should omnipotence create a race requiring worse than
-inquisitorial tortures for its discipline? In all the literature of
-Christendom there is not one honest attempt to deal with the evils and
-agonies of nature; and at this moment we find theists apotheosizing the
-"Unknowable from which all things proceed," without any appreciation
-of the fact that in the remote past Jahvism sought the same refuge,
-and that it was proved by Job a refuge of fallacies. In an awakening
-moral and humane sentiment Job stands in this latter day upon the
-earth, and again steadily repeats his demand why one should respect
-an Unknowable from whom all things,--all horrors and agonies,--proceed.
-
-Ethically we are required to do no evil that good may come;
-theologically, to worship a deity who is doing just that all the
-time. This is no doubt a convenient doctrine for the Christian
-nations that wish to preserve their own property and peace at home,
-while acting as banditti in remote continents and islands. All such
-atrocities are enacted and adopted as part of the providential plan of
-spreading the Gospel, latterly "civilisation"; but it is very certain
-that there can be no such thing as national civilisation until evil is
-recognised as evil, good as good,--the one to be abhorred, the other
-loved,--and no deity respected whose government would wrong a worm.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII.
-
-THE BOOK OF PROVERBS AND THE AVESTA.
-
-
-The legend of the Queen of Sheba forms not only a poetic prologue
-to the epical tradition of Solomon's wisdom, but has a substantial
-connexion with the character of that wisdom, to whose final
-personification she contributed.
-
-The corresponding Oriental stories do not necessarily deprive this
-legend of historic basis, but point to the region of this "Queen
-of the Seven (Sheba)." Those Oriental pilgrimages of eminent women
-to great sages, however invested with magnificence, are natural;
-even such romances could not have been invented unless in accordance
-with the genius of the country in which they were written. There is
-no antecedent improbability that a queen, belonging to a region in
-which her sex enjoyed large freedom, should have made a journey to
-meet Solomon.
-
-The Abyssinians, who regard her as the founder of their dynasty, at the
-same time show how little characteristic of their country the legend
-was, by their ancient tradition, that it was the Queen of Sheba who
-provided that no woman should sit on the throne, forever! They claim
-that this Queen is referred to in Psalm xlv.--"At thy right hand
-doth stand the Queen, in gold of Ophir." This psalm is Solomonic,
-but the reference is no doubt to the Queen Mother, Bathsheba (whose
-throne was on his "right hand," 1 Kings ii. 19). Neither Naamah
-the Ammonitess, mother of Solomon's successor, nor the daughter of
-Pharaoh, who was his especially distinguished wife, is described as
-a queen,--this indeed not being a Jewish title for a king's wife. The
-psalm indicates much glory to be conferred on a woman by wedlock with
-Solomon, but not that he was to derive any honor from either or all of
-the "threescore queens" assigned him in later times (Cant. vi. 8). In
-another Solomonic Psalm (lxxii.) it is said:
-
-
-   "The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents:
-    The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts,
-    Yea, all kings shall fall down before him."
-
-
-No glory is here supposed to be derivable from a woman, and an inventor
-would probably have merely devised a saga on the last of the lines
-just quoted, which is adapted in 1 Kings iv. 34, to Solomon's wisdom,
-or he would have imagined some instance of a particularly illustrious
-monarch coming to pay homage to Solomon. That the only example
-particularized is that of a woman carries some signs of reality.
-
-Assuming that there was ever any King Solomon at all, this Psalm
-lxxii., whose Hebrew title is "Of Solomon," might have been written
-in the height of his reign. The title of "God" given him in Psalm
-xlv. is here approximated in the opening line, "Give the King thy
-judgments, O Elohim," and in the ascription to him of such virtues and
-such beneficent dominion, "from the river (Euphrates) to the ends of
-the earth," without any further reference to God, that an indignant
-Jahvist expands the doxology (18, 19) to include a reclamation for
-Jahveh. The ancient lyric closes with verse 17, which says of Solomon:
-
-
-    "His name shall endure forever;
-    His name shall have emanations as long as the sun;
-    Men shall bless themselves in him;
-    All nations shall call him The Happy."
-
-
-The Jahvist answers:
-
-
-   "Blessed be Jahveh Elohim, the Elohim of Israel,
-    Who alone doeth wondrous things,
-    And blessed be His glorious name forever;
-    And let the whole earth be filled with His glory.
-    Amen, and Amen."
-
-
-Now in this beautiful poem (omitting the doxology) the elation is
-especially concerning some connexion with Sheba. In verse 10 it is
-said "The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts"; in verse 15,
-"To him shall be given of the gold of Sheba." These lines might have
-been written on the announcement of a royal visit, or meeting, which
-had not mentioned a queen. But what country is indicated by Sheba (the
-Seven)? In India there are seven holy rivers, and seven holy Rishis,
-represented by the seven stars of the Great Bear. But these correspond
-with the Seven Rivers of Persia which enter into the Persian Gulf, in
-the Avesta called Satavæsa, a star-deity. In the Yîr Yast 9 it is said:
-
-
-   "Satavæsa makes those waters flow down to the seven Karshvares of
-    the earth, and when he has arrived down there he stands, beautiful,
-    spreading ease and joy on the fertile countries, thinking in
-    himself, 'How shall the countries of the Aryas grow fertile?'"
-
-
-As there are seven heavens, there are seven earths (Karshvares),
-and these, as already shown (ante II.), are presided over by the
-"seven infinite ones" (Amesha-Spentas). Of these seven the first is
-Ahura Mazda himself, and of the others only one is female--Armaîti,
-genius of the earth. Of this wonderful and beautiful personification
-more must be said presently, but it may be said here that Armaîti
-was the spouse of Ahura Mazda, and Queen of the Seven,--the seven
-Ameshi-Spentas who preside respectively over the seven karshvares of
-the earth.
-
-The function of Armaîti being to win men from nomadic life and warfare,
-to foster peace and tillage, she was a type of "the eternal feminine";
-and such an ideal could hardly have been developed except in a region
-where women were held in great honour, nor could it fail to produce
-women worthy of honor. That such was the fact in Zoroastrian Persia
-is proved by many passages in the Avesta, wherein we find eminent
-women among the first disciples of Zoroaster. There is a litany to the
-Fravashis, or ever living and working spirits, of twenty-seven women,
-whose names are given in Favardîn Yast (139-142). Among these was
-the Queen Hutaosa, converted by Zoroaster, the wife of King Vîstâspa,
-the Constantine of Zoroastrianism. Hutaosa was naturally a visible and
-royal representative of Armaîti, "Queen of the Seven," a princess of
-peace, a patroness of culture, to be imitated by other Persian queens.
-
-That the sanctity of "seven" was impressed on all usages of life in
-Persia is shown in the story of Esther. King Ahasuerus feasts on the
-seventh day, has seven chamberlains, and consults the seven princes
-of Media and Persia ("wise men which knew the times"). When Esther
-finds favor of the King above all other maidens, as successor to
-deposed Vashti, she is at once given "the seven maidens, which were
-meet to be given her, out of the King's house; and he removed her
-and her maidens to the best place of the house of the women." Esther
-was thus a Queen of the Seven,--of Sheba, in Hebrew,--and although
-this was some centuries after Solomon's time, there is every reason
-to suppose that the Zoroastrian social usages in Persia prevailed
-in Solomon's time. At any rate we find in the ancient Psalm lxxii.,
-labeled "Of Solomon," Kings of Sheba (the Seven) mentioned along
-with the Euphrates, chief of the Seven Rivers (Zend Haptaheando); and
-remembering also the "sevens" of Esther, we may safely infer that a
-"Queen of Sheba" connoted a Persian or Median Queen.
-
-We may also fairly infer, from the emphasis laid on "sevens" in Esther,
-in connexion with her wit and wisdom, that a Queen of the Seven had
-come to mean a wise woman, whether of Jewish or Persian origin, a
-woman instructed among the Magi, and enjoying the freedom allowed by
-them to women. There is no geographical difficulty in supposing that a
-Persian queen like Hutaosa, a devotee of Armaîti (Queen of the Seven,
-genius of Peace and Agriculture), might not have heard of Salem, the
-City of Peace, of its king whose title was the Peaceful (Solomon),
-and visited that city,--though of course the location of the meeting
-may have been only a later tradition. [10]
-
-The object of the Queen's visit to Solomon was "to test him with hard
-questions" as to his wisdom. It was not to discover or pay court to his
-wisdom, though he received from her "of the gold of Sheba" spoken of
-in the psalm. As a royal missionary of the Magi her ability and title
-to prove Solomon's knowledge, and decide on it, are assumed in the
-narrative (1 Kings x.). Several sentences in her tribute to Solomon's
-"wisdom and goodness" recall passages in the Psalm (lxxii.). There is
-here an intimation of some prevailing belief that Solomon's wisdom
-was harmonious with the Zoroastrian wisdom. Whether the visit of
-the Queen be mythical or not, and even if both she and Solomon are
-regarded as mythical, the legend would none the less be an expression
-of a popular perception of elements not Jewish in Solomonic literature.
-
-Of course only Biblical mythology is here referred to. The Moslem
-mythology of Solomon and the Queen (Balkis) has taken from the
-Avesta Wise King Yima's potent ring, and his power over demons, and
-other fables, in most instances to be noted only as an unconscious
-recognition of a certain general accent common to the narratives of
-the two great kings. Yet it can hardly be said that the stories of Yima
-in the Avesta and of Solomon in the Bible are entirely independent of
-each other,--as in Yima's being given by the deity a sort of choice
-and selecting the political career, Ahura Mazda saying: "Since thou
-wanted not to be the preacher and the bearer of my law, then make thou
-my worlds thrive, make my worlds increase: undertake thou to nourish,
-to rule, and to watch over my world." Ahura Mazda requests Yima to
-build an enclosure for the preservation of the seeds of life (men,
-animals, and plants) during a succession of fatal winters, and some
-of the particulars resemble both the legend of the ark and that of
-building the temple. Yima was, like Solomon, a priest-king (he is also
-called "the good shepherd"); he was, like Solomon, beset by satans
-(daêvas), and after a reign of fabulous prosperity he finally fell by
-uttering falsehood. What the falsehood was is told in the Bundahis:
-the good part of creation was ascribed to the evil creator.
-
-Several other heroes of the Avesta have assisted in the idealisation
-of Solomon, notably King Vîstâspa, already mentioned. Like Solomon,
-he is famous for his horses and his wealth. Zoroaster exhorts him,
-"All night long address the heavenly Wisdom; all night long call for
-the Wisdom that will keep thee awake." From Zoroaster the "Young King"
-learned "how the worlds were arranged"; and he is advised "have no
-bad priests or unfriendly priests."
-
-It is now necessary to inquire whether there is anything corresponding
-to these facts in the ancient writings ascribed to Solomon. The
-lower criticism has little liking for Solomon, and makes but a feeble
-struggle for the genuineness of his canonical books against the higher
-criticism, which forbids us to assign any word to Solomon. But these
-higher critics acquired their learning while lower critics, and it
-is difficult to repress an occasional suspicion of the survival of
-an unconscious prejudice against the royal secularist, apparent in
-their unwillingness to admit any participation at all of Solomon in
-the wisdom books. Is this quite reasonable?
-
-It is of course clear that Solomon cannot be described as the author of
-any book or compilation that we now possess. But neither did Boccaccio
-write Shakespeare's "Cymbeline," nor Dryden's "Cymon and Iphigenia,"
-nor the apologue of the Ring in Lessing's "Nathan the Wise," nor
-Tennyson's "Falcon," all of which, however, are his tales. I select
-Boccaccio for the illustration because his defiance of "the moralities"
-led to his suppression in most European homes, thus facilitating the
-utilization of his ideas by others who derive credit from his genius,
-this being precisely what might be expected in the case of the great
-secularist of Jerusalem. For no one can carefully study the Book
-of Proverbs without perceiving that a large number of them never
-could have been popular proverbs, but are terse little essays and
-fables, some of them highly artistic, which indicate the presence
-at some remote epoch of a man of genius. And I cannot conceive any
-fair reason for setting aside the tradition of many centuries which
-steadily united the name of Solomon with much of this kind of writing,
-or for believing that every sentence he ever uttered or wrote is lost.
-
-It would require a separate work to pick out from the two Anthologies
-ascribed to Solomon (the First, Proverbs x. i-xxii. 16; the Second,
-xxv-xxix), the more elaborate thoughts, and piece together those that
-represent one mind, even were I competent for that work. But this
-fine task awaits some scholar, and, indeed, the whole Book of Proverbs
-needs a more thorough treatment in this direction than it has received.
-
-Of the last seven chapters of the Book of Proverbs, one (xxx.),
-containing the fragments of Agur and his angry antagonist, has been
-(vii.) considered. Chapters xxv., xxvi., xxvii., and xxxi. 10-31, may
-with but little elimination fairly come under their general heading,
-"These are also proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, King
-of Judah, copied out." Chapters xxviii. and xxix., with their flings
-at princes and wealth, contain many Jahvist insertions. The admirable
-verses in xxiv. 23-34, and those in xxxi. 10-29, 31, represent the
-high secular ethics of the Solomonic school.
-
-The verses last mentioned (exaltation of the virtuous woman) are,
-curiously enough, blended with "The words of King Lemuel, the oracle
-which his mother taught him." The ancient Rabbins identify Lemuel
-with Solomon, and relate that when, on the day of the dedication
-of the temple, he married Pharaoh's daughter, he drank too much at
-the wedding feast, and slept until the fourth hour of the next day,
-with the keys of the temple under his pillow. Whereupon his mother,
-Bathsheba, entered and reproved him with this oracle. Bathsheba's
-own amour with Solomon's father does not appear to have excited any
-rabbinical suspicion that the description of the virtuous wife with
-which the Book of Proverbs closes is hardly characteristic of the
-woman. She was the "Queen Mother," a part of the divine scheme, her
-conception of the builder of the temple immaculate, predetermined in
-the counsels of Jahveh.
-
-The first nine verses of this last chapter in the Book of Proverbs
-certainly appear as if written at a later day, perhaps even so late as
-the third century before our era, and aimed at the Jahvist tradition
-of Solomon. Lemuel seems to be allegorical, and we here have an
-early instance of the mysterious disinclination to mention the great
-King's name. His name, Renan assures us, is hidden under "Koheleth,"
-but he is not named in the text of that book or even in that of the
-"Wisdom of Solomon." In Ezra v. 11 the mention of the temple as the
-house "which a great king of Israel builded and finished" seems to
-indicate a purposed suppression of Solomon's name, which continued
-(Jeremiah lii. 20 is barely an exception) until this silence was
-broken by Jesus Ben Sira, and again by Jesus of Nazareth.
-
-The removal of verse 30 (Proverbs xxxi.), clearly a late Jahvist
-protest, leaves the praise of the virtuous woman with which the book
-closes without any suggestion of piety. Yet we find here that "her
-price is far above rubies," "she openeth her mouth with wisdom," and
-one or two other tropes which probably united with some in the First
-Anthology to evolve more distinctly the goddess Wisdom. Some sentences
-of the First Anthology grew like mustard seed. "Wisdom resteth in the
-heart of him who hath understanding" (Proverbs xiv. 33), reappears
-in 1 Kings iii. 12, and in x. 24 it is definitely stated that it was
-the wisdom which God had put into Solomon's heart that made all the
-earth seek his presence. It was a miracle they went to see; the glory
-is not that of Solomon, but that of God. [11]
-
-The nearest approach to a personification of Wisdom in the First
-Anthology is Proverb xx. 15: "There is gold and abundance of pearls,
-but the lips of knowledge are a (more) precious jewel." This expands in
-Job to a long list of precious things--gold, coral, topaz, pearls--all
-surpassed by Wisdom, and the similitudes journey on to the parables
-of Jesus, wherein the woman sweeps for the lost silver, and the
-man sells all he has for the pearl of price. This, however, was a
-comparatively simple and human development. And the first complete
-personification of Wisdom, growing out of "the lips of knowledge," and
-perhaps influenced by the portraiture of "the virtuous woman," is an
-expression of philosophical and poetic religion. This personification
-is in Proverbs viii. and ix., which are evidently far more ancient
-than the seven chapters preceding them, and no doubt constitute the
-original editorial Prologue to the so-called "Proverbs of Solomon,"
-with the exception of some Jahvist cant about "the fear of Jahveh." We
-hear from "the lips of knowledge" a reaffirmation of the "excellent
-things" said in the Anthologies about the superiority of Wisdom to
-gems. (The word "ancient" given by the revisers in the margin to
-viii. 18 may possibly signify the antiquity of the Anthologies when
-this Prologue was written.) The scholarly writer of the Prologue had
-closely studied the ancient proverbs, and occasionally gives good hints
-for the interpretation of some that puzzle modern translators. Thus
-Wisdom, in describing herself as "sporting" (viii. 30), indicates the
-right meaning of x. 23 to be that while the fool finds his sport in
-mischief, the wise man finds his sport with wisdom. (This proverb may
-also have suggested the laughter of the "virtuous woman" in xxxi. 25.)
-
-In viii. 22-31, Wisdom becomes more than a personification, and takes
-her place in cosmogony. This passage, which contains germs of much
-of our latter-day theology, must be quoted in full, and comparatively
-studied. Wisdom speaks:
-
-
-    22. Jahveh acquired me in the outset of his way,
-        Before his works, from of old.
-
-    23. From eternity was I existent,
-        From the first, before the earth.
-
-    24. When no deep seas I was brought forward,
-        When no fountains abounding with water.
-
-    25. Before the mountains were fixed,
-        Before the hills, was I brought forward:
-
-    26. When he had not fashioned the earth and the fields,
-        And the consummate part of the dust of the world.
-
-    27. When he established the heavens, I was there;
-        When he set a boundary on the face of the deep;
-
-    28. When he made firm the clouds above;
-        When the fountains of the deep became strong;
-
-    29. When he gave to the sea its limit,
-        That the waters should not pass over their coast;
-        When he marked out the foundation pillars of the earth:
-
-    30. Then was I near him, as a master builder:
-        And I was his delight continually,
-        Sporting before him at all times;
-
-    31. Sporting in the habitable part of his earth,
-        And my delight was with the sons of men.
-
-
-Let us compare with this picture of Wisdom that of Armaîti, genius of
-the Earth, in the sacred Zoroastrian books. In the Gâtha Ahunavaiti,
-7, it is said: "To succor this life (to increase it) Armaîti came
-with wealth, and good and true mind: she, the everlasting one,
-created the material world; but the soul, as to time, the first
-cause among created beings, was with thee" (Ahura Mazda). Thus, like
-Wisdom, Armaîti is everlasting: she was not created, but "acquired,"
-by the deity. When Ahura Mazda, as chief of the seven Amesha-spentas,
-ideally designed the world, she gave it reality, as master-builder,
-and, like Wisdom, hewed out the foundation pillars he had marked
-out,--namely, the Seven Karshvares of the earth. The opening lines
-of Proverbs ix. read almost like a quotation from some Gâtha:
-
-
-   "Wisdom hath builded her house,
-    She hath hewn out her seven pillars."
-
-
-Like Wisdom, Armaîti was the continual delight of the supreme God. In
-an ancient Pâli MS., it is said that Zoroaster saw the supreme being in
-heaven, with Armaîti seated at his side, her hand caressing his neck,
-and said: "Thou, who art Ahura Mazda, turnest not thy eyes away from
-her, and she turns not away from thee." Ahura Mazda tells Zoroaster
-that she is "the house mistress of my heaven, and mother of the
-creatures." [12] Like Wisdom, Armaîti has joy in the "habitable part"
-of the earth, and the "sons of men," from whom she receives especial
-delight ("the greatest joy"), are enumerated in the Vendîdâd, also
-the places in which she has such delight. They are the faithful who
-cultivate the earth morally and physically, and the places so watered
-or drained, and homes "with wife, children, and good herds within."
-
-Armaîti has a daughter, "the good Ashi," whose function is to pass
-between earth and heaven and bring the heavenly wisdom (Vohu-Mano,
-"Good Thought") to mankind. The soul of the world thus reaches, and
-is reached by, heaven, and Armaîti thus becomes a personification
-of the combined human and superhuman Wisdom ascribed to great men,
-such as Solomon. At the same time the "sons of men" are all the
-children of Armaîti, and she finds delight among them. Even the
-rudest are restrained by her culture. "By the eyes of Armaîti the
-(demonic) ruffian was made powerless," says Zoroaster. The spirit of
-the Earth, laughing with her flowers and fruits, survived in Persia
-the sombre reign of Islam, to sing in the quatrain of Omar Khayyám:
-"I asked my fair bride--the World--what was her dower: she answered,
-'My dower is in the joy of thy heart.'"
-
-"The sons of men" is not an Avestan phrase, for to Armaîti her
-daughters are as dear as her sons, but we find in the Vendîdâd "the
-seeds of men and women." These are sprung from those who were selected
-for preservation in the Vara, or enclosure, of the first man, Yimi,
-made by direction of the deity, when the evil powers brought fatal
-winters on the world. The deformed, diseased, wicked, were excluded;
-the chosen people were those formed of "the best of the earth." From
-long and prosperous life on earth, the Amesha of immortality, the
-good angel of death, conducted them to eternal happiness; they are the
-immortals, children of the demons being mortals. There was something
-corresponding to this in the Jewish idea of their being a chosen
-people, as distinguished from the Gentile world (see Deut. xxxii. 8),
-and no doubt the phrase "sons of men" represented a divine dignity
-afterwards expressed in the title, "Son of Man." [13]
-
-The Solomonic hymn of Wisdom at the creation (Proverbs viii. 22-31)
-contains other Avestan phrases. "From eternity was I existent," recalls
-Zervan akarana, "boundless time," and verse 26, relating to the earth,
-is still more significant: in it "the sum" has been suggested by the
-Revisers for (E. V.) "the highest part" (of the earth), but in either
-rendering it is near to the Avestan phrase, "the best of Armaîti"
-(Earth). This phrase is reproduced in the Bundahis (xv. 6), where the
-creator, Ahura Mazda, says to the first pair, "You are men (cf. Genesis
-v. 2, he 'called their name Adam'), you are the ancestry of the world,
-and you are created the best of Armaîti (the Earth) by me." (West's
-translation. Sacred Books of the East. Vol. V., p. 54, n. 2.) The
-word for Earth in Proverb 26 is adamah, and in the Septuagint (various
-reading) it is actually translated Armaith,--Armaîti's very name. We
-may thus find in Proverb 26 (viii.) the idea of Omar Khayyám, "Man
-is the whole creation's summary."
-
-Whether there is any connexion between the Sanskrit Adima and
-Hebrew Adam is still under philological discussion: probably not,
-for their meaning is different, Adima meaning "the first," and
-Adam relating to the material out of which he is said to have been
-formed. Adam is derived from Adamah: after all, man came from the
-great Woman--"the Mother of all living." [14] Adamah, according to
-Sale, is a Persian word meaning "red earth," and in Hebrew also it
-connotes redness. Armaîti might have acquired an epithet of ruddiness
-from her union with Âtar, the genius of Fire (Fargard xviii. 51,
-52. Darmesteter. Introduction, iv. 30). In Hebrew adamah combines
-three senses--a fortress, redness, and cultivated ground. In Proverbs
-(viii. 31) we have the fortress or enclosure, "the habitable part of
-his earth"; in verse 26 the cultivated earth, "the highest part (or
-sum, or best) of the dust of the earth." The "delight" in which Wisdom
-dwelt (verse 30) is Eden, the garden of delight, and in verse 31 this
-delight associated with the human children of the earth. Here we have
-the elements of the narrative of the creation of Adam in Genesis,
-and of the garden, though clearly not derived from Genesis. And in
-Genesis we find something like a personification of the earth, as in
-ix. 13, "It (the rainbow) shall be a token of a covenant between me
-and the earth."
-
-The idea of a creative deity requiring, as in Proverbs viii., the
-assistance of another personal being, is foreign to Jahvism, but it
-is of the very substance of Zoroastrianism, and it reappears in the
-Elohism of Genesis. Another important and fundamental fact is, that we
-find in the prologue to Proverbs a deity contending against something,
-circumscribing forces that need control, not of his creation. It is
-plain that the conception of monotheistic omnipotence had not yet
-been formed. There are higher and lower parts of the earth.
-
-Although there is no evidence that any such compilation as our
-"Genesis" existed at the time when the prologue (viii., ix.) to the
-"Proverbs of Solomon" was composed, the Elohistic opening of Genesis,
-especially in its original form, harmonises with the Parsi conflict
-between Light and Darkness.
-
-
-   "When of old Elohim separated heaven and earth--when the earth was
-    desolation and emptiness--darkness on the face of the deep, and
-    the spirit of Elohim brooding on the face of the waters,--Elohim
-    said, Be Light; Light was." [15]
-
-
-The spirit of God "brooding" over the waters (Genesis i. 1) may
-be identified with the Wisdom of Proverbs ix. 1, who "builds her
-house" as the Elohim built the universe, and "hath hewn out her
-seven pillars" like a true Armaîti, "Queen of the Seven." She is
-the Spirit of Light. And perhaps the darkness that was on the face
-of the abyss suggested the antagonistic personification in the next
-chapter (ix.) named by Professor Cheyne "Dame Folly." Wisdom, having
-builded her house, spread her table, mingled her wine, sends forth her
-maidens to invite the simple to forsake Folly, enjoy her feast, and
-"live." Dame Folly,--who though she has "a seat in high places" is
-"silly,"--clamours to every wayfarer that even the bread and water
-of her table, being surreptitious, are sweeter than the luxuries
-and wine offered by Wisdom. This appears to be the meaning of Dame
-Folly's somewhat obscure invitation.
-
-
-  "'Waters stolen are sweet!
-    Forbidden bread is pleasant!'
-    He knoweth not her phantoms are there,
-    That her guests are in the underworld."
-
-
-In this contrast between Wisdom inviting all to enter her house,
-drink her wine, and "live," and Folly inviting them to her "Sheol,"
-we have nearly a quatrain of Omar Khayyám: "Since from the beginning
-of life to its end there is for thee only this earth, at least live
-as one who is on it and not under it."
-
-In the Avesta the good and wise Mother Earth (Armaîti) is opposed by
-a malign female "Drug" (demoness), whose paramours are described in
-Fargard xviii. (Vendîdâd). These two are fairly represented by Wisdom
-and Folly as personified in Proverbs viii. and ix.
-
-The Jahvist who in Proverbs i. 1-7 (excepting the first six verses)
-undertakes to edit the original and ancient editor as well as Solomon,
-presents the curious case of one of Dame Folly's phantoms interpreting
-the words of Wisdom's guests. Unable to comprehend their portraiture
-of Dame Folly, he imagines that the allusion must be to harlotry,
-admonishes his "son" that "Jahveh giveth wisdom," which among other
-things will "deliver thee from the strange woman," whose "house sinketh
-down to the underworld and her paths unto phantoms." Which recalls
-the pious lady who on hearing her ritualistic pastor accused by a
-dissenter of leanings toward the Scarlet Woman, anxiously inquired
-of a friend whether she had ever heard any scandal connected with
-their vicar's name!
-
-Our Jahvist editor seems to be one who would often say of laughter
-"it is mad"; and naturally could not imagine how Wisdom could "sport"
-before the Lord (viii. 30) unless she were in some sense mad. The
-sport before Jahveh could only be in mockery of some sinner's torment,
-like the derision ascribed to Jahveh (Psalm ii. 4); consequently our
-editor represents Wisdom crying abroad in the streets:
-
-
-   "Because I have called and ye refused....
-    I also will laugh in the day of your calamity,
-    I will mock when your fear cometh."
-
-
-But Pliny mentions the Mazdean belief, confirmed by Parsi tradition,
-that Zoroaster was born laughing. To him Ahura Mazda says: "Do thou
-proclaim, O pure Zoroaster, the vigor, the glory, the help and the
-joy that are in the Fravashis (souls) of the faithful."
-
-However, we may see in these first seven chapters of Proverbs that
-Wisdom had become detached from the sons of men, in whom she had
-once found delight, was no longer in the human heart, but had finally
-ascended to wield the heavenly thunderbolts. And yet it is probable
-that we owe to this vindictive and menacing attitude of deified Wisdom
-the preservation of so many witty and sceptical things in books
-traditionally ascribed to Solomon. The orthodox legend being that
-the Lord had put supernatural wisdom into Solomon's heart, and never
-revoked it despite his "idolatry" and secularism, it followed that the
-naughty man could not help continuing to be a medium of this divine
-person, Wisdom, and that it might be a dangerous thing to suppress
-any utterance of hers through Solomon,--unwitting blasphemy. However
-profane or worldly the writings might appear to the Jahvist mind,
-there was no knowing what occult inspiration there might be in them,
-and the only thing editors could venture was to sprinkle through them
-plenteous disinfectants in the way of "Fear-of-the-Lord" wisdom.
-
-The proverbs in which the name Jahveh appears are not, of course, to
-be indiscriminately rejected as entirely Jahvist interpolations. It
-seems probable that little more than the word Jahveh has been supplied
-in some of these,--e. g., xix. 3, xx. 27, xxi. 1, 3, xxviii. 5,
-xxix. 26. But in a majority of cases the proverbs containing the name
-Jahveh are ethically and radically inharmonious with the substance
-and spirit of the book as a whole, which is founded on the supremacy
-of human "merits" as fully as Zoroastrianism, in which salvation
-depends absolutely on Good Thought, Good Word, Good Deed. In dynamic
-monotheism (as distinguished from ethical) of which Jahvism is the
-ancient and Islam the modern type, the doctrine of human "merits"
-is inadmissible: a man's virtues are not his own, and in Jahveh's
-sight they are but "filthy rags," except so far as they are given by
-Jahveh. But in the Solomonic proverbs the highest virtues, and the
-supreme blessings of the universe, are obtained by a man's own wisdom,
-character, and deeds. And in some cases the claims for Jahveh appear
-to have been inserted as if in answer or retort to proverbs ignoring
-the participation of any deity in such high matters. I quote a few
-instances, in which the antithesis turns to antagonism:
-
-
-    Solomon--By kindness and truth iniquity is atoned for.
-
-    Jahvist--By the fear of Jahveh men turn away from evil. (xvi. 6.)
-
-    Solomon--He who is skilful in a matter findeth good.
-
-    Jahvist--Whoso trusteth in Jahveh, happy is he! (xvi. 20.)
-
-
-In several other cases entire proverbs seem to be inserted for the
-correction of preceding ones,--these being not always understood by
-the interpolator:
-
-
-    Solomon--Treasures of evil profit not,
-    But virtue delivereth from death.
-
-    Jahvist--Jahveh will not suffer the righteous man to be famished,
-    But the desires of the unrighteous he thrusteth away. (x. 2, 3.)
-
-    Solomon--The tongue of the just is choice silver;
-    The heart of the evil is little worth:
-    The lips of the just feed many,
-    But fools die through heartlessness.
-
-    Jahvist--The blessing of Jahveh, that maketh rich,
-    And work addeth nothing thereto. (x. 20-22.)
-
-    Solomon--The virtuous man hath an everlasting foundation. (x. 25.)
-
-    Jahvist--The fear of Jahveh prolongeth days. (x. 27.)
-
-    Solomon--Hear counsel, receive correction,
-    That thou mayst be wise in thy future.
-
-    Jahvist--Many are the purposes in a man's heart,
-    But the counsel of Jahveh, that shall stand. (xix. 20-1.)
-
-    Solomon--The acceptableness of a man is his kindness:
-    Better off the poor than the treacherous man.
-
-    Jahvist--The fear of Jahveh addeth to life;
-    Whoso is filled therewith shall abide, he shall not be visited
-    by evil. (xix. 22-3.)
-
-    Solomon--The upright man considereth his way.
-
-    Jahvist--Wisdom is nothing, heart nothing,
-    Counsel nothing, against Jahveh. (xxi. 29, 30.)
-
-
-In one instance the Jahvist has made a slip by which his hand is
-confessed. In xvii. 3 we find:
-
-
-    The fining-pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold,
-    But Jahveh trieth hearts.
-
-
-But he omitted to notice the repetition in xxvii. 21, where we find
-the profound sentence which the Jahvist had reduced to commonplace:
-
-
-    The fining-pot for silver and the furnace for gold,
-    And a man is proved by that which he praiseth.
-
-
-The Jahvist spirit is also discoverable in xx. 22:
-
-
-    Solomon--Say not "I will retaliate evil";
-
-    Jahvist--Wait for Jahveh and he will save thee.
-
-
-Also in xxv. 21-2:
-
-
-    Solomon--If he that hateth thee be hungry, give him bread to eat,
-    If he be athirst give him water to drink.
-
-    Jahvist--For thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head,
-    And Jahveh shall reward thee.
-
-
-A similar mean and vindictive spirit is shown in xxiv. 18, following
-a magnanimous proverb; but in verse 29, probably more ancient than 18,
-we find the unqualified rebuke of retaliation:
-
-
-    Say not "As he hath done to me, so will I do to him,
-    I will render to the man according to his work."
-
-
-It was this generosity that Buddha exercised, [16] and Jesus; and it
-was left to Paul to recover the Jahvist modifications of Solomon's
-wisdom in order to adulterate for hard Romans the humane spirit of
-Jesus (Romans xii. 19, 20). The Solomonic sentences are normally so
-magnanimous as to throw suspicion on any clause tainted with smallness
-or vulgarity. The pervading spirit is, "The benevolent heart shall
-be enriched, and he who watereth shall himself be watered."
-
-There is one proverb (xiv. 32) which suggests a belief in immortality,
-or possibly in the Angel of Death:
-
-
-    By his evil deeds the evil man is thrust downward,
-    But the virtuous man hath confidence in his death.
-
-
-According to the Avesta every man is born with an invisible noose
-around his neck. When a good man dies the noose falls, and he passes
-to a beautiful region where he is met by a maid, to whom he says, "Who
-art thou, who art the fairest I have ever seen?" She answers, "O thou
-of good thoughts, good words, good deeds, I am thy actions." The evil
-man meets a leprous hag, embodiment of his actions, who by his noose
-drags him down through the evil-thought hell, the evil-word hell, the
-evil-deed hell, to the region of "Endless Darkness" (Yast xxii.). This
-darkness may be metaphorically spoken of in Proverbs xx. 20:
-
-
-    He that curseth his father and mother,
-    His lamp shall be put out in the blackest darkness.
-
-
-But generally the allusions to death in the Solomonic proverbs do not
-seem to allude to physical death. In x. 2 "virtue delivereth from
-death" is in antithesis to the unprofitableness of evil treasures,
-and in 16:
-
-
-    The reward of a virtuous man is life;
-    The gain of the wicked is sin.
-
-
-Here "life" and "sin" are in opposition. Other sentences to be
-compared are:
-
-
-    The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life,
-    To avoid the snares of death. (xiii. 14, cf. the Jahvist xiv. 27.)
-    Understanding is a fountain of life to those who possess it,
-    But the snare of fools is Folly. (xvi. 22.)
-    He that hateth reproof shall die. (xv. 10.)
-    The way of life is upward to the wise,
-    So as to turn away from the grave (sheol) beneath. (xv. 24.)
-    Death and life are in the power of the tongue,
-    And they who love it shall eat its fruit. (xviii. 21.)
-
-
-(In the last clause "it" probably refers to "life," unless the pronoun
-be cancelled altogether.)
-
-
-    The getting of treasures by a tongue of falsehood
-    Is getting a fleeting vapour, delusions of death. (xxi. 6.)
-    In the way of virtue is life,
-    But the way of the by-path leadeth to death. (xii. 28.)
-    The man who wandereth from the way of instruction
-    Shall rest in the congregation of the phantoms. (xxi. 16.)
-
-
-The two proverbs last quoted may be usefully compared with the ancient
-Prologue (viii. ix.) already referred to in this chapter, as they
-are there reproduced pictorially in Wisdom and Dame Folly sitting at
-their respective doors. Wisdom offers long life and happiness:
-
-
-    But he who wandereth from me doeth violence to his own life,
-    All who hate me love death. (viii. 36.)
-
-
-Dame Folly tries to turn into her by-path those who are "proceeding
-straight in their course" (ix. 15), but her victim--
-
-
-    He knoweth not her phantoms are there,
-    That her guests are in the underworld. (ix. 18.)
-
-
-The same Hebrew word Rephaim (phantoms or shades) is used here and
-in xxi. 16.
-
-All of these references to death and the underworld (sheol), except
-perhaps xiv. 32, refer to the living death, moral and spiritual,
-which is of such vast and fundamental significance in Zoroastrian
-religion. In this religion the evil power is "all death." The universe
-is divided by and into "the living and the not living." [17] "When
-these two Spirits came together they made first Life and Death,"--words
-sometimes used as synonymous with the "Good and the Evil Mind." Ahura
-Mazda representing all the forces that work for health and life,
-Angromainyu (Ahriman) all that work for disease and destruction, have
-ranged with them all animals and plants, on one side or the other, in
-this great conflict. The life of an Ahrimanian creature is "incarnate
-death." (Darmesteter's Introduction to the Vendîdâd, v. 11.) His
-destructiveness is equally against virtue, wisdom, peace, health,
-happiness, life, and all of these, not merely physical dissolution,
-are included in his Avestan title, "The Fiend who is all death." He
-is the Abaddon of Revelation ix. 11, also he "that had the power of
-death" in Hebrews ii. 14, and probably came into both of these from
-Proverbs xxvii. 20:
-
-
-    Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied,
-    And the eyes of man are never satisfied.
-
-
-Dr. Inman (Ancient Faiths, i., p. 180) connects Abaddon with "Abadan
-(cuneiform), the lost one, the sun in winter, or darkness," which
-conforms with the Avestan Ahriman, who is emphatically a winter-demon,
-his hell being in the north (cf. Jeremiah i. 14 and elsewhere),
-and is the natural adversary of the Fire-worshipper.
-
-Among the Zoroastrians there were not only Towers of Silence (Dakhma)
-for the literally dead, but also for the confinement of those tainted
-by carrying corpses, or by any contact with the death-fiend's empire,
-such as being struck with temporary death. "The unclean," says
-Darmesteter, "are confined in a particular place, apart from all clean
-persons and objects, the Armêst-gâh, which may be described, therefore,
-as the Dakhma for the living." Here then are the dead-alive guests of
-Dame Folly (Proverbs ix. 15), who opposes Wisdom, as Ahriman created
-Akem-Mano (evil thought) to oppose Vohu-Mano (good thought), and here
-is the assembly that might give the Solomonic proverb its metaphor:
-
-
-    The man who wandereth from the way of instruction
-    Shall rest in the congregation of the phantoms (or shades,
-    Rephaim).
-
-
-The Zoroastrian books from which I have been quoting contain passages
-of very unequal date, but it is the opinion of Avestan scholars that
-most of them are from very ancient sources, pre-Solomonic, and there
-is no chronological difficulty in supposing that such institutions
-as the Armêst-gâh, for the separation of the unclean, should not
-have been well known in ancient Jerusalem before the corresponding
-levitical laws concerning the unclean and the leprous existed.
-
-The Book of Proverbs was also a growth, and although, as has been
-stated, there is reason to regard as later additions most of the
-proverbs containing the word Jahveh, as they are inconsistent with the
-general ethical tenor of the book, there are several in which that
-name is evidently out of place. Even in the editorial Prologue we
-can hardly recognize orthodox Jahvism in the conception of a being,
-Wisdom, not created by Jahveh yet giving him delight and some kind
-of assistance at the creation; and nowhere else in the Old Testament
-do we find such an idea as that of xx. 27, "The spirit of a man is
-Jahveh's lamp," or in xix. 17:
-
-
-    He who is kind to the poor lendeth to Jahveh,
-    And his good deed shall be recompensed to him.
-
-
-But in the Zoroastrian religion men and women render assistance and
-encouragement to the gods, and we find the chief deity, Ahura Mazda,
-saying to Zoroaster concerning the Fravashis, or souls, of holy
-men and women: "Do thou proclaim, O pure Zoroaster, the vigor and
-strength, the glory, the help and the joy, that are in the Fravashis
-of the faithful ... do thou tell how they came to help me, how they
-bring assistance unto me.... Through their brightness and glory,
-O Zoroaster, I maintain that sky there above." Favardîn Yast, 1,
-2.) As Frederick the Great said, "a king is the chief of subjects,"
-so with Zoroaster Ahura Mazda is the chief of the faithful; or,
-as Luther said, "God is strong, but he likes to be helped."
-
-The similitude in Proverbs xx. 27 is especially important in our
-inquiry:
-
-
-    The spirit of man is the lamp of Jahveh,
-    Searching all the chambers of the body.
-
-
-The word for "spirit" here is Nishma, which occurs in but one other
-instance in the Bible, namely, in Job xxvi. 4. Job asks:
-
-
-    To whom hast thou uttered words?
-    And whose spirit came forth from thee?
-
-
-This chapter of Job (xxvi.) is closely related to Proverbs viii. and
-ix., both in thought and phraseology: the Rephaim, or phantoms,
-the "pillars," the ordering of earth and clouds, the boundary on
-the deep; and there is an allusion to "the confines of Light and
-Darkness," which point to the domains of Wisdom and Dame Folly. Job
-and the proverbialist surely got these ideas from the same source,
-and also the word nishma, translated "spirit," which throughout the
-Old Testament is ruach, save in the two texts indicated. But there
-is no text in the Bible where ruach, spirit, or soul, is associated
-with light like the nishma of the proverb, and in Job nishma evidently
-means a superhuman spirit. Now there is a Chaldean word, nisma, which
-in the Persian Bundahis appears as nismô, and is translated by West,
-"living soul." The ordinary word for soul in the Parsi scriptures
-seems to be rûbân, and West regards the two words as meaning the same
-thing, the breath, or soul, basing this on the following passage of
-the Bundahis, representing the separation of the first mortal into
-the first human pair, Mâshya and Mâshyoi:
-
-
-    "And the waists of both were brought close, and so connected
-    together that it was not clear which is the male and which the
-    female, and which is the one whose living soul (nismô) of Aûharmazd
-    (God) is not away (lacking). As it is said thus: 'Which is created
-    before, the soul (nismô) or the body? And Aûharmazd said that
-    the soul is created before, and the body after, for him who was
-    created; it is given unto the body to produce activity, and the
-    body is created only for activity; hence the conclusion is this,
-    that the soul (rûbân) is created before and the body after. And
-    both of them changed from the shape of a plant into the shape of
-    man, and the breath (nismô) went spiritually into them, which is
-    the soul (rûbân)." [18]
-
-
-With all deference to the learned translator, I cannot think his
-exegesis here quite satisfactory. In the first sentence nismô is the
-breath of God; and although in the second the same word is used for
-the human soul, the writer seems to have aimed in the last sentence
-at a distinction: the divine breath or spirit (nismô) creates a soul
-(rûbân), to receive which the plant is transformed into a body fitted
-for the "activity" of an imbreathed soul. West twice translates nismô
-"living soul," but rûbân only "soul." Does not this indicate Ahura
-Mazda as the source of divine life, as in Genesis ii. 7, where
-Jahveh-Elohim breathes into man, who becomes a "living soul,"--a
-being within the domain of the god of life, not subject to the god of
-death? Is it not his rûbân that is the image of nismô? (Cf. Genesis
-ix. 5, 6.)
-
-Turning now to the Avesta, we find the famous Favardin Yast,
-a collection of litanies and ascriptions to the Fravashis. "The
-Fravashi," says Darmesteter, "is the inner power in every being that
-maintains it and makes it grow and subsist. Originally the Fravashis
-were the same as the Pitris of the Hindus or the Manes of the Latins,
-that is to say, the everlasting and deified souls of the dead;
-but in course of time they gained a wider domain, and not only men,
-but gods and even physical objects, like the sky and the earth, had
-each a Fravashi." "The Fravashi was independent of the circumstances
-of life or death, an immortal part of the individual which existed
-before man and outlived him."
-
-In Yast xxii. 39, 40, it is said: "O Maker, how do the souls of the
-dead, the Fravashis of the holy Ones, manifest themselves?" Ahura
-Mazda answered: "They manifest themselves from goodness of spirit
-and excellence of mind."
-
-Favardin Yast, 9: "Through their brightness and glory, O Zarathrustra,
-I maintain the wide earth," etc. 12: "Had not the awful Fravashis
-of the faithful given help unto me, those animals and men of mine,
-of which there are such excellent kinds, would not subsist; strength
-would belong to the fiend."
-
-In other verses these Fravashis (the word means "protectors") help
-the children unborn, nourish health, develop the wise. The imagery
-relating to them is largely related to the stars, of which many are
-guardians. These are probably the origin of the Solomonic similitude
-of reason, "The spirit (nishma) of man is the lamp of----?"
-
-With all of these correspondences between the Solomonic proverbs,
-nothing is more remarkable than their originality, so far as
-any ancient scriptures are concerned. While they are totally
-different from the Psalms, in showing man as a citizen of the world,
-relying on himself and those around him for happiness, and exalting
-nothing above human virtue and intelligence, without any religious
-fervor or wrath, the proverbialist is equally far from the ethical
-superstitions of Zoroastrian religion, which abounds in fictitious
-"merits" and anathematises fictitious immoralities. It is as if
-some sublime Eastern pedlar and banker of ethical and poetic gems,
-who had come in contact with Oriental literatures, had separated
-from their liturgies and prophecies the nuggets of gold and the
-precious stones, polishing, resetting, and exciting others to do the
-like. At the same time many of the sentences are the expressions of
-an original mind, a man of letters, neither Eastern nor Oriental,
-and these may be labelled with the line of the Persian poet Faizi:
-"Take Faizi's Díwán to bear witness to the wonderful speeches of a
-freethinker who belongs to a thousand sects."
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX.
-
-THE SONG OF SONGS.
-
-
-The praise of the virtuous woman, at the close of the Proverbs,
-is given a Jahvist turn by verse 30: "Favour is deceitful and beauty
-vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised." But the
-Solomonists also had their ideas of the virtuous woman, and of beauty,
-these being beautifully expressed in a series of dramatic idylls
-entitled The Song of Songs. To this latter, in the original title,
-is added, "which is Solomon's"; and it confirms what has been said
-concerning the superstitious awe of everything proceeding from Solomon,
-and the dread of insulting the Holy Spirit of Wisdom supernaturally
-lodged in him, that we find in the Bible these passionate love
-songs. And indeed Solomon must have been superlatively wise to have
-written poems in which his greatness is slightly ridiculed. That of
-course would be by no means incredible in a man of genuine wisdom--on
-the contrary would be characteristic--if other conditions were met
-by the tradition of his authorship.
-
-At the outset, however, we are confronted by the question whether
-the Song of Songs has any general coherency or dramatic character
-at all. Several modern critics of learning, among them Prof. Karl
-Budde and the late Edward Reuss, find the book a collection of
-unconnected lyrics, and Professor Cornill of Königsberg has added
-the great weight of his name to that opinion (Einleitung in das Alte
-Testament. 1891). Unfortunately Professor Cornill's treatment is brief,
-and not accompanied by a complete analysis of the book. He favors as
-a principle Reuss's division of Canticles into separate idylls, and
-thinks most readers import into this collection of songs an imaginary
-system and significance. This is certainly true of the "allegorical"
-purport, aim, and religious ideas ascribed to the book, but Professor
-Cornill's reference to Herder seems to leave the door open for further
-treatment of the Song of Songs from a purely literary standpoint. He
-praises Herder's discernment in describing the book as a string of
-pearls, but passes without criticism or denial Herder's further view
-that there are indications of editorial modifications of some of
-the lyrics. For what purpose? Herder also pointed out that various
-individualities and conditions are represented. This indeed appears
-undeniable: here are prince and shepherd, the tender mother, the cruel
-brothers, the rough watchman, the dancer, the bride and bridegroom. The
-dramatis personæ are certainly present: but is there any drama?
-
-Admitting that there was no ancient Hebrew theatre, the question
-remains whether among the later Hellenic Jews the old songs were
-not arranged, and new ones added, in some kind of Singspiele or
-vaudeville. There seems to be a chorus. It is hardly consistent
-with the general artistic quality of the compilation that the lady
-should say "I am swarthy but comely," or "I am a lily of the valley"
-(a gorgeous flower). Surely the compliments are ejaculations of the
-chorus. And may we not ascribe to a chorus the questions, "Who is
-this that cometh up out of the wilderness?" etc. (iii. 6-10.) "What
-is thy beloved more than another beloved"? (v. 9.) "Who is this that
-cometh up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved"? (viii. 5).
-
-As in the modern vaudeville songs are often introduced without
-any special relation to the play, so we find in Canticles some
-songs that might be transposed from one chapter to another without
-marring the work, but is this the case with all of them? The song
-in the first chapter, for instance, in which the damsel, brought by
-the King into his palace, tells the ladies of the home she left,
-and of maltreatment by her brothers, who took her from her own
-vineyard and made her work in theirs, where she was sunburnt,--this
-could not be placed effectively at the end of the book, nor the
-triumphant line, "My vineyard, which is mine own, is before me,"
-be set at the beginning. This is but one of several instances that
-might be quoted. Even pearls may be strung with definite purpose,
-as in a rosary, and how perfectly set is the great rose,--the hymn
-to Love in the final chapter! Or to remember Professor Cornill's word
-Scenenwechsel, along with his affirmation that the love of human lovers
-is the burden of the "unrivalled" book, there are some sequences
-and contrasts which do convey an impression of dissolving views,
-and occasionally reveal a connexion between separate tableaux. For
-example the same words (which I conjecture to be those of a chorus)
-are used to introduce Solomon in pompous palanquin with grand escort,
-that are presently used to greet the united lovers.
-
-
-   "Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness like pillars of
-    smoke?" (iii. 6.)
-
-    "Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness
-    Leaning on her beloved?" (viii. 5.)
-
-
-These are five chapters apart, yet surely they may be supposed
-connected without Hineininterpretation. Any single contrast of this
-kind might be supposed a mere coincidence, but there are two others
-drawn between the swarthy maiden and the monarch. The tableau of
-Solomon in his splendor dissolves into another of his Queen Mother
-crowning him on the day of his espousal: that of Shulamith leaning on
-her beloved dissolves into another of her mother pledging her to her
-lover in espousals under an apple tree. And then we find (viii. 11,
-12) Solomon's distant vineyards tended by many hirelings contrasted
-with Shulamith's own little vineyard tended by herself.
-
-The theory that the book is a collection of bridal songs, and that
-the mention of Solomon is due to an eastern custom of designating
-the bridegroom and bride as Solomon and Queen Shulamith, during
-their honeymoon, does not seem consistent with the fact that in
-several allusions to Solomon his royal state is slighted, whereas only
-compliments would be paid to a bridegroom. Moreover the two--Shulamith
-and Solomon--are not as persons named together. It will, I think,
-appear as we proceed that the Shelomoh (Solomon) of Canticles
-represents a conventionalisation of the monarch, with some traits
-not found in any other book in the Bible. A verse near the close,
-presently considered, suggests that the bride and bridegroom are at
-that one point metaphorically pictured as a Solomon and Solomona,
-indicating one feature of the Wise Man's conventionalization.
-
-Renan assigned Canticles the date B. C. 992-952, mainly because in
-it Tirza is coupled with Jerusalem. Tirza was a capital only during
-those years, and at any later period was too insignificant a town to
-be spoken of as in the Song vi. 4:
-
-
-   "Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah,
-    Comely as Jerusalem,
-    Dazzling as bannered ranks."
-
-
-But the late Russell Martineau, a thorough and unbiassed scholar,
-points out in the work phrases from Greek authors of the third
-century B. C., and assigns a date not earlier than 247-222. [19]
-But may it not be that the Alexandrian of the third century built on
-some earlier foundation, as Shakespeare adapted the "Pound of Flesh"
-and the "Three Caskets" (Merchant of Venice) from tales traceable as
-far back as early Buddhist literature? or as Marlowe and Goethe used
-the mediæval legend of Faustus?
-
-The several songs can hardly be assigned to one and the same
-century. The coupling of Tirza and Jerusalem points to a remote past
-for that particular lyric, and is it credible that any Jew after
-Josiah's time could have written the figleafless songs so minutely
-descriptive of Shulamith's physical charms? Could any Jewish writer of
-the third century before our era have written iv. 1-7 or vii. 1-9,
-regarding no name or place as too sacred to be pressed into his
-hyperboles of rapture at every detail of the maiden's form, and
-have done this in perfect innocency, without a blush? Or if such a
-poet could have existed in the later Jahvist times, would his songs
-have found their place in the Jewish canon? As it was the book was
-admitted only with a provision that no Jew under thirty years of age
-should read it. That it was included at all was due to the occult
-pious meanings read into it by rabbins, while it is tolerably certain
-that the realistic flesh-painting would have been expunged but for
-sanctions of antiquity similar to those which now protect so many
-old classics from expurgation by the Vice Societies. These songs,
-sensuous without sensuality, with their Oriental accent, seem ancient
-enough to have been brought by Solomon from Ophir.
-
-On the other hand a critical reader can hardly ascribe the whole book
-to the Solomonic period. The exquisite exaltation of Love, as a human
-passion (viii. 6, 7), brings us into the refined atmosphere amid which
-Eros was developed, and it is immediately followed by a song that
-hardly rises above doggerel (viii. 8, 9). This is an interruption
-of the poem that looks as if suggested by the line that follows it
-(first line of verse 10) and meant to be comic. It impresses me as
-a very late interpolation, and by a hand inferior to the Alexandrian
-artist who in style has so well matched the more ancient pieces in his
-literary mosaic. Herder finds the collection as a whole Solomonic,
-and makes the striking suggestion that its author at a more mature
-age would take the tone of Ecclesiasticus.
-
-Considered simply as a literary production, the composition makes
-on my own mind the impression of a romance conveyed in idylls, each
-presenting a picturesque situation or a scene, the general theme and
-motif being that of the great Solomonic Psalm.
-
-This psalm (xlv.), quoted and discussed in chapter III., brings
-before us a beautiful maiden brought from a distant region to
-the court, but not quite happy: she is entreated to forget her
-people and enjoy the dignities and luxuries offered by her lord,
-the King. This psalm is remarkable in its intimations of a freedom
-of sentiment accorded to the ladies wooed by Solomon, and the same
-spirit pervades Canticles. Its chief refrain is that love must not be
-coerced or awakened until it please. This magnanimity might naturally
-connect the name of Solomon with old songs of love and courtship such
-as those utilised and multiplied in this book, whose composition might
-be naturally entitled "A Song (made) of Songs which are Solomon's."
-
-The heroine, whose name is Shulamith,--(feminine of Shelomoh,
-Solomon) [20]--is an only daughter, cherished by her apparently
-widowed mother but maltreated by her brothers. Incensed against her,
-they compel Shulamith to keep their vineyards to the neglect of her
-own. She becomes sunburnt, "swarthy," but is very "attractive," and
-is brought by Solomon to his palace, where she delights the ladies
-by her beauty and dances. In what I suppose to be one of the ancient
-Solomonic Songs embodied in the work it is said:
-
-
-   "There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines,
-    And maidens without number:
-    Beyond compare is my dove, my unsoiled;
-    She is the only one of her mother,
-    The cherished one of her that bare her:
-    The daughters saw her and called her blessed,
-    Yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her." [21]
-
-
-Thus far the motif seems to be that of a Cinderella oppressed by
-brothers but exalted by the most magnificent of princes. But here
-the plot changes. The magnificence of Solomon cannot allure from her
-shepherd lover this "lily of the valley." Her lover visits her in
-the palace, where her now relenting brothers (vi. 12) seem to appear
-(though this is doubtful) and witness her triumphs; and all are in
-raptures at her dancing and her amply displayed charms--all unless
-one (perhaps the lover) who, according to a doubtful interpretation,
-complains that they should gaze at her as at dancers in the camps
-(vi. 13). [22]
-
-Although Russell Martineau maintained, against most other commentators,
-that Solomon is only a part of the scene, and not among the dramatis
-personæ, the King certainly seems to be occasionally present, as in
-the following dialogue, where I give the probable, though of course
-conjectural, names. The dancer has approached the King while at table.
-
-
-Solomon--
-
-   "I have compared thee, O my love,
-    To my steed in Pharaoh's chariot.
-    Thy cheeks are comely with plaits of hair,
-    Thy neck with strings of jewels.
-    We will make thee plaits of gold
-    With studs of silver."
-
-
-Shulamith, who, on leaving the King, meets her jealous lover--
-
-   "While the King sat at his table
-    My spikenard sent forth its odor.
-    My beloved is unto me as a bag of myrrh
-    That lieth between my breasts,
-    My beloved is unto me as a cluster of henna-flowers
-    In the vineyards of En-gedi."
-
-
-Shepherd Lover--
-
-   "Behold thou art fair, my love, behold thou art fair;
-    Thine eyes are as doves,
-    Behold thou art fair, my beloved, yea pleasant:
-    Also our couch is green.
-    The beams of our house are of cedar,
-    And our rafters are of fir."
-
-
-Shulamith--
-
-   "I am a (mere) crocus of the plain."
-
-
-Chorus, or perhaps the Lover--
-
-   "A lily of the valleys."
-
-
-Shepherd Lover--
-
-   "As a lily among thorns
-    So is my love among the daughters."
-
-
-Shulamith--
-
-   "As the apple tree among forest trees
-    So is my beloved among the sons.
-    I sat down under his shadow with great delight,
-    And his fruit was sweet to my taste."
-
-
-Thus we find the damsel anointing the king with her spikenard, but
-for her the precious fragrance is her shepherd. Against the plaits of
-gold and studs of silver offered in the palace (i. 2) her lover can
-only point to his cottage of cedar and fir, and a couch of grass. She
-is content to be only a flower of the plain and valley, not for the
-seraglio. Nevertheless she remains to dance in the palace; a sufficient
-time there is needed by the poet to illustrate the impregnability of
-true love against all other splendors and attractions, even those of
-the Flower of Kings. He however puts no constraint on her, one song,
-thrice repeated, saying to the ladies of the harem--
-
-
-   "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
-    By the (free) gazelles, by the hinds in the field,
-    That ye stir not up, nor awaken love,
-    Until it please."
-
-
-This refrain is repeated the second time just before a picture of
-Solomon's glory, shaded by a suggestion that all is not brightness even
-around this Prince of Peace. The ladies of the seraglio are summoned
-to look out and see the passing of the King in state, seated on his
-palanquin of purple and gold, but escorted by armed men "because of
-fear in the night." In immediate contrast with that scene, we see
-Shulamith going off with her humble lover, now his bride, to his field
-and to her vineyard, and singing a beautiful song of love, strong as
-death, flame-tipped arrow of a god, unquenchable, unpurchaseable.
-
-Though according to the revised version of vi. 12 her relatives are
-princely, and it may be they who invite her to return (vi. 13), she
-says, "I am my beloved's." With him she will go into the field and
-lodge in the village (vii. 10, 11). She finds her own little garden
-and does not envy Solomon.
-
-
-   "Solomon hath a vineyard at Baalhamon;
-    He hath let out the vineyard to keepers;
-    Each for the fruit thereof was to bring a thousand pieces of
-    silver:
-    My vineyard, which is mine, is before me:
-    Thou, O Solomon, shall have the thousand,
-    And those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred."
-
-
-There was, as we see in Koheleth, a prevailing tradition that Solomon
-felt the hollowness of his palatial life. "See life with a woman thou
-lovest." The wife is the fountain:
-
-
-   "Bethink thee of thy fountain
-    In the days of thy youth."
-
-
-This perhaps gave rise to a theory that the shepherd lover was Solomon
-himself in disguise, like the god Krishna among the cow-maidens. It
-does not appear probable that any thought of that kind was in
-the writer of this Song. Certainly there appears not to be any
-purpose of lowering Solomon personally in enthroning Love above
-him. There is no hint of any religious or moral objection to him,
-and indeed throughout the work Solomon appears in a favourable
-light personally,--he is beloved by the daughters of Jerusalem
-(v. 10)--though his royal estate is, as we have seen, shown in a light
-not altogether enviable. Threescore mighty men guard him: "every man
-hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night," and the
-day of his heart's gladness was the day of his espousals (iii. 8, 11).
-
-It is not improbable that there is an allusion to Solomon's magic seal
-in the first lines of the hymn to Love (viii. 6). The legend of the
-Ring must have been long in growing to the form in which it is found in
-the Talmud, where it is said that Solomon's "fear in the night" arose
-from his apprehension that the Devil might again get hold of his Ring,
-with which he (Aschmedai) once wrought much mischief. (Gittin. Vol. 68,
-col. 1, 2). The hymn strikes me as late Alexandrian:
-
-
-   "Wear me as a seal on thy breast
-    As a seal-ring on thine arm:
-    For love is strong as death,
-    Its passion unappeasable as the grave;
-    Its shafts are arrows of fire,
-    The lightnings of a god. [Jah.]
-    Many waters cannot quench love,
-    Deluges cannot overwhelm it.
-    Should a noble offer all the wealth of his house for love
-    It would be utterly spurned."
-
-
-Excluding the interrupting verses 8 and 9, the hymn is followed by a
-song about Solomon's vineyard, preceded by two lines which appear to
-me to possess a significance overlooked by commentators. Shulamith
-(evidently) speaks:
-
-
-   "I was a wall, my breasts like its towers:
-    Thus have I been in his eyes as one finding peace.
-    Solomon hath a vineyard," etc. [as above.]
-
-
-The word "peace" is Shalôm; it is immediately followed by Shelomoh
-(Solomon, "peaceful"); and Shulamith (also meaning "peaceful"), thus
-brings together the fortress of her lover's peace, her own breast,
-and the fortifications built by the peaceful King (who never attacked
-but was always prepared for defence). Here surely, at the close of
-Canticles, is a sort of tableau: Shalôm, Shulamith, Shelomoh: Peace,
-the prince of Peace, the queen of Peace. If this were the only lyric
-one would surely infer that these were the bride and bridegroom, under
-the benediction of Peace. It is not improbable that at this climax of
-the poem Shulamith means that in her lover she has found her Solomon,
-and he found in her his Solomona,--their reciprocal strongholds of
-Shalôm or Peace.
-
-Of course my interpretations of the Song of Songs are largely
-conjectural, as all other interpretations necessarily are. The songs
-are there to be somehow explained, and it is of importance that every
-unbiassed student of the book should state his conjectures, these
-being based on the contents of the book, and not on the dogmatic
-theories which have been projected into it. I have been compelled,
-under the necessary limitations of an essay like the present, to omit
-interesting details in the work, but have endeavoured to convey the
-impression left on my own mind by a totally unprejudiced study. The
-conviction has grown upon me with every step that, even at the lowest
-date ever assigned it, the work represents the earliest full expression
-of romantic love known in any language. It is so entirely free from
-fabulous, supernatural, or even pious incidents and accents, so human
-and realistic, that its having escaped the modern playwright can only
-be attributed to the superstitious encrustations by which its beauty
-has been concealed for many centuries.
-
-This process of perversion was begun by Jewish Jahvists, but they have
-been far surpassed by our A. S. version, whose solemn nonsense at
-most of the chapter heads in the Bible here reached its climax. It
-is a remarkable illustration of the depths of fatuity to which
-clerical minds may be brought by prepossession, that the closing
-chapter of Canticles, with its beautiful exaltation of romantic love,
-could be headed: "The love of the Church to Christ. The vehemency of
-Love. The calling of the Gentiles. The Church Prayeth for Christ's
-coming." The "Higher Criticism" is now turning the headings into
-comedy, but they have done--nay, are continuing--their very serious
-work of misdirection.
-
-It has already been noted that the Jewish doctors exalted Bathsheba,
-adulteress as she was, into a blessed woman, probably because of the
-allusion to her in the Song (iii. 2) as having crowned her royal Son,
-who had become mystical; and it can only be ascribed to Protestantism
-that, instead of the Queen-Mother Mary, the Church becomes Bathsheba's
-successor in our version: "The Church glorieth in Christ." And of
-course the shepherd lover's feeding (his flock) among the lilies
-becomes "Christ's care of the Church."
-
-But for such fantasies the beautiful Song of Songs might indeed never
-have been preserved at all, yet is it a scandal that Bibles containing
-chapter-headings known by all educated Christians to be falsifications,
-should be circulated in every part of the world, and chiefly among
-ignorant and easily misled minds. These simple people, reading the
-anathemas pronounced in their Bibles on those who add anything to the
-book given them as the "Word of God" (Deuteronomy iv. 2, xii. 32,
-Proverbs xxx. 6, Revelation xxii. 18), cannot imagine that these
-chapter-headings are not in the original books, but forged. And what
-can be more brazenly fraudulent than the chapter-heading to one of
-these very passages (Revelation xxii. 18, 19), where nothing is said
-of the "Word of God," but over which is printed: "18. Nothing may be
-added to the word of God, nor taken therefrom." But even the learned
-cannot quite escape the effect of these perversions. How far they reach
-is illustrated in the fate of Mary Magdalen, a perfectly innocent woman
-according to the New Testament, yet by a single chapter-heading in Luke
-branded for all time as the "sinner" who anointed Jesus,--"Magdalen"
-being now in our dictionaries as a repentant prostitute. Yet there are
-hundreds of additions to the Bible more harmful than this,--additions
-which, whether honestly made or not originally, are now notoriously
-fraudulent. It is especially necessary in the interest of the Solomonic
-and secular literature in the Bible that Truth shall be liberated from
-the malarious well--Jahvist and ecclesiastical--in which she has long
-been sunk by mistranslation, interpolation, and chapter-headings. The
-Christian churches are to be credited with having produced critics
-brave enough to expose most of these impositions, and it is now the
-manifest duty of all public teachers and literary leaders to uphold
-those scholars, to protest against the continuance of the propaganda
-of pious frauds, and to insist upon the supremacy of truth.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X.
-
-KOHELETH (ECCLESIASTES).
-
-
-In the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1897, a writer, in giving his
-personal reminiscences of Tennyson, relates an anecdote concerning the
-poet and the Rev. F. D. Maurice. Speaking of Ecclesiastes (Koheleth),
-Tennyson said it was the one book the admission of which into the
-canon he could not understand, it was so utterly pessimistic--of the
-earth, earthy. Maurice fired up. "Yes, if you leave out the last two
-verses. But the conclusion of the whole matter is, 'Fear God and keep
-His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall
-bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it
-be good or whether it be evil.' So long as you look only down upon
-earth, all is 'vanity of vanities.' But if you look up there is a God,
-the judge of good and evil." Tennyson said he would think over the
-matter from that point of view.
-
-This amusing incident must have caused a ripple of laughter in
-scholastic circles, now that the labors of Cheyne, Renan, Dillon,
-and others, have left little doubt that both of the verses cited
-by Maurice are later editorial additions. They alone, he admitted,
-could save the book, and the charm of the incident is that the verses
-were placed there by ancient Maurices to induce ancient Tennysons to
-"think over the matter from that point of view." The result was that
-the previously rejected book was admitted into the canon by precisely
-the same force which continued its work at Faringford, and continues
-it to this day. Only one must not suppose that Mr. Maurice was aware
-of the ungenuineness of the verses. He was an honest gentleman,
-but so ingeniously mystical that had the two verses not been there
-he could readily have found others of equally transcendant and holy
-significance, without even resorting to other pious interpolations
-in the book.
-
-Tennyson was curiously unconscious of his own pessimism. When any one
-questioned the belief in a future life in his presence his vehemence
-without argument betrayed his sub-conscious misgivings, while his
-indignation ran over all the conditional resentments of Job. I have
-heard that he said to Tyndall that if he knew there was no future
-life he would regard the creator of human beings as a demon, and
-shake his fist in His eternal face. This rage was based in a more
-profoundly pessimistic view of the present life than anything even
-in Ecclesiastes,--by which name may be happily distinguished the
-disordered, perverted, and mistranslated Koheleth.
-
-It appears evident that the sentence which opens Koheleth,--in our
-Bibles "All is vanity, saith the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all
-is vanity,"--is as mere a Jahvist chapter-heading as that of our
-A. S. translators: "The Preacher showeth that all human courses are
-vain." It is repeated as the second of the eight verses added at the
-end of the work. Koheleth does not label the whole of things vanity;
-in a majority of cases the things he calls vain are vain; and some
-things he finds not vanity,--youth, and wedded love, and work that
-is congenial.
-
-Renan (Histoire du Peuple d'Israël, Tome 5, p. 158) has shown
-conclusively, as I think, that the signature on this book, QHLT,
-is a mere letter-play on the word "Solomon," and the eagerness
-with which the letters were turned into Koheleth (which really
-means Preacheress), and to make Solomon's inner spouse a preacher
-of the vanities of pleasure and the wisdom of fearing God, is thus
-naively indicated in the successive names of the book, "Koheleth"
-and "Ecclesiastes." We are thus warned by the title to pick our way
-carefully where the Jahvist and the Ecclesiastic have been before us;
-remembering especially that though piety may induce men to forge
-things, this is never done lightly. As people now do not commit
-forgery for a shilling, so neither did those who placed spurious
-sentences or phrases in nearly every chapter of the Bible do so for
-anything they did not consider vital to morality or to salvation. In
-Ecclesiastes we must be especially suspicious of the very serious
-religious points. Fortunately the style of the book renders it
-particularly subject to the critical and literary touchstone.
-
-Is it necessary to point out to any man of literary instinct the
-interpolation bracketed in the following verses? "Rejoice, O young
-man, in thy youth, and let thy heart gladden thee in the flower of thy
-age, and walk in the paths of thy heart, and according to the vision
-of thine eyes [but know thou that for all these things God will bring
-thee into judgment], and banish discontent from thy heart, and put away
-evil from thy flesh; for youth and dawn are fleeting. Remember also
-thy fountain in the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days come or
-the years draw nigh in which thou shalt say I have no delight in them."
-
-It is only by removing the bracketed clause that any consistency can be
-found in the lyric, which Professor Cheyne compares with the following
-song by the ancient Egyptian harper at the funeral feast of Neferhotap:
-
-
-   "Make a good day, O holy fathers!
-    Let odors and oils stand before thy nostril;
-    Wreaths and lotus are on the arms and bosom of thy sister
-    Dwelling in thy heart, sitting beside thee.
-    Let song and music be before thy face,
-    And leave behind thee all evil dirges!
-    Mind thee of joy, till cometh the day of pilgrimage,
-    When we draw near the land that loveth silence." [23]
-
-
-There is no historical means of determining what writings of Solomon
-are preserved in the Bible and even in the apocryphal books. One may
-feel that Goethe recognised a brother spirit in that far epoch when
-he selected for his proverb:
-
-
-   "Apples of gold in chased work of silver,
-    A word smoothly spoken."
-
-
-Koheleth too appreciated this, and also (x. 12) uses almost literally
-Proverbs xii. 18, "The tongue of the wise is gentleness." (Compare
-Shakespeare's words, "Let gentleness my strong enforcement be.") The
-lines previously cited, "Rejoice O young man, etc.," are also probably
-quoted, as they are given in poetical quatrains. There are many of
-these quatrains introduced into the book, from the prose context of
-which they differ in style and sometimes in sense.
-
-In none of these metrical quotations (as I believe them to be) is
-there any belief in God, the only instance in which the word "God"
-is mentioned being an ironical maxim about the danger coming from
-monarchs because of their oaths to their God, with whom they identify
-their own ways and wishes. Such seems to me the meaning of the lines
-(viii. 2, 4) which Dillon translates--
-
-
-   "The wise man harkens to the king's command,
-    By reason of the oath to God.
-    Mighty is the word of the monarch:
-    Who dares ask him, 'What dost thou?'"
-
-
-With this compare Proverbs xxi. 1, "The king's heart is in the hand
-of the Lord (Jahveh) as the water-courses; he turneth it whithersoever
-he will." This proverb is evidently by a Jahvist, and Koheleth quotes
-another which signifies rather "Jahveh is in the king's caprice." But
-he adopts the neighbouring proverb, "To do justice and judgment is
-more acceptable to Jahveh than sacrifice." Koheleth says, and this
-is not quoted--"To draw near to (God) in order to learn, is better
-than the offering of sacrifices by fools."
-
-Although the verses quoted by Maurice to Tennyson (xii. 13, 14) are not
-genuinely in Koheleth they correspond with sentences in the genuine
-text of very different import. Koheleth, though his quotations are
-godless, believes there is a God, and a formidable one. Sometimes he
-refers to him as Fate, sometimes as the unknowable, but as without
-moral quality. "To the just men that happeneth which should befall
-wrong-doers; and that happeneth for criminals which should be the lot
-of the upright" (viii. 14), and "neither (God's) love nor hatred doth
-a man foresee" (ix. 1). God has set prosperity and adversity side by
-side for the express purpose of hiding Himself from human knowledge
-(vii. 14); not, alas, as the Yalkut Koheleth suggests, in order that
-one may help the other. God does benefit those who please him, and
-punish those who displease him; this is 'good' and 'evil' to Him; but
-it has no relation with the humanly good and evil (viii. 11-14). As
-it is evident that God's favor is not secured by good works nor his
-disfavor incurred by evil works, a prudent man will consider that
-it may perhaps be a matter of etiquette, and will be punctilious,
-especially "in the house of God"; he will not speak rashly and then
-hope to escape by saying "it was rashness." His words had better be
-few, and if he makes any vow (which may well be avoided) he should
-perform it. But as for practical life and conduct, God, or fate,
-is clearly indifferent to it, consequently let a man eat his bread
-and quaff his wine with joy, love his wife,--the best portion of
-his lot,--and whatever his hand findeth to do that do with vigor,
-remembering that "there is no work, nor thought, nor knowledge,
-nor wisdom, in the inevitable grave."
-
-Such is Koheleth's conception of life, which, except so far as it
-is marred by a vague notion of Fate which is fatal to philanthropy,
-is not very different from the idea growing in our own time. "The
-All is a never-ceasing whirl" (i. 8), and Koheleth advises that each
-individual man try to make what little circle of happiness he can
-around him. "O my heart!" says Omar Khayyám, "thou wilt never penetrate
-the mysteries of the heavens; thou wilt never reach that culminating
-point of wisdom which the intrepid omniscients have attained. Resign
-thyself then to make what little paradise thou canst here below. As
-for that close-barred seraglio beyond thou shalt arrive there--or
-thou shalt not!"
-
-It is, however, impossible for any church or priesthood to be
-maintained on any such principles. Where mankind believe with Koheleth
-that whatever God does is forever, that nothing can be superadded
-to it nor aught be taken away; and that God has so contrived that
-man must fear Him; they will have no use for any paraphernalia for
-softening the irrevocable decrees of a Judgment Day already past. But
-Koheleth's arrows, feathered with wit and eloquence, were logically
-shot from the Jahvist arquebus. It was Jahveh himself who proudly
-claimed that he created good and evil, and that if there were evil in
-a city it was his work. It was Jahveh's own prophet, Isaiah, who cried
-(lxiii. 17), "O Lord, why dost Thou make us to err from Thy ways,
-and hardenest our heart from Thy fear?"
-
-What then could Jahvism say when a time arrived wherein it must defend
-itself against a Jahveh-created world?
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-WISDOM (ECCLESIASTICUS).
-
-
-It was necessary that Koheleth should be answered, but who was
-competent for this? A fable had been invented of a Solomonic serpent
-who had tempted Eve to taste the fruit of knowledge which, when the
-man shared it, brought a curse on the earth, but the canonical prophets
-do not appear to have heard of it, and at any rate it was too late in
-the day to meet fact with fable. Nor had Jahveh's whirlwind-answer
-to Job proved effectual. However, some sort of answer did come,
-and significantly enough it had to come from Koheleth's own quarter,
-the Wisdom school. Pure Jahvism had not brains enough for the task.
-
-The apocryphal book "Ecclesiasticus" is the antidote to
-Ecclesiastes. (These are the Christian names given to the two
-books.) This book, bearing the simple title "Wisdom," compiled and
-partly written by Jesus Ben Sira early in the second century B. C.,
-is as a whole much more than an offset to Koheleth. It is a great
-though unintentional literary monument to Solomon, and it is the book
-of reconciliation, or so intended, between Solomonism and Jahvism,--or,
-as we should now say, between philosophy and theology.
-
-The newly discovered original Hebrew of Ecclesiasticus xxxix. 15,
-xlix. 11, published by the Clarendon Press in 1897, enables us to read
-correctly for the first time the portraiture of Solomon in xlvii.,
-with the assistance of Wace and other scholars:
-
-
-    12. After him [David] rose up a wise son, and for his [David's]
-    sake he dwelt in quiet.
-
-    13. Solomon reigned in days of prosperity, and was honoured, and
-    God gave rest to him round about that he might build an house in
-    his name, and prepare his sanctuary for ever.
-
-    14. How wast thou wise in thy youth, and didst overflow with
-    instruction like the Nile!
-
-    15. The earth (was covered by thy soul) and thou didst celebrate
-    song in the height.
-
-    16. Thy name went far unto the islands, and for thy peace thou
-    wast beloved.
-
-    17. The countries marvelled at thee for thy songs, and proverbs,
-    and parables, and interpretations.
-
-    18. Thou wast called by the glorious name which is called over
-    Israel.
-
-    18a. Thou didst gather gold as tin, and didst gather silver
-    as lead.
-
-    19. But thou gavest thy loins unto women, and lettest them have
-    dominion over thy body.
-
-    20. Thou didst stain thy honour and pollute thy seed; so that
-    thou broughtest wrath upon thy children, that they should groan
-    in their beds.
-
-    21. That the kingdom should be divided: and out of Ephraim ruled
-    a rebel kingdom.
-
-    22. But the Lord will never leave off his mercy, neither shall
-    any of his words perish, neither will he abolish the posterity of
-    his elect, and the seed of him that loveth him he will not take
-    away: wherefore he gave a remnant unto Jacob, and out of him a
-    root unto David.
-
-    23. Thus rested Solomon with his fathers, and of his seed he left
-    behind him Rehoboam [of the lineage of Ammon], ample in foolishness
-    and lacking understanding, who by his council let loose the people.
-
-
-In the last sentence I have inserted in crochets an alternative
-reading of Fritzsche for the three words that follow. (Rehoboam's
-Ammonite mother was Naamah.)
-
-It will be noticed that early in the second century B. C. there
-remained no trace of the anathemas on Solomon for his foreign or
-his idolatrous wives. He is now simply accused of being too fond of
-women,--a charge not known to the canonical books.
-
-The verse 18 attests the correctness of the view taken of the
-forty-fifth Psalm in chapter III., written before this Clarendon
-Press volume appeared. It thus becomes certain that the Psalm was
-recognised as written in Solomon's time, and that it was he who was
-there addressed as "God" ("the glorious name").
-
-The mention of this fact in "Wisdom," and the enthusiasm pervading
-every sentence of the tribute to Solomon, despite his alleged
-sensuality, supply conclusive evidence that the cult of Solomon had
-for more than eight centuries been continuous, that it was at length
-prevailing, and that it had become necessary for a broad wing of
-Jahvism to include the Solomonic worldly wisdom and ethics.
-
-Jesus Ben Sira states that he found a book written by his learned
-grandfather, whose name was also Jesus, who had studied many works of
-"our fathers," and added to them writings of his own. The anonymous
-preface states that Sira, son of the first Jesus, left it to his son,
-and that "this Jesus did imitate Solomon."
-
-It is not said that Sira contributed anything to this composite work,
-yet there appear to be three minds in it. There is a fine and free
-philosophy which savors of the earliest traditions of the Solomonic
-School; there is an exceptionally morose Jahvism; and there is also
-mysticism, an attempt to rationalise and soften the Jahvism, and to
-solemnise the philosophy, so as to blend them in a kind of harmonious
-religion. I cannot help feeling that Sira or some friend of his must
-have inserted the Jahvism between the grandfather and the grandson.
-
-However this may be, it is evident that Jesus Ben Sira was too
-reverent to seriously alter anything in the volume before him,
-for the contrast is startling between the hard Jahvism and the
-philosophy of life. Their inclusion in one work is like the union
-of oil and vinegar. The Jahvism is curiously bald: fear Jahveh, keep
-his commandments, pay your tithes, say your prayers, be severe with
-your children (especially daughters), never play with them, guard
-your wife vigilantly, flog your servants. The philosophy is quite
-incongruous with this formalism and rigidity, most of the maxims
-being elaborated with care, and only proverbs in form. Some of them
-are almost Shakespearian in artistic expression:
-
-
-    "Pipe and harp make sweet the song, but a sincere tongue is above
-    them both."
-
-    "Wisdom hid, and treasure hoarded, what value is in either?"
-
-    "The fool's heart is in his mouth, the wise man's mouth is in
-    his heart."
-
-    "There is no riches above a sound body, and no joy above that of
-    the heart."
-
-    "Whoso regardeth dreams is as one who grasps at his shadow."
-
-    "The evil man cursing Satan is but cursing himself."
-
-    "The bars of Wisdom shall be thy fortress, her chains thy robe
-    of honour."
-
-
-About the rendering of xli. 15 there is some doubt, and I give this
-conjecture:
-
-
-    Better the (ignorant) that hideth his folly, than the (learned)
-    who hideth his wisdom.
-
-
-In the Bible which belonged to the historian Gibbon, loaned by
-the late General Meredith Read to the Gibbon exhibition in London,
-I observed a pencil mark around these sentences in "Wisdom":
-
-
-   "He that buildeth his house with other men's money, is like one
-    that gathereth stones for the tomb of his own burial."
-
-   "He that is not wise will not be taught, but there is a wisdom
-    that multiplieth bitterness."
-
-
-To Jesus Ben Sira we may, I believe, ascribe the following:
-
-
-   "Glorifying God, exalt him as far as your thought can reach, yet
-    you will never attain to his height: praising him, put forth all
-    your powers, be not weary, yet ever will they fall short. Who hath
-    seen him that he can tell us? Who can describe him as he is? Let
-    us still be rejoicing in him, for we shall not search him out:
-    he is great beyond his works."
-
-
-This has an interesting correspondence with the beautiful rapture of
-the Persian Sâdi:
-
-
-   "They who pretend to be informed are ignorant, for they who have
-    known him have not recovered their senses. O thou who towerest
-    above the heights of imagination, thought, or conjecture,
-    surpassing all that has been related, and excelling all that we
-    have heard or read, the banquet is ended, the congregation is
-    dismissed, and life draws to a close, and we still rest in our
-    first encomium of thee!"
-
-
-To Jesus Ben Sira may be safely ascribed the passages that bear
-witness to the pressure of problems which, though old, appear in
-new forms under Hellenic influences. They grow urgent and threaten
-the foundations of Jahvism. It was no longer sufficient to say that
-Jahveh rewarded virtue and piety, and punished vice and impiety in
-this world. Job had demanded the evidence for this, and the centuries
-had brought none. Job was awarded some recompense in this world,
-but that happy experience did not attend other virtuous sufferers.
-
-The doctrine of one writer in "Wisdom" is simply predestination. Paul's
-potter-and-clay similitude is anticipated, and the Parsi dualism
-curiously adapted to Jahvist monotheism: "Good is set against evil,
-life against death, the godly against the sinner and the sinner
-against the godly: look through all the works of the Most High and
-there are two and two, one against another." But the liberal son of
-Sira is more optimist: "All things are double, one against another,
-but he hath made nothing imperfect: one thing establisheth the good of
-another." Freedom of the will is asserted: "Say not, he hath caused
-me to err, for he hath no need of the evildoer. He made man from the
-beginning and left him in the hand of his (own) counsel.... He hath
-set fire and water before thee, stretch forth thy hand to whichever
-thou wilt. Before man is the living and the not-living, and whichever
-he liketh shall be given him."
-
-But the doctrine of human free agency is pregnant with polemics;
-it has so been in Christian history, as is proved by the Pelagian,
-Arminian, Jesuit, and Wesleyan movements. There are indications in
-Ben Sira's work that the foundations of Jahvism were threatened by
-a moral scepticism. His own celebration of the Fathers was enough to
-bring into dreary contrast the tragedies of his own time and glories
-of the Past, when "Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under
-his vine and fig-tree, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, all the days
-of Solomon." What shelter now in the divine fig-tree, which could
-bear nothing but legendary or predictive leaves? The curse on the
-barren tree was near at hand when Jesus Ben Sira uttered his pathetic
-complaint, veiled in prayer:
-
-
-   "Have mercy on us, O Lord God of all, and regard us! Send thy
-    fear on all the nations that seek thee not; lift thy hand against
-    them, let them see thy power! As thou wast (of old) sanctified
-    in us before them, be thou (now) magnified among them before us;
-    and let them know thee, as we have known thee,--that there is, O
-    God, no God but thou alone! Show new signs, more strange wonders;
-    glorify thy hand and thy right arm, that they may publish thy
-    wondrous works! Raise up indignation, pour out wrath, remove
-    the adversary, destroy the enemy: hasten! remember thy covenant,
-    and let them witness thy wonderful works!"
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII.
-
-THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON.
-
-
-Somewhat more than a century after Jesus Ben Sira's work, came
-an answer to his prayer, not from above but from beneath, in the
-so-called "Psalter of Solomon." This is no wisdom book, and need not
-detain us. It is mainly a hash--one may say a mess--made up out of
-the Psalms; and though some of the allusions, apparently to Pompey
-and others, may possess value in other connexions, the work need
-only be mentioned here as an indication of the fate which Solomon
-met at the hands of Jahvism. The name of the Wisest of his race on
-this vulgar production is like the doggerel on Shakespeare's tomb,
-and the fling at England's greatest poet written on the tomb of his
-daughter,--"Wise to salvation was good Mistriss Hall," etc.
-
-Before passing, it may be remarked that the obvious allusions to Christ
-in this Psalter seem clearly spurious, and for one I cannot regard
-as other than a late interpolation verse 24 of Psalter-Psalm xvii.:
-"Behold, O God, and raise up unto them their king, the Son of David,
-in the time which thou, O God, knowest, that he may reign over Israel
-thy servant." There is nothing in the literature of the time before or
-after that would warrant the concession to this ranting Salvationist
-(B. C. 70-60) of an idea which would then have been original. The
-verse has the accent of a Second Adventist a century later. The title
-"Son of David" occurs even in the New Testament but sixteen times.
-
-The Psalter is in spirit thoroughly Jahvist, narrow, hard, without
-one ray of Solomonic wisdom or wit. It may fairly be regarded as
-the sepulchre of the wise man whose name it bears (though not in its
-text). Jahvism has here triumphed over the whole cult of Wisdom.
-
-But Solomon is not to rest there. He is again evoked, though not
-yet in his ancient secular greatness, by the next work that claims
-our attention.
-
-This last of the Wisdom Books bears the heading "Wisdom of Solomon"
-(Sophia Solomontos) and gives unmistakable identifications of the
-King, though herein also the name "Solomon" appears only in the
-title. Perhaps the writer may have wished to avoid exciting the
-ridicule or resentment of the Solomonists by plainly connecting the
-name of their founder with a retractation of all the secularism and the
-heresies anciently associated with him. The aristocratic Sadducees,
-who believed not in immortality, derived their name from Solomon's
-famous chaplain, Zadok.
-
-This "Wisdom of Solomon" probably appeared not far from the first
-year of our era. It is written in almost classical Greek, is full of
-striking and poetic interpretations and spiritualisations of Jewish
-legends, and transfused with a piety at once warm and mystical. Solomon
-is summoned much in the way that the "Wandering Jew," Ahasuerus, is
-called up in Shelley's "Prometheus," yet not quite allegorically,
-to testify concerning the Past, and concerning the mysteries of
-the invisible world. He has left behind his secularist Proverbs
-and his worldly wisdom; but though he now rises as a prophet of
-otherworldliness, not a word is uttered inconsistent with his having
-been a saint from the beginning, albeit "chastised" and "proved." In
-fact he gives his spiritual autobiography, which is that of a Son
-of God wise and "undefiled" from childhood. His burden is to warn
-the kings and judges of the world of the blessedness that awaits the
-righteous,--the misery that awaits the unrighteous,--beyond the grave.
-
-The work impresses me as having been written by one who had long
-been an enthusiastic Solomonist, but who had been spiritually
-revolutionised by attaining the new belief of immortality. It does
-not appear as if the apparition of Solomon was to this writer a
-simple imagination. Solomon seems to be alive, or rather as if never
-dead. "For thou (God) hast power of life and death: thou leadest to
-the gates of Hades, and bringest up again." "The giving heed unto her
-(Wisdom's) laws is the assurance of incorruption; and incorruption
-maketh us near unto God: therefore the desire of Wisdom bringeth to
-a Kingdom."
-
-The Jewish people idealised Solomon's reign long before they idealised
-the man himself; and indeed he had to reach his halo under personified
-epithets derived from his fame,--as "Melchizedek," and "Prince of
-Peace." The nation sighed for the restoration of his splendid empire,
-but could not describe their Coming Man as a returning Solomon,
-because the priests and prophets,--a gentry little respected by
-the Wise Man,--steadily ascribed all the national misfortunes to the
-shrines built to other deities than Jahveh by the royal Citizen of the
-World. Thus grew such prophetic indirections as "the House of David,"
-"Jesse's branch," and finally "Son of David."
-
-But this idea of the returning hero does not appear to have been
-original with any Semitic people; it is first found among them in the
-Oriental book of Job, who longs to sleep in some cavern for ages,
-then reappear, and, even if his flesh were shrivelled, find that
-his good name was vindicated (xiv.). This idea of the Sleeping Hero
-(which is traced in many examples in my work on The Wandering Jew)
-appears to have gained its earliest expression in the legend of King
-Yima, in Persia,--the original of such sleepers as Barbarossa and
-King Arthur, as well as of the legendary Enoch, Moses, and Elias, who
-were to precede or attend the revived Son of David. Solomon, whose
-name probably gave Jerusalem the peaceful half of its name (Salem)
-would no doubt have been central among the "Undying Ones" had it not
-been for the Parliament of Religions he set up in that city. But he
-had to wait a thousand years for his honorable fame to awaken.
-
-In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the Queen of Sheba is also recalled into
-life. She is, as Renan pointed out, transfigured in the personified
-Wisdom, and her gifts become mystical. "All good things together came
-to me with her," and "Wisdom goeth before them: and I knew not that
-she was the mother of them." She is amiable, beautiful, and gave him
-his knowledge:
-
-"All such things as are secret or manifest, them I knew. For Wisdom,
-which is the worker of all things, taught me: for in her is an
-understanding spirit, holy, one only, manifold; subtle, lively,
-clear, undefiled, plain, not subject to hurt, loving the thing that
-is good, quick, which cannot be letted, ready to do good, kind to
-man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power, overseeing
-all things, and pervading all intellectual, pure, and most subtle
-spirits. For Wisdom is more moving than motion itself; she passeth
-and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness. For she is the
-breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory
-of the Almighty: therefore can no impure thing fall into her. For she
-is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of
-the power of God, and the image of his goodness. And alone, she can
-do all things; herself unchanged, she maketh all things new; and in
-all ages, entering into holy souls, she maketh them intimates of God,
-and prophets. For God loveth only him who dwelleth with Wisdom. She
-is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of stars;
-compared with the light she is found before it,--for after light
-cometh night, but evil shall not prevail against Wisdom." (vii. 21-30.)
-
-In Sophia Solomontos Solomon relates his espousal of Wisdom,
-who sat beside the throne of God (ix. 4). But there remains with
-God a detective Wisdom called the Holy Spirit. Wisdom and the Holy
-Spirit have different functions. "Thy counsel who hath known except
-thou give Wisdom, and send thy Holy Spirit from above?" This verse
-(ix. 17) is followed by two chapters (x., xi.) relating the work of
-Wisdom through past ages as a Saviour. But then comes an account
-of the severe chastening functions of the Holy Spirit. "For thine
-incorruptible Spirit is in all things (i. e., nothing is concealed
-from her), therefore chastenest thou them by little and little that
-offend," etc. (xii. 1, 2.)
-
-There is here a slight variation in the historic development of the
-Spirit of God, and one so pregnant with results that it may be well
-to refer to some of the earlier Hebrew conceptions. The Spirit of
-God described in Genesis i. 2, as "brooding" over the waters was
-evidently meant to represent a detached agent of the deity. The
-legend is obviously related to that of the dove going forth over
-the waters of the deluge. The dove probably acquired its symbolical
-character as a messenger between earth and heaven from the marvellous
-powers of the carrier pigeon--powers well known in ancient Egypt--it
-also appears that its cooing was believed to be an echo on earth
-of the voice of God. [24] We have already seen (viii.) that Wisdom,
-when first personified, was identified with this "brooding" spirit
-over the surface of the waters, and also that in a second (Jahvist)
-personification she is a severe and reproving agent. But in the
-second verse of Genesis there is a darkness on the abyss, and both
-darkness and abyss were personified. In the rigid development of
-monotheism all of these beings were necessarily regarded as agents
-of Jahveh--monopolist of all powers. We thus find such accounts as
-that in 1 Samuel 16, where the Spirit of Jahveh departed from Saul
-and an evil Spirit from Jahveh troubled him.
-
-Although the Spirit of God was generally supposed to convey miraculous
-knowledge, especially of future events, and superior skill, it is
-not, I believe, in any book earlier than Sophia Solomontos definitely
-ascribed the function of a detective. There is in Ecclesiastes (x. 20)
-a passage which suggests the carrier: "Curse not the King, no, not
-in thy thought; and curse not the rich even in thy bedchamber; for
-a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings
-shall tell the matter." [25] This was evidently in the mind of the
-writer of Sophia Solomontos in the following verses:
-
-Wisdom is a loving Spirit, and will not (cannot?) acquit a blasphemer
-of his words: for God is a witness of his reins, and a true beholder
-of his heart, and a hearer of his tongue; for the Spirit of the
-Lord filleth the world, and that which containeth all things hath
-knowledge of the voice; therefore he that speaketh unrighteous things
-cannot be hid, neither shall vengeance when it punisheth, pass by
-him. For inquisition shall be made into the counsels of the ungodly;
-the sound of his words shall come unto the Lord for the disclosure
-of his wickedness, the ear of jealousy heareth all things, and the
-sound even of murmurings is not secret."
-
-Here we have the origin of the "unpardonable sin." The Holy Spirit
-detects and informs, Jahveh avenges, and if the offence is blasphemy,
-Wisdom, the Saviour, cannot acquit (as the "Loving Spirit" of God
-it is for her ultra vires). This detective Holy Spirit appears to
-be an evolution from both Wisdom and Satan the Accuser, in Job a Son
-of God. By associating with Solomon on earth, Wisdom was without the
-severe holiness essential to Jahvist conceptions of divine government;
-in other words, personified Wisdom, whose "delight was with the sons
-of men" (Prov. viii. 31) was too humanized to fulfil the conditions
-necessary for upholding the temple at a time when penal sanctions
-were withdrawn from the priesthood. A celestial spy was needed, and
-also an uncomfortable Sheol, if the ancient ordinances and sacrifices
-were to be preserved at all under the rule of Roman liberty, and amid
-the cosmopolitan conditions prevailing at Jerusalem, and still more
-at Alexandria. [26]
-
-With regard to Wisdom herself, there is a sentence which requires
-notice, especially as no unweighed word is written in the work
-under notice. It is said, "In that she is conversant with God,
-she magnifieth her nobility; yea, the Lord of all things himself
-loved her." (viii. 3). [27] This seems to be the germ of Philo's
-idea of Wisdom as the Mother: "And she, receiving the seed of God,
-with beautiful birth-pangs brought forth this world, His visible Son,
-only and well-beloved." The writer of Sophia Solomontos is very careful
-to be vague in speculations of this kind, while suggesting inferences
-with regard to them. Thus, alluding to Moses before Pharaoh, he says,
-"She (Wisdom) entered into the servant of the Lord, and withstood
-dreadful kings in wonders and signs" (x. 16), but leaves us to mere
-conjecture as to whether he (the writer) still had Wisdom in mind
-when writing (xvii. 13) of the failure of these enchantments and the
-descent of the Almighty Word, for the destruction of the first-born:
-
-"For while all things are quiet silence, and that night was in the
-midst of her swift course, thine Almighty Word leaped down from Heaven
-out of thy Royal throne, as a fierce man of war into the midst of
-a land of destruction; and brought thine unfeigned commandment as
-a sharp sword, and standing up filled all things with death; and it
-touched the heaven, but it stood upon the earth." [28]
-
-The Word in this place (ho pantodynamos sou logos) is clearly
-reproduced in the Epistle to the Hebrews (iv. 12). "The Word of God
-is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword;" and
-the same military metaphor accompanies this "Word" into Revelation
-xix. 13. This continuity of metaphor has apparently been overlooked
-by Alford (Greek Testament, vol. iv., p. 226) who regards the use of
-the phrase "Word of God" (ho logos tou theou) as linking Revelation
-to the author of the fourth Gospel, whereas in this Gospel Logos is
-never followed by "of God," while it is so followed in Hebrews iv. 12.
-
-This evolution of the "Word" is clear. In the "Wisdom of Solomon"
-Wisdom is the creative Word and the Saviour. The Word leaping down from
-the divine throne and bearing the sword of vengeance is more like the
-son of the celestial counterpart of Wisdom, namely, the detective Holy
-Spirit (called in i. 5 "the Holy Spirit of Discipline"). But in the
-era we are studying, all words by able writers were living things,
-and were two-edged swords, and long after they who wrote them were
-dead went on with active and sundering work undreamed of by those
-who first uttered them.
-
-The Zoroastrian elements which we remarked in Jesus Ben Sira's
-"Wisdom" are even more pronounced in the "Wisdom of Solomon." The
-Persian worshippers are so mildly rebuked (xiii.) for not passing
-beyond fire and star to the "origin of beauty," that one may suppose
-the author, probably an Alexandrian, must have had friends among
-them. At any rate his conception of a resplendent God is Mazdean,
-his all-seeing Holy Spirit is the Parsî "Anahita," and his Wisdom
-is Armaîti, the "loving spirit" on earth, the saviour of men. [29]
-The opposing kingdoms of Ahuramazda and Angromainyu, and especially
-Zoroaster's original division of the universe into "the living and
-the not-living," are reflected in the "Wisdom of Solomon," i. 13-16:
-
-"God made not death: neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of
-the living. He created all things that they might have their being;
-and the generations of the world were healthful; and there (was)
-no poison of destruction in them, nor (any) kingdom of death on the
-earth: (for righteousness is immortal): but ungodly men with their
-deeds and words evoked Death to them: when they thought to have it
-their friend they consumed to naught, and made a covenant with Death,
-being fit to take sides with it."
-
-In the moral and religious evolution which we have been tracing it
-has been seen that the utter indifference of the Cosmos to human good
-and evil, right and wrong, was the theme of Job; that in Ecclesiastes
-the same was again declared, and the suggestion made that if God
-helped or afflicted men it must depend on some point of etiquette or
-observance unconnected with moral considerations, so that man need
-not omit pleasure but only be punctilious when in the temple; that
-in Jesus Ben Sira's contribution to his fathers' "Wisdom," the moral
-character of God was maintained, moral evil regarded as hostile to God,
-and imaginary sanctions invented, accompanied by pleadings with God
-to indorse them by new signs and wonders. Such signs not appearing,
-and no rewards and punishments being manifested in human life, the
-next step was to assign them to a future existence, and this step was
-taken in "Wisdom of Solomon."  There remained but one more necessity,
-namely, that there should be some actual evidence of that future
-existence. Agur's question had remained unanswered--
-
-
-   "Who has ascended into heaven and come down again?
-    Such an one would I question about God."
-
-
-To this the reply was to be the resurrection from death claimed for
-the greatest of the spiritual race of Solomon.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII.
-
-EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS (A SEQUEL TO SOPHIA SOLOMONTOS).
-
-
-In a Theocracy the birth of a new God was not the mere new
-generalization that it might be in our secularized century,--a
-deification of the Unknowable, for instance,--of not the slightest
-practical or moral interest to any human being. Judea was the bodily
-incarnation, even more than Islam is now, of a deity who said,
-"I am the Lord and there is none else; I form the light and create
-darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I the Lord do all these
-things." The denial of such a deity, the substitution of one who
-required neither prayers, sacrifices, nor intercessions, could not
-be merely theoretical. It must involve the overthrow of a nationality
-which had no bond of unity except a book, and the institutions founded
-on that book.
-
-Nor did the theocratic principle admit of a mere philosophical
-opposition to its institutions. He who touched that system was dealing
-with people who, in the language of "Sophia Solomontos" were "shut up
-in a prison without iron bars." The natural advent of the anti-Jahvist
-was in the Temple and with the words--
-
-
-    He hath sent me to herald glad news to the poor,
-    He hath sent me to proclaim deliverance to captives,
-    And recovering of sight to the blind,
-    To set at liberty them that are bruised.
-
-
-These miseries had no real relation to the social or political
-conditions amid which their phrases and hymns were born, but to a
-burden of debts to a jealous and vindictive omnipotence; a burden
-not of actions really wrong, but of mysterious offences, related to
-incomprehensible ordinances and heavenly etiquette. No human vices
-are so malignant as inhuman virtues.
-
-Bunyan, in depicting Christian's burden, has, with a felicity
-perhaps unconscious, made it a pack strapped on. It is not a hunch,
-not any part of the pilgrim, and had he possessed the courage to
-examine it there must have been found many spiritual nightmares
-of the race, and many robust English virtues turned to sins when
-the merry and honest tinker turned retrospective Rip Van Winkle,
-and dreamed himself back into the year One. The burden of sins on
-the poor Israelites had been gradually getting lighter under the
-scepticism of the Wisdom school, in view of the failure of Jahveh to
-fulfil the menaces and sentences of the priesthood. Conformity was
-secured mainly for actual advantages bestowed by the synagogue, or its
-terrors. But the discovery of the doctrine of a future life and a day
-of judgment, when all the mysterious "sins" were to be settled for,
-while smiled at by the Saducees, made the burden of the ignorant poor
-intolerable. Life was passed under suspended swords. The priesthood
-had a cowering vassal in every ignorant human being. The time, the
-labour, the flocks of the peasantry were devoted, but it was all a
-"sweating" process,--the debts were never paid, and there was always
-that "certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of
-fire which shall devour the adversaries." No doubt even the learned
-supposed these superstitions useful to keep the "masses" in order.
-
-But one day a scholarly gentleman, a man of genius, was moved with
-compassion for these poor lost and priest-harried sheep: he turned
-aside from his college and his rank, and became their shepherd;
-he declared they owed no duties to any deity, and that the heavenly
-despot they so dreaded had no existence.
-
-A modern gentleman in a fine mansion and estate may be amused at
-Bunyan's quaint pilgrim, reading in a book and discovering that he
-was in a City of Destruction, fleeing with a burden on his back, and
-rejoicing when it rolls off at the cross. But if this gentleman should
-suddenly receive from some distant personage papers showing that his
-estate had been entirely mortgaged by his father, that it would soon
-be claimed and his family reduced to beggary, he might understand
-the City of Destruction. And if, soon after, some visitor arrived to
-state that the holder of the mortgages was dead; that those claims had
-all legally fallen into his own hands, and that he had burnt them,
-the rolling off of Christian's burden might be appreciated,--also
-the enthusiasm of the personal followers of Jesus.
-
-But one might further imagine a host of hungry lawyers, living on
-large retainers, not being quite happy at such easy settlements,
-especially if the generous visitor were found wealthy enough to go
-about buying up and burning claims, and ending litigation. This, to
-us hardly imaginable, was, however, actually the condition of things
-reflected in parts of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Therein the bond
-under which man suffers is clearly to him who hath the Power of Death,
-the Devil: Jesus ransomed man from the Devil.
-
-The anonymous tractate superscribed solely "To the Hebrews," though
-the last admitted into the New Testament, is probably the earliest
-document it contains. It has no doubt been tampered with, but the
-evidences of the early date of its conception of Christ remain. Not
-only was it evidently written before the destruction of the temple
-(anno 70), but before there was any thought of a mission to the
-Gentiles, who, with Paul their apostle, are ignored. Some of its
-phrases and illustrations are found in epistles of Paul, but, as
-Dr. Davidson pointed out in his Introduction to the New Testament,
-the general doctrine of this treatise is far from Pauline, and
-it is difficult to find any reason for supposing that the few
-borrowings were not by Paul, other than a preference for Paul, and
-disinclination to admit that there is any anonymous work in the New
-Testament. The treatise is without Paul's egotism, or his fatalism,
-and its conception of the new movement seems decidedly more primitive
-than that in the recognised Pauline epistles. The sagacious Eusebius,
-"father of church history," connects the Epistle "To the Hebrews"
-with the "Wisdom of Solomon," and it seems clear that we have here the
-bridge between the last abutment of philosophic or "broad" Jahvism,
-and its "new departure" as Christism.
-
-It is not of especial importance to the present inquiry to determine
-that Paul might not at some youthful period have written this work,
-though I cannot see how any critical reader can so imagine; but
-it will bear indirectly on that point if we read successively the
-following corresponding passages:
-
-
-    Wisdom of Solomon.--"For Wisdom, which is the worker of all things,
-    taught me ... she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure
-    influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty; therefore can
-    no unclean thing fall into her. For she is the brightness of
-    the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God,
-    and the image of his goodness. And alone she can do all things;
-    herself unchanged, she maketh all things new: and in all ages
-    entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God and
-    prophets."--(vii. 25-27.) "And Wisdom was with thee: which knoweth
-    thy works, and was present when thou madest the world." (ix. 9.)
-
-    Epistle to the Hebrews.--"God, having in time past spoken to the
-    fathers by many fragments and divers ways in the prophets, at the
-    end of these days spake unto us in Son whom he constituted heir
-    of all things, by whom also he fashioned the ages; who, being the
-    brightness of his light and the image of his substance, and guiding
-    all things by the word of his authority, having made purification
-    of sins, sat on the right of majesty in high places." (i. 1-3.)
-
-    Epistle to the Colossians.--"Who (the Father) delivered us out of
-    the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of his
-    son of love, in whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of
-    our sins: who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of
-    all creation; for in him were all things created, in the heavens
-    and above the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether
-    thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have
-    been created through him and unto him; and he is before all things,
-    and in him all things hold together." (i. 13-17.)
-
-    Fourth Gospel.--"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
-    with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning
-    with God. All things were made through him, and without him was
-    not anything made. That which hath been made was life in him,
-    and the life was the light of men. And the Word became flesh
-    and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory--glory as of an only
-    begotten of a Father full of grace and truth." (i. 1-15.)
-
-
-It appears to me that the evolution is represented in the
-order given. Paul's phrase, "first-born of all creation,"  is an
-amplification of the word "first-born" used in the Epistle to the
-Hebrews, but there used in another connection,--and not solely,
-as we shall see, relating to Christ. Paul's phrase corresponds with
-"the only-begotten," etc., of John, and with the "son constituted
-heir" of the Epistle to the Hebrews, though the latter is a different
-Christological conception. When this writer's doctrinal statement is
-finished, and after his argument is begun, he says (i. 6), "But when
-of old bringing the first-born into the inhabited earth, he saith,
-And pay homage to him all angels of God." The word "first-born" here is
-probably the seed from which Paul develops his full flower of doctrine,
-given above. Paul's conception of a creative Christ seems later than
-the "guiding" Christ (Heb. i. 3), which recalls the function of Wisdom
-as "director" at the creation (Prov. viii. 30); and the idea in this
-epistle to the Hebrews of a previous and historical Christophany,
-while harmonious with that of the "Wisdom of Solomon" (vii. 27),--that
-she (Wisdom) "in all ages enters into holy souls,"--is so primitive,
-unique, and so foreign to Paul, that the writer may have been one of
-those accused by him of preaching "another Jesus" (2 Cor. ii. 4). [30]
-
-Although this Epistle contains the principle ascribed to Jesus,
-"charity and not sacrifice" (xiii. 9) and substitutes for beasts the
-"sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips harmonious with his good
-name" (verse 15), the letter that killeth brought forth from the same
-chapter the fatal doctrine that the body of Jesus was a sacrifice to be
-eaten. And although this emphasizes the completeness of his humanity
-to an extent inconsistent with his deity, it is on the letter of this
-Epistle that the deification of Christ is founded.
-
-
-    V. 7-9. "Who in the days of his flesh, having offered up
-    entreaties with vehement crying and tears to him able to save
-    him out of death, and although inclined to because of his piety,
-    yet, albeit a son, learned obedience by the things he suffered;
-    and having been made perfect, became unto all that follow him
-    the author of eternal salvation." [31]
-
-
-He is represented as "made perfect through sufferings," as "tempted
-in all points like (?others) without sin," and as having without
-assistance of temple or sacrifices, "obtained eternal redemption"
-(ix. 12). Thus he also needed redemption.
-
-The new covenant of which Jesus was the founder is described in the
-words of Jeremiah (xxxi.):
-
-
-    I will put my laws into their mind,
-    And on their heart will I write them
-    And I will be to them a God,
-    And they shall be to me a people:
-    And they shall not teach every man his fellow-citizen,
-    And every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord:
-    For all shall know me,
-    From the least unto the greatest.
-
-
-In quoting this the writer to the Hebrews adds: "In that he saith,
-'A new (covenant) he hath made the first old. But that which is
-becoming old and waxeth aged is near unto vanishing entirely.'" Here
-is a primitive Quakerism, but more conservative; not like George Fox
-at once sweeping away priesthood sacraments and ecclesiastical laws
-before the Inner Light, but pointing to their near vanishing.
-
-The writer of this Epistle is a philosophical conservative; he shudders
-at the idea of a swift and complete overthrow of the traditional
-system, and even borrows its old thunders against levitical sin
-to menace offences against the new moral God. "Our God [also] is
-a consuming fire." It is evident by his very warnings that a great
-anti-sacerdotal and anti-levitical revolution had taken place, and
-that the free spirit was burgeoning out in excesses. But such is
-his culture that one may suspect his thunders of being theatrical,
-and that he thinks some superstition necessary for the masses.
-
-The fatal and subtle character of the detective Holy Spirit is imported
-into this Epistle from the "Wisdom of Solomon" (i. 6), though not
-so distinctly personified. The sin afterwards called "unpardonable"
-is here a sin against Christ for which repentance, not pardon, is
-impossible. We may perhaps find in some of the expressions germs of
-the legend of Judas. "As touching those who were once enlightened,
-and tasted the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy
-Spirit, and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age
-that is come, and fell away, it is impossible to renew them again to
-repentance, seeing they individually impale the Son of God afresh
-and put him to open shame" (vi. 5, 6). The believers are "not of
-them that shrink back into perdition" (x. 39); and they are warned
-to look carefully "whether there be any man that falleth back from
-the grace of God,... like Esau, who for one mess of meat sold his own
-birthright" (xii. 15, 16). The words "tasted," "perdition," "sold,"
-might start a legend of the betrayal, first alluded to by Paul (if 1
-Cor. xi. 23 be genuine, which is doubtful), though had the legend of
-Judas then existed this writer would naturally have alluded to him
-along with Esau.
-
-This Epistle is the nursery of the titles of Christ; he is Apostle,
-Son of God, Son of Man, Great Shepherd, Captain of Salvation, Mediator,
-Great High Priest; and here alone is found the now familiar endearing
-phrase "Our Lord." These titles represent the functions of different
-beings in the Avesta. The conception of the work of Jesus on earth
-is largely Zoroastrian. The Majesty on high has a colony and a people
-on earth, which otherwise is under the supremacy of the Evil One. As
-we have seen the Avestan definitions of Ahuramazda and Angra Mainyu,
-"the Living and the Not Living," are reflected in the phrases of this
-Epistle,--the "Power of Imperishable Life" (vii. 16) and the "Power of
-Death" (ii. 14). Ahuramazda, when his "habitable earth" was prepared,
-brought into it his "first-born," Yima, and wished him to propagate
-the divine law which should destroy the power of Angra Mainyu on earth
-and confine him in the underworld. Yima replied, "I was not born,
-I was not taught, to be the preacher and the bearer of thy law." He
-engaged, however, to enlarge and nourish the garden of God on earth,
-of which he was king, and entitled "the good shepherd." He obtained
-from the Holy Spirit, Anâhita, the powers thus enumerated in Abân
-Yast 26: "He begged of her a boon, saying, 'Grant me this, O good,
-most beneficent Ardvi Sûra Anâhita, that I may become the sovereign
-lord of all countries, of the dævas [devils] and men, of the Yâtus
-[sorcerers] and Pairkas [seducing nymphs], of the oppressors [who
-afflict] the blind and the deaf; and that I may take from the dævas
-[devils] both riches and welfare, both fatness and flocks, both weal
-and glory" [hvarenô, "the glory from above which makes the king an
-earthly god"]. [32] This "firstborn" reigned a thousand years, but
-then, having ascribed his "glory" to the demons from whom he obtained
-wealth and material benefits, his "glory" was lost, and secured by
-the Devil, who reigned in his place a thousand years, blighting the
-world, when Zoroaster was born to undertake the establishment of the
-divine Law on earth. Yima was ultimately developed into the Jamshid
-of Persian mythology, whose power over demons, fabulous wealth, and
-ultimate fall (through declaring himself a god, according to Firdusi)
-invested the legend of Solomon.
-
-From the legend of Solomon and the Solomonic Psalms the Epistle to
-the Hebrews brings its exaltation of Christ. From Ps. lxxxix. 26-7,
-as reproduced in 2 Sam. vii. 14, is quoted (i. 5) the divine promise,
-"I will be to him (Solomon) a Father and he shall be my Son," along
-with the manifesto at Solomon's enthronement (Ps. ii. 7), "Thou art
-my Son; this day have I begotten thee." Solomon is the "first-born"
-alluded to in Heb. i. 6: "When of old bringing the first-born into
-the inhabited earth (oikoumenên) he saith, And pay homage to him all
-angels of God?"
-
-And here we have an interesting example of evolution in the Solomon
-legend. The term "first-born," as indicating the relation of a human
-being to the deity, occurs but once in the Old Testament, namely, in
-Psalm lxxxix. 27. It occurs in a strange passage that must be quoted:
-
-
-    19. Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy ones,
-        And saidst, I have laid help upon a youth;
-        I have raised one elected out of the people.
-    20. I have discovered David, my servant:
-        With my holy oil have I anointed him,
-    21. By whom my hand shall be established,
-        Whom also mine arm shall strengthen.
-    22. The enemy shall not do him violence,
-        Nor the son of evil afflict him.
-    23. I will beat down his adversaries before him
-        And smite them that hate him.
-    24. But my faithfulness and my mercy end not with him,
-        And in my name shall his horn be exalted.
-    25. I will extend his hand on the sea also,
-        And his right hand on the rivers:
-    26. He shall address me, "Thou, my father,
-        My God, and the rock of my support";
-    27. In answer I constitute him first-born,
-        Elyon of the kings of the earth.
-
-
-Although in all of these verses the Davidic royalty is exalted, the
-reference to David's own reign passes at verse 24 into a celebration of
-Solomon. Here, as in Psalm cxxxii. 17, Solomon is the "horn" of David:
-he was distinctively the power on sea and river, phrases inapplicable
-to David, and there is a contrast between the anointed "servant"
-(verse 20) and the "first-born" (verse 27). The next title, "Elyon"
-(Most High), comes very near to that of the deity (El Elyon) of the
-mysterious priest-king of Salem, Melchizedek, whose mythical character
-and identity with the legendary Solomon will be hereafter considered.
-
-Here we have no doubt the germs of the narrative in 2 Sam. vii. of
-the formal adoption of Solomon as Jahveh's son, with the addition of a
-metaphysical connotation of the sonship not found in the Psalm. In the
-Psalm the fatherhood is that of support, the position of "first-born"
-is that of chieftainship among kings; and it is further said (31,
-32) that if any of the sons of the Davidic line profane the divine
-statutes, "Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and
-their iniquity with stripes." But in 2 Sam. vii. 14, Jahveh applies
-this warning to Solomon alone, and with a remarkable modification:
-"I will be his father and he shall be my son: if he commit iniquity
-I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of
-the sons of men; but my mercy shall not depart from him." That is,
-though a son of God he may be chastened like the sons of men,--an
-intimation of a difference between Solomon and ordinary human nature
-not intended in the words of the Psalm.
-
-The Epistle to the Hebrews, finding in this Psalm an introduction of
-"first-born" into the world, for there is no article preceding the
-word, follows it so closely as to omit any article before "son"
-(i. 2). He finds this in an address of the deity to his angels
-("holy ones" or saints), and understands verse 27 of the Psalm to
-mean that they, the angels, are to worship the "first-born" as the
-Elyon, or Most High on earth. From 2 Sam. vii. the Epistle gets
-sufficient authority for ascribing an eternal personality to the
-sonship, anciently represented by Solomon, and we may thus see that
-the gesture of Hebrew religion towards a doctrine of incarnation was
-much earlier than is generally supposed. And this, too, is the Hebrew
-contribution to a Psalm which, in the nine verses above quoted, imports
-ideas foreign to Judaism. The reciprocal help of the deity and the king
-(19-21) is Avestan, and inconsistent with monotheism. Elyon is the
-name of an ancient Phoenician god, slain by his son El, no doubt the
-"first-born of death" in Job xviii. 13, and the violent "son of evil,"
-in verse 22 of our Psalm. The exaltation of both David and Solomon in
-the Psalm is primarily in reference to service and deeds, not majesty,
-essence, or title; of these Avestan religion made little, but Hebraism
-made much, and the deification of Solomon, though warranted by other
-Psalms, is added to this eighty-ninth by Samuel and the Epistle to
-the Hebrews.
-
-In Ecclesiasticus it is written: "In the division of the nations of the
-whole earth he set a ruler over every people; but Israel is the Lord's
-portion: whom, being his first-born, he nourisheth with discipline,
-and giving him the light of his love doth not forsake him.... For all
-things cannot be in men, because the son of man is not immortal. What
-is brighter than the sun? Yet the light thereof faileth; and flesh
-and blood will imagine evil" (xvii.). Now in the Zoroastrian theology
-there could be no direct contact of God with matter: the devil's
-empire could be invaded and death conquered only by a perfectly
-"blameless" MAN. (Cf. "Wisdom of Solomon," xviii. 21, with the
-"sinless" of Heb. iv. 15, the "guileless" of vii. 26, and "without
-blemish," ix. 14). The spotless one can use no carnal weapon. In
-the Zoroastrian theology the divine potency is that of the Word, and
-formulas exist to be wielded against every variety of demon. So in
-this Epistle the supremacy of the Son is by "the word of his power",
-(i. 3), and "the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword"
-(iv. 12).
-
-The enterprise of the Son of God was to fulfil these conditions. He
-must become a complete man, share all the infirmities of man, all his
-liabilities to temptation, receive no assistance from his Father,
-no angelic help,--placed lower than the angels,--and confront the
-powers of Death and Hell without any material weapon. If he succeeded
-in remaining sinless, faithful to the divine law, even unto death,
-even while in hell, unshaken by threats, sufferings, or seductions,
-it must be a purely human achievement. There was no miracle; even the
-suspicion of using supernatural power would have tainted the whole
-work of Jesus as conceived in this Epistle.
-
-This undertaking was not simply for the sake of mankind. All things
-are not yet subjected to the divine sway (Heb. ii. 8). Heaven itself
-was shaken, when the old covenant failed, and trembled for the result
-of the tremendous conflict of the Son of Man on earth with its Prince
-and his hosts (Heb. xii. 25-29). This was "the joy in front of him"
-(xii. 2), as well as the rescue of men.
-
-Thus was the man left entirely to the devil, not even his life
-being reserved, as in the case of Job. He loudly cries for help,
-even with tears, at the sight of Death; he is heard, pitied, but no
-help comes. He must trust to his human merits, and not miracles,
-for his Sonship is of no value in this conflict. By his obedience
-learned in his sufferings, by his sinlessness under all trials and
-temptations, he fulfilled the conditions of deathlessness. By his
-own heart's blood, not by offerings of bloody sacrifices, not by
-supernatural power, he reached the place of holiness, "having obtained
-eternal redemption." From first to last there was no divine aid. His
-unanswered loud cries (Heb. v. 7) may be connected with the legend
-of his expiring cry, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
-
-Much of the thought here is similar to the "Wisdom of Solomon"
-(ii. 22-4, iii. 1-9), where however the ideas are conflicting. It is
-said, "God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of
-his own eternity: nevertheless, through the devil's envy came death
-into the world, and they that hold of his side do find it." But then
-Jahvism puts in with the declaration that the seeming destruction
-of the righteous is God's chastisement and probation of them. The
-Epistle to the Hebrews does not regard the sufferings and death of
-Jesus as God's work at all, but all from the devil. Though God spoke
-by him there is no suggestion that he sent Jesus, or that his coming
-was not voluntary.
-
-With this reservation, and a large one it is, that Jesus was not
-delivered up to Satan by God, but left to confront his torments in an
-effort to subdue him, "bring him to nought," the central idea of the
-Epistle is a doctrinal transfiguration of Job, who being delivered up
-to Satan, triumphs over the tempter and tormentor, and through all
-preserves his sinlessness and loyalty to God. The result being that
-those who had denied Job's merits, his sinlessness, had to secure Job's
-intercession in order to escape the penalty of having ascribed his
-sufferings to God (Job xlii. 8). [33] This relationship of ideas is all
-the more interesting because apparently unconscious in the writer of
-the Epistle, and thus revealing the extent to which Oriental religion
-had remoulded Judaism among the educated Jews of his time. Monotheism
-is strictly inconsistent with the supremacy of "merits" which is the
-very soul of Oriental religion. The sacred books of India contain
-records of saints or Rishis who by extraordinary austerities,
-sacrifices, and virtues so piled up their "merits" that the gods
-were frightened, as they were at the tower of Babel; and sometimes
-the gods tempted these powerful saints to commit some sin that would
-reduce their "merits." The Solomonic "Proverbs" are pervaded by the
-Oriental doctrine of "merits": a man is proved by test of his merits,
-as gold passing through the furnace (xxvii. 21); the perfect inherit
-good (xxviii. 10); and perhaps that sublime pedlar of transcendent
-gems imported along with the gold of Ophir some version of the Puranic
-legend of Harischandra, "the Hindu Job." All the Jahvist adulterations
-of the biblical version do not conceal the fact that when Jahveh,
-by delivering the meritorious man up to Satan, delivered himself also
-into the hands of Satan, he (Jahveh) was compelled to surrender before
-the merits on which the man had planted himself. Jahveh reclaimed his
-sovereignty, but agreed that Job, who had said "God hath wronged me,"
-had spoken of him "the thing that is right" (xlii. 8). In the same
-way the storm-god Indra (the Hindu Jahveh) accompanied by all the
-gods, headed by Dharma (Justice), appears to Harischandra after his
-trials, and tells him that he, his wife and son, had, by their merits,
-"conquered heaven" (Markandeya Purana). The completion of these merits
-was when Harischandra resolved with his wife to die on the funeral
-pyre of their son, who, as a result of their torments, had died by a
-serpent's bite. It was then that the god Indra appeared to restore
-the son, and admit that the just and faithful king, his wife and
-son, had "conquered heaven." We are thus carried to the Solomonic
-affirmations that "when the whirlwind passeth the just man is on
-an everlasting foundation" (Prov. x. 25), that "justice delivereth
-from death" (x. 2), that "the just man finds a refuge in death"
-(xiv. 32); and we are carried forward to the Epistle to the Hebrews,
-where, after the last ordeal, death, the son of the heavenly king
-is restored to life, and Satan, who had over him the power of death,
-"brought to nought" (ii. 14). But further, in the Puranic legend, which
-from time immemorial has been a passion-play in India, Harischandra,
-when told that he, his wife and son, had "conquered heaven," refused
-to ascend to heaven without his "faithful subjects." "This request
-was granted by Indra, and after Viswamitra had inaugurated Rohitaswa,
-the king's son, to be his successor, Harischandra, his friends and
-followers, all ascended to heaven." Thus, in our Epistle, the son,
-having "learned obedience by the things which he suffered, and having
-been made perfect, became unto all them that obeyed him the author
-of eternal salvation." "For in that he hath himself suffered being
-tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted." The subjects of
-King Harischandra who remained faithful to him after he was reduced
-to beggary, ascended with him. Faith is declared in our Epistle to be
-"the testing of things not seen" (xi. 1), and faithfulness is to "run
-with patience the course that is set before us, looking unto Jesus,
-the captain and perfector of faithfulness, who for the joy set before
-him endured the stake (stauron), despising shame, and hath sat down
-at the right hand of the throne of God" (xi. 1, xii. 1, 2).
-
-And there is also, I believe, in the scheme of redemption set forth
-in this Epistle, an influence from the story of King Usinára in the
-Mahábhárata, of which there were various versions which must have
-been familiar to the Buddhists in Alexandria. A dove pursued by a
-falcon takes refuge in the bosom of Usinára; the falcon demands its
-surrender. The King quotes the law of Manu that it is a great sin to
-abandon any being that has taken asylum with one. The falcon urges that
-it is the law of nature that falcons shall feed on doves, and that
-unless this dove is surrendered its little falcons must starve. The
-King offers other food, but the only substitute that is adapted to
-the falcon's nature is a quantity of Usinára's own flesh equal to the
-weight of the dove. To this the King agrees. Balances are produced,
-and the dove placed in one scale, in the other a piece of the King's
-flesh, which seems large enough, but is insufficient. Though the
-King cuts off piece by piece all of his flesh, the dove outweighs it,
-until at length Usinára gets into the scale HIMSELF. That outweighs
-the dove, which is really Agni, the falcon being Indra. The gods
-who had assumed these forms in order to test Usinára's fidelity
-to the law of sanctuary, resume their shape, and the King ascends
-transfigured to paradise. In one version a King (Givi) sacrifices
-his son, Vrihad-Gasbha in obedience to sacred requirements, the story
-resembling that of Abraham and Isaac. Alford calls attention to the
-emphasis on the word "himself" in the Epistle of the Hebrews ix. 14:
-"How much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal
-Spirit offered HIMSELF, without blemish, unto God, cleanse our
-conscience from dead works to serve the living God."
-
-Without blemish! That was the great point. The champion of the Good
-confronts the champion of Evil, his purpose being to conquer the last
-enemy, Death, by unarmed human virtue. This was the central idea
-in the Passion, a drama gone to pieces in the Gospels. Therefore,
-he did not summon legions of angels, and said to Peter, "Sheath
-thy sword." Therefore, the mere lynching of Jesus, for such it was,
-is given the formalities of judicial procedure, in order to impress
-an official character on the testimonies to his innocence: Pilate,
-Caiaphas, Pilate's wife, Judas, Herod, all bear witness that no evil
-is in him, and he challenges the High Priest's court, "If I have
-uttered evil bear witness of the evil." [34] In this passion-drama
-Jesus Barabbas is set beside Jesus the Christ,--officially proclaimed
-guilt beside officially proclaimed innocence,--and Wrath selects guilt,
-condemns innocence. But it was thus the first-born of Life prevailed
-over the first-born of Death. In that crisis the blameless man swerving
-not from his rectitude, established the "assembly of the first-born,"
-who can dwell with the living God because they have learned from their
-Captain how to get rid of the defilement of mortality. There is nothing
-vicarious in his service. The Captain represented the human race in
-a single combat with Satan, and he discovered for all the vulnerable
-point of that Adversary,--that he could not hold in sheol a perfectly
-sinless human being. But it still remained that without holiness no
-man could see the Lord. Another advantage secured by Jesus for men
-was that after his victory was achieved the heroic man, on resuming
-his previous position as Son of God, was able to add thereto what
-he had won as Son of Man,--the office of high priest or intercessor,
-who could take good care that every man who fulfilled the condition
-of holiness got his reward. Satan should not cheat. Nevertheless
-Jesus had been his own saviour, and every man must be his own saviour.
-
-Pulpit ignorance has wrested from the Epistle to the Hebrews
-fragments of texts, in support of a dogma of atonement which only
-a fortunate lack of logic prevents from amounting to a doctrine of
-human sacrifice. A favorite clause is, "Without the shedding of blood
-there in no remission,"--which is really this epistle's stigma on
-the system it is abolishing! The sacredness of the blood of Jesus
-was that it was the price he had to pay to the devil in order to
-preserve his sinlessness, and so rise from death, and demonstrate to
-others that they also could rise by sinlessness to eternal life. It
-might cost their blood also, but would be lost if they "resisted unto
-blood." Jesus thus brought life and incorruption, as distinguished
-from living-death in sheol, to light. And the devotion to Jesus for
-this was due to the belief that he had laid aside his heavenly glory
-and become a complete man, and had thus risked his all, his greatness,
-his very immortality, to make for both heaven and earth the tremendous
-venture; the slightest misstep, the least sin, or wrath, or impatience,
-and he would have had his abode in sheol, in bonds of Satan, through
-all eternity.
-
-When this Epistle was written the believers already found immortality
-in such faith; with such hope and joy before them they were able to
-despise sensual joys, to conquer temptations, and to fulfill those
-duties and conditions of personal holiness which are described in this
-Epistle,--"Peace with all men, and holiness without which no man can
-see the Lord." The ecstasy did not last long, but it was a marvellous
-phenomenon while it lasted, and the most complete reflection of it may
-be found in this Epistle to the Hebrews, especially if it be approached
-by its prologue,--the "Wisdom of Solomon,"--but it is subtle, and
-can only be comprehended by patient and comparative studies.
-
-At the heart of this earliest and swiftly lost Christianity was a
-sublime effort to humanize God.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV.
-
-SOLOMON MELCHIZEDEK.
-
-
-It is possible that the genealogies of Jesus started from no other
-basis than Hebrews vii. 14: "It is clear beforehand that our Lord
-hath arisen out of Judah." [35] Yet nothing could be more subversive
-of the Epistle than a claim of any hereditary authority or advantage
-for Jesus.
-
-The author of the Epistle, if he ever heard the phrase "Son of David,"
-avoided it, for David is here in the background, and in a quotation
-from one of his Psalms his name is passed over, with the vague words,
-"one hath testified somewhere, saying," etc. It is an essential part
-of the writer's argument that Christ is "without genealogy" of that
-kind. To some it was no doubt grateful to be told that Jesus was not
-of the priestly tribe, not of that "apostolic succession," so to say;
-but it was more important to convince the conservative that their
-sacred history sanctioned faith in a high priest approved as such not
-by carnal descent, but by his sinlessness and by his resurrection. But
-it was not agreeable to any Jewish party to suppose that the new
-dominion was to be altogether in the heavens, or detached from the
-Solomonic Golden Age for whose return they were hoping. The writer
-therefore connects Jesus with a "first-born" forerunner, namely, with
-Melchizedek, concerning whom he "has many things to say, and hard
-of interpretation." So Christian commentators have to this day found
-what he does say, and Melchizedek is not surrounded by any dogmatic
-fence that can turn a new hypothesis into a trespass.
-
-The Epistle applies to Jesus lines from Psalm cx.:
-
-
-    Thou art a priest for ever,
-    After the order of Melchizedek.
-
-
-But in this anonymous Psalm there is reason to believe that Melchizedek
-is not a proper name at all. It is admittedly a combination of
-malki'-tzedek, "king of justice," and in the Jewish Family Bible
-(Deusch) the above lines are translated, "Thou art my priest for ever,
-my king in righteousness, by my word." The Septuagint, regularly
-followed by the Epistle to the Hebrews, has Melchizedek in this Psalm
-cx., which was also messianized by the LXX. in its very first line,
-"The Lord said unto my Lord," Kyrios being the word for Lord in
-both cases, whereas in the original the words are different ("Jahveh
-declared to my Adonai"). And it is notable that Matthew xxii. whose
-Hebraic character is so marked, and Mark xii., both make Jesus follow
-the Septuagint in quoting these words.
-
-In both of these Gospels the incident is evidently, in Mark clumsily,
-interpolated, and it would appear to have belonged to some legend
-of the Infancy, such as that of the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy,
-where it occurs naturally:
-
-
-   "And when he was twelve years old they took him to Jerusalem
-    to the feast. But when the feast was over they indeed returned,
-    but the Lord Jesus remained in the temple among the doctors and
-    elders and learned men of Jerusalem, and he asked them sundry
-    questions about the sciences and they answered him in turn. Now
-    he said to them, Whose son is Messiah? They answered him, The son
-    of David. Wherefore, then, said he, Doth he in spirit call him
-    Lord, when he saith the Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my
-    right hand, that I may bring down thy enemies to the footprints
-    of thy feet?"
-
-
-It is probable that this anecdote had floated down from an early
-period when the notion of a royal descent of Jesus had not arisen.
-
-Obviously a tremendous question arises here as to how a story should
-be found in Genesis xiv. about Melchizedek, which as a proper name
-really occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, [36] and the mystery
-is increased by the absence of any allusion to such a personage
-in Jesus Ben Sira's enumeration of "famous men" (Ecclus. xliv.),
-or elsewhere. It almost looks as if Jesus Ben Sira had not read, or
-else had cancelled as spurious, the strange passage in Genesis--which
-is as follows:
-
-
-   "And Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought forth bread and wine;
-    and he was priest of El-Elyôn. And he blessed him and said,
-    Blessed be Abram of El-Elyôn, purchaser of heaven and earth;
-    and blessed be El-Elyôn, which hath delivered thine enemies into
-    thy hand. And he (Abram) gave him a tenth of all."
-
-
-Professor Max Müller, in his third lecture on the "Science of
-Religion," gives some useful information concerning this peculiar
-name, "El-Elyôn," after consulting his contemporaries at Oxford and
-in Germany:
-
-"One of the oldest names of the deity among the ancestors of the
-Semitic nations was El. It meant Strong. It occurs in the Babylonian
-inscriptions as Ilu, God, and in the very name of Bab-il, the gate
-or temple of Il.... The same El was worshipped at Byblus by the
-Phoenicians, and he was called there the Son of Heaven and Earth. His
-father was the son of Eliun, the most high God, who had been killed
-by wild animals. The Son of Eliun, who succeeded him, was dethroned,
-and at last slain by his own son, El, whom Philo identifies with the
-Greek Kronos, and represents as the presiding deity of the planet
-Saturn.... Elyôn, which, in Hebrew, means the Highest is used in the
-Old Testament as a predicate of God.... It occurs in the Phoenician
-cosmogony as Eliun, the highest God, the Father of Heaven, who was
-the father of El."
-
-According to Sanchunvaton (Euseb. Proep. i. 10) the Phoenicians called
-God Elioun.
-
-The combination El Elyôn occurs in but two chapters in the
-Bible,--Genesis xiv. and Psalm lxxviii. (The Revisers translate it
-in Genesis, "God Most High," but in the Psalm (verse 35), "Most High
-God.") That the name was imported from the earlier into the later
-chapter is suggested by a similar association of each with the idea of
-purchase or redemption: "God Most High, purchaser of heaven and earth"
-(Genesis), "God Most High, their redeemer" (Psalm). But which is the
-earlier? Probably the Psalm; for it is a long résumé of the traditional
-history of Israel, but contains no allusion to Abraham. Had its unique
-name, "El Elyôn," been derived from any such traditional source surely
-some mention of Abraham would have been made.
-
-The Psalm is Elohistic. Possibly the Phoenician name for God, Elioun,
-was used in order to set "El" above it. Or it may be that as Solomon
-had been declared "Elyôn of Kings" (Psalm lxxxix. 27) it was important
-to recall that he at the same time said, "My Elohim," and to place "El"
-before his title. This conjecture is warranted by the fact that in
-both of the Psalms, and in the corresponding passages, God is spoken
-of as a "Rock." There are other resemblances between the two Psalms,
-one very striking:
-
-Psalm lxxviii. 70--"He chose David also, his servant, and took him
-from the sheepfolds."
-
-Psalm lxxxix. 19, 20--"I have raised one elected out of the people;
-I have discovered David, my servant."
-
-The Psalm in which the Septuagint personalises malki'-tzedek (cx.) into
-"Melchizedek" is a fragmentary little piece, with two incomprehensible
-verses at the end which seem to allude to some legend or folklore
-now lost. These verses (6 and 7) are incongruous with the preceding
-ones and must be detached, and perhaps verse 5 also, as this seems an
-anti-climax. These closing verses look as if they may have been added
-by some admirer of Joshua's slaughter of kings, and it is probable
-that the legend of Joshua's making his captains tread on the necks
-of the five kings (Joshua x.) was developed out of the opening verse
-of this Psalm:
-
-
-   "Jahveh said to my lord [Adonai], Sit thou at my right hand,
-    Until I make thine enemies thy footstool."
-
-
-The leader of these kings was Adonai-Zedek, who, like Melchizedek, was
-King of Jerusalem; they are certainly mythical relatives, their names
-meaning "Lord of Justice" and "King of Justice." It is philologically
-impossible that any persons with those proper names could have existed
-in Jerusalem before the invasion of the Hebrews. And "Adonai-bezek,"
-the "radiant lord," whose thumbs and toes Joshua cut off when he
-captured Jerusalem, is a transparent variant of Adonai-zedek.
-
-When the city, originally named Jebus, began to be called Salem (see
-Psalm lxxvi. 2), the aboriginal people who continued to dwell there
-might naturally dream of their ancient kings, as the Welch and Bretons
-so long did of Arthur, "flower of kings," and perhaps similarly expect
-their return to restore their ancient freedom; and it may have become
-a useful political device to find beyond the ugly legends of Joshua's
-cruelty to their "just" and "shining" lords a prettier one, made out
-of an old song, of an earlier "King of Justice," whose bread and wine
-Abraham had eaten, to whom he had paid tithes, whose deity, El Elyôn,
-the father of Israel had recognized as his own, and with whom he had
-made a treaty of salem, or peace,--Jebus thus becoming Jebus-Salem
-(Jerusalem).
-
-Josephus records the legend as it was no doubt generally accepted among
-the Jews in the first century of our era: "Now, the King of Sodom met
-him (Abram) at a certain place which they called the King's Dale,
-where Melchizedek, King of the City of Salem, received him. That
-name signifies the righteous king, and such he was without dispute,
-insomuch that on that account he was made the priest of God. However,
-they afterward called Salem Jerusalem." (Antiq. Bk. i. ch. 10.)
-
-Josephus is careful to identify Salem as Jerusalem, and in vi. ch. 10
-of the same work states that the King's Dale (identified as the Shaveh
-where Abraham met Melchizedek, Genesis xiv.) is "two furlongs distant
-from Jerusalem." This carefulness may have been intended to distinguish
-Melchizedek's Salem from the northern Shalem (Genesis xxxiii. 18), a
-place associated with Jacob, and apparently representing an attempt to
-set up a rival temple to that in Jerusalem. It was an old competition
-about tithes. Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek, King of Salem,
-but Jacob, after his vision at Bethel, recognized that as the "house
-of God," and vowed to give to God a tenth of all that was given him
-(Genesis xxviii). [37] This quarrel between rival towns and temples,
-trying each to draw all tithes to themselves, harmonized in the later
-legends of the Bible, need not detain us, but it is of importance
-to remark that the story of Abram meeting the King of Justice and
-Peace near Jerusalem, and establishing the sanctity of that city,
-corresponds with, and is counterbalanced by, Jacob's meeting with
-angels, and wrestling with a mysterious "man," who, it is hinted, was
-some form of God himself. This reply to the story of Abram suggests
-that at the time of that tithe controversy between Bethel and Sion
-Melchizedek was not thought of as a flesh-and-blood king or a mere
-man, but as a shadowy shape, evoked from actual conditions for certain
-purposes, and named in accordance with the history or traditions out
-of which the conditions and the aims were evolved.
-
-In investigations of this kind, concerned with ages really prehistoric,
-it is necessary to remember at every step that our search is amid eras
-when words and names were at once counters of actual forces and factors
-of history. How serious a play on words may be even in historic times
-is illustrated by a Papacy founded on the double meaning of Peter--a
-man's name and a rock,--and as we approach earlier epochs, whose
-issues and struggles have long passed away, and their once antagonistic
-leaders harmonised by pious legends, it is largely by the aid of words
-and names that we are enabled to reach even historic probabilities.
-
-As to Melchizedek, my inference above stated, derived from the two
-tithe legends, that his supernatural character is reflected in that
-of the corresponding phantoms met by Jacob may not be generally
-accepted, but that he (Melchizedek) was so understood by the writer
-to the Hebrews can hardly be disputed. Melchizedek is there (Hebrews
-vii.) declared to have been "without father, without mother, without
-genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, being
-assimilated unto the Son of God."
-
-In the third century the Melchizedekian sect maintained that
-Melchizedek was not a man but a heavenly power superior to Jesus,
-and the Hieracites held similar views. Some eminent theologians have
-believed that Melchizedek was Christ himself. Most of the Christian
-theories concerning the mysterious king are virtual admissions that
-only the eye of faith can see in him any actual being at all. How
-then was this mythical being formed? [38]
-
-1. A suitable nest for the Melchizedek Saga existed near Jerusalem,
-in a vale called the King's Dale. It seems to have been a royal
-racing ground (Targum of Onkelos, Gen. xiv. 17) or hippodrome
-(lxx. xlviii. 7), and its name in Hebrew was Emek-ham-Melech.
-
-2. In the ancient Psalm cx. 1 we have Adonai (Lord), and in verse 4
-Melchi-Melech (or Moloch) king, combined with tsedek, justice.
-
-3. Tzedek (Tsaydoc or Zadok), the priest who anointed Solomon to
-be king. Tsaydoc supplanted the legitimate High Priest Abiathar
-who had taken the side of the legitimate heir to David's throne,
-Adonijah, supplanted by Solomon. The deprivation of Abiathar, and
-exaltation of Tsaydoc to be High Priest is said (1 Kings ii. 27)
-to have been in fulfillment of "the word of Jahveh, which he spake
-concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh." The reference is to the
-sentence passed on Eli and his house, to which Abiathar belonged,
-when Jahveh said, "And I will raise me up a faithful priest, etc.,"
-(1 Sam. ii. 35). Faithful priests were called "sons of Zadok," the
-phrase having apparently become proverbial (Ezek. xliv. 15).
-
-4. In 1 Chron. iii. there appear, among the descendants of Solomon,
-"Amaziah, Azariah his son, Jotham his son." In 1 Chron. vi. we
-find among descendants of Zadok, Ahimaaz, Azariah his son, Johanan
-his son. Johanan is also among Solomon's descendants, and among the
-descendants of both Solomon and Zadok is Shallum,--written by Josephus
-Salloumos (Bk. x. ch. 8). Josephus also says that Zadok was the first
-High Priest of Solomon's Temple. But Solomon himself, without the
-assistance of any priest, dedicated the Temple, offered the sacrifices
-on that occasion, and so continued: "three times in a year did Solomon
-offer burnt offerings and peace offerings upon the altar which he built
-to Jahveh." (1 Kings ix. 25). These statements establish a probability
-that no such person as Zadok existed at all, and that the development
-of this personification of justice (zedek) into a priestly personage
-was due to an ecclesiastical necessity of introducing a priest among
-the provisions of Solomon for the temple. Zadok is thus a detachment
-from King Solomon of the priestly functions he had discharged in the
-temple, according to the book of Kings; and in 1 Chron. vi., where this
-personification is completed, the Solomonic family names are found,
-as above, recurring as descendants of the personification,--Zadok.
-
-These names are the fossil remains of controversies with Shilonite
-and Samaritan pretensions, which ended in consecrating the throne and
-altar at Jerusalem, and they prove that the consecration was that of
-justice and peace. Of these the Wise Man was typical. Solomon was the
-model from whom all of these ideals were painted. His title, Adonai,
-and his equity (Psalm xlv. 7, 11) are combined in Adonizedek, his glory
-(Psalm xlv. 3, 4) is in Adonibezek; his high priesthood is allegorized
-in Zadok; and in "Melchizedek, King of Salem," his supreme characters
-are summed up, "King of Justice, Prince of Peace."
-
-In a warlike age this peacefulness of a monarch was the great and
-supernatural phenomenon. It is the very central idea of the whole
-Solomonic legend. Solomon got his name from it, even the name with
-Jahveh in it (Jedediah) being set aside; he was preferred above David
-to build the temple, because David was a warrior; in building the
-temple the peace was not broken even by the noise of a hammer, the
-stones being all in shape, it seems by supernatural power, when taken
-from the quarry, so as to be noiselessly fitted together; he would not
-fight even those who were rending parts of his kingdom away. He was
-the hero of the Beatitudes,--the gentle one who inherited the earth,
-the one who hungered and thirsted for justice and was filled, the
-peacemaker called the Son of God. It was he who first said, If thine
-enemy hunger give him food, if he thirst give him drink. And all this
-was allegorized in Melchizedek, who, when his country was invaded,
-instead of joining the five kings who resisted, loved his enemy,
-gave the invader food and drink.
-
-We thus find Solomon,--the glorious cosmopolitan and secularist,
-whose name Jahvism could not utter without a shudder,--distributed in
-fable, legend, psalm, through Hexateuch and Hagiographa, and finally
-transfigured into a type of divine and eternal Sonship. Thus he
-appears in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to which we now return.
-
-In the Epistle to the Hebrews Christ is invested with the mystical
-robes of Solomon. To Christ are applied the words, "I will be to him
-a Father, and he shall be to me a Son," quoted from Jahveh's promise
-to David concerning Solomon (2 Sam. vii. 14). To Christ are twice
-applied the words, "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee,"
-quoted from Psalm ii. 7, admittedly Solomonic. From Psalm xlv.,
-verses 6 and 7, ascriptions to Solomon, are applied to Christ in
-this Epistle. And Melchizedek is here declared to be "a great man,"
-"assimilated unto the Son of God."
-
-We may here recall the words of Josephus, a contemporary of our
-writer, who says that Melchizedek was made the priest of God on
-account of his righteousness (Ant., Bk. i. ch. 10). It may have
-been that there was a popular belief in the time of Josephus that
-Melchizedek received his ordination from Abram himself, but there is
-no doubt that the mysterious king's priesthood was believed to rest
-upon his righteousness and above all his peacefulness.
-
-With these preliminaries we may find the Epistle's argument about
-Melchizedek less "hard of interpretation" than the writer says it
-is. After speaking of Abraham as having "obtained" the promise,
-not merely because it was God's promise, but because he "patiently
-endured," having argued that Christ, "though he was a Son, yet learned
-obedience by the things that he suffered", this Epistle maintains
-(vi. 20) that this is the believer's hope, whereby he enters within
-the veil, "whither as a forerunner Jesus entered for us, having
-become a high priest forever after the manner of Melchizedek." (The
-sense of this is lost in the E. V. by rendering genomenos "made":
-the argument is that though he was a Son of God even that could not
-make him a high priest; this he had to "become" by his own merits,
-uninheritable even from God, as was the case with Melchizedek.) "For
-this Melchizedek, being of Salem, priest of God Most High, who met
-Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him,
-to whom also Abraham divided a tenth part of all (being first by
-interpretation King of Righteousness, and next also King of Salem,
-that is Prince of Peace; being without father, without mother,
-without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life,
-but assimilated (echôn aphômoiômenos) unto the Son of God), abideth
-a priest perpetually" (vii. 1-3).
-
-The mystical clauses of verse 3 have for centuries been an unsolved
-enigma to exegetists; and Alford, after summing up the many conjectures
-as to their meaning, expresses his feeling that the writer had
-a thought which he did not intend us to comprehend! Probably,
-however, the writer was using language understood in his time, and
-which may be interpreted by comparison with expressions familiar
-in Jewish folklore. Some of these are preserved in the apocryphal
-gospels. Thus, in the Pseudo-Matthew, Levi, the teacher of Jesus,
-astounded by the Child's learning, says, "I think he was born before
-the flood." In the gospel of Thomas, the teacher Zacchæus says,
-"This child is not of earthly parents, he is able to subdue even
-fire. Perhaps he was begotten before the world was made." These
-ideas, which correspond somewhat to the Teutonic superstition of
-the "changeling," are traceable in the Fourth Gospel (viii. 56-59),
-where Jesus is stoned for saying, "Before Abraham was I am."
-
-It will be seen that by this early writer "to the Hebrews"  Jesus was
-not thought of in connection with David, but bore Solomon's preëminent
-title, King of Peace, and that conferred on him by the Queen of
-Sheba, King of Justice. In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the Prince of the
-Golden Age, historically associated with idolatrous shrines, had been
-rehabilitated, even apotheosized; he was now a sort of rival of Jesus
-in divine sonship. The writer of our Epistle therefore artistically,
-not to say artfully, utilizes a composite word made into a proper name
-under which Solomon's combined royalty and priesthood, his peace and
-justice, had been detached from his personality and personified. The
-new exaltation of Solomon personally was thus ignored, while his
-essential glories, his wisdom, and his reclaimed virtues, were woven
-into the celestial mantle of mysterious Melchizedek, and through him
-passed to the shoulders of the risen Christ.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV.
-
-THE PAULINE DEHUMANIZATION OF JESUS.
-
-
-The Queen of Sheba certainly deserved her exaltation as the Hebrew
-Athena, and the homage paid to her by Jesus, for journeying so
-far simply to hear the wisdom of Solomon. In Jewish and Christian
-folklore are many miraculous tales about the Queen's visit, but in
-the Biblical records, in the books of "Kings" and "Chronicles," the
-only miracle is the entire absence of anything marvellous, magical,
-or even occult. The Queen was impressed by Solomon's science, wisdom,
-the edifices he had built, the civilization he had brought about;
-they exchanged gifts, and she departed. It is a strangely rational
-history to find in any ancient annals.
-
-The saying of Jesus cited by Clement of Alexandria, "He that hath
-marvelled shall reign," uttered perhaps with a sigh, tells too
-faithfully how small has been the interest of grand people in the
-wisdom that is "clear, undefiled, plain." They are represented rather
-by the beautiful and wealthy Marchioness in "Gil Blas," whose favour
-was sought by the nobleman, the ecclesiastic, the philosopher, the
-dramatist, by all the brilliant people, but who set them all aside
-for an ape-like hunchback, with whom she passed many hours, to the
-wonder of all, until it was discovered that the repulsive creature
-was instructing her ladyship in cabalistic lore and magic.
-
-There is much human pathos in this longing of mortals to attain
-to some kind of real and intimate perception beyond the phenomenal
-universe, and to some personal assurance of a future existence; but
-it has cost much to the true wisdom of this world. Some realization
-of this may have caused the sorrow of Jesus at Dalmanutha, as related
-in Mark. "The Pharisees came forth and began to question with him,
-seeking of him a sign from heaven, testing him. And he sighed deeply
-in his spirit, and saith, Why does this people seek a sign? I say
-plainly unto you no sign will be given them. And he left them, and
-reëntering the boat departed to the other side."
-
-They who now long to know the real mind of Jesus are often constrained
-to repeat his deep sigh when they find the most probable utterances
-ascribed to him perverted by the marvel-mongers, insomuch that to the
-protest just quoted Matthew adds a self-contradictory sentence about
-Jonah. That this unqualified repudiation by Jesus of miracles should
-have been preserved at all in Mark, a gospel full of miracles, is a
-guarantee of the genuineness of the incident, and of the comparative
-earliness of some parts of that gospel. The period of sophistication
-was not far advanced. Miracles require time to grow. But the deep sigh
-and the words of Jesus, taken in connection with the entire absence
-from the Epistles--the earliest New Testament documents--of any hint of
-a miracle wrought by him, is sufficient to bring us into the presence
-of a man totally different from the "Christ" of the four Gospels. [39]
-
-Those who seek the real Jesus will find it the least part of their
-task to clear away the particular miracles ascribed to him; that is
-easy enough; the critical and difficult thing is to detach from the
-anecdotes and language connected with him every admixture derived
-from the belief in his resurrection. To do this completely is indeed
-impossible.
-
-Paul, probably a contemporary of Jesus, knew well enough the
-vast difference between the man "Jesus" and the risen "Christ";
-he insisted that the man should be ignored, and supplanted by the
-risen Christ, as revealed by private revelations received by himself
-after the resurrection. The student must now reverse that: he must
-ignore those post-resurrectional revelations if he would know Jesus
-"after the flesh"--that is, the real Jesus.
-
-In an age when immortality is a familiar religious belief we can hardly
-realize the agitation, among a people to whom life after death was a
-vague, imported philosophy, excited by the belief that a man had been
-raised bodily from the grave. Immortality was no longer hypothesis. If
-to this belief be added the further conviction that this resurrection
-was preliminary to his speedy reappearance, and the world's sudden
-transformation, a mental condition could not fail to arise in which
-any ethical or philosophical ideas he might have uttered while "in
-the flesh" must be thrown into the background, as of merely casual
-or temporary importance. Such is the state of mind reflected in the
-Pauline Epistles. In them is found no reference whatever to any moral
-instructions by Jesus. And when after some two generations had passed,
-and they who had expected while yet living to meet their returning Lord
-had died, those who had heard oral reports and legends concerning him
-and his teachings began to write the memoranda on which our Synoptical
-Gospels are based, it was too late to give these without adulterations
-from the apostolic ecstasy. His casual or playful remarks were by this
-time discoloured and distorted, and enormously swollen, as if under a
-solar microscope, by the overwhelming conceptions of a resurrection, an
-approaching advent, a subversion of all nationalities and institutions.
-
-The most serious complication arises from the extent to which the
-pretended revelations of Paul have been built into the Gospels. The
-so-called "conversion of Paul" was really the conversion of Jesus. The
-facts can only be gathered from Paul's letters, the book of "Acts"
-being hardly more historical than "Robinson Crusoe." The account in
-"Acts" of Paul's "conversion" is, however, of interest as indicating
-a purpose in its writers to raise Paul into a supernatural authority
-equivalent to that ascribed to Christ, in order that he might set
-aside the man Jesus. The story is a travesty of that related in the
-"Gospel According to the Hebrews," concerning the baptism of Jesus:
-"And a voice out of the heaven saying, 'Thou art my beloved Son,
-in thee I am well pleased': and again, 'I have this day begotten
-thee.' And straightway a great light shone around the place. And
-when John saw it he saith to him, 'Who art thou, Lord?'" John fell
-down before Jesus as did Paul before Christ. "At midday, O King,
-I saw on the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the
-sun, shining round about me, and them that journeyed with me. And
-when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice saying to me
-in the Hebrew language, 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is
-hard for thee to kick against the goad.' And I said, 'Who art thou,
-Lord?'" (Precisely what John said to Jesus at the baptism.)
-
-This story (Acts xxvi. 13-15), quite inconsistent with Paul's
-letters, is throughout very ingenious. Besides associating Paul
-with the supernatural consecration of Jesus, it replies, by calling
-him Saul, to the Ebionite declaration that Paul had been a pagan,
-who had become a Jewish proselyte with the intention of marrying the
-High Priest's daughter. There is no reason to suppose that Paul was
-ever called Saul during his life, and his salutation of two kinsmen in
-Rome with Latin names, Andronicus and Junias (Romans xvi. 7), renders
-it probable that he was not entirely if at all Hebrew. The sentence,
-"It is hard for thee to kick against the goad," is a subtle answer
-to any who might think it curious that the story of the resurrection
-carried no conviction to Paul's mind at the time of its occurrence by
-suggesting that in continuing his persecutions he was going against
-his real belief--kicking against the goad.
-
-Paul, however, knows nothing of this theatrical conversion in his
-letters. But in severe competition with other "preëminent apostles,"
-who were preaching "another Christ" from his, he pronounces them
-accursed, supporting an authority above theirs by declaring that he had
-repeated interviews with the risen Christ, and on one occasion had been
-taken up into the third heaven and even into Paradise! The extremes
-to which Paul was driven by the opposing apostles are illustrated
-in his intimidation of dissenting converts by his pretence to an
-occult power of withering up the flesh of those whom he disapproves
-(1 Cor. v. 5). He tells Timothy of two men, Hymenoeus and Alexander,
-whom he thus "delivered over to Satan" that "they may be taught not
-to blaspheme"--the blasphemy in this case being the belief (now become
-orthodoxy) that the dead were not sleeping in their graves but passed
-into heaven or hell at death. In the book of "Acts" (xiii.) this claim
-of Paul's seems to have been developed into the Evil Eye (which he
-fastened on Bar Jesus, whose eyes thereon went out), and may perhaps
-account for the similar sinister power ascribed to some of the Popes.
-
-In this story of Bar Jesus, Christ is associated with Paul in
-striking the learned man blind (xiii. 11), and the development of
-such a legend reveals the extent to which Jesus had been converted
-by Paul. In 1 Cor. ii. he presents a Christ whose body and blood,
-being not precisely discriminated in the sacramental bread and wine,
-had made some participants sickly and killed others, in addition to
-the damnation they had eaten and drank. He does not mention that any
-who communicated correctly had been physically benefited thereby;
-only the malignant powers appear to have had any utility for Paul.
-
-That this menacing Christ may have been needed to intimidate converts
-and build up churches is probable; that such a being was nothing like
-Jesus in the flesh, but had to come by pretended posthumous revelation,
-as an awful potentate whose human flesh had been but a disguise,
-is certain. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find that nearly
-everything pharisaic, cruel, and ungentlemanly, ascribed to Jesus in
-the synoptical Gospels, is fabricated out of Paul's Epistles. Paul
-compares rival apostles to the serpent that beguiled Eve (2 Cor. xi. 3,
-4), and Christ calls his opponents offspring of vipers. The fourth
-Gospel, apostolic in spirit, degrades Jesus independently, but it also
-borrows from Paul. Paul personally delivered some over to Satan, and
-the intimation in John xiii. 27, "after the sop, then entered Satan
-into Judas," accords well with what Paul says about the unworthy
-communicant eating and drinking damnation (1 Cor. xi. 29).
-
-The Eucharist itself was probably Paul's own adaptation of a Mithraic
-rite to Christian purposes. There is no reason to suppose that there
-was anything sanctimonious in the wine supper which Jesus took with his
-friends at the time of the Passover, and Paul's testimony concerning
-the way it had been observed is against any   over with you?" [40]
-Had it been other than a pleasant Epiphanius from the Gospel according
-to the Hebrews show that he desired to draw his friends away from
-the sacrificial feature of the festival: "Where wilt thou that we
-prepare for the passover to eat?" ... "Have I desired with desire to
-eat this flesh, the passover with you?" [41] Had it been other than a
-pleasant wine supper it could not in so short a time have become the
-jovial festival which Paul describes (1 Cor. xi. 20), nor, in order
-to reform it, would he have needed the pretence that he had received
-from Christ the special revelation of details of the Supper which
-he gives, and which the Gospels have followed. Having substituted a
-human for an animal sacrifice ("our passover also hath been sacrificed,
-Christ," 1 Cor. v. 7), he restores precisely that sacrificial feature
-to which Jesus had objected; and in harmony with this goes on to show
-that human lives have been sacrificed to the majestic real presence
-(1 Cor. xi. 30). He had learned, perhaps by "pagan" experiences,
-what power such a sacrament might put into the priestly hand. [42]
-
-It is Paul who first appointed Christ the judge of quick and dead
-(1 Tim. iv. 1). He describes to the Thessalonians (2 Thes. i.) "the
-revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of his power
-in flaming fire, rendering vengeance to them that know not God," and
-the "eternal destruction" of these. Hence, "I never knew you" becomes
-a formula of damnation put into the mouth of Christ. "I know you not"
-is the brutal reply of the bridegroom to the five virgins, whose lamps
-were not ready on the moment of his arrival. The picturesque incidents
-of this parable have caused its representation in pretty pictures,
-which blind many to its essential heartlessness. It is curious that
-it should be preserved in a Gospel which contains the words, "Knock,
-and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth,
-and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be
-opened." The parable is fabricated out of 1 Thes. v., where Paul warns
-the converts that the Lord cometh as a thief in the night, that there
-will be no escape for those who then slumber, that they must not sleep
-like the rest, but watch, "for God hath appointed us not unto wrath."
-
-The Christian dogma of the unpardonable sin, substituted for the
-earlier idea of an unrepentable sin, was developed out of Paul's
-fatalism. He writes, "For this cause God sendeth them a strong delusion
-that they should believe a lie" (2 Thes. ii). Although this is not
-connected in any Gospel with the inexpiable sin, we find its spirit
-animating the Paul-created Christ in Mark iv. 11: "Unto them that are
-without all these things are done in parables, that seeing they may
-see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand:
-lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should
-be forgiven them." This is imported from Paul (Rom. xi. 7, 8):
-"That which Israel seeketh for, that he obtained not; but the elect
-obtained it and the rest were hardened; according as it is written,
-God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see,
-and ears that they should not hear, unto this very day."
-
-Whence came this Christ who, in the very chapter where Jesus warns
-men against hiding their lamp under a bushel, carefully hides his
-teaching under a parable for the express purpose of preventing some
-outsiders from being enlightened and obtaining forgiveness?
-
-Jesus could not have said these things unless he plagiarized from
-Paul by anticipation. Deduct from the Gospels all that has been
-fabricated out of Paul (I have given only the more salient examples)
-and there will be found little or nothing morally revolting, nothing
-heartless. Superstitions abound, but so far as Jesus is concerned
-they are nearly all benevolent in their spirit.
-
-But even after we have removed from the Gospels the immoralities of
-Paul and the pharisaisms so profound as to suggest the proselyte, after
-we have turned from his Christ to seek Jesus, we have yet to divest
-him of the sombre vestments of a supernatural being, who could not
-open his lips or perform any action but in relation to a resurrection
-and a heavenly office of which he could never have dreamed. Was he
-
-
-    "The faultless monster whom the world ne'er saw"?
-
-
-Did he never laugh? Did he eat with sinners only to call
-them to repentance? Did he get the name of wine-bibber for his
-"salvationism,"--or was it because, like Omar Khayyám, he defied the
-sanctimonious and the puritanical by gathering with the intellectual,
-the scholarly, the Solomonic clubs?
-
-To Paul we owe one credible item concerning Jesus, that he was
-originally wealthy (2 Cor. viii. 9), and as Paul mentioned this to
-inculcate liberality in contributors, it is not necessary to suppose
-that he alluded to his heavenly riches. At any rate, the few sayings
-that may be reasonably ascribed to Jesus are those of an educated
-gentleman, and strongly suggest his instruction in the college of
-Hillel, whose spirit remained there after his death, which occurred
-when Jesus was at least ten years old.
-
-To a pagan who asked Hillel concerning the law, he answered: "That
-which you like not for yourself do not to thy neighbour, that is the
-whole law; the rest is but commentary." It will be observed that Hillel
-humanizes the law laid down in Lev. xix. 18, where the Israelites
-are to love each his neighbour among "the children of thy people" as
-himself. Even Paul (Rom. xiii. 8, Gal. v. 14) quotes it for a rule
-among the believers, while hurling anathema on others. But Jesus
-is made (Matt. vii. 12) to inflate the rule into the impracticable
-form of "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you,
-even so do ye also unto them." By which rule a wealthy Christian would
-give at least half his property to the first beggar, as he would wish
-the beggar to do to him were their situations reversed. This might
-be natural enough in a community hourly expecting the end of the
-world and their own instalment in palaces whose splendour would be
-proportioned to their poverty in this world. But when this delusion
-faded the rule reverted to what Hillel said, and no doubt Jesus also,
-as we find it in the second verse of "Didache," the Teaching of the
-Twelve Apostles. It is a principle laid down by Confucius, Buddha,
-and all the human "prophets," and one followed by every gentleman, not
-to do to his neighbour what he would not like if done to himself. But
-it is removed out of human ethics and strained ad absurdum by the
-second-adventist version put into the mouth of Jesus by Matthew. I
-have dwelt on this as an illustration of how irrecoverably a man
-loses his manhood when he is made a God.
-
-Irrecoverably! In the second Clementine Epistle (xii. 2) it is said,
-"For the Lord himself, having been asked by some one when his kingdom
-should come, said, When the two shall be one, and the outside as the
-inside, and the male with the female neither male nor female." Perhaps
-a humorous way of saying Never. Equally remote appears the prospect
-of recovering the man Jesus from his Christ-sepulchre. Even among
-rationalists there are probably but few who would not be scandalized
-by any thorough test such as Jesus is said, in the Nazarene Gospel,
-to have requested of his disciples after his resurrection, "Take, feel
-me, and see that I am not a bodiless demon!" Without blood, without
-passion, he remains without the experiences and faults that mould
-best men, as Shakespeare tells us; he so remains in the nerves where
-no longer in the intellect, insomuch that even many an agnostic would
-shudder if any heretic, taking his life in his hand, should maintain
-that Jesus had fallen in love, or was a married man, or had children.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI.
-
-THE MYTHOLOGICAL MANTLE OF SOLOMON FALLEN ON JESUS.
-
-
-It is no part of my aim to prove miracles impossible, nor to consider
-whether one or another alleged wonder might not be really within
-the powers of an exceptional man. In the absence of any apostolic
-allusion to any extraordinary incident in the life of Jesus, and his
-own declaration (for the evangelists could not have invented a rebuke
-to their own narratives) that miracles were the vain expectation of
-a people in distress and degradation, such records have lost their
-historic character. As Gibbon said in the last century, it requires
-a miracle of grace to make a believer in miracles, and even among the
-uncritical that miracle is not frequent. In the New Testament belief
-in miracle has its natural corollary in a miraculous morality,--a
-dissolution of earthly ties, a severance from worldly affairs, a
-non-resistance and passiveness under wrongs, which are in perfect
-accord with persons moving in an apocalyptic dream, but not with a
-world awakened from that dream.
-
-But at the root of the unnatural miracles is the natural miracle--the
-heart of man. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, as the
-miracle-working poet reminds us; our little life is surrounded with a
-sleep, a realm of dreams,--visions that give poetic fulfilment to hopes
-born of hard experience. No biblical miracle in its literal form is so
-beautiful and impressive as the history of its origin and development
-as traced by the student of mythology. The growth, for example, of
-a simple proverb ascribed to Solomon "He that trusteth in his riches
-shall fall, but the just shall flourish as a green leaf" into a hymn
-(Ps. lii.); the association of this Psalm, by its Hebrew caption,
-with hungry David eating the shewbread of the temple, and the king's
-slaying the priests who permitted it; the use of this legend by Jesus
-when his disciples were censured for plucking the corn on the Sabbath
-(with perhaps some humorous picture of a great king in Heaven angry
-because hungry men ate a few grains of corn, crumbs from his royal
-table) pointed with advice that the censors should learn that God
-desires charity and not sacrifice; the development of this into an
-early Christian burden against the rich, which took the form of an
-old Oriental fable, [43] to which a Jewish connotation was given by
-giving the poor man in Paradise the name of Lazarus (i.e. Eleazar,
-who risked his life to obtain water for famished David, a story that
-may have been referred to by Jesus along with that of the shewbread);
-the transformation of this parable into a quasi-historical narrative
-representing the return of Lazarus from Abraham's bosom, his poverty
-omitted; the European combination of the parable and the history
-by creating a St. Lazarus ("one helped by God"), yet appointing him
-the helper of beggars (lazzaroni): these items together represent a
-continuity of the human spirit through thousands of years, surmounting
-obstructive superstitions, holding still the guiding thread of humanity
-through long labyrinths of legend.
-
-To fix on any one stage in such an evolution, detach it, affirm it,
-is to wrest a true scripture to its destruction. Few can really
-be interested in Abimelech and the shewbread; no one now believes
-that a rich man must go to hell because he is rich, nor a pauper to
-Paradise because of his pauperism; and none can intelligently believe
-the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus without believing that
-in Jesus miraculous power was associated with the unveracity and
-vanity ascribed to him in that narrative. But take the legends all
-together, and in them is visible the supersacred heart of humanity
-steadily developing through manifold symbols and fables the religion
-of human helpfulness and happiness. The study of mythology is the
-study of nature.
-
-The theory already stated (ante I), that illegitimacy or irregularity
-of birth was a sign of authentication for "the God-anointed," finds
-some corroboration in the claim of the Epistle to the Hebrews that
-Jesus, like Melchizedek, was without father, mother, or genealogy. His
-double nature is suggested: "Our Lord sprung out of Judah" (vii. 14),
-yet (verse 16), as priest, he has arisen "not after the law of a
-carnal commandment, but after the power of an indissoluble life." The
-writer admits that what he writes about Melchizedek is "hard of
-interpretation," and perhaps it so proved to the genealogist (Matt,
-i.) who apparently was animated by a desire to make out a carnal-law
-inheritance of the throne, yet not so legitimate as to exclude divine
-interference at various stages. In the forty-two generations only
-five mothers are named,--all associated either with sexual immorality
-or some kind of irregularity in their matrimonial relations. Tamar,
-through whose adultery with her father-in-law, Judah, his almost
-extinct line was preserved, is already a holy woman in the book of
-Ruth (iv. 12), and the association there of Ruth's name with this
-particular one of the many female ancestors of her son, and her mention
-in Matthew, look as if some editor of Ruth as well as the genealogist
-desired to cast suspicion on her midnight visit to Boaz. "The Lord
-gave Tamar conception, and she bore a son"--grandfather of David. It
-is also doubtful whether Rahab, who comes next to Tamar in Matthew's
-list, is called a harlot in the book of Joshua: Zuneh is said to mean
-"hostess" or "tavern-keeper." But in the Epistle to the Hebrews and in
-that of James she becomes a glorified harlot. The next female ancestor
-of Jesus mentioned is "her of Uriah." The name of the woman is not
-given,--the important fact being apparently that she was somebody's
-wife. Our translators have supplied no fewer than five words to save
-this text from signifying that Bathsheba was still Uriah's wife when
-Solomon was born.
-
-The next ancestress named after the mother of Solomon is the mother of
-Jesus, Mary, in whom Bathsheba finds transfiguration. The exaltation
-of the adulterous mother of Solomon has already been referred to
-(ante II.), and the traditional ascription to her of the authorship
-of the last chapter of Proverbs. She was also supposed to be the
-original or model of "the Virtuous Woman" therein portrayed! Now,
-in that same chapter she is pronounced "blessed," and excelling all
-the daughters who have done virtuously (Cf. Luke i. 28, 42). In the
-"Wisdom of Solomon" (ix. 5) a phrase is used by Solomon which is also
-used by his mother (Bathsheba) when she conjured from David the decree
-for his succession,--"thine handmaiden" (1 Kings i.). Solomon says,
-"For I, thy servant, and son of thy handmaiden," etc. This was written
-in a popular work about the time of the birth of Jesus. We find the
-"blessed" of Proverbs xxxi. 28, and the "handmaiden" of the "Wisdom
-of Solomon" both in Mary's magnificat: "For he hath regarded the low
-estate of his handmaiden; for behold, from henceforth all generations
-shall call me blessed."
-
-In Ecclesiasticus (xv. 2) we find the enigmatic clause concerning
-Solomonic "Sophia," personified Wisdom: kai hypantêsetai autô hôs
-mêtêr, kai hôs gynê parthenias prosdexetai auoton.
-
-The Vulgate translates: "Et obviabit illi quasi mater honorificata,
-et quasi mulier a virginitate suscipiet illum."
-
-Wycliffe translates the Vulgate: "And it as a modir onourid schal
-meete hym, and as a womman fro virgynyte schal take him."
-
-The Authorised Version has: "And as a mother shall she meet him,
-and receive him as a wife married of a virgin."
-
-In the Variorum Teacher's Bible the reading "maiden wife" is suggested,
-and reference is made to Leviticus xxi. 13, "And he shall take a wife
-in her virginity." But the Septuagint, which Jesus Ben Sira would
-follow were he quoting, uses simple words there: hautos gynaika
-parthenon [ek tou genous autou] lêpsetai.
-
-(The words in crochets are added by the LXX.)
-
-The clause in Ecclus. xv. 2, taken with the chapter it continues,
-conveys to me an impression of rhapsodical paradox, as when Dante
-apostrophises Mary: "O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy son!" The Semitic
-goddess is born, Wisdom, sister of virginal Athena of the Parthenon,
-yet fulfilling the Solomonic exaltation of the Virtuous Woman, who
-is also a wife. She is therefore the Virgin Bride.
-
-But whether this interpretation is correct or not, it cannot be
-doubted that this strange phrase in a household book might easily
-convey that impression, and that to believers in the resurrection
-of Jesus the feeling that he must also have entered the world in a
-supernatural way might naturally have associated Miriam his mother
-with the virgin bride, Wisdom.
-
-The evolution of Wisdom into the Holy Spirit has been traced (ante
-XII.), and it is sufficient to mention here that in the "Gospel
-according to the Hebrews," Jesus uses the phrase "My mother the
-Holy Spirit."
-
-In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the resurrected Solomon says, "I was
-nursed in swaddling clothes, and that with cares" (vii. 4, cf. Luke
-ii. 7). This might be said of every babe, but the King, having begun by
-saying "I myself also am a mortal man," mentions the swaddling clothes
-as a sign of lowliness; and the impression made by this item in the
-Birth-legend of Jesus is shown by a passage in the Arabic Gospel of
-the Infancy. It is said that when the Wise Men came, in obedience to
-a prophecy of Zoroaster, Mary rewarded their gifts with one of the
-child's "Swaddling bands," which on their return to their own land
-withstood the power of fire, in which it was tested.
-
-The infant Jesus receives gifts of the Wise Men, traceable to the gold,
-silver, and spices brought by the Queen of Sheba (afterwards "Sophia")
-to Solomon. (Cf. also Psalm lxxii. 8-11.) As Solomon to the Queen,
-so Jesus gives proofs of astounding wisdom to the woman of Samaria.
-
-In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the returned king proceeds: "I was a witty
-child, and had a good spirit. Yea rather, being good, I came into a
-body undefiled" (viii. 19, 20). In Luke it is said, "And the child
-grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom." "And Jesus
-increased in wisdom and stature."
-
-The word "undefiled" was a special title of Wisdom. In the "Wisdom of
-Solomon" (vii.) the King, having described his birth, "like to all,"
-and his "swaddling clothes," follows this immediately by saying,
-"I prayed, and understanding was given me; I called, and the spirit
-of Wisdom came to me." This is the new and the spiritual birth. Among
-the titles ascribed in the same chapter to Wisdom is "Undefiled," this
-being emphasized three verses lower by the declaration that being a
-pure emanation from God "no defiled thing can fall into her." These
-ideas, so far as Solomon is concerned, are referable to his prayer
-for wisdom (1 Kings iii. 9) and to Jahveh's adoption of him (Psalm
-ii. 7). "Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee."
-
-These ideas all reappear at the baptism of Jesus, as related in the
-"Gospel according to Hebrews":
-
-
-   "Behold the mother of the Lord and his brethren said to him,
-    'John the Baptist baptizeth for remission of sins: let us go and
-    be baptized by him.' But he said to them, 'Wherein have I sinned
-    that I should go and be baptized by him? except perchance this very
-    thing that I have said is ignorance.' And when the people had been
-    baptized Jesus also came and was baptized by John. And as he went
-    up the heavens were opened, and he saw the Holy Spirit in shape
-    of a Dove descending and entering him. And a voice out of heaven,
-    saying, 'Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased';
-    and again, 'I have this day begotten thee.'" (Cf. Jahveh's promise
-    concerning Solomon, 1 Chron. xvii. 13, "I will be his father and
-    he shall be my son.")
-
-
-It is important to recall that this all occurred before baptism. The
-suggestion that he should be baptized for remission of sins, is met by
-Jesus as a challenge of his sinlessness. It is submitted to the test,
-and before he enters the water the "Undefiled" (the dove) enters
-him, and the deity announces him as then and there begotten. When
-"straightway a great light shone around the place"--ultimately the Star
-of Bethlehem. John the Baptist is here the shepherd: seeing the light,
-he asks, "Who art thou, Lord?" The heavenly voice replies, "This is my
-beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Then John fell down before
-him and said, "I pray thee, Lord, baptize thou me." But he prevented
-him, saying, "Let be; for thus it is becoming that all things should
-be fulfilled." Then follows the baptism, and the account continues:
-
-
-   "And it came to pass, when the Lord had come up from the water,
-    the entire fountain of the Holy Spirit descended and rested upon
-    him and said to him, 'My Son, in all the prophets did I await thee,
-    that thou mightest come and I might rest in thee; for thou art
-    my rest; thou art my first-born Son that reignest forever.'" [44]
-
-
-The phrase "entire fountain of the Holy Spirit" is Parsî. Anâhita
-is the Holy Spirit; her influence is always described as a fountain
-descending on the saints or heroes to whom she gives strength. It
-will be remembered that in this Gospel the Holy Spirit is also
-feminine. The use of the words "fountain" and "rest in thee" are
-interesting in connection with the account of John the Baptizer
-and Jesus in the fourth gospel, which differs so widely from the
-Synoptical narratives. It is in John (iii.) left doubtful whether
-Jesus accepted any baptismal rite at all. John was baptizing at
-a large pool called Ænon-by-Saleim,--probably allegorical, meaning
-"Fountain of Repose." Jesus and his friends came there and plunged in
-(ebaptixonto), but they seem to have been a distinct party from
-that of John.
-
-After the supposed resurrection of Jesus everything he did, even
-taking a bath, became mystical. Jerome says that in his time there
-was a place called Salumias, and he maintained that it was there that
-Melchizedek refreshed Abraham. There are various readings of this
-Saleim in the New Testament, all, no doubt, variants of Solomon,
-all meaning "rest"; and the fourth Gospel supplies in 'Ainôn engys
-Salêm' the basis of the legend in the Aramaic Gospel of the "rest"
-which the Holy Spirit found in her son, on whom her "entire fountain"
-was poured. And with this legend may also be read the words of "Wisdom
-of Solomon," vii. 27, 28: "She (Wisdom) maketh all things new; and in
-all ages entering into holy souls she maketh them friends of God and
-prophets. For God loveth none but him that dwelleth with Wisdom." The
-representation in this Aramaic Gospel of the Holy Spirit as "entering
-into" Jesus is especially interesting in connection with the use of
-the same phrase in "Wisdom of Solomon,"--into whose heart Wisdom was
-put by God (1 Kings x. 24).
-
-It is only after Wisdom has entered into Jesus that the voice is
-heard, "This is my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased." This
-accords with Solomon's words, "God loveth none but him that dwelleth
-with Wisdom." The angelic song at the birth (Luke ii. 14) preserves
-the heavenly voice at the baptism concerning "peace." The "peace"
-is Solomon's own name, associated with the "rest" given to his reign
-in order that he might build the temple (1 Kings v. 4, Ecclesiasticus
-xlvii. 13). "My Son," says the spirit from within Jesus, "Thou art
-my rest."
-
-It is remarkable that the title preëminently belonging to Solomon,
-"Prince of Peace," and unknown to the Gospels as a title of Jesus,
-should be traditionally given to one said to have declared that
-he had come on earth to bring not peace but a sword, and bids his
-disciples arm themselves. No doubt the religious instinct tells true
-in this; it is tolerably plain that the warlike words were ascribed
-to Jesus not because he said them, but to adapt him to the "Word"
-as described in the "Wisdom of Solomon": "While all things were in
-quiet silence ... thine Almighty Word leaped down from heaven out
-of thy royal throne as a fierce man of war ... and brought thine
-unfeigned commandment as a sharp sword," etc. The fierce metaphor
-was, as we have seen, caught up and spiritualized in the Epistle to
-the Hebrews, and passed on to be literalized for the risen Christ,
-so that the consecration of the sword by the Prince of Peace is writ
-large in the Christian wars of many centuries.
-
-To the tests and proofs of Solomon's wisdom recorded in 1 Kings
-iii. and x. many additions were made by rabbinical tradition, mostly
-derived from Parsî scriptures. The famous Ring of Solomon is the symbol
-of sovereignty over the part of the earth owned by God given by him to
-the first man King Yima--"Then I, Ahura Mazda, brought two implements
-unto him, a golden ring and a poniard inlaid with gold. Behold,
-here Yima bears the royal sway!" (Vendîdâd, Farg. ii. 5). When Yima
-pressed the earth with this ring, the genius of the Earth, Aramaîti,
-responded to his wish and order. The ring represented Yima's "glory"
-(in Avestan phrase), his divine potency, lost when he yielded to a
-temptation of the devil, and Solomon also lost his ring with which,
-as we have seen (ante IV.) his "glory" and royal sway passed to the
-(Persian) devil Asmodeus. This occurred in a trial of wits, Asmodeus
-propounding hard questions, which Solomon was able to answer until,
-proudly thinking he could answer by his unaided intellect, he laid
-aside his ring, at the challenge of Asmodeus. These hard questions
-are found in an ancient legend of a similar contest between the devil
-and Zoroaster, and are alluded to as "malignant riddles." Zoroaster
-met the devil "unshaken by the hardness of his malignant riddles,"
-and swinging "stones as big as a house," which he had obtained from
-the Maker,--tables of the divine law, and possibly origin of the
-stones which the devil challenged Jesus to turn into bread.
-
-There are Avestan elements in the legend of the temptation of Jesus
-that do not appear in the legends of Solomon. In Parsî belief the land
-of demons on earth is Mâzana. From that region they issue to inflict
-diseases, especially blindness and deafness. In that region is an
-"exceeding high mountain," Damâvand, to which the great demon Azi
-Dahâka was bound by Feridun who overcame him. This demon was called
-"the murderer,"--the epithet mysteriously applied by Jesus to the
-devil (John viii. 44). After tempting and supplanting King Yima he
-ruled over the world for a millennium in great splendour, and the
-chief of devils tempts Zoroaster with that glory.
-
-"Renounce the good law of the worshippers of Mazda, and thou shalt
-gain such a boon as the Murderer gained, the ruler of nations." Thus
-in answer to him said Zoroaster, "No, never will I renounce the good
-law of the worshippers of Mazda, though my body, my life, my soul,
-should burst." Again said the guileful one, the Maker of the evil
-world, "By whose word wilt thou strike, by whose word wilt thou
-repel, by whose weapon will the good creatures (strike and repel)
-my creation?" Thus, in answer, said Zoroaster, "The sacred mortar,
-the sacred cup, the Haoma [the sacramental juice] the Words taught
-by Mazda, these are my weapons." [45]
-
-After this, Zoroaster "on the mountain" conversed with Ahura Mazda,
-and invoked the beneficent beings who preside over the seven Karshvares
-of the earth. We thus have here the mountain, the stones, the Word
-from the mouth of God, the offer of the kingdoms of the world, and
-the ministering angels, which reappear in the temptation of Jesus.
-
-After his baptism, Jesus repudiates his human parentage ("who is my
-mother?" etc.), and was led up by his new mother--the Spirit--into
-the wilderness to be tested by the devil. To this no doubt relate
-the words of Jesus preserved by Origen from the "Gospel according
-to the Hebrews": "Just now my mother the Holy Spirit took me by one
-of my hairs and bore me up on the great mountain Tabor." [46] Here
-the Solomonic kingdom and glory were offered by the devil if Jesus
-would worship him. According to Luke iv. he was tempted forty days
-(the number of the years of Solomon's reign). The first incident
-thereafter was his announcement that the Spirit of the Lord was
-upon him, and the second was an exhibition of his Solomonic power
-over devils. This, in Luke, is his first miracle. His first titular
-recognition was this surrender of the devil, who cried, "I know thee
-who them art, the Holy One of Israel!"
-
-In Matthew also the devils first give him the divine title "Son of God"
-(vii. 29). In the next chapter he gives his twelve disciples authority
-over demons. That this was well understood by the people is shown
-in Matthew xii. 23, where, on seeing demons mastered, they cry,
-"Is this the Son of David?" that is, is this Solomon, the famous
-enslaver of demons?
-
-It may be noted in passing that in the three miracles in Matthew of
-exorcising a blinding demon the title "Son of David" is used. Alford
-speaks of this as remarkable; but vision is the especial promise of
-Wisdom, therefore of Solomon, son of David.
-
-It may be remembered in this connection that in "Wisdom"
-(Ecclus. iv.) the trial by Wisdom is set forth:
-
-
-   "Whoso giveth ear unto her shall judge the nations. * * *
-    If a man commit himself unto her, he shall inherit her. * * *
-    At the first she will walk with him by crooked ways and bring
-    fear and dread upon him, and torment him with her discipline,
-    until she may trust his soul, and try him by her laws. Then
-    she will return the straight way unto him, and comfort him, and
-    shew him her secrets. But if he go wrong she will forsake him,
-    and give him over to his own ruin."
-
-
-This, which reappears in the parable of the broad and the narrow ways,
-seems to have determined the part which the Holy Spirit performs in
-the temptation of Jesus. According to Matthew he was by the Spirit
-carried involuntarily, "driven," says Mark, the Hebrew Gospel says,
-"borne by the hair" into the wilderness: as Jahveh "raised a Satan
-unto Solomon," and left Job to Satan, the Holy Spirit carries Jesus to
-Satan, the same Evil One; and after his triumph the promise in "Wisdom"
-(she will "comfort him") is fulfilled: "Angels came and ministered unto
-him." Luke says he "returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee;
-and a fame went out concerning him through all the region round about:
-he taught in their synagogues and was glorified of all."
-
-Nevertheless it may be remarked that the peculiar language in Luke
-(iv. 1) "led in the spirit" suggests that the whole story is a late
-literalization of some vision, partly based on v. 7 of the Epistle
-to the Hebrews, but originally on Solomon's dream (1 Kings iii.),
-in which Jahveh offers him any gift, and he asks only for Wisdom. Or,
-as he (Solomon) says in "Wisdom of Solomon," "I preferred her before
-sceptres and thrones" (vii. 8). But all of these were remotely
-influenced by the trial of Zoroaster, and the attempts of the devil
-to terrify Zoroaster before tempting him may be hinted in Mark i. 13,
-"He was with the wild beasts." These, however, are more prominent in
-the temptation of Buddha.
-
-Paul appears to have considered it an important apostolic credential
-to have had to contend with a Satan (2 Cor. xii. 7-10), and Peter
-was honoured by a special request made by Satan, and conceded, that
-he should be for a time under his diabolical control. (Luke xxii. 31.)
-
-As in the case of Solomon, the tests and trials of the superhuman
-wisdom and power of Jesus are found chiefly in tradition and
-folklore. The apocryphal gospels contain many, and some are
-preserved by Persian and Arabian poets. In the New Testament a few
-examples appear in which his utterances are given a quasi-judicial
-tone. There are several points of resemblance between the famous
-judgment of Solomon on the two harlots contending for the child, and
-the sentence of Jesus in favour of "sinful Mary," sister of Martha,
-accused by Simon the Pharisee. In both cases the decision was made
-at a feast, and in favour of the one who "loved much." It is not,
-however, the incident in itself that is now referred to, but only
-the formality ascribed to it in the narrative. And this adheres to
-the entire story. The anointing of Jesus may have occurred, but the
-scenic touches recall lines in the Solomonic "Song of Songs":
-
-
-   "While the King sat at his table,
-    My spikenard sent forth its fragrance."
-
-
-It is not impossible, by the way, that it was from chaste Shulamith
-of the Song ascribed to Solomon that a bad reputation was fixed on
-Mary Magdalene, against whose virginal purity no word is said in the
-Bible, the chapter heading to Luke vii. alone identifying her, in
-contradiction to John xi. 2, as the woman who anointed Jesus. This
-libel seems to come from a far antiquity,--as far probably as
-the Talmudic "Miriam Magdala" (i. e., Braided-hair Mary); and
-this epithet might have been derived from Shulamith's "ringlets"
-which were "tied up in folds," and whose spikenard sent forth its
-odours while Solomon was at the table. The later Jahvism must have
-considered such attention by ladies to their hair as an evidence of
-wickedness. Paul, while recognizing that long hair is a woman's "glory"
-(1 Cor. xi.) dangerously fascinating even to the angels, testifies
-against "braided hair" (1 Tim. ii.), an instruction repeated in 1
-Peter iii. Whether this lady of means who helped to support Jesus was
-from Magdala or not, it is nearly certain that her legend was derived
-from another sense of "Magdalene," and it is not improbable that the
-friendship of Jesus for her was in keeping with his Solomonic defiance
-of the Pharisaic.
-
-The Eastern tales of monarchs in disguise, derived from a legend
-of Solomon, may have prepared the popular mind for the double rôle
-performed by Jesus in the Gospels, for the earlier writers do not
-suggest any lowliness in his position beyond the humiliation of taking
-on human flesh and dying. In the Gospels we find him now an hungered,
-now dining with the Pharisee and anointed with precious ointment,
-again multiplying food; an humble-son of man who has not where to lay
-his head, a son of God with legions of angels at his command; purifying
-the temple with violence, and predicting its destruction; a peacemaker
-bringing a sword; telling his disciples to resist not evil, and arming
-them; enjoining secrecy about his miracles, presently parading them;
-prostrate with anguish in a garden, presently shining with unmasked
-splendour. Solomon never arrayed himself in any such brilliant
-raiment as that of the transfiguration, nor was his environment finer
-than the scenes imaged in some of these parables,--the prodigal's
-ring and robe, the king going to war and sending his ambassadors,
-the masters of fields and vineyards, the momentous wedding dress,
-the importance of rank and precedence at a feast. In miracles, too,
-we have the grand wedding at Cana, and the homage of the centurion
-deferentially rewarded. [47]
-
-In the Hebrew Gospel Jesus says, "I will that ye be twelve apostles
-for a testimony to Israel"; with which we may compare the "twelve
-officers over all Israel" appointed by Solomon (1 Kings iv. 7). In
-Mark the first bestowal on Jesus of his Solomonic title "Son of
-David" (x.) is immediately followed by his Solomonic entry into
-Jerusalem. In Matthew the blind man's tribute is followed by the cry
-of multitudes, "Hosanna to the Son of David"; and the whole scene
-is obviously from the narrative in 1 Kings i. of the procession of
-Solomon, seated on David's mule, on the occasion of the anointing
-which made him the model Messiah, in virtue of which he was King
-and Priest in combination. Solomon dedicated the temple himself, as
-High Priest, and to him, as King-Priest, the privilege of sanctuary
-was subordinate. Wherefore he had an offender executed while holding
-the horns of the altar. The titular Son of David, on the morrow of
-his triumphal entry, assumes authority in the temple, and scourges
-out of it the sellers of things used in the sacrifices,--especially
-Doves. These his human mother had sacrificed after his birth for
-purification, but by this time they symbolized his divine mother,
-the Holy Spirit, and were not to be sold.
-
-Who can suppose that this violence, which were as if one assaulted
-those who sell holy candles and pictures in a church vestibule,
-really occurred? At Oberammergau the whole tragedy of the Passion
-Play hinges on the resentment of these merchants, who appeal to the
-Sanhedrim for protection from the violence of one man armed with a
-whip! The story (John ii.) is an epitaph of the primitive Christ,
-the value of whose blood was its proof that his victory over the
-Adversary was that of a Man, unaided by a divine, unblemished by a
-carnal, weapon: triumph by either would have been defeat.
-
-The bread and wine offered to Abraham by the mythical king-priest
-of Salem (Solomon disguised as Melchizedek) may have been suggested
-by the bread and wine offered by Wisdom to her guests, in Proverbs
-ix. However this may be, there is clearly discoverable at the Last
-Supper of Jesus the Satan that Jahveh raised up against Solomon in
-the presence of mythical Judas ("Satan entered into him," says John),
-and in the whole scene the table of Wisdom. "She hath mingled her wine,
-she hath furnished her table," and cries--
-
-
-    "Come, eat ye of my bread,
-    And drink of the wine which I have mingled."
-
-
-That Jesus supped with his disciples, at the Passover time, is very
-probable, but that the bread and wine alone should have been selected
-for symbolical usage (a point unknown to the fourth gospel) conforms
-too closely with the Solomonic prologue to be a mere coincidence. The
-words "Take, eat," "Drink ye all of it," recall also the Song of
-Songs--
-
-
-    Eat, O friends!
-    Drink, yea abundantly, O beloved!
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII.
-
-THE HEIR OF SOLOMON'S GODHEAD.
-
-
-The anger of Jahveh against Solomon (1 Kings xi.) is, of course, the
-outcome of late theological explanations of how the ancient and much
-idealised kingdom could have been divided after divine promises of its
-protection. The interview with Solomon is a sort of dramatization,
-in which the anachronism of making Jahveh a historic contemporary
-of the Wise King represents the fact that when the tribal deity was
-evolved it was in antagonism to a Solomon who, though his body had long
-mouldered, was still "marching on." That Solomon had to contend with
-the hard and fanatical elements afterwards consolidated in Jahvism is
-pretty clear, and we may see in him a primitive Akbar. A century after
-Akbar's death the Rajah of Joudpoor said to the emperor Aurungzebe:
-"Your ancestor Akbar, whose throne is now in heaven, conducted the
-affairs of his empire in equity and security for the period of fifty
-years. He preserved every tribe of men in repose and happiness, whether
-they were followers of Jesus or of Moses, of Brahma or Mohammed. Of
-whatever sect or creed they might be, they all equally enjoyed his
-countenance and favour, insomuch that his people, in gratitude for
-the indiscriminate protection which he afforded them, distinguished
-him by the appellation of The Guardian of Mankind." Moslem fanaticism
-could not tolerate such toleration, and Akbar's reign was followed
-by conflicts very similar to those which followed Solomon's reign,
-leading to the Mogul empire, but ultimately to the reign of an "Empress
-of India," under whom we now see the same toleration of all religions
-which prevailed in the fifty years of Akbar.
-
-The Moslem saw in Akbar's liberality and toleration the supreme
-offence of putting other gods--Jesus, Brahma, Ahuramazda--beside
-Allah. The Jahvist saw retrospectively in Solomon's liberality the
-putting of Moloch, Ashera, and other gods beside Jahveh. It was
-therefore recorded that Jahveh determined to rend all the tribes
-save one from Solomon's son (a vaticinium ex evento). But that one
-was enough to preserve the Solomon cult.
-
-Anankê oude Theoi machontai. This Necessity, which the Greeks saw
-working above all the gods, is man himself, and worked also above Jah
-and Jahvism, nay, by means of them. Gradually they seemed to prevail
-over Solomonism. The Proverbs and Solomonic Psalms were transfused with
-Jahvism, but by this process the heavenly and the terrestrial kings
-were confused, and the idea of a human heir to the throne of Jahveh
-was conceived. As when, in our own era, Islam swallowed Zoroaster,
-with the result of bringing forth the great literary age of Persia,
-with Parsaism rationalized under a transparent veil of Moslem phrase
-and fable, so anciently arose the Hebrew Faizis and Saadis and Omar
-Khayyáms. Of these was the Isaiah who, with pigments of the Solomonic
-sunset, painted the sunrise of a new day, and a new earth-born God.
-
-
-   "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the
-    government shall rest on his shoulder; and his name shall be
-    called Counsellor of Wonders, God-hero, Father of Spoil, Prince of
-    Peace. Enlarged shall be dominion, and without cessation of peace,
-    on the throne of David, and throughout his kingdom, to establish
-    it and uphold it by justice and righteousness from henceforth
-    and forever."
-
-
-Every title, every tint, in this gorgeous vision is taken from the
-nuptial song for Solomon (Ps. xlv.) and Solomon's Psalm (lxxii.) The
-"delightsomeness poured over (Solomon's) lips" (Ps. xlv. 2) makes
-the Counsellor of Wonders; his deification (verses 6, 7) makes the
-God-hero; the tributes of Tarshish, and Sheba make him father of
-spoil (Ps. lxxii.); his "mildness" (Ps. xlv. 4) his abundant "peace"
-(Ps. lxxii. 3, 7) make the Prince of Peace; and the rest is a general
-refrain for both of the Psalms.
-
-Psalm xlv. opens with the words, "My verse concerns the King," and
-there is a fair consensus of the learned that the king is Solomon. It
-has been found impossible to fix upon any other monarch to whom the
-eulogia would be applicable, and the resemblance of the theme to the
-Song of Solomon proves that at an early period writers connected the
-Psalm with Solomon and one of his espousals.
-
-In quoting Professor Newman's translation of this Psalm (ante II)
-I alluded to my slight alterations. These are few and verbal, but
-momentous, and were not made without consultation of many critical
-authorities and versions. Professor Newman was unable to believe
-that the poet really meant to address Solomon as God, and in verse
-6 translates "Thy throne divine," in verse 7, "Therefore hath God,
-thy God, etc." Others, with similar theistic bias, have shrunk from
-what, according to the balance of critical interpretation, is the
-clear sense of the original:
-
-
-   "Thy throne, O God, ever and always stands;
-    A righteous sceptre is thy royal sceptre:
-    Thou lovest right and hatest evil;
-    Therefore, O God, hath thy God anointed thee
-    With oil of joy above thy fellow-kings."
-
-
-When these verses were written--and verse 11, where after Adonai
-the Vulgate has Elohim, "He is thy Lord God, worship thou him"--the
-rigid Jewish monotheism did not exist; and the apostrophe might have
-continued without special notice had not the psalm been included in
-the Jewish hymnology and thus given the solemnity and consecration
-ascribed by Jahvism to its canonical Book of Psalms. But ultimately
-it made a tremendous and even revolutionary impression; and that the
-verses were interpreted as bestowing the divine name on Solomon, by
-those most jealous of that name, is proved, I think, by the following
-considerations:
-
-1. Isaiah, in his vision quoted above (Is. ix.) combines the
-phraseology of Ps. xlv. with that of Ps. lxxii. (which bears Solomon's
-name as its author), and ascribes to a new-born child the title
-"God-hero."
-
-2. The recently discovered original of a fragment of Ecclesiasticus
-includes the passage about Solomon in xlvii., and it is said in
-verse 18: "Thou (Solomon) wast called by the glorious name which
-is called over Israel." This seems to be a plain reference to the
-ascriptions in Ps. xlv., where alone the divine name is applied to
-any individual mortal. Ecclesiasticus was compiled early in the second
-century before our era, and on the basis of much earlier compilations,
-as its prologue states.
-
-3. In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the monarch is represented as a mortal
-who by the divine gift of supernatural Wisdom had gained immortality;
-he had become privy to the mysteries of God, was his Beloved, his
-Son. This was written about the first year of our era.
-
-4. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews translates the Psalm
-xlv. as it is translated above, interpreting the words of deification
-as meant for the Firstborn of God at his ancient appearance on earth
-(i. 6), and applicable to his reappearance as Christ; arguing from
-such language of deification the superiority of the Son of God over
-the angels, who were never so addressed.
-
-A court poet addresses a princely bridegroom as Elohim, as a god--as
-it were, an Apollo. Had more songs of like antiquity by poets of his
-race been preserved, no doubt other instances of such rhapsody might
-be found, but it happens that this is the only instance in Hebrew
-literature where an individual man is clearly addressed as God (for
-Exod. vii. 1 and 1 Sam. xxviii. 13 are not really exceptions). As in
-the Psalm that is the only instance in which an individual man is,
-in the Old Testament, addressed as God, so is its application in the
-Epistle to the Hebrews the only indisputable instance in which an
-individual is addressed as God in the New Testament.
-
-"Thy throne, O God." Fateful words! The word of God, says this Epistle,
-is sharper than any two-edged sword, but its writer himself unwittingly
-unsheathed from a courtier's compliment just such a sword. One edge
-has slaughtered innumerable Jews, Moslems, Arians, Socinians, mingling
-their blood with that of the humane Jesus himself on the sacrificial
-altar he tried so hard to exchange for mercifulness. The other edge
-turned against the moral heart of Jesus himself, lowering the tone of
-all narratives and utterances ascribed to him after his connection
-with Jahveh, and consequently lowering all Christendom under its
-dishonourable burden of accommodating human veracity and kindness to
-the bad heavenly manners that were acquired by the deified Christ. For
-there was no other God to adopt him but a particularly rude one.
-
-Theological scholars who have compared the Epistle to the Hebrews
-with the Epistles of Paul have dwelt on the theological differences,
-but the moral differences are greater. In the Epistle to the Hebrews
-the emphasis is laid on the service of Jesus to mankind: it is this
-that makes him, as it made Solomon, worthy of worship as a God,
-and the ancient God with his sacrifices is virtually represented as
-transforming himself and his government to the measure of Jesus. Jesus
-is complete and perfect man, no part or power of his divine nature
-accompanying him on earth. But we see in Philippians ii. 7, and other
-passages, the primitive idea fading away, and Jesus pictured as a
-divine being in the mere semblance and disguise of a man, no real man
-at all; a theory which prevails in the story of the transfiguration,
-where the disguise is for a moment thrown aside. The earlier idea of
-his genuine humanity was still strong enough to prevent any stories
-of miracles wrought by Jesus from arising, the resurrection being a
-miracle wrought by God after the work of Jesus was "finished," as he
-is said to have proclaimed from the stake. But legends of miracles
-became inevitable after the theory of his disguise was diffused,
-and also stories of the vituperation, anathemas, and attitudinizings,
-which are so offensive in a man, but so characteristic of the whole
-history of Jahveh, with whom he was gradually identified. A gentleman
-does not call his opponents vipers and consign them to hell, but
-Jahveh is not under any such obligations. And, alas, disregard of
-the humanities did not, as we have seen, stop there even in Paul's
-time. In the further development, that of Jesus the magician, the
-personal character of Jesus was sadly sacrificed, and it is only
-due to the superstition that prevents the New Testament narratives
-from being read in a common sense way that people generally are not
-shocked by some of the representations.
-
-When the second Solomon was born in Bethlehem, as the Gospel carols
-tell, Wise Men came to worship him, but Jahveh had already fixed
-his own star above the cradle, and his angels contended for the
-great man, as for centuries the wisdom of the first Solomon had been
-jahvized. It was, however, the opinion of some ancient commentators
-that the cry of the angels, "Glory to God in the highest" meant that
-the birth of Jesus was to operate in the heavenly heights, and work
-changes there also. One may indeed dream of a deity longing for a human
-love,--grieving at being through ages an object of fear, personified as
-Wrath,--rejoicing in the birth of any new interpreter who should free
-him from the despot glory, "I create evil," and reconcile the human
-heart to him as eternal love--love ever burdened with the griefs of
-humanity, ever seeking to be born of woman, and to struggle against the
-dark and evil forces of nature. So one may dream, and it is a pathetic
-fact that the contention between humanity and heaven for the new-born
-Saviour is traceable in varying versions of the Angels' song. While
-half of Christendom sing "On earth peace, good will toward men," the
-other half sing, "On earth peace to men of good will." Our Revisers
-find the balance of authorities on the side of authority, and translate
-
-
-    Glory to God in the highest,
-    And on earth peace among men in whom he is well pleased.
-
-
-Although the "higher criticism" appears to treat with a certain
-contempt the birth-legends and carols in Matthew and Luke, and
-the genealogies, beyond the letter of these is visible more of the
-vanishing Jesus "after the flesh," the real and great man, than of
-the risen Christ in whom his humanity was lost. The "shepherd of my
-people," he who is to absolve them from their nightmare "sins," make
-crooked ways straight, rough places smooth, and free them from fear,
-is remembered in these rhapsodies of the Infancy, in the terrors of
-Herod, and gifts of the Wise. They have a certain evolution in the
-benevolent teachings and healing miracles of the Synoptics, easily
-discriminated from the competing Jahveh-Christ. (Think of a teacher
-urging his friends to forgive offenders seventy times seven and then
-promising them a "Comforter" who will never forgive the slightest
-offence, though merely verbal, either in this world or in the next!)
-
-The extent to which the man was lowered and lost in the risen Lord is
-especially revealed in the fourth Gospel. Except for the story of the
-woman taken in adultery, admittedly interpolated from another Gospel,
-the fourth Gospel may be regarded as perhaps the only book in the
-Bible without recognition of humanity. "I pray not for the world,
-but for those whom thou hast given me," is the keynote. In this work
-there is no text for the reformer and the philanthropist, unless
-perhaps the retreat of Jesus from a prospect of being made king. What
-inferences of benevolence might be made even from the miracles related
-have to be strained through the arrogance, self-aggrandizement,
-attitudinizing, as of a showman, with which they are wrought. [48] A
-rudeness to his mother precedes the turning of water to wine (ii. 4);
-the nobleman's son is healed because the aristocrat will not believe
-without a miracle (iv. 48); the infirm man at Bethesda is healed only
-after a sham question, "Wouldest thou be made whole?" and threatened
-afterwards (v. 6, 14); feeding the multitude is attended with another
-sham question (vi. 5), and a parade of the fragments (13); the man
-born blind is declared to have been so born solely for the sign and
-wonder manifested in his cure (ix. 3).
-
-But the supremacy of a new Jahveh over all moral obligations and all
-truthfulness is especially displayed in the resurrection of Lazarus
-(xi.). Here Jesus is represented as staying away from the sick man, in
-order that he may die; he affects to believe Lazarus is only asleep,
-but finding his disciples pleased with the prospect of recovery, in
-which case there would be no miracle, he becomes frank (parrhêsia)
-and assures them Lazarus is dead; he tells his disciples privately he
-is glad Lazarus is dead; he tells Martha, when she comes out to him
-alone, that her brother shall rise; but when her sister Mary comes out,
-accompanied by her Jewish consolers, Jesus breaks out into vehement
-groans and lamentations, lashing himself (etaraxen eauton) into this
-sham grief over a man at whose death he has connived and who would
-presently be alive! Even in his prayer over Lazarus the pretence is
-kept up, and his Father is informed, in an aside, "I know that thou
-hearest me always, but because of the multitude around I said it,
-that they may believe that thou didst send me." Thus does the fourth
-Gospel sink Jesus morally into the grave of Lazarus, leaving in his
-place an embodiment of the Jahveh who had lying spirits to send out
-into his prophets on occasion.
-
-The resurrection of Lazarus is a transparent fabrication out of
-the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Abraham's words to the rich
-man,--"neither will they be persuaded if one rose from the dead,"--were
-not adapted to a faith built on a resurrection, so that parable is
-suppressed in the fourth Gospel. The resurrection of a supernatural
-man is not quite sufficient for people not supernatural. Those who
-had been looking for a returning Christ had died, just like the
-unbelievers. There was a tremendous necessity for an example of the
-resurrection of an ordinary man. Shocking as are the immoral details
-of the story, there is audible in it the pathetic cry of the suffering
-human heart, and the demand that must be met by any Gospel claiming
-the faith of humanity. "Lord, if thou hadst been here my brother had
-not died!" Through what ages has that declaration, not to be denied,
-ascended to cold and cruel skies? It is found in the Vedas, in Job,
-in the Psalms. If there is a Heart up there why are we tortured? To the
-many apologies and explanations and pretences which imperilled systems
-had given, Christianity had to support itself by something more than
-Egyptian dreams and Platonic speculations. A dead man must arise;
-it must be done dramatically, amid domestic grief and neighbourly
-sympathy; it must be done doctrinally, with funeral sermon turned to
-rejoicings. And this was all done in the story of Lazarus in such a way
-that it might surround every grave with illusions for centuries. For
-who, while tears are falling, will pause to handle the wreaths, and
-find whether they are genuine? Who, while the service is proceeding,
-will analyze the details, and ask whether it is possible that the good
-Jesus could have practiced such deception and assumed such theatrical
-attitudes? [49]
-
-The indifference of the fourth Gospel to such moral considerations as
-those found in the Synoptics is so apostolic that I am inclined
-to place much of it nearer to the first century than I once
-supposed. Paul's rage against the "wisdom of this world," and his
-fulminations against the learned because they are not "called,"
-are fully adopted by the Johannine Christ, who says to the blind man
-whose eyes he had opened, and who was worshipping him: "For judgment
-came I into this world, that they that see not may see, and they that
-see may become blind." And these ideas are represented in a legend
-related in the book of Acts which is really allegorical, though our
-translators have manipulated it into serious history.
-
-A persecutor of Christians, on whom the spirit "came mightily," as
-on King Saul, so that he was a new "Saul among the prophets," sought
-to convert to his new faith a Roman Proconsul, Sergius Paul. But
-with this Consul was a learned man of the Jewish Wisdom School,
-Bar-Jesus Elymas,--i. e., Dr. Anti-Jesus Wise Man. Like Michael and
-Satan contending for the body of Moses, Prophet Saul and Anti-Jesus
-Wise Man contended for the Roman Paul's soul. Prophet Saul prevailed
-by calling Anti-Jesus Wise Man a child of the devil, and striking
-him blind. Thereupon Consul Paul believed, being "astonished at the
-teaching of the Lord." Whereupon Prophet Saul triumphantly carries
-off the Roman's name as a trophy. [50]
-
-Beginning in this conclusive way, by striking human Wisdom sightless
-("that they that see may become blind," John ix. 39), the Anti-Wisdom
-propaganda, which began with identifying Wisdom with the serpent
-in Eden, passed on to inspire the Church Fathers who gloated over
-the eternal tortures of the poets and philosophers of Greece and
-Rome. Alas for the philosophers not in their graves, but in their
-cradles, or in the womb of the future! For torments are nearest
-"eternal" when they begin at once on earth.
-
-One may readily understand how it was that personal traditions of Jesus
-and his teachings remained unwritten until his contemporaries were
-dead (although this may not have been the case with the suppressed
-"Gospel according to the Hebrews"); the hourly expected return of
-Christ rendered such memoirs unimportant until it became clear that
-the expectation was erroneous. The age of John, of whom Jesus was
-rumoured to have predicted survival till his return (John xxi. 22),
-was stretched out to a mythical extent; he became an undying sleeper
-at Ephesus, and finally a pious "Wandering Jew"; but when at length
-such fables lost their strength, some imaginative impersonator brought
-forth an apocalyptic bequest of John postponing the second advent
-a thousand years. The conventicles had thus no resource but to turn
-into orthodoxy the heresy of Hymenoeus and Alexander, for which Paul
-delivered them over to Satan, that the resurrection occurs at death;
-to collect the traditional sayings of Jesus; and to adapt these to the
-new situation. A thousand years later, when the expected catastrophe
-did not occur, the substantial churches and cathedrals were built,
-as the Gospels had been built after the first-century disappointment.
-
-These Gospels contain things from which some of the real teachings
-of the wise man of Nazareth may be fairly conjectured. That the
-synoptical records are palimpsests, though denied by the prudent, is
-a truth felt by the unsophisticated who, in their use of such words
-as "Christian" and "a Christian spirit," quite ignore the fearful
-anathemas and damnatory language ascribed to Jesus.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII.
-
-THE LAST SOLOMON.
-
-
-Every race has a pride in its great men which ultimately prevails over
-any pious taboo imposed on them in life or by tradition. Some years
-ago it was announced that a German scholar was about to publish proofs
-that Jesus was not of the Hebrew race, and while Christendom showed
-little concern, all Israel sat upon that German almost furiously. It
-is an old story. Banished Buddha becomes an avatar of Vishnu, and
-his image now appears in India beside Jagenath. For the heresiarch
-must be adapted before adoption. So Solomon returns as a preacher of
-orthodox Jahvism, in the "Wisdom of Solomon," but so rigid had been
-the taboo in his case that the writer did not venture to insert the
-name of so famous a liberal and secularist.
-
-That was about the first year of our era. But presently we hear about
-the "Son of David." Was that because of David himself? Interest in
-David had so receded that in the "Wisdom of Solomon" the resuscitated
-Wise Man barely alludes (once) to his "father's seat." Was it because
-of any popular interest in the legendary throne or house of David? That
-old "covenant" is not alluded to by the resuscitated monarch, and in
-the apostolic writings nothing is said about it. In the Gospels the
-title "Son of David" is generally connected with certain alleged
-miracles of Jesus, which recalled legends of Solomon, and it is
-only in the account of the entry into Jerusalem that it carries any
-connotation of royalty corresponding to the genealogies afterwards
-elaborated. Unless these narratives are accepted as historical
-they must be regarded as phenomena, and, taken in connection with
-what may be reasonably regarded as genuine teachings of Jesus, the
-phenomena point to a probability that he had reawakened interest in
-the Wise Man's teachings, and that this interest, by a compromise
-with Jahvist prejudices, coined the expression "Son of David" as an
-alias of Solomon.
-
-However this may be, it appears certain that there was in the
-teachings of Jesus some substantial recovery of the ancient and
-unconverted Solomon, the proverbial philosopher, the man of the
-world. How much Jesus may have said to revive interest in Solomon,
-and how many of his secular utterances have been hidden in the grave
-of his humanity, can only be conjectured; but there are two direct
-sayings concerning Solomon ascribed to him which may be regarded
-as the only unreserved tributes to the Wise Man that had ever been
-uttered since his idealization in Chronicles. And our own Protestant
-Jahvism has tried so hard to manipulate these tributes into partial
-disparagements that we may easily imagine early Christian Jahvism
-destroying similar testimonies altogether.
-
-A. S. V. Luke xi. 31: "The Queen of the South shall rise up in judgment
-with the men of this generation and condemn them: for she came from
-the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon,
-and behold a greater than Solomon is here."
-
-True rendering: "The Queen of the South shall stand in the judgment
-with the men of this [Abrahamic]  brood, and condemn them; for she came
-from the farthest parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and
-behold something more than Solomon is here." (pleion Solomônos hôde)
-
-The word mistranslated "greater," pleion, is neuter and cannot be
-applied to a man. Jesus is not speaking of himself, but of the new
-Spirit animating a whole movement.
-
-The word "generation" as a translation of genea is, in this connection,
-misleading. No one English word can convey the satire on people who
-regarded themselves as holy by generation from Abraham (cf. Luke
-iii. 8), which is in the vein of Carlyle's ridicule of English
-"Paper Nobility." Above these self-satisfied claimants of inherited
-wisdom Jesus sets the Gentile Queen journeying to sit at the feet
-of Solomon. At the feet of Solomon Jesus also was sitting, and he
-certainly did not call himself personally greater than Solomon.
-
-The other allusion to Solomon (Matt. vi. 28, 29) is rendered thus:
-"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not,
-neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in
-all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
-
-Here "glory," which when applied to a man has a connotation of pride
-and pomp, is made to translate doxê, which means honour in its best
-sense, as preserved in "doxology." Jesus really says, "Solomon amid all
-his honours never arrayed himself (periebaleto) like one of these." The
-greatest and wisest of men did not affect display in dress. [51]
-
-The apparent slightness of these English changes reveals their
-deliberate subtlety. Puritanism, taking its cue from King James's
-translators, has bettered the instruction, and steadily pictured
-Jesus pointing to a lily,--white emblem of purity,--and censuring
-(implicitly) the ostentation of Solomon. Even in rationalistic
-hymn-books is found the pretty hymn of Agnes Strickland, beginning:
-
-
-    "Fair lilies of Jerusalem,
-        Ye wear the same array
-    As when imperial Judah's stem
-        Maintained its regal sway:
-    By sacred Jordan's desert tide
-        As bright ye blossom on
-    As when your simple charms outvied
-        The pride of Solomon."
-
-
-Very sweet! But the "lilies of the field" in Palestine are not "fair,"
-their charms are not "simple"; they are large and gorgeous combinations
-of red and gold; and Solomon, so far from being proud in the contrast,
-"outvied" in simplicity the pride of the lily.
-
-Jesus may not indeed have said these things concerning Solomon, but
-the probability that he did say something of the kind is suggested
-by the adroit mistranslations. The same puritanical spirit, the
-same prejudice against human wisdom and love of beauty, prevailed
-even more when the Gospels were written. The Jahvist jealousy of
-the wisdom of the world which in a Targum added to Jeremiah ix. 23
-a fling at Solomon,--"Let not Solomon the Son of David, the Wise
-Man, glory in his Wisdom,"--screamed on in Christian anathemas
-on science, and laudations of the silly. (For "silly" is of pious
-derivation, from German selig--blessed.) Solomon had not been named
-in any canonical scripture for centuries, and even in apocryphal
-"Wisdom" (Ecclesiasticus) he appears as if a brilliant but fallen
-Lucifer. The cult of Solomon continued no doubt, in a sense, among the
-Sadducees (respectfully treated, by the way, by Jesus), but they were
-comparatively few, and like the rationalists of the English Church,
-cautious about outside heresies. It was probably characteristic that
-their name is derived from Solomon's priest, Zadok, instead of from
-Solomon himself. As for the Gentile Queen, she is not named in the
-Bible after the record of her visit to Solomon until the homage of
-Jesus was given her. It appears, therefore, very unlikely that such
-homage and the unqualified tributes to Solomon, would have been put
-into the mouth of Jesus.
-
-But why, it may be asked, were not these tributes suppressed? There is
-in one case a recognition of a Gentile lady which would recommend the
-text to the writer of Luke, and in the other a lesson against luxury
-which would recommend this to all believers. At any rate, whatever may
-have been the suppressions, and no doubt there were many, two of the
-Gospels have preserved these sentences, which, so far as the glorious
-"idolator" is concerned, neither of them would have invented. There
-are the words; somebody uttered them; and the question arises, who
-was that daring man who broke the severe silence or reservations of
-centuries and did honour to the king who built shrines to gods and
-goddesses? [52]
-
-As Solomon said, "A man is proved by what he praises." That Jesus did
-appreciate the greatness of the Solomonic literature is not a matter
-of conjecture. The sayings ascribed to him in the Gospels--apart from
-Pauline importations and quotations from Jahvist scriptures--are
-largely pervaded by the spirit and even by the phraseology of the
-Solomonic books. Remembering that the phrases "kingdom of heaven,"
-"kingdom of God," are post-resurrectional, and that Jesus could not,
-unless by miraculous foresight, use those phrases for any external
-dominion connected with himself, there is reason to believe that his
-conception was of a sway of Wisdom, and that Wisdom was to him the
-Saviour, as to Jesus Ben Sira, her realm "within," her leaven hid in
-the world, her advance without observation.
-
-Of course those who read the Bible in the light of a supernatural
-theory, see these things very differently, but considering the
-records as if they were those of uninspired people, one may say that
-some of the sayings ascribed to Jesus are, in their present form,
-meaningless. For example, what should we think if we found an ancient
-record of some poor Egyptian reported as saying, "Come unto me, all
-ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my
-yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart: and
-ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden
-is light." How incongruous the "I am meek" with "learn of me"! How
-could he give the heavy laden rest? And what rest? what yoke? But we
-would surely feel enlightened should we presently discover an Egyptian
-book of "Wisdom,"  with proof of its popularity when the mysterious
-words were orally repeated, containing such language as this from
-personified Wisdom: "Come unto me, all ye that be desirous of me,
-and fill yourselves with my fruits." And if we found in the same
-book a teacher saying: "I directed my soul unto Wisdom, and I found
-her in pureness.... Draw near unto me, ye unlearned, and dwell in
-the house of Wisdom.... Buy her for yourselves without money. Put
-your neck under her yoke, and let your life receive instruction:
-she is near at hand to find. Behold with your eyes that I have had
-but little labour, and have gotten unto me much rest."
-
-Here is sense. These are the words of Wisdom in Jesus Ben Sira
-(Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 19, li. 23-27). Can any unbiased mind fail to
-recognize in Matthew xi. 28-30 a mangled quotation from this Hebrew
-book of the second century, before Jesus of Nazareth was born, but
-in his time cherished in many Jewish households as much as any Gospel
-is cherished in Christian households?
-
-Consider the Sermon on the Mount. In the Proverbs ascribed to
-Solomon is found the beatitude pronounced by Jesus on the lowly,
-no doubt literally quoted by him: "With the lowly is wisdom"
-(Prov. xi. 2). The blessing of those who hunger for righteousness
-(justice) is in Prov. x. 24, where it is said their desire shall be
-granted. The blessing of the peacemakers is joy (Prov. xii. 20). The
-merciful man doeth good to his own life (Prov. xi. 17). The pure in
-heart shall have the King for his friend (Prov. xxii. 11). The house
-that stands and the house overthrown (Prov. x. 25; xii. 7; xiv. 11);
-the two ways (Prov. xii. 28, xiv. 12, xvi. 17); the tree known by
-its fruits (Prov. xi. 30, xii. 12); give and it shall be given you
-(Prov. xxii. 9); the sower (Prov. xi. 18, 24, 25); taking the lower
-place so as to be placed higher and not moved down (Prov. xxv. 6-8);
-searching for and buying Wisdom as the precious silver, the pearl,
-the treasure (Prov. vi. 11, 12, 17, 19, 35; xx. 15; xxiii. 23); the
-prodigal (Prov. xxix. 3); those who wrong parents (Prov. xx. 20;
-xxviii. 24; cf. Matt. xv. 5; Mark vii. 11). The lamps of the wise
-and foolish virgins are found in Prov. xiii. 9; also xxiv. 20.
-
-In Proverbs xx. 9, we have the words, "Who can say, 'I have made
-my heart clean, I am pure from sin?'" In Ecclesiastes iii. 16, it
-is said, "Moreover, I saw under the sun, in the place of judgment,
-that wickedness was there; and in the place of righteousness that
-wickedness was there." (Cf. also vii. 20.) In the "Gospel according
-to the Hebrews" Jesus, declaring that an offender should be forgiven
-seventy times seven, adds: "For in the prophets likewise, after they
-were anointed by the Holy Spirit, utterance of sin was found."
-
-Although in the language ascribed to Jesus in the fourth Gospel
-(iii. 1-10) there are post-resurrectional phrases, whatever he
-may have said about birth and about the wind-like spirit seems to
-have been what he expected Nicodemus, as a teacher in Israel, to
-understand. We may therefore suppose that it was substantially a
-quotation from Ecclesiastes xi. 5: "As thou knowest not the way of
-the wind, nor the growth of the bones in the mother's womb, even so
-thou canst not fathom the work of God, who compasseth all things."
-
-In relation to Woman Jesus seems to have appealed to Solomon against
-Ecclesiastes, where (vii. 25-29) it is said:
-
-
-    I have turned my heart to know,
-    And to explore, and search out wisdom and the reason of things;
-    And to know that wickedness is Folly, and Folly madness:
-    And I have found what is more bitter than death--
-    The Woman who is a snare, her heart nets, her hands chains:
-    He who pleases God shall be delivered from her,
-    But the offender shall be captured by her.
-        See, this have I found (saith the Speaker).
-    Adding one to another, to find out the account,
-    Which I am still searching after, but have not found--
-    One man in a thousand I have found,
-    But a woman among all these I have not found.
-    Look you, only this have I found--
-    That God made man upright,
-    But they have sought out many devices.
-
-
-In the first seven lines of this passage we may recognize the
-personification in Proverbs ix. 13-18. The Woman of the fifth line
-is "Dame Folly"; but the last eight lines relate to womankind. The
-assurance in the eighth line that it is Koheleth who speaks raises
-a suspicion that the last eight lines are commentary,--a suspicion
-further confirmed by the awkwardness of the writing. Strictly read,
-it is left uncertain whether no woman is ever captured by Dame Folly,
-or not one escapes. However, as commentators are generally men,
-the interpretation has been adverse to woman.
-
-But Jesus, perhaps remembering that Wisdom is as much a woman as Folly,
-is reported (Matthew xi. 19) to have said: "Wisdom is justified by
-her works." In Luke vii. 35 it is, "Wisdom is justified of all her
-children." Both of these readings appeal to the Solomonic portrait of
-the virtuous woman, in Proverbs xxxi. the last line of which says,
-"Let her works praise her," and verse 28, "her children rise up and
-call her blessed."
-
-In Luke the sentence is a verse by itself, and the word "all" renders
-it probable that the sentiment has a bearing on the story that follows
-of the anointing of Jesus by a sinful woman. [53] Some such incident
-may have occurred, but the address to Simon the Pharisee making him
-to be the offender, and the woman one delivered from Dame Folly by
-her faith ("pleasing God") looks like a criticism on the "fling" at
-woman in Ecclesiastes, with a proverb taken for text. This rebuke of
-the Pharisee, who thought "the prophet" ought to abhor the "sinner,"
-immediately precedes an account of the eminent women who supported
-Jesus by their means,--Mary, called Magdalene; Joanna, the wife of
-Herod's steward; Susanna, "and many others." They "ministered to him of
-their substance," and possibly the Pharisee and others might naturally
-suspect him of being among "the ensnared." The fact is strange enough
-to be genuine, and Luke thinks it important to say that Jesus had
-healed these ladies of bad spirits and infirmities. Of course it
-is necessary to divest Gospel anecdotes of much post-resurrectional
-vesture, and in this case it cannot be credited that Jesus said that
-the woman's sins were "many," which he could not have known, or that
-he gave her formal absolution.
-
-The indications of the study of Ecclesiasticus by Jesus are very
-remarkable. This book appears to have been a sort of nursery in
-which proverbs were trained for their fruitage in the last Solomon's
-religious testimonies. What those testimonies were we cannot easily
-gather, but it is useful for comparative study to remark the sentences
-in Ecclesiastictus which correspond, either in thought or phraseology,
-with those ascribed to Jesus. The broad and the narrow ways barely
-suggested in "Proverbs" are here developed (Ecclesiasticus iv. 17,
-18). "Hide not thy wisdom" (iv. 23, xx. 30). "Say not, 'I have enough
-(goods) for my life'" (v. 1, xi. 24). "Extol not thyself" (vi. 2). We
-find the exhortation to judge not (vii. 6); rebuke of much speaking in
-prayer (14); warning against the lustful gaze (ix. 5, 8); the night
-cometh when no man can work (xiv. 16-19; cf. Eccles. ix. 10); the
-proud cast down, the humble exalted (x. 14, xi. 5); one only is good
-(xviii. 2); swear not (xxiii. 9); forgiven as we forgive (xxviii. 2);
-treasure rusting and treasure laid up according to the commandments
-of the Most High (xxix. 10, 11); "Judge of thy neighbor by thyself"
-(xxxi. 15); the altar-gift and the wronged brother (xxxiv. 18-20);
-he that seeks the law shall be filled (xxxii. 15); charity and not
-sacrifice (xxxv. 2).
-
-These resemblances, of which more might be quoted, between teachings
-ascribed to Jesus and passages in the Wisdom Books, are so important
-that by the aid of these books some of the confused utterances
-attributed to him may be made clear. [54] Apart from the importations
-of Paul, and one or two from the epistle to the Hebrews, no reference
-by the Jesus of the Gospels to Jahvist books can be shown of similar
-significance. Combined as his Solomonic ideas are with his homage
-to Solomon and the Gentile Queen, and followed, as we shall see,
-by a resuscitation of Solomonic legends in connection with him, it
-appears clear that Jesus was of the Solomonic and anti-Jahvist school.
-
-It would, however, be a great mistake to suppose that Jesus
-was simply a philosophical and ethical teacher. He cannot be so
-explained. The fragmentary sayings, so far as discoverable amid their
-post-resurrectional perversions, have the air of obiter dicta from a
-man engaged in a local propaganda of subversive principles. What the
-propaganda really was is but dimly discernible under its own subsequent
-subversion by his ghost, but there are a few sayings not traceable
-to his predecessors, and beyond the capacity of his contemporaries
-or his successors, which bring us near to an individual mind, and
-suggest the general nature of the agitation he caused.
-
-The story of the woman taken in adultery, known to have been in the
-suppressed "Gospel according to the Hebrews," and by some strange
-chance preserved in the fourth gospel (viii), I believe to have really
-occurred. It would have required a first-century Boccaccio to invent
-such a story, and I cannot discover anything similar in Eastern or
-in Oriental books. Augustine says that some had removed it from their
-manuscripts, "I imagine, out of fear that impunity of sin was granted
-to their wives." It is not likely that any of the earlier fathers,
-any more than the later, would have invented so dangerous a story.
-
-Another anecdote, preserved only in the fourth Gospel, probably
-contains some elements of truth, namely, the words uttered to the
-Samaritan woman. Who would have been bold enough, even had he been
-liberal enough, to invent the words: "Neither in this mountain, nor
-in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father"? Even in the one Gospel
-that ventures to preserve it this noble catholicity is immediately
-retracted (John iv. 22) in a verse which obviously interrupts the
-idea. That the story is an early one is also suggested by the fact
-that no reproach to the woman on account of her many husbands is
-inserted. It is remarkable to find such a story related without any
-word about sin and forgiveness.
-
-The so-called "Sermon on the Mount" is well named: it is evidently
-made up of reports of sermons in amplification of sayings of Jesus
-in the style of the Wisdom Books, among which probably were:
-
-
-   "Let your light shine before men. A lamp is not lit to be put
-    under a bushel."
-
-   "The lamp of the body is the eye. If thine eye be sound the whole
-    body is illumined; if the eye be diseased the whole body is in
-    darkness. If the inner eye be darkened how great is the darkness."
-
-   "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
-
-   "By their fruits both trees and man are known."
-
-   "Each tree is known by its own fruit."
-
-   "Put not new wine into old wine-skins, lest they burst."
-
-   "Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves."
-
-   "Wisdom is justified by her children."
-
-   "If any man will be great, let him serve."
-
-   "The lowly shall be exalted, the proud humbled."
-
-   "Blind guides strain out the gnat, and swallow a camel."
-
-   "Give and it shall be given you."
-
-   "The measure ye mete shall be measured to you."
-
-   "Cast the beam from thine eye before noticing the mote in that
-    of thy neighbour."
-
-
-The following sentences in the "Gospel according to the Hebrews" do not
-appear to have been very seriously influenced by post-resurrectional
-ideas.
-
-
-   "He is a great criminal who hath grieved the spirit of his
-    brother."
-
-   "No thank to you if you love them that love you, but
-    there is thank if ye love your enemies and them that hate
-    you." (Cf. Prov. xxix. 17, 29.)
-
-   "Be ye never joyful save when you have looked upon your brother
-    in charity."
-
-   "Be as lambkins in midst of wolves."
-
-   "The son and the daughter shall inherit alike."
-
-   "It is happy rather to give than to receive."
-
-   "No servant can serve two masters."
-
-   "Out of entire heart and out of entire mind."
-
-   "What is the profit if a man gain the entire world, and lose
-    his life?"
-
-   "Seek from little to wax great, and not from greater to become
-    less."
-
-   "Become proved bankers."
-
-   "If ye have not been faithful in the little who will give you
-    the great?"
-
-
-These instructions have no connotations of the end of the world. They
-appear like the words of a man of the world, but not a man of the
-people. There is a certain unity in them, indicating a mind more
-developed than the semi-Jahvist Alexandrian philosophers of the later
-Wisdom cult, as represented by Jesus Ben Sira's "Wisdom," and by the
-"Wisdom of Solomon"; also a mind more practical.
-
-But these wise sayings do not convey the full idea of a man whose
-execution the Sanhedrim would require, nor a man whose resurrection
-from the grave would be looked for by the populace. These two
-phenomenal facts imply some strong antagonism to the priesthood and
-their system. Martyrdoms do not occur for ethical generalizations,
-much less for philosophical affirmations. The faith that strikes deep
-is that which speaks in great denials.
-
-Trying to follow his advice to "Become proved bankers," we may detect
-in some probable sayings of Jesus a transitional ring, e. g., "The
-Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." The effort
-at self-emancipation is still more traceable in certain incidents
-related in the "Gospel according to the Hebrews":
-
-
-   "He saith, 'If thy brother hath offended in anything and hath
-    made thee amends, seven times in a day receive him,' Simon his
-    disciple said unto him, 'Seven times in a day?' The Lord answered
-    and said unto him, 'I tell thee also unto seventy times seven;
-    for in the prophets likewise, after that they were anointed by
-    the Holy Spirit, utterance of sin was found.'"
-
-   "The same day, having beheld a man working on the Sabbath, he said
-    to him, 'Man, if thou knowest what thou dost, blessed art thou: but
-    if thou knowest not, thou art under a curse, and a law-breaker.'"
-
-
-That a man should regard the Holy Spirit as unable to make men
-infallible; that he should have discovered immoral utterances in
-the prophets; that he should regard it as a sign of enlightenment to
-disregard the Sabbath deliberately and intelligently--this is surely
-all very striking.
-
-Who, in the second century, could have invented these anecdotes
-about Jesus? They are not harmonious with the Pauline Epistles;
-their heretical character is proved by the repudiation of the Gospel
-containing them, while their genuineness is implicitly confessed
-by the ultimate suppression of that Gospel. For surely it cannot be
-supposed that such a work, well known in the fifth century, was lost;
-nor is there much doubt that any learned rationalist, if permitted
-the free range of all the libraries in Rome, without the presence of
-polite librarians, could bring to light that first-century Gospel,
-the only one written in Aramaic, the language of Jesus.
-
-But, when we come to consider the mature and positive teachings of
-Jesus, there may be placed in the front a sentence preserved from
-the suppressed Gospel by Epiphanius, who writes (Haer. xxx. 16):
-"And they say that he both came, and (as their so-called Gospel has
-it) instructed them that he had come to dissolve the Sacrifices:
-'and unless ye cease from sacrificing the wrath shall not cease
-from you.'" Dr. Nicholson is shocked at this threat, and suspects
-the Ebionites of having altered what Jesus said. But surely it
-is a true and grand admonition by one superseding a phantasm of
-heavenly Egoism, demanding gifts from men for pacification, with
-the idea of a Father. Dr. Nicholson connects it, no doubt rightly,
-with Luke xiii. 1-3, which should probably read: "There were some
-present at that very season who told him of the Galileans whose
-blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered,
-Think ye these Galileans were sinners rather than all other Galileans
-because they suffered these things? I tell you, No! And unless ye
-cease from sacrificing, the Wrath will not cease from you." That is,
-they would always be haunted by the delusion of a bloodthirsty god,
-a god of Wrath, and see a judgment, not only in every accident,
-but in every calamity wrought by fiendish men.
-
-In his quotation from Hosea--"I desire charity, and not
-sacrifice"--Jesus speaks as if with a transitional accent,
-as compared with the declaration that sacrifices imply deified
-Wrath. The contempt of Ecclesiastes for "the sacrifice of fools
-who know not that they are doing evil" (v. 1), has here become
-a great and far-reaching affirmation, which must have impressed
-the orthodox Jews as atheism. For, although there are passages in
-several psalms and in the prophets which disparage sacrifice, they
-were all interpreted by the Rabbins, as now by Christian theologians,
-as meaning their purification and spiritualization--by no means their
-abolition. Indeed, this higher interpretation of sacrifices appears
-to have given them fresh lease; and in the time of Jesus, when to
-the priesthood remained only control over their religious ordinances,
-the sacrifices were apparently preserved with increased rigour. Jesus
-himself, unless the gospeller (Matt. v. 23, 24) has softened his
-language, had at one time only demanded that none should offer a gift
-at the altar until he had done justice to any who had aught against
-him. But a remarkable passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews (x. 5)
-represents Jesus as going to the world with a quotation from Psalm
-xl. 6, 7, for a clause of which a parenthesis is given, saying:
-
-
-   "Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not
-    (Thou hast furnished me this body)--
-    In whole burnt offerings and sin offerings thou delighted not:
-    Then said I (in that chapter of the book it is written for me),
-    'Lo, I come to do thy will, O God.'"
-
-
-The sentence preserved by Eusebius, however, shows that his attitude
-toward sacrifices was not merely to "lift" from men (Heb. x. 9,
-anairei) the burden of sacrifice, but to denounce it as an offering
-to the devil. "Unless ye cease from sacrificing, the Wrath shall not
-cease from you."
-
-In this sentence "the Wrath" (hê orgê) is clearly a personification. It
-does not in the same form occur elsewhere in the Bible. Matthew and
-Mark report John the Baptist as speaking of "the impending wrath,"
-and Paul occasionally gives "Wrath" a quasi-personification (e. g.,
-"children of Wrath," Eph. ii. 1-3). These expressions, and the
-"destroyer" Abaddon or Apollyon, of Revelations ix. and (xii. 12)
-the devil "in great temper" (thymon), all show that the Jewish mind
-had become familiar with the idea of a dark and evil power quite
-detached from official relation to Jahveh, no longer "the wrath of
-God" executing divine judgments, but organized Violence, eager to
-afflict mankind as the creation of his enemy.
-
-In the "Wisdom of Solomon" (xviii.) there is a complete picture of
-the two opposing Destroyers. The divine destroyer ("thine Almighty
-Word") leaps down with his sword and slays the firstborn of Egypt; the
-antagonist Destroyer begins the same kind of work among the Israelites
-in Egypt, but Moses by prayer and the "propitiation of incense" sets
-himself "against the Wrath" and overcomes him,--"not with physical
-strength, nor force of arms, but with a word." The incense used by
-Moses to put the demon to flight recalls the "perfume" used by Tobit,
-on the advice of the angel, to put to flight Asmodeus; and Asmodeus is
-notoriously the Persian Aêshma, a name meaning "Wrath," who occupies
-so large space in the Parsî scriptures. [55] The especial antagonist
-of Aêshma "of the wounding spear," is Sraosha, "the incarnate Word,
-a mighty-speared god." (Farvardin Yast, 85.) As Moses overcomes "the
-Wrath" "with a word," Zoroaster is given a form of words to conquer
-Aêshma ("Praise to Armaîti, the propitious!") and the Vendîdâd says,
-"The fiend becomes weaker and weaker at every one [repetition] of
-those words." The Zamyâd Yast says, "The Word of falsehood smites,
-but the Word of truth shall smite it." Aêshma is the child of Ahriman,
-the Deceiver of the World, and a Parsî would recognize him in the
-declaration ascribed to Jesus, "The devil is a liar and so is his
-father." (John viii. 44.)
-
-That Jesus regarded the whole realm of evil as absolutely antagonistic
-to the Good is reflected in the epistle "To the Hebrews." There his
-mission is to abolish the devil (ii. 14), which is very different
-from abolishing death (2 Tim. i. 10). For a long time the devil was
-suppressed in the "Lord's Prayer," but in that brief collection of
-Talmudic ejaculations the only original thing is, "Deliver us from the
-evil one." In the Clementine Homilies Jesus is quoted as having said,
-"The evil one is the tempter," and "Give not a pretext to the evil
-one." Nay, the single clause preserved in Matthew, that it is an enemy
-that sows tares,--these being as much parts of nature as corn,--is
-a sentence that divides the Ahrimanic creation from the Ahuramazdean
-creation as clearly and profoundly as anything ascribed to Zoroaster.
-
-Theological harmonists have for centuries been at work on the
-contrarious doctrines of all scriptures, and even among the Parsîs
-some kind of metaphysical alliance has taken place between the Kingdoms
-of Good and Evil. Devout Christians find it quite consistent that one
-person of the trinity should say, "I create good and I create evil,"
-and another person of the trinity should say of natural evil, "An
-enemy hath done this." But no such harmony existed in the Jerusalem
-of Jesus. Under a teaching that symbolized the deity as the Sun,
-shining alike on the thankful and thankless, individually, desiring no
-sacrifices, and concentrating human effort against the forces of evil
-in nature, in society--the evil principle--Jahveh falls like lightning
-from heaven. Like "the blameless man" of the "Wisdom of Solomon," Jesus
-"sets himself against the Wrath," however sanctified as the Wrath of
-God, and sees all sacrifices as eucharists of the Adversary. He not
-only repudiates the name "Jahveh," but tells the official agents of
-Jahvism that their god is his devil. (John viii. 44).
-
-Of course one can only refer cautiously to anything in the fourth
-Gospel, for it is a composite book, but it contains, as I believe,
-passages or fragments of the early apostolic theology, wherein dualism,
-until crushed by Paul, was prominent, and the good God represented
-in hard struggle with Satan for the rescue of mankind.
-
-This aspect of the teaching of Jesus cannot be dealt with here as its
-importance deserves. We live in an age whose clergy deal apologetically
-with the prominence of the Adversary of Man in the teachings of
-Jesus. For this fundamental principle of Jesus Jewish monotheism
-has been substituted. But there are many records to attest that the
-moral perfection and benevolence of the deity, which is certainly
-inconsistent with his omnipotence, or his "permission" of the tares in
-nature, was the only new principle of religion affirmed by Jesus; and,
-also, that it was so subversive of sacrifices, priesthood, and the very
-foundations of the temple--all dependent on Jahveh's menaces--that
-the execution of Jesus appears more rationally explicable by this
-dualistic propaganda than by any other ascribed to him.
-
-It was the birth of a new God that moved Jerusalem: a unique God
-in Judea--and almost unknown in modern Christendom--namely, a GOOD
-God. As the Arabian gospel significantly relates, the Eastern Wise
-Men came to the cradle of Jesus as that of a saviour "prophesied
-by Zoroaster,"--the one prophet who separated deity from the realm
-of evil.
-
-It is now even unorthodox to deny that the agonies of nature are part
-of the providence of God: but herein orthodoxy is in direct antagonism
-to what it maintains as the authentic teaching of Jesus. "Then was
-brought unto him one possessed of a devil, blind and dumb; and he
-healed him, insomuch that the dumb man spake and saw. And all the
-multitudes were amazed and said, Is this the Son of David? But when
-the Pharisees heard it, they said, This man doth not cast out devils
-but by Beelzebub, the prince of devils. And knowing their thoughts he
-said, Every dominion divided against itself is brought to desolation;
-and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand; and
-if Satan casteth out Satan, he is divided against himself: how then
-shall his dominion stand?"
-
-Those therefore who believe these to be the words of Jesus, and yet
-believe blindness, dumbness, and other physical diseases to be in
-any sense of divine providence or even permission, are believing in
-a God whom Jesus implicitly pronounced to be Satan.
-
-And those who do not believe that Jesus healed such diseases, nor
-believe in a personal Satan, may still regard the above legend as
-characteristic. The separation of Good and Evil into eternally
-antagonistic dominions could not have been affirmed by any Jew
-other than Jesus (or John the Baptist, probably however an Oriental
-dervish). Though the Jews popularly believed in Beelzebub and other
-devils, they were all regarded as under the omnipotence and control
-of Jahveh, who proudly claimed that he was the creator of all evil,
-and who even had lying spirits in his employ.
-
-Whether Jesus believed in the personality of the evil principle, in
-any strict sense, may be questioned. He may have meant no more than
-Emerson, who pictured ill health as a ghoul preying on the heart and
-life of its victims. Memories of similar teachings may have given
-rise to the tales of healing afterwards associated with Jesus. But
-the personality of evil is a more philosophical generalization than
-the personification of a power representing both the good and the
-evil phenomena of nature. Evil acts in concrete forms, and often
-in combinations of forces which can not be analysed and distributed
-into particular causes. History records instances of moral epidemics
-driving whole peoples as if down a steep place into seas of blood,
-as if by some pandemoniac possession, impressing the ordinarily humane
-along with the vindictive, the lawless and destructive. A great deal
-of crime seems disinterested, and still more is due to the fanatical
-inspiration of cruel deities, whose names become in other religions
-the names of devils. Out of manifold experiences in the tragical
-annals of mankind came the terrible Ahriman.
-
-That Jesus did not adopt the Zoroastrian theology is shown in his
-hostility to sacrifices which are of vital importance in the Parsî
-system, though they were not of the cruel kind; nor, as we have
-seen, were they to propitiate gods, but to assist them. Moreover,
-belief in Ahriman had naturally evoked a militant spirit in the war
-against evil, and Jesus seems to have for this reason separated himself
-from the dervish, John the Baptist, whose violence had landed him in
-prison. The incident (Matt. xi.) is so wrapped in post-resurrectional
-phraseology that any rational interpretation must be conjectural;
-but there is a certain accent about it which can hardly be explained
-as part of the evangelical doctrine that the Baptist was a mere
-preface to Christ. Jesus seems to regard John the Baptizer as the
-ablest man of his time (verse 11), but as of a revolutionary spirit,
-as if the reformation were a siege against some political kingdom or
-throne. Violent people had been pressing around John, and the cause of
-spiritual liberation had suffered. There was too much of the old law
-with its thunders, too much of fiery Elijah, surviving in John. The
-ideal is not a thing to be clutched at, or taken by force, but all
-of the conditions--every tittle--must be fulfilled. (Luke xvi. 17.)
-
-This is in substance a doctrine of evolution as opposed to revolution,
-and my interpretation may be suspected of rationalistic anachronism;
-but it must be remembered that the Golden Age behind Israel was an
-epoch of Peace, which was represented in the ancient name of their
-city (Salem), and of its greatest monarch, Solomon. The prophets had
-long been painting the visionary dawn with pigments of that glorious
-sunset. Solomon, true to his name, had allowed dismemberment of his
-kingdom rather than go to war against rebellion; and it is noticeable
-that in the apostolic age there was a principle against carnal
-weapons, the Epistle to the Hebrews (xii. 3, 4) especially reminding
-the brethren of the patient endurance of Jesus, and commending their
-not having "resisted unto blood." This peacefulness of Jesus had indeed
-become a basis of the doctrine that the triumph of Jesus over Satan was
-conditioned on his not using any force, or other satanic weapon. Those
-who took to the sword would perish thereby--i. e., remain in sheol.
-
-But in a realm of practically oppressive and cruel superstitions,
-established and consecrated, an absolute appeal to the moral sentiment
-cannot escape being revolutionary. The American Anti-Slavery Society
-were non-resistants; their great leader, William Lloyd Garrison,
-thus apostrophised his "elder brother" of Jerusalem:
-
-"O Jesus! noblest of patriots, greatest of heroes, most glorious of
-all martyrs! Thine is the spirit of universal liberty and love--of
-uncompromising hostility to every form of injustice and wrong. But not
-with weapons of death dost thou assault thy enemies, that they may be
-vanquished or destroyed; for thou dost not wrestle against flesh and
-blood, but against 'principalities, against powers, against the rulers
-of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high
-places'; therefore hast thou put on the whole armor of God, having
-the loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of
-righteousness, and thy feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of
-peace, and going forth to battle with the shield of faith, the helmet
-of salvation, the sword of the Spirit! Worthy of imitation art thou,
-in overcoming the evil that is in the world; for by the shedding of
-thine own blood, but not even the blood of thy bitterest foe, shalt
-thou at last obtain a universal victory."
-
-So, across the ages, does deep answer unto deep. But all the same
-Garrison's feet were unconsciously shod with the preparation of the
-gospel of war, even as those of Jesus were. In a realm of consecrated
-wrong every appeal to the moral sentiment is necessarily revolutionary;
-far more so than physical rebellion, against which preponderant moral
-forces combine with the immoral, as being a greater evil than the
-orderly wrong assailed. Satan cannot be cast out by Beelzebub. A
-god of wrath, enthroned on reeking altars, could better stand the
-axe of the Baptist than the sunbeam of Jesus, the arrow feathered
-with gentleness and culture. John the Baptist was not a religious
-martyr; he suffered from a ruler quite indifferent to his religion,
-with whose personal affairs he had interfered. But Jesus suffered
-because he proclaimed, with irresistible eloquence, a new religion,
-one involving practically the existing institutions of the priesthood,
-and their whole moral system. It was virtually the setting up of
-a new deity in place of Jahveh, reason in place of the Bible, the
-heart worshipping in spirit and in truth in place of the temple, and
-humanizing the moral sentiment--turning the conventional morality to
-"dead works" (Heb. vi. 1). He expected the reform to be peaceful!
-
-Rousseau's remark that Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus like
-a god, has in it a truth more important than those who often quote
-it recognise. Jesus died, legendarily, so much like a god that it is
-difficult to make out just what happened to the man. Strong arguments
-have been made to prove that he did not die at all on "the cross"
-(a word unknown to the New Testament), [56] and that Pilate not only
-"set himself" to save Jesus (John xix. 12), but succeeded. There may
-have been from the stake a despairing cry, afterwards shaped after a
-line from a psalm, but it can hardly be determined whether this may
-not have been part of the first post-resurrectional doctrine that the
-Son must be absolutely left by his divine Father, and pass unaided
-through the ordeal of Satan, in order to fulfil the conditions of a
-return from death. It is true, however, that this primitive idea had
-almost vanished when the earliest Gospel was written, and, although a
-relic of it may have been preserved by tradition, there is an equal
-probability that Jesus did utter at the stake a cry of despair. The
-whole miserable murderous affair, unforeseen and disappointing, must
-have appeared to him a horrible display of diabolism; and even after
-his friends believed in his resurrection, and saw in the tragedy
-a sacrifice, they regarded it a sacrifice hateful to his Father,
-and exacted only by the Devil.
-
-Did he pray, "Father forgive them, they know not what they do"? Only
-Luke reports this; its suppression by the other Gospels suggests
-that its doctrinal significance was perceived. I heard a preacher
-in the church of the Jesuits at Rome argue that Judas himself is
-now in Paradise, because Jesus thus prayed for those who slew him,
-and the prayer of the Son of God must have been answered. There is
-no apparent dogmatic purpose in this incident, and it may be true.
-
-The story of his confiding his mother to the disciple "whom he loved,"
-told only by John, is evidently meant to complete the assumption of a
-special favoritism towards that disciple, who is the type of the good
-Spirit on one side of Jesus in contrast with Judas, Satan's agent,
-on the other. The two are equally unhistorical and allegorical. John
-and Judas became the good and evil Wandering Jews of mediæval folklore.
-
-The first Solomon had perished as a teacher of wisdom when he was
-summoned from his tomb to utter the Jahvism of the "Wisdom of Solomon":
-the second and last Solomon was forever buried on the day when Mary
-Magdalene saw his apparition, and cried, "My master!" From that time
-may be dated the loss of the man Jesus, and restoration in Christ of
-the Jahvism whose burden the wise teacher had endeavored to lift from
-the heart and mind of the people. Vicisti Jahveh!
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX.
-
-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.
-
-
-
-
-
-
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-Moncure Daniel Conway
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Solomon and Solomonic Literature, by
-Moncure Daniel Conway
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: Solomon and Solomonic Literature
-
-Author: Moncure Daniel Conway
-
-Release Date: October 19, 2012 [EBook #41115]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOLOMON AND SOLOMONIC LITERATURE ***
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-Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net/ for Project
-Gutenberg (This book was produced from scanned images of
-public domain material from the Google Print project.)
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-
-                                SOLOMON
-                                  AND
-                          SOLOMONIC LITERATURE
-
-                                   BY
-                         MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY
-
-
-
-                                CHICAGO
-                   THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
-            London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co., Ltd.
-                                  1899
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-                               INSCRIBED
-                         TO MY BROTHER OMARIANS
-                                 OF THE
-                           OMAR KHAYYAM CLUB
-                                 LONDON
-
-
-    "Seek the circle of the wise: flee a thousand leagues from men
-    without wit. If a wise man give thee poison, drink it without fear;
-    if a fool proffer an antidote, spill it on the ground."
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-                                                           Page
-    Preface                                                   v
-
-    CHAPTER I
-
-    Solomon                                                   1
-
-    CHAPTER II
-
-    The Judgment of Solomon                                  12
-
-    CHAPTER III
-
-    The Wives of Solomon                                     24
-
-    CHAPTER IV
-
-    Solomon's Idolatry                                       30
-
-    CHAPTER V
-
-    Solomon and the Satans                                   34
-
-    CHAPTER VI
-
-    Solomon in the Hexateuch                                 41
-
-    CHAPTER VII
-
-    Solomonic Antijahvism                                    51
-
-    CHAPTER VIII
-
-    The Book of Proverbs and the Avesta                      59
-
-    CHAPTER IX
-
-    The Song of Songs                                        89
-
-    CHAPTER X
-
-    Koheleth (Ecclesiastes)                                 104
-
-    CHAPTER XI
-
-    Wisdom (Ecclesiasticus)                                 111
-
-    CHAPTER XII
-
-    The Wisdom of Solomon                                   118
-
-    CHAPTER XIII
-
-    Epistle to the Hebrews (A Sequel to Sophia Solomontos)  129
-
-    CHAPTER XIV
-
-    Solomon Melchizedek                                     150
-
-    CHAPTER XV
-
-    The Pauline Dehumanization of Jesus                     164
-
-    CHAPTER XVI
-
-    The Mythological Mantle of Solomon Fallen on Jesus      176
-
-    CHAPTER XVII
-
-    The Heir of Solomon's Godhead                           194
-
-    CHAPTER XVIII
-
-    The Last Solomon                                        207
-
-    CHAPTER XIX
-
-    Postscripta                                             234
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE.
-
-
-An English lady of my acquaintance, sojourning at Baalbek, was
-conversing with an humble stonecutter, and pointing to the grand
-ruins inquired, "Why do you not occupy yourself with magnificent work
-like that?" "Ah," he said, "those edifices were built by no mortal,
-but by genii."
-
-These genii now represent the demons which in ancient legends were
-enslaved by the potency of Solomon's ring. Some of these folk-tales
-suggest the ingenuity of a fabulist. According to one, Solomon
-outwitted the devils even after his death, which occurred while he was
-leaning on his staff and superintending the reluctant labors of the
-demons on some sacred edifice. In that posture his form remained for
-a year after his death, and it was not until a worm gnawed the end
-of his staff, causing his body to fall, that the demons discovered
-their freedom.
-
-If this be a fable, a modern moral may be found by reversing the
-delusion. The general world has for ages been working on under the
-spell of Solomon while believing him to be dead. Solomon is very much
-alive. Many witnesses of his talismanic might can be summoned from
-the homes and schools wherein the rod is not spared, however much
-it spoils the child, and where youth's "flower of age" bleaches in a
-puritan cell because the "wisest of men" is supposed to have testified
-that all earth's pleasures are vanity. And how many parents are in
-their turn feeling the recoil of the rod, and live to deplore the
-intemperate thirst for "vanities" stimulated in homes overshadowed by
-the fear-of-God wisdom for which Solomon is also held responsible? On
-the other hand, what parson has not felt the rod bequeathed to the
-sceptic by the king whom Biblical authority pronounces at once the
-worldliest and the wisest of mankind?
-
-More imposing, if not more significant, are certain picturesque
-phenomena which to-day represent the bifold evolution of the Solomonic
-legend. While in various parts of Europe "Solomon's Seal," survival
-from his magic ring, is the token of conjuring and fortune-telling
-impostors, the knightly Order of Solomon's Seal in Abyssinia has been
-raised to moral dignity by an emperor (Menelik) who has given European
-monarchs a lesson in magnanimity and gallantry by presenting to a
-"Queen of the South" (Margharita), on her birthday, release of the
-captives who had invaded his country. While this is the tradition
-of nobility which has accompanied that of lineal descent from the
-Wise Man, his name lingers in the rest of Christendom in proverbial
-connexion with any kind of sagacity, while as a Biblical personality
-he is virtually suppressed.
-
-In one line of evolution,--whose historic factors have been Jahvism,
-Pharisaism, and Puritanism,--Solomon has been made the Adam of
-a second fall. His Eves gave him the fruit that was pleasant and
-desirable to make one wise, and he did eat. Jahveh retracts his
-compliments to Solomon, and makes the naive admission that deity
-itself cannot endow a man with the wisdom that can ensure orthodoxy,
-or with knowledge impregnable by feminine charms (Nehemiah xiii.);
-and from that time Solomon disappears from canonical Hebrew books
-except those ascribed to his own authorship.
-
-That some writings attributed to Solomon,--especially the "Song of
-Songs" and "Koheleth" (Ecclesiastes),--were included in the canon,
-may be ascribed to a superstitious fear of suppressing utterances
-of a supernatural wisdom, set as an oracle in the king and never
-revoked. This view is confirmed and illustrated in several further
-pages, but it may be added here that the very idolatries and alleged
-sins of Solomon led to the detachment from his personal self of his
-divinely-conferred Wisdom, and her personification as something apart
-from him in various avatars (preserving his glory while disguising
-his name), an evolution culminating in ideals and creeds that have
-largely moulded Christendom.
-
-The two streams of evolution here suggested, one issuing from
-the wisdom books, the other from the law books, are traceable
-in their collisions, their periods of parallelism, and their
-convergence,--where, however, their respective inspirations continue
-distinguishable, like the waters of the Missouri and the Mississippi
-after they flow between the same banks.
-
-The present essays by no means claim to have fully traced these lines
-of evolution, but aim at their indication. The only critique to which
-it pretends is literary. The studies and experiences of many years
-have left me without any bias concerning the contents of the Bible, or
-any belief, ethical or religious, that can be affected by the fate of
-any scripture under the higher or other criticism. But my interest in
-Biblical literature has increased with the perception of its composite
-character ethnically. I believe that I have made a few discoveries in
-it; and a volume adopted as an educational text-book requires every ray
-of light which any man feels able to contribute to its interpretation.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-SOLOMONIC LITERATURE.
-
-
-CHAPTER I.
-
-SOLOMON.
-
-
-There is a vast Solomon mythology: in Palestine, Abyssinia, Arabia,
-Persia, India, and Europe, the myths and legends concerning the
-traditional Wisest Man are various, and merit a comparative study they
-have not received. As the name Solomon seems to be allegorical, it is
-not possible to discover whether he is mentioned in any contemporary
-inscription by a real name, and the external and historical data
-are insufficient to prove certainly that an individual Solomon ever
-existed. [1] But that a great personality now known under that name did
-exist, about three thousand years ago, will, I believe, be recognised
-by those who study the ancient literature relating to him. The
-earliest and most useful documents for such an investigation are:
-the first collection of Proverbs, x-xxii. 16; the second collection,
-xxv-xxix. 27; Psalms ii., xlv., lxxii., evidently Solomonic; 2 Samuel
-xii. 24, 25; and 1 Kings iv. 29-34.
-
-As, however, the object of this essay is not to prove the existence
-of Solomon, but to study the evolution of the human heart and mind
-under influences of which a peculiar series is historically associated
-with his name, he will be spoken of as a genuine figure, the reader
-being left to form his own conclusion as to whether he was such,
-if that incidental point interests him.
-
-The indirect intimations concerning Solomon in the Proverbs and
-Psalms may be better understood if we first consider the historical
-books which profess to give an account of his career. And the search
-naturally begins with the passage in the Book of Kings just referred
-to:
-
-
-    "And God gave Solomon wisdom and intelligence exceeding much,
-    and largeness of heart, even as the sand on the seashore. And
-    Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the
-    East, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men;
-    than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Calcol, and Darda, the
-    sons of Mahol; and his fame was in all the surrounding nations. He
-    spake three thousand parables, and his songs were a thousand
-    and five. He spake of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon to the
-    hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts,
-    birds, reptiles, fishes. And there came people of all countries to
-    hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth,
-    which had heard of his wisdom."
-
-
-This passage is Elohist: it is the Elohim--perhaps here the gods--who
-gave Solomon wisdom. The introduction of Jahveh as the giver, in
-the dramatic dream of Chapter iii., alters the nature of the gift,
-which from the Elohim is scientific and literary wisdom, but from
-Jahveh is political, related to government and judgment.
-
-As for Mahol and his four sons, the despair of Biblical historians,
-they are now witnesses that this passage was written when those
-men,--or perhaps masculine Muses,--were famous, though they are unknown
-within any period that can be called historical. As intimated, they may
-be figures from some vanished mythology Hebraised into Mahol (dance),
-Ethan (the imperishable), Heman (faithful), Calcol (sustenance),
-Darda (pearl of knowledge).
-
-In speaking of 1 Kings iv. 29-34 as substantially historical it is not
-meant, of course, that it is free from the extravagance characteristic
-of ancient annals, but that it is the nearest approach to Solomon's
-era in the so-called historical books, and, although the stage of
-idealisation has been reached, is free from the mythology which grew
-around the name of Solomon.
-
-But while we have thus only one small scrap of even quasi-historical
-writing that can be regarded as approaching Solomon's era, the
-traditions concerning him preserved in the Book of Kings yield
-much that is of value when comparatively studied with annals of the
-chroniclers, who modify, and in some cases omit, not to say suppress,
-the earlier record. Such modifications and omissions, while interesting
-indications of Jahvist influences, are also testimonies to the strength
-of the traditions they overlay. The pure and simple literary touchstone
-can alone be trusted amid such traditions; it alone can distinguish the
-narratives that have basis, that could not have been entirely invented.
-
-In the Book of Chronicles,--for the division into two books was by
-Christians, as also was the division of the Book of Kings,--we find
-an ecclesiastical work written after the captivity, but at different
-periods and by different hands; it is in the historic form, but really
-does not aim at history. The main purpose of the first chronicler is to
-establish certain genealogies and conquests related to the consecration
-of the house and lineage of David. Solomon's greatness and his building
-of the temple are here transferred as far as possible to David. [2]
-David captures from various countries the gold, silver, and brass,
-and dedicates them for use in the temple, which he plans in detail,
-but which Jahveh forbade him to build himself. The reason of this
-prohibition is far from clear to the first writer on the compilation,
-but apparently it was because David was not sufficiently highborn and
-renowned. "I took thee from the sheepcote," says Jahveh, but adds,
-"I will make thee a name like unto the name of the great ones that are
-in the earth;" also, says Jahveh, "I will subdue all thine enemies." So
-it is written in 1 Chronicles xvii., and it could hardly have been
-by the same hand that in xxii. wrote David's words to Solomon:
-
-
-    "It was in my heart to build an house to the name of Jahveh my
-    God; but the word of Jahveh came to me, saying: 'Thou shalt not
-    build an house unto my name, because thou hast shed much blood
-    upon the earth in my sight; behold a son shall be born unto thee
-    who shall be a man of rest, and I will give him rest from all his
-    enemies round about: for his name shall be Solomon [Peaceful],
-    and I will give peace and quietness unto Israel in his days:
-    he shall build an house for my name: and he shall be my son,
-    and I will be his father; and I will establish the throne of his
-    kingdom over Israel for ever.'"
-
-
-In Chapter xvii. Jahveh claims that it is he who has subdued and
-cut off David's enemies; his long speech is that of a war-god;
-but in the xxii. it is the God of Peace who speaks; and in harmony
-with this character all the bloodshed by which Solomon's succession
-was accompanied, as recorded in the Book of Kings, is suppressed,
-and he stands to the day of his death the Prince of Peace. To him
-(1 Chron. xxviii., xxix.) from the first all the other sons of David
-bow submissively, and the people by a solemn election confirm David's
-appointment and make Solomon their king.
-
-Thus, 1 Chron. xvii., which is identical with 2 Sam. vii., clearly
-represents a second Chronicler. The hand of the same writer is found
-in 1 Chron. xviii., xix., xx., and the chapters partly identical in 2
-Samuel, namely viii., x., xi.; the offence of David then being narrated
-in 2 Samuel xii. as the wrong done Uriah, whereas in 1 Chron. xxi. the
-sin is numbering Israel. The Chroniclers know nothing of the Uriah
-and Bathsheba story, but the onomatopoeists may take note of the fact
-that David's order was to number Israel "from Beer-sheba unto Dan."
-
-The first ten chapters of 2 Chronicles seem to represent a third
-chronicler. Here we find David in the background, and Solomon
-completely conventionalised, as the Peaceful Prince of the Golden
-Age. All is prosperity and happiness. Solomon even anticipates
-the silver millennium: "The king made silver to be in Jerusalem as
-stones." It is only when the fourth chronicler begins (2 Chron. x.),
-with the succession of Solomon's son Rehoboam, that we are told
-anything against Solomon. Then all Israel come to the new king,
-saying, "Thy father made our yoke grievous," and he answers, "My
-father chastised you with whips, but I with scorpions."
-
-All this is so inconsistent with the accounts in the earlier books
-of both David and Solomon, that it is charitable to believe that the
-third chronicler had never heard the ugly stories about these two
-canonised kings.
-
-In the First Book of Kings, Solomon is made king against the rightful
-heir, by an ingenious conspiracy between a wily prophet, Nathan, and
-a wily beauty, Bathsheba,--Solomon's mother, whom David had obtained
-by murdering her husband.
-
-It may be remembered here that David had by Bathsheba a son named
-Nathan (2 Sam. v. 14; 1 Chron. iii. 5), elder brother of Solomon,
-from whom Luke traces the genealogy of Joseph, father of Jesus,
-while Matthew traces it from Solomon. It appears curious that the
-prophet Nathan should have intrigued for the accession of the younger
-brother rather than the one bearing his own name. It will be seen,
-however, by reference to 2 Samuel xii. 24, that Solomon was the first
-legitimate child of David and Bathsheba, the son of their adultery
-having died. John Calvin having laid it down very positively that
-"if Jesus was not descended from Solomon, he was not the Christ,"
-some theologians have resorted to the hypothesis that Nathan married
-an ancestress of the Virgin Mary, and that Luke gives her descent,
-not that of Joseph; but apart from the fact that Luke (iii. 23)
-begins with Joseph, it is difficult to see how the requirement of
-Calvin, that Solomon should be the ancestor of Jesus, is met by his
-mother's descent from Solomon's brother. It is clear, however, from
-2 Sam. xii. 24, 25, that this elder brother of Solomon, Nathan, is a
-myth. Otherwise he, and not Solomon, was the lawful heir to the throne
-(legitimacy being confined to the sons of David born in Jerusalem),
-and Jesus would not have been "born King of the Jews" (Matt, i. 2),
-nor fulfilled the Messianic conditions. It is even possible that
-Luke wished to escape the implication of illegitimacy by tracing
-the descent of Jesus from Solomon's elder brother. But the writer
-of 1 Kings i. had no knowledge of the Christian discovery that, in
-the order of legal succession to the throne, the sons of David born
-before he reigned in Jerusalem were excluded. Adonijah's legal right
-of succession was not questioned by David (1 Kings i. 6).
-
-When David was in his dotage and near his end this eldest son (by
-Haggith), Adonijah, began to consult leading men about his accession,
-but unfortunately for himself, did not summon Nathan. This slighted
-"prophet" proposed to Bathsheba that she should go to David and tell
-him the falsehood that he (David) had once sworn before Jahveh that
-her son Solomon should reign; "and while you are talking," says
-Nathan, "I will enter and fulfil" (that was his significant word)
-"your declaration." The royal dotard could not gainsay two seemingly
-independent witnesses, and helplessly kept the alleged oath. David
-announced this oath as his reason,--apparently the only one,--for
-appointing Solomon. The prince may be credited with being too young
-to participate in this scheme.
-
-Irregularity of succession and of birth in princes appeals to
-popular superstition. The legal heir, regularly born, seems to
-come by mere human arrangement, but the God-appointed chieftain is
-expected in unexpected ways and in defiance of human laws and even
-moralities. David, or some one speaking for him, said, "In sin did
-my mother conceive me," and the contempt in which he was held by
-his father's other children, and his father's keeping him out of
-sight till the prophet demanded him (1 Sam. xvi. 11), look as if he,
-also, may have been illegitimate. Solomon may have been technically
-legitimate, but in any case he was the son of an immoral marriage,
-sealed by a husband's blood. The populace would easily see the divine
-hand in the elevation of this youth, who seems to have been himself
-impressed with the like superstition.
-
-Unfortunately, Solomon received his father's last injunctions as divine
-commands. At the very time when David is pictured by the Chronicler
-in such a saintly death-bed scene, parting so pathetically with his
-people, and giving such unctuous and virtuous last counsels to Solomon,
-he is shown by the historian of Kings pouring into his successor's ear
-the most treacherous and atrocious directions for the murder of certain
-persons; among others, of Shimei, whose life he had sworn should not
-be taken. Shimei had once called David what Jahveh also called him,
-a man of blood, but afterwards asked his forgiveness. Under a pretence
-of forgiveness, David nursed his vengeance through many years, and
-Shimei was now a white-haired man. David's last words addressed to
-Solomon were these:
-
-
-    "He (Shimei) came down to meet me at Jordan, and I sware to him by
-    Jahveh, saying, 'I will not put thee to death with the sword.' Now
-    therefore hold him not guiltless, for thou art a wise man, and
-    wilt know what thou oughtest to do unto him; and thou shalt bring
-    his hoar head down to the grave in blood."
-
-
-Such, according to an admiring annalist, were the last words uttered
-by David on earth. He died with a lie in his mouth (for he had sworn
-to Shimei, plainly, "Thy life shall not be taken"), and with murder
-(personal and vindictive) in his heart. The book opens with a record
-that they had tried to revive the aged king by bringing to him a
-beautiful damsel; but lust was gone; the only passion that survived
-even his lust, and could give one more glow to this "man of blood,"
-was vengeance. Two aged men were named by him for death at the hands of
-Solomon, who could not disobey, this being the last act of the forty
-years of reign of King David. His dying word was "blood." One would
-be glad to believe these things mythical, but they are contained in
-a record which says:
-
-
-    "David did that which was right in the sight of Jahveh and turned
-    not aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of
-    his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite."
-
-
-This traditional incident of getting Uriah slain in order to
-appropriate his wife, made a deep impression on the historian of
-Samuel, and suspicious pains are taken (2 Sam. xii.) to prove that the
-illegitimate son of David and Bathsheba was "struck by Jahveh" for his
-parents' sin, and that Solomon was born only after the marriage. Even
-if the youth was legitimate, the adherents of the king's eldest son,
-Adonijah, would not fail to recall the lust and murder from which
-Solomon sprang, though the populace might regard these as signs of
-Jahveh's favor. In the coronation ode (Psalm ii.) the young king is
-represented as if answering the Legitimists who spoke of his birth
-not only from an adulteress, but one with a foreign name:
-
-
-    "I will proclaim the decree:
-    The Lord said unto me, 'Thou art my son;
-    This day have I begotten thee.'"
-
-
-(It is probable that the name Jahveh was inserted in this song in
-place of Elohim, and in several other phrases there are indications
-that the original has been tampered with.) The lines--
-
-
-    "Kiss the son lest he be angry
-    And ye perish straightway."
-
-
-and others, may have originated the legendary particulars of plots
-caused by Solomon's accession, recorded in the Book of Kings, but
-at any rate the emphatic claim to his adoption by God as His son, by
-the anointing received at coronation, suggests some trouble arising
-out of his birth. There is also a confidence and enthusiasm in the
-language of the court laureate, as the writer of Psalm ii. appears
-to have been, which conveys an impression of popular sympathy.
-
-It is not improbable that the superstition about illegitimacy, as
-under some conditions a sign of a hero's heavenly origin, may have
-had some foundation in the facts of heredity. In times when love or
-even passion had little connexion with any marriage, and none with
-royal marriages, the offspring of an amour might naturally manifest
-more force of character than the legitimate, and the inherited sensual
-impulses, often displayed in noble energies, might prove of enormous
-importance in breaking down an old oppression continued by an automatic
-legitimacy of succession.
-
-In Talmudic books (Moed Katon, Vol. 9, col. 2, and Midrash Rabbah,
-ch. 15) it is related that when Solomon was conveying the ark into the
-temple, the doors shut themselves against him of their own accord. He
-recited twenty-four psalms, but they opened not. In vain he cried,
-"Lift up your heads, O ye gates!" But when he prayed, "O Lord God,
-turn not Thy face from Thine anointed; remember the mercies of David
-thy servant" (2 Chron. vi. 42), the gates flew open. "Then the enemies
-of David turned black in the face, for all knew that God had pardoned
-David's transgression with Bathsheba." This legend curiously ignores
-1 Chron. xxii., which shows that Jahveh had prearranged Solomon's
-birth and name, and had adopted him before birth. It is one of many
-rabbinical intimations that David, Bathsheba, Uriah, and Solomon, had
-become popular divinities,--much like Vulcan, Venus, Mars,--and as such
-relieved from moral obligations. Jewish theology had to accommodate
-itself ethically to this popular mythology, and did so by a theory
-of divine forgiveness; but really the position of Hebrew, as well as
-Christian, orthodoxy was that lustful David and Bathsheba were mere
-puppets in the divine plan, and their actions quite consistent with
-their being souls after Jahveh's own heart.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II.
-
-THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.
-
-
-It may occur to mythographers that I treat as historical narratives and
-names that cannot be taken so seriously; but in a study of primitive
-culture, fables become facts and evidences. A grand harvest awaits that
-master of mythology and folklore who shall bravely explore the legends
-of David and Solomon, but in the present essay mythical details can
-only be dealt with incidentally. Some of these may be considered at
-the outset.
-
-It is said in 1 Kings i.:
-
-
-    "Now King David was old and stricken in years; and they covered
-    him with clothes, but he gat no heat. Wherefore his servants said
-    unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin:
-    and let her stand before the king, and cherish him; and let her
-    lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat. So they
-    sought for a fair damsel throughout all the coasts of Israel, and
-    found Abishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king. And the
-    damsel was very fair; and she cherished the king and ministered
-    to him; but the king knew her not."
-
-
-That this story is characteristic of lustful David cannot blind us to
-the fact of its improbability. Whatever may be meant by "the coasts
-of Israel," the impression is conveyed of a long journey, and it
-is hardly credible that so much time should be taken for a moribund
-monarch. Many interpretations are possible of the name Abishag, but
-it is usually translated "Father (or source) of error." However this
-may be, the story bears a close resemblance to the search for a wife
-for Isaac. When Abraham sent out this commission he also "was old
-and well stricken in age," and of Rebekah it is said, "The damsel
-was very fair to look upon, a virgin, neither had any man known
-her." (Gen. xxiv.) Rebekah means "ensnarer," and Abishag "father
-(source) of error"; and both women cause trouble between two brothers.
-
-There is an Oriental accent about both of these stories. In ancient
-Indian literature there are several instances of servants sent out
-to search the world for a damsel fair and wise enough to wed the
-son and heir of some grand personage. Maya, the mother of Buddha,
-was sought for in the same way. This of itself is not enough to prove
-that the Biblical narratives in question are of Oriental origin, but
-there is a Tibetan tale which contains several details which seem to
-bear on this point. The tale is that of Visakha, and it is accessible
-to English readers in a translation by Schiefner and Ralston of the
-"Kah-Gyur." (Truebner's Oriental Series.)
-
-Visakha was the seventh son of Mrgadhara, prime minister of the
-king of Kosala. For this youth a bride was sought by a Brahman, who
-in the land of Champa found a beautiful maiden whose name was also
-Visakha. She was, with other girls, entering a park, where they all
-bathed in a tank,--her companions taking off their clothes, but Visakha
-lifting her dress by degrees as she entered the water. Besides showing
-decorum, this maiden conducted herself differently from the others
-in everything, some of her actions being mysterious. The Brahman,
-having contrived to meet her alone, questioned her concerning these
-peculiarities, for all of which she gave reasons implying exceptional
-wisdom and virtue. On his return the Brahman described this maiden
-to the prime minister, who set forth and asked her hand for his son,
-and she was brought to Kosala on a ship with great pomp. The maiden
-then for a long time gives evidence of extraordinary wisdom, one
-example being of special importance to our inquiry. She determines
-which of two women claiming a child is the real mother. The king and
-his ministers being unable to settle the dispute, Visakha said:
-
-
-    "Speak to the two women thus: 'As we do not know to which of
-    you two the boy belongs, let her who is the strongest take the
-    boy.' When each of them has taken hold of one of the boy's hands,
-    and he begins to cry out on account of the pain, the real mother
-    will let go, being full of compassion for him, and knowing that
-    if her child remains alive she will be able to see it again; but
-    the other, who has no compassion for him, will not let go. Then
-    beat her with a switch, and she will thereupon confess the truth
-    of the whole matter."
-
-
-In comparing this with the famous judgment of Solomon there appear
-some reasons for believing the Oriental tale to be the earlier. In
-the Biblical tale there is evidently a missing link. Why should the
-false mother, who had so desired the child, consent to have it cut
-in two? What motive could she have? But in the Tibetan tale one of
-the women is the wife, the other the concubine, of a householder. The
-wife bore him no child, and was jealous of the concubine on account of
-her babe. The concubine, feeling certain that the wife would kill the
-child, gave it to her, with her lord's approval; but after his death
-possession of the house had to follow motherhood of the child. If,
-however, the child were dead, the false claimant would be mistress of
-the house. Here, then, is a motive wanting in the story of Solomon,
-and suggesting that the latter is not the original.
-
-In the ancient "Mahosadha Jataka" the false claimant proves to be a
-Yakshini (a sort of siren and vampire) who wishes to eat the child. To
-Buddha himself is here ascribed the judgment, which is much the same
-as that of the "wise Champa maiden," Visakha. Here, also, is a motive
-for assenting to the child's death or injury which is lacking in the
-Biblical story.
-
-Here, then, we find in ancient Indian literature a tale which may be
-fairly regarded as the origin of the "Judgment of Solomon." And it
-belongs to a large number of Oriental tales in which the situations
-and accents of the Biblical narratives concerning David and Solomon
-often occur. There is a cave-born youth, Asuga, son of a Brahman and
-a bird-fairy, with a magic lute which accompanies his verses, and
-who dallies with Brahmadetta's wife. A king, enamored of a beautiful
-foreign woman beneath him in rank, obtains her by a promise that
-her son, if one is born, shall succeed him on the throne, to the
-exclusion of his existing heir by his wife of equal birth; but he
-permits arrangements for his elder son's succession to go on until
-induced by a threat of war from the new wife's father and country
-to fulfil his promise. A prime minister, Mahaushadha, travels, in
-disguise of a Brahman, in order to find a true wife; he meets with
-a witty maiden (Visakha), who directs him to her village by a road
-where he will see her naked at a bathing tank, though she had taken
-another road. This minister was, like David, lowly born; a "deity"
-revealed him to the king, as Jahveh revealed David to Samuel; he was
-a seventh minister, as David was a seventh son, and Solomon also.
-
-Although the number seven was sacred among the ancient Hebrews,
-it does not appear to have been connected by them with exceptional
-wisdom or occult powers in man or woman. The ideas in which such
-legends as "The Seven Wise Masters," "The Seven Sages," and the
-superstition about a seventh son's second-sight, originate, are
-traceable to ancient Indo-Iranian theosophy. It may be useful here
-to read the subjoined extract from Darmesteter's introduction to the
-"Vendidad." Having explained that the religion of the Persian Magi is
-derived from the same source as that of the Indian Rishis, that is,
-from the common forefathers of both Iranian and Indian, he says:
-
-
-    "The Indo-Iranian Asura (the supreme but not the only god) was
-    often conceived as sevenfold: by the play of certain mythical
-    formulae and the strength of certain mythical numbers, the ancestors
-    of the Indo-Iranians had been led to speak of seven worlds, and
-    the supreme god was often made sevenfold, as well as the worlds
-    over which he ruled. The names and the attributes of the seven
-    gods had not been as yet defined, nor could they be then; after
-    the separation of the two religions, these gods, named Aditya,
-    'the infinite ones,' in India, were by and by identified there
-    with the sun, and their number was afterward raised to twelve, to
-    correspond to the twelve aspects of the sun. In Persia, the seven
-    gods are known as Amesha Spentas, 'the undying and well-doing one';
-    they by and by, according to the new spirit that breathed in the
-    religion, received the names of the deified abstractions, Vohu-mano
-    (good thought), Asha Vahista (excellent holiness), Khshathra Vairya
-    (perfect sovereignty), Spenta Armaiti (divine piety), Haurvatat
-    and Ameretaot (health and immortality). The first of them all
-    was and remained Ahura Mazda; but whereas formerly he had been
-    only the first of them, he was now their father. 'I invoke the
-    glory of the Amesha Spentas, who all seven have one and the same
-    thinking, one and the same speaking, one and the same father and
-    lord, Ahura Mazda,'" (Yast xix. 16.) [3]
-
-
-In Persian religion the Seven are always wise and beneficent. The vast
-folklore derived from this Parsi religion included the Babylonian
-belief in seven powerful spirits, associated with the Pleiades,
-beneficent at certain seasons, but normally malevolent: they all
-move together, taking possession of human beings, as in the case of
-the seven demons cast out of Mary Magdalene. In Egypt the seven are
-always evil. But neither of these sevens are especially clever. In
-Buddhist legends they are not so carefully classified, the seventh
-son or daughter manifesting exceptional powers, sometimes of good,
-sometimes of evil, but they are usually referred to for this wit or
-wisdom. In the Davidian and Solomonic legends these notions are found
-as if merely adhering to some importation, and without any perception
-of the significance of the number seven. David is an eighth son in
-1 Sam. xvi. 10-13, but a seventh son in 1 Chron. ii. 16. Solomon is
-a tenth son in 1 Chron. iii. 1-6, but the seventh legitimate son
-in 2 Sam. xii. 24-25. The word Sheba means "the seven," but the
-early scribes appear to have understood it as shaba, "he swears,"
-as in Gen. xxi. 30-31, where after the seven ewe lambs have given
-the well its name, Beersheba, it is ascribed the significance of
-an oath. Bathsheba is commonly translated "Daughter of the Oath,"
-but there can be little doubt that the name means "Daughter of the
-Seven," and that it originated in the astute tricks by which that
-fair foreigner made herself queen-mother and her son king, above the
-lawful heir, whom she was instrumental (perhaps purposely) in getting
-out of the way by furthering his wishes.
-
-Moral obliquities are little considered in these fair favorites of
-translunary powers. Visakha, in one Buddhist tale, gets herself chosen
-by the Brahman as bride of a great man by her care to veil her charms
-at the bath; in another tale she attracts a prime minister in disguise,
-and becomes his wife, partly by laying aside all of her clothing at
-a bathing tank where she knows he will see her. Bathsheba's fame is
-similarly various. Her nudity and ready adultery with the king did
-not prevent her from passing into Talmudic tradition as "blessed among
-women," and to her was even ascribed the beautiful chapter of Proverbs
-(xxxi.) in praise of the virtuous wife! In the "Wisdom of Solomon"
-she is described as the "handmaiden" of the Lord in anticipation of
-the Christian ideal of immaculate womanhood.
-
-A similar development might no doubt be traced in the beautiful
-story of Vi[']s[=]akh[=]a of Shravasti, the most famous of the
-female lay-disciples of Buddha. The queries put to her by Buddha
-and her explanations of her petitions, which had appeared enigmatic,
-are related in Carus's Gospel of Buddha, and in form correspond with
-the very different questions and solutions that passed between the
-Brahman and the Tibetan Visakha, already mentioned. The name Visakha,
-from a Sanskrit root, meaning to divide, came to mean selection and
-intelligence, of all kinds, but in the matron of Shravasti wit becomes
-the genius of charity, and cleverness expands to enlightenment.
-
-The Queen of Sheba,--"Queen of the Seven,"--is a sister spirit of this
-lay-disciple. Whatever truth may underlie the legends of this lady,
-there is little doubt of her legendary relation to the Wise Women of
-Buddhist parables,--to Visakha of the sevenfold wisdom; and of her who
-decided between the rival claimants to the same child; to Ambapali,
-the courtesan, who journeyed to hear Buddha's wisdom and presented
-to him and his disciples her park and mansion; and to the Queen of
-Glory, whose story belongs "to a very early period in the history of
-Buddhism." Such is the opinion of Mr. Rhys Davids, whose translation of
-the Mahasudassana-Sutta, containing an account of the queen's visit to
-the King of Glory, in his Palace of Justice, attended by her fourfold
-army, may be read in Vol. XI., p. 276, of Sacred Books of the East.
-
-This exaltation of human knowledge and wisdom, travelling to find it,
-testing it with riddles and questions, belongs to the cult of the
-Magus and the Pundit.
-
-With reference to the seventh son Visakha (all-potential) and
-his all-wise bride Visakha, a notable parallelism is found in the
-substantial identity of "Solomon" and "the Shunnamite," on account
-of whom he slew his brother Adonijah. Shunnamite is equivalent to
-Shulamite, substantially the same as Solomon (peaceful), but here
-probably meaning that she was a "Solomoness," a very wise woman. That
-such was her reputation appears by the "Song of Songs."
-
-An equally striking comparison may be made between the naming of
-Solomon and the naming of Mahaushadha, the Tibetan "Solomon" already
-mentioned as having married a wise Visakha. Among the many proofs of
-wisdom given by this village-born youth was the discovery of the real
-husband of a woman claimed by two men. One of the men being much the
-weaker, there could be no such trial as that proposed in the child's
-case by Visakha. Mahaushadha questioned the two men as to what they
-had last eaten, then made them vomit, and so found out which had
-told the truth. Let us compare this Tibetan minister's birth with
-that of Solomon:
-
-
-    "When the boy came into the world and his birth-feast was
-    celebrated, the name of Mahaushadha (Great Remedy) was given
-    to him at the request of his mother, inasmuch as she, who
-    had long suffered from illness, and had been unable to obtain
-    relief from the time of the boy's conception, had been cured by
-    him." (Tib. Tales, p. 133)
-
-    "And Jahveh struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto David,
-    and ... on the seventh day [it was the seventh son] the child
-    died.... And David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went in unto
-    her, and lay with her; and she bare a son, and she called his name
-    Solomon. And Jahveh loved him; and he sent by the hand of Nathan
-    the prophet, and he called his name Jedidiah [Beloved of Jah]
-    for Jahveh's sake." (2 Sam. xii.)
-
-
-In the Revised Version "she called" is given in the margin as "another
-reading," but that it is the right reading appears by the context: it
-was she that was "comforted," and in her babe she found "rest"--which
-"Solomon" strictly means. Among the Hebrews the naming of a child
-was an act of authority, and it is difficult to believe that in any
-purely Hebrew narrative a woman would be described as setting aside
-the name given by Jahveh himself. But the high position of woman in
-the Iranian and the Buddhist religions is well known.
-
-In comparative studies the questions to be determined concerning
-parallel incidents are--whether they are trivial coincidences; whether
-they are not based in such universal beliefs or simple facts that they
-may have been of independent origin; whether the historic conditions of
-time and place admit of any supposed borrowing; if borrowing occurred,
-which is the original? With regard to the above parallelisms I submit
-that one of them, at least,--the Judgment of Solomon,--is neither
-trivial nor based in simple facts, and could not have originated
-independently of the Indian tale; that the others, though each, if it
-stood alone, might be a mere coincidence, are too numerous to be so
-explained; that the time and conditions which rendered it possible that
-the names of the apes and peacocks (1 Kings x. 22) imported by Solomon
-should be Indian proves the possibility of importations of tales from
-the same country. (See Rhys David's Buddhist Birth Stories, p. xlvii.)
-
-The question remaining to be determined--which region was the
-borrower--cannot be settled, in the present cases, by the relative
-antiquity of the books in which they are found; not only are the ages
-of all the books, Hebrew and Oriental, doubtful, but they are all
-largely made up of narratives long anterior to their compilation. The
-safest method, therefore, must be study of the intrinsic character
-of each narrative with a view to discovering the country to whose
-intellectual and social fauna and flora, so to say, it is most related,
-and which of the stories bears least of the faults incidental to
-translation. I have applied this touchstone to the above examples, and
-believe that the Oriental stories are the originals. The Judgment of
-Solomon appears to me to have lost an essential link, a motif, which
-it retains in Buddhist versions. And I do not believe that any Hebrew
-Bathsheba could have set aside a name given her child by a prophet,
-in the name of Jahveh, in order to celebrate by another name the
-"rest" she found from her sorrows.
-
-On the other hand, the borrowings by other countries from the legend
-of Solomon appear much more numerous. In some cases, as the legend
-of Jemshid, there appear to have been exchanges between the two great
-sages, but the Solomonic traditions seem preponderant in Vikramadatsya,
-the demon-commanding hero of India. Solomon became a proverb of wisdom
-and liberality in Abyssinia, Arabia, and Persia. Ideal Sulaimans and
-Solimas abound. Solomon has influenced the legends of many heroes,
-such as Haroun-Alraschid and Charlemagne, and I will even venture
-a suspicion that the fame, and perhaps the name, of Solon have been
-influenced by the legend of Solomon. Lexicographers give no account of
-Solon's name; he is assigned to a conjectural period before written
-Greek existed; his interviews with Croesus, given in Herodotus,
-are hopelessly unhistorical, and his moralisings to the rich man
-recall the book of Proverbs. The Solon of Plato's Critias is already a
-mythological voyager, a Sindebad-Solomon, and his romance of the lost
-Atlantis is like an idealised rumour of the Wise Man's Kingdom. Solon's
-"history" was developed by Plutarch, seven centuries after the era
-assigned to the sage, out of poetical fragments ascribed to him,
-and he is represented as a great trader and traveller in the regions
-associated with Solomon. It is doubtful whether this chief of the Seven
-Sages, whose Solomonic motto was "Know Thyself" (cf. Prov. xiv. 8),
-could he reappear, would know himself as historically costumed by
-writers in our era, from Plutarch to Grote.
-
-At any rate there is little doubt of a reference to the Seven Spentas
-or to the Seven Sages in Proverbs ix. 1:
-
-
-    "Wisdom hath builded her house,
-    She hath hewn out her seven pillars."
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III.
-
-THE WIVES OF SOLOMON.
-
-
-According to the first book of Kings, Solomon's half-brother, Adonijah,
-after the defeat of an alleged (perhaps mythical) effort to recover the
-throne of which he had been defrauded, submitted himself to Solomon. He
-had become enamored of the virgin who had been brought to the aged King
-David to try to revive some vitality in him; and he came to Bathsheba
-asking her to request her son the king to give him this damsel as
-his wife. Bathsheba proffered this "small petition" for Adonijah,
-but Solomon was enraged, and ironically suggested that she should
-ask the kingdom itself for Adonijah, whom he straightway ordered to
-execution. The immediate context indicates that Solomon suspected
-in this petition a plot against his throne. A royal father's harem
-was inherited by a royal son, and its possession is supposed to have
-involved certain rights of succession: this is the only interpretation
-I have ever heard of the extreme violence of Solomon. But I have never
-been satisfied with this explanation. Would Adonijah have requested, or
-Bathsheba asked as a "small" thing, a favor touching the king's tenure?
-
-The story as told in the Book of Kings appears diplomatic, and several
-details suggest that in some earlier legend the strife between the
-half-brothers had a more romantic relation to "Abishag the Shunammite,"
-who is described as "very fair."
-
-Abishag is interpreted as meaning "father of error," and though that
-translation is of doubtful accuracy, its persistence indicates the
-place occupied by her in early tradition. According to Yalkut Reubeni
-the soul of Eve transmigrated into her. She caused trouble between
-the brothers, whose Jahvist names, Adonijah and Jedidiah,--strength of
-Jah, and love of Jah,--seem to have been at some time related. However
-this may be, the fair Shunammite, as represented in the Shulamite of
-the Song of Songs, fills pretty closely the outlines set forth in the
-famous epithalamium (Psalm xlv.) which all critics, I believe, refer
-to Solomon's marriage with a bride brought from some far country. I
-quote (with a few alterations hereafter discussed) the late Professor
-Newman's translation, in which it will be seen that several lines are
-applicable to the Shunammite, whose humble position is alluded to,
-separated from her "people," and her "father's house":
-
-
-   "My heart boils up with goodly matter.
-    I ponder; and my verse concerns the King.
-    Let my tongue be a ready writer's pen.
-
-   "Fairer art thou than all the sons of men.
-    Over thy lips delightsomeness is poured:
-    Therefore hath God forever blessed thee.
-
-   "Gird at thy hip thy hero sword,
-    Thy glory and thy majesty:
-    And forth victorious ride majestic,
-    For truth and meekness, righteously;
-    And let thy right hand teach the wondrous deeds.
-    Beneath thy feet the peoples fall;
-    For in the heart of the king's enemies
-    Sharp are thy arrows.
-
-   "Thy throne, O God, ever and always stands;
-    A righteous sceptre is thy royal sceptre.
-    Thou lovest right and hatest evil;
-    Therefore, O God, thy God hath anointed thee
-    With oil of joy above thy fellow-kings.
-    Myrrh, aloes, cassia, all thy raiment is.
-    From ivory palaces the viols gladden thee.
-    King's daughters count among thy favorites;
-    And at thy right hand stands the Queen
-        In Gold of Ophir.
-
-   "O daughter, hark! behold and bend thy ear:
-    Forget thy people and thy father's house.
-    Win thou the King thy beauty to desire;
-    He is thy lord; do homage unto him.
-    So Tyrus's daughter and the sons of wealth
-        With gifts shall court thee.
-
-   "Right glorious is the royal damsel;
-    Wrought of gold is her apparel.
-    In broidered tissues to the King she is led:
-    Her maiden-friends, behind, are brought to thee.
-    They come with joy and gladness,
-    They enter the royal palace.
-
-   "Thy fathers by their sons shall be replaced;
-    As princes o'er the land shalt thou exalt them.
-    So will I publish to all times thy name;
-    So shall the nations praise thee, now and always."
-
-
-In this epithalamium the name of Jahveh does not occur, and Solomon
-himself is twice addressed as God (Elohim). This lack of anticipation
-was avenged by Jahvism when it arrived; the Song was put among the
-Psalms and transmitted to British Jahvism, which has headed it:
-"The majesty and grace of Christ's kingdom. The duty of the Church
-and the benefits thereof." Such is the chapter-heading to a song
-of bridesmaids,--described in the original as "a song of loves" and
-"set to lilies" (a tune of the time).
-
-There are no indications in the Solomon legend, apart from some
-mistranslations, until the time of Ecclesiasticus (B. C. 180), that
-Solomon was a sensualist, or that there were any moral objections to
-the extent of his harem, which indeed is expanded by his historians
-with evident pride.
-
-As to this, our own monogamic ideas are quite inapplicable to a
-period when personal affection had nothing to do with marriage,
-when women had no means of independent subsistence, and the size of
-a man's harem was the measure of his benevolence. Probably there was
-then no place more enviable for a woman than Solomon's seraglio.
-
-The sin was not in the size of the seraglio but in its foreign and
-idolatrous wives. (Here our translators again get in an innuendo
-against Solomon by turning "foreign" into "strange women.") Before
-a religious notion can get itself fixed as law it is apt to be
-enforced by an extra amount of odium. Solomon's mother had married
-a Hittite, and presumably he would have imbibed liberal ideas on
-such subjects. The round number of a thousand ladies in his harem is
-unhistorical, but that the chief princesses were of Gentile origin
-and religion is clear. The second writer in the first Book of Kings
-begins (xi.) with this gravamen:
-
-
-   "Now King Solomon loved many foreign women besides the daughter of
-    Pharaoh,--Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Zidonian, and Hittite women,
-    nations concerning which Jahveh said to the children of Israel,
-    Ye shall not go among them, neither shall they come among you:
-    for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods:
-    Solomon clave to these in love."
-
-
-The wisest of men could hardly attend to rules which an unconceived
-Jahveh would lay down for an unborn nation centuries later. We
-must, however, as we are not on racial problems, consent to a few
-anachronisms in names if we are to discover any credible traditions
-in the Biblical books relating to Solomon. As Mr. Flinders Petrie
-has discovered something like the word "Israel" in ancient Egypt,
-it may be as well to use that word tentatively for the tribe we are
-considering. No Israelite, then, is mentioned among Solomon's wives,
-and one can hardly imagine such a man finding a bride among devotees
-of an altar of unhewn stones piled in a tent.
-
-As our cosmopolitan prince had to send abroad for workmen of skill,
-he may also have had to seek abroad for ladies accomplished enough
-to be his princesses. That, however, does not explain the number and
-variety of the countries from which the wives seem to have come. The
-theory of many scholars that this Prince of Peace substituted
-alliances by marriage for military conquests is confirmed in at
-least one instance. The mother of his only son, Rehoboam, was Naamah
-the Ammonitess (1 Kings xiv. 31), and the Septuagint preserves an
-addition to this verse that she was the "daughter of Ana, the son of
-Nahash,"--a king (Hanum) with whom David had waged furious war. The
-reference in the epithalamium (Psalms xlv.) to "Tyrus's daughter,"
-in connexion with 1 Kings v. 12, "there was peace between Hiram and
-Solomon," suggests that there also marriage was the peacemaker.
-
-The phrase in 1 Kings iii. 1, "Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh and
-took Pharaoh's daughter" suggests, though less clearly, that some
-feud may have been settled in that case also. That Solomon should
-have espoused as his first and pre-eminent queen the daughter of a
-Pharaoh is very picturesque if set beside the legend of the "Land of
-Bondage," but the narrative could hardly have been given without any
-allusion to bygones had the story in Exodus been known. Yet the words
-"made affinity" may refer to a racial feud in that direction. This
-princess brought as her dowry the important frontier city of Gezer,
-and her palace appears to have been the first fine edifice erected
-in Jerusalem.
-
-The commercial regime established by Solomon could hardly have been
-possible but for his intermarriages. Perhaps if the Christian ban
-had not been fixed against polygamy, and European princes had been
-permitted to marry in several countries, there might have been fewer
-wars, as well as fewer illicit connexions. The intermarriages of the
-large English royal family with most of the reigning houses of Europe,
-have been for many years a security of peace, and it is not improbable
-that our industrial and democratic age, wherein the working man's
-welfare depends on peace, may find in the undemocratic institution
-of royalty a certain utility in its power to be prolific in such ties
-of peace.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV.
-
-SOLOMON'S IDOLATRY.
-
-
-Bathsheba's function at Solomon's marriage is celebrated in the Song
-of Songs:
-
-
-   "Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold King Solomon,
-    With the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of
-    his espousals."
-
-
-Bathsheba, as we have seen, was said to have written Proverbs
-xxxi. as an admonition or reproof to her son on his betrothal with the
-daughter of Pharaoh. The words of David, "Send me Uriah the Hittite"
-(2 Sam. xi. 6), and the emphasis laid on Uriah's being a Hittite (a
-race with which intermarriage was prohibited, Deut. vii. 1-5) might
-have been meant as some legal excuse for David's conduct. He rescued
-Bathsheba, Hebraised (1 Chr. iii. 5), from unlawful wedlock, it might
-be said, and her exaltation in Talmudic tradition may have been meant
-to guard the purity of David's lineage. But the ascription to Bathsheba
-of especial opposition to her son's marriage with the daughter of
-Pharaoh indicates that the gravamen in Solomon's posthumous offence
-lay less in his intermarriage with foreigners than in building for
-them shrines of their several deities,--Istar, Chemosh, Milcom, and
-the rest. Against Pharaoh's daughter the Talmud manifests a special
-animus: she is said to have introduced to Solomon a thousand musical
-instruments, and taught him chants to the various idols. (Shabbath,
-56, col. 2.)
-
-There is a bit of Solomonic folklore according to which the Devil
-tempted him with a taunt that he would be but an ordinary person
-but for his magic ring, in which lay all his wisdom. Solomon being
-piqued into a denial, was challenged to remove his ring, but no
-sooner had he done so than the Devil seized it, and, having by its
-might metamorphosed the king beyond recognition, himself assumed
-the appearance of Solomon and for some time resided in the royal
-seraglio. The more familiar legend is that Solomon was cajoled into
-parting with his signet ring by a promise of the demon to reveal
-to him the secret of demonic superiority over man in power. Having
-transformed Solomon and transported him four hundred miles away,
-the demon (Asmodeus) threw the ring into the sea. Solomon, after long
-vagrancy, became the cook of the king of Ammon (Ano Hanun), with whose
-daughter, Naamah, he eloped. [4] One day in dressing a fish for dinner
-Naamah found in it the signet ring which Asmodeus had thrown into the
-sea, and Solomon thus recovered his palace and harem from the demon.
-
-The connexion of this fish-and-ring legend,--known in several versions,
-from the Ring of Polycrates (Herodotus III.) to the heraldic legend
-of Glasgow,--with the Solomonic demonology, looks as if it may once
-have been part of a theory that the idolatrous shrines were built for
-the princesses while the Devil was personating their lord. In truth,
-however, all of these animadversions belong to a comparatively late
-period. Many struggles had to precede even the recognition of the
-idolatrous character of the shrines, and to the last the Jews were
-generally proud of the "graven images" in their temple,--including
-brazen reproductions of the terrible Golden Calf. At the same time
-there were no doubt some old priests and soothsayers to whom these
-new-fangled things were injurious and odious, and superstitious
-people enough to cling to their ancient unhewn altar rather than to
-the brilliant cherubim, just as in Catholic countries the devotees
-cannot be drawn from their age-blackened Madonnas and time-stained
-crucifixes by the most attractive works of modern art.
-
-Although there is no evidence that the God of Israel was known under
-the name of either Jah or Jahveh in Solomon's time, there is little
-doubt that the rudimentary forces of Jahvism were felt in the Solomonic
-age. The furious prophetic denunciations of the wise and learned which
-echoed on through the centuries, and made the burden of St. Paul,
-indicate that there was from the first much superstition among the
-peasantry, which might easily in times of distress be fanned into
-fanaticism. The special denunciation of Solomon by Jahveh, and his
-suppression during the prophetic age, could hardly have been possible
-but for some extreme defiance on his part of the primitive priesthood
-and the soothsayers. The temple was dedicated by the king himself
-without the help of any priest, and the monopoly of the prophet was
-taken away by the establishment of an oracle in the temple. And the
-worst was that these things indicated a genuine liberation of the king,
-intellectually, from the superstitions out of which Jahvism grew. This
-was especially proved by his disregard of the sanctuary claimed by
-the murderer Joab, who had laid hold of the horns of the altar. The
-altar was the precinct of deity, and beyond the jurisdiction of civil
-or military authority; yet when the "man of blood" refused to leave
-the altar our royal forerunner of Erastus compelled the reluctant
-executioner to slay him at the altar,--even the sacred altar of
-unhewn stone. As no thunderbolt fell from heaven on the king for this
-sacrilege, the act could not fail to be a thunderbolt from earth
-striking the phantasmal heaven of the priest. The Judgment Day for
-settlement of such accounts was not yet invented, and injuries of
-the gods were left to the vengeance of their priests and prophets.
-
-There is an unconscious humour in the solemn reading by English
-clergymen of Jahvist rebukes of Solomon for his tolerance towards
-idolatry, at a time when the Queen of England and Empress of India is
-protecting temples and idols throughout her realm, and has just rebuilt
-the ancient temple of Buddha at Gaya; while the sacred laws of Brahman,
-Buddhist, Parsee, Moslem, are used in English courts of justice. If
-any modern Josiah should insult a shrine of Vishnu, or of any Hindu
-deity, he would have to study his exemplar inside a British prison.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V.
-
-SOLOMON AND THE SATANS.
-
-
-When Solomon ascended the throne, Jerusalem must have been a wretched
-place, without any art or architecture, with a swarming mongrel
-population, mainly of paupers. The holy ark was kept in a tent, and
-the altar of unhewn stone accurately symbolised the rude condition of
-the people, among whom Solomon could find no workmen of skill enough
-to build a temple. It is not easy to forgive him for compelling a
-good many of them into the public works; but it was probably no more
-than a national conscription of the unemployed paupers in Jerusalem,
-chiefly on fortifications for their own defence. There was apparently
-no slave-mart, and it seems rather better to conscript people for
-public industries than, in our modern way, for cutting their neighbors'
-throats. Most of them were the remnants of tribes that once occupied
-the region, much despised by the Israelites, and probably they looked
-on Solomon's plan of building Jerusalem into a city of magnificence,
-giving everybody employment and support, as a grand socialistic
-movement. An Ephraimite, Jeroboam, who tried to get up a revolt in
-Jerusalem does not seem to have found any adherents. The only people
-who complained of any yoke--and their complaint is only heard of after
-some centuries--were the priest-ridden and prophet-ridden Israelites
-who had become fanatically excited about the strange shrines built for
-the king's foreign wives, and the splendid carvings and forms in the
-temple itself. Probably the first two commandments in the decalogue
-were put there with special reference to some Solomonic cult with an
-aesthetic taste for graven images and foreign shrines.
-
-There can be little doubt that Solomon, by his patronage of these
-foreign religions, detached them from the cruel rites traditionally
-associated with them. Among all the censures pronounced against
-him none attributes to him any human sacrifices, though such are
-ascribed to David and Samuel, (1 Sam. xv. 33, 2 Sam. xxi. 9). The
-earliest rebukes of sacrifice in the Bible are those attributed
-to Solomon. "To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the
-Lord than sacrifice" (Prov. xxi. 3). "By mercy and truth iniquity
-is atoned for" (Prov. xvi. 6). "Mercy and truth preserve the king;
-he upholdeth his throne by mercy" (Prov. xx. 28). "Deliver them that
-are carried away to death: those that are ready to be slain forbear
-not thou to save" (Prov. xxiv. 11). "Love covereth all transgressions"
-(Prov. x. 12).
-
-Solomon may not indeed have written these and the many similar maxims
-ascribed to him, but they are among the most ancient sentences in the
-Bible, and they would not have been attributed to any man who had not
-left among the people a tradition of humanity and benevolence. Had
-the royal "idolator" or his wives stained their shrines with human
-blood the prophets would have been eager to declare it. Two acts of
-cruelty are ascribed to Solomon's youth, in the book of Kings: one of
-these, the execution of Shimei, carried out his father's order, but
-only after Shimei had been given fair warning with means of escape;
-while the other, the execution of Adonijah (Solomon's brother), if
-true, is too much wrapped up in obscurity to enable us to judge its
-motives; but it cannot be regarded as historical.
-
-The second historiographer of Kings, setting out to record Jahveh's
-anger about Solomon's foreign wives and shrines (1 Kings xi) says,
-with unconscious humour, that Jahveh raised Satan against him,--two
-Satans. One of these was Hadad, an Edomite, the other Rezon,
-a Syrian. The writer says that this was when Solomon was old, his
-wives having then turned away his heart after other gods. Fortunately,
-however, this writer has embodied in his record some items, evidently
-borrowed, which contradict his Jahvistic legend. One of these tells us
-that Hadad had been carried away from Edom to Egypt, when David and his
-Captain Joab massacred all the males in Edom; that he there married
-the sister of Pharaoh; and that he returned to his own country on
-hearing of the death of David and Joab. When this occurred, Solomon,
-so far from being old, was about eighteen. The Septuagint (Vatican
-MS.) says that Hadad "reigned in the land of Edom." We may conclude
-then that on the return of this heir to the throne Edom declared
-its independence, nor is there any indication that Solomon tried to
-prevent this. Another contradiction of this writer is a note inserted
-about Rezon the Syrian,--"He was an adversary of Israel all the days
-of Solomon." Not, therefore, a Satan raised up by Jahveh against
-Solomon when in old age he had turned to other gods. Rezon "reigned
-over Syria," and there is no indication of any expedition against him
-sent out by Solomon. Bishop Colenso (Pentateuch, Vol. III., p. 101),
-in referring to these points remarks that we do not read of a single
-warlike expedition undertaken by Solomon. [5]
-
-The remark (1 Kings xi.) about the Satans set against Solomon is more
-applicable to the Shiloh traitors, Ahijah and Jeroboam. Jeroboam,--a
-servant whom Solomon had raised to high office,--was instigated
-by Ahijah, a "prophet" neglected by Solomon, to his ungrateful
-treason. Ahijah pretended that he had a divine revelation that he
-(Jeroboam) was to succeed Solomon on account (of course!) of the king's
-shrines to Istar, Chemosh, and Milcom. If the narrative were really
-historic nothing could be more "Satanic" than the lies and treacheries
-related of those self-seekers. Were the story true, the failure of
-these divinely appointed "Satans" to overthrow the kingdom of Solomon,
-who did not arm against them, must have been due to his popularity. In
-after times this impunity of the glorious "idolator" would have to be
-explained; consequently we find Jahveh telling Solomon that, offended
-as he was by the shrines, he would spare him for his father's sake,
-but would rend the kingdom, save one tribe, from his (Solomon's)
-son. That this should be immediately followed by the raising up of
-"Satans" to harass Solomon and Israel, Jahveh having just said the
-trouble should be postponed till after the king's death, suggests that
-the whole account of these quarrels (1 Kings xi. 14-40) is a late
-interpolation. Up to that point the old record is unbroken. "He had
-peace on all sides round about him. And Judah and Israel dwelt safely,
-every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, from Dan to Beersheba,
-all the days of Solomon" (1 Kings iv. 24-25).
-
-Jahveh, in his personal interview with Solomon (1 Kings xi. 11-13),
-said, "I will surely rend the kingdom from thee and will give it
-to thy servant." That is, as explained by the "prophet" Ahijah,
-to Jeroboam. As a retribution and check on idolatry the selection,
-besides violating Jahveh's promise to David (1 Chron. xxii), was not
-successful: after the sundering of Israel and Judah into internecine
-kingdoms, Jeroboam, King of Israel, established idolatry more actively
-than either Solomon or his son Rehoboam. On Jeroboam, his selected
-Nemesis, Jahveh inflicted his characteristic punishment of visiting the
-sins of the fathers on the children; as David was left the seduced wife
-whose husband he had murdered, while his son was executed; as Solomon
-was left in peaceful enjoyment of his kingdom and none of the sinful
-shrines destroyed, while his son bore the penalty; so now Jeroboam,
-elect of Jahveh, built golden calves, surpassed Solomon's offences,
-and vengeance was taken on his son Abijah, who died. This Abijah left
-a son, Baasha, who, undeterred by these fatalities, continued the
-"idolatries" with impunity for the twenty-four years of his reign,
-the punishment falling on his son Elah, who was slain after only two
-years' reign by his military servant, Zimri. And this Zimri, who thus
-carried on Jahveh's decree against idolatry, himself continued "in the
-ways of Jeroboam," the shrines and idols themselves being meanwhile
-unvisited by any executioner or iconoclast until some centuries later.
-
-In Josiah there arrived a king, of the line of David, who might
-seem by his fury against idolatry to be another "man after God's
-own heart." He pulverised the images and the shrines, he "sacrificed
-the priests on their own altars," he even dug up the bones of those
-who had ministered at such altars and burnt them. He trusted Jahveh
-absolutely. He went to the prophetess, Hulda, who told him that he
-should be "gathered to his grave in peace." He was slain miserably,
-by the King of Egypt, to whom the country then became subject.
-
-Josephus ascribed the act of Josiah, in hurling himself against an
-army that was not attacking him, to fate. The fate was that Josiah,
-having exterminated the wizards and fortune-tellers, repaired to
-the only dangerous one among them, because she pretended to be a
-"prophetess," inspired by Jahveh. Her assurances led him to believe
-himself invulnerable, personally, and that in his life-time Jerusalem
-would not suffer the woes she predicted. Josiah, "of the house
-of David," seems to have thought that his zeal in destroying the
-shrines which his ancestor Solomon had introduced, mainly Egyptian,
-would be so grandly consummated if he could destroy a Pharaoh,
-that he insisted on a combat. Pharaoh-Necho sent an embassy to say
-that he was not his enemy, but on his way to fight the Assyrian:
-"God commanded me to hasten; forbear thou from opposing God, who is
-with me, that he destroy thee not." Here, however, was the fanatic's
-opportunity for an Armageddon: Pharaoh had appealed to what Solomon
-would have regarded as their common deity, but which to Josiah meant a
-chance to pit Jahveh against the God of Egypt. On Jahveh's invisible
-forces he must have depended for victory. So perished Josiah, and
-with him the independence of his country.
-
-Solomon, the Prince of Peace, had made the house of Pharaoh the
-ally of his country. Josiah carries his people back under Egyptian
-bondage. Solomon had built the metropolitan Temple, whose shrines,
-symbols, works of art, represented a catholicity to all races and
-religions,--peace on earth, good will to man. Josiah, panic-stricken
-about a holy book purporting to have been found in the Temple,
-concerning which the king by his counsellors consulted a female
-fortune-teller, makes a holocaust of all that Solomon had built up.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI.
-
-SOLOMON IN THE HEXATEUCH.
-
-
-"And when they brought out the money that was brought into the house of
-Jahveh, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of Jahveh given
-by Moses. And Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the scribe, I have
-found the book of the law in the house of Jahveh." (2 Chron. xxxiv. 14,
-15.) The Chronicler adds to the earlier account (2 Kings xxii. 8) the
-words "given by Moses," which looks as if the authenticity of the book
-(Deuteronomy) had not been without question. The finding of the Book
-is set forth in a sort of picture, wherein are grouped the priest,
-the theologian, the phantom prophet, the deity, the temple, and the
-contribution-box. Every part of the ecclesiastical machine is present.
-
-One is irresistibly reminded of the finding of the Book of Mormon by
-Joseph Smith, although it would be unfair to ascribe Deuteronomist
-atrocities to the revelations of the American phantom, Mormon. Nor is
-this a mere coincidence. There are lists of the early Mormons which
-show a large proportion of them to have borne Old Testament names,
-derived from Puritan ancestors. When Solomon set up his philosophic
-throne at Harvard University, and the parishes of the Pilgrims
-became Unitarian, and Boston became artistic, literary, and worldly,
-the Jahvists began to migrate, carrying with them their Sabbatarian
-Ark, in which so many frontier communities are imprisoned "unto this
-day." Some of them have become conquerors of Hawaiian "Canaanites,"
-appropriating their lands. But the Vermont Hilkiah, Joseph Smith,
-discerned that a new Deuteronomy was needed to deal with the many
-American sects, and was guided by an Angel of the Lord to a spot in
-Ontario County, New York, where the Book was found (1827), which
-he was enabled to translate by the aid of his "Urim and Thummim"
-spectacles, found beside the Book. In the Book were discussed the
-principles of all the sects, though not by name, as in Deuteronomy
-Moses is made to deal with the conditions which had arisen since
-the time of Solomon. Unfortunately for these American Jahvists, they
-had left the New English brains behind, with Channing and Emerson,
-and had not carried with them enough to produce a western Jeremiah
-to save their movement from ridicule and popular hatred.
-
-"Thy words were found and I did eat them," says Jeremiah
-(xv. 16). Whether, as some scholars think, Jeremiah had any part in
-the composition of the Book "found," or not, his rage attests the
-existence at the time of an important Solomonic School. "How say you,
-We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us? Behold the lying
-pen of the scribes has turned it to a fiction." (viii. 8.) "They are
-grown strong in the land but not for the faith." (ix. 3.) "Thus saith
-the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the
-mighty man glory in his might." (ix. 23.)
-
-The Deuteronomist especially aims at suppression of the Solomonic
-cult and regime. The law, not found in Exodus, against marriage with
-foreigners (Deut. vii. 3) is especially turned against Solomon's
-example by the addition that such a marriage will "turn away thy son
-from following me, that they may serve other gods." The wife, or other
-member of a man's family, who entices him to serve other gods, is to
-be stoned to death. (xiii. 6-11.) Moses is represented as anticipating
-the setting up of kings, and even the particular events of Solomon's
-reign. Solomon's "forty thousand stalls of horses" (1 Kings iv. 26),
-his horses brought out of Egypt (1 Kings x. 28), his wives, his silver
-and gold, are all foreseen by the ancient lawgiver, who provides that:
-"He [your king] shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the
-people to return to Egypt to the end that he should multiply horses
-... neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn
-not away; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and
-gold." (Deut. xvii. 16, 17.)
-
-This Deuteronomist Moses foresaw, too, that some check on the divine
-appointments to the throne would be needed. "Thou shalt in any wise
-set him king over thee whom thy God shall choose: one from among thy
-brethren shalt thou set over thee: thou mayest not put a foreigner
-over thee." As all of these commandments were received by Moses from
-Jahveh himself (Deut. vi. 1, and elsewhere), it is worthy of remark
-that there should be no trace of that anger with which Jahveh met the
-proposal for a monarchy: "they have rejected me, that I should not be
-king over them." (1 Sam. viii.) In 1776 Thomas Paine, in his Common
-Sense, used this scriptural denunciation of kings with much effect, and
-it no doubt contributed much to overthrow British monarchy in America.
-
-The special denunciations of sun-worship in Deuteronomy (iv. 19,
-xvii. 3) suggest a probability that Solomon's allusion to the sun,
-when dedicating the temple, may have been popularly associated with
-the punishable practice alluded to in Job xxxi. 26, of kissing the
-hand to the sun and moon. The words of Solomon are cancelled in the
-Massoretic text, and do not appear in any English version, but they
-are preserved by the LXX., and there declared to be in the book of
-Jasher. "They are," says Dr. Briggs, "recognised by the best modern
-critics as belonging to the original text [of 1 Kings viii. 12, 13]
-which then would read:
-
-
-   "The sun is known in the heavens,
-        But Jahveh said that he would dwell in thick darkness.
-        I have built up a house of habitation for thee,
-        A place for thee to dwell in forever.
-    Lo, is it not written in the book of Jasher?" [6]
-
-
-This suppression of the opening line of the Dedication, at cost
-of a grand poetic antithesis, reveals the hand of mere bigoted
-ignorance. How many other fine things have been eliminated, how
-many reduced to commonplaces, we know not, but the additions and
-interpolations in the Old Testament have been nearly all traced. Many
-of these are novelettes more prurient than the tales forbidden in
-families when found in the pages of Boccaccio and Balzac, and it is
-a notable evidence of the mere fetish that the Bible has become to
-most sects, that a chorus of abuse instead of welcome still meets the
-scholars who prove the quasi-spurious character of the most odious
-stories in Genesis.
-
-Bishop Colenso seems to have found in such tales only the work of a
-Jahvist with a taste for obscene details, but too little attention has
-been paid to the investigations of Bernstein, who discovers in many
-of these legends a late Ephraimic effort to blacken the character of
-the whole house and line of Judah. [7] Bernstein does not deal with
-the story of Adonijah and Jedidiah (Solomon), whose relative antiquity
-is shown, I think, in the fact that no shameful action is ascribed to
-the elder brother to account for the deprivation of his primogenitive
-right. After Solomon's accession, however, Adonijah proposed to marry
-the maiden Abishag, who technically belonged to his father's harem,
-and probably this tradition gave a cue to the inventor of the story
-of Absalom's having gone to his father's concubines in order to base
-on the act a claim to the kingdom while his father was yet alive.
-
-Absalom's shameful action is supposed to be a fulfilment of the
-sentence pronounced against David because of his crime against
-Uriah. A close examination of that passage (2 Sam. xii. 10-14) must
-suggest doubts about verses 11, 12, but at any rate the sentence is
-not fulfilled by Absalom's alleged act: David's "wives" were not
-taken away "before his eyes," and given "unto his neighbor," but
-some of his concubines were appropriated by his son. Absalom's act
-(2 Sam. xvi. 20-23) and that of David's consigning the concubines to
-perpetual isolation or imprisonment (2 Sam. xx. 3) are not alluded
-to in David's mourning for Absalom, nor in Joab's rebuke of this
-grief. In these strange incoherent items one seems to find the debris,
-so to say, of some masterly work, picturing a sort of Nemesis pursuing
-David and his family for the crime against Uriah. Ahithophel, who is
-described as "the word of God," was the grandfather of Bathsheba and
-the chief friend and counsellor of David, yet it was he who suddenly
-becomes a traitor to the King, foreshadowing Judas--as his sinister
-name ("brother of lies") implies--even to the extent of hanging
-himself. It was Bathsheba's grandfather who moved Absalom to dishonor
-his father's concubines. But were they only concubines in the original
-story, or were they David's wives, as predicted in the verses 11, 12
-(2 Sam. xii.) which seem misplaced and unfulfilled? It may have been
-that some of the details of the story were too gross for preservation,
-or too disgraceful to David, but I cannot think that we possess in its
-original form the tragedy suggested by the presence of an ancestor
-of seduced Bathsheba,--the sinister "word of God" Ahithophel,--and
-the death of the child of that adultery, the deflowering of Tamar,
-David's daughter, the disgrace and violent death of Amnon, Absalom,
-apparently of Daniel also, and finally of Adonijah. What became of
-the eight wives of David? Was that prediction ascribed to Nathan,
-of their defilement, without any corresponding narrative?
-
-In a previous chapter I have pointed out the improbability that the
-fatal wrath of Solomon against Adonijah could have been excited by
-his brother's proposal of honorable wedlock with the maiden Abishag,
-and conjectured that there may have been a story, now lost, of rivalry
-between the brothers for this "very fair" damsel. Whatever may have
-been the real history there is little doubt that there was substituted
-for it some real offence by Adonijah, perhaps such as that afterwards
-ascribed to Absalom. Bathsheba herself is here the Nemesis, as her
-grandfather is in the case of Absalom.
-
-It must be borne in mind that we are dealing with the age which
-produced the thrilling story of Joseph and his brothers, and Potiphar's
-wife, and the contrast with his chastity represented in the profligacy
-of Judah. Indications have been left in Gen. xxxv. at the end of
-verse 22 of the suppression of a story of Reuben and Bilhah, and no
-doubt there were other suppressions. How very bad the story of Reuben
-was we may judge, as Bernstein points out, by the severity of his
-condemnation by Jacob (Gen. xlix.) and by the shocking things about
-Judah (Gen. xxxviii.) allowed to remain in the text. In the latter
-chapter Bernstein finds the same personages,--David, Bathsheba,
-Solomon,--acting in a similar drama to that presented in the Samuel
-fragments, and under their disguises may perhaps be discovered some
-of the details suppressed in the Davidic records. Bernstein says:
-
-"In Genesis xxxviii. Judah, the fourth son of the patriarch, is shown
-in a light which is to lay bare the stain of his existence. Judah went
-to Adullam, where lived his friend 'Chirah.' He married a Canaanite,
-the daughter of Shuah. [8] His eldest son was called Er. He (Er) was
-displeasing in the eyes of Jahveh, therefore Jahveh slew him. His
-second son was called Onan: he died in consequence of his sexual
-sins. The third son's name was Shelah, and, as it is mysteriously
-stated after his name, 'he was at Chezib when his mother bare
-him.' Chezib is certainly the name of a place, and the addition may
-therefore signify that the mother had named the boy Shelah because the
-father happened to be in Chezib at the time, absent from home. Chezib
-has, however, a second meaning.... Chezib means 'deception, lie,' and
-is used by the prophet Micah in this sense (i. 4). Now as Shelah, in
-our narrative, serves to deceive Tamar's hopes, held out by Judah, the
-allusion to Chezib is appropriate. However this may be, Judah's sons
-are all represented as despicable. Even Judah himself fell into bad
-ways and was trapped into the snares laid by his daughter-in-law Tamar,
-who played the prostitute. Thus only did Judah found a generation,
-from which King David is said to descend, from a son of Judah called
-Paretz, meaning 'breaking through,' in which manner he is supposed
-to have behaved towards his brother at his birth.
-
-"Veiled as the libel is here, it becomes apparent as soon as we cast
-a glance upon David's family. The picture which this libel draws of
-Judah hits David himself sharply. The 'Canaanite'--namely, whom Judah
-marries [?]--is no other than the wife of Uriah the Hittite (murdered
-at David's command) whom David himself married adulterously. This
-wife of Judah is said to have been the daughter of a man named
-Shuah. Therefore she is a Bath-shua, and is thus called (verse
-12). But Bathshua is also Bathsheba herself, as one may conclude from 1
-Chron. iii. 5. The eldest son died, hateful in the sight of God, just
-like the first son of Bathsheba (2 Sam. xii. 15). The son of Judah is
-alleged to have been called Er; why? because reading it backwards
-(rea, wrong) it means 'bad,' 'wicked.' The second son is called Onan,
-and dies for sexual sins. He is no other than David's son Amnon, who
-meets his death on account of his sexual sins (2 Sam. xiii). The Tamar
-of Judah's story is the same as the Tamar dishonored by Amnon,--the
-daughter of David, who, in spite of her misfortune and her purity, is,
-to the entire ruin of her good name, humiliated to a person who plays
-the prostitute. And Shelah who does not die,--add to his name only the
-letter m, and you have Solomon."
-
-If in the light of these facts, which reveal the mythical character
-of some of the worst things told of Judah and David, the blessings
-of Jacob (Gen. xlix.) be carefully read, the blessing on Judah will
-be found rather equivocal. Colenso translates:
-
-
-   "A lion's whelp is Judah,
-    Ravaging the young of the suckling ewes."
-
-
-Is this couplet related to Nathan's parable of the rich man taking away
-the poor man's one little ewe lamb which smote the conscience of David?
-
-
-   "The staff shall not depart from Judah,
-    Nor the rod from between his feet
-    Until Shiloh come."
-
-
-Is this merely a device of the Ephraimite rebels, Jeroboamites,
-pretending to find in a patriarchal prophecy a prediction that Judah
-is to be superseded by the descendants of Joseph (on whom Jacob's
-encomiums and blessings are unstinted)? Shiloh was always their
-headquarters.
-
-It is probable, however, that there is here a play upon words. The
-words "Until Shiloh come" are rendered by some scholars "Till he
-(Judah) come to Shiloh," and interpreted as meaning "Till he come
-to rest." The Samaritan version ("donec veniat Pacificus") seems to
-identify Shiloh with Solomon. (Colenso, Pent. iii. p. 127.) But this
-is transparently Shelah over again. Shelomoh (Solomon), Shelah, and
-Shiloh are substantially of the same etymological significance. It
-will be observed that in Gen. xxxviii. Shelah is the only person
-whose character is not blackened. The Ephraimic poem, the "Blessings
-of Jacob,"--each blessing a vaticinium ex evento,--could well afford
-a half-disguised compliment to Solomon who had made no attempt to
-suppress the rebels of Shiloh,--the city of Abijah, who originated
-the Jeroboamic revolution which divided the Davidic kingdom. Jacob's
-blessing on Joseph is of course a blessing on Ephraim: it closes with
-a transfer of the crown (from Judah) to "him that is a prince among
-his brethren." This is "rest" from the arrows of David, this is the
-coming of Shiloh; it occurred under the reign of the Prince of Peace,
-Solomon, and it could not be undone by Solomon's son Rehoboam.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII.
-
-SOLOMONIC ANTIJAHVISM.
-
-
-The ferocities of Josiah and his Jahvists indicate the presence of
-an important Solomonist School. Their culture and tendencies are
-reflected, as we have seen, in the rage of prophets against them,
-and the continuance of their strength is shown in the preservation
-of Agur's Voltairian satire on Jahvism, and Job's avowed blasphemies:
-
-
-   "If indeed ye will glorify yourselves above me,
-    And prove me guilty of blasphemy--
-    Know then, that God hath wronged me!"
-
-
-This translation from Job, quoted from Professor Dillon, need only
-be compared with that of the authorised and the revised versions
-to show us the causa causans to-day which of old added four hundred
-interpolations to the Book of Job to soften its criticism.
-
-It appears strange, however, that Professor Dillon has not included
-among The Sceptics of the Old Testament three writers in the
-composite eighty-ninth Psalm, nor remarked its relation to the Book
-of Job. At the head of this wonderful composition the mythical wise
-man of 1 Kings iv. 31, Ethan, rises ("Maschil of Ethan the Ezrahite,"
-perhaps meaning Wisdom of the Everlasting Helper) to attest the divine
-mercies and faithfulness in all generations. This is in two verses,
-evidently ancient, which a later hand, apparently, has pointed with
-a specification of the covenant with David. After the "Selah" which
-ends these four verses come fourteen verses of sermonising upon them,
-in which nearly all of the points made by Job's "comforters" are put
-in a nutshell. The sons of God who presented themselves, Satan among
-them, in his council (Job i. 6) appear here also (Ps. lxxxix. 6):
-
-
-   "Who among the sons of the gods is like unto Jahveh,
-    A God very terrible in the council of the holy ones."
-
-
-After the mighty things that "Jah" had done to his enemies have been
-affirmed an Elohist takes up the burden and a "vision" like that of
-Eliphaz (Job iv. 13) is appealed to:
-
-
-   "Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy ones."
-
-
-The vision's revelation (Job v. 17) "Happy is the man whom God
-correcteth" is also in this psalm (32, 33): "Then will I visit their
-transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes, but
-my mercy will I not utterly take from him." And Eliphaz's assurance
-"thy seed will be great" (v. 25) corresponds with that in our psalm
-(verse 36), "His seed shall endure forever."
-
-When the psalmist of the vision has pictured, as if in dissolving
-views, the military renown of David, God's "servant," and his "horn,"
-pointing to Solomon, God's "first-born," the transgressions of the
-latter are intimated (30-33), but the seer continues to utter the
-divine promises:
-
-
-   "My covenant will I not break,
-    Nor alter the thing that has gone out of my lips.
-    One thing have I sworn by my holiness;
-    I will not lie unto David:
-    His seed shall endure forever,
-    And his throne as the sun before me;
-    As the moon which is established forever:
-    Faithful is the witness in the sky. Selah."
-
-
-Then breaks out the indignant accuser:
-
-
-   "But thou HAST cast off and rejected!
-    Thou hast been wroth with thine 'anointed';
-    Thou hast broken the covenant with thy 'servant,'
-    Thou hast profaned his crown to the very dust;
-    Thou hast broken down all his defences;
-    Thou hast brought his strongholds to ruin!
-    All the wayfarers that pass by despoil him;
-    He is become a reproach to his neighbors.
-    Thou hast exalted the right-hand of his adversaries,
-    Thou hast made all his enemies to rejoice.
-    Yea, thou turnest back the edge of his sword,
-    And hast not enabled him to stand in battle.
-    Thou hast made his brightness to cease,
-    And hurled his throne down to the ground.
-    The days of his youth thou hast shortened:
-    Thou hast covered him with shame! Selah."
-
-
-A sarcastic "Selah," or "so it is!"--if Eben Ezra's definition of
-Selah be correct.
-
-Then follow four verses by a more timid plaintiff, who, almost in the
-words of Job (e.g., x. 20), reminds Jahveh of the shortness of life,
-and the impossibility of any return from the grave, and asks how long
-he intends to wait before fulfilling his promises. He also supplies
-Koheleth with a text by the pessimistic exclamation, "For what vanity
-hast thou created all the children of men"!
-
-After this writer has sounded his "Selah," another rather more bitterly
-reminds Jahveh, in three verses, that not only his chosen people are
-in disgrace, but his own enemies are triumphant.
-
-(These two are much like the writer of Psalms xliv. 9-26, who almost
-repeats the points made by the above three remonstrants, and asks
-Jahveh, "Why sleepest thou?")
-
-Finally a Jahvist doxology, fainter than any appended to the other
-four books, completes this strange eighty-ninth psalm:
-
-
-   "Praised be Jahveh for evermore!
-    Amen, and Amen!"
-
-
-Great is Diana of the Ephesians! Or is this the half-sardonic
-submission of Job under the whirlwind-answer, which extorted from him
-no tribute except a virtual admission that when the ethical debate
-became a question of which could wield the loudest whirlwinds,
-he surrendered!
-
-In Job's case the only recantation is that of Jahveh himself, who
-admits (xlii. 7) that Job had all along spoken the right thing about
-him (Jahveh). The epilogue is a complete denial of Jahvist theology.
-
-Job's small voice of scepticism which followed the whirlwind was
-never silenced. The fragment of Agur (Proverbs xxx. 1-4) appears to
-have been written as the alternative reply of Job to Jahveh. Job had
-said, "I am vile, I will lay my hand upon my mouth, I have uttered
-that I understand not." Agur adds ironically, "I am more stupid
-than other men, in me is no human understanding nor yet the wisdom
-to comprehend the science of sacred things." Then quoting Jahveh's
-boast about distributing the wind (Job xxxviii. 24), about his "sons
-shouting for joy" (Ibid. 7), and giving the sea its garment of cloud
-(Ibid. 9), Agur, the "Hebrew Voltaire," as Professor Dillon aptly
-styles him, asks:
-
-
-   "Who has ascended into heaven and come down again?
-    Who can gather the wind in his fists?
-    Who can bind the seas in a garment?
-    Who can grasp all the ends of the earth?
-    Such an one I would question about God: 'What is his name?
-    And what the name of his sons, if thou knowest?'"
-
-
-The stupid Jahvist commentator who follows Agur (Proverbs xxx. 5-14)
-and in the same chapter interpolates 17 and 20, has the indirect value
-of rendering it probable that there were a great many "Agurites" (a
-"bad generation" he calls them) and that they were rather aristocratic
-and distrustful of the masses. This commentator, who cannot understand
-the Agur fragments, also shows us, side by side with the brilliant
-genius, lines revealing the mentally pauperised condition into which
-Jahvism must have fallen when such a writer was its champion.
-
-It is tolerably certain that such fragments as those of Agur imply a
-literary atmosphere, a cultured philosophic constituency, and a long
-precedent evolution of rationalism. Such peaks are not solitary, but
-rise from mountain ranges. Professor Dillon, whose admirable volume
-merits study, finds Buddhistic influence in Agur's fragments. [9]
-But I cannot find in them any trace of the recluse or of the mystic;
-he does not appear to be even an "agnostic," for when he says "I
-have worried myself about God and succeeded not," the vein is too
-satirical for a mind interested in theistic speculations. He is a man
-of the world,--more of a Goethe than a Voltaire; he regards Jahveh as
-a phantasm, is well domesticated in his planet, and does not moralise
-on the facts of nature in the Oriental any more than in the Pharisaic
-way. He appears to be a true Solomonic philosopher and naturalist. I
-cannot agree to Professor Dillon's omission of the "Four Cunning Ones"
-(Proverbs xxx. 24-28), because they are not of the same metrical form
-as the others, and lead "nowhither." The lines
-
-
-   "The ants are a people not strong,
-    Yet they provide their meat in the summer,"
-
-
-no doubt led to the famous parable of Proverbs vi. 6-11, "Go to the
-ant, thou sluggard." Being there imbedded in an otherwise commonplace
-editorial chapter, they may have been derived from some commentator
-on Agur.
-
-Agur apparently represents the Solomonic thinkers brought with
-the rest of the people under the trials that made Israel the Job
-of nations. They are such as those who led astonished Jeremiah to
-ask "what kind of wisdom is in them?" (Jeremiah viii.) They "do not
-recognise Jahveh's judgments"; in "shame, dismay, captivity, they have
-rejected Jahveh's word." The exquisite humor of Agur shows that these
-philosophers did not lose their serenity. Agur sees man passing his
-life between two insatiable daughters of the ghoul, "the Grave and
-the Womb,"--Birth and Death,--and amid the inevitable evils of life
-he will be wise to refrain from rage and lay his hand upon his lips.
-
-But silence was just what the Jahvist omniscients could not attain
-to. Notwithstanding Jahveh's confession that Job was right in his
-position, and the orthodox wrong in their theory that all evil is
-providential, the "comforters" rise again in the commentator who begins
-(Proverbs xxx. 5):
-
-
-   "Every word of God is perfected.
-    He is a shield to them that trust in Him,"
-
-
-and proceeds in verse 14 with his inanities. And these have prevailed
-ever since. Even Jesus, when he took up the burden of Wisdom, and
-rebuked the Jahvist superstition that those on whom a tower fell
-were subjects of a judgment, must have his stupid corrector to add,
-"Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish." This simpleton's
-superstition has taken the place of the great successor of Solomon,
-and to-day, amid all the learning of Christendom, is proclaiming
-that the Father is "permitting" all the Satans,--war, disease,
-earthquake, famine,--to harry his children just to test them or to
-chasten them. Why should omnipotence create a race requiring worse than
-inquisitorial tortures for its discipline? In all the literature of
-Christendom there is not one honest attempt to deal with the evils and
-agonies of nature; and at this moment we find theists apotheosizing the
-"Unknowable from which all things proceed," without any appreciation
-of the fact that in the remote past Jahvism sought the same refuge,
-and that it was proved by Job a refuge of fallacies. In an awakening
-moral and humane sentiment Job stands in this latter day upon the
-earth, and again steadily repeats his demand why one should respect
-an Unknowable from whom all things,--all horrors and agonies,--proceed.
-
-Ethically we are required to do no evil that good may come;
-theologically, to worship a deity who is doing just that all the
-time. This is no doubt a convenient doctrine for the Christian
-nations that wish to preserve their own property and peace at home,
-while acting as banditti in remote continents and islands. All such
-atrocities are enacted and adopted as part of the providential plan of
-spreading the Gospel, latterly "civilisation"; but it is very certain
-that there can be no such thing as national civilisation until evil is
-recognised as evil, good as good,--the one to be abhorred, the other
-loved,--and no deity respected whose government would wrong a worm.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII.
-
-THE BOOK OF PROVERBS AND THE AVESTA.
-
-
-The legend of the Queen of Sheba forms not only a poetic prologue
-to the epical tradition of Solomon's wisdom, but has a substantial
-connexion with the character of that wisdom, to whose final
-personification she contributed.
-
-The corresponding Oriental stories do not necessarily deprive this
-legend of historic basis, but point to the region of this "Queen
-of the Seven (Sheba)." Those Oriental pilgrimages of eminent women
-to great sages, however invested with magnificence, are natural;
-even such romances could not have been invented unless in accordance
-with the genius of the country in which they were written. There is
-no antecedent improbability that a queen, belonging to a region in
-which her sex enjoyed large freedom, should have made a journey to
-meet Solomon.
-
-The Abyssinians, who regard her as the founder of their dynasty, at the
-same time show how little characteristic of their country the legend
-was, by their ancient tradition, that it was the Queen of Sheba who
-provided that no woman should sit on the throne, forever! They claim
-that this Queen is referred to in Psalm xlv.--"At thy right hand
-doth stand the Queen, in gold of Ophir." This psalm is Solomonic,
-but the reference is no doubt to the Queen Mother, Bathsheba (whose
-throne was on his "right hand," 1 Kings ii. 19). Neither Naamah
-the Ammonitess, mother of Solomon's successor, nor the daughter of
-Pharaoh, who was his especially distinguished wife, is described as
-a queen,--this indeed not being a Jewish title for a king's wife. The
-psalm indicates much glory to be conferred on a woman by wedlock with
-Solomon, but not that he was to derive any honor from either or all of
-the "threescore queens" assigned him in later times (Cant. vi. 8). In
-another Solomonic Psalm (lxxii.) it is said:
-
-
-   "The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents:
-    The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts,
-    Yea, all kings shall fall down before him."
-
-
-No glory is here supposed to be derivable from a woman, and an inventor
-would probably have merely devised a saga on the last of the lines
-just quoted, which is adapted in 1 Kings iv. 34, to Solomon's wisdom,
-or he would have imagined some instance of a particularly illustrious
-monarch coming to pay homage to Solomon. That the only example
-particularized is that of a woman carries some signs of reality.
-
-Assuming that there was ever any King Solomon at all, this Psalm
-lxxii., whose Hebrew title is "Of Solomon," might have been written
-in the height of his reign. The title of "God" given him in Psalm
-xlv. is here approximated in the opening line, "Give the King thy
-judgments, O Elohim," and in the ascription to him of such virtues and
-such beneficent dominion, "from the river (Euphrates) to the ends of
-the earth," without any further reference to God, that an indignant
-Jahvist expands the doxology (18, 19) to include a reclamation for
-Jahveh. The ancient lyric closes with verse 17, which says of Solomon:
-
-
-    "His name shall endure forever;
-    His name shall have emanations as long as the sun;
-    Men shall bless themselves in him;
-    All nations shall call him The Happy."
-
-
-The Jahvist answers:
-
-
-   "Blessed be Jahveh Elohim, the Elohim of Israel,
-    Who alone doeth wondrous things,
-    And blessed be His glorious name forever;
-    And let the whole earth be filled with His glory.
-    Amen, and Amen."
-
-
-Now in this beautiful poem (omitting the doxology) the elation is
-especially concerning some connexion with Sheba. In verse 10 it is
-said "The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts"; in verse 15,
-"To him shall be given of the gold of Sheba." These lines might have
-been written on the announcement of a royal visit, or meeting, which
-had not mentioned a queen. But what country is indicated by Sheba (the
-Seven)? In India there are seven holy rivers, and seven holy Rishis,
-represented by the seven stars of the Great Bear. But these correspond
-with the Seven Rivers of Persia which enter into the Persian Gulf, in
-the Avesta called Satavaesa, a star-deity. In the Yir Yast 9 it is said:
-
-
-   "Satavaesa makes those waters flow down to the seven Karshvares of
-    the earth, and when he has arrived down there he stands, beautiful,
-    spreading ease and joy on the fertile countries, thinking in
-    himself, 'How shall the countries of the Aryas grow fertile?'"
-
-
-As there are seven heavens, there are seven earths (Karshvares),
-and these, as already shown (ante II.), are presided over by the
-"seven infinite ones" (Amesha-Spentas). Of these seven the first is
-Ahura Mazda himself, and of the others only one is female--Armaiti,
-genius of the earth. Of this wonderful and beautiful personification
-more must be said presently, but it may be said here that Armaiti
-was the spouse of Ahura Mazda, and Queen of the Seven,--the seven
-Ameshi-Spentas who preside respectively over the seven karshvares of
-the earth.
-
-The function of Armaiti being to win men from nomadic life and warfare,
-to foster peace and tillage, she was a type of "the eternal feminine";
-and such an ideal could hardly have been developed except in a region
-where women were held in great honour, nor could it fail to produce
-women worthy of honor. That such was the fact in Zoroastrian Persia
-is proved by many passages in the Avesta, wherein we find eminent
-women among the first disciples of Zoroaster. There is a litany to the
-Fravashis, or ever living and working spirits, of twenty-seven women,
-whose names are given in Favardin Yast (139-142). Among these was
-the Queen Hutaosa, converted by Zoroaster, the wife of King Vistaspa,
-the Constantine of Zoroastrianism. Hutaosa was naturally a visible and
-royal representative of Armaiti, "Queen of the Seven," a princess of
-peace, a patroness of culture, to be imitated by other Persian queens.
-
-That the sanctity of "seven" was impressed on all usages of life in
-Persia is shown in the story of Esther. King Ahasuerus feasts on the
-seventh day, has seven chamberlains, and consults the seven princes
-of Media and Persia ("wise men which knew the times"). When Esther
-finds favor of the King above all other maidens, as successor to
-deposed Vashti, she is at once given "the seven maidens, which were
-meet to be given her, out of the King's house; and he removed her
-and her maidens to the best place of the house of the women." Esther
-was thus a Queen of the Seven,--of Sheba, in Hebrew,--and although
-this was some centuries after Solomon's time, there is every reason
-to suppose that the Zoroastrian social usages in Persia prevailed
-in Solomon's time. At any rate we find in the ancient Psalm lxxii.,
-labeled "Of Solomon," Kings of Sheba (the Seven) mentioned along
-with the Euphrates, chief of the Seven Rivers (Zend Haptaheando); and
-remembering also the "sevens" of Esther, we may safely infer that a
-"Queen of Sheba" connoted a Persian or Median Queen.
-
-We may also fairly infer, from the emphasis laid on "sevens" in Esther,
-in connexion with her wit and wisdom, that a Queen of the Seven had
-come to mean a wise woman, whether of Jewish or Persian origin, a
-woman instructed among the Magi, and enjoying the freedom allowed by
-them to women. There is no geographical difficulty in supposing that a
-Persian queen like Hutaosa, a devotee of Armaiti (Queen of the Seven,
-genius of Peace and Agriculture), might not have heard of Salem, the
-City of Peace, of its king whose title was the Peaceful (Solomon),
-and visited that city,--though of course the location of the meeting
-may have been only a later tradition. [10]
-
-The object of the Queen's visit to Solomon was "to test him with hard
-questions" as to his wisdom. It was not to discover or pay court to his
-wisdom, though he received from her "of the gold of Sheba" spoken of
-in the psalm. As a royal missionary of the Magi her ability and title
-to prove Solomon's knowledge, and decide on it, are assumed in the
-narrative (1 Kings x.). Several sentences in her tribute to Solomon's
-"wisdom and goodness" recall passages in the Psalm (lxxii.). There is
-here an intimation of some prevailing belief that Solomon's wisdom
-was harmonious with the Zoroastrian wisdom. Whether the visit of
-the Queen be mythical or not, and even if both she and Solomon are
-regarded as mythical, the legend would none the less be an expression
-of a popular perception of elements not Jewish in Solomonic literature.
-
-Of course only Biblical mythology is here referred to. The Moslem
-mythology of Solomon and the Queen (Balkis) has taken from the
-Avesta Wise King Yima's potent ring, and his power over demons, and
-other fables, in most instances to be noted only as an unconscious
-recognition of a certain general accent common to the narratives of
-the two great kings. Yet it can hardly be said that the stories of Yima
-in the Avesta and of Solomon in the Bible are entirely independent of
-each other,--as in Yima's being given by the deity a sort of choice
-and selecting the political career, Ahura Mazda saying: "Since thou
-wanted not to be the preacher and the bearer of my law, then make thou
-my worlds thrive, make my worlds increase: undertake thou to nourish,
-to rule, and to watch over my world." Ahura Mazda requests Yima to
-build an enclosure for the preservation of the seeds of life (men,
-animals, and plants) during a succession of fatal winters, and some
-of the particulars resemble both the legend of the ark and that of
-building the temple. Yima was, like Solomon, a priest-king (he is also
-called "the good shepherd"); he was, like Solomon, beset by satans
-(daevas), and after a reign of fabulous prosperity he finally fell by
-uttering falsehood. What the falsehood was is told in the Bundahis:
-the good part of creation was ascribed to the evil creator.
-
-Several other heroes of the Avesta have assisted in the idealisation
-of Solomon, notably King Vistaspa, already mentioned. Like Solomon,
-he is famous for his horses and his wealth. Zoroaster exhorts him,
-"All night long address the heavenly Wisdom; all night long call for
-the Wisdom that will keep thee awake." From Zoroaster the "Young King"
-learned "how the worlds were arranged"; and he is advised "have no
-bad priests or unfriendly priests."
-
-It is now necessary to inquire whether there is anything corresponding
-to these facts in the ancient writings ascribed to Solomon. The
-lower criticism has little liking for Solomon, and makes but a feeble
-struggle for the genuineness of his canonical books against the higher
-criticism, which forbids us to assign any word to Solomon. But these
-higher critics acquired their learning while lower critics, and it
-is difficult to repress an occasional suspicion of the survival of
-an unconscious prejudice against the royal secularist, apparent in
-their unwillingness to admit any participation at all of Solomon in
-the wisdom books. Is this quite reasonable?
-
-It is of course clear that Solomon cannot be described as the author of
-any book or compilation that we now possess. But neither did Boccaccio
-write Shakespeare's "Cymbeline," nor Dryden's "Cymon and Iphigenia,"
-nor the apologue of the Ring in Lessing's "Nathan the Wise," nor
-Tennyson's "Falcon," all of which, however, are his tales. I select
-Boccaccio for the illustration because his defiance of "the moralities"
-led to his suppression in most European homes, thus facilitating the
-utilization of his ideas by others who derive credit from his genius,
-this being precisely what might be expected in the case of the great
-secularist of Jerusalem. For no one can carefully study the Book
-of Proverbs without perceiving that a large number of them never
-could have been popular proverbs, but are terse little essays and
-fables, some of them highly artistic, which indicate the presence
-at some remote epoch of a man of genius. And I cannot conceive any
-fair reason for setting aside the tradition of many centuries which
-steadily united the name of Solomon with much of this kind of writing,
-or for believing that every sentence he ever uttered or wrote is lost.
-
-It would require a separate work to pick out from the two Anthologies
-ascribed to Solomon (the First, Proverbs x. i-xxii. 16; the Second,
-xxv-xxix), the more elaborate thoughts, and piece together those that
-represent one mind, even were I competent for that work. But this
-fine task awaits some scholar, and, indeed, the whole Book of Proverbs
-needs a more thorough treatment in this direction than it has received.
-
-Of the last seven chapters of the Book of Proverbs, one (xxx.),
-containing the fragments of Agur and his angry antagonist, has been
-(vii.) considered. Chapters xxv., xxvi., xxvii., and xxxi. 10-31, may
-with but little elimination fairly come under their general heading,
-"These are also proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, King
-of Judah, copied out." Chapters xxviii. and xxix., with their flings
-at princes and wealth, contain many Jahvist insertions. The admirable
-verses in xxiv. 23-34, and those in xxxi. 10-29, 31, represent the
-high secular ethics of the Solomonic school.
-
-The verses last mentioned (exaltation of the virtuous woman) are,
-curiously enough, blended with "The words of King Lemuel, the oracle
-which his mother taught him." The ancient Rabbins identify Lemuel
-with Solomon, and relate that when, on the day of the dedication
-of the temple, he married Pharaoh's daughter, he drank too much at
-the wedding feast, and slept until the fourth hour of the next day,
-with the keys of the temple under his pillow. Whereupon his mother,
-Bathsheba, entered and reproved him with this oracle. Bathsheba's
-own amour with Solomon's father does not appear to have excited any
-rabbinical suspicion that the description of the virtuous wife with
-which the Book of Proverbs closes is hardly characteristic of the
-woman. She was the "Queen Mother," a part of the divine scheme, her
-conception of the builder of the temple immaculate, predetermined in
-the counsels of Jahveh.
-
-The first nine verses of this last chapter in the Book of Proverbs
-certainly appear as if written at a later day, perhaps even so late as
-the third century before our era, and aimed at the Jahvist tradition
-of Solomon. Lemuel seems to be allegorical, and we here have an
-early instance of the mysterious disinclination to mention the great
-King's name. His name, Renan assures us, is hidden under "Koheleth,"
-but he is not named in the text of that book or even in that of the
-"Wisdom of Solomon." In Ezra v. 11 the mention of the temple as the
-house "which a great king of Israel builded and finished" seems to
-indicate a purposed suppression of Solomon's name, which continued
-(Jeremiah lii. 20 is barely an exception) until this silence was
-broken by Jesus Ben Sira, and again by Jesus of Nazareth.
-
-The removal of verse 30 (Proverbs xxxi.), clearly a late Jahvist
-protest, leaves the praise of the virtuous woman with which the book
-closes without any suggestion of piety. Yet we find here that "her
-price is far above rubies," "she openeth her mouth with wisdom," and
-one or two other tropes which probably united with some in the First
-Anthology to evolve more distinctly the goddess Wisdom. Some sentences
-of the First Anthology grew like mustard seed. "Wisdom resteth in the
-heart of him who hath understanding" (Proverbs xiv. 33), reappears
-in 1 Kings iii. 12, and in x. 24 it is definitely stated that it was
-the wisdom which God had put into Solomon's heart that made all the
-earth seek his presence. It was a miracle they went to see; the glory
-is not that of Solomon, but that of God. [11]
-
-The nearest approach to a personification of Wisdom in the First
-Anthology is Proverb xx. 15: "There is gold and abundance of pearls,
-but the lips of knowledge are a (more) precious jewel." This expands in
-Job to a long list of precious things--gold, coral, topaz, pearls--all
-surpassed by Wisdom, and the similitudes journey on to the parables
-of Jesus, wherein the woman sweeps for the lost silver, and the
-man sells all he has for the pearl of price. This, however, was a
-comparatively simple and human development. And the first complete
-personification of Wisdom, growing out of "the lips of knowledge," and
-perhaps influenced by the portraiture of "the virtuous woman," is an
-expression of philosophical and poetic religion. This personification
-is in Proverbs viii. and ix., which are evidently far more ancient
-than the seven chapters preceding them, and no doubt constitute the
-original editorial Prologue to the so-called "Proverbs of Solomon,"
-with the exception of some Jahvist cant about "the fear of Jahveh." We
-hear from "the lips of knowledge" a reaffirmation of the "excellent
-things" said in the Anthologies about the superiority of Wisdom to
-gems. (The word "ancient" given by the revisers in the margin to
-viii. 18 may possibly signify the antiquity of the Anthologies when
-this Prologue was written.) The scholarly writer of the Prologue had
-closely studied the ancient proverbs, and occasionally gives good hints
-for the interpretation of some that puzzle modern translators. Thus
-Wisdom, in describing herself as "sporting" (viii. 30), indicates the
-right meaning of x. 23 to be that while the fool finds his sport in
-mischief, the wise man finds his sport with wisdom. (This proverb may
-also have suggested the laughter of the "virtuous woman" in xxxi. 25.)
-
-In viii. 22-31, Wisdom becomes more than a personification, and takes
-her place in cosmogony. This passage, which contains germs of much
-of our latter-day theology, must be quoted in full, and comparatively
-studied. Wisdom speaks:
-
-
-    22. Jahveh acquired me in the outset of his way,
-        Before his works, from of old.
-
-    23. From eternity was I existent,
-        From the first, before the earth.
-
-    24. When no deep seas I was brought forward,
-        When no fountains abounding with water.
-
-    25. Before the mountains were fixed,
-        Before the hills, was I brought forward:
-
-    26. When he had not fashioned the earth and the fields,
-        And the consummate part of the dust of the world.
-
-    27. When he established the heavens, I was there;
-        When he set a boundary on the face of the deep;
-
-    28. When he made firm the clouds above;
-        When the fountains of the deep became strong;
-
-    29. When he gave to the sea its limit,
-        That the waters should not pass over their coast;
-        When he marked out the foundation pillars of the earth:
-
-    30. Then was I near him, as a master builder:
-        And I was his delight continually,
-        Sporting before him at all times;
-
-    31. Sporting in the habitable part of his earth,
-        And my delight was with the sons of men.
-
-
-Let us compare with this picture of Wisdom that of Armaiti, genius of
-the Earth, in the sacred Zoroastrian books. In the Gatha Ahunavaiti,
-7, it is said: "To succor this life (to increase it) Armaiti came
-with wealth, and good and true mind: she, the everlasting one,
-created the material world; but the soul, as to time, the first
-cause among created beings, was with thee" (Ahura Mazda). Thus, like
-Wisdom, Armaiti is everlasting: she was not created, but "acquired,"
-by the deity. When Ahura Mazda, as chief of the seven Amesha-spentas,
-ideally designed the world, she gave it reality, as master-builder,
-and, like Wisdom, hewed out the foundation pillars he had marked
-out,--namely, the Seven Karshvares of the earth. The opening lines
-of Proverbs ix. read almost like a quotation from some Gatha:
-
-
-   "Wisdom hath builded her house,
-    She hath hewn out her seven pillars."
-
-
-Like Wisdom, Armaiti was the continual delight of the supreme God. In
-an ancient Pali MS., it is said that Zoroaster saw the supreme being in
-heaven, with Armaiti seated at his side, her hand caressing his neck,
-and said: "Thou, who art Ahura Mazda, turnest not thy eyes away from
-her, and she turns not away from thee." Ahura Mazda tells Zoroaster
-that she is "the house mistress of my heaven, and mother of the
-creatures." [12] Like Wisdom, Armaiti has joy in the "habitable part"
-of the earth, and the "sons of men," from whom she receives especial
-delight ("the greatest joy"), are enumerated in the Vendidad, also
-the places in which she has such delight. They are the faithful who
-cultivate the earth morally and physically, and the places so watered
-or drained, and homes "with wife, children, and good herds within."
-
-Armaiti has a daughter, "the good Ashi," whose function is to pass
-between earth and heaven and bring the heavenly wisdom (Vohu-Mano,
-"Good Thought") to mankind. The soul of the world thus reaches, and
-is reached by, heaven, and Armaiti thus becomes a personification
-of the combined human and superhuman Wisdom ascribed to great men,
-such as Solomon. At the same time the "sons of men" are all the
-children of Armaiti, and she finds delight among them. Even the
-rudest are restrained by her culture. "By the eyes of Armaiti the
-(demonic) ruffian was made powerless," says Zoroaster. The spirit of
-the Earth, laughing with her flowers and fruits, survived in Persia
-the sombre reign of Islam, to sing in the quatrain of Omar Khayyam:
-"I asked my fair bride--the World--what was her dower: she answered,
-'My dower is in the joy of thy heart.'"
-
-"The sons of men" is not an Avestan phrase, for to Armaiti her
-daughters are as dear as her sons, but we find in the Vendidad "the
-seeds of men and women." These are sprung from those who were selected
-for preservation in the Vara, or enclosure, of the first man, Yimi,
-made by direction of the deity, when the evil powers brought fatal
-winters on the world. The deformed, diseased, wicked, were excluded;
-the chosen people were those formed of "the best of the earth." From
-long and prosperous life on earth, the Amesha of immortality, the
-good angel of death, conducted them to eternal happiness; they are the
-immortals, children of the demons being mortals. There was something
-corresponding to this in the Jewish idea of their being a chosen
-people, as distinguished from the Gentile world (see Deut. xxxii. 8),
-and no doubt the phrase "sons of men" represented a divine dignity
-afterwards expressed in the title, "Son of Man." [13]
-
-The Solomonic hymn of Wisdom at the creation (Proverbs viii. 22-31)
-contains other Avestan phrases. "From eternity was I existent," recalls
-Zervan akarana, "boundless time," and verse 26, relating to the earth,
-is still more significant: in it "the sum" has been suggested by the
-Revisers for (E. V.) "the highest part" (of the earth), but in either
-rendering it is near to the Avestan phrase, "the best of Armaiti"
-(Earth). This phrase is reproduced in the Bundahis (xv. 6), where the
-creator, Ahura Mazda, says to the first pair, "You are men (cf. Genesis
-v. 2, he 'called their name Adam'), you are the ancestry of the world,
-and you are created the best of Armaiti (the Earth) by me." (West's
-translation. Sacred Books of the East. Vol. V., p. 54, n. 2.) The
-word for Earth in Proverb 26 is adamah, and in the Septuagint (various
-reading) it is actually translated Armaith,--Armaiti's very name. We
-may thus find in Proverb 26 (viii.) the idea of Omar Khayyam, "Man
-is the whole creation's summary."
-
-Whether there is any connexion between the Sanskrit Adima and
-Hebrew Adam is still under philological discussion: probably not,
-for their meaning is different, Adima meaning "the first," and
-Adam relating to the material out of which he is said to have been
-formed. Adam is derived from Adamah: after all, man came from the
-great Woman--"the Mother of all living." [14] Adamah, according to
-Sale, is a Persian word meaning "red earth," and in Hebrew also it
-connotes redness. Armaiti might have acquired an epithet of ruddiness
-from her union with Atar, the genius of Fire (Fargard xviii. 51,
-52. Darmesteter. Introduction, iv. 30). In Hebrew adamah combines
-three senses--a fortress, redness, and cultivated ground. In Proverbs
-(viii. 31) we have the fortress or enclosure, "the habitable part of
-his earth"; in verse 26 the cultivated earth, "the highest part (or
-sum, or best) of the dust of the earth." The "delight" in which Wisdom
-dwelt (verse 30) is Eden, the garden of delight, and in verse 31 this
-delight associated with the human children of the earth. Here we have
-the elements of the narrative of the creation of Adam in Genesis,
-and of the garden, though clearly not derived from Genesis. And in
-Genesis we find something like a personification of the earth, as in
-ix. 13, "It (the rainbow) shall be a token of a covenant between me
-and the earth."
-
-The idea of a creative deity requiring, as in Proverbs viii., the
-assistance of another personal being, is foreign to Jahvism, but it
-is of the very substance of Zoroastrianism, and it reappears in the
-Elohism of Genesis. Another important and fundamental fact is, that we
-find in the prologue to Proverbs a deity contending against something,
-circumscribing forces that need control, not of his creation. It is
-plain that the conception of monotheistic omnipotence had not yet
-been formed. There are higher and lower parts of the earth.
-
-Although there is no evidence that any such compilation as our
-"Genesis" existed at the time when the prologue (viii., ix.) to the
-"Proverbs of Solomon" was composed, the Elohistic opening of Genesis,
-especially in its original form, harmonises with the Parsi conflict
-between Light and Darkness.
-
-
-   "When of old Elohim separated heaven and earth--when the earth was
-    desolation and emptiness--darkness on the face of the deep, and
-    the spirit of Elohim brooding on the face of the waters,--Elohim
-    said, Be Light; Light was." [15]
-
-
-The spirit of God "brooding" over the waters (Genesis i. 1) may
-be identified with the Wisdom of Proverbs ix. 1, who "builds her
-house" as the Elohim built the universe, and "hath hewn out her
-seven pillars" like a true Armaiti, "Queen of the Seven." She is
-the Spirit of Light. And perhaps the darkness that was on the face
-of the abyss suggested the antagonistic personification in the next
-chapter (ix.) named by Professor Cheyne "Dame Folly." Wisdom, having
-builded her house, spread her table, mingled her wine, sends forth her
-maidens to invite the simple to forsake Folly, enjoy her feast, and
-"live." Dame Folly,--who though she has "a seat in high places" is
-"silly,"--clamours to every wayfarer that even the bread and water
-of her table, being surreptitious, are sweeter than the luxuries
-and wine offered by Wisdom. This appears to be the meaning of Dame
-Folly's somewhat obscure invitation.
-
-
-  "'Waters stolen are sweet!
-    Forbidden bread is pleasant!'
-    He knoweth not her phantoms are there,
-    That her guests are in the underworld."
-
-
-In this contrast between Wisdom inviting all to enter her house,
-drink her wine, and "live," and Folly inviting them to her "Sheol,"
-we have nearly a quatrain of Omar Khayyam: "Since from the beginning
-of life to its end there is for thee only this earth, at least live
-as one who is on it and not under it."
-
-In the Avesta the good and wise Mother Earth (Armaiti) is opposed by
-a malign female "Drug" (demoness), whose paramours are described in
-Fargard xviii. (Vendidad). These two are fairly represented by Wisdom
-and Folly as personified in Proverbs viii. and ix.
-
-The Jahvist who in Proverbs i. 1-7 (excepting the first six verses)
-undertakes to edit the original and ancient editor as well as Solomon,
-presents the curious case of one of Dame Folly's phantoms interpreting
-the words of Wisdom's guests. Unable to comprehend their portraiture
-of Dame Folly, he imagines that the allusion must be to harlotry,
-admonishes his "son" that "Jahveh giveth wisdom," which among other
-things will "deliver thee from the strange woman," whose "house sinketh
-down to the underworld and her paths unto phantoms." Which recalls
-the pious lady who on hearing her ritualistic pastor accused by a
-dissenter of leanings toward the Scarlet Woman, anxiously inquired
-of a friend whether she had ever heard any scandal connected with
-their vicar's name!
-
-Our Jahvist editor seems to be one who would often say of laughter
-"it is mad"; and naturally could not imagine how Wisdom could "sport"
-before the Lord (viii. 30) unless she were in some sense mad. The
-sport before Jahveh could only be in mockery of some sinner's torment,
-like the derision ascribed to Jahveh (Psalm ii. 4); consequently our
-editor represents Wisdom crying abroad in the streets:
-
-
-   "Because I have called and ye refused....
-    I also will laugh in the day of your calamity,
-    I will mock when your fear cometh."
-
-
-But Pliny mentions the Mazdean belief, confirmed by Parsi tradition,
-that Zoroaster was born laughing. To him Ahura Mazda says: "Do thou
-proclaim, O pure Zoroaster, the vigor, the glory, the help and the
-joy that are in the Fravashis (souls) of the faithful."
-
-However, we may see in these first seven chapters of Proverbs that
-Wisdom had become detached from the sons of men, in whom she had
-once found delight, was no longer in the human heart, but had finally
-ascended to wield the heavenly thunderbolts. And yet it is probable
-that we owe to this vindictive and menacing attitude of deified Wisdom
-the preservation of so many witty and sceptical things in books
-traditionally ascribed to Solomon. The orthodox legend being that
-the Lord had put supernatural wisdom into Solomon's heart, and never
-revoked it despite his "idolatry" and secularism, it followed that the
-naughty man could not help continuing to be a medium of this divine
-person, Wisdom, and that it might be a dangerous thing to suppress
-any utterance of hers through Solomon,--unwitting blasphemy. However
-profane or worldly the writings might appear to the Jahvist mind,
-there was no knowing what occult inspiration there might be in them,
-and the only thing editors could venture was to sprinkle through them
-plenteous disinfectants in the way of "Fear-of-the-Lord" wisdom.
-
-The proverbs in which the name Jahveh appears are not, of course, to
-be indiscriminately rejected as entirely Jahvist interpolations. It
-seems probable that little more than the word Jahveh has been supplied
-in some of these,--e. g., xix. 3, xx. 27, xxi. 1, 3, xxviii. 5,
-xxix. 26. But in a majority of cases the proverbs containing the name
-Jahveh are ethically and radically inharmonious with the substance
-and spirit of the book as a whole, which is founded on the supremacy
-of human "merits" as fully as Zoroastrianism, in which salvation
-depends absolutely on Good Thought, Good Word, Good Deed. In dynamic
-monotheism (as distinguished from ethical) of which Jahvism is the
-ancient and Islam the modern type, the doctrine of human "merits"
-is inadmissible: a man's virtues are not his own, and in Jahveh's
-sight they are but "filthy rags," except so far as they are given by
-Jahveh. But in the Solomonic proverbs the highest virtues, and the
-supreme blessings of the universe, are obtained by a man's own wisdom,
-character, and deeds. And in some cases the claims for Jahveh appear
-to have been inserted as if in answer or retort to proverbs ignoring
-the participation of any deity in such high matters. I quote a few
-instances, in which the antithesis turns to antagonism:
-
-
-    Solomon--By kindness and truth iniquity is atoned for.
-
-    Jahvist--By the fear of Jahveh men turn away from evil. (xvi. 6.)
-
-    Solomon--He who is skilful in a matter findeth good.
-
-    Jahvist--Whoso trusteth in Jahveh, happy is he! (xvi. 20.)
-
-
-In several other cases entire proverbs seem to be inserted for the
-correction of preceding ones,--these being not always understood by
-the interpolator:
-
-
-    Solomon--Treasures of evil profit not,
-    But virtue delivereth from death.
-
-    Jahvist--Jahveh will not suffer the righteous man to be famished,
-    But the desires of the unrighteous he thrusteth away. (x. 2, 3.)
-
-    Solomon--The tongue of the just is choice silver;
-    The heart of the evil is little worth:
-    The lips of the just feed many,
-    But fools die through heartlessness.
-
-    Jahvist--The blessing of Jahveh, that maketh rich,
-    And work addeth nothing thereto. (x. 20-22.)
-
-    Solomon--The virtuous man hath an everlasting foundation. (x. 25.)
-
-    Jahvist--The fear of Jahveh prolongeth days. (x. 27.)
-
-    Solomon--Hear counsel, receive correction,
-    That thou mayst be wise in thy future.
-
-    Jahvist--Many are the purposes in a man's heart,
-    But the counsel of Jahveh, that shall stand. (xix. 20-1.)
-
-    Solomon--The acceptableness of a man is his kindness:
-    Better off the poor than the treacherous man.
-
-    Jahvist--The fear of Jahveh addeth to life;
-    Whoso is filled therewith shall abide, he shall not be visited
-    by evil. (xix. 22-3.)
-
-    Solomon--The upright man considereth his way.
-
-    Jahvist--Wisdom is nothing, heart nothing,
-    Counsel nothing, against Jahveh. (xxi. 29, 30.)
-
-
-In one instance the Jahvist has made a slip by which his hand is
-confessed. In xvii. 3 we find:
-
-
-    The fining-pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold,
-    But Jahveh trieth hearts.
-
-
-But he omitted to notice the repetition in xxvii. 21, where we find
-the profound sentence which the Jahvist had reduced to commonplace:
-
-
-    The fining-pot for silver and the furnace for gold,
-    And a man is proved by that which he praiseth.
-
-
-The Jahvist spirit is also discoverable in xx. 22:
-
-
-    Solomon--Say not "I will retaliate evil";
-
-    Jahvist--Wait for Jahveh and he will save thee.
-
-
-Also in xxv. 21-2:
-
-
-    Solomon--If he that hateth thee be hungry, give him bread to eat,
-    If he be athirst give him water to drink.
-
-    Jahvist--For thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head,
-    And Jahveh shall reward thee.
-
-
-A similar mean and vindictive spirit is shown in xxiv. 18, following
-a magnanimous proverb; but in verse 29, probably more ancient than 18,
-we find the unqualified rebuke of retaliation:
-
-
-    Say not "As he hath done to me, so will I do to him,
-    I will render to the man according to his work."
-
-
-It was this generosity that Buddha exercised, [16] and Jesus; and it
-was left to Paul to recover the Jahvist modifications of Solomon's
-wisdom in order to adulterate for hard Romans the humane spirit of
-Jesus (Romans xii. 19, 20). The Solomonic sentences are normally so
-magnanimous as to throw suspicion on any clause tainted with smallness
-or vulgarity. The pervading spirit is, "The benevolent heart shall
-be enriched, and he who watereth shall himself be watered."
-
-There is one proverb (xiv. 32) which suggests a belief in immortality,
-or possibly in the Angel of Death:
-
-
-    By his evil deeds the evil man is thrust downward,
-    But the virtuous man hath confidence in his death.
-
-
-According to the Avesta every man is born with an invisible noose
-around his neck. When a good man dies the noose falls, and he passes
-to a beautiful region where he is met by a maid, to whom he says, "Who
-art thou, who art the fairest I have ever seen?" She answers, "O thou
-of good thoughts, good words, good deeds, I am thy actions." The evil
-man meets a leprous hag, embodiment of his actions, who by his noose
-drags him down through the evil-thought hell, the evil-word hell, the
-evil-deed hell, to the region of "Endless Darkness" (Yast xxii.). This
-darkness may be metaphorically spoken of in Proverbs xx. 20:
-
-
-    He that curseth his father and mother,
-    His lamp shall be put out in the blackest darkness.
-
-
-But generally the allusions to death in the Solomonic proverbs do not
-seem to allude to physical death. In x. 2 "virtue delivereth from
-death" is in antithesis to the unprofitableness of evil treasures,
-and in 16:
-
-
-    The reward of a virtuous man is life;
-    The gain of the wicked is sin.
-
-
-Here "life" and "sin" are in opposition. Other sentences to be
-compared are:
-
-
-    The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life,
-    To avoid the snares of death. (xiii. 14, cf. the Jahvist xiv. 27.)
-    Understanding is a fountain of life to those who possess it,
-    But the snare of fools is Folly. (xvi. 22.)
-    He that hateth reproof shall die. (xv. 10.)
-    The way of life is upward to the wise,
-    So as to turn away from the grave (sheol) beneath. (xv. 24.)
-    Death and life are in the power of the tongue,
-    And they who love it shall eat its fruit. (xviii. 21.)
-
-
-(In the last clause "it" probably refers to "life," unless the pronoun
-be cancelled altogether.)
-
-
-    The getting of treasures by a tongue of falsehood
-    Is getting a fleeting vapour, delusions of death. (xxi. 6.)
-    In the way of virtue is life,
-    But the way of the by-path leadeth to death. (xii. 28.)
-    The man who wandereth from the way of instruction
-    Shall rest in the congregation of the phantoms. (xxi. 16.)
-
-
-The two proverbs last quoted may be usefully compared with the ancient
-Prologue (viii. ix.) already referred to in this chapter, as they
-are there reproduced pictorially in Wisdom and Dame Folly sitting at
-their respective doors. Wisdom offers long life and happiness:
-
-
-    But he who wandereth from me doeth violence to his own life,
-    All who hate me love death. (viii. 36.)
-
-
-Dame Folly tries to turn into her by-path those who are "proceeding
-straight in their course" (ix. 15), but her victim--
-
-
-    He knoweth not her phantoms are there,
-    That her guests are in the underworld. (ix. 18.)
-
-
-The same Hebrew word Rephaim (phantoms or shades) is used here and
-in xxi. 16.
-
-All of these references to death and the underworld (sheol), except
-perhaps xiv. 32, refer to the living death, moral and spiritual,
-which is of such vast and fundamental significance in Zoroastrian
-religion. In this religion the evil power is "all death." The universe
-is divided by and into "the living and the not living." [17] "When
-these two Spirits came together they made first Life and Death,"--words
-sometimes used as synonymous with the "Good and the Evil Mind." Ahura
-Mazda representing all the forces that work for health and life,
-Angromainyu (Ahriman) all that work for disease and destruction, have
-ranged with them all animals and plants, on one side or the other, in
-this great conflict. The life of an Ahrimanian creature is "incarnate
-death." (Darmesteter's Introduction to the Vendidad, v. 11.) His
-destructiveness is equally against virtue, wisdom, peace, health,
-happiness, life, and all of these, not merely physical dissolution,
-are included in his Avestan title, "The Fiend who is all death." He
-is the Abaddon of Revelation ix. 11, also he "that had the power of
-death" in Hebrews ii. 14, and probably came into both of these from
-Proverbs xxvii. 20:
-
-
-    Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied,
-    And the eyes of man are never satisfied.
-
-
-Dr. Inman (Ancient Faiths, i., p. 180) connects Abaddon with "Abadan
-(cuneiform), the lost one, the sun in winter, or darkness," which
-conforms with the Avestan Ahriman, who is emphatically a winter-demon,
-his hell being in the north (cf. Jeremiah i. 14 and elsewhere),
-and is the natural adversary of the Fire-worshipper.
-
-Among the Zoroastrians there were not only Towers of Silence (Dakhma)
-for the literally dead, but also for the confinement of those tainted
-by carrying corpses, or by any contact with the death-fiend's empire,
-such as being struck with temporary death. "The unclean," says
-Darmesteter, "are confined in a particular place, apart from all clean
-persons and objects, the Armest-gah, which may be described, therefore,
-as the Dakhma for the living." Here then are the dead-alive guests of
-Dame Folly (Proverbs ix. 15), who opposes Wisdom, as Ahriman created
-Akem-Mano (evil thought) to oppose Vohu-Mano (good thought), and here
-is the assembly that might give the Solomonic proverb its metaphor:
-
-
-    The man who wandereth from the way of instruction
-    Shall rest in the congregation of the phantoms (or shades,
-    Rephaim).
-
-
-The Zoroastrian books from which I have been quoting contain passages
-of very unequal date, but it is the opinion of Avestan scholars that
-most of them are from very ancient sources, pre-Solomonic, and there
-is no chronological difficulty in supposing that such institutions
-as the Armest-gah, for the separation of the unclean, should not
-have been well known in ancient Jerusalem before the corresponding
-levitical laws concerning the unclean and the leprous existed.
-
-The Book of Proverbs was also a growth, and although, as has been
-stated, there is reason to regard as later additions most of the
-proverbs containing the word Jahveh, as they are inconsistent with the
-general ethical tenor of the book, there are several in which that
-name is evidently out of place. Even in the editorial Prologue we
-can hardly recognize orthodox Jahvism in the conception of a being,
-Wisdom, not created by Jahveh yet giving him delight and some kind
-of assistance at the creation; and nowhere else in the Old Testament
-do we find such an idea as that of xx. 27, "The spirit of a man is
-Jahveh's lamp," or in xix. 17:
-
-
-    He who is kind to the poor lendeth to Jahveh,
-    And his good deed shall be recompensed to him.
-
-
-But in the Zoroastrian religion men and women render assistance and
-encouragement to the gods, and we find the chief deity, Ahura Mazda,
-saying to Zoroaster concerning the Fravashis, or souls, of holy
-men and women: "Do thou proclaim, O pure Zoroaster, the vigor and
-strength, the glory, the help and the joy, that are in the Fravashis
-of the faithful ... do thou tell how they came to help me, how they
-bring assistance unto me.... Through their brightness and glory,
-O Zoroaster, I maintain that sky there above." Favardin Yast, 1,
-2.) As Frederick the Great said, "a king is the chief of subjects,"
-so with Zoroaster Ahura Mazda is the chief of the faithful; or,
-as Luther said, "God is strong, but he likes to be helped."
-
-The similitude in Proverbs xx. 27 is especially important in our
-inquiry:
-
-
-    The spirit of man is the lamp of Jahveh,
-    Searching all the chambers of the body.
-
-
-The word for "spirit" here is Nishma, which occurs in but one other
-instance in the Bible, namely, in Job xxvi. 4. Job asks:
-
-
-    To whom hast thou uttered words?
-    And whose spirit came forth from thee?
-
-
-This chapter of Job (xxvi.) is closely related to Proverbs viii. and
-ix., both in thought and phraseology: the Rephaim, or phantoms,
-the "pillars," the ordering of earth and clouds, the boundary on
-the deep; and there is an allusion to "the confines of Light and
-Darkness," which point to the domains of Wisdom and Dame Folly. Job
-and the proverbialist surely got these ideas from the same source,
-and also the word nishma, translated "spirit," which throughout the
-Old Testament is ruach, save in the two texts indicated. But there
-is no text in the Bible where ruach, spirit, or soul, is associated
-with light like the nishma of the proverb, and in Job nishma evidently
-means a superhuman spirit. Now there is a Chaldean word, nisma, which
-in the Persian Bundahis appears as nismo, and is translated by West,
-"living soul." The ordinary word for soul in the Parsi scriptures
-seems to be ruban, and West regards the two words as meaning the same
-thing, the breath, or soul, basing this on the following passage of
-the Bundahis, representing the separation of the first mortal into
-the first human pair, Mashya and Mashyoi:
-
-
-    "And the waists of both were brought close, and so connected
-    together that it was not clear which is the male and which the
-    female, and which is the one whose living soul (nismo) of Auharmazd
-    (God) is not away (lacking). As it is said thus: 'Which is created
-    before, the soul (nismo) or the body? And Auharmazd said that
-    the soul is created before, and the body after, for him who was
-    created; it is given unto the body to produce activity, and the
-    body is created only for activity; hence the conclusion is this,
-    that the soul (ruban) is created before and the body after. And
-    both of them changed from the shape of a plant into the shape of
-    man, and the breath (nismo) went spiritually into them, which is
-    the soul (ruban)." [18]
-
-
-With all deference to the learned translator, I cannot think his
-exegesis here quite satisfactory. In the first sentence nismo is the
-breath of God; and although in the second the same word is used for
-the human soul, the writer seems to have aimed in the last sentence
-at a distinction: the divine breath or spirit (nismo) creates a soul
-(ruban), to receive which the plant is transformed into a body fitted
-for the "activity" of an imbreathed soul. West twice translates nismo
-"living soul," but ruban only "soul." Does not this indicate Ahura
-Mazda as the source of divine life, as in Genesis ii. 7, where
-Jahveh-Elohim breathes into man, who becomes a "living soul,"--a
-being within the domain of the god of life, not subject to the god of
-death? Is it not his ruban that is the image of nismo? (Cf. Genesis
-ix. 5, 6.)
-
-Turning now to the Avesta, we find the famous Favardin Yast,
-a collection of litanies and ascriptions to the Fravashis. "The
-Fravashi," says Darmesteter, "is the inner power in every being that
-maintains it and makes it grow and subsist. Originally the Fravashis
-were the same as the Pitris of the Hindus or the Manes of the Latins,
-that is to say, the everlasting and deified souls of the dead;
-but in course of time they gained a wider domain, and not only men,
-but gods and even physical objects, like the sky and the earth, had
-each a Fravashi." "The Fravashi was independent of the circumstances
-of life or death, an immortal part of the individual which existed
-before man and outlived him."
-
-In Yast xxii. 39, 40, it is said: "O Maker, how do the souls of the
-dead, the Fravashis of the holy Ones, manifest themselves?" Ahura
-Mazda answered: "They manifest themselves from goodness of spirit
-and excellence of mind."
-
-Favardin Yast, 9: "Through their brightness and glory, O Zarathrustra,
-I maintain the wide earth," etc. 12: "Had not the awful Fravashis
-of the faithful given help unto me, those animals and men of mine,
-of which there are such excellent kinds, would not subsist; strength
-would belong to the fiend."
-
-In other verses these Fravashis (the word means "protectors") help
-the children unborn, nourish health, develop the wise. The imagery
-relating to them is largely related to the stars, of which many are
-guardians. These are probably the origin of the Solomonic similitude
-of reason, "The spirit (nishma) of man is the lamp of----?"
-
-With all of these correspondences between the Solomonic proverbs,
-nothing is more remarkable than their originality, so far as
-any ancient scriptures are concerned. While they are totally
-different from the Psalms, in showing man as a citizen of the world,
-relying on himself and those around him for happiness, and exalting
-nothing above human virtue and intelligence, without any religious
-fervor or wrath, the proverbialist is equally far from the ethical
-superstitions of Zoroastrian religion, which abounds in fictitious
-"merits" and anathematises fictitious immoralities. It is as if
-some sublime Eastern pedlar and banker of ethical and poetic gems,
-who had come in contact with Oriental literatures, had separated
-from their liturgies and prophecies the nuggets of gold and the
-precious stones, polishing, resetting, and exciting others to do the
-like. At the same time many of the sentences are the expressions of
-an original mind, a man of letters, neither Eastern nor Oriental,
-and these may be labelled with the line of the Persian poet Faizi:
-"Take Faizi's Diwan to bear witness to the wonderful speeches of a
-freethinker who belongs to a thousand sects."
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX.
-
-THE SONG OF SONGS.
-
-
-The praise of the virtuous woman, at the close of the Proverbs,
-is given a Jahvist turn by verse 30: "Favour is deceitful and beauty
-vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised." But the
-Solomonists also had their ideas of the virtuous woman, and of beauty,
-these being beautifully expressed in a series of dramatic idylls
-entitled The Song of Songs. To this latter, in the original title,
-is added, "which is Solomon's"; and it confirms what has been said
-concerning the superstitious awe of everything proceeding from Solomon,
-and the dread of insulting the Holy Spirit of Wisdom supernaturally
-lodged in him, that we find in the Bible these passionate love
-songs. And indeed Solomon must have been superlatively wise to have
-written poems in which his greatness is slightly ridiculed. That of
-course would be by no means incredible in a man of genuine wisdom--on
-the contrary would be characteristic--if other conditions were met
-by the tradition of his authorship.
-
-At the outset, however, we are confronted by the question whether
-the Song of Songs has any general coherency or dramatic character
-at all. Several modern critics of learning, among them Prof. Karl
-Budde and the late Edward Reuss, find the book a collection of
-unconnected lyrics, and Professor Cornill of Koenigsberg has added
-the great weight of his name to that opinion (Einleitung in das Alte
-Testament. 1891). Unfortunately Professor Cornill's treatment is brief,
-and not accompanied by a complete analysis of the book. He favors as
-a principle Reuss's division of Canticles into separate idylls, and
-thinks most readers import into this collection of songs an imaginary
-system and significance. This is certainly true of the "allegorical"
-purport, aim, and religious ideas ascribed to the book, but Professor
-Cornill's reference to Herder seems to leave the door open for further
-treatment of the Song of Songs from a purely literary standpoint. He
-praises Herder's discernment in describing the book as a string of
-pearls, but passes without criticism or denial Herder's further view
-that there are indications of editorial modifications of some of
-the lyrics. For what purpose? Herder also pointed out that various
-individualities and conditions are represented. This indeed appears
-undeniable: here are prince and shepherd, the tender mother, the cruel
-brothers, the rough watchman, the dancer, the bride and bridegroom. The
-dramatis personae are certainly present: but is there any drama?
-
-Admitting that there was no ancient Hebrew theatre, the question
-remains whether among the later Hellenic Jews the old songs were
-not arranged, and new ones added, in some kind of Singspiele or
-vaudeville. There seems to be a chorus. It is hardly consistent
-with the general artistic quality of the compilation that the lady
-should say "I am swarthy but comely," or "I am a lily of the valley"
-(a gorgeous flower). Surely the compliments are ejaculations of the
-chorus. And may we not ascribe to a chorus the questions, "Who is
-this that cometh up out of the wilderness?" etc. (iii. 6-10.) "What
-is thy beloved more than another beloved"? (v. 9.) "Who is this that
-cometh up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved"? (viii. 5).
-
-As in the modern vaudeville songs are often introduced without
-any special relation to the play, so we find in Canticles some
-songs that might be transposed from one chapter to another without
-marring the work, but is this the case with all of them? The song
-in the first chapter, for instance, in which the damsel, brought by
-the King into his palace, tells the ladies of the home she left,
-and of maltreatment by her brothers, who took her from her own
-vineyard and made her work in theirs, where she was sunburnt,--this
-could not be placed effectively at the end of the book, nor the
-triumphant line, "My vineyard, which is mine own, is before me,"
-be set at the beginning. This is but one of several instances that
-might be quoted. Even pearls may be strung with definite purpose,
-as in a rosary, and how perfectly set is the great rose,--the hymn
-to Love in the final chapter! Or to remember Professor Cornill's word
-Scenenwechsel, along with his affirmation that the love of human lovers
-is the burden of the "unrivalled" book, there are some sequences
-and contrasts which do convey an impression of dissolving views,
-and occasionally reveal a connexion between separate tableaux. For
-example the same words (which I conjecture to be those of a chorus)
-are used to introduce Solomon in pompous palanquin with grand escort,
-that are presently used to greet the united lovers.
-
-
-   "Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness like pillars of
-    smoke?" (iii. 6.)
-
-    "Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness
-    Leaning on her beloved?" (viii. 5.)
-
-
-These are five chapters apart, yet surely they may be supposed
-connected without Hineininterpretation. Any single contrast of this
-kind might be supposed a mere coincidence, but there are two others
-drawn between the swarthy maiden and the monarch. The tableau of
-Solomon in his splendor dissolves into another of his Queen Mother
-crowning him on the day of his espousal: that of Shulamith leaning on
-her beloved dissolves into another of her mother pledging her to her
-lover in espousals under an apple tree. And then we find (viii. 11,
-12) Solomon's distant vineyards tended by many hirelings contrasted
-with Shulamith's own little vineyard tended by herself.
-
-The theory that the book is a collection of bridal songs, and that
-the mention of Solomon is due to an eastern custom of designating
-the bridegroom and bride as Solomon and Queen Shulamith, during
-their honeymoon, does not seem consistent with the fact that in
-several allusions to Solomon his royal state is slighted, whereas only
-compliments would be paid to a bridegroom. Moreover the two--Shulamith
-and Solomon--are not as persons named together. It will, I think,
-appear as we proceed that the Shelomoh (Solomon) of Canticles
-represents a conventionalisation of the monarch, with some traits
-not found in any other book in the Bible. A verse near the close,
-presently considered, suggests that the bride and bridegroom are at
-that one point metaphorically pictured as a Solomon and Solomona,
-indicating one feature of the Wise Man's conventionalization.
-
-Renan assigned Canticles the date B. C. 992-952, mainly because in
-it Tirza is coupled with Jerusalem. Tirza was a capital only during
-those years, and at any later period was too insignificant a town to
-be spoken of as in the Song vi. 4:
-
-
-   "Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah,
-    Comely as Jerusalem,
-    Dazzling as bannered ranks."
-
-
-But the late Russell Martineau, a thorough and unbiassed scholar,
-points out in the work phrases from Greek authors of the third
-century B. C., and assigns a date not earlier than 247-222. [19]
-But may it not be that the Alexandrian of the third century built on
-some earlier foundation, as Shakespeare adapted the "Pound of Flesh"
-and the "Three Caskets" (Merchant of Venice) from tales traceable as
-far back as early Buddhist literature? or as Marlowe and Goethe used
-the mediaeval legend of Faustus?
-
-The several songs can hardly be assigned to one and the same
-century. The coupling of Tirza and Jerusalem points to a remote past
-for that particular lyric, and is it credible that any Jew after
-Josiah's time could have written the figleafless songs so minutely
-descriptive of Shulamith's physical charms? Could any Jewish writer of
-the third century before our era have written iv. 1-7 or vii. 1-9,
-regarding no name or place as too sacred to be pressed into his
-hyperboles of rapture at every detail of the maiden's form, and
-have done this in perfect innocency, without a blush? Or if such a
-poet could have existed in the later Jahvist times, would his songs
-have found their place in the Jewish canon? As it was the book was
-admitted only with a provision that no Jew under thirty years of age
-should read it. That it was included at all was due to the occult
-pious meanings read into it by rabbins, while it is tolerably certain
-that the realistic flesh-painting would have been expunged but for
-sanctions of antiquity similar to those which now protect so many
-old classics from expurgation by the Vice Societies. These songs,
-sensuous without sensuality, with their Oriental accent, seem ancient
-enough to have been brought by Solomon from Ophir.
-
-On the other hand a critical reader can hardly ascribe the whole book
-to the Solomonic period. The exquisite exaltation of Love, as a human
-passion (viii. 6, 7), brings us into the refined atmosphere amid which
-Eros was developed, and it is immediately followed by a song that
-hardly rises above doggerel (viii. 8, 9). This is an interruption
-of the poem that looks as if suggested by the line that follows it
-(first line of verse 10) and meant to be comic. It impresses me as
-a very late interpolation, and by a hand inferior to the Alexandrian
-artist who in style has so well matched the more ancient pieces in his
-literary mosaic. Herder finds the collection as a whole Solomonic,
-and makes the striking suggestion that its author at a more mature
-age would take the tone of Ecclesiasticus.
-
-Considered simply as a literary production, the composition makes
-on my own mind the impression of a romance conveyed in idylls, each
-presenting a picturesque situation or a scene, the general theme and
-motif being that of the great Solomonic Psalm.
-
-This psalm (xlv.), quoted and discussed in chapter III., brings
-before us a beautiful maiden brought from a distant region to
-the court, but not quite happy: she is entreated to forget her
-people and enjoy the dignities and luxuries offered by her lord,
-the King. This psalm is remarkable in its intimations of a freedom
-of sentiment accorded to the ladies wooed by Solomon, and the same
-spirit pervades Canticles. Its chief refrain is that love must not be
-coerced or awakened until it please. This magnanimity might naturally
-connect the name of Solomon with old songs of love and courtship such
-as those utilised and multiplied in this book, whose composition might
-be naturally entitled "A Song (made) of Songs which are Solomon's."
-
-The heroine, whose name is Shulamith,--(feminine of Shelomoh,
-Solomon) [20]--is an only daughter, cherished by her apparently
-widowed mother but maltreated by her brothers. Incensed against her,
-they compel Shulamith to keep their vineyards to the neglect of her
-own. She becomes sunburnt, "swarthy," but is very "attractive," and
-is brought by Solomon to his palace, where she delights the ladies
-by her beauty and dances. In what I suppose to be one of the ancient
-Solomonic Songs embodied in the work it is said:
-
-
-   "There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines,
-    And maidens without number:
-    Beyond compare is my dove, my unsoiled;
-    She is the only one of her mother,
-    The cherished one of her that bare her:
-    The daughters saw her and called her blessed,
-    Yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her." [21]
-
-
-Thus far the motif seems to be that of a Cinderella oppressed by
-brothers but exalted by the most magnificent of princes. But here
-the plot changes. The magnificence of Solomon cannot allure from her
-shepherd lover this "lily of the valley." Her lover visits her in
-the palace, where her now relenting brothers (vi. 12) seem to appear
-(though this is doubtful) and witness her triumphs; and all are in
-raptures at her dancing and her amply displayed charms--all unless
-one (perhaps the lover) who, according to a doubtful interpretation,
-complains that they should gaze at her as at dancers in the camps
-(vi. 13). [22]
-
-Although Russell Martineau maintained, against most other commentators,
-that Solomon is only a part of the scene, and not among the dramatis
-personae, the King certainly seems to be occasionally present, as in
-the following dialogue, where I give the probable, though of course
-conjectural, names. The dancer has approached the King while at table.
-
-
-Solomon--
-
-   "I have compared thee, O my love,
-    To my steed in Pharaoh's chariot.
-    Thy cheeks are comely with plaits of hair,
-    Thy neck with strings of jewels.
-    We will make thee plaits of gold
-    With studs of silver."
-
-
-Shulamith, who, on leaving the King, meets her jealous lover--
-
-   "While the King sat at his table
-    My spikenard sent forth its odor.
-    My beloved is unto me as a bag of myrrh
-    That lieth between my breasts,
-    My beloved is unto me as a cluster of henna-flowers
-    In the vineyards of En-gedi."
-
-
-Shepherd Lover--
-
-   "Behold thou art fair, my love, behold thou art fair;
-    Thine eyes are as doves,
-    Behold thou art fair, my beloved, yea pleasant:
-    Also our couch is green.
-    The beams of our house are of cedar,
-    And our rafters are of fir."
-
-
-Shulamith--
-
-   "I am a (mere) crocus of the plain."
-
-
-Chorus, or perhaps the Lover--
-
-   "A lily of the valleys."
-
-
-Shepherd Lover--
-
-   "As a lily among thorns
-    So is my love among the daughters."
-
-
-Shulamith--
-
-   "As the apple tree among forest trees
-    So is my beloved among the sons.
-    I sat down under his shadow with great delight,
-    And his fruit was sweet to my taste."
-
-
-Thus we find the damsel anointing the king with her spikenard, but
-for her the precious fragrance is her shepherd. Against the plaits of
-gold and studs of silver offered in the palace (i. 2) her lover can
-only point to his cottage of cedar and fir, and a couch of grass. She
-is content to be only a flower of the plain and valley, not for the
-seraglio. Nevertheless she remains to dance in the palace; a sufficient
-time there is needed by the poet to illustrate the impregnability of
-true love against all other splendors and attractions, even those of
-the Flower of Kings. He however puts no constraint on her, one song,
-thrice repeated, saying to the ladies of the harem--
-
-
-   "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
-    By the (free) gazelles, by the hinds in the field,
-    That ye stir not up, nor awaken love,
-    Until it please."
-
-
-This refrain is repeated the second time just before a picture of
-Solomon's glory, shaded by a suggestion that all is not brightness even
-around this Prince of Peace. The ladies of the seraglio are summoned
-to look out and see the passing of the King in state, seated on his
-palanquin of purple and gold, but escorted by armed men "because of
-fear in the night." In immediate contrast with that scene, we see
-Shulamith going off with her humble lover, now his bride, to his field
-and to her vineyard, and singing a beautiful song of love, strong as
-death, flame-tipped arrow of a god, unquenchable, unpurchaseable.
-
-Though according to the revised version of vi. 12 her relatives are
-princely, and it may be they who invite her to return (vi. 13), she
-says, "I am my beloved's." With him she will go into the field and
-lodge in the village (vii. 10, 11). She finds her own little garden
-and does not envy Solomon.
-
-
-   "Solomon hath a vineyard at Baalhamon;
-    He hath let out the vineyard to keepers;
-    Each for the fruit thereof was to bring a thousand pieces of
-    silver:
-    My vineyard, which is mine, is before me:
-    Thou, O Solomon, shall have the thousand,
-    And those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred."
-
-
-There was, as we see in Koheleth, a prevailing tradition that Solomon
-felt the hollowness of his palatial life. "See life with a woman thou
-lovest." The wife is the fountain:
-
-
-   "Bethink thee of thy fountain
-    In the days of thy youth."
-
-
-This perhaps gave rise to a theory that the shepherd lover was Solomon
-himself in disguise, like the god Krishna among the cow-maidens. It
-does not appear probable that any thought of that kind was in
-the writer of this Song. Certainly there appears not to be any
-purpose of lowering Solomon personally in enthroning Love above
-him. There is no hint of any religious or moral objection to him,
-and indeed throughout the work Solomon appears in a favourable
-light personally,--he is beloved by the daughters of Jerusalem
-(v. 10)--though his royal estate is, as we have seen, shown in a light
-not altogether enviable. Threescore mighty men guard him: "every man
-hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night," and the
-day of his heart's gladness was the day of his espousals (iii. 8, 11).
-
-It is not improbable that there is an allusion to Solomon's magic seal
-in the first lines of the hymn to Love (viii. 6). The legend of the
-Ring must have been long in growing to the form in which it is found in
-the Talmud, where it is said that Solomon's "fear in the night" arose
-from his apprehension that the Devil might again get hold of his Ring,
-with which he (Aschmedai) once wrought much mischief. (Gittin. Vol. 68,
-col. 1, 2). The hymn strikes me as late Alexandrian:
-
-
-   "Wear me as a seal on thy breast
-    As a seal-ring on thine arm:
-    For love is strong as death,
-    Its passion unappeasable as the grave;
-    Its shafts are arrows of fire,
-    The lightnings of a god. [Jah.]
-    Many waters cannot quench love,
-    Deluges cannot overwhelm it.
-    Should a noble offer all the wealth of his house for love
-    It would be utterly spurned."
-
-
-Excluding the interrupting verses 8 and 9, the hymn is followed by a
-song about Solomon's vineyard, preceded by two lines which appear to
-me to possess a significance overlooked by commentators. Shulamith
-(evidently) speaks:
-
-
-   "I was a wall, my breasts like its towers:
-    Thus have I been in his eyes as one finding peace.
-    Solomon hath a vineyard," etc. [as above.]
-
-
-The word "peace" is Shalom; it is immediately followed by Shelomoh
-(Solomon, "peaceful"); and Shulamith (also meaning "peaceful"), thus
-brings together the fortress of her lover's peace, her own breast,
-and the fortifications built by the peaceful King (who never attacked
-but was always prepared for defence). Here surely, at the close of
-Canticles, is a sort of tableau: Shalom, Shulamith, Shelomoh: Peace,
-the prince of Peace, the queen of Peace. If this were the only lyric
-one would surely infer that these were the bride and bridegroom, under
-the benediction of Peace. It is not improbable that at this climax of
-the poem Shulamith means that in her lover she has found her Solomon,
-and he found in her his Solomona,--their reciprocal strongholds of
-Shalom or Peace.
-
-Of course my interpretations of the Song of Songs are largely
-conjectural, as all other interpretations necessarily are. The songs
-are there to be somehow explained, and it is of importance that every
-unbiassed student of the book should state his conjectures, these
-being based on the contents of the book, and not on the dogmatic
-theories which have been projected into it. I have been compelled,
-under the necessary limitations of an essay like the present, to omit
-interesting details in the work, but have endeavoured to convey the
-impression left on my own mind by a totally unprejudiced study. The
-conviction has grown upon me with every step that, even at the lowest
-date ever assigned it, the work represents the earliest full expression
-of romantic love known in any language. It is so entirely free from
-fabulous, supernatural, or even pious incidents and accents, so human
-and realistic, that its having escaped the modern playwright can only
-be attributed to the superstitious encrustations by which its beauty
-has been concealed for many centuries.
-
-This process of perversion was begun by Jewish Jahvists, but they have
-been far surpassed by our A. S. version, whose solemn nonsense at
-most of the chapter heads in the Bible here reached its climax. It
-is a remarkable illustration of the depths of fatuity to which
-clerical minds may be brought by prepossession, that the closing
-chapter of Canticles, with its beautiful exaltation of romantic love,
-could be headed: "The love of the Church to Christ. The vehemency of
-Love. The calling of the Gentiles. The Church Prayeth for Christ's
-coming." The "Higher Criticism" is now turning the headings into
-comedy, but they have done--nay, are continuing--their very serious
-work of misdirection.
-
-It has already been noted that the Jewish doctors exalted Bathsheba,
-adulteress as she was, into a blessed woman, probably because of the
-allusion to her in the Song (iii. 2) as having crowned her royal Son,
-who had become mystical; and it can only be ascribed to Protestantism
-that, instead of the Queen-Mother Mary, the Church becomes Bathsheba's
-successor in our version: "The Church glorieth in Christ." And of
-course the shepherd lover's feeding (his flock) among the lilies
-becomes "Christ's care of the Church."
-
-But for such fantasies the beautiful Song of Songs might indeed never
-have been preserved at all, yet is it a scandal that Bibles containing
-chapter-headings known by all educated Christians to be falsifications,
-should be circulated in every part of the world, and chiefly among
-ignorant and easily misled minds. These simple people, reading the
-anathemas pronounced in their Bibles on those who add anything to the
-book given them as the "Word of God" (Deuteronomy iv. 2, xii. 32,
-Proverbs xxx. 6, Revelation xxii. 18), cannot imagine that these
-chapter-headings are not in the original books, but forged. And what
-can be more brazenly fraudulent than the chapter-heading to one of
-these very passages (Revelation xxii. 18, 19), where nothing is said
-of the "Word of God," but over which is printed: "18. Nothing may be
-added to the word of God, nor taken therefrom." But even the learned
-cannot quite escape the effect of these perversions. How far they reach
-is illustrated in the fate of Mary Magdalen, a perfectly innocent woman
-according to the New Testament, yet by a single chapter-heading in Luke
-branded for all time as the "sinner" who anointed Jesus,--"Magdalen"
-being now in our dictionaries as a repentant prostitute. Yet there are
-hundreds of additions to the Bible more harmful than this,--additions
-which, whether honestly made or not originally, are now notoriously
-fraudulent. It is especially necessary in the interest of the Solomonic
-and secular literature in the Bible that Truth shall be liberated from
-the malarious well--Jahvist and ecclesiastical--in which she has long
-been sunk by mistranslation, interpolation, and chapter-headings. The
-Christian churches are to be credited with having produced critics
-brave enough to expose most of these impositions, and it is now the
-manifest duty of all public teachers and literary leaders to uphold
-those scholars, to protest against the continuance of the propaganda
-of pious frauds, and to insist upon the supremacy of truth.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X.
-
-KOHELETH (ECCLESIASTES).
-
-
-In the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1897, a writer, in giving his
-personal reminiscences of Tennyson, relates an anecdote concerning the
-poet and the Rev. F. D. Maurice. Speaking of Ecclesiastes (Koheleth),
-Tennyson said it was the one book the admission of which into the
-canon he could not understand, it was so utterly pessimistic--of the
-earth, earthy. Maurice fired up. "Yes, if you leave out the last two
-verses. But the conclusion of the whole matter is, 'Fear God and keep
-His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall
-bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it
-be good or whether it be evil.' So long as you look only down upon
-earth, all is 'vanity of vanities.' But if you look up there is a God,
-the judge of good and evil." Tennyson said he would think over the
-matter from that point of view.
-
-This amusing incident must have caused a ripple of laughter in
-scholastic circles, now that the labors of Cheyne, Renan, Dillon,
-and others, have left little doubt that both of the verses cited
-by Maurice are later editorial additions. They alone, he admitted,
-could save the book, and the charm of the incident is that the verses
-were placed there by ancient Maurices to induce ancient Tennysons to
-"think over the matter from that point of view." The result was that
-the previously rejected book was admitted into the canon by precisely
-the same force which continued its work at Faringford, and continues
-it to this day. Only one must not suppose that Mr. Maurice was aware
-of the ungenuineness of the verses. He was an honest gentleman,
-but so ingeniously mystical that had the two verses not been there
-he could readily have found others of equally transcendant and holy
-significance, without even resorting to other pious interpolations
-in the book.
-
-Tennyson was curiously unconscious of his own pessimism. When any one
-questioned the belief in a future life in his presence his vehemence
-without argument betrayed his sub-conscious misgivings, while his
-indignation ran over all the conditional resentments of Job. I have
-heard that he said to Tyndall that if he knew there was no future
-life he would regard the creator of human beings as a demon, and
-shake his fist in His eternal face. This rage was based in a more
-profoundly pessimistic view of the present life than anything even
-in Ecclesiastes,--by which name may be happily distinguished the
-disordered, perverted, and mistranslated Koheleth.
-
-It appears evident that the sentence which opens Koheleth,--in our
-Bibles "All is vanity, saith the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all
-is vanity,"--is as mere a Jahvist chapter-heading as that of our
-A. S. translators: "The Preacher showeth that all human courses are
-vain." It is repeated as the second of the eight verses added at the
-end of the work. Koheleth does not label the whole of things vanity;
-in a majority of cases the things he calls vain are vain; and some
-things he finds not vanity,--youth, and wedded love, and work that
-is congenial.
-
-Renan (Histoire du Peuple d'Israel, Tome 5, p. 158) has shown
-conclusively, as I think, that the signature on this book, QHLT,
-is a mere letter-play on the word "Solomon," and the eagerness
-with which the letters were turned into Koheleth (which really
-means Preacheress), and to make Solomon's inner spouse a preacher
-of the vanities of pleasure and the wisdom of fearing God, is thus
-naively indicated in the successive names of the book, "Koheleth"
-and "Ecclesiastes." We are thus warned by the title to pick our way
-carefully where the Jahvist and the Ecclesiastic have been before us;
-remembering especially that though piety may induce men to forge
-things, this is never done lightly. As people now do not commit
-forgery for a shilling, so neither did those who placed spurious
-sentences or phrases in nearly every chapter of the Bible do so for
-anything they did not consider vital to morality or to salvation. In
-Ecclesiastes we must be especially suspicious of the very serious
-religious points. Fortunately the style of the book renders it
-particularly subject to the critical and literary touchstone.
-
-Is it necessary to point out to any man of literary instinct the
-interpolation bracketed in the following verses? "Rejoice, O young
-man, in thy youth, and let thy heart gladden thee in the flower of thy
-age, and walk in the paths of thy heart, and according to the vision
-of thine eyes [but know thou that for all these things God will bring
-thee into judgment], and banish discontent from thy heart, and put away
-evil from thy flesh; for youth and dawn are fleeting. Remember also
-thy fountain in the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days come or
-the years draw nigh in which thou shalt say I have no delight in them."
-
-It is only by removing the bracketed clause that any consistency can be
-found in the lyric, which Professor Cheyne compares with the following
-song by the ancient Egyptian harper at the funeral feast of Neferhotap:
-
-
-   "Make a good day, O holy fathers!
-    Let odors and oils stand before thy nostril;
-    Wreaths and lotus are on the arms and bosom of thy sister
-    Dwelling in thy heart, sitting beside thee.
-    Let song and music be before thy face,
-    And leave behind thee all evil dirges!
-    Mind thee of joy, till cometh the day of pilgrimage,
-    When we draw near the land that loveth silence." [23]
-
-
-There is no historical means of determining what writings of Solomon
-are preserved in the Bible and even in the apocryphal books. One may
-feel that Goethe recognised a brother spirit in that far epoch when
-he selected for his proverb:
-
-
-   "Apples of gold in chased work of silver,
-    A word smoothly spoken."
-
-
-Koheleth too appreciated this, and also (x. 12) uses almost literally
-Proverbs xii. 18, "The tongue of the wise is gentleness." (Compare
-Shakespeare's words, "Let gentleness my strong enforcement be.") The
-lines previously cited, "Rejoice O young man, etc.," are also probably
-quoted, as they are given in poetical quatrains. There are many of
-these quatrains introduced into the book, from the prose context of
-which they differ in style and sometimes in sense.
-
-In none of these metrical quotations (as I believe them to be) is
-there any belief in God, the only instance in which the word "God"
-is mentioned being an ironical maxim about the danger coming from
-monarchs because of their oaths to their God, with whom they identify
-their own ways and wishes. Such seems to me the meaning of the lines
-(viii. 2, 4) which Dillon translates--
-
-
-   "The wise man harkens to the king's command,
-    By reason of the oath to God.
-    Mighty is the word of the monarch:
-    Who dares ask him, 'What dost thou?'"
-
-
-With this compare Proverbs xxi. 1, "The king's heart is in the hand
-of the Lord (Jahveh) as the water-courses; he turneth it whithersoever
-he will." This proverb is evidently by a Jahvist, and Koheleth quotes
-another which signifies rather "Jahveh is in the king's caprice." But
-he adopts the neighbouring proverb, "To do justice and judgment is
-more acceptable to Jahveh than sacrifice." Koheleth says, and this
-is not quoted--"To draw near to (God) in order to learn, is better
-than the offering of sacrifices by fools."
-
-Although the verses quoted by Maurice to Tennyson (xii. 13, 14) are not
-genuinely in Koheleth they correspond with sentences in the genuine
-text of very different import. Koheleth, though his quotations are
-godless, believes there is a God, and a formidable one. Sometimes he
-refers to him as Fate, sometimes as the unknowable, but as without
-moral quality. "To the just men that happeneth which should befall
-wrong-doers; and that happeneth for criminals which should be the lot
-of the upright" (viii. 14), and "neither (God's) love nor hatred doth
-a man foresee" (ix. 1). God has set prosperity and adversity side by
-side for the express purpose of hiding Himself from human knowledge
-(vii. 14); not, alas, as the Yalkut Koheleth suggests, in order that
-one may help the other. God does benefit those who please him, and
-punish those who displease him; this is 'good' and 'evil' to Him; but
-it has no relation with the humanly good and evil (viii. 11-14). As
-it is evident that God's favor is not secured by good works nor his
-disfavor incurred by evil works, a prudent man will consider that
-it may perhaps be a matter of etiquette, and will be punctilious,
-especially "in the house of God"; he will not speak rashly and then
-hope to escape by saying "it was rashness." His words had better be
-few, and if he makes any vow (which may well be avoided) he should
-perform it. But as for practical life and conduct, God, or fate,
-is clearly indifferent to it, consequently let a man eat his bread
-and quaff his wine with joy, love his wife,--the best portion of
-his lot,--and whatever his hand findeth to do that do with vigor,
-remembering that "there is no work, nor thought, nor knowledge,
-nor wisdom, in the inevitable grave."
-
-Such is Koheleth's conception of life, which, except so far as it
-is marred by a vague notion of Fate which is fatal to philanthropy,
-is not very different from the idea growing in our own time. "The
-All is a never-ceasing whirl" (i. 8), and Koheleth advises that each
-individual man try to make what little circle of happiness he can
-around him. "O my heart!" says Omar Khayyam, "thou wilt never penetrate
-the mysteries of the heavens; thou wilt never reach that culminating
-point of wisdom which the intrepid omniscients have attained. Resign
-thyself then to make what little paradise thou canst here below. As
-for that close-barred seraglio beyond thou shalt arrive there--or
-thou shalt not!"
-
-It is, however, impossible for any church or priesthood to be
-maintained on any such principles. Where mankind believe with Koheleth
-that whatever God does is forever, that nothing can be superadded
-to it nor aught be taken away; and that God has so contrived that
-man must fear Him; they will have no use for any paraphernalia for
-softening the irrevocable decrees of a Judgment Day already past. But
-Koheleth's arrows, feathered with wit and eloquence, were logically
-shot from the Jahvist arquebus. It was Jahveh himself who proudly
-claimed that he created good and evil, and that if there were evil in
-a city it was his work. It was Jahveh's own prophet, Isaiah, who cried
-(lxiii. 17), "O Lord, why dost Thou make us to err from Thy ways,
-and hardenest our heart from Thy fear?"
-
-What then could Jahvism say when a time arrived wherein it must defend
-itself against a Jahveh-created world?
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-WISDOM (ECCLESIASTICUS).
-
-
-It was necessary that Koheleth should be answered, but who was
-competent for this? A fable had been invented of a Solomonic serpent
-who had tempted Eve to taste the fruit of knowledge which, when the
-man shared it, brought a curse on the earth, but the canonical prophets
-do not appear to have heard of it, and at any rate it was too late in
-the day to meet fact with fable. Nor had Jahveh's whirlwind-answer
-to Job proved effectual. However, some sort of answer did come,
-and significantly enough it had to come from Koheleth's own quarter,
-the Wisdom school. Pure Jahvism had not brains enough for the task.
-
-The apocryphal book "Ecclesiasticus" is the antidote to
-Ecclesiastes. (These are the Christian names given to the two
-books.) This book, bearing the simple title "Wisdom," compiled and
-partly written by Jesus Ben Sira early in the second century B. C.,
-is as a whole much more than an offset to Koheleth. It is a great
-though unintentional literary monument to Solomon, and it is the book
-of reconciliation, or so intended, between Solomonism and Jahvism,--or,
-as we should now say, between philosophy and theology.
-
-The newly discovered original Hebrew of Ecclesiasticus xxxix. 15,
-xlix. 11, published by the Clarendon Press in 1897, enables us to read
-correctly for the first time the portraiture of Solomon in xlvii.,
-with the assistance of Wace and other scholars:
-
-
-    12. After him [David] rose up a wise son, and for his [David's]
-    sake he dwelt in quiet.
-
-    13. Solomon reigned in days of prosperity, and was honoured, and
-    God gave rest to him round about that he might build an house in
-    his name, and prepare his sanctuary for ever.
-
-    14. How wast thou wise in thy youth, and didst overflow with
-    instruction like the Nile!
-
-    15. The earth (was covered by thy soul) and thou didst celebrate
-    song in the height.
-
-    16. Thy name went far unto the islands, and for thy peace thou
-    wast beloved.
-
-    17. The countries marvelled at thee for thy songs, and proverbs,
-    and parables, and interpretations.
-
-    18. Thou wast called by the glorious name which is called over
-    Israel.
-
-    18a. Thou didst gather gold as tin, and didst gather silver
-    as lead.
-
-    19. But thou gavest thy loins unto women, and lettest them have
-    dominion over thy body.
-
-    20. Thou didst stain thy honour and pollute thy seed; so that
-    thou broughtest wrath upon thy children, that they should groan
-    in their beds.
-
-    21. That the kingdom should be divided: and out of Ephraim ruled
-    a rebel kingdom.
-
-    22. But the Lord will never leave off his mercy, neither shall
-    any of his words perish, neither will he abolish the posterity of
-    his elect, and the seed of him that loveth him he will not take
-    away: wherefore he gave a remnant unto Jacob, and out of him a
-    root unto David.
-
-    23. Thus rested Solomon with his fathers, and of his seed he left
-    behind him Rehoboam [of the lineage of Ammon], ample in foolishness
-    and lacking understanding, who by his council let loose the people.
-
-
-In the last sentence I have inserted in crochets an alternative
-reading of Fritzsche for the three words that follow. (Rehoboam's
-Ammonite mother was Naamah.)
-
-It will be noticed that early in the second century B. C. there
-remained no trace of the anathemas on Solomon for his foreign or
-his idolatrous wives. He is now simply accused of being too fond of
-women,--a charge not known to the canonical books.
-
-The verse 18 attests the correctness of the view taken of the
-forty-fifth Psalm in chapter III., written before this Clarendon
-Press volume appeared. It thus becomes certain that the Psalm was
-recognised as written in Solomon's time, and that it was he who was
-there addressed as "God" ("the glorious name").
-
-The mention of this fact in "Wisdom," and the enthusiasm pervading
-every sentence of the tribute to Solomon, despite his alleged
-sensuality, supply conclusive evidence that the cult of Solomon had
-for more than eight centuries been continuous, that it was at length
-prevailing, and that it had become necessary for a broad wing of
-Jahvism to include the Solomonic worldly wisdom and ethics.
-
-Jesus Ben Sira states that he found a book written by his learned
-grandfather, whose name was also Jesus, who had studied many works of
-"our fathers," and added to them writings of his own. The anonymous
-preface states that Sira, son of the first Jesus, left it to his son,
-and that "this Jesus did imitate Solomon."
-
-It is not said that Sira contributed anything to this composite work,
-yet there appear to be three minds in it. There is a fine and free
-philosophy which savors of the earliest traditions of the Solomonic
-School; there is an exceptionally morose Jahvism; and there is also
-mysticism, an attempt to rationalise and soften the Jahvism, and to
-solemnise the philosophy, so as to blend them in a kind of harmonious
-religion. I cannot help feeling that Sira or some friend of his must
-have inserted the Jahvism between the grandfather and the grandson.
-
-However this may be, it is evident that Jesus Ben Sira was too
-reverent to seriously alter anything in the volume before him,
-for the contrast is startling between the hard Jahvism and the
-philosophy of life. Their inclusion in one work is like the union
-of oil and vinegar. The Jahvism is curiously bald: fear Jahveh, keep
-his commandments, pay your tithes, say your prayers, be severe with
-your children (especially daughters), never play with them, guard
-your wife vigilantly, flog your servants. The philosophy is quite
-incongruous with this formalism and rigidity, most of the maxims
-being elaborated with care, and only proverbs in form. Some of them
-are almost Shakespearian in artistic expression:
-
-
-    "Pipe and harp make sweet the song, but a sincere tongue is above
-    them both."
-
-    "Wisdom hid, and treasure hoarded, what value is in either?"
-
-    "The fool's heart is in his mouth, the wise man's mouth is in
-    his heart."
-
-    "There is no riches above a sound body, and no joy above that of
-    the heart."
-
-    "Whoso regardeth dreams is as one who grasps at his shadow."
-
-    "The evil man cursing Satan is but cursing himself."
-
-    "The bars of Wisdom shall be thy fortress, her chains thy robe
-    of honour."
-
-
-About the rendering of xli. 15 there is some doubt, and I give this
-conjecture:
-
-
-    Better the (ignorant) that hideth his folly, than the (learned)
-    who hideth his wisdom.
-
-
-In the Bible which belonged to the historian Gibbon, loaned by
-the late General Meredith Read to the Gibbon exhibition in London,
-I observed a pencil mark around these sentences in "Wisdom":
-
-
-   "He that buildeth his house with other men's money, is like one
-    that gathereth stones for the tomb of his own burial."
-
-   "He that is not wise will not be taught, but there is a wisdom
-    that multiplieth bitterness."
-
-
-To Jesus Ben Sira we may, I believe, ascribe the following:
-
-
-   "Glorifying God, exalt him as far as your thought can reach, yet
-    you will never attain to his height: praising him, put forth all
-    your powers, be not weary, yet ever will they fall short. Who hath
-    seen him that he can tell us? Who can describe him as he is? Let
-    us still be rejoicing in him, for we shall not search him out:
-    he is great beyond his works."
-
-
-This has an interesting correspondence with the beautiful rapture of
-the Persian Sadi:
-
-
-   "They who pretend to be informed are ignorant, for they who have
-    known him have not recovered their senses. O thou who towerest
-    above the heights of imagination, thought, or conjecture,
-    surpassing all that has been related, and excelling all that we
-    have heard or read, the banquet is ended, the congregation is
-    dismissed, and life draws to a close, and we still rest in our
-    first encomium of thee!"
-
-
-To Jesus Ben Sira may be safely ascribed the passages that bear
-witness to the pressure of problems which, though old, appear in
-new forms under Hellenic influences. They grow urgent and threaten
-the foundations of Jahvism. It was no longer sufficient to say that
-Jahveh rewarded virtue and piety, and punished vice and impiety in
-this world. Job had demanded the evidence for this, and the centuries
-had brought none. Job was awarded some recompense in this world,
-but that happy experience did not attend other virtuous sufferers.
-
-The doctrine of one writer in "Wisdom" is simply predestination. Paul's
-potter-and-clay similitude is anticipated, and the Parsi dualism
-curiously adapted to Jahvist monotheism: "Good is set against evil,
-life against death, the godly against the sinner and the sinner
-against the godly: look through all the works of the Most High and
-there are two and two, one against another." But the liberal son of
-Sira is more optimist: "All things are double, one against another,
-but he hath made nothing imperfect: one thing establisheth the good of
-another." Freedom of the will is asserted: "Say not, he hath caused
-me to err, for he hath no need of the evildoer. He made man from the
-beginning and left him in the hand of his (own) counsel.... He hath
-set fire and water before thee, stretch forth thy hand to whichever
-thou wilt. Before man is the living and the not-living, and whichever
-he liketh shall be given him."
-
-But the doctrine of human free agency is pregnant with polemics;
-it has so been in Christian history, as is proved by the Pelagian,
-Arminian, Jesuit, and Wesleyan movements. There are indications in
-Ben Sira's work that the foundations of Jahvism were threatened by
-a moral scepticism. His own celebration of the Fathers was enough to
-bring into dreary contrast the tragedies of his own time and glories
-of the Past, when "Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under
-his vine and fig-tree, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, all the days
-of Solomon." What shelter now in the divine fig-tree, which could
-bear nothing but legendary or predictive leaves? The curse on the
-barren tree was near at hand when Jesus Ben Sira uttered his pathetic
-complaint, veiled in prayer:
-
-
-   "Have mercy on us, O Lord God of all, and regard us! Send thy
-    fear on all the nations that seek thee not; lift thy hand against
-    them, let them see thy power! As thou wast (of old) sanctified
-    in us before them, be thou (now) magnified among them before us;
-    and let them know thee, as we have known thee,--that there is, O
-    God, no God but thou alone! Show new signs, more strange wonders;
-    glorify thy hand and thy right arm, that they may publish thy
-    wondrous works! Raise up indignation, pour out wrath, remove
-    the adversary, destroy the enemy: hasten! remember thy covenant,
-    and let them witness thy wonderful works!"
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII.
-
-THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON.
-
-
-Somewhat more than a century after Jesus Ben Sira's work, came
-an answer to his prayer, not from above but from beneath, in the
-so-called "Psalter of Solomon." This is no wisdom book, and need not
-detain us. It is mainly a hash--one may say a mess--made up out of
-the Psalms; and though some of the allusions, apparently to Pompey
-and others, may possess value in other connexions, the work need
-only be mentioned here as an indication of the fate which Solomon
-met at the hands of Jahvism. The name of the Wisest of his race on
-this vulgar production is like the doggerel on Shakespeare's tomb,
-and the fling at England's greatest poet written on the tomb of his
-daughter,--"Wise to salvation was good Mistriss Hall," etc.
-
-Before passing, it may be remarked that the obvious allusions to Christ
-in this Psalter seem clearly spurious, and for one I cannot regard
-as other than a late interpolation verse 24 of Psalter-Psalm xvii.:
-"Behold, O God, and raise up unto them their king, the Son of David,
-in the time which thou, O God, knowest, that he may reign over Israel
-thy servant." There is nothing in the literature of the time before or
-after that would warrant the concession to this ranting Salvationist
-(B. C. 70-60) of an idea which would then have been original. The
-verse has the accent of a Second Adventist a century later. The title
-"Son of David" occurs even in the New Testament but sixteen times.
-
-The Psalter is in spirit thoroughly Jahvist, narrow, hard, without
-one ray of Solomonic wisdom or wit. It may fairly be regarded as
-the sepulchre of the wise man whose name it bears (though not in its
-text). Jahvism has here triumphed over the whole cult of Wisdom.
-
-But Solomon is not to rest there. He is again evoked, though not
-yet in his ancient secular greatness, by the next work that claims
-our attention.
-
-This last of the Wisdom Books bears the heading "Wisdom of Solomon"
-(Sophia Solomontos) and gives unmistakable identifications of the
-King, though herein also the name "Solomon" appears only in the
-title. Perhaps the writer may have wished to avoid exciting the
-ridicule or resentment of the Solomonists by plainly connecting the
-name of their founder with a retractation of all the secularism and the
-heresies anciently associated with him. The aristocratic Sadducees,
-who believed not in immortality, derived their name from Solomon's
-famous chaplain, Zadok.
-
-This "Wisdom of Solomon" probably appeared not far from the first
-year of our era. It is written in almost classical Greek, is full of
-striking and poetic interpretations and spiritualisations of Jewish
-legends, and transfused with a piety at once warm and mystical. Solomon
-is summoned much in the way that the "Wandering Jew," Ahasuerus, is
-called up in Shelley's "Prometheus," yet not quite allegorically,
-to testify concerning the Past, and concerning the mysteries of
-the invisible world. He has left behind his secularist Proverbs
-and his worldly wisdom; but though he now rises as a prophet of
-otherworldliness, not a word is uttered inconsistent with his having
-been a saint from the beginning, albeit "chastised" and "proved." In
-fact he gives his spiritual autobiography, which is that of a Son
-of God wise and "undefiled" from childhood. His burden is to warn
-the kings and judges of the world of the blessedness that awaits the
-righteous,--the misery that awaits the unrighteous,--beyond the grave.
-
-The work impresses me as having been written by one who had long
-been an enthusiastic Solomonist, but who had been spiritually
-revolutionised by attaining the new belief of immortality. It does
-not appear as if the apparition of Solomon was to this writer a
-simple imagination. Solomon seems to be alive, or rather as if never
-dead. "For thou (God) hast power of life and death: thou leadest to
-the gates of Hades, and bringest up again." "The giving heed unto her
-(Wisdom's) laws is the assurance of incorruption; and incorruption
-maketh us near unto God: therefore the desire of Wisdom bringeth to
-a Kingdom."
-
-The Jewish people idealised Solomon's reign long before they idealised
-the man himself; and indeed he had to reach his halo under personified
-epithets derived from his fame,--as "Melchizedek," and "Prince of
-Peace." The nation sighed for the restoration of his splendid empire,
-but could not describe their Coming Man as a returning Solomon,
-because the priests and prophets,--a gentry little respected by
-the Wise Man,--steadily ascribed all the national misfortunes to the
-shrines built to other deities than Jahveh by the royal Citizen of the
-World. Thus grew such prophetic indirections as "the House of David,"
-"Jesse's branch," and finally "Son of David."
-
-But this idea of the returning hero does not appear to have been
-original with any Semitic people; it is first found among them in the
-Oriental book of Job, who longs to sleep in some cavern for ages,
-then reappear, and, even if his flesh were shrivelled, find that
-his good name was vindicated (xiv.). This idea of the Sleeping Hero
-(which is traced in many examples in my work on The Wandering Jew)
-appears to have gained its earliest expression in the legend of King
-Yima, in Persia,--the original of such sleepers as Barbarossa and
-King Arthur, as well as of the legendary Enoch, Moses, and Elias, who
-were to precede or attend the revived Son of David. Solomon, whose
-name probably gave Jerusalem the peaceful half of its name (Salem)
-would no doubt have been central among the "Undying Ones" had it not
-been for the Parliament of Religions he set up in that city. But he
-had to wait a thousand years for his honorable fame to awaken.
-
-In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the Queen of Sheba is also recalled into
-life. She is, as Renan pointed out, transfigured in the personified
-Wisdom, and her gifts become mystical. "All good things together came
-to me with her," and "Wisdom goeth before them: and I knew not that
-she was the mother of them." She is amiable, beautiful, and gave him
-his knowledge:
-
-"All such things as are secret or manifest, them I knew. For Wisdom,
-which is the worker of all things, taught me: for in her is an
-understanding spirit, holy, one only, manifold; subtle, lively,
-clear, undefiled, plain, not subject to hurt, loving the thing that
-is good, quick, which cannot be letted, ready to do good, kind to
-man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power, overseeing
-all things, and pervading all intellectual, pure, and most subtle
-spirits. For Wisdom is more moving than motion itself; she passeth
-and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness. For she is the
-breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory
-of the Almighty: therefore can no impure thing fall into her. For she
-is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of
-the power of God, and the image of his goodness. And alone, she can
-do all things; herself unchanged, she maketh all things new; and in
-all ages, entering into holy souls, she maketh them intimates of God,
-and prophets. For God loveth only him who dwelleth with Wisdom. She
-is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of stars;
-compared with the light she is found before it,--for after light
-cometh night, but evil shall not prevail against Wisdom." (vii. 21-30.)
-
-In Sophia Solomontos Solomon relates his espousal of Wisdom,
-who sat beside the throne of God (ix. 4). But there remains with
-God a detective Wisdom called the Holy Spirit. Wisdom and the Holy
-Spirit have different functions. "Thy counsel who hath known except
-thou give Wisdom, and send thy Holy Spirit from above?" This verse
-(ix. 17) is followed by two chapters (x., xi.) relating the work of
-Wisdom through past ages as a Saviour. But then comes an account
-of the severe chastening functions of the Holy Spirit. "For thine
-incorruptible Spirit is in all things (i. e., nothing is concealed
-from her), therefore chastenest thou them by little and little that
-offend," etc. (xii. 1, 2.)
-
-There is here a slight variation in the historic development of the
-Spirit of God, and one so pregnant with results that it may be well
-to refer to some of the earlier Hebrew conceptions. The Spirit of
-God described in Genesis i. 2, as "brooding" over the waters was
-evidently meant to represent a detached agent of the deity. The
-legend is obviously related to that of the dove going forth over
-the waters of the deluge. The dove probably acquired its symbolical
-character as a messenger between earth and heaven from the marvellous
-powers of the carrier pigeon--powers well known in ancient Egypt--it
-also appears that its cooing was believed to be an echo on earth
-of the voice of God. [24] We have already seen (viii.) that Wisdom,
-when first personified, was identified with this "brooding" spirit
-over the surface of the waters, and also that in a second (Jahvist)
-personification she is a severe and reproving agent. But in the
-second verse of Genesis there is a darkness on the abyss, and both
-darkness and abyss were personified. In the rigid development of
-monotheism all of these beings were necessarily regarded as agents
-of Jahveh--monopolist of all powers. We thus find such accounts as
-that in 1 Samuel 16, where the Spirit of Jahveh departed from Saul
-and an evil Spirit from Jahveh troubled him.
-
-Although the Spirit of God was generally supposed to convey miraculous
-knowledge, especially of future events, and superior skill, it is
-not, I believe, in any book earlier than Sophia Solomontos definitely
-ascribed the function of a detective. There is in Ecclesiastes (x. 20)
-a passage which suggests the carrier: "Curse not the King, no, not
-in thy thought; and curse not the rich even in thy bedchamber; for
-a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings
-shall tell the matter." [25] This was evidently in the mind of the
-writer of Sophia Solomontos in the following verses:
-
-Wisdom is a loving Spirit, and will not (cannot?) acquit a blasphemer
-of his words: for God is a witness of his reins, and a true beholder
-of his heart, and a hearer of his tongue; for the Spirit of the
-Lord filleth the world, and that which containeth all things hath
-knowledge of the voice; therefore he that speaketh unrighteous things
-cannot be hid, neither shall vengeance when it punisheth, pass by
-him. For inquisition shall be made into the counsels of the ungodly;
-the sound of his words shall come unto the Lord for the disclosure
-of his wickedness, the ear of jealousy heareth all things, and the
-sound even of murmurings is not secret."
-
-Here we have the origin of the "unpardonable sin." The Holy Spirit
-detects and informs, Jahveh avenges, and if the offence is blasphemy,
-Wisdom, the Saviour, cannot acquit (as the "Loving Spirit" of God
-it is for her ultra vires). This detective Holy Spirit appears to
-be an evolution from both Wisdom and Satan the Accuser, in Job a Son
-of God. By associating with Solomon on earth, Wisdom was without the
-severe holiness essential to Jahvist conceptions of divine government;
-in other words, personified Wisdom, whose "delight was with the sons
-of men" (Prov. viii. 31) was too humanized to fulfil the conditions
-necessary for upholding the temple at a time when penal sanctions
-were withdrawn from the priesthood. A celestial spy was needed, and
-also an uncomfortable Sheol, if the ancient ordinances and sacrifices
-were to be preserved at all under the rule of Roman liberty, and amid
-the cosmopolitan conditions prevailing at Jerusalem, and still more
-at Alexandria. [26]
-
-With regard to Wisdom herself, there is a sentence which requires
-notice, especially as no unweighed word is written in the work
-under notice. It is said, "In that she is conversant with God,
-she magnifieth her nobility; yea, the Lord of all things himself
-loved her." (viii. 3). [27] This seems to be the germ of Philo's
-idea of Wisdom as the Mother: "And she, receiving the seed of God,
-with beautiful birth-pangs brought forth this world, His visible Son,
-only and well-beloved." The writer of Sophia Solomontos is very careful
-to be vague in speculations of this kind, while suggesting inferences
-with regard to them. Thus, alluding to Moses before Pharaoh, he says,
-"She (Wisdom) entered into the servant of the Lord, and withstood
-dreadful kings in wonders and signs" (x. 16), but leaves us to mere
-conjecture as to whether he (the writer) still had Wisdom in mind
-when writing (xvii. 13) of the failure of these enchantments and the
-descent of the Almighty Word, for the destruction of the first-born:
-
-"For while all things are quiet silence, and that night was in the
-midst of her swift course, thine Almighty Word leaped down from Heaven
-out of thy Royal throne, as a fierce man of war into the midst of
-a land of destruction; and brought thine unfeigned commandment as
-a sharp sword, and standing up filled all things with death; and it
-touched the heaven, but it stood upon the earth." [28]
-
-The Word in this place (ho pantodynamos sou logos) is clearly
-reproduced in the Epistle to the Hebrews (iv. 12). "The Word of God
-is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword;" and
-the same military metaphor accompanies this "Word" into Revelation
-xix. 13. This continuity of metaphor has apparently been overlooked
-by Alford (Greek Testament, vol. iv., p. 226) who regards the use of
-the phrase "Word of God" (ho logos tou theou) as linking Revelation
-to the author of the fourth Gospel, whereas in this Gospel Logos is
-never followed by "of God," while it is so followed in Hebrews iv. 12.
-
-This evolution of the "Word" is clear. In the "Wisdom of Solomon"
-Wisdom is the creative Word and the Saviour. The Word leaping down from
-the divine throne and bearing the sword of vengeance is more like the
-son of the celestial counterpart of Wisdom, namely, the detective Holy
-Spirit (called in i. 5 "the Holy Spirit of Discipline"). But in the
-era we are studying, all words by able writers were living things,
-and were two-edged swords, and long after they who wrote them were
-dead went on with active and sundering work undreamed of by those
-who first uttered them.
-
-The Zoroastrian elements which we remarked in Jesus Ben Sira's
-"Wisdom" are even more pronounced in the "Wisdom of Solomon." The
-Persian worshippers are so mildly rebuked (xiii.) for not passing
-beyond fire and star to the "origin of beauty," that one may suppose
-the author, probably an Alexandrian, must have had friends among
-them. At any rate his conception of a resplendent God is Mazdean,
-his all-seeing Holy Spirit is the Parsi "Anahita," and his Wisdom
-is Armaiti, the "loving spirit" on earth, the saviour of men. [29]
-The opposing kingdoms of Ahuramazda and Angromainyu, and especially
-Zoroaster's original division of the universe into "the living and
-the not-living," are reflected in the "Wisdom of Solomon," i. 13-16:
-
-"God made not death: neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of
-the living. He created all things that they might have their being;
-and the generations of the world were healthful; and there (was)
-no poison of destruction in them, nor (any) kingdom of death on the
-earth: (for righteousness is immortal): but ungodly men with their
-deeds and words evoked Death to them: when they thought to have it
-their friend they consumed to naught, and made a covenant with Death,
-being fit to take sides with it."
-
-In the moral and religious evolution which we have been tracing it
-has been seen that the utter indifference of the Cosmos to human good
-and evil, right and wrong, was the theme of Job; that in Ecclesiastes
-the same was again declared, and the suggestion made that if God
-helped or afflicted men it must depend on some point of etiquette or
-observance unconnected with moral considerations, so that man need
-not omit pleasure but only be punctilious when in the temple; that
-in Jesus Ben Sira's contribution to his fathers' "Wisdom," the moral
-character of God was maintained, moral evil regarded as hostile to God,
-and imaginary sanctions invented, accompanied by pleadings with God
-to indorse them by new signs and wonders. Such signs not appearing,
-and no rewards and punishments being manifested in human life, the
-next step was to assign them to a future existence, and this step was
-taken in "Wisdom of Solomon."  There remained but one more necessity,
-namely, that there should be some actual evidence of that future
-existence. Agur's question had remained unanswered--
-
-
-   "Who has ascended into heaven and come down again?
-    Such an one would I question about God."
-
-
-To this the reply was to be the resurrection from death claimed for
-the greatest of the spiritual race of Solomon.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII.
-
-EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS (A SEQUEL TO SOPHIA SOLOMONTOS).
-
-
-In a Theocracy the birth of a new God was not the mere new
-generalization that it might be in our secularized century,--a
-deification of the Unknowable, for instance,--of not the slightest
-practical or moral interest to any human being. Judea was the bodily
-incarnation, even more than Islam is now, of a deity who said,
-"I am the Lord and there is none else; I form the light and create
-darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I the Lord do all these
-things." The denial of such a deity, the substitution of one who
-required neither prayers, sacrifices, nor intercessions, could not
-be merely theoretical. It must involve the overthrow of a nationality
-which had no bond of unity except a book, and the institutions founded
-on that book.
-
-Nor did the theocratic principle admit of a mere philosophical
-opposition to its institutions. He who touched that system was dealing
-with people who, in the language of "Sophia Solomontos" were "shut up
-in a prison without iron bars." The natural advent of the anti-Jahvist
-was in the Temple and with the words--
-
-
-    He hath sent me to herald glad news to the poor,
-    He hath sent me to proclaim deliverance to captives,
-    And recovering of sight to the blind,
-    To set at liberty them that are bruised.
-
-
-These miseries had no real relation to the social or political
-conditions amid which their phrases and hymns were born, but to a
-burden of debts to a jealous and vindictive omnipotence; a burden
-not of actions really wrong, but of mysterious offences, related to
-incomprehensible ordinances and heavenly etiquette. No human vices
-are so malignant as inhuman virtues.
-
-Bunyan, in depicting Christian's burden, has, with a felicity
-perhaps unconscious, made it a pack strapped on. It is not a hunch,
-not any part of the pilgrim, and had he possessed the courage to
-examine it there must have been found many spiritual nightmares
-of the race, and many robust English virtues turned to sins when
-the merry and honest tinker turned retrospective Rip Van Winkle,
-and dreamed himself back into the year One. The burden of sins on
-the poor Israelites had been gradually getting lighter under the
-scepticism of the Wisdom school, in view of the failure of Jahveh to
-fulfil the menaces and sentences of the priesthood. Conformity was
-secured mainly for actual advantages bestowed by the synagogue, or its
-terrors. But the discovery of the doctrine of a future life and a day
-of judgment, when all the mysterious "sins" were to be settled for,
-while smiled at by the Saducees, made the burden of the ignorant poor
-intolerable. Life was passed under suspended swords. The priesthood
-had a cowering vassal in every ignorant human being. The time, the
-labour, the flocks of the peasantry were devoted, but it was all a
-"sweating" process,--the debts were never paid, and there was always
-that "certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of
-fire which shall devour the adversaries." No doubt even the learned
-supposed these superstitions useful to keep the "masses" in order.
-
-But one day a scholarly gentleman, a man of genius, was moved with
-compassion for these poor lost and priest-harried sheep: he turned
-aside from his college and his rank, and became their shepherd;
-he declared they owed no duties to any deity, and that the heavenly
-despot they so dreaded had no existence.
-
-A modern gentleman in a fine mansion and estate may be amused at
-Bunyan's quaint pilgrim, reading in a book and discovering that he
-was in a City of Destruction, fleeing with a burden on his back, and
-rejoicing when it rolls off at the cross. But if this gentleman should
-suddenly receive from some distant personage papers showing that his
-estate had been entirely mortgaged by his father, that it would soon
-be claimed and his family reduced to beggary, he might understand
-the City of Destruction. And if, soon after, some visitor arrived to
-state that the holder of the mortgages was dead; that those claims had
-all legally fallen into his own hands, and that he had burnt them,
-the rolling off of Christian's burden might be appreciated,--also
-the enthusiasm of the personal followers of Jesus.
-
-But one might further imagine a host of hungry lawyers, living on
-large retainers, not being quite happy at such easy settlements,
-especially if the generous visitor were found wealthy enough to go
-about buying up and burning claims, and ending litigation. This, to
-us hardly imaginable, was, however, actually the condition of things
-reflected in parts of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Therein the bond
-under which man suffers is clearly to him who hath the Power of Death,
-the Devil: Jesus ransomed man from the Devil.
-
-The anonymous tractate superscribed solely "To the Hebrews," though
-the last admitted into the New Testament, is probably the earliest
-document it contains. It has no doubt been tampered with, but the
-evidences of the early date of its conception of Christ remain. Not
-only was it evidently written before the destruction of the temple
-(anno 70), but before there was any thought of a mission to the
-Gentiles, who, with Paul their apostle, are ignored. Some of its
-phrases and illustrations are found in epistles of Paul, but, as
-Dr. Davidson pointed out in his Introduction to the New Testament,
-the general doctrine of this treatise is far from Pauline, and
-it is difficult to find any reason for supposing that the few
-borrowings were not by Paul, other than a preference for Paul, and
-disinclination to admit that there is any anonymous work in the New
-Testament. The treatise is without Paul's egotism, or his fatalism,
-and its conception of the new movement seems decidedly more primitive
-than that in the recognised Pauline epistles. The sagacious Eusebius,
-"father of church history," connects the Epistle "To the Hebrews"
-with the "Wisdom of Solomon," and it seems clear that we have here the
-bridge between the last abutment of philosophic or "broad" Jahvism,
-and its "new departure" as Christism.
-
-It is not of especial importance to the present inquiry to determine
-that Paul might not at some youthful period have written this work,
-though I cannot see how any critical reader can so imagine; but
-it will bear indirectly on that point if we read successively the
-following corresponding passages:
-
-
-    Wisdom of Solomon.--"For Wisdom, which is the worker of all things,
-    taught me ... she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure
-    influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty; therefore can
-    no unclean thing fall into her. For she is the brightness of
-    the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God,
-    and the image of his goodness. And alone she can do all things;
-    herself unchanged, she maketh all things new: and in all ages
-    entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God and
-    prophets."--(vii. 25-27.) "And Wisdom was with thee: which knoweth
-    thy works, and was present when thou madest the world." (ix. 9.)
-
-    Epistle to the Hebrews.--"God, having in time past spoken to the
-    fathers by many fragments and divers ways in the prophets, at the
-    end of these days spake unto us in Son whom he constituted heir
-    of all things, by whom also he fashioned the ages; who, being the
-    brightness of his light and the image of his substance, and guiding
-    all things by the word of his authority, having made purification
-    of sins, sat on the right of majesty in high places." (i. 1-3.)
-
-    Epistle to the Colossians.--"Who (the Father) delivered us out of
-    the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of his
-    son of love, in whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of
-    our sins: who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of
-    all creation; for in him were all things created, in the heavens
-    and above the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether
-    thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have
-    been created through him and unto him; and he is before all things,
-    and in him all things hold together." (i. 13-17.)
-
-    Fourth Gospel.--"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
-    with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning
-    with God. All things were made through him, and without him was
-    not anything made. That which hath been made was life in him,
-    and the life was the light of men. And the Word became flesh
-    and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory--glory as of an only
-    begotten of a Father full of grace and truth." (i. 1-15.)
-
-
-It appears to me that the evolution is represented in the
-order given. Paul's phrase, "first-born of all creation,"  is an
-amplification of the word "first-born" used in the Epistle to the
-Hebrews, but there used in another connection,--and not solely,
-as we shall see, relating to Christ. Paul's phrase corresponds with
-"the only-begotten," etc., of John, and with the "son constituted
-heir" of the Epistle to the Hebrews, though the latter is a different
-Christological conception. When this writer's doctrinal statement is
-finished, and after his argument is begun, he says (i. 6), "But when
-of old bringing the first-born into the inhabited earth, he saith,
-And pay homage to him all angels of God." The word "first-born" here is
-probably the seed from which Paul develops his full flower of doctrine,
-given above. Paul's conception of a creative Christ seems later than
-the "guiding" Christ (Heb. i. 3), which recalls the function of Wisdom
-as "director" at the creation (Prov. viii. 30); and the idea in this
-epistle to the Hebrews of a previous and historical Christophany,
-while harmonious with that of the "Wisdom of Solomon" (vii. 27),--that
-she (Wisdom) "in all ages enters into holy souls,"--is so primitive,
-unique, and so foreign to Paul, that the writer may have been one of
-those accused by him of preaching "another Jesus" (2 Cor. ii. 4). [30]
-
-Although this Epistle contains the principle ascribed to Jesus,
-"charity and not sacrifice" (xiii. 9) and substitutes for beasts the
-"sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips harmonious with his good
-name" (verse 15), the letter that killeth brought forth from the same
-chapter the fatal doctrine that the body of Jesus was a sacrifice to be
-eaten. And although this emphasizes the completeness of his humanity
-to an extent inconsistent with his deity, it is on the letter of this
-Epistle that the deification of Christ is founded.
-
-
-    V. 7-9. "Who in the days of his flesh, having offered up
-    entreaties with vehement crying and tears to him able to save
-    him out of death, and although inclined to because of his piety,
-    yet, albeit a son, learned obedience by the things he suffered;
-    and having been made perfect, became unto all that follow him
-    the author of eternal salvation." [31]
-
-
-He is represented as "made perfect through sufferings," as "tempted
-in all points like (?others) without sin," and as having without
-assistance of temple or sacrifices, "obtained eternal redemption"
-(ix. 12). Thus he also needed redemption.
-
-The new covenant of which Jesus was the founder is described in the
-words of Jeremiah (xxxi.):
-
-
-    I will put my laws into their mind,
-    And on their heart will I write them
-    And I will be to them a God,
-    And they shall be to me a people:
-    And they shall not teach every man his fellow-citizen,
-    And every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord:
-    For all shall know me,
-    From the least unto the greatest.
-
-
-In quoting this the writer to the Hebrews adds: "In that he saith,
-'A new (covenant) he hath made the first old. But that which is
-becoming old and waxeth aged is near unto vanishing entirely.'" Here
-is a primitive Quakerism, but more conservative; not like George Fox
-at once sweeping away priesthood sacraments and ecclesiastical laws
-before the Inner Light, but pointing to their near vanishing.
-
-The writer of this Epistle is a philosophical conservative; he shudders
-at the idea of a swift and complete overthrow of the traditional
-system, and even borrows its old thunders against levitical sin
-to menace offences against the new moral God. "Our God [also] is
-a consuming fire." It is evident by his very warnings that a great
-anti-sacerdotal and anti-levitical revolution had taken place, and
-that the free spirit was burgeoning out in excesses. But such is
-his culture that one may suspect his thunders of being theatrical,
-and that he thinks some superstition necessary for the masses.
-
-The fatal and subtle character of the detective Holy Spirit is imported
-into this Epistle from the "Wisdom of Solomon" (i. 6), though not
-so distinctly personified. The sin afterwards called "unpardonable"
-is here a sin against Christ for which repentance, not pardon, is
-impossible. We may perhaps find in some of the expressions germs of
-the legend of Judas. "As touching those who were once enlightened,
-and tasted the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy
-Spirit, and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age
-that is come, and fell away, it is impossible to renew them again to
-repentance, seeing they individually impale the Son of God afresh
-and put him to open shame" (vi. 5, 6). The believers are "not of
-them that shrink back into perdition" (x. 39); and they are warned
-to look carefully "whether there be any man that falleth back from
-the grace of God,... like Esau, who for one mess of meat sold his own
-birthright" (xii. 15, 16). The words "tasted," "perdition," "sold,"
-might start a legend of the betrayal, first alluded to by Paul (if 1
-Cor. xi. 23 be genuine, which is doubtful), though had the legend of
-Judas then existed this writer would naturally have alluded to him
-along with Esau.
-
-This Epistle is the nursery of the titles of Christ; he is Apostle,
-Son of God, Son of Man, Great Shepherd, Captain of Salvation, Mediator,
-Great High Priest; and here alone is found the now familiar endearing
-phrase "Our Lord." These titles represent the functions of different
-beings in the Avesta. The conception of the work of Jesus on earth
-is largely Zoroastrian. The Majesty on high has a colony and a people
-on earth, which otherwise is under the supremacy of the Evil One. As
-we have seen the Avestan definitions of Ahuramazda and Angra Mainyu,
-"the Living and the Not Living," are reflected in the phrases of this
-Epistle,--the "Power of Imperishable Life" (vii. 16) and the "Power of
-Death" (ii. 14). Ahuramazda, when his "habitable earth" was prepared,
-brought into it his "first-born," Yima, and wished him to propagate
-the divine law which should destroy the power of Angra Mainyu on earth
-and confine him in the underworld. Yima replied, "I was not born,
-I was not taught, to be the preacher and the bearer of thy law." He
-engaged, however, to enlarge and nourish the garden of God on earth,
-of which he was king, and entitled "the good shepherd." He obtained
-from the Holy Spirit, Anahita, the powers thus enumerated in Aban
-Yast 26: "He begged of her a boon, saying, 'Grant me this, O good,
-most beneficent Ardvi Sura Anahita, that I may become the sovereign
-lord of all countries, of the daevas [devils] and men, of the Yatus
-[sorcerers] and Pairkas [seducing nymphs], of the oppressors [who
-afflict] the blind and the deaf; and that I may take from the daevas
-[devils] both riches and welfare, both fatness and flocks, both weal
-and glory" [hvareno, "the glory from above which makes the king an
-earthly god"]. [32] This "firstborn" reigned a thousand years, but
-then, having ascribed his "glory" to the demons from whom he obtained
-wealth and material benefits, his "glory" was lost, and secured by
-the Devil, who reigned in his place a thousand years, blighting the
-world, when Zoroaster was born to undertake the establishment of the
-divine Law on earth. Yima was ultimately developed into the Jamshid
-of Persian mythology, whose power over demons, fabulous wealth, and
-ultimate fall (through declaring himself a god, according to Firdusi)
-invested the legend of Solomon.
-
-From the legend of Solomon and the Solomonic Psalms the Epistle to
-the Hebrews brings its exaltation of Christ. From Ps. lxxxix. 26-7,
-as reproduced in 2 Sam. vii. 14, is quoted (i. 5) the divine promise,
-"I will be to him (Solomon) a Father and he shall be my Son," along
-with the manifesto at Solomon's enthronement (Ps. ii. 7), "Thou art
-my Son; this day have I begotten thee." Solomon is the "first-born"
-alluded to in Heb. i. 6: "When of old bringing the first-born into
-the inhabited earth (oikoumenen) he saith, And pay homage to him all
-angels of God?"
-
-And here we have an interesting example of evolution in the Solomon
-legend. The term "first-born," as indicating the relation of a human
-being to the deity, occurs but once in the Old Testament, namely, in
-Psalm lxxxix. 27. It occurs in a strange passage that must be quoted:
-
-
-    19. Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy ones,
-        And saidst, I have laid help upon a youth;
-        I have raised one elected out of the people.
-    20. I have discovered David, my servant:
-        With my holy oil have I anointed him,
-    21. By whom my hand shall be established,
-        Whom also mine arm shall strengthen.
-    22. The enemy shall not do him violence,
-        Nor the son of evil afflict him.
-    23. I will beat down his adversaries before him
-        And smite them that hate him.
-    24. But my faithfulness and my mercy end not with him,
-        And in my name shall his horn be exalted.
-    25. I will extend his hand on the sea also,
-        And his right hand on the rivers:
-    26. He shall address me, "Thou, my father,
-        My God, and the rock of my support";
-    27. In answer I constitute him first-born,
-        Elyon of the kings of the earth.
-
-
-Although in all of these verses the Davidic royalty is exalted, the
-reference to David's own reign passes at verse 24 into a celebration of
-Solomon. Here, as in Psalm cxxxii. 17, Solomon is the "horn" of David:
-he was distinctively the power on sea and river, phrases inapplicable
-to David, and there is a contrast between the anointed "servant"
-(verse 20) and the "first-born" (verse 27). The next title, "Elyon"
-(Most High), comes very near to that of the deity (El Elyon) of the
-mysterious priest-king of Salem, Melchizedek, whose mythical character
-and identity with the legendary Solomon will be hereafter considered.
-
-Here we have no doubt the germs of the narrative in 2 Sam. vii. of
-the formal adoption of Solomon as Jahveh's son, with the addition of a
-metaphysical connotation of the sonship not found in the Psalm. In the
-Psalm the fatherhood is that of support, the position of "first-born"
-is that of chieftainship among kings; and it is further said (31,
-32) that if any of the sons of the Davidic line profane the divine
-statutes, "Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and
-their iniquity with stripes." But in 2 Sam. vii. 14, Jahveh applies
-this warning to Solomon alone, and with a remarkable modification:
-"I will be his father and he shall be my son: if he commit iniquity
-I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of
-the sons of men; but my mercy shall not depart from him." That is,
-though a son of God he may be chastened like the sons of men,--an
-intimation of a difference between Solomon and ordinary human nature
-not intended in the words of the Psalm.
-
-The Epistle to the Hebrews, finding in this Psalm an introduction of
-"first-born" into the world, for there is no article preceding the
-word, follows it so closely as to omit any article before "son"
-(i. 2). He finds this in an address of the deity to his angels
-("holy ones" or saints), and understands verse 27 of the Psalm to
-mean that they, the angels, are to worship the "first-born" as the
-Elyon, or Most High on earth. From 2 Sam. vii. the Epistle gets
-sufficient authority for ascribing an eternal personality to the
-sonship, anciently represented by Solomon, and we may thus see that
-the gesture of Hebrew religion towards a doctrine of incarnation was
-much earlier than is generally supposed. And this, too, is the Hebrew
-contribution to a Psalm which, in the nine verses above quoted, imports
-ideas foreign to Judaism. The reciprocal help of the deity and the king
-(19-21) is Avestan, and inconsistent with monotheism. Elyon is the
-name of an ancient Phoenician god, slain by his son El, no doubt the
-"first-born of death" in Job xviii. 13, and the violent "son of evil,"
-in verse 22 of our Psalm. The exaltation of both David and Solomon in
-the Psalm is primarily in reference to service and deeds, not majesty,
-essence, or title; of these Avestan religion made little, but Hebraism
-made much, and the deification of Solomon, though warranted by other
-Psalms, is added to this eighty-ninth by Samuel and the Epistle to
-the Hebrews.
-
-In Ecclesiasticus it is written: "In the division of the nations of the
-whole earth he set a ruler over every people; but Israel is the Lord's
-portion: whom, being his first-born, he nourisheth with discipline,
-and giving him the light of his love doth not forsake him.... For all
-things cannot be in men, because the son of man is not immortal. What
-is brighter than the sun? Yet the light thereof faileth; and flesh
-and blood will imagine evil" (xvii.). Now in the Zoroastrian theology
-there could be no direct contact of God with matter: the devil's
-empire could be invaded and death conquered only by a perfectly
-"blameless" MAN. (Cf. "Wisdom of Solomon," xviii. 21, with the
-"sinless" of Heb. iv. 15, the "guileless" of vii. 26, and "without
-blemish," ix. 14). The spotless one can use no carnal weapon. In
-the Zoroastrian theology the divine potency is that of the Word, and
-formulas exist to be wielded against every variety of demon. So in
-this Epistle the supremacy of the Son is by "the word of his power",
-(i. 3), and "the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword"
-(iv. 12).
-
-The enterprise of the Son of God was to fulfil these conditions. He
-must become a complete man, share all the infirmities of man, all his
-liabilities to temptation, receive no assistance from his Father,
-no angelic help,--placed lower than the angels,--and confront the
-powers of Death and Hell without any material weapon. If he succeeded
-in remaining sinless, faithful to the divine law, even unto death,
-even while in hell, unshaken by threats, sufferings, or seductions,
-it must be a purely human achievement. There was no miracle; even the
-suspicion of using supernatural power would have tainted the whole
-work of Jesus as conceived in this Epistle.
-
-This undertaking was not simply for the sake of mankind. All things
-are not yet subjected to the divine sway (Heb. ii. 8). Heaven itself
-was shaken, when the old covenant failed, and trembled for the result
-of the tremendous conflict of the Son of Man on earth with its Prince
-and his hosts (Heb. xii. 25-29). This was "the joy in front of him"
-(xii. 2), as well as the rescue of men.
-
-Thus was the man left entirely to the devil, not even his life
-being reserved, as in the case of Job. He loudly cries for help,
-even with tears, at the sight of Death; he is heard, pitied, but no
-help comes. He must trust to his human merits, and not miracles,
-for his Sonship is of no value in this conflict. By his obedience
-learned in his sufferings, by his sinlessness under all trials and
-temptations, he fulfilled the conditions of deathlessness. By his
-own heart's blood, not by offerings of bloody sacrifices, not by
-supernatural power, he reached the place of holiness, "having obtained
-eternal redemption." From first to last there was no divine aid. His
-unanswered loud cries (Heb. v. 7) may be connected with the legend
-of his expiring cry, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
-
-Much of the thought here is similar to the "Wisdom of Solomon"
-(ii. 22-4, iii. 1-9), where however the ideas are conflicting. It is
-said, "God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of
-his own eternity: nevertheless, through the devil's envy came death
-into the world, and they that hold of his side do find it." But then
-Jahvism puts in with the declaration that the seeming destruction
-of the righteous is God's chastisement and probation of them. The
-Epistle to the Hebrews does not regard the sufferings and death of
-Jesus as God's work at all, but all from the devil. Though God spoke
-by him there is no suggestion that he sent Jesus, or that his coming
-was not voluntary.
-
-With this reservation, and a large one it is, that Jesus was not
-delivered up to Satan by God, but left to confront his torments in an
-effort to subdue him, "bring him to nought," the central idea of the
-Epistle is a doctrinal transfiguration of Job, who being delivered up
-to Satan, triumphs over the tempter and tormentor, and through all
-preserves his sinlessness and loyalty to God. The result being that
-those who had denied Job's merits, his sinlessness, had to secure Job's
-intercession in order to escape the penalty of having ascribed his
-sufferings to God (Job xlii. 8). [33] This relationship of ideas is all
-the more interesting because apparently unconscious in the writer of
-the Epistle, and thus revealing the extent to which Oriental religion
-had remoulded Judaism among the educated Jews of his time. Monotheism
-is strictly inconsistent with the supremacy of "merits" which is the
-very soul of Oriental religion. The sacred books of India contain
-records of saints or Rishis who by extraordinary austerities,
-sacrifices, and virtues so piled up their "merits" that the gods
-were frightened, as they were at the tower of Babel; and sometimes
-the gods tempted these powerful saints to commit some sin that would
-reduce their "merits." The Solomonic "Proverbs" are pervaded by the
-Oriental doctrine of "merits": a man is proved by test of his merits,
-as gold passing through the furnace (xxvii. 21); the perfect inherit
-good (xxviii. 10); and perhaps that sublime pedlar of transcendent
-gems imported along with the gold of Ophir some version of the Puranic
-legend of Harischandra, "the Hindu Job." All the Jahvist adulterations
-of the biblical version do not conceal the fact that when Jahveh,
-by delivering the meritorious man up to Satan, delivered himself also
-into the hands of Satan, he (Jahveh) was compelled to surrender before
-the merits on which the man had planted himself. Jahveh reclaimed his
-sovereignty, but agreed that Job, who had said "God hath wronged me,"
-had spoken of him "the thing that is right" (xlii. 8). In the same
-way the storm-god Indra (the Hindu Jahveh) accompanied by all the
-gods, headed by Dharma (Justice), appears to Harischandra after his
-trials, and tells him that he, his wife and son, had, by their merits,
-"conquered heaven" (Markandeya Purana). The completion of these merits
-was when Harischandra resolved with his wife to die on the funeral
-pyre of their son, who, as a result of their torments, had died by a
-serpent's bite. It was then that the god Indra appeared to restore
-the son, and admit that the just and faithful king, his wife and
-son, had "conquered heaven." We are thus carried to the Solomonic
-affirmations that "when the whirlwind passeth the just man is on
-an everlasting foundation" (Prov. x. 25), that "justice delivereth
-from death" (x. 2), that "the just man finds a refuge in death"
-(xiv. 32); and we are carried forward to the Epistle to the Hebrews,
-where, after the last ordeal, death, the son of the heavenly king
-is restored to life, and Satan, who had over him the power of death,
-"brought to nought" (ii. 14). But further, in the Puranic legend, which
-from time immemorial has been a passion-play in India, Harischandra,
-when told that he, his wife and son, had "conquered heaven," refused
-to ascend to heaven without his "faithful subjects." "This request
-was granted by Indra, and after Viswamitra had inaugurated Rohitaswa,
-the king's son, to be his successor, Harischandra, his friends and
-followers, all ascended to heaven." Thus, in our Epistle, the son,
-having "learned obedience by the things which he suffered, and having
-been made perfect, became unto all them that obeyed him the author
-of eternal salvation." "For in that he hath himself suffered being
-tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted." The subjects of
-King Harischandra who remained faithful to him after he was reduced
-to beggary, ascended with him. Faith is declared in our Epistle to be
-"the testing of things not seen" (xi. 1), and faithfulness is to "run
-with patience the course that is set before us, looking unto Jesus,
-the captain and perfector of faithfulness, who for the joy set before
-him endured the stake (stauron), despising shame, and hath sat down
-at the right hand of the throne of God" (xi. 1, xii. 1, 2).
-
-And there is also, I believe, in the scheme of redemption set forth
-in this Epistle, an influence from the story of King Usinara in the
-Mahabharata, of which there were various versions which must have
-been familiar to the Buddhists in Alexandria. A dove pursued by a
-falcon takes refuge in the bosom of Usinara; the falcon demands its
-surrender. The King quotes the law of Manu that it is a great sin to
-abandon any being that has taken asylum with one. The falcon urges that
-it is the law of nature that falcons shall feed on doves, and that
-unless this dove is surrendered its little falcons must starve. The
-King offers other food, but the only substitute that is adapted to
-the falcon's nature is a quantity of Usinara's own flesh equal to the
-weight of the dove. To this the King agrees. Balances are produced,
-and the dove placed in one scale, in the other a piece of the King's
-flesh, which seems large enough, but is insufficient. Though the
-King cuts off piece by piece all of his flesh, the dove outweighs it,
-until at length Usinara gets into the scale HIMSELF. That outweighs
-the dove, which is really Agni, the falcon being Indra. The gods
-who had assumed these forms in order to test Usinara's fidelity
-to the law of sanctuary, resume their shape, and the King ascends
-transfigured to paradise. In one version a King (Givi) sacrifices
-his son, Vrihad-Gasbha in obedience to sacred requirements, the story
-resembling that of Abraham and Isaac. Alford calls attention to the
-emphasis on the word "himself" in the Epistle of the Hebrews ix. 14:
-"How much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal
-Spirit offered HIMSELF, without blemish, unto God, cleanse our
-conscience from dead works to serve the living God."
-
-Without blemish! That was the great point. The champion of the Good
-confronts the champion of Evil, his purpose being to conquer the last
-enemy, Death, by unarmed human virtue. This was the central idea
-in the Passion, a drama gone to pieces in the Gospels. Therefore,
-he did not summon legions of angels, and said to Peter, "Sheath
-thy sword." Therefore, the mere lynching of Jesus, for such it was,
-is given the formalities of judicial procedure, in order to impress
-an official character on the testimonies to his innocence: Pilate,
-Caiaphas, Pilate's wife, Judas, Herod, all bear witness that no evil
-is in him, and he challenges the High Priest's court, "If I have
-uttered evil bear witness of the evil." [34] In this passion-drama
-Jesus Barabbas is set beside Jesus the Christ,--officially proclaimed
-guilt beside officially proclaimed innocence,--and Wrath selects guilt,
-condemns innocence. But it was thus the first-born of Life prevailed
-over the first-born of Death. In that crisis the blameless man swerving
-not from his rectitude, established the "assembly of the first-born,"
-who can dwell with the living God because they have learned from their
-Captain how to get rid of the defilement of mortality. There is nothing
-vicarious in his service. The Captain represented the human race in
-a single combat with Satan, and he discovered for all the vulnerable
-point of that Adversary,--that he could not hold in sheol a perfectly
-sinless human being. But it still remained that without holiness no
-man could see the Lord. Another advantage secured by Jesus for men
-was that after his victory was achieved the heroic man, on resuming
-his previous position as Son of God, was able to add thereto what
-he had won as Son of Man,--the office of high priest or intercessor,
-who could take good care that every man who fulfilled the condition
-of holiness got his reward. Satan should not cheat. Nevertheless
-Jesus had been his own saviour, and every man must be his own saviour.
-
-Pulpit ignorance has wrested from the Epistle to the Hebrews
-fragments of texts, in support of a dogma of atonement which only
-a fortunate lack of logic prevents from amounting to a doctrine of
-human sacrifice. A favorite clause is, "Without the shedding of blood
-there in no remission,"--which is really this epistle's stigma on
-the system it is abolishing! The sacredness of the blood of Jesus
-was that it was the price he had to pay to the devil in order to
-preserve his sinlessness, and so rise from death, and demonstrate to
-others that they also could rise by sinlessness to eternal life. It
-might cost their blood also, but would be lost if they "resisted unto
-blood." Jesus thus brought life and incorruption, as distinguished
-from living-death in sheol, to light. And the devotion to Jesus for
-this was due to the belief that he had laid aside his heavenly glory
-and become a complete man, and had thus risked his all, his greatness,
-his very immortality, to make for both heaven and earth the tremendous
-venture; the slightest misstep, the least sin, or wrath, or impatience,
-and he would have had his abode in sheol, in bonds of Satan, through
-all eternity.
-
-When this Epistle was written the believers already found immortality
-in such faith; with such hope and joy before them they were able to
-despise sensual joys, to conquer temptations, and to fulfill those
-duties and conditions of personal holiness which are described in this
-Epistle,--"Peace with all men, and holiness without which no man can
-see the Lord." The ecstasy did not last long, but it was a marvellous
-phenomenon while it lasted, and the most complete reflection of it may
-be found in this Epistle to the Hebrews, especially if it be approached
-by its prologue,--the "Wisdom of Solomon,"--but it is subtle, and
-can only be comprehended by patient and comparative studies.
-
-At the heart of this earliest and swiftly lost Christianity was a
-sublime effort to humanize God.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV.
-
-SOLOMON MELCHIZEDEK.
-
-
-It is possible that the genealogies of Jesus started from no other
-basis than Hebrews vii. 14: "It is clear beforehand that our Lord
-hath arisen out of Judah." [35] Yet nothing could be more subversive
-of the Epistle than a claim of any hereditary authority or advantage
-for Jesus.
-
-The author of the Epistle, if he ever heard the phrase "Son of David,"
-avoided it, for David is here in the background, and in a quotation
-from one of his Psalms his name is passed over, with the vague words,
-"one hath testified somewhere, saying," etc. It is an essential part
-of the writer's argument that Christ is "without genealogy" of that
-kind. To some it was no doubt grateful to be told that Jesus was not
-of the priestly tribe, not of that "apostolic succession," so to say;
-but it was more important to convince the conservative that their
-sacred history sanctioned faith in a high priest approved as such not
-by carnal descent, but by his sinlessness and by his resurrection. But
-it was not agreeable to any Jewish party to suppose that the new
-dominion was to be altogether in the heavens, or detached from the
-Solomonic Golden Age for whose return they were hoping. The writer
-therefore connects Jesus with a "first-born" forerunner, namely, with
-Melchizedek, concerning whom he "has many things to say, and hard
-of interpretation." So Christian commentators have to this day found
-what he does say, and Melchizedek is not surrounded by any dogmatic
-fence that can turn a new hypothesis into a trespass.
-
-The Epistle applies to Jesus lines from Psalm cx.:
-
-
-    Thou art a priest for ever,
-    After the order of Melchizedek.
-
-
-But in this anonymous Psalm there is reason to believe that Melchizedek
-is not a proper name at all. It is admittedly a combination of
-malki'-tzedek, "king of justice," and in the Jewish Family Bible
-(Deusch) the above lines are translated, "Thou art my priest for ever,
-my king in righteousness, by my word." The Septuagint, regularly
-followed by the Epistle to the Hebrews, has Melchizedek in this Psalm
-cx., which was also messianized by the LXX. in its very first line,
-"The Lord said unto my Lord," Kyrios being the word for Lord in
-both cases, whereas in the original the words are different ("Jahveh
-declared to my Adonai"). And it is notable that Matthew xxii. whose
-Hebraic character is so marked, and Mark xii., both make Jesus follow
-the Septuagint in quoting these words.
-
-In both of these Gospels the incident is evidently, in Mark clumsily,
-interpolated, and it would appear to have belonged to some legend
-of the Infancy, such as that of the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy,
-where it occurs naturally:
-
-
-   "And when he was twelve years old they took him to Jerusalem
-    to the feast. But when the feast was over they indeed returned,
-    but the Lord Jesus remained in the temple among the doctors and
-    elders and learned men of Jerusalem, and he asked them sundry
-    questions about the sciences and they answered him in turn. Now
-    he said to them, Whose son is Messiah? They answered him, The son
-    of David. Wherefore, then, said he, Doth he in spirit call him
-    Lord, when he saith the Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my
-    right hand, that I may bring down thy enemies to the footprints
-    of thy feet?"
-
-
-It is probable that this anecdote had floated down from an early
-period when the notion of a royal descent of Jesus had not arisen.
-
-Obviously a tremendous question arises here as to how a story should
-be found in Genesis xiv. about Melchizedek, which as a proper name
-really occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, [36] and the mystery
-is increased by the absence of any allusion to such a personage
-in Jesus Ben Sira's enumeration of "famous men" (Ecclus. xliv.),
-or elsewhere. It almost looks as if Jesus Ben Sira had not read, or
-else had cancelled as spurious, the strange passage in Genesis--which
-is as follows:
-
-
-   "And Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought forth bread and wine;
-    and he was priest of El-Elyon. And he blessed him and said,
-    Blessed be Abram of El-Elyon, purchaser of heaven and earth;
-    and blessed be El-Elyon, which hath delivered thine enemies into
-    thy hand. And he (Abram) gave him a tenth of all."
-
-
-Professor Max Mueller, in his third lecture on the "Science of
-Religion," gives some useful information concerning this peculiar
-name, "El-Elyon," after consulting his contemporaries at Oxford and
-in Germany:
-
-"One of the oldest names of the deity among the ancestors of the
-Semitic nations was El. It meant Strong. It occurs in the Babylonian
-inscriptions as Ilu, God, and in the very name of Bab-il, the gate
-or temple of Il.... The same El was worshipped at Byblus by the
-Phoenicians, and he was called there the Son of Heaven and Earth. His
-father was the son of Eliun, the most high God, who had been killed
-by wild animals. The Son of Eliun, who succeeded him, was dethroned,
-and at last slain by his own son, El, whom Philo identifies with the
-Greek Kronos, and represents as the presiding deity of the planet
-Saturn.... Elyon, which, in Hebrew, means the Highest is used in the
-Old Testament as a predicate of God.... It occurs in the Phoenician
-cosmogony as Eliun, the highest God, the Father of Heaven, who was
-the father of El."
-
-According to Sanchunvaton (Euseb. Proep. i. 10) the Phoenicians called
-God Elioun.
-
-The combination El Elyon occurs in but two chapters in the
-Bible,--Genesis xiv. and Psalm lxxviii. (The Revisers translate it
-in Genesis, "God Most High," but in the Psalm (verse 35), "Most High
-God.") That the name was imported from the earlier into the later
-chapter is suggested by a similar association of each with the idea of
-purchase or redemption: "God Most High, purchaser of heaven and earth"
-(Genesis), "God Most High, their redeemer" (Psalm). But which is the
-earlier? Probably the Psalm; for it is a long resume of the traditional
-history of Israel, but contains no allusion to Abraham. Had its unique
-name, "El Elyon," been derived from any such traditional source surely
-some mention of Abraham would have been made.
-
-The Psalm is Elohistic. Possibly the Phoenician name for God, Elioun,
-was used in order to set "El" above it. Or it may be that as Solomon
-had been declared "Elyon of Kings" (Psalm lxxxix. 27) it was important
-to recall that he at the same time said, "My Elohim," and to place "El"
-before his title. This conjecture is warranted by the fact that in
-both of the Psalms, and in the corresponding passages, God is spoken
-of as a "Rock." There are other resemblances between the two Psalms,
-one very striking:
-
-Psalm lxxviii. 70--"He chose David also, his servant, and took him
-from the sheepfolds."
-
-Psalm lxxxix. 19, 20--"I have raised one elected out of the people;
-I have discovered David, my servant."
-
-The Psalm in which the Septuagint personalises malki'-tzedek (cx.) into
-"Melchizedek" is a fragmentary little piece, with two incomprehensible
-verses at the end which seem to allude to some legend or folklore
-now lost. These verses (6 and 7) are incongruous with the preceding
-ones and must be detached, and perhaps verse 5 also, as this seems an
-anti-climax. These closing verses look as if they may have been added
-by some admirer of Joshua's slaughter of kings, and it is probable
-that the legend of Joshua's making his captains tread on the necks
-of the five kings (Joshua x.) was developed out of the opening verse
-of this Psalm:
-
-
-   "Jahveh said to my lord [Adonai], Sit thou at my right hand,
-    Until I make thine enemies thy footstool."
-
-
-The leader of these kings was Adonai-Zedek, who, like Melchizedek, was
-King of Jerusalem; they are certainly mythical relatives, their names
-meaning "Lord of Justice" and "King of Justice." It is philologically
-impossible that any persons with those proper names could have existed
-in Jerusalem before the invasion of the Hebrews. And "Adonai-bezek,"
-the "radiant lord," whose thumbs and toes Joshua cut off when he
-captured Jerusalem, is a transparent variant of Adonai-zedek.
-
-When the city, originally named Jebus, began to be called Salem (see
-Psalm lxxvi. 2), the aboriginal people who continued to dwell there
-might naturally dream of their ancient kings, as the Welch and Bretons
-so long did of Arthur, "flower of kings," and perhaps similarly expect
-their return to restore their ancient freedom; and it may have become
-a useful political device to find beyond the ugly legends of Joshua's
-cruelty to their "just" and "shining" lords a prettier one, made out
-of an old song, of an earlier "King of Justice," whose bread and wine
-Abraham had eaten, to whom he had paid tithes, whose deity, El Elyon,
-the father of Israel had recognized as his own, and with whom he had
-made a treaty of salem, or peace,--Jebus thus becoming Jebus-Salem
-(Jerusalem).
-
-Josephus records the legend as it was no doubt generally accepted among
-the Jews in the first century of our era: "Now, the King of Sodom met
-him (Abram) at a certain place which they called the King's Dale,
-where Melchizedek, King of the City of Salem, received him. That
-name signifies the righteous king, and such he was without dispute,
-insomuch that on that account he was made the priest of God. However,
-they afterward called Salem Jerusalem." (Antiq. Bk. i. ch. 10.)
-
-Josephus is careful to identify Salem as Jerusalem, and in vi. ch. 10
-of the same work states that the King's Dale (identified as the Shaveh
-where Abraham met Melchizedek, Genesis xiv.) is "two furlongs distant
-from Jerusalem." This carefulness may have been intended to distinguish
-Melchizedek's Salem from the northern Shalem (Genesis xxxiii. 18), a
-place associated with Jacob, and apparently representing an attempt to
-set up a rival temple to that in Jerusalem. It was an old competition
-about tithes. Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek, King of Salem,
-but Jacob, after his vision at Bethel, recognized that as the "house
-of God," and vowed to give to God a tenth of all that was given him
-(Genesis xxviii). [37] This quarrel between rival towns and temples,
-trying each to draw all tithes to themselves, harmonized in the later
-legends of the Bible, need not detain us, but it is of importance
-to remark that the story of Abram meeting the King of Justice and
-Peace near Jerusalem, and establishing the sanctity of that city,
-corresponds with, and is counterbalanced by, Jacob's meeting with
-angels, and wrestling with a mysterious "man," who, it is hinted, was
-some form of God himself. This reply to the story of Abram suggests
-that at the time of that tithe controversy between Bethel and Sion
-Melchizedek was not thought of as a flesh-and-blood king or a mere
-man, but as a shadowy shape, evoked from actual conditions for certain
-purposes, and named in accordance with the history or traditions out
-of which the conditions and the aims were evolved.
-
-In investigations of this kind, concerned with ages really prehistoric,
-it is necessary to remember at every step that our search is amid eras
-when words and names were at once counters of actual forces and factors
-of history. How serious a play on words may be even in historic times
-is illustrated by a Papacy founded on the double meaning of Peter--a
-man's name and a rock,--and as we approach earlier epochs, whose
-issues and struggles have long passed away, and their once antagonistic
-leaders harmonised by pious legends, it is largely by the aid of words
-and names that we are enabled to reach even historic probabilities.
-
-As to Melchizedek, my inference above stated, derived from the two
-tithe legends, that his supernatural character is reflected in that
-of the corresponding phantoms met by Jacob may not be generally
-accepted, but that he (Melchizedek) was so understood by the writer
-to the Hebrews can hardly be disputed. Melchizedek is there (Hebrews
-vii.) declared to have been "without father, without mother, without
-genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, being
-assimilated unto the Son of God."
-
-In the third century the Melchizedekian sect maintained that
-Melchizedek was not a man but a heavenly power superior to Jesus,
-and the Hieracites held similar views. Some eminent theologians have
-believed that Melchizedek was Christ himself. Most of the Christian
-theories concerning the mysterious king are virtual admissions that
-only the eye of faith can see in him any actual being at all. How
-then was this mythical being formed? [38]
-
-1. A suitable nest for the Melchizedek Saga existed near Jerusalem,
-in a vale called the King's Dale. It seems to have been a royal
-racing ground (Targum of Onkelos, Gen. xiv. 17) or hippodrome
-(lxx. xlviii. 7), and its name in Hebrew was Emek-ham-Melech.
-
-2. In the ancient Psalm cx. 1 we have Adonai (Lord), and in verse 4
-Melchi-Melech (or Moloch) king, combined with tsedek, justice.
-
-3. Tzedek (Tsaydoc or Zadok), the priest who anointed Solomon to
-be king. Tsaydoc supplanted the legitimate High Priest Abiathar
-who had taken the side of the legitimate heir to David's throne,
-Adonijah, supplanted by Solomon. The deprivation of Abiathar, and
-exaltation of Tsaydoc to be High Priest is said (1 Kings ii. 27)
-to have been in fulfillment of "the word of Jahveh, which he spake
-concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh." The reference is to the
-sentence passed on Eli and his house, to which Abiathar belonged,
-when Jahveh said, "And I will raise me up a faithful priest, etc.,"
-(1 Sam. ii. 35). Faithful priests were called "sons of Zadok," the
-phrase having apparently become proverbial (Ezek. xliv. 15).
-
-4. In 1 Chron. iii. there appear, among the descendants of Solomon,
-"Amaziah, Azariah his son, Jotham his son." In 1 Chron. vi. we
-find among descendants of Zadok, Ahimaaz, Azariah his son, Johanan
-his son. Johanan is also among Solomon's descendants, and among the
-descendants of both Solomon and Zadok is Shallum,--written by Josephus
-Salloumos (Bk. x. ch. 8). Josephus also says that Zadok was the first
-High Priest of Solomon's Temple. But Solomon himself, without the
-assistance of any priest, dedicated the Temple, offered the sacrifices
-on that occasion, and so continued: "three times in a year did Solomon
-offer burnt offerings and peace offerings upon the altar which he built
-to Jahveh." (1 Kings ix. 25). These statements establish a probability
-that no such person as Zadok existed at all, and that the development
-of this personification of justice (zedek) into a priestly personage
-was due to an ecclesiastical necessity of introducing a priest among
-the provisions of Solomon for the temple. Zadok is thus a detachment
-from King Solomon of the priestly functions he had discharged in the
-temple, according to the book of Kings; and in 1 Chron. vi., where this
-personification is completed, the Solomonic family names are found,
-as above, recurring as descendants of the personification,--Zadok.
-
-These names are the fossil remains of controversies with Shilonite
-and Samaritan pretensions, which ended in consecrating the throne and
-altar at Jerusalem, and they prove that the consecration was that of
-justice and peace. Of these the Wise Man was typical. Solomon was the
-model from whom all of these ideals were painted. His title, Adonai,
-and his equity (Psalm xlv. 7, 11) are combined in Adonizedek, his glory
-(Psalm xlv. 3, 4) is in Adonibezek; his high priesthood is allegorized
-in Zadok; and in "Melchizedek, King of Salem," his supreme characters
-are summed up, "King of Justice, Prince of Peace."
-
-In a warlike age this peacefulness of a monarch was the great and
-supernatural phenomenon. It is the very central idea of the whole
-Solomonic legend. Solomon got his name from it, even the name with
-Jahveh in it (Jedediah) being set aside; he was preferred above David
-to build the temple, because David was a warrior; in building the
-temple the peace was not broken even by the noise of a hammer, the
-stones being all in shape, it seems by supernatural power, when taken
-from the quarry, so as to be noiselessly fitted together; he would not
-fight even those who were rending parts of his kingdom away. He was
-the hero of the Beatitudes,--the gentle one who inherited the earth,
-the one who hungered and thirsted for justice and was filled, the
-peacemaker called the Son of God. It was he who first said, If thine
-enemy hunger give him food, if he thirst give him drink. And all this
-was allegorized in Melchizedek, who, when his country was invaded,
-instead of joining the five kings who resisted, loved his enemy,
-gave the invader food and drink.
-
-We thus find Solomon,--the glorious cosmopolitan and secularist,
-whose name Jahvism could not utter without a shudder,--distributed in
-fable, legend, psalm, through Hexateuch and Hagiographa, and finally
-transfigured into a type of divine and eternal Sonship. Thus he
-appears in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to which we now return.
-
-In the Epistle to the Hebrews Christ is invested with the mystical
-robes of Solomon. To Christ are applied the words, "I will be to him
-a Father, and he shall be to me a Son," quoted from Jahveh's promise
-to David concerning Solomon (2 Sam. vii. 14). To Christ are twice
-applied the words, "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee,"
-quoted from Psalm ii. 7, admittedly Solomonic. From Psalm xlv.,
-verses 6 and 7, ascriptions to Solomon, are applied to Christ in
-this Epistle. And Melchizedek is here declared to be "a great man,"
-"assimilated unto the Son of God."
-
-We may here recall the words of Josephus, a contemporary of our
-writer, who says that Melchizedek was made the priest of God on
-account of his righteousness (Ant., Bk. i. ch. 10). It may have
-been that there was a popular belief in the time of Josephus that
-Melchizedek received his ordination from Abram himself, but there is
-no doubt that the mysterious king's priesthood was believed to rest
-upon his righteousness and above all his peacefulness.
-
-With these preliminaries we may find the Epistle's argument about
-Melchizedek less "hard of interpretation" than the writer says it
-is. After speaking of Abraham as having "obtained" the promise,
-not merely because it was God's promise, but because he "patiently
-endured," having argued that Christ, "though he was a Son, yet learned
-obedience by the things that he suffered", this Epistle maintains
-(vi. 20) that this is the believer's hope, whereby he enters within
-the veil, "whither as a forerunner Jesus entered for us, having
-become a high priest forever after the manner of Melchizedek." (The
-sense of this is lost in the E. V. by rendering genomenos "made":
-the argument is that though he was a Son of God even that could not
-make him a high priest; this he had to "become" by his own merits,
-uninheritable even from God, as was the case with Melchizedek.) "For
-this Melchizedek, being of Salem, priest of God Most High, who met
-Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him,
-to whom also Abraham divided a tenth part of all (being first by
-interpretation King of Righteousness, and next also King of Salem,
-that is Prince of Peace; being without father, without mother,
-without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life,
-but assimilated (echon aphomoiomenos) unto the Son of God), abideth
-a priest perpetually" (vii. 1-3).
-
-The mystical clauses of verse 3 have for centuries been an unsolved
-enigma to exegetists; and Alford, after summing up the many conjectures
-as to their meaning, expresses his feeling that the writer had
-a thought which he did not intend us to comprehend! Probably,
-however, the writer was using language understood in his time, and
-which may be interpreted by comparison with expressions familiar
-in Jewish folklore. Some of these are preserved in the apocryphal
-gospels. Thus, in the Pseudo-Matthew, Levi, the teacher of Jesus,
-astounded by the Child's learning, says, "I think he was born before
-the flood." In the gospel of Thomas, the teacher Zacchaeus says,
-"This child is not of earthly parents, he is able to subdue even
-fire. Perhaps he was begotten before the world was made." These
-ideas, which correspond somewhat to the Teutonic superstition of
-the "changeling," are traceable in the Fourth Gospel (viii. 56-59),
-where Jesus is stoned for saying, "Before Abraham was I am."
-
-It will be seen that by this early writer "to the Hebrews"  Jesus was
-not thought of in connection with David, but bore Solomon's preeminent
-title, King of Peace, and that conferred on him by the Queen of
-Sheba, King of Justice. In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the Prince of the
-Golden Age, historically associated with idolatrous shrines, had been
-rehabilitated, even apotheosized; he was now a sort of rival of Jesus
-in divine sonship. The writer of our Epistle therefore artistically,
-not to say artfully, utilizes a composite word made into a proper name
-under which Solomon's combined royalty and priesthood, his peace and
-justice, had been detached from his personality and personified. The
-new exaltation of Solomon personally was thus ignored, while his
-essential glories, his wisdom, and his reclaimed virtues, were woven
-into the celestial mantle of mysterious Melchizedek, and through him
-passed to the shoulders of the risen Christ.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV.
-
-THE PAULINE DEHUMANIZATION OF JESUS.
-
-
-The Queen of Sheba certainly deserved her exaltation as the Hebrew
-Athena, and the homage paid to her by Jesus, for journeying so
-far simply to hear the wisdom of Solomon. In Jewish and Christian
-folklore are many miraculous tales about the Queen's visit, but in
-the Biblical records, in the books of "Kings" and "Chronicles," the
-only miracle is the entire absence of anything marvellous, magical,
-or even occult. The Queen was impressed by Solomon's science, wisdom,
-the edifices he had built, the civilization he had brought about;
-they exchanged gifts, and she departed. It is a strangely rational
-history to find in any ancient annals.
-
-The saying of Jesus cited by Clement of Alexandria, "He that hath
-marvelled shall reign," uttered perhaps with a sigh, tells too
-faithfully how small has been the interest of grand people in the
-wisdom that is "clear, undefiled, plain." They are represented rather
-by the beautiful and wealthy Marchioness in "Gil Blas," whose favour
-was sought by the nobleman, the ecclesiastic, the philosopher, the
-dramatist, by all the brilliant people, but who set them all aside
-for an ape-like hunchback, with whom she passed many hours, to the
-wonder of all, until it was discovered that the repulsive creature
-was instructing her ladyship in cabalistic lore and magic.
-
-There is much human pathos in this longing of mortals to attain
-to some kind of real and intimate perception beyond the phenomenal
-universe, and to some personal assurance of a future existence; but
-it has cost much to the true wisdom of this world. Some realization
-of this may have caused the sorrow of Jesus at Dalmanutha, as related
-in Mark. "The Pharisees came forth and began to question with him,
-seeking of him a sign from heaven, testing him. And he sighed deeply
-in his spirit, and saith, Why does this people seek a sign? I say
-plainly unto you no sign will be given them. And he left them, and
-reentering the boat departed to the other side."
-
-They who now long to know the real mind of Jesus are often constrained
-to repeat his deep sigh when they find the most probable utterances
-ascribed to him perverted by the marvel-mongers, insomuch that to the
-protest just quoted Matthew adds a self-contradictory sentence about
-Jonah. That this unqualified repudiation by Jesus of miracles should
-have been preserved at all in Mark, a gospel full of miracles, is a
-guarantee of the genuineness of the incident, and of the comparative
-earliness of some parts of that gospel. The period of sophistication
-was not far advanced. Miracles require time to grow. But the deep sigh
-and the words of Jesus, taken in connection with the entire absence
-from the Epistles--the earliest New Testament documents--of any hint of
-a miracle wrought by him, is sufficient to bring us into the presence
-of a man totally different from the "Christ" of the four Gospels. [39]
-
-Those who seek the real Jesus will find it the least part of their
-task to clear away the particular miracles ascribed to him; that is
-easy enough; the critical and difficult thing is to detach from the
-anecdotes and language connected with him every admixture derived
-from the belief in his resurrection. To do this completely is indeed
-impossible.
-
-Paul, probably a contemporary of Jesus, knew well enough the
-vast difference between the man "Jesus" and the risen "Christ";
-he insisted that the man should be ignored, and supplanted by the
-risen Christ, as revealed by private revelations received by himself
-after the resurrection. The student must now reverse that: he must
-ignore those post-resurrectional revelations if he would know Jesus
-"after the flesh"--that is, the real Jesus.
-
-In an age when immortality is a familiar religious belief we can hardly
-realize the agitation, among a people to whom life after death was a
-vague, imported philosophy, excited by the belief that a man had been
-raised bodily from the grave. Immortality was no longer hypothesis. If
-to this belief be added the further conviction that this resurrection
-was preliminary to his speedy reappearance, and the world's sudden
-transformation, a mental condition could not fail to arise in which
-any ethical or philosophical ideas he might have uttered while "in
-the flesh" must be thrown into the background, as of merely casual
-or temporary importance. Such is the state of mind reflected in the
-Pauline Epistles. In them is found no reference whatever to any moral
-instructions by Jesus. And when after some two generations had passed,
-and they who had expected while yet living to meet their returning Lord
-had died, those who had heard oral reports and legends concerning him
-and his teachings began to write the memoranda on which our Synoptical
-Gospels are based, it was too late to give these without adulterations
-from the apostolic ecstasy. His casual or playful remarks were by this
-time discoloured and distorted, and enormously swollen, as if under a
-solar microscope, by the overwhelming conceptions of a resurrection, an
-approaching advent, a subversion of all nationalities and institutions.
-
-The most serious complication arises from the extent to which the
-pretended revelations of Paul have been built into the Gospels. The
-so-called "conversion of Paul" was really the conversion of Jesus. The
-facts can only be gathered from Paul's letters, the book of "Acts"
-being hardly more historical than "Robinson Crusoe." The account in
-"Acts" of Paul's "conversion" is, however, of interest as indicating
-a purpose in its writers to raise Paul into a supernatural authority
-equivalent to that ascribed to Christ, in order that he might set
-aside the man Jesus. The story is a travesty of that related in the
-"Gospel According to the Hebrews," concerning the baptism of Jesus:
-"And a voice out of the heaven saying, 'Thou art my beloved Son,
-in thee I am well pleased': and again, 'I have this day begotten
-thee.' And straightway a great light shone around the place. And
-when John saw it he saith to him, 'Who art thou, Lord?'" John fell
-down before Jesus as did Paul before Christ. "At midday, O King,
-I saw on the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the
-sun, shining round about me, and them that journeyed with me. And
-when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice saying to me
-in the Hebrew language, 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is
-hard for thee to kick against the goad.' And I said, 'Who art thou,
-Lord?'" (Precisely what John said to Jesus at the baptism.)
-
-This story (Acts xxvi. 13-15), quite inconsistent with Paul's
-letters, is throughout very ingenious. Besides associating Paul
-with the supernatural consecration of Jesus, it replies, by calling
-him Saul, to the Ebionite declaration that Paul had been a pagan,
-who had become a Jewish proselyte with the intention of marrying the
-High Priest's daughter. There is no reason to suppose that Paul was
-ever called Saul during his life, and his salutation of two kinsmen in
-Rome with Latin names, Andronicus and Junias (Romans xvi. 7), renders
-it probable that he was not entirely if at all Hebrew. The sentence,
-"It is hard for thee to kick against the goad," is a subtle answer
-to any who might think it curious that the story of the resurrection
-carried no conviction to Paul's mind at the time of its occurrence by
-suggesting that in continuing his persecutions he was going against
-his real belief--kicking against the goad.
-
-Paul, however, knows nothing of this theatrical conversion in his
-letters. But in severe competition with other "preeminent apostles,"
-who were preaching "another Christ" from his, he pronounces them
-accursed, supporting an authority above theirs by declaring that he had
-repeated interviews with the risen Christ, and on one occasion had been
-taken up into the third heaven and even into Paradise! The extremes
-to which Paul was driven by the opposing apostles are illustrated
-in his intimidation of dissenting converts by his pretence to an
-occult power of withering up the flesh of those whom he disapproves
-(1 Cor. v. 5). He tells Timothy of two men, Hymenoeus and Alexander,
-whom he thus "delivered over to Satan" that "they may be taught not
-to blaspheme"--the blasphemy in this case being the belief (now become
-orthodoxy) that the dead were not sleeping in their graves but passed
-into heaven or hell at death. In the book of "Acts" (xiii.) this claim
-of Paul's seems to have been developed into the Evil Eye (which he
-fastened on Bar Jesus, whose eyes thereon went out), and may perhaps
-account for the similar sinister power ascribed to some of the Popes.
-
-In this story of Bar Jesus, Christ is associated with Paul in
-striking the learned man blind (xiii. 11), and the development of
-such a legend reveals the extent to which Jesus had been converted
-by Paul. In 1 Cor. ii. he presents a Christ whose body and blood,
-being not precisely discriminated in the sacramental bread and wine,
-had made some participants sickly and killed others, in addition to
-the damnation they had eaten and drank. He does not mention that any
-who communicated correctly had been physically benefited thereby;
-only the malignant powers appear to have had any utility for Paul.
-
-That this menacing Christ may have been needed to intimidate converts
-and build up churches is probable; that such a being was nothing like
-Jesus in the flesh, but had to come by pretended posthumous revelation,
-as an awful potentate whose human flesh had been but a disguise,
-is certain. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find that nearly
-everything pharisaic, cruel, and ungentlemanly, ascribed to Jesus in
-the synoptical Gospels, is fabricated out of Paul's Epistles. Paul
-compares rival apostles to the serpent that beguiled Eve (2 Cor. xi. 3,
-4), and Christ calls his opponents offspring of vipers. The fourth
-Gospel, apostolic in spirit, degrades Jesus independently, but it also
-borrows from Paul. Paul personally delivered some over to Satan, and
-the intimation in John xiii. 27, "after the sop, then entered Satan
-into Judas," accords well with what Paul says about the unworthy
-communicant eating and drinking damnation (1 Cor. xi. 29).
-
-The Eucharist itself was probably Paul's own adaptation of a Mithraic
-rite to Christian purposes. There is no reason to suppose that there
-was anything sanctimonious in the wine supper which Jesus took with his
-friends at the time of the Passover, and Paul's testimony concerning
-the way it had been observed is against any   over with you?" [40]
-Had it been other than a pleasant Epiphanius from the Gospel according
-to the Hebrews show that he desired to draw his friends away from
-the sacrificial feature of the festival: "Where wilt thou that we
-prepare for the passover to eat?" ... "Have I desired with desire to
-eat this flesh, the passover with you?" [41] Had it been other than a
-pleasant wine supper it could not in so short a time have become the
-jovial festival which Paul describes (1 Cor. xi. 20), nor, in order
-to reform it, would he have needed the pretence that he had received
-from Christ the special revelation of details of the Supper which
-he gives, and which the Gospels have followed. Having substituted a
-human for an animal sacrifice ("our passover also hath been sacrificed,
-Christ," 1 Cor. v. 7), he restores precisely that sacrificial feature
-to which Jesus had objected; and in harmony with this goes on to show
-that human lives have been sacrificed to the majestic real presence
-(1 Cor. xi. 30). He had learned, perhaps by "pagan" experiences,
-what power such a sacrament might put into the priestly hand. [42]
-
-It is Paul who first appointed Christ the judge of quick and dead
-(1 Tim. iv. 1). He describes to the Thessalonians (2 Thes. i.) "the
-revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of his power
-in flaming fire, rendering vengeance to them that know not God," and
-the "eternal destruction" of these. Hence, "I never knew you" becomes
-a formula of damnation put into the mouth of Christ. "I know you not"
-is the brutal reply of the bridegroom to the five virgins, whose lamps
-were not ready on the moment of his arrival. The picturesque incidents
-of this parable have caused its representation in pretty pictures,
-which blind many to its essential heartlessness. It is curious that
-it should be preserved in a Gospel which contains the words, "Knock,
-and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth,
-and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be
-opened." The parable is fabricated out of 1 Thes. v., where Paul warns
-the converts that the Lord cometh as a thief in the night, that there
-will be no escape for those who then slumber, that they must not sleep
-like the rest, but watch, "for God hath appointed us not unto wrath."
-
-The Christian dogma of the unpardonable sin, substituted for the
-earlier idea of an unrepentable sin, was developed out of Paul's
-fatalism. He writes, "For this cause God sendeth them a strong delusion
-that they should believe a lie" (2 Thes. ii). Although this is not
-connected in any Gospel with the inexpiable sin, we find its spirit
-animating the Paul-created Christ in Mark iv. 11: "Unto them that are
-without all these things are done in parables, that seeing they may
-see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand:
-lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should
-be forgiven them." This is imported from Paul (Rom. xi. 7, 8):
-"That which Israel seeketh for, that he obtained not; but the elect
-obtained it and the rest were hardened; according as it is written,
-God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see,
-and ears that they should not hear, unto this very day."
-
-Whence came this Christ who, in the very chapter where Jesus warns
-men against hiding their lamp under a bushel, carefully hides his
-teaching under a parable for the express purpose of preventing some
-outsiders from being enlightened and obtaining forgiveness?
-
-Jesus could not have said these things unless he plagiarized from
-Paul by anticipation. Deduct from the Gospels all that has been
-fabricated out of Paul (I have given only the more salient examples)
-and there will be found little or nothing morally revolting, nothing
-heartless. Superstitions abound, but so far as Jesus is concerned
-they are nearly all benevolent in their spirit.
-
-But even after we have removed from the Gospels the immoralities of
-Paul and the pharisaisms so profound as to suggest the proselyte, after
-we have turned from his Christ to seek Jesus, we have yet to divest
-him of the sombre vestments of a supernatural being, who could not
-open his lips or perform any action but in relation to a resurrection
-and a heavenly office of which he could never have dreamed. Was he
-
-
-    "The faultless monster whom the world ne'er saw"?
-
-
-Did he never laugh? Did he eat with sinners only to call
-them to repentance? Did he get the name of wine-bibber for his
-"salvationism,"--or was it because, like Omar Khayyam, he defied the
-sanctimonious and the puritanical by gathering with the intellectual,
-the scholarly, the Solomonic clubs?
-
-To Paul we owe one credible item concerning Jesus, that he was
-originally wealthy (2 Cor. viii. 9), and as Paul mentioned this to
-inculcate liberality in contributors, it is not necessary to suppose
-that he alluded to his heavenly riches. At any rate, the few sayings
-that may be reasonably ascribed to Jesus are those of an educated
-gentleman, and strongly suggest his instruction in the college of
-Hillel, whose spirit remained there after his death, which occurred
-when Jesus was at least ten years old.
-
-To a pagan who asked Hillel concerning the law, he answered: "That
-which you like not for yourself do not to thy neighbour, that is the
-whole law; the rest is but commentary." It will be observed that Hillel
-humanizes the law laid down in Lev. xix. 18, where the Israelites
-are to love each his neighbour among "the children of thy people" as
-himself. Even Paul (Rom. xiii. 8, Gal. v. 14) quotes it for a rule
-among the believers, while hurling anathema on others. But Jesus
-is made (Matt. vii. 12) to inflate the rule into the impracticable
-form of "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you,
-even so do ye also unto them." By which rule a wealthy Christian would
-give at least half his property to the first beggar, as he would wish
-the beggar to do to him were their situations reversed. This might
-be natural enough in a community hourly expecting the end of the
-world and their own instalment in palaces whose splendour would be
-proportioned to their poverty in this world. But when this delusion
-faded the rule reverted to what Hillel said, and no doubt Jesus also,
-as we find it in the second verse of "Didache," the Teaching of the
-Twelve Apostles. It is a principle laid down by Confucius, Buddha,
-and all the human "prophets," and one followed by every gentleman, not
-to do to his neighbour what he would not like if done to himself. But
-it is removed out of human ethics and strained ad absurdum by the
-second-adventist version put into the mouth of Jesus by Matthew. I
-have dwelt on this as an illustration of how irrecoverably a man
-loses his manhood when he is made a God.
-
-Irrecoverably! In the second Clementine Epistle (xii. 2) it is said,
-"For the Lord himself, having been asked by some one when his kingdom
-should come, said, When the two shall be one, and the outside as the
-inside, and the male with the female neither male nor female." Perhaps
-a humorous way of saying Never. Equally remote appears the prospect
-of recovering the man Jesus from his Christ-sepulchre. Even among
-rationalists there are probably but few who would not be scandalized
-by any thorough test such as Jesus is said, in the Nazarene Gospel,
-to have requested of his disciples after his resurrection, "Take, feel
-me, and see that I am not a bodiless demon!" Without blood, without
-passion, he remains without the experiences and faults that mould
-best men, as Shakespeare tells us; he so remains in the nerves where
-no longer in the intellect, insomuch that even many an agnostic would
-shudder if any heretic, taking his life in his hand, should maintain
-that Jesus had fallen in love, or was a married man, or had children.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI.
-
-THE MYTHOLOGICAL MANTLE OF SOLOMON FALLEN ON JESUS.
-
-
-It is no part of my aim to prove miracles impossible, nor to consider
-whether one or another alleged wonder might not be really within
-the powers of an exceptional man. In the absence of any apostolic
-allusion to any extraordinary incident in the life of Jesus, and his
-own declaration (for the evangelists could not have invented a rebuke
-to their own narratives) that miracles were the vain expectation of
-a people in distress and degradation, such records have lost their
-historic character. As Gibbon said in the last century, it requires
-a miracle of grace to make a believer in miracles, and even among the
-uncritical that miracle is not frequent. In the New Testament belief
-in miracle has its natural corollary in a miraculous morality,--a
-dissolution of earthly ties, a severance from worldly affairs, a
-non-resistance and passiveness under wrongs, which are in perfect
-accord with persons moving in an apocalyptic dream, but not with a
-world awakened from that dream.
-
-But at the root of the unnatural miracles is the natural miracle--the
-heart of man. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, as the
-miracle-working poet reminds us; our little life is surrounded with a
-sleep, a realm of dreams,--visions that give poetic fulfilment to hopes
-born of hard experience. No biblical miracle in its literal form is so
-beautiful and impressive as the history of its origin and development
-as traced by the student of mythology. The growth, for example, of
-a simple proverb ascribed to Solomon "He that trusteth in his riches
-shall fall, but the just shall flourish as a green leaf" into a hymn
-(Ps. lii.); the association of this Psalm, by its Hebrew caption,
-with hungry David eating the shewbread of the temple, and the king's
-slaying the priests who permitted it; the use of this legend by Jesus
-when his disciples were censured for plucking the corn on the Sabbath
-(with perhaps some humorous picture of a great king in Heaven angry
-because hungry men ate a few grains of corn, crumbs from his royal
-table) pointed with advice that the censors should learn that God
-desires charity and not sacrifice; the development of this into an
-early Christian burden against the rich, which took the form of an
-old Oriental fable, [43] to which a Jewish connotation was given by
-giving the poor man in Paradise the name of Lazarus (i.e. Eleazar,
-who risked his life to obtain water for famished David, a story that
-may have been referred to by Jesus along with that of the shewbread);
-the transformation of this parable into a quasi-historical narrative
-representing the return of Lazarus from Abraham's bosom, his poverty
-omitted; the European combination of the parable and the history
-by creating a St. Lazarus ("one helped by God"), yet appointing him
-the helper of beggars (lazzaroni): these items together represent a
-continuity of the human spirit through thousands of years, surmounting
-obstructive superstitions, holding still the guiding thread of humanity
-through long labyrinths of legend.
-
-To fix on any one stage in such an evolution, detach it, affirm it,
-is to wrest a true scripture to its destruction. Few can really
-be interested in Abimelech and the shewbread; no one now believes
-that a rich man must go to hell because he is rich, nor a pauper to
-Paradise because of his pauperism; and none can intelligently believe
-the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus without believing that
-in Jesus miraculous power was associated with the unveracity and
-vanity ascribed to him in that narrative. But take the legends all
-together, and in them is visible the supersacred heart of humanity
-steadily developing through manifold symbols and fables the religion
-of human helpfulness and happiness. The study of mythology is the
-study of nature.
-
-The theory already stated (ante I), that illegitimacy or irregularity
-of birth was a sign of authentication for "the God-anointed," finds
-some corroboration in the claim of the Epistle to the Hebrews that
-Jesus, like Melchizedek, was without father, mother, or genealogy. His
-double nature is suggested: "Our Lord sprung out of Judah" (vii. 14),
-yet (verse 16), as priest, he has arisen "not after the law of a
-carnal commandment, but after the power of an indissoluble life." The
-writer admits that what he writes about Melchizedek is "hard of
-interpretation," and perhaps it so proved to the genealogist (Matt,
-i.) who apparently was animated by a desire to make out a carnal-law
-inheritance of the throne, yet not so legitimate as to exclude divine
-interference at various stages. In the forty-two generations only
-five mothers are named,--all associated either with sexual immorality
-or some kind of irregularity in their matrimonial relations. Tamar,
-through whose adultery with her father-in-law, Judah, his almost
-extinct line was preserved, is already a holy woman in the book of
-Ruth (iv. 12), and the association there of Ruth's name with this
-particular one of the many female ancestors of her son, and her mention
-in Matthew, look as if some editor of Ruth as well as the genealogist
-desired to cast suspicion on her midnight visit to Boaz. "The Lord
-gave Tamar conception, and she bore a son"--grandfather of David. It
-is also doubtful whether Rahab, who comes next to Tamar in Matthew's
-list, is called a harlot in the book of Joshua: Zuneh is said to mean
-"hostess" or "tavern-keeper." But in the Epistle to the Hebrews and in
-that of James she becomes a glorified harlot. The next female ancestor
-of Jesus mentioned is "her of Uriah." The name of the woman is not
-given,--the important fact being apparently that she was somebody's
-wife. Our translators have supplied no fewer than five words to save
-this text from signifying that Bathsheba was still Uriah's wife when
-Solomon was born.
-
-The next ancestress named after the mother of Solomon is the mother of
-Jesus, Mary, in whom Bathsheba finds transfiguration. The exaltation
-of the adulterous mother of Solomon has already been referred to
-(ante II.), and the traditional ascription to her of the authorship
-of the last chapter of Proverbs. She was also supposed to be the
-original or model of "the Virtuous Woman" therein portrayed! Now,
-in that same chapter she is pronounced "blessed," and excelling all
-the daughters who have done virtuously (Cf. Luke i. 28, 42). In the
-"Wisdom of Solomon" (ix. 5) a phrase is used by Solomon which is also
-used by his mother (Bathsheba) when she conjured from David the decree
-for his succession,--"thine handmaiden" (1 Kings i.). Solomon says,
-"For I, thy servant, and son of thy handmaiden," etc. This was written
-in a popular work about the time of the birth of Jesus. We find the
-"blessed" of Proverbs xxxi. 28, and the "handmaiden" of the "Wisdom
-of Solomon" both in Mary's magnificat: "For he hath regarded the low
-estate of his handmaiden; for behold, from henceforth all generations
-shall call me blessed."
-
-In Ecclesiasticus (xv. 2) we find the enigmatic clause concerning
-Solomonic "Sophia," personified Wisdom: kai hypantesetai auto hos
-meter, kai hos gyne parthenias prosdexetai auoton.
-
-The Vulgate translates: "Et obviabit illi quasi mater honorificata,
-et quasi mulier a virginitate suscipiet illum."
-
-Wycliffe translates the Vulgate: "And it as a modir onourid schal
-meete hym, and as a womman fro virgynyte schal take him."
-
-The Authorised Version has: "And as a mother shall she meet him,
-and receive him as a wife married of a virgin."
-
-In the Variorum Teacher's Bible the reading "maiden wife" is suggested,
-and reference is made to Leviticus xxi. 13, "And he shall take a wife
-in her virginity." But the Septuagint, which Jesus Ben Sira would
-follow were he quoting, uses simple words there: hautos gynaika
-parthenon [ek tou genous autou] lepsetai.
-
-(The words in crochets are added by the LXX.)
-
-The clause in Ecclus. xv. 2, taken with the chapter it continues,
-conveys to me an impression of rhapsodical paradox, as when Dante
-apostrophises Mary: "O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy son!" The Semitic
-goddess is born, Wisdom, sister of virginal Athena of the Parthenon,
-yet fulfilling the Solomonic exaltation of the Virtuous Woman, who
-is also a wife. She is therefore the Virgin Bride.
-
-But whether this interpretation is correct or not, it cannot be
-doubted that this strange phrase in a household book might easily
-convey that impression, and that to believers in the resurrection
-of Jesus the feeling that he must also have entered the world in a
-supernatural way might naturally have associated Miriam his mother
-with the virgin bride, Wisdom.
-
-The evolution of Wisdom into the Holy Spirit has been traced (ante
-XII.), and it is sufficient to mention here that in the "Gospel
-according to the Hebrews," Jesus uses the phrase "My mother the
-Holy Spirit."
-
-In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the resurrected Solomon says, "I was
-nursed in swaddling clothes, and that with cares" (vii. 4, cf. Luke
-ii. 7). This might be said of every babe, but the King, having begun by
-saying "I myself also am a mortal man," mentions the swaddling clothes
-as a sign of lowliness; and the impression made by this item in the
-Birth-legend of Jesus is shown by a passage in the Arabic Gospel of
-the Infancy. It is said that when the Wise Men came, in obedience to
-a prophecy of Zoroaster, Mary rewarded their gifts with one of the
-child's "Swaddling bands," which on their return to their own land
-withstood the power of fire, in which it was tested.
-
-The infant Jesus receives gifts of the Wise Men, traceable to the gold,
-silver, and spices brought by the Queen of Sheba (afterwards "Sophia")
-to Solomon. (Cf. also Psalm lxxii. 8-11.) As Solomon to the Queen,
-so Jesus gives proofs of astounding wisdom to the woman of Samaria.
-
-In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the returned king proceeds: "I was a witty
-child, and had a good spirit. Yea rather, being good, I came into a
-body undefiled" (viii. 19, 20). In Luke it is said, "And the child
-grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom." "And Jesus
-increased in wisdom and stature."
-
-The word "undefiled" was a special title of Wisdom. In the "Wisdom of
-Solomon" (vii.) the King, having described his birth, "like to all,"
-and his "swaddling clothes," follows this immediately by saying,
-"I prayed, and understanding was given me; I called, and the spirit
-of Wisdom came to me." This is the new and the spiritual birth. Among
-the titles ascribed in the same chapter to Wisdom is "Undefiled," this
-being emphasized three verses lower by the declaration that being a
-pure emanation from God "no defiled thing can fall into her." These
-ideas, so far as Solomon is concerned, are referable to his prayer
-for wisdom (1 Kings iii. 9) and to Jahveh's adoption of him (Psalm
-ii. 7). "Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee."
-
-These ideas all reappear at the baptism of Jesus, as related in the
-"Gospel according to Hebrews":
-
-
-   "Behold the mother of the Lord and his brethren said to him,
-    'John the Baptist baptizeth for remission of sins: let us go and
-    be baptized by him.' But he said to them, 'Wherein have I sinned
-    that I should go and be baptized by him? except perchance this very
-    thing that I have said is ignorance.' And when the people had been
-    baptized Jesus also came and was baptized by John. And as he went
-    up the heavens were opened, and he saw the Holy Spirit in shape
-    of a Dove descending and entering him. And a voice out of heaven,
-    saying, 'Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased';
-    and again, 'I have this day begotten thee.'" (Cf. Jahveh's promise
-    concerning Solomon, 1 Chron. xvii. 13, "I will be his father and
-    he shall be my son.")
-
-
-It is important to recall that this all occurred before baptism. The
-suggestion that he should be baptized for remission of sins, is met by
-Jesus as a challenge of his sinlessness. It is submitted to the test,
-and before he enters the water the "Undefiled" (the dove) enters
-him, and the deity announces him as then and there begotten. When
-"straightway a great light shone around the place"--ultimately the Star
-of Bethlehem. John the Baptist is here the shepherd: seeing the light,
-he asks, "Who art thou, Lord?" The heavenly voice replies, "This is my
-beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Then John fell down before
-him and said, "I pray thee, Lord, baptize thou me." But he prevented
-him, saying, "Let be; for thus it is becoming that all things should
-be fulfilled." Then follows the baptism, and the account continues:
-
-
-   "And it came to pass, when the Lord had come up from the water,
-    the entire fountain of the Holy Spirit descended and rested upon
-    him and said to him, 'My Son, in all the prophets did I await thee,
-    that thou mightest come and I might rest in thee; for thou art
-    my rest; thou art my first-born Son that reignest forever.'" [44]
-
-
-The phrase "entire fountain of the Holy Spirit" is Parsi. Anahita
-is the Holy Spirit; her influence is always described as a fountain
-descending on the saints or heroes to whom she gives strength. It
-will be remembered that in this Gospel the Holy Spirit is also
-feminine. The use of the words "fountain" and "rest in thee" are
-interesting in connection with the account of John the Baptizer
-and Jesus in the fourth gospel, which differs so widely from the
-Synoptical narratives. It is in John (iii.) left doubtful whether
-Jesus accepted any baptismal rite at all. John was baptizing at
-a large pool called AEnon-by-Saleim,--probably allegorical, meaning
-"Fountain of Repose." Jesus and his friends came there and plunged in
-(ebaptixonto), but they seem to have been a distinct party from
-that of John.
-
-After the supposed resurrection of Jesus everything he did, even
-taking a bath, became mystical. Jerome says that in his time there
-was a place called Salumias, and he maintained that it was there that
-Melchizedek refreshed Abraham. There are various readings of this
-Saleim in the New Testament, all, no doubt, variants of Solomon,
-all meaning "rest"; and the fourth Gospel supplies in 'Ainon engys
-Salem' the basis of the legend in the Aramaic Gospel of the "rest"
-which the Holy Spirit found in her son, on whom her "entire fountain"
-was poured. And with this legend may also be read the words of "Wisdom
-of Solomon," vii. 27, 28: "She (Wisdom) maketh all things new; and in
-all ages entering into holy souls she maketh them friends of God and
-prophets. For God loveth none but him that dwelleth with Wisdom." The
-representation in this Aramaic Gospel of the Holy Spirit as "entering
-into" Jesus is especially interesting in connection with the use of
-the same phrase in "Wisdom of Solomon,"--into whose heart Wisdom was
-put by God (1 Kings x. 24).
-
-It is only after Wisdom has entered into Jesus that the voice is
-heard, "This is my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased." This
-accords with Solomon's words, "God loveth none but him that dwelleth
-with Wisdom." The angelic song at the birth (Luke ii. 14) preserves
-the heavenly voice at the baptism concerning "peace." The "peace"
-is Solomon's own name, associated with the "rest" given to his reign
-in order that he might build the temple (1 Kings v. 4, Ecclesiasticus
-xlvii. 13). "My Son," says the spirit from within Jesus, "Thou art
-my rest."
-
-It is remarkable that the title preeminently belonging to Solomon,
-"Prince of Peace," and unknown to the Gospels as a title of Jesus,
-should be traditionally given to one said to have declared that
-he had come on earth to bring not peace but a sword, and bids his
-disciples arm themselves. No doubt the religious instinct tells true
-in this; it is tolerably plain that the warlike words were ascribed
-to Jesus not because he said them, but to adapt him to the "Word"
-as described in the "Wisdom of Solomon": "While all things were in
-quiet silence ... thine Almighty Word leaped down from heaven out
-of thy royal throne as a fierce man of war ... and brought thine
-unfeigned commandment as a sharp sword," etc. The fierce metaphor
-was, as we have seen, caught up and spiritualized in the Epistle to
-the Hebrews, and passed on to be literalized for the risen Christ,
-so that the consecration of the sword by the Prince of Peace is writ
-large in the Christian wars of many centuries.
-
-To the tests and proofs of Solomon's wisdom recorded in 1 Kings
-iii. and x. many additions were made by rabbinical tradition, mostly
-derived from Parsi scriptures. The famous Ring of Solomon is the symbol
-of sovereignty over the part of the earth owned by God given by him to
-the first man King Yima--"Then I, Ahura Mazda, brought two implements
-unto him, a golden ring and a poniard inlaid with gold. Behold,
-here Yima bears the royal sway!" (Vendidad, Farg. ii. 5). When Yima
-pressed the earth with this ring, the genius of the Earth, Aramaiti,
-responded to his wish and order. The ring represented Yima's "glory"
-(in Avestan phrase), his divine potency, lost when he yielded to a
-temptation of the devil, and Solomon also lost his ring with which,
-as we have seen (ante IV.) his "glory" and royal sway passed to the
-(Persian) devil Asmodeus. This occurred in a trial of wits, Asmodeus
-propounding hard questions, which Solomon was able to answer until,
-proudly thinking he could answer by his unaided intellect, he laid
-aside his ring, at the challenge of Asmodeus. These hard questions
-are found in an ancient legend of a similar contest between the devil
-and Zoroaster, and are alluded to as "malignant riddles." Zoroaster
-met the devil "unshaken by the hardness of his malignant riddles,"
-and swinging "stones as big as a house," which he had obtained from
-the Maker,--tables of the divine law, and possibly origin of the
-stones which the devil challenged Jesus to turn into bread.
-
-There are Avestan elements in the legend of the temptation of Jesus
-that do not appear in the legends of Solomon. In Parsi belief the land
-of demons on earth is Mazana. From that region they issue to inflict
-diseases, especially blindness and deafness. In that region is an
-"exceeding high mountain," Damavand, to which the great demon Azi
-Dahaka was bound by Feridun who overcame him. This demon was called
-"the murderer,"--the epithet mysteriously applied by Jesus to the
-devil (John viii. 44). After tempting and supplanting King Yima he
-ruled over the world for a millennium in great splendour, and the
-chief of devils tempts Zoroaster with that glory.
-
-"Renounce the good law of the worshippers of Mazda, and thou shalt
-gain such a boon as the Murderer gained, the ruler of nations." Thus
-in answer to him said Zoroaster, "No, never will I renounce the good
-law of the worshippers of Mazda, though my body, my life, my soul,
-should burst." Again said the guileful one, the Maker of the evil
-world, "By whose word wilt thou strike, by whose word wilt thou
-repel, by whose weapon will the good creatures (strike and repel)
-my creation?" Thus, in answer, said Zoroaster, "The sacred mortar,
-the sacred cup, the Haoma [the sacramental juice] the Words taught
-by Mazda, these are my weapons." [45]
-
-After this, Zoroaster "on the mountain" conversed with Ahura Mazda,
-and invoked the beneficent beings who preside over the seven Karshvares
-of the earth. We thus have here the mountain, the stones, the Word
-from the mouth of God, the offer of the kingdoms of the world, and
-the ministering angels, which reappear in the temptation of Jesus.
-
-After his baptism, Jesus repudiates his human parentage ("who is my
-mother?" etc.), and was led up by his new mother--the Spirit--into
-the wilderness to be tested by the devil. To this no doubt relate
-the words of Jesus preserved by Origen from the "Gospel according
-to the Hebrews": "Just now my mother the Holy Spirit took me by one
-of my hairs and bore me up on the great mountain Tabor." [46] Here
-the Solomonic kingdom and glory were offered by the devil if Jesus
-would worship him. According to Luke iv. he was tempted forty days
-(the number of the years of Solomon's reign). The first incident
-thereafter was his announcement that the Spirit of the Lord was
-upon him, and the second was an exhibition of his Solomonic power
-over devils. This, in Luke, is his first miracle. His first titular
-recognition was this surrender of the devil, who cried, "I know thee
-who them art, the Holy One of Israel!"
-
-In Matthew also the devils first give him the divine title "Son of God"
-(vii. 29). In the next chapter he gives his twelve disciples authority
-over demons. That this was well understood by the people is shown
-in Matthew xii. 23, where, on seeing demons mastered, they cry,
-"Is this the Son of David?" that is, is this Solomon, the famous
-enslaver of demons?
-
-It may be noted in passing that in the three miracles in Matthew of
-exorcising a blinding demon the title "Son of David" is used. Alford
-speaks of this as remarkable; but vision is the especial promise of
-Wisdom, therefore of Solomon, son of David.
-
-It may be remembered in this connection that in "Wisdom"
-(Ecclus. iv.) the trial by Wisdom is set forth:
-
-
-   "Whoso giveth ear unto her shall judge the nations. * * *
-    If a man commit himself unto her, he shall inherit her. * * *
-    At the first she will walk with him by crooked ways and bring
-    fear and dread upon him, and torment him with her discipline,
-    until she may trust his soul, and try him by her laws. Then
-    she will return the straight way unto him, and comfort him, and
-    shew him her secrets. But if he go wrong she will forsake him,
-    and give him over to his own ruin."
-
-
-This, which reappears in the parable of the broad and the narrow ways,
-seems to have determined the part which the Holy Spirit performs in
-the temptation of Jesus. According to Matthew he was by the Spirit
-carried involuntarily, "driven," says Mark, the Hebrew Gospel says,
-"borne by the hair" into the wilderness: as Jahveh "raised a Satan
-unto Solomon," and left Job to Satan, the Holy Spirit carries Jesus to
-Satan, the same Evil One; and after his triumph the promise in "Wisdom"
-(she will "comfort him") is fulfilled: "Angels came and ministered unto
-him." Luke says he "returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee;
-and a fame went out concerning him through all the region round about:
-he taught in their synagogues and was glorified of all."
-
-Nevertheless it may be remarked that the peculiar language in Luke
-(iv. 1) "led in the spirit" suggests that the whole story is a late
-literalization of some vision, partly based on v. 7 of the Epistle
-to the Hebrews, but originally on Solomon's dream (1 Kings iii.),
-in which Jahveh offers him any gift, and he asks only for Wisdom. Or,
-as he (Solomon) says in "Wisdom of Solomon," "I preferred her before
-sceptres and thrones" (vii. 8). But all of these were remotely
-influenced by the trial of Zoroaster, and the attempts of the devil
-to terrify Zoroaster before tempting him may be hinted in Mark i. 13,
-"He was with the wild beasts." These, however, are more prominent in
-the temptation of Buddha.
-
-Paul appears to have considered it an important apostolic credential
-to have had to contend with a Satan (2 Cor. xii. 7-10), and Peter
-was honoured by a special request made by Satan, and conceded, that
-he should be for a time under his diabolical control. (Luke xxii. 31.)
-
-As in the case of Solomon, the tests and trials of the superhuman
-wisdom and power of Jesus are found chiefly in tradition and
-folklore. The apocryphal gospels contain many, and some are
-preserved by Persian and Arabian poets. In the New Testament a few
-examples appear in which his utterances are given a quasi-judicial
-tone. There are several points of resemblance between the famous
-judgment of Solomon on the two harlots contending for the child, and
-the sentence of Jesus in favour of "sinful Mary," sister of Martha,
-accused by Simon the Pharisee. In both cases the decision was made
-at a feast, and in favour of the one who "loved much." It is not,
-however, the incident in itself that is now referred to, but only
-the formality ascribed to it in the narrative. And this adheres to
-the entire story. The anointing of Jesus may have occurred, but the
-scenic touches recall lines in the Solomonic "Song of Songs":
-
-
-   "While the King sat at his table,
-    My spikenard sent forth its fragrance."
-
-
-It is not impossible, by the way, that it was from chaste Shulamith
-of the Song ascribed to Solomon that a bad reputation was fixed on
-Mary Magdalene, against whose virginal purity no word is said in the
-Bible, the chapter heading to Luke vii. alone identifying her, in
-contradiction to John xi. 2, as the woman who anointed Jesus. This
-libel seems to come from a far antiquity,--as far probably as
-the Talmudic "Miriam Magdala" (i. e., Braided-hair Mary); and
-this epithet might have been derived from Shulamith's "ringlets"
-which were "tied up in folds," and whose spikenard sent forth its
-odours while Solomon was at the table. The later Jahvism must have
-considered such attention by ladies to their hair as an evidence of
-wickedness. Paul, while recognizing that long hair is a woman's "glory"
-(1 Cor. xi.) dangerously fascinating even to the angels, testifies
-against "braided hair" (1 Tim. ii.), an instruction repeated in 1
-Peter iii. Whether this lady of means who helped to support Jesus was
-from Magdala or not, it is nearly certain that her legend was derived
-from another sense of "Magdalene," and it is not improbable that the
-friendship of Jesus for her was in keeping with his Solomonic defiance
-of the Pharisaic.
-
-The Eastern tales of monarchs in disguise, derived from a legend
-of Solomon, may have prepared the popular mind for the double role
-performed by Jesus in the Gospels, for the earlier writers do not
-suggest any lowliness in his position beyond the humiliation of taking
-on human flesh and dying. In the Gospels we find him now an hungered,
-now dining with the Pharisee and anointed with precious ointment,
-again multiplying food; an humble-son of man who has not where to lay
-his head, a son of God with legions of angels at his command; purifying
-the temple with violence, and predicting its destruction; a peacemaker
-bringing a sword; telling his disciples to resist not evil, and arming
-them; enjoining secrecy about his miracles, presently parading them;
-prostrate with anguish in a garden, presently shining with unmasked
-splendour. Solomon never arrayed himself in any such brilliant
-raiment as that of the transfiguration, nor was his environment finer
-than the scenes imaged in some of these parables,--the prodigal's
-ring and robe, the king going to war and sending his ambassadors,
-the masters of fields and vineyards, the momentous wedding dress,
-the importance of rank and precedence at a feast. In miracles, too,
-we have the grand wedding at Cana, and the homage of the centurion
-deferentially rewarded. [47]
-
-In the Hebrew Gospel Jesus says, "I will that ye be twelve apostles
-for a testimony to Israel"; with which we may compare the "twelve
-officers over all Israel" appointed by Solomon (1 Kings iv. 7). In
-Mark the first bestowal on Jesus of his Solomonic title "Son of
-David" (x.) is immediately followed by his Solomonic entry into
-Jerusalem. In Matthew the blind man's tribute is followed by the cry
-of multitudes, "Hosanna to the Son of David"; and the whole scene
-is obviously from the narrative in 1 Kings i. of the procession of
-Solomon, seated on David's mule, on the occasion of the anointing
-which made him the model Messiah, in virtue of which he was King
-and Priest in combination. Solomon dedicated the temple himself, as
-High Priest, and to him, as King-Priest, the privilege of sanctuary
-was subordinate. Wherefore he had an offender executed while holding
-the horns of the altar. The titular Son of David, on the morrow of
-his triumphal entry, assumes authority in the temple, and scourges
-out of it the sellers of things used in the sacrifices,--especially
-Doves. These his human mother had sacrificed after his birth for
-purification, but by this time they symbolized his divine mother,
-the Holy Spirit, and were not to be sold.
-
-Who can suppose that this violence, which were as if one assaulted
-those who sell holy candles and pictures in a church vestibule,
-really occurred? At Oberammergau the whole tragedy of the Passion
-Play hinges on the resentment of these merchants, who appeal to the
-Sanhedrim for protection from the violence of one man armed with a
-whip! The story (John ii.) is an epitaph of the primitive Christ,
-the value of whose blood was its proof that his victory over the
-Adversary was that of a Man, unaided by a divine, unblemished by a
-carnal, weapon: triumph by either would have been defeat.
-
-The bread and wine offered to Abraham by the mythical king-priest
-of Salem (Solomon disguised as Melchizedek) may have been suggested
-by the bread and wine offered by Wisdom to her guests, in Proverbs
-ix. However this may be, there is clearly discoverable at the Last
-Supper of Jesus the Satan that Jahveh raised up against Solomon in
-the presence of mythical Judas ("Satan entered into him," says John),
-and in the whole scene the table of Wisdom. "She hath mingled her wine,
-she hath furnished her table," and cries--
-
-
-    "Come, eat ye of my bread,
-    And drink of the wine which I have mingled."
-
-
-That Jesus supped with his disciples, at the Passover time, is very
-probable, but that the bread and wine alone should have been selected
-for symbolical usage (a point unknown to the fourth gospel) conforms
-too closely with the Solomonic prologue to be a mere coincidence. The
-words "Take, eat," "Drink ye all of it," recall also the Song of
-Songs--
-
-
-    Eat, O friends!
-    Drink, yea abundantly, O beloved!
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII.
-
-THE HEIR OF SOLOMON'S GODHEAD.
-
-
-The anger of Jahveh against Solomon (1 Kings xi.) is, of course, the
-outcome of late theological explanations of how the ancient and much
-idealised kingdom could have been divided after divine promises of its
-protection. The interview with Solomon is a sort of dramatization,
-in which the anachronism of making Jahveh a historic contemporary
-of the Wise King represents the fact that when the tribal deity was
-evolved it was in antagonism to a Solomon who, though his body had long
-mouldered, was still "marching on." That Solomon had to contend with
-the hard and fanatical elements afterwards consolidated in Jahvism is
-pretty clear, and we may see in him a primitive Akbar. A century after
-Akbar's death the Rajah of Joudpoor said to the emperor Aurungzebe:
-"Your ancestor Akbar, whose throne is now in heaven, conducted the
-affairs of his empire in equity and security for the period of fifty
-years. He preserved every tribe of men in repose and happiness, whether
-they were followers of Jesus or of Moses, of Brahma or Mohammed. Of
-whatever sect or creed they might be, they all equally enjoyed his
-countenance and favour, insomuch that his people, in gratitude for
-the indiscriminate protection which he afforded them, distinguished
-him by the appellation of The Guardian of Mankind." Moslem fanaticism
-could not tolerate such toleration, and Akbar's reign was followed
-by conflicts very similar to those which followed Solomon's reign,
-leading to the Mogul empire, but ultimately to the reign of an "Empress
-of India," under whom we now see the same toleration of all religions
-which prevailed in the fifty years of Akbar.
-
-The Moslem saw in Akbar's liberality and toleration the supreme
-offence of putting other gods--Jesus, Brahma, Ahuramazda--beside
-Allah. The Jahvist saw retrospectively in Solomon's liberality the
-putting of Moloch, Ashera, and other gods beside Jahveh. It was
-therefore recorded that Jahveh determined to rend all the tribes
-save one from Solomon's son (a vaticinium ex evento). But that one
-was enough to preserve the Solomon cult.
-
-Ananke oude Theoi machontai. This Necessity, which the Greeks saw
-working above all the gods, is man himself, and worked also above Jah
-and Jahvism, nay, by means of them. Gradually they seemed to prevail
-over Solomonism. The Proverbs and Solomonic Psalms were transfused with
-Jahvism, but by this process the heavenly and the terrestrial kings
-were confused, and the idea of a human heir to the throne of Jahveh
-was conceived. As when, in our own era, Islam swallowed Zoroaster,
-with the result of bringing forth the great literary age of Persia,
-with Parsaism rationalized under a transparent veil of Moslem phrase
-and fable, so anciently arose the Hebrew Faizis and Saadis and Omar
-Khayyams. Of these was the Isaiah who, with pigments of the Solomonic
-sunset, painted the sunrise of a new day, and a new earth-born God.
-
-
-   "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the
-    government shall rest on his shoulder; and his name shall be
-    called Counsellor of Wonders, God-hero, Father of Spoil, Prince of
-    Peace. Enlarged shall be dominion, and without cessation of peace,
-    on the throne of David, and throughout his kingdom, to establish
-    it and uphold it by justice and righteousness from henceforth
-    and forever."
-
-
-Every title, every tint, in this gorgeous vision is taken from the
-nuptial song for Solomon (Ps. xlv.) and Solomon's Psalm (lxxii.) The
-"delightsomeness poured over (Solomon's) lips" (Ps. xlv. 2) makes
-the Counsellor of Wonders; his deification (verses 6, 7) makes the
-God-hero; the tributes of Tarshish, and Sheba make him father of
-spoil (Ps. lxxii.); his "mildness" (Ps. xlv. 4) his abundant "peace"
-(Ps. lxxii. 3, 7) make the Prince of Peace; and the rest is a general
-refrain for both of the Psalms.
-
-Psalm xlv. opens with the words, "My verse concerns the King," and
-there is a fair consensus of the learned that the king is Solomon. It
-has been found impossible to fix upon any other monarch to whom the
-eulogia would be applicable, and the resemblance of the theme to the
-Song of Solomon proves that at an early period writers connected the
-Psalm with Solomon and one of his espousals.
-
-In quoting Professor Newman's translation of this Psalm (ante II)
-I alluded to my slight alterations. These are few and verbal, but
-momentous, and were not made without consultation of many critical
-authorities and versions. Professor Newman was unable to believe
-that the poet really meant to address Solomon as God, and in verse
-6 translates "Thy throne divine," in verse 7, "Therefore hath God,
-thy God, etc." Others, with similar theistic bias, have shrunk from
-what, according to the balance of critical interpretation, is the
-clear sense of the original:
-
-
-   "Thy throne, O God, ever and always stands;
-    A righteous sceptre is thy royal sceptre:
-    Thou lovest right and hatest evil;
-    Therefore, O God, hath thy God anointed thee
-    With oil of joy above thy fellow-kings."
-
-
-When these verses were written--and verse 11, where after Adonai
-the Vulgate has Elohim, "He is thy Lord God, worship thou him"--the
-rigid Jewish monotheism did not exist; and the apostrophe might have
-continued without special notice had not the psalm been included in
-the Jewish hymnology and thus given the solemnity and consecration
-ascribed by Jahvism to its canonical Book of Psalms. But ultimately
-it made a tremendous and even revolutionary impression; and that the
-verses were interpreted as bestowing the divine name on Solomon, by
-those most jealous of that name, is proved, I think, by the following
-considerations:
-
-1. Isaiah, in his vision quoted above (Is. ix.) combines the
-phraseology of Ps. xlv. with that of Ps. lxxii. (which bears Solomon's
-name as its author), and ascribes to a new-born child the title
-"God-hero."
-
-2. The recently discovered original of a fragment of Ecclesiasticus
-includes the passage about Solomon in xlvii., and it is said in
-verse 18: "Thou (Solomon) wast called by the glorious name which
-is called over Israel." This seems to be a plain reference to the
-ascriptions in Ps. xlv., where alone the divine name is applied to
-any individual mortal. Ecclesiasticus was compiled early in the second
-century before our era, and on the basis of much earlier compilations,
-as its prologue states.
-
-3. In the "Wisdom of Solomon" the monarch is represented as a mortal
-who by the divine gift of supernatural Wisdom had gained immortality;
-he had become privy to the mysteries of God, was his Beloved, his
-Son. This was written about the first year of our era.
-
-4. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews translates the Psalm
-xlv. as it is translated above, interpreting the words of deification
-as meant for the Firstborn of God at his ancient appearance on earth
-(i. 6), and applicable to his reappearance as Christ; arguing from
-such language of deification the superiority of the Son of God over
-the angels, who were never so addressed.
-
-A court poet addresses a princely bridegroom as Elohim, as a god--as
-it were, an Apollo. Had more songs of like antiquity by poets of his
-race been preserved, no doubt other instances of such rhapsody might
-be found, but it happens that this is the only instance in Hebrew
-literature where an individual man is clearly addressed as God (for
-Exod. vii. 1 and 1 Sam. xxviii. 13 are not really exceptions). As in
-the Psalm that is the only instance in which an individual man is,
-in the Old Testament, addressed as God, so is its application in the
-Epistle to the Hebrews the only indisputable instance in which an
-individual is addressed as God in the New Testament.
-
-"Thy throne, O God." Fateful words! The word of God, says this Epistle,
-is sharper than any two-edged sword, but its writer himself unwittingly
-unsheathed from a courtier's compliment just such a sword. One edge
-has slaughtered innumerable Jews, Moslems, Arians, Socinians, mingling
-their blood with that of the humane Jesus himself on the sacrificial
-altar he tried so hard to exchange for mercifulness. The other edge
-turned against the moral heart of Jesus himself, lowering the tone of
-all narratives and utterances ascribed to him after his connection
-with Jahveh, and consequently lowering all Christendom under its
-dishonourable burden of accommodating human veracity and kindness to
-the bad heavenly manners that were acquired by the deified Christ. For
-there was no other God to adopt him but a particularly rude one.
-
-Theological scholars who have compared the Epistle to the Hebrews
-with the Epistles of Paul have dwelt on the theological differences,
-but the moral differences are greater. In the Epistle to the Hebrews
-the emphasis is laid on the service of Jesus to mankind: it is this
-that makes him, as it made Solomon, worthy of worship as a God,
-and the ancient God with his sacrifices is virtually represented as
-transforming himself and his government to the measure of Jesus. Jesus
-is complete and perfect man, no part or power of his divine nature
-accompanying him on earth. But we see in Philippians ii. 7, and other
-passages, the primitive idea fading away, and Jesus pictured as a
-divine being in the mere semblance and disguise of a man, no real man
-at all; a theory which prevails in the story of the transfiguration,
-where the disguise is for a moment thrown aside. The earlier idea of
-his genuine humanity was still strong enough to prevent any stories
-of miracles wrought by Jesus from arising, the resurrection being a
-miracle wrought by God after the work of Jesus was "finished," as he
-is said to have proclaimed from the stake. But legends of miracles
-became inevitable after the theory of his disguise was diffused,
-and also stories of the vituperation, anathemas, and attitudinizings,
-which are so offensive in a man, but so characteristic of the whole
-history of Jahveh, with whom he was gradually identified. A gentleman
-does not call his opponents vipers and consign them to hell, but
-Jahveh is not under any such obligations. And, alas, disregard of
-the humanities did not, as we have seen, stop there even in Paul's
-time. In the further development, that of Jesus the magician, the
-personal character of Jesus was sadly sacrificed, and it is only
-due to the superstition that prevents the New Testament narratives
-from being read in a common sense way that people generally are not
-shocked by some of the representations.
-
-When the second Solomon was born in Bethlehem, as the Gospel carols
-tell, Wise Men came to worship him, but Jahveh had already fixed
-his own star above the cradle, and his angels contended for the
-great man, as for centuries the wisdom of the first Solomon had been
-jahvized. It was, however, the opinion of some ancient commentators
-that the cry of the angels, "Glory to God in the highest" meant that
-the birth of Jesus was to operate in the heavenly heights, and work
-changes there also. One may indeed dream of a deity longing for a human
-love,--grieving at being through ages an object of fear, personified as
-Wrath,--rejoicing in the birth of any new interpreter who should free
-him from the despot glory, "I create evil," and reconcile the human
-heart to him as eternal love--love ever burdened with the griefs of
-humanity, ever seeking to be born of woman, and to struggle against the
-dark and evil forces of nature. So one may dream, and it is a pathetic
-fact that the contention between humanity and heaven for the new-born
-Saviour is traceable in varying versions of the Angels' song. While
-half of Christendom sing "On earth peace, good will toward men," the
-other half sing, "On earth peace to men of good will." Our Revisers
-find the balance of authorities on the side of authority, and translate
-
-
-    Glory to God in the highest,
-    And on earth peace among men in whom he is well pleased.
-
-
-Although the "higher criticism" appears to treat with a certain
-contempt the birth-legends and carols in Matthew and Luke, and
-the genealogies, beyond the letter of these is visible more of the
-vanishing Jesus "after the flesh," the real and great man, than of
-the risen Christ in whom his humanity was lost. The "shepherd of my
-people," he who is to absolve them from their nightmare "sins," make
-crooked ways straight, rough places smooth, and free them from fear,
-is remembered in these rhapsodies of the Infancy, in the terrors of
-Herod, and gifts of the Wise. They have a certain evolution in the
-benevolent teachings and healing miracles of the Synoptics, easily
-discriminated from the competing Jahveh-Christ. (Think of a teacher
-urging his friends to forgive offenders seventy times seven and then
-promising them a "Comforter" who will never forgive the slightest
-offence, though merely verbal, either in this world or in the next!)
-
-The extent to which the man was lowered and lost in the risen Lord is
-especially revealed in the fourth Gospel. Except for the story of the
-woman taken in adultery, admittedly interpolated from another Gospel,
-the fourth Gospel may be regarded as perhaps the only book in the
-Bible without recognition of humanity. "I pray not for the world,
-but for those whom thou hast given me," is the keynote. In this work
-there is no text for the reformer and the philanthropist, unless
-perhaps the retreat of Jesus from a prospect of being made king. What
-inferences of benevolence might be made even from the miracles related
-have to be strained through the arrogance, self-aggrandizement,
-attitudinizing, as of a showman, with which they are wrought. [48] A
-rudeness to his mother precedes the turning of water to wine (ii. 4);
-the nobleman's son is healed because the aristocrat will not believe
-without a miracle (iv. 48); the infirm man at Bethesda is healed only
-after a sham question, "Wouldest thou be made whole?" and threatened
-afterwards (v. 6, 14); feeding the multitude is attended with another
-sham question (vi. 5), and a parade of the fragments (13); the man
-born blind is declared to have been so born solely for the sign and
-wonder manifested in his cure (ix. 3).
-
-But the supremacy of a new Jahveh over all moral obligations and all
-truthfulness is especially displayed in the resurrection of Lazarus
-(xi.). Here Jesus is represented as staying away from the sick man, in
-order that he may die; he affects to believe Lazarus is only asleep,
-but finding his disciples pleased with the prospect of recovery, in
-which case there would be no miracle, he becomes frank (parrhesia)
-and assures them Lazarus is dead; he tells his disciples privately he
-is glad Lazarus is dead; he tells Martha, when she comes out to him
-alone, that her brother shall rise; but when her sister Mary comes out,
-accompanied by her Jewish consolers, Jesus breaks out into vehement
-groans and lamentations, lashing himself (etaraxen eauton) into this
-sham grief over a man at whose death he has connived and who would
-presently be alive! Even in his prayer over Lazarus the pretence is
-kept up, and his Father is informed, in an aside, "I know that thou
-hearest me always, but because of the multitude around I said it,
-that they may believe that thou didst send me." Thus does the fourth
-Gospel sink Jesus morally into the grave of Lazarus, leaving in his
-place an embodiment of the Jahveh who had lying spirits to send out
-into his prophets on occasion.
-
-The resurrection of Lazarus is a transparent fabrication out of
-the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Abraham's words to the rich
-man,--"neither will they be persuaded if one rose from the dead,"--were
-not adapted to a faith built on a resurrection, so that parable is
-suppressed in the fourth Gospel. The resurrection of a supernatural
-man is not quite sufficient for people not supernatural. Those who
-had been looking for a returning Christ had died, just like the
-unbelievers. There was a tremendous necessity for an example of the
-resurrection of an ordinary man. Shocking as are the immoral details
-of the story, there is audible in it the pathetic cry of the suffering
-human heart, and the demand that must be met by any Gospel claiming
-the faith of humanity. "Lord, if thou hadst been here my brother had
-not died!" Through what ages has that declaration, not to be denied,
-ascended to cold and cruel skies? It is found in the Vedas, in Job,
-in the Psalms. If there is a Heart up there why are we tortured? To the
-many apologies and explanations and pretences which imperilled systems
-had given, Christianity had to support itself by something more than
-Egyptian dreams and Platonic speculations. A dead man must arise;
-it must be done dramatically, amid domestic grief and neighbourly
-sympathy; it must be done doctrinally, with funeral sermon turned to
-rejoicings. And this was all done in the story of Lazarus in such a way
-that it might surround every grave with illusions for centuries. For
-who, while tears are falling, will pause to handle the wreaths, and
-find whether they are genuine? Who, while the service is proceeding,
-will analyze the details, and ask whether it is possible that the good
-Jesus could have practiced such deception and assumed such theatrical
-attitudes? [49]
-
-The indifference of the fourth Gospel to such moral considerations as
-those found in the Synoptics is so apostolic that I am inclined
-to place much of it nearer to the first century than I once
-supposed. Paul's rage against the "wisdom of this world," and his
-fulminations against the learned because they are not "called,"
-are fully adopted by the Johannine Christ, who says to the blind man
-whose eyes he had opened, and who was worshipping him: "For judgment
-came I into this world, that they that see not may see, and they that
-see may become blind." And these ideas are represented in a legend
-related in the book of Acts which is really allegorical, though our
-translators have manipulated it into serious history.
-
-A persecutor of Christians, on whom the spirit "came mightily," as
-on King Saul, so that he was a new "Saul among the prophets," sought
-to convert to his new faith a Roman Proconsul, Sergius Paul. But
-with this Consul was a learned man of the Jewish Wisdom School,
-Bar-Jesus Elymas,--i. e., Dr. Anti-Jesus Wise Man. Like Michael and
-Satan contending for the body of Moses, Prophet Saul and Anti-Jesus
-Wise Man contended for the Roman Paul's soul. Prophet Saul prevailed
-by calling Anti-Jesus Wise Man a child of the devil, and striking
-him blind. Thereupon Consul Paul believed, being "astonished at the
-teaching of the Lord." Whereupon Prophet Saul triumphantly carries
-off the Roman's name as a trophy. [50]
-
-Beginning in this conclusive way, by striking human Wisdom sightless
-("that they that see may become blind," John ix. 39), the Anti-Wisdom
-propaganda, which began with identifying Wisdom with the serpent
-in Eden, passed on to inspire the Church Fathers who gloated over
-the eternal tortures of the poets and philosophers of Greece and
-Rome. Alas for the philosophers not in their graves, but in their
-cradles, or in the womb of the future! For torments are nearest
-"eternal" when they begin at once on earth.
-
-One may readily understand how it was that personal traditions of Jesus
-and his teachings remained unwritten until his contemporaries were
-dead (although this may not have been the case with the suppressed
-"Gospel according to the Hebrews"); the hourly expected return of
-Christ rendered such memoirs unimportant until it became clear that
-the expectation was erroneous. The age of John, of whom Jesus was
-rumoured to have predicted survival till his return (John xxi. 22),
-was stretched out to a mythical extent; he became an undying sleeper
-at Ephesus, and finally a pious "Wandering Jew"; but when at length
-such fables lost their strength, some imaginative impersonator brought
-forth an apocalyptic bequest of John postponing the second advent
-a thousand years. The conventicles had thus no resource but to turn
-into orthodoxy the heresy of Hymenoeus and Alexander, for which Paul
-delivered them over to Satan, that the resurrection occurs at death;
-to collect the traditional sayings of Jesus; and to adapt these to the
-new situation. A thousand years later, when the expected catastrophe
-did not occur, the substantial churches and cathedrals were built,
-as the Gospels had been built after the first-century disappointment.
-
-These Gospels contain things from which some of the real teachings
-of the wise man of Nazareth may be fairly conjectured. That the
-synoptical records are palimpsests, though denied by the prudent, is
-a truth felt by the unsophisticated who, in their use of such words
-as "Christian" and "a Christian spirit," quite ignore the fearful
-anathemas and damnatory language ascribed to Jesus.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII.
-
-THE LAST SOLOMON.
-
-
-Every race has a pride in its great men which ultimately prevails over
-any pious taboo imposed on them in life or by tradition. Some years
-ago it was announced that a German scholar was about to publish proofs
-that Jesus was not of the Hebrew race, and while Christendom showed
-little concern, all Israel sat upon that German almost furiously. It
-is an old story. Banished Buddha becomes an avatar of Vishnu, and
-his image now appears in India beside Jagenath. For the heresiarch
-must be adapted before adoption. So Solomon returns as a preacher of
-orthodox Jahvism, in the "Wisdom of Solomon," but so rigid had been
-the taboo in his case that the writer did not venture to insert the
-name of so famous a liberal and secularist.
-
-That was about the first year of our era. But presently we hear about
-the "Son of David." Was that because of David himself? Interest in
-David had so receded that in the "Wisdom of Solomon" the resuscitated
-Wise Man barely alludes (once) to his "father's seat." Was it because
-of any popular interest in the legendary throne or house of David? That
-old "covenant" is not alluded to by the resuscitated monarch, and in
-the apostolic writings nothing is said about it. In the Gospels the
-title "Son of David" is generally connected with certain alleged
-miracles of Jesus, which recalled legends of Solomon, and it is
-only in the account of the entry into Jerusalem that it carries any
-connotation of royalty corresponding to the genealogies afterwards
-elaborated. Unless these narratives are accepted as historical
-they must be regarded as phenomena, and, taken in connection with
-what may be reasonably regarded as genuine teachings of Jesus, the
-phenomena point to a probability that he had reawakened interest in
-the Wise Man's teachings, and that this interest, by a compromise
-with Jahvist prejudices, coined the expression "Son of David" as an
-alias of Solomon.
-
-However this may be, it appears certain that there was in the
-teachings of Jesus some substantial recovery of the ancient and
-unconverted Solomon, the proverbial philosopher, the man of the
-world. How much Jesus may have said to revive interest in Solomon,
-and how many of his secular utterances have been hidden in the grave
-of his humanity, can only be conjectured; but there are two direct
-sayings concerning Solomon ascribed to him which may be regarded
-as the only unreserved tributes to the Wise Man that had ever been
-uttered since his idealization in Chronicles. And our own Protestant
-Jahvism has tried so hard to manipulate these tributes into partial
-disparagements that we may easily imagine early Christian Jahvism
-destroying similar testimonies altogether.
-
-A. S. V. Luke xi. 31: "The Queen of the South shall rise up in judgment
-with the men of this generation and condemn them: for she came from
-the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon,
-and behold a greater than Solomon is here."
-
-True rendering: "The Queen of the South shall stand in the judgment
-with the men of this [Abrahamic]  brood, and condemn them; for she came
-from the farthest parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and
-behold something more than Solomon is here." (pleion Solomonos hode)
-
-The word mistranslated "greater," pleion, is neuter and cannot be
-applied to a man. Jesus is not speaking of himself, but of the new
-Spirit animating a whole movement.
-
-The word "generation" as a translation of genea is, in this connection,
-misleading. No one English word can convey the satire on people who
-regarded themselves as holy by generation from Abraham (cf. Luke
-iii. 8), which is in the vein of Carlyle's ridicule of English
-"Paper Nobility." Above these self-satisfied claimants of inherited
-wisdom Jesus sets the Gentile Queen journeying to sit at the feet
-of Solomon. At the feet of Solomon Jesus also was sitting, and he
-certainly did not call himself personally greater than Solomon.
-
-The other allusion to Solomon (Matt. vi. 28, 29) is rendered thus:
-"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not,
-neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in
-all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
-
-Here "glory," which when applied to a man has a connotation of pride
-and pomp, is made to translate doxe, which means honour in its best
-sense, as preserved in "doxology." Jesus really says, "Solomon amid all
-his honours never arrayed himself (periebaleto) like one of these." The
-greatest and wisest of men did not affect display in dress. [51]
-
-The apparent slightness of these English changes reveals their
-deliberate subtlety. Puritanism, taking its cue from King James's
-translators, has bettered the instruction, and steadily pictured
-Jesus pointing to a lily,--white emblem of purity,--and censuring
-(implicitly) the ostentation of Solomon. Even in rationalistic
-hymn-books is found the pretty hymn of Agnes Strickland, beginning:
-
-
-    "Fair lilies of Jerusalem,
-        Ye wear the same array
-    As when imperial Judah's stem
-        Maintained its regal sway:
-    By sacred Jordan's desert tide
-        As bright ye blossom on
-    As when your simple charms outvied
-        The pride of Solomon."
-
-
-Very sweet! But the "lilies of the field" in Palestine are not "fair,"
-their charms are not "simple"; they are large and gorgeous combinations
-of red and gold; and Solomon, so far from being proud in the contrast,
-"outvied" in simplicity the pride of the lily.
-
-Jesus may not indeed have said these things concerning Solomon, but
-the probability that he did say something of the kind is suggested
-by the adroit mistranslations. The same puritanical spirit, the
-same prejudice against human wisdom and love of beauty, prevailed
-even more when the Gospels were written. The Jahvist jealousy of
-the wisdom of the world which in a Targum added to Jeremiah ix. 23
-a fling at Solomon,--"Let not Solomon the Son of David, the Wise
-Man, glory in his Wisdom,"--screamed on in Christian anathemas
-on science, and laudations of the silly. (For "silly" is of pious
-derivation, from German selig--blessed.) Solomon had not been named
-in any canonical scripture for centuries, and even in apocryphal
-"Wisdom" (Ecclesiasticus) he appears as if a brilliant but fallen
-Lucifer. The cult of Solomon continued no doubt, in a sense, among the
-Sadducees (respectfully treated, by the way, by Jesus), but they were
-comparatively few, and like the rationalists of the English Church,
-cautious about outside heresies. It was probably characteristic that
-their name is derived from Solomon's priest, Zadok, instead of from
-Solomon himself. As for the Gentile Queen, she is not named in the
-Bible after the record of her visit to Solomon until the homage of
-Jesus was given her. It appears, therefore, very unlikely that such
-homage and the unqualified tributes to Solomon, would have been put
-into the mouth of Jesus.
-
-But why, it may be asked, were not these tributes suppressed? There is
-in one case a recognition of a Gentile lady which would recommend the
-text to the writer of Luke, and in the other a lesson against luxury
-which would recommend this to all believers. At any rate, whatever may
-have been the suppressions, and no doubt there were many, two of the
-Gospels have preserved these sentences, which, so far as the glorious
-"idolator" is concerned, neither of them would have invented. There
-are the words; somebody uttered them; and the question arises, who
-was that daring man who broke the severe silence or reservations of
-centuries and did honour to the king who built shrines to gods and
-goddesses? [52]
-
-As Solomon said, "A man is proved by what he praises." That Jesus did
-appreciate the greatness of the Solomonic literature is not a matter
-of conjecture. The sayings ascribed to him in the Gospels--apart from
-Pauline importations and quotations from Jahvist scriptures--are
-largely pervaded by the spirit and even by the phraseology of the
-Solomonic books. Remembering that the phrases "kingdom of heaven,"
-"kingdom of God," are post-resurrectional, and that Jesus could not,
-unless by miraculous foresight, use those phrases for any external
-dominion connected with himself, there is reason to believe that his
-conception was of a sway of Wisdom, and that Wisdom was to him the
-Saviour, as to Jesus Ben Sira, her realm "within," her leaven hid in
-the world, her advance without observation.
-
-Of course those who read the Bible in the light of a supernatural
-theory, see these things very differently, but considering the
-records as if they were those of uninspired people, one may say that
-some of the sayings ascribed to Jesus are, in their present form,
-meaningless. For example, what should we think if we found an ancient
-record of some poor Egyptian reported as saying, "Come unto me, all
-ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my
-yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart: and
-ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden
-is light." How incongruous the "I am meek" with "learn of me"! How
-could he give the heavy laden rest? And what rest? what yoke? But we
-would surely feel enlightened should we presently discover an Egyptian
-book of "Wisdom,"  with proof of its popularity when the mysterious
-words were orally repeated, containing such language as this from
-personified Wisdom: "Come unto me, all ye that be desirous of me,
-and fill yourselves with my fruits." And if we found in the same
-book a teacher saying: "I directed my soul unto Wisdom, and I found
-her in pureness.... Draw near unto me, ye unlearned, and dwell in
-the house of Wisdom.... Buy her for yourselves without money. Put
-your neck under her yoke, and let your life receive instruction:
-she is near at hand to find. Behold with your eyes that I have had
-but little labour, and have gotten unto me much rest."
-
-Here is sense. These are the words of Wisdom in Jesus Ben Sira
-(Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 19, li. 23-27). Can any unbiased mind fail to
-recognize in Matthew xi. 28-30 a mangled quotation from this Hebrew
-book of the second century, before Jesus of Nazareth was born, but
-in his time cherished in many Jewish households as much as any Gospel
-is cherished in Christian households?
-
-Consider the Sermon on the Mount. In the Proverbs ascribed to
-Solomon is found the beatitude pronounced by Jesus on the lowly,
-no doubt literally quoted by him: "With the lowly is wisdom"
-(Prov. xi. 2). The blessing of those who hunger for righteousness
-(justice) is in Prov. x. 24, where it is said their desire shall be
-granted. The blessing of the peacemakers is joy (Prov. xii. 20). The
-merciful man doeth good to his own life (Prov. xi. 17). The pure in
-heart shall have the King for his friend (Prov. xxii. 11). The house
-that stands and the house overthrown (Prov. x. 25; xii. 7; xiv. 11);
-the two ways (Prov. xii. 28, xiv. 12, xvi. 17); the tree known by
-its fruits (Prov. xi. 30, xii. 12); give and it shall be given you
-(Prov. xxii. 9); the sower (Prov. xi. 18, 24, 25); taking the lower
-place so as to be placed higher and not moved down (Prov. xxv. 6-8);
-searching for and buying Wisdom as the precious silver, the pearl,
-the treasure (Prov. vi. 11, 12, 17, 19, 35; xx. 15; xxiii. 23); the
-prodigal (Prov. xxix. 3); those who wrong parents (Prov. xx. 20;
-xxviii. 24; cf. Matt. xv. 5; Mark vii. 11). The lamps of the wise
-and foolish virgins are found in Prov. xiii. 9; also xxiv. 20.
-
-In Proverbs xx. 9, we have the words, "Who can say, 'I have made
-my heart clean, I am pure from sin?'" In Ecclesiastes iii. 16, it
-is said, "Moreover, I saw under the sun, in the place of judgment,
-that wickedness was there; and in the place of righteousness that
-wickedness was there." (Cf. also vii. 20.) In the "Gospel according
-to the Hebrews" Jesus, declaring that an offender should be forgiven
-seventy times seven, adds: "For in the prophets likewise, after they
-were anointed by the Holy Spirit, utterance of sin was found."
-
-Although in the language ascribed to Jesus in the fourth Gospel
-(iii. 1-10) there are post-resurrectional phrases, whatever he
-may have said about birth and about the wind-like spirit seems to
-have been what he expected Nicodemus, as a teacher in Israel, to
-understand. We may therefore suppose that it was substantially a
-quotation from Ecclesiastes xi. 5: "As thou knowest not the way of
-the wind, nor the growth of the bones in the mother's womb, even so
-thou canst not fathom the work of God, who compasseth all things."
-
-In relation to Woman Jesus seems to have appealed to Solomon against
-Ecclesiastes, where (vii. 25-29) it is said:
-
-
-    I have turned my heart to know,
-    And to explore, and search out wisdom and the reason of things;
-    And to know that wickedness is Folly, and Folly madness:
-    And I have found what is more bitter than death--
-    The Woman who is a snare, her heart nets, her hands chains:
-    He who pleases God shall be delivered from her,
-    But the offender shall be captured by her.
-        See, this have I found (saith the Speaker).
-    Adding one to another, to find out the account,
-    Which I am still searching after, but have not found--
-    One man in a thousand I have found,
-    But a woman among all these I have not found.
-    Look you, only this have I found--
-    That God made man upright,
-    But they have sought out many devices.
-
-
-In the first seven lines of this passage we may recognize the
-personification in Proverbs ix. 13-18. The Woman of the fifth line
-is "Dame Folly"; but the last eight lines relate to womankind. The
-assurance in the eighth line that it is Koheleth who speaks raises
-a suspicion that the last eight lines are commentary,--a suspicion
-further confirmed by the awkwardness of the writing. Strictly read,
-it is left uncertain whether no woman is ever captured by Dame Folly,
-or not one escapes. However, as commentators are generally men,
-the interpretation has been adverse to woman.
-
-But Jesus, perhaps remembering that Wisdom is as much a woman as Folly,
-is reported (Matthew xi. 19) to have said: "Wisdom is justified by
-her works." In Luke vii. 35 it is, "Wisdom is justified of all her
-children." Both of these readings appeal to the Solomonic portrait of
-the virtuous woman, in Proverbs xxxi. the last line of which says,
-"Let her works praise her," and verse 28, "her children rise up and
-call her blessed."
-
-In Luke the sentence is a verse by itself, and the word "all" renders
-it probable that the sentiment has a bearing on the story that follows
-of the anointing of Jesus by a sinful woman. [53] Some such incident
-may have occurred, but the address to Simon the Pharisee making him
-to be the offender, and the woman one delivered from Dame Folly by
-her faith ("pleasing God") looks like a criticism on the "fling" at
-woman in Ecclesiastes, with a proverb taken for text. This rebuke of
-the Pharisee, who thought "the prophet" ought to abhor the "sinner,"
-immediately precedes an account of the eminent women who supported
-Jesus by their means,--Mary, called Magdalene; Joanna, the wife of
-Herod's steward; Susanna, "and many others." They "ministered to him of
-their substance," and possibly the Pharisee and others might naturally
-suspect him of being among "the ensnared." The fact is strange enough
-to be genuine, and Luke thinks it important to say that Jesus had
-healed these ladies of bad spirits and infirmities. Of course it
-is necessary to divest Gospel anecdotes of much post-resurrectional
-vesture, and in this case it cannot be credited that Jesus said that
-the woman's sins were "many," which he could not have known, or that
-he gave her formal absolution.
-
-The indications of the study of Ecclesiasticus by Jesus are very
-remarkable. This book appears to have been a sort of nursery in
-which proverbs were trained for their fruitage in the last Solomon's
-religious testimonies. What those testimonies were we cannot easily
-gather, but it is useful for comparative study to remark the sentences
-in Ecclesiastictus which correspond, either in thought or phraseology,
-with those ascribed to Jesus. The broad and the narrow ways barely
-suggested in "Proverbs" are here developed (Ecclesiasticus iv. 17,
-18). "Hide not thy wisdom" (iv. 23, xx. 30). "Say not, 'I have enough
-(goods) for my life'" (v. 1, xi. 24). "Extol not thyself" (vi. 2). We
-find the exhortation to judge not (vii. 6); rebuke of much speaking in
-prayer (14); warning against the lustful gaze (ix. 5, 8); the night
-cometh when no man can work (xiv. 16-19; cf. Eccles. ix. 10); the
-proud cast down, the humble exalted (x. 14, xi. 5); one only is good
-(xviii. 2); swear not (xxiii. 9); forgiven as we forgive (xxviii. 2);
-treasure rusting and treasure laid up according to the commandments
-of the Most High (xxix. 10, 11); "Judge of thy neighbor by thyself"
-(xxxi. 15); the altar-gift and the wronged brother (xxxiv. 18-20);
-he that seeks the law shall be filled (xxxii. 15); charity and not
-sacrifice (xxxv. 2).
-
-These resemblances, of which more might be quoted, between teachings
-ascribed to Jesus and passages in the Wisdom Books, are so important
-that by the aid of these books some of the confused utterances
-attributed to him may be made clear. [54] Apart from the importations
-of Paul, and one or two from the epistle to the Hebrews, no reference
-by the Jesus of the Gospels to Jahvist books can be shown of similar
-significance. Combined as his Solomonic ideas are with his homage
-to Solomon and the Gentile Queen, and followed, as we shall see,
-by a resuscitation of Solomonic legends in connection with him, it
-appears clear that Jesus was of the Solomonic and anti-Jahvist school.
-
-It would, however, be a great mistake to suppose that Jesus
-was simply a philosophical and ethical teacher. He cannot be so
-explained. The fragmentary sayings, so far as discoverable amid their
-post-resurrectional perversions, have the air of obiter dicta from a
-man engaged in a local propaganda of subversive principles. What the
-propaganda really was is but dimly discernible under its own subsequent
-subversion by his ghost, but there are a few sayings not traceable
-to his predecessors, and beyond the capacity of his contemporaries
-or his successors, which bring us near to an individual mind, and
-suggest the general nature of the agitation he caused.
-
-The story of the woman taken in adultery, known to have been in the
-suppressed "Gospel according to the Hebrews," and by some strange
-chance preserved in the fourth gospel (viii), I believe to have really
-occurred. It would have required a first-century Boccaccio to invent
-such a story, and I cannot discover anything similar in Eastern or
-in Oriental books. Augustine says that some had removed it from their
-manuscripts, "I imagine, out of fear that impunity of sin was granted
-to their wives." It is not likely that any of the earlier fathers,
-any more than the later, would have invented so dangerous a story.
-
-Another anecdote, preserved only in the fourth Gospel, probably
-contains some elements of truth, namely, the words uttered to the
-Samaritan woman. Who would have been bold enough, even had he been
-liberal enough, to invent the words: "Neither in this mountain, nor
-in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father"? Even in the one Gospel
-that ventures to preserve it this noble catholicity is immediately
-retracted (John iv. 22) in a verse which obviously interrupts the
-idea. That the story is an early one is also suggested by the fact
-that no reproach to the woman on account of her many husbands is
-inserted. It is remarkable to find such a story related without any
-word about sin and forgiveness.
-
-The so-called "Sermon on the Mount" is well named: it is evidently
-made up of reports of sermons in amplification of sayings of Jesus
-in the style of the Wisdom Books, among which probably were:
-
-
-   "Let your light shine before men. A lamp is not lit to be put
-    under a bushel."
-
-   "The lamp of the body is the eye. If thine eye be sound the whole
-    body is illumined; if the eye be diseased the whole body is in
-    darkness. If the inner eye be darkened how great is the darkness."
-
-   "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
-
-   "By their fruits both trees and man are known."
-
-   "Each tree is known by its own fruit."
-
-   "Put not new wine into old wine-skins, lest they burst."
-
-   "Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves."
-
-   "Wisdom is justified by her children."
-
-   "If any man will be great, let him serve."
-
-   "The lowly shall be exalted, the proud humbled."
-
-   "Blind guides strain out the gnat, and swallow a camel."
-
-   "Give and it shall be given you."
-
-   "The measure ye mete shall be measured to you."
-
-   "Cast the beam from thine eye before noticing the mote in that
-    of thy neighbour."
-
-
-The following sentences in the "Gospel according to the Hebrews" do not
-appear to have been very seriously influenced by post-resurrectional
-ideas.
-
-
-   "He is a great criminal who hath grieved the spirit of his
-    brother."
-
-   "No thank to you if you love them that love you, but
-    there is thank if ye love your enemies and them that hate
-    you." (Cf. Prov. xxix. 17, 29.)
-
-   "Be ye never joyful save when you have looked upon your brother
-    in charity."
-
-   "Be as lambkins in midst of wolves."
-
-   "The son and the daughter shall inherit alike."
-
-   "It is happy rather to give than to receive."
-
-   "No servant can serve two masters."
-
-   "Out of entire heart and out of entire mind."
-
-   "What is the profit if a man gain the entire world, and lose
-    his life?"
-
-   "Seek from little to wax great, and not from greater to become
-    less."
-
-   "Become proved bankers."
-
-   "If ye have not been faithful in the little who will give you
-    the great?"
-
-
-These instructions have no connotations of the end of the world. They
-appear like the words of a man of the world, but not a man of the
-people. There is a certain unity in them, indicating a mind more
-developed than the semi-Jahvist Alexandrian philosophers of the later
-Wisdom cult, as represented by Jesus Ben Sira's "Wisdom," and by the
-"Wisdom of Solomon"; also a mind more practical.
-
-But these wise sayings do not convey the full idea of a man whose
-execution the Sanhedrim would require, nor a man whose resurrection
-from the grave would be looked for by the populace. These two
-phenomenal facts imply some strong antagonism to the priesthood and
-their system. Martyrdoms do not occur for ethical generalizations,
-much less for philosophical affirmations. The faith that strikes deep
-is that which speaks in great denials.
-
-Trying to follow his advice to "Become proved bankers," we may detect
-in some probable sayings of Jesus a transitional ring, e. g., "The
-Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." The effort
-at self-emancipation is still more traceable in certain incidents
-related in the "Gospel according to the Hebrews":
-
-
-   "He saith, 'If thy brother hath offended in anything and hath
-    made thee amends, seven times in a day receive him,' Simon his
-    disciple said unto him, 'Seven times in a day?' The Lord answered
-    and said unto him, 'I tell thee also unto seventy times seven;
-    for in the prophets likewise, after that they were anointed by
-    the Holy Spirit, utterance of sin was found.'"
-
-   "The same day, having beheld a man working on the Sabbath, he said
-    to him, 'Man, if thou knowest what thou dost, blessed art thou: but
-    if thou knowest not, thou art under a curse, and a law-breaker.'"
-
-
-That a man should regard the Holy Spirit as unable to make men
-infallible; that he should have discovered immoral utterances in
-the prophets; that he should regard it as a sign of enlightenment to
-disregard the Sabbath deliberately and intelligently--this is surely
-all very striking.
-
-Who, in the second century, could have invented these anecdotes
-about Jesus? They are not harmonious with the Pauline Epistles;
-their heretical character is proved by the repudiation of the Gospel
-containing them, while their genuineness is implicitly confessed
-by the ultimate suppression of that Gospel. For surely it cannot be
-supposed that such a work, well known in the fifth century, was lost;
-nor is there much doubt that any learned rationalist, if permitted
-the free range of all the libraries in Rome, without the presence of
-polite librarians, could bring to light that first-century Gospel,
-the only one written in Aramaic, the language of Jesus.
-
-But, when we come to consider the mature and positive teachings of
-Jesus, there may be placed in the front a sentence preserved from
-the suppressed Gospel by Epiphanius, who writes (Haer. xxx. 16):
-"And they say that he both came, and (as their so-called Gospel has
-it) instructed them that he had come to dissolve the Sacrifices:
-'and unless ye cease from sacrificing the wrath shall not cease
-from you.'" Dr. Nicholson is shocked at this threat, and suspects
-the Ebionites of having altered what Jesus said. But surely it
-is a true and grand admonition by one superseding a phantasm of
-heavenly Egoism, demanding gifts from men for pacification, with
-the idea of a Father. Dr. Nicholson connects it, no doubt rightly,
-with Luke xiii. 1-3, which should probably read: "There were some
-present at that very season who told him of the Galileans whose
-blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered,
-Think ye these Galileans were sinners rather than all other Galileans
-because they suffered these things? I tell you, No! And unless ye
-cease from sacrificing, the Wrath will not cease from you." That is,
-they would always be haunted by the delusion of a bloodthirsty god,
-a god of Wrath, and see a judgment, not only in every accident,
-but in every calamity wrought by fiendish men.
-
-In his quotation from Hosea--"I desire charity, and not
-sacrifice"--Jesus speaks as if with a transitional accent,
-as compared with the declaration that sacrifices imply deified
-Wrath. The contempt of Ecclesiastes for "the sacrifice of fools
-who know not that they are doing evil" (v. 1), has here become
-a great and far-reaching affirmation, which must have impressed
-the orthodox Jews as atheism. For, although there are passages in
-several psalms and in the prophets which disparage sacrifice, they
-were all interpreted by the Rabbins, as now by Christian theologians,
-as meaning their purification and spiritualization--by no means their
-abolition. Indeed, this higher interpretation of sacrifices appears
-to have given them fresh lease; and in the time of Jesus, when to
-the priesthood remained only control over their religious ordinances,
-the sacrifices were apparently preserved with increased rigour. Jesus
-himself, unless the gospeller (Matt. v. 23, 24) has softened his
-language, had at one time only demanded that none should offer a gift
-at the altar until he had done justice to any who had aught against
-him. But a remarkable passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews (x. 5)
-represents Jesus as going to the world with a quotation from Psalm
-xl. 6, 7, for a clause of which a parenthesis is given, saying:
-
-
-   "Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not
-    (Thou hast furnished me this body)--
-    In whole burnt offerings and sin offerings thou delighted not:
-    Then said I (in that chapter of the book it is written for me),
-    'Lo, I come to do thy will, O God.'"
-
-
-The sentence preserved by Eusebius, however, shows that his attitude
-toward sacrifices was not merely to "lift" from men (Heb. x. 9,
-anairei) the burden of sacrifice, but to denounce it as an offering
-to the devil. "Unless ye cease from sacrificing, the Wrath shall not
-cease from you."
-
-In this sentence "the Wrath" (he orge) is clearly a personification. It
-does not in the same form occur elsewhere in the Bible. Matthew and
-Mark report John the Baptist as speaking of "the impending wrath,"
-and Paul occasionally gives "Wrath" a quasi-personification (e. g.,
-"children of Wrath," Eph. ii. 1-3). These expressions, and the
-"destroyer" Abaddon or Apollyon, of Revelations ix. and (xii. 12)
-the devil "in great temper" (thymon), all show that the Jewish mind
-had become familiar with the idea of a dark and evil power quite
-detached from official relation to Jahveh, no longer "the wrath of
-God" executing divine judgments, but organized Violence, eager to
-afflict mankind as the creation of his enemy.
-
-In the "Wisdom of Solomon" (xviii.) there is a complete picture of
-the two opposing Destroyers. The divine destroyer ("thine Almighty
-Word") leaps down with his sword and slays the firstborn of Egypt; the
-antagonist Destroyer begins the same kind of work among the Israelites
-in Egypt, but Moses by prayer and the "propitiation of incense" sets
-himself "against the Wrath" and overcomes him,--"not with physical
-strength, nor force of arms, but with a word." The incense used by
-Moses to put the demon to flight recalls the "perfume" used by Tobit,
-on the advice of the angel, to put to flight Asmodeus; and Asmodeus is
-notoriously the Persian Aeshma, a name meaning "Wrath," who occupies
-so large space in the Parsi scriptures. [55] The especial antagonist
-of Aeshma "of the wounding spear," is Sraosha, "the incarnate Word,
-a mighty-speared god." (Farvardin Yast, 85.) As Moses overcomes "the
-Wrath" "with a word," Zoroaster is given a form of words to conquer
-Aeshma ("Praise to Armaiti, the propitious!") and the Vendidad says,
-"The fiend becomes weaker and weaker at every one [repetition] of
-those words." The Zamyad Yast says, "The Word of falsehood smites,
-but the Word of truth shall smite it." Aeshma is the child of Ahriman,
-the Deceiver of the World, and a Parsi would recognize him in the
-declaration ascribed to Jesus, "The devil is a liar and so is his
-father." (John viii. 44.)
-
-That Jesus regarded the whole realm of evil as absolutely antagonistic
-to the Good is reflected in the epistle "To the Hebrews." There his
-mission is to abolish the devil (ii. 14), which is very different
-from abolishing death (2 Tim. i. 10). For a long time the devil was
-suppressed in the "Lord's Prayer," but in that brief collection of
-Talmudic ejaculations the only original thing is, "Deliver us from the
-evil one." In the Clementine Homilies Jesus is quoted as having said,
-"The evil one is the tempter," and "Give not a pretext to the evil
-one." Nay, the single clause preserved in Matthew, that it is an enemy
-that sows tares,--these being as much parts of nature as corn,--is
-a sentence that divides the Ahrimanic creation from the Ahuramazdean
-creation as clearly and profoundly as anything ascribed to Zoroaster.
-
-Theological harmonists have for centuries been at work on the
-contrarious doctrines of all scriptures, and even among the Parsis
-some kind of metaphysical alliance has taken place between the Kingdoms
-of Good and Evil. Devout Christians find it quite consistent that one
-person of the trinity should say, "I create good and I create evil,"
-and another person of the trinity should say of natural evil, "An
-enemy hath done this." But no such harmony existed in the Jerusalem
-of Jesus. Under a teaching that symbolized the deity as the Sun,
-shining alike on the thankful and thankless, individually, desiring no
-sacrifices, and concentrating human effort against the forces of evil
-in nature, in society--the evil principle--Jahveh falls like lightning
-from heaven. Like "the blameless man" of the "Wisdom of Solomon," Jesus
-"sets himself against the Wrath," however sanctified as the Wrath of
-God, and sees all sacrifices as eucharists of the Adversary. He not
-only repudiates the name "Jahveh," but tells the official agents of
-Jahvism that their god is his devil. (John viii. 44).
-
-Of course one can only refer cautiously to anything in the fourth
-Gospel, for it is a composite book, but it contains, as I believe,
-passages or fragments of the early apostolic theology, wherein dualism,
-until crushed by Paul, was prominent, and the good God represented
-in hard struggle with Satan for the rescue of mankind.
-
-This aspect of the teaching of Jesus cannot be dealt with here as its
-importance deserves. We live in an age whose clergy deal apologetically
-with the prominence of the Adversary of Man in the teachings of
-Jesus. For this fundamental principle of Jesus Jewish monotheism
-has been substituted. But there are many records to attest that the
-moral perfection and benevolence of the deity, which is certainly
-inconsistent with his omnipotence, or his "permission" of the tares in
-nature, was the only new principle of religion affirmed by Jesus; and,
-also, that it was so subversive of sacrifices, priesthood, and the very
-foundations of the temple--all dependent on Jahveh's menaces--that
-the execution of Jesus appears more rationally explicable by this
-dualistic propaganda than by any other ascribed to him.
-
-It was the birth of a new God that moved Jerusalem: a unique God
-in Judea--and almost unknown in modern Christendom--namely, a GOOD
-God. As the Arabian gospel significantly relates, the Eastern Wise
-Men came to the cradle of Jesus as that of a saviour "prophesied
-by Zoroaster,"--the one prophet who separated deity from the realm
-of evil.
-
-It is now even unorthodox to deny that the agonies of nature are part
-of the providence of God: but herein orthodoxy is in direct antagonism
-to what it maintains as the authentic teaching of Jesus. "Then was
-brought unto him one possessed of a devil, blind and dumb; and he
-healed him, insomuch that the dumb man spake and saw. And all the
-multitudes were amazed and said, Is this the Son of David? But when
-the Pharisees heard it, they said, This man doth not cast out devils
-but by Beelzebub, the prince of devils. And knowing their thoughts he
-said, Every dominion divided against itself is brought to desolation;
-and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand; and
-if Satan casteth out Satan, he is divided against himself: how then
-shall his dominion stand?"
-
-Those therefore who believe these to be the words of Jesus, and yet
-believe blindness, dumbness, and other physical diseases to be in
-any sense of divine providence or even permission, are believing in
-a God whom Jesus implicitly pronounced to be Satan.
-
-And those who do not believe that Jesus healed such diseases, nor
-believe in a personal Satan, may still regard the above legend as
-characteristic. The separation of Good and Evil into eternally
-antagonistic dominions could not have been affirmed by any Jew
-other than Jesus (or John the Baptist, probably however an Oriental
-dervish). Though the Jews popularly believed in Beelzebub and other
-devils, they were all regarded as under the omnipotence and control
-of Jahveh, who proudly claimed that he was the creator of all evil,
-and who even had lying spirits in his employ.
-
-Whether Jesus believed in the personality of the evil principle, in
-any strict sense, may be questioned. He may have meant no more than
-Emerson, who pictured ill health as a ghoul preying on the heart and
-life of its victims. Memories of similar teachings may have given
-rise to the tales of healing afterwards associated with Jesus. But
-the personality of evil is a more philosophical generalization than
-the personification of a power representing both the good and the
-evil phenomena of nature. Evil acts in concrete forms, and often
-in combinations of forces which can not be analysed and distributed
-into particular causes. History records instances of moral epidemics
-driving whole peoples as if down a steep place into seas of blood,
-as if by some pandemoniac possession, impressing the ordinarily humane
-along with the vindictive, the lawless and destructive. A great deal
-of crime seems disinterested, and still more is due to the fanatical
-inspiration of cruel deities, whose names become in other religions
-the names of devils. Out of manifold experiences in the tragical
-annals of mankind came the terrible Ahriman.
-
-That Jesus did not adopt the Zoroastrian theology is shown in his
-hostility to sacrifices which are of vital importance in the Parsi
-system, though they were not of the cruel kind; nor, as we have
-seen, were they to propitiate gods, but to assist them. Moreover,
-belief in Ahriman had naturally evoked a militant spirit in the war
-against evil, and Jesus seems to have for this reason separated himself
-from the dervish, John the Baptist, whose violence had landed him in
-prison. The incident (Matt. xi.) is so wrapped in post-resurrectional
-phraseology that any rational interpretation must be conjectural;
-but there is a certain accent about it which can hardly be explained
-as part of the evangelical doctrine that the Baptist was a mere
-preface to Christ. Jesus seems to regard John the Baptizer as the
-ablest man of his time (verse 11), but as of a revolutionary spirit,
-as if the reformation were a siege against some political kingdom or
-throne. Violent people had been pressing around John, and the cause of
-spiritual liberation had suffered. There was too much of the old law
-with its thunders, too much of fiery Elijah, surviving in John. The
-ideal is not a thing to be clutched at, or taken by force, but all
-of the conditions--every tittle--must be fulfilled. (Luke xvi. 17.)
-
-This is in substance a doctrine of evolution as opposed to revolution,
-and my interpretation may be suspected of rationalistic anachronism;
-but it must be remembered that the Golden Age behind Israel was an
-epoch of Peace, which was represented in the ancient name of their
-city (Salem), and of its greatest monarch, Solomon. The prophets had
-long been painting the visionary dawn with pigments of that glorious
-sunset. Solomon, true to his name, had allowed dismemberment of his
-kingdom rather than go to war against rebellion; and it is noticeable
-that in the apostolic age there was a principle against carnal
-weapons, the Epistle to the Hebrews (xii. 3, 4) especially reminding
-the brethren of the patient endurance of Jesus, and commending their
-not having "resisted unto blood." This peacefulness of Jesus had indeed
-become a basis of the doctrine that the triumph of Jesus over Satan was
-conditioned on his not using any force, or other satanic weapon. Those
-who took to the sword would perish thereby--i. e., remain in sheol.
-
-But in a realm of practically oppressive and cruel superstitions,
-established and consecrated, an absolute appeal to the moral sentiment
-cannot escape being revolutionary. The American Anti-Slavery Society
-were non-resistants; their great leader, William Lloyd Garrison,
-thus apostrophised his "elder brother" of Jerusalem:
-
-"O Jesus! noblest of patriots, greatest of heroes, most glorious of
-all martyrs! Thine is the spirit of universal liberty and love--of
-uncompromising hostility to every form of injustice and wrong. But not
-with weapons of death dost thou assault thy enemies, that they may be
-vanquished or destroyed; for thou dost not wrestle against flesh and
-blood, but against 'principalities, against powers, against the rulers
-of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high
-places'; therefore hast thou put on the whole armor of God, having
-the loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of
-righteousness, and thy feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of
-peace, and going forth to battle with the shield of faith, the helmet
-of salvation, the sword of the Spirit! Worthy of imitation art thou,
-in overcoming the evil that is in the world; for by the shedding of
-thine own blood, but not even the blood of thy bitterest foe, shalt
-thou at last obtain a universal victory."
-
-So, across the ages, does deep answer unto deep. But all the same
-Garrison's feet were unconsciously shod with the preparation of the
-gospel of war, even as those of Jesus were. In a realm of consecrated
-wrong every appeal to the moral sentiment is necessarily revolutionary;
-far more so than physical rebellion, against which preponderant moral
-forces combine with the immoral, as being a greater evil than the
-orderly wrong assailed. Satan cannot be cast out by Beelzebub. A
-god of wrath, enthroned on reeking altars, could better stand the
-axe of the Baptist than the sunbeam of Jesus, the arrow feathered
-with gentleness and culture. John the Baptist was not a religious
-martyr; he suffered from a ruler quite indifferent to his religion,
-with whose personal affairs he had interfered. But Jesus suffered
-because he proclaimed, with irresistible eloquence, a new religion,
-one involving practically the existing institutions of the priesthood,
-and their whole moral system. It was virtually the setting up of
-a new deity in place of Jahveh, reason in place of the Bible, the
-heart worshipping in spirit and in truth in place of the temple, and
-humanizing the moral sentiment--turning the conventional morality to
-"dead works" (Heb. vi. 1). He expected the reform to be peaceful!
-
-Rousseau's remark that Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus like
-a god, has in it a truth more important than those who often quote
-it recognise. Jesus died, legendarily, so much like a god that it is
-difficult to make out just what happened to the man. Strong arguments
-have been made to prove that he did not die at all on "the cross"
-(a word unknown to the New Testament), [56] and that Pilate not only
-"set himself" to save Jesus (John xix. 12), but succeeded. There may
-have been from the stake a despairing cry, afterwards shaped after a
-line from a psalm, but it can hardly be determined whether this may
-not have been part of the first post-resurrectional doctrine that the
-Son must be absolutely left by his divine Father, and pass unaided
-through the ordeal of Satan, in order to fulfil the conditions of a
-return from death. It is true, however, that this primitive idea had
-almost vanished when the earliest Gospel was written, and, although a
-relic of it may have been preserved by tradition, there is an equal
-probability that Jesus did utter at the stake a cry of despair. The
-whole miserable murderous affair, unforeseen and disappointing, must
-have appeared to him a horrible display of diabolism; and even after
-his friends believed in his resurrection, and saw in the tragedy
-a sacrifice, they regarded it a sacrifice hateful to his Father,
-and exacted only by the Devil.
-
-Did he pray, "Father forgive them, they know not what they do"? Only
-Luke reports this; its suppression by the other Gospels suggests
-that its doctrinal significance was perceived. I heard a preacher
-in the church of the Jesuits at Rome argue that Judas himself is
-now in Paradise, because Jesus thus prayed for those who slew him,
-and the prayer of the Son of God must have been answered. There is
-no apparent dogmatic purpose in this incident, and it may be true.
-
-The story of his confiding his mother to the disciple "whom he loved,"
-told only by John, is evidently meant to complete the assumption of a
-special favoritism towards that disciple, who is the type of the good
-Spirit on one side of Jesus in contrast with Judas, Satan's agent,
-on the other. The two are equally unhistorical and allegorical. John
-and Judas became the good and evil Wandering Jews of mediaeval folklore.
-
-The first Solomon had perished as a teacher of wisdom when he was
-summoned from his tomb to utter the Jahvism of the "Wisdom of Solomon":
-the second and last Solomon was forever buried on the day when Mary
-Magdalene saw his apparition, and cried, "My master!" From that time
-may be dated the loss of the man Jesus, and restoration in Christ of
-the Jahvism whose burden the wise teacher had endeavored to lift from
-the heart and mind of the people. Vicisti Jahveh!
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX.
-
-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 matinee 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 mediaeval 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 "Melibaeus" 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 Parsi 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 Parsi 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 Khayyam, 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 Mueller. Vol. IV. The
-Zend-Avesta. Part I. The Vendidad. Translated by James
-Darmesteter. P. lix., et seq.
-
-[4] "Ammon" probably developed the name "Amina," 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., Sirozah 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 gaosho-sruta khratu,
-the knowledge acquired by hearing and learning. There is between the
-two nearly the same relation as between the paravidya and aparavidya 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 Armaiti 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 Mara, 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 Mueller'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 (Zambad 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 ajyaiti, translated by Haug "reality and unreality"
-(Parsis, p. 303). The translation "living and not living" was sent
-me by Prof. Max Mueller 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 Fuerst, 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 mediaeval 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 Armaiti,
-genius of the earth, are referred to ante Chap. VIII., in a passage
-from West's Palahvi Texts. In the Vendidad 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 Armaiti (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 Buiti, 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-mano
-(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."--Vendidad, 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" (prodelon) 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-Elyon," 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 Elyon. 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 Hom 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 Aeshma 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 Aeshma 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 Aeshma, 'the raving,' 'a fiend with the wounding
-spear.' Originally a mere epithet of the storm fiend, Aeshma 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.
-
-
-
-
-
-
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-Moncure Daniel Conway
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